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 Now online (2)dariusgriffin big ...and 183 guests Last 5 registered Oplandisks nothingstar N_loop yipe foxtrotromeo Browse members... |
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true, i guess i can see where you are coming from. let me rephrase a bit better. yes, i do think there is only one thing, but that one thing (ie. brain, body, whatever you want to call it) causes chemical interactions which lead us to 'perceive' that we have some sort of consciousness. but no, i don't agree that there is some sort of cartesian dualism, where there is something like the ever-famous pineal gland which is the 'head controller' (no pun intended) of consciousness and its related activities... |
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jenf ... the only things i take from heidegger is the being-in-the-world .. his existential analytic is well flawed - i realise that. tho as an aside, existential as an informal rule of thumb is quite liberating. |
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other people make me feel real- |
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yeah, one semester taking contemporary existentialism beats a typical course in school - i'll give it that much :) but yes, heidegger is a very interesting read (being in time, you read?), so is sartre (although i find he writes like he is on lots of caffiene and constipated), but the cynic in me eventually tries to find flaws in their seemingly flawless thinking... to end that, yes, existentialism is a nice break from god-fearing talk ;) |
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that's neat |
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i guess we differ in understanding at that point. physical reality affects consiousness, consiosuenss affects physical reality. it's a continous feedback system (analagous to art and society). you suggest that physical reality is causal (am i right?), while i suggest that consiousness is equally as casual. for this reason i see no conflict between freewill and destiny and can't stand by one but not the other. |
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casual? what you mean? like they both wear sweat pants and baggy shirts? |
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"then how can there be any interaction between your cousciousness and the perception of the physical world? there couldn't be. " i don't understand. aren't consiousness perception nearly the same? |
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causal is what i meant |
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time for sleep, goodnight all. |
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i said that in response to: "but i don't think that consioueness "comes from" the physical any more than the physical comes from consiousness." isn't that what you said? |
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ah! i see.. 'i see', said the blind man. :) yeah, now that you are explaining yourself more and more (which is nice to see), i see where you are getting at. so basically you're saying something like art cannot be labeled or classified so distinctly and clearly, because art is dependent on society and vice-versa? well then, mr. post-modernist, yes you do have a point, but im just trying to get into the nitty gritty of body vs. mind. the thing is, i think society is something we can empirically understand, and art also. body/brain, yes, but mind/consciousness? not so easy to define for everybody.. so the argument continues.... |
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yes, that's what i said. |
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i suppose i should accept that my thread will not be taken up tonight. a fond goodnight to you all. |
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and I refute it by saying you wouldn't be able to have any perception of the exterior world. Consciousness most definitely comes from the physical. Stick an electrode in my hypothalamus and give it the right shock: I'll have an orgasm like sensation of pleasure. LIkewise, stimulate the visual cortex, you'll hallucinate. Like I said, any part of your consciousness, it's in your head and nowhere else. |
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bunnies |
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here's a quick answer - why don't we just not try to answer the question of 'what is the meaning of life' with one sentence? different strokes for different folks... heh heh heh |
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i mostly just agree with you plaidzebra, and understanding doesn't usually lead me to many words. goodnight. |
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yay daniel c. dennett :) reading his book consciousness explained right now. good stuff. |
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existentialism .. re: not explaining everything does that mean you shouldn't try to? in virtue of science you can not produce ethics. you can't derive ethics from science. you can give a list of properties, gain greater technical knowledge from science etc. and this is very useful, BUT you cannot derive any notion of good or bad from it ... though i'm not advocating a universal notion or anything. |
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a really good kiss- |
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mappa, you mistake sensation for consciousness. hopefully no one will mistake my impending state for unconsciousness. i am always ready for awakening. |
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yeah but buddy.. come on! we're trying to answer the mind/body problem (or that's what i seem to see in the thread), which i don't really see the topic of ethics specifically popping up on! ethics is for another thread ... :) |
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sure you can. |
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i never said that consiousness doesn't come from the physical, just no more so than the physical comes from consiousness. i'm not sure why you think that response to probing the brain(the focal area of consiousness?) conflicts with this. |
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i guess i should restate 'everything' as meaning 'all those physical things' for this thread.. |
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no plaidzebra, I don't mistake. Tell me, what happens if I take a probe, insert it through your skull and scramble your brains? |
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there is no mind/body problem as far as i am concerned. |
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jenf. yeah, read being+time, and parts of being+nothingness .. great stuff. |
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your brain before drugs = {} your brain after drugs = @*@ |
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ok, i see more clearly now jupitah. |
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hey if you get some time, see if you can get your hand on maurice merleau-ponty's 'phenomenology of perception'.. |
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seriously though, i am interested in the conflict you see between brain probe response and consiousness being equally as causal as physical. |
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i thought you had to go to bed? :) |
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another time though.... i need sleep baaaad. g'night. |
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I don't see any problem with brain-probe response, I was using that to refute what I thought you meant, that consciousness doesn't rely on the physical. That is, you alter the physical, the result is an alteration in consciousness. Plain to see. |
