Admittedly I took this from /pol/, but I think that since philosophy is such a broad topic, it's better to have guidelines for how to discuss something rather than what to discuss.

>>1
Want to narrow that down a bit? There are encyclopedias on this one subject.

and here i am

body = hardware
mind = software

bugs are logged and will be released with the next patch

Mind is a function of the body. Certain parts of the brain, to be more specific.

As far as dualism/determinism goes, I think most philosophers favor determinism, but I could be wrong.

There is of course the problem of consciousness, which may be what you're referring to. I believe that the problem states that biochemical reactions and whatnot cannot account for the existence of qualia, or what we experience.

A case for separateness of consciousness is often made by the "zombie" thought experiment, where, as I understand it, you imagine a world where "zombies" go around exactly the way we do, reacting to things, etc, but are not conscious of what they are doing or why they are doing it.

My problem with this is that in order for the zombies to go around exactly the way we do would require that they have the same cognitive functions as any of us, including memory, sensory processing, creativity, logic, and so on. Basically to say it's possible to imagine a world where zombies act exactly the same as people but don't have consciousness assumes that consciousness is something separate to begin with, so I think that makes the argument basically circular reasoning. I could be wrong, though.

There's also the question of whether a computer could be conscious in the same way as a human in that it could experiences qualia. Simply running a program to identify the color red based on wavelengths is not the same as *experiencing* redness the way we do. Our eyes essentially process wavelengths, and our brain identifies it as red, but subjectively when we look at something red, we're experiencing redness. The question this raises (or one of them) is not about the mechanics of visual processing, which a computer could conceivably accomplish, but whether it could experience redness the way we do.

Personally, I think it's likely that the determinists have it right in that the answer will not involve to some separate substance. It seems possible to me that qualia is just the output of how the brain processes information.

You can be sure that your mind exists. You cannot be sure that your body exists.

>>625

>>

>>but in certain fields femininity is based on ability

I'd actually like to hear some examples here.

>>and masculinity on appearance

Here too.

People say things like, 'I always felt like a girl' or 'girls just think differently'. They imply that femininity is some profound aspect of the mind and soul of a woman, and I would simply like to question that.

I already gave one for each.
Bodybuilding - Look muscular (not be able to lift things)- appearance not ability - This is what Arnold is, and he's pretty damn manly for it.

I gave cross cultural parallels [boat making (Hidatsa), woodworking (Pawnee)] for femininity being based on ability, but just so you don't have to step out of your comfort zone: The ability to sew or knit is certainly considered a feminine trait. If someone were to do these things very well that would be considered feminine of them. If you want to say that a lot of high fashion is male, sure, but they're also almost exclusively gay men who don't care that it's considered feminine.

Just because tasks are domestic isn't to say that one doesn't have to have a particular ability to do them.

>>People say things like, 'I always felt like a girl' or 'girls just think differently'.
Those that say they 'always felt like a girl' are mistaken. At least they are not phrasing their feelings correctly. There is no way for a man to actually know what it is to be a girl in the same way that there's no way for a man to know what it is to be any other person. I mean usually they mean to say that they identify more with our culture's female gender roles (that is to say cooking, cleaning, child rearing, being the passive one in relationships, being interested in fashion, etc.). Where I think you go off the rails is when you assume that our culture's definition of femininity is some sort of universal, and take one aspect of femininity (that women often like to look attractive) and try to say that that is the only basis for womanhood.

>>They imply that femininity is some profound aspect of the mind and soul of a woman, and I would simply like to question that.
Being a woman identifies them as much as being a man identifies you. There are a lot of things that define who we are, and each is integral to our person. Do I think that femininity is solely seen in women? Certainly not, there are a lot of feminine men, and a lot of masculine women. If you're using profound to be the opposite of superficial I'd have to disagree with you again. Being a woman is just as important to their character as being masculine is to yours.

>>627
>I mean usually they mean to say that they identify more with our culture's female gender roles (that is to say cooking, cleaning, child rearing, being the passive one in relationships, being interested in fashion, etc.).
Umm I think it's that they identify with women around them. I think it's deeper, I know there's a neurological basis; it's probably something more like their internal picture of themselves being the opposite of their biological gender for some reason. Such an explanation would make sense because it separates what identifies as from sex and orientation. What gender roles a person identifies with don't reflect on self-professed gender. For example I'm a man but I'm really empathetic, I like taking care of kids, and I'm pretty into fashion; yet I never feel I identify as a woman. Somehow being masculine/feminine is a separate thing.

