What is your Myers-Briggs type?

[Luke de Spa]

philosophy is "the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence", sez my computer dictionary, and that's good enough for me.

we already know* the unified self is an illusion, that the conscious mind doesn't interact with reality but rather accesses a patchwork reconstruction built by the brain, but that it isn't geared up to notice. basically, we know that the mind has some Really Big Fucking Blind Spots: we're at the mercy of all sorts of unconscious subroutines, invisible cognitive biases that can quite easily be manipulated by the modification of external inputs. here's a great example (although just about any post on that blog will suffice).

so, philosophy attempts to explain what it is to be human, how we know what we know, and what our place in the world is. but the more we learn about the brain, the less room for movement philosophy has – science is stealing its turf. specifically, what i'm kind of expecting is that, eventually, consciousness will be explained as a side effect of underlying brain function, and come to be seen as something akin to a first class passenger who – by sheer chutzpah and permanent, untreatable ignorance – somehow thinks he's flying the plane. if we were to know that to be true, philosophy would be pointless.

it's too early to call it, of course, but the evidence is piling up and it's seemingly only piling up on one side of the fence. that kind of sucks for humanity, because we sure do love our agency, but honey badger science don't care, honey badger science don't give a fuck. it's already knocked religion on the head. the rest of history's inadvertent bullshit artists will topple eventually.

anyway blah blah blah thread derailment over

* yeah yeah, you get what i mean. we have enough data that the confidence level is sufficient for us to say we 'know'. it's a timesaving device not an objective claim

[myosis]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

i don't think of those things as philosophy, but if the brain is understood all actions of the brain become explicable by science as mere physical phenomena, like the rest of existence, with philosophy becoming a redundant etiological dead end

THEN YOU CAN FINALLY BECOME A GOD

[duovamp]

This is all getting too philosophical for me.

[Trotskilicious]

man that blog post belongs in that graduation thread

[myosis]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

science is stealing its turf.

there is where it derails, really, i don't understand this leap you're making.

[myosis]

it's a good thing i'm bad at debating or i might waste my time on this, not knowing if luke is being serious or trolling

[Trotskilicious]

nah he's srs bsnss

[Luke de Spa]

Originally Posted by myosis

there is where it derails, really, i don't understand this leap you're making.

stealing or destroying or exposing as the playground of children. some 'philosophical' questions science will be able to answer, because a better understanding of the brain will make them neuroscientific questions. some it will render absurd. others it will not be able to touch, and we'll just have to deal with knowing we'll never know. the semantic apocalypse, as the guy put it in the first link i posted

[Luke de Spa]

Originally Posted by myosis

THEN YOU CAN FINALLY BECOME A GOD

nah, we'll all be sad little meat robots and with the death of meaning society will disintegrate into chaos as billions of brains go into amoral feedback loops

i just wanna understand what's going on, man

[Trotskilicious]

i don't think the average person will ever think that they aren't in control

[Eulogy]

and for all intents and purposes

who gives a shit

[cocksure]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

they can be tested for internal consistency and logic, right? (if they can't, surely they're useless)

of course. i was thinking strictly of empirical "testing"

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

i look forward to the day when we know enough about the brain to dismiss philosophy entirely. but more to the point anything like myers-briggs – i.e. anything that demands that the world to conform to the theory, rather than the other way around – can go die in a fire

science itself is built upon a philosophical basis; questions about what knowing, reality, language etc. "mean" will not go away as long as there is science.

also every theory is obviously a little deductive. pure induction does simply not exist.

[duovamp]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

nah, we'll all be sad little meat robots and with the death of meaning society will disintegrate into chaos as billions of brains go into amoral feedback loops

i just wanna understand what's going on, man

Well despite knowing these truths, still being attached to an ego will keep things just the way they are tbh.

[Luke de Spa]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

i don't think the average person will ever think that they aren't in control

i don't really think it'll play out that way. it's too convoluted for me to imagine what would really happen. marketing targeted not to your exposed preferences but to your neurology? police-operated MRI scanners everywhere, looking for thought criminals? doctors offering services akin to "sunshine of a spotless mind" memory erasure? governments temporarily rewiring their soldiers to lower error/stress/risk of atrocity? who frigging knows

[Luke de Spa]

Originally Posted by cocksure

science itself is built upon a philosophical basis; questions about what knowing, reality, language etc. "mean" will not go away as long as there is science.

well if there's no such thing as a person any more that's not going to really work out, is it

we're down the rabbit hole now, team

science gonna kill science

[Luke de Spa]

okay i guess i'm trolling now

is it time for breakfast yet?

[Luke de Spa]

SUISCIENCE

ouro fucking boros

[cocksure]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

well if there's no such thing as a person any more that's not going to really work out, is it

i don't think this matters at all. the concept of person itself has changed considerably throughout the ages, and philosophers are far from an agreement about what "being a person" actually means. or what "being" means. or how the phrase "being a person" can carry meaning. or what "meaning" is.

[Luke de Spa]

meaning is about to die, buddy. get on board or go home

[cocksure]

that is nonsense. how then do we communicate our knowledge about those nerve cells and brain parts you love so dearly?

[Luke de Spa]

we don't. we're automata.

[Trotskilicious]

that was a good read luke

it explained a lot about why I hated my last job so much. they kept telling me how smart and wonderful I was but then when raise time came i'd get something meager based on tenure, while the people who were less intelligent and more drone-like were being rewarded so I just really checked out and started performing worse and no matter what I did I couldn't reverse it. I just stopped caring.

It's nice to know that scientifically speaking it wasn't really because I was a terrible person it was just bad external stimuli

[myosis]

"And now we must not conceal from ourselves what lies hidden in the womb of this Socratic culture! An optimism that thinks itself all powerful! Well, people should not be surprised when the fruits of this optimism ripen, when a society that has been thoroughly leavened with this kind of culture, right down to the lowest levels, gradually starts trembling in an extravagant turmoil of desires, when the belief in earthly happiness for everyone, when faith in the possibility of such a universal knowledge culture gradually changes into the threatening demand for such an Alexandrian earthly happiness, into the invocation of a Euripidean deus ex machina!"

[Luke de Spa]

[duovamp]

Whereof nothing can be said, thereof one must remain silent.

[cocksure]

Originally Posted by Luke de Spa

we don't. we're automata.

what's the difference? i believe we're automata already in a sense, and i thought so did you.

[Nimrod's Son]

ENTP. Every time I've taken a version of that test, same result.

[barden]

Luke, art will be your only saviour. Stay human.