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jenf .. yeah too true .. just making clear that talk of ethics doesn't presuppose dualism. :) u familiar with structural semiotics ... re: mind body problem, i admire how heidegger tries to dissolve the problem ... at the same time though .. there might always be opposition "within" so to speak. though i'm quite a fan of metaphorical talk. |
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structural semiotics? in what sense? you mean like language (eg. wittgenstein)? not formally, but in my spare time i try.. read some derrida and the former... yeah heidegger has some good points to him.. it's interesting that he befriended d.t. suzuki, a scholar on zen buddhism - you can see the influences on both ends of the spectrum if you go through their texts... yes, there is nothing wrong with admiring someone for something they say, whether it is more or less truthful (within a certain context of course)... |
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... but at the same time, i think that admiring cannot be mistakened for believing... one does not necessarily constitute the other.. no? like they say.. knowledge is power.. anyway.. to your last comment, you mean metaphorical as in analogous or metaphysical? |
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re: structural semiotics .. de sassure, levi-strauss, barthes -> but yeah it all basically boils down to derrida in some form. (though his "differánce is a bit of a quasi-mythical account also imo). i like the freeness of later wittgenstein, and that's what i hoped from heidegger, and there's potential, but in the end he is more a quasi-nietzschien ... but yes buddhist influence is quite noticeable (especially when it comes to his later philosophy).\\ re: metaphorical, no not metaphysical by anymeans. i was meaning more - as you were saying re: contextualism ... just sort of almost a playful use of concepts/terms - not to justify any universal doctrine - but just to use as part of a vocabulary .. expressing thoughts, without commiting to them. perhaps admiring but not believing? |
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ah, so structuralism vs. post-structuralism - modernism/p-modernism, etc. yeah, i know about it in a general context i guess... honestly can say i never read levi-strauss or de saussure, but have heard of them here and there.... yes, i agree, i also enjoy the 'wordplay' that wittgenstein uses in philosophical investigations, but i think i have to come closer to the fact that i can't avoid logic forever - tried to hold on to nietzsche for as long as i could, but i think the hold is loosening up! ive gotta take a little bit of both sides - possibly even three or more (quantum?) sides, if i challenge myself enough... you can't have logic without it's opposite, or even their synthesis, or none at all, and vice versa, etc etc.. yes this is all confusing.. but hopefully you get my drift. i like logic for the fact that it brings on a challenge - somewhat like language does. where you have a set of rules that you have to work by, and you try to stretch them out to their limits as much as possible. mysticism and Subjectivism (with a capital S, yes) seems to be rule-LESS, and therefore too easy to beat an argument with :) |
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ah, so structuralism vs. post-structuralism - modernism/p-modernism pretty much i guess yeah .. though i wouldn't restrict myself to just the french. de sassure's stuff is quite cool, its quite a neat system of opposition - levi-strauss does it on a grander scale, haven't read much of his, and find his writing quite difficult. can't avoid logic huh? i've done my dash with logic, dabbled in a bit of meta-logic, though didn't quite do gödel's theorm which would have been interesting, but i'll live without for now. i appreciate logic, and its a powerful tool, but i do think that circularity, infinite regress and self-referential inconsistency will plague logic always - and i guess anything formal. but with logic it just seems so blatantly obvious. nietzsche, sartre and that sort of thing is great "personal" philosophy in my opinion, but in the end, even nietzsche had a ghost he was fighting. he killed god, and i don't think he ever managed to get out of the opposition - eg. there never was a god. i'd say i've got lots of sides .. there's not much point in trying to conform/live by ideals in my opinion, only loosely (what i'd call in a metaphorical sense). in that sense i like the post-structuralist picture. i think i get the drift.. logic is very useful/powerful, but can be enjoyable just like puzzle-solving in itself. on the other hand ethics (but won't diverge too much), seems devoid of logic, as it sais at the end of tracatus philisophicus-logico (?) can't quite remember how it goes, but how after explaining everything ethics is unexplained, and this is what he termed the mystical (no less!). not really - but yeah ... mysticism confuses a lot of concepts imo. i quite like toying around with more informal logic (ie. reasoning with 'substance', don't mean that in a derogatory way) - and am intrigued that reason seems to self-destruct when pushed, yet this seems the only way to formulate anything coherently/explicitly .. maybe. being-in-the-world to me is wh |
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being-in-the-world to me is where its at .. and any reasoning or such - is already within (so much so that i'm doing what nietzsche did with killing god) .. its not there - but its difficult to shake. (a friend of mine a while ago said, doesn't post-modernism just ignore Truth) .. how can one answer that without stepping into a false opposition? - maybe |
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hey if you get some time, see if you can get your hand on maurice merleau-ponty's 'phenomenology of perception'.. yeah, most definetly on my to read list, from what i have heard/read its brilliant stuff ... (foreshadowing structuralism also!) |
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well all-in-all, i basically can 'truthfully' say that at this stage in my life, i enjoy reading fiction, fact and theory (and everything in between), and the slight nihilist in me really thinks in the end the Truth won't be figured out (wherever the 'end' may be)... therefore, i may as well have fun with wordplay, paradoxes and metaphors, no? :) thus, puzzle-solving has always been one of my greatest hobbies - but not just any old typical puzzle-solving being the greatest challenge - think of russell within a realm of the dionysian mindset - now THAT'S crazy.. ;) |
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life has no meaning, but the aim is survival |
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hehe... you haven't thought about it much, have you? |
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it hurts to much |
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We should rephrase the question [what is the meaning of life]... --- or We should define word by word, in the phrase, so we're all talking about the same thing. Too many times people define words differently... |
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EXACTLY! from what i recall, the original question-asker stated 'a pretty simple question, but...' or something along those lines.. but really, it is not so simple. and it really covers a broad range of topics. maybe it should be reworked - something like 'what is the meaning of life to an old man who lives in orwell's 1984?' haha |
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