In my experience, the 'femininity' expressed by MtF transexuals and gay men is actually a subtly different sort of state of being to the femininity traditionally possed by those born female. The male feminity, as I will call it, has more of a performative and hypersexual character; it is flamboyant and takes up a lot of social space and as such can be seen as a macsulinised feminity, whereas traditional feminity has undertones of maternality and is born of a much more cyclical mindset- possibly as a result of the cyclical fact of female biology.

I feel as if these two types of feminity have been falsely merged in today's society, to the extent that many biological females have taken on aspects of the male version, and I think recognising this difference will help us much better deal with the different issues affecting the respective groups.

>>705
I feel like I should mention that I am speaking from a position of someone possessing said 'male feminity', for added legitimacy of course

“Hard question is not, ‘What is meaning of life?’ That is easy question to answer! No, hard question is what make happiness."

The meaning of life is to survive and reproduce. Any further meaning is defined by the person asking the question.

>>700
The "meaning" part of this question i think is implicitly spiritual in tone and not concerned with biological priorities, or even going meta with it and harnessing the power of stars and entire galaxies. You can quickly imagine these scenarios and then always end up adding a "and then what" to it, or a "that's it?"

We keep coming back to the question of meaning because it's something we can never properly make coherent, we've found a way to speak about our existence that we can't put to words, or we're unsatisfied with any words that could describe it.

>>709
Spiritually, I don't think we were put here for any purpose. The meaning of life is whatever you want it to be. My meaning of my life is to have a good time.

Order that brings disorder.

New Realism is the new thing.

>>702

Yes i'm quiet versed on metamodernism, I was fishing for people who've gone super-saiyan 3 before we moved on to super-saiyan 4 so to speak.

I'm a reader of François Laruelle's non-philosophy as well.

>>702

Also speculative realism remains so representationalist and thus plays into neo-hegelianism, any neo- or retro- plays into the symbolic/impossible exchange of the hyperreal and hence doesn't overcome the issues of post-modernism's deconstruction of 'Being' through differance.

in brief: that shit's still onto-theologically metaphysical

The self is a myth. It is a fable concocted by the brain, to make it possible to function and survive. In reality, your predispositions are simply correlations of dendritic connections. The more connections, the more used the pathways, the more likely the brain will default to these patterns.

In a social species, it is important to notice certain predispositions in others, because that must inform your interactions with them. Fight, flight, fuck, friend, etc. It is also important to signal your predispositions, in a manner that will likely not trigger negative response from others. So to use economic theory, the "self" is a signalling algorithm, that supposedly chooses the best response to observed environmental variables.

The concept of self evolved from the need to maintain a place in a social group. Baboons "present," apes puff out their chests, all to show their status in the tribe. This is no different from men who show off fancy cars, or get tatoos. Think of it as a highly evolved form of plumage. Your personality stems from the same instinctive process, the same need to present one's worth to others.

We have gotten so good at this, that we don't even think about it. Personality cannot exist in the absence of socialization. This is why schizophrenics and other types of shut in frequently describe themselves as not having a personality. On the other side of the spectrum are the autists, who have a dysfunction of observation. They cannot best respond to signals, because the signals are ignored or weakly recieved. The presence of these vestigial traits in the population demonstrates that personality as we know it is a relatively recent development in terms of evolution.


The essential question is whether animals who are not "self aware" have selfhood. Is it a characteristic of life? The litmus test seems to be whether an animal can recognize its reflection. But such creatures also engage in social signalling. The problem is describing the phenomena in terms of wonder and enlightenment, as opposed to hard observational science.

>>540
A philosophical argument based on a controversial interpretation of mathematics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haecceity

>>580
seems like this is related to the thought of heidegger

You are a pattern

This pattern is not totally static, but retains certain elements across time

Smaller tends to be better, but the size of society is proportional to the amount of organized labor is needed to sustain that society. For example river valley civilizations such as the Xia Dynasty based their power on their ability to complete hydrological works and irrigation. Such a society could not be effectively split without severe famine.

On the other extreme, the carrying capacity of the arctic tundra may only allow for a low population density, hence the inuit tend to live in small family bands.

It comes down to location, location, location.

The funny thing is, globalization is the one thing that transcends these boundaries. Want to have an ideal platonic society on an island somewhere with no natural resources? You can, the market can provide everything you need, and you can provide twilight hours tech support in return.

at one point i remembered reading something about the highest number of people that we know and can keep in our heads at one time - it came out to about 100. Later, I read about the lowest number of people in an organic community that can exist where everyone is at most 2 degrees of separation from each other. It was also about 100 people.

weak troll

Next time use the New Revised Standard Version. It's the best translation from the original Greek. Not that I care, particularly. I'm a Jew, so to me your argument is meaningless.

