Hey. I came here for an argument. That’s just a contradiction. … Yes it is.
Again my deepest sympathies for your current condition. May you someday recover.
I do wish to avoid traumatizing you with more exposure to rational thought and analysis but I do think that a small bit of history is of interest.
It was ancient Greek philosophers who birthed the study and nature of perceptual illusions (and used them to inform their architecture in the process) and who framed the questions that gave the answers that one can now blithely state we learn from science. Most of how science now thinks about perception, the interplay between top-down expectations and bottom-up inputs, are merely refinements of the models that philosophers came up with over the centuries.
As far as nihilism goes my favorite quote is “Just because we are doomed doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time.” No idea who to attribute it to.
It’s actually quite a profound thought and not one that takes $500 and uncomfortable chairs over a weekend in a hotel conference room to come to.
But for those who venture off into the scary open spaces of considering existence and meaning (or lack thereof) this XKCD is probably even more apt. One can get lost pretty easily and want to turn back. It is kind of scary. Terrifying even. And beautiful. … Oh okay, and sometimes even a bit silly.
Of course to some degree our poor impaired M is correct that those who study philosophy may end up “knowing” less than they “knew” before they started. One last pertinent quote for that: “Confidence is what you have before you understand the problem.” - Woody Allen.
You claim you can’t have self-awareness because the Self doesn’t exist. So then who has “been broken by philosophy” and started this thread, Machinaforce?
Clearly, You exist in some practical enough way to feel broken and to start this OP. So your premise that the Self does not exist is flawed.
Bottom line: you appear to be in a thought-cycle that isn’t working for you. True, some folks get caught up using philosophy tools in ways that cause existential dread. You seem to be one of them. Sounds like you should walk away and focus on the practical. You are in the world. Now what?
Machinaforce, do you disparage the study of medicine, on the grounds that medications and surgeries can have negative side effects? Do you disparage the study of physics, on the grounds that gravity can cause things to crash and break? Do you disparage the study of literature, on the grounds that some works have to do with depression or death?
That’s true of all subjects. That someone is unfamiliar with a subject does not necessarily mean they’ll be derisive of it, but it’s very rare to find someone who declares a whole field of knowledge or form of art to be Unworthy and who can distinguish it from a bag of fried peanuts. “I don’t want my food to contain any chemicals!”, “why would you study [a foreign language] for?”…
You to no small degree accept Descartes here of course. But the conundrum to some philosophers … and perhaps even more so to cognitive neurobiologists who study the mind … is what actually is this self, what constitutes that identity, and is it an illusion (along with free will)? And if so how does that illusion get created and experience identity in face of, or even as a result of, constant change?
Seriously these things overwhelm some minds. From my POV “I” may be an illusion, but I still really have to go pee.*
*It’s an allusion to an old joke btw, about a rabbi who got drunk and woke up after having passed out in a cemetery, thinking he must be dead because he was in a cemetery. But if I’m dead, why do I … An illustration of philosohical thinking itself.
Yes, of course I accept the reality that I feel conscious. That goes back to our thread on Determinism vs Free Will: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=813828 In the OP I start by accepting that I perceive my Self so I want to ground my pondering with an acceptance of that.
You framed that Self may be, likely is, illusory. But also agree that it is an essential part of how we engage our Reality.
That is why I ended my post to MForce by saying “You are in the world. Now what?” If I get too caught up in there being no True Purpose, or there is no Self, and a few others, I stop and “inhabit” the fact that “I” feels like the authentic way I engage reality.
So yeah, cool - there is no real Self. I get the case for it and use it to ground my thinking, per that thread. But I can’t escape the everyday reality that it is “my” thinking I’m grounding.
Actually my conclusion is that the word “illusion” is a silly one to use as an “illusion” is something a “self” perceives, so self must precede being able to have an illusion. My belief, as I think we also covered in that past thread, is that “self” is not a thing but the Hofstadter GEB strange looping process as experienced by a cognitive system of certain sorts and levels of self-referential complexity makes decisions.
But let’s look back to that past thread. Your goal was to have a discussion on how particular takes on a certain philosophical concept informed posters’ lives, if they did at all. Certainly one can see how for some of a particular mindset accepting the Laplacian deterministic perspective, believing that there is no Free Will, would imply that neither they nor anyone else has any moral responsibility for any action they take. That, if true, and taken seriously (and some in philosophy take themselves and these discussions very very seriously … really? one can only have superficial meaning without Philosophy? c’mon) would be scary stuff, more scary to my read than nihilism or solipsism.
Not intending to reopen that discussion, but just agreeing with Trinopus’s earlier post that to some these concepts can hurt. To go with your tool analogy: these concepts are bit like very sharp Chef’s knives and some are best off not playing with sharp knives, especially without having even taken a basic knife skills class. The ideas suggested by a good wrestle with determinism, nihilism, solipsism, and existentialism, may be experienced by some who take them very seriously as suddenly taking off the training wheels of revealed truth moral certainty without having the skills to balance and control the ride on just two wheels. And no helmet either!