>The object of science is to say as little as possible, to simply state the undeniable, that water is a fluid at room temperature, that one plus one equals two, etc.

>Physics doesn't prove anything, it is merely a model based on rules we bullshit, and anything proved in math is specious and artificial, not what's really "out there". If something is undeniable it is not science, and one plus one is not always two in mathematics.

So much ignorance of physics and maths. But then again this is /phi/, where people come to make questions that have already been answered by science or aren't answerable because they're empty statements.

>>689
Cmon man. They may have only a tenuous grasp of stem stuff but you clearly only have a tenuous grasp of philosophy (and the English language) and no one is hassling you about it. Well... I mean I am now.

>make questions that have already been answered by science
If you're talking about ancient philosophy regarding science you should remember that it was a precursor to science, and that science would not exist without it. If instead you are talking about ontology I would argue that the questions it poses are not, in fact, answered by science. The underlying assumption of science is that our observations are accurate, which is not necessarily true, so when a philosopher asks about the universe it is far different from a scientist asking the same thing. The scientist is interested in the practical, observable universe. The philosopher is asking about what it might be, knowing that evidence is most likely unavailable to them. You could argue that based on that definition, there is 'no point' to philosophic investigation of the nature of the universe (as we can't do anything with their answers), but that doesn't change that their questions are not 'answered by science'.
>or aren't answerable because they're empty statements
This is where you really show your ignorance. Are you really saying that deciding upon one's life's goal is inherently meaningless? That is the question that underlies all of ethics, and it is quite important to answer as without answering this, we are no different from animals. You could say it is 'unanswerable' in an objective sense, and you would be right, but that doesn't mean that the answer that we arrive at isn't important. Science is about estimation and refinement, and Philosophy is no different. At the end of the day, the only objective metric we have for philosophic ideas, however, is their logical consistency. We, as humans, are just balls of cognitive dissonance and just having an answer to the question of what it is we strive to do helps to make us more rational. You could say that the answer is meaningless in the grand scheme, but really everything we do is. The point is that on the granularity of everyday life philosophy is both answerable (on a personal level) and useful (in that it makes us more rational), so I have a hard time seeing what is so 'empty' about it. Sure there are questions that may seem meaningless, but philosophy is occasionally done for philosophy's sake just as science can be done for science's sake. Often discoveries of this type turn out to be meaningful later.

If it will make you feel more comfortable with the idea that philosophy is an ok field, you can think of the fact that philosophy eventually boils down to logic (predicate logic in fact) and that logic is math (which you seem to think is good).

A corollary theme in science is to make statements without bias. Observations made by an observer must be neutral.

Philosophy is most often a fanciful defense of idiosyncrasy; anyone with intellect can justify bias. Philosophy is bias incarnate. Sure it has spawned many related disciplines. But compared to it's descendants, philosophy is a veritable dinosaur. Astronomers would hardly consult astrology, at least during office hours.

Sure, it may be interesting to read up on logical statements derived from linguistical jokes that no longer fit any form of usage, but it could hardly be considered useful.

Ex: The character for woman combined with the character for beard, means ploy, or trick. Thus the it's a trap meme predates the common era. Because the written language is the highest form of art, the implied negative connotation is certainly true!

Of course that is a very literal interpretation. Philosophy is very language dependent, however, and truths that do not exist cross cultures can hardly be considered universal.

Philosophy works quite well as a process, but is indefensible as a viable discipline.

There is something going on behind your senses that is called reality. Religion is a tool to discover that reality. What is actually man made is all of our projections based on faulty perception onto that reality.

>>693

Eastern Dialects do the same, but cheaper.

>>523
Churn it out, or simply tell your instructor the truth.

Don't pay for somebody else to do it - use the money for better things.

>>524
I could get extensions alright, but my mind is in turmoil until the workload has been taken care of, and I need it to be done sooner rather than later for any kind of peace of mind. I've started the ground work to churn them out though that being said. Hopefully I can fire out some shitty essays and be done with it if I can't find someone to do them for me in the next 24 hours

Getting someone to do your essays equals plagiarizing, which can have serious consequences depending on your institution. So basically just writing some bullshit barely coherent scramble is better then buying a decent one, at least in my view.

Also, lmao at the Germans, one minister plagiarized his Ph.D. thesis. I mean come on, I can sort of understand it for a random term paper or essay, but your goddamn thesis? Believing that that shit won't get checked out is just blind stupidity.

Probably can't help OP anymore, but 1000 words on each of those topics is ridiculously easy. That is, we are talking about an entire branch of philosophy and one of the most influential philosopher there has ever been, which equals lots of shit to just copy-paste from your textbook(s). In your own words, of course, you know what the deal is.

What I'd do is just give an broad description of the development of metaphysics from Plato and Aristotle through Descartes to Kant and Hegel, gloss over the existentialists and then describe the declining interest during the late 19th and 20th centuries, and end with a pointer or two of the current status.

Another aspect would be to describe what metaphysics is, namely it's various subfields such as ontology and epistemology. Then on each give a couple of major theories throughout the times.

With Marx you could either talk about his philosophy, the material dialectic or w/e, and gloss over its impact, or focus on the impact and gloss over the philosophy part. The impact naturally being communism in its various forms, and do bring up the ways in which different communist ideologies differ from Marx's original thoughts, for extra points.

>>529
I churned out a mediocre essay and turned it in. Am doing the same right now with the other essay. It was the easier solution just to fling something together with what time I could spare.

>>531
academiccomposition.com

It's legit

>>669
Pyromania would probably fit best

I like fire..I like to burn things. Would you like to get together and have some coffee OP. We could talk about fire and maybe burn a few things.

>>671
I would like that stranger from the internet, as I to, like to light things on fire

>>670
Yes, pyromania is a beautiful way of life. Just this morning I set a preschool on fire, what a way to start your day.

There was a point in my life when I was really into the idea of arson, but it turned out that I was actually into pyromania. The common distinction (I read this a long time ago so it probably isn't accurate) is that pyromaniacs stay around to watch the fires they set, while arsonists flee since their only goal is destruction.

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a pyromaniac, but fire is really pleasing to my senses, with bigger fires being more pleasing. While candles are pretty boring, the roar and swirling tongues of a large fire are pretty hypnotic, and when I'm around a campfire I like to be right on the edge of burning to feel the heat, since you can't really get that sensation anywhere else. Fire also brings back really good memories for me (I wonder if there is a higher incident rate of pyromania among former boy scouts). One of the highlights of high school for me was watching a neighbor's house burn down, and while burnt wreckage isn't necessarily exciting, the progression of something burning is usually cool.

I don't know why you are looking for opinions about a disorder on a philosophy board, but while I'm not a pyromaniac, I can understand how somebody could be so attracted to fire that they are unable to control the urge to start fires.

No it's not

What is delicious.

As a side note, I can't believe people still use the King James edition. The man was a fucking lunatic.

"During a very famous moment, Krishnamurti asked the audience if they wanted to know his secret. The lecture hall went silent, and everyone leaned forward.

“You see,” he said, “I don’t give a shit.”"

It's pretty much the opposite. The vast majority of religions believe that our actions in this world matter. I mean you can't really have a dogma if you don't value the physical world at all can you? Not only do most religions believe our actions matter, but just as many believe that we ought to try our best to do good. This generally extends to not murdering people, I mean it's one of the commandments in Christianity. Some religious believers even go to the extreme and try to preserve potential lives by banning abortion. So what I'm getting at is that there is not a religion I can think of that explicitly outlines in its texts that human life or experience is of little value. Even religions which see the physical world as a horrible place we must escape from (Buddhism, Gnosticism) STILL maintain that our actions here matter and we ought to do good.

I always find it really ignorant when people blame religion for things. Religion is words and ideas, it exists as much as James Bond does. Religion doesn't do good or bad, people do.

>>634

But our concept of blame is religious in origin. I guess I'll be blunt and say I'm not really talking about religion, but rather Abrahamic religion (as the most egregious and popular example).

If people don't murder because of religion, then what happens when a religious figure issues a fatwa (declaration) that sanctions murder? Religion is the lens through which many, many people see the world.

When a secular person does something wrong, there's no doubt about it. But in a religious context, you can never truly eliminate the possibility that what happens is god's will. Thus religion lends to cynical manipulation, even more than the regular con act, because with salesmen you're supposed to do due diligence; with Abrahamic religion you subordinate yourself, you conform, driven by the guilt of something your ancestors have done (even if your ancestors would have rejected the notion, as polytheists). It's a wicked cult that curses one's revered ancestors, and tramples upon all legacy and tradition for this "religion 2.0" mockery. They even set a fucking Year Zero. Can you imagine the arrogance of these people?

If you ask your wife who's watching the baby. "God's watching the baby." You'd
have that bitch committed, right?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

The theory takes effect with three or more people, even if the third person is a completely made up entity.

Message too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>641

first god and religion are not the same. you can believe in god and not be religious.

second-ironically, you sound like s sheep-believing that being an atheist makes you a "rebel, free thinker" is a load of bs. thats very much part of the atheist movement and thats all it clings to because thats all its has. if you want to be a real free thinker, follow what you want to. but not doing what you want because of a group you are in is rather ironic that being atheism but not surprising, given the movement has become what it for so long has bitched about.