Mind you most end up chopping the onions just fine and even if they shed a few tears in the process they keep all digits attached. And some learn how not only to chop, dice, and slice safely and well, but to chiffonade and julienne, and they end up using those skills on all sorts of ingredients, not only tear inducing onions but things sweet tart and spicy as well. Some, perhaps M, never master the skills, which is a shame as these particular skills also help us cut through lots of bullshit along the way!
For the fans of philosophy - what’s your biggest problem with the subject?
Mine is definition creep. Words get used as if they mean the same thing in different contexts and sneaking in a creep from having defined “word” as meaning “X” into a different usage of “word” by context or grammatical construction creating nonsense that they take as meaningful.
In a small book “I Think Therefore I Laugh” John Allen Paulos has a chapter discussing how Wittgenstein and Lewis Carroll both dealt with these issues such as as follows:
That sort of annoying bit is done all the freakin’ time by those making allegedly profound points in philosophy!
I’ve nearly finished reading “I Am A Strange Loop.” Hofstadter is good!
(Where should I start with Daniel Dennett?)
Makes me think of a Tom The Dancing Bug strip, where God (“God-Man”) has to go off to another galaxy for a bit, but he’ll be right back. While he’s gone, his loyal sidekick engages in murder, rape, arson, theft, and spitting on the sidewalk, because the only source of absolute morality isn’t watching. This is a caricature of someone using one of the tools…very badly.
I mentioned mine already – the element of hero-worship, where there is still a great emphasis on classical philsophy, and a few big names in modern philosophy, and comparatively little that just focuses on the issues.
Fortunately the areas I’m most interested in (philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of mind) are a bit more of a free-for-all.
DSeid - hmm, sounds like I should check out I am a Strange Loop. Yes, that all sounds good.
As for what bugs me about Philosophy is the same thing I respect and understand is required: the precise-to-the-point-of-silly words and terms. Words are so important that they occupy their own realm of philosophical inquiry, so getting them right is key. But the going gets so dense, and the terms don’t stay easily in my head - they’re like keeping track of the Russian names in War & Peace, you know? ;).
Consciousness Explained, although maybe dip a toe in some shorter articles, like Quining Qualia (Dennett is not a fan), or maybe his various TED talks.
In my opinion, philosophy is worth studying because it increases our understanding of human perspective. As in, it provides various lenses through which to view the world, and perhaps a perspective we ourselves hadn’t perceived will prove useful to our overall understanding of life as human beings.
Of course, being that we have limited senses, we can only form opinions about the things we cannot take in and interpret directly through our senses, such as abstract thoughts like the meaning of life. There is no right or wrong answer because there simply is no way of knowing what the precise meaning of life is. Just as we all have differing opinions on whether or not there is a God because there is no precise definition of what God is or isn’t and most of us cannot say we’ve directly had contact from God. (I hold that such contact would be based in delusion, but that’s also my own opinion on the matter.)
I think researching philosophy aids the critical thinker in forming their own personal perspective in regards to the complexities of human life. Philosophy doesn’t provide a solid answer to complex questions about life, and perhaps that would be more satisfying and grounding, but ultimately would be impossible to find.
I believe philosophy “gives back” in the sense we find comfort and a sense of connectedness in our mutual struggle to understand life’s complexities. It cannot “give back” with one solid answer to every/any problem human life presents because philosophy is basically structured by perspective.
Could be worse: late medieval theology! “Prevenient Grace” and the like.
I like short articles, so I’ll start there, and if I like the jasper, I’ll go for the book. From the articles and notes I’ve read about Dennett, I’m likely to become a fan of his and his work. Thank’ee kindly!
I just started reading this thread, but I wanted to post my total agreement with paragraph. Philosophy is worth studying for precisely this reason. Everybody is born and raised in some environment where they absorb certain assumptions without being aware that they are assumptions, treating them as obvious and unquestionable truths instead. In order to break free from those assumptions, we must learn what they are. Then we question whether certain assumptions are right. Then we understand that other people who disagree with us are not merely stupid or evil, but are acting from different assumptions.
I was raised in a very left-wing household and when I entered college that was the only viewpoint that I knew and understood. I broke free from that myopic viewpoint by reading Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Descartes and Hobbes and Locke and Hume and Rousseau and Karl Marx and William James and Bertrand Russell and many others. The only way to truly free your mind is to be exposed to other minds doing high-quality thinking about important topics. In other words, you have to study philosophy.
I’ve also read more about Dennett’s writings than what he’s written. I vaguely recall reading an article he wrote and being unimpressed. I’ve now read that linked one and have no desire to read more of what he’s written. I think he coined the phrase “deepity”? That article is deep with deepity. To my read full of his own sense of cleverness as he presents some things as if they are profound when they are actually pretty trivial concepts. Just MHO but Hofstadter he aint.
Oh they are for me but for the man who woke up from an accident with a radioactive complete set of the OED to discover himself to be … WORDMAN? Say it aint so!