You should see if there is a Unitarian Universalist church nearby where you live. Basically, the idea behind these places is that people of all faiths or non-faiths come together to seek personal growth. Services are generally lay-led, meaning that members of the congregation contribute segments to each gathering rather than a preacher just taking over the show. My favorite service was when a classical guitar major just brought his instrument in, had everybody meditate, and then played a few songs. No mention of God, just a bunch of people trying to get that "church feel."

I should mention it did start out as a Christian Church, and some would say that it is still affiliated with Christianity, but the church I used to go to had more atheists and agnostics than Christians.

I think I know how you are feeling, OP. I am an atheist and have never had a crisis like the one you are going through, but I may have something that could help you.

Look into artistic muses. These are totally made up figures, whether defined or shapeless, that the creator can lean on in times of creative trouble. I am not sure of the psychological or philosophical grounding behind the idea, but having these muses seem to allow the user to be okay with failings and helps them along to the next project.

We are always serving someone. Its sometimes more, sometimes less apparent to whom and why.
It really depends on how you want to look at it and whether you need to feel comfortable with the things you see from those angles.

Brains are funny.

You should let your curiosity lead you. Don't let your misunderstood fear stop you from a path that feels right. Have no fear and take the plunge, don't be afraid to become another person.

I was an atheist in my teenage years and slowly wound up being quite spiritual. I grew curious and began reading about different religions and ideas. I slowly began to stitch together my own faith rather than subscribing to any one path. So now I believe in a strange mixture of Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Buddhism.

If being a rebel is so important to you, Gnosticism might be a good place to start reading. In a nutshell Gnostics believe that the Christian God of Abraham is actually a Demiurge, a false creator god. They believe humans are apsects of God's mind that have been trapped in the physical world by the Demiurge. As you can imagine Gnosticism was quickly classified as a Christian heresy and so the ideas of it were advanced mostly in secret among small circles of people. The belief system also encourages creativity and flexibility since the belief system itself was never the subject of a centralized authority. Rather, it came into being slowly through the discussion and ideas of esoteric thinkers. The Secret Book of John is the fundamental Gnostic text. Give it a read.

I think at an underlying level, certain basic philosophies are drilled into us subconsciously through culture. The brain already organizes these into discernible units, it is only through LSD that we become aware of them.

LSD was more of a collective brain meltdown for me. I even became benched on my NBA 2k team, because I was fool enough to play while on LSD.

DXM was the trip worth mentioning. The entire universe unfolded and I saw life as an entropic cascade that spilled throughout the stars in a wondrous cosmic flush.

Is life not like any other process, another sustained reaction that throws the universe into greater disorder through the appearance of order; enzyme regulation, and organization.

But life is categorized as any intrinsically sustaining and heritable process. So machines can be extension of life, so can holograms, but it can all start from a single domino.

We rescue the universe from inertia.

I also saw my infinitesimal part in this grand opera, and disabused myself of imperious ambition, because I am a big picture kind of guy. The universe asks nothing more of me than to chug a few beers and procreate.

Psychedelics actually didn't change my thinking, although I could never get any good stuff. Other psychoactive like opiates, stims, marijuana, etc taught me a lot though. It made me realize that life really is the desire for powerful and pleasant sensations, followed by unpleasant sensations. It's a very buddhist sort of thinking, though I'm not a buddhist in any way. I do practice moderation and avoidance of a lot of things now, and I'm much happier for it. It's like the ups and downs of drugs tuned me into that pattern and make me very aware that by indulging less I could be much happier.

Among hunter gatherer societies, it is never the case that anyone is self sufficient. So if you want people to share their food with you, you gotta walk the walk, do the talk, etc.

The issue with basing your worldview upon ancient philosophies is that you risk having an antiquated view of the world. Since most ancient philosophies were based upon observation, their conclusions come from a world very different from ours, making them antiquated or just plain wrong. In this sense, a philosophy which tries to explain observable or physical phenomena is much less likely to have any lasting impact (sorry Pythagoreanism) than one which deals with logic and ethics. Maybe I am just dissing metaphysics but I'm not too worried about that.

Stoicism is pretty cool though, it certainly makes some valid ethical and logical points, but don't lose sleep because you don't agree with their scientific ideas and definition of nature. Remember, it's *your* worldview, don't feel the need to commit to a school.

I like Xunzi, not because he inspired me to espouse his philosophy, but because my personal philosophy coincidentally has many overlaps with his.