If so, is there never a post or any ongoing thread on "Existentialism"?
Is "Existentialism" subsumed under:
pittsburgh.tribe.net/tribe/d...46a83f29
Is "Existentialism" subsumed under:
pittsburgh.tribe.net/tribe/d...46a83f29
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Re: Is being nothingness?
Mon, January 31, 2005 - 10:03 PMSUSAN BLACKMORE
Psychologist, Visiting Lecturer, University of the West of England, Bristol; Author The Meme Machine
It is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free will. As Samuel Johnson said "All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience is for it." With recent developments in neuroscience and theories of consciousness, theory is even more against it than it was in his time, more than 200 years ago. So I long ago set about systematically changing the experience. I now have no feeling of acting with free will, although the feeling took many years to ebb away.
But what happens? People say I'm lying! They say it's impossible and so I must be deluding myself to preserve my theory. And what can I do or say to challenge them? I have no idea—other than to suggest that other people try the exercise, demanding as it is.
When the feeling is gone, decisions just happen with no sense of anyone making them, but then a new question arises—will the decisions be morally acceptable? Here I have made a great leap of faith (or the memes and genes and world have done so). It seems that when people throw out the illusion of an inner self who acts, as many mystics and Buddhist practitioners have done, they generally do behave in ways that we think of as moral or good. So perhaps giving up free will is not as dangerous as it sounds—but this too I cannot prove.
As for giving up the sense of an inner conscious self altogether—this is very much harder. I just keep on seeming to exist. But though I cannot prove it—I think it is true that I don't. -
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Unsu...
Re: Is being nothingness?
Tue, February 1, 2005 - 7:33 PMRichard:
Thanks for the reference and the comments even more. I wish I were further along in what you're describing but the affinities apparent in Buddhist approaches makes sense to me as well.
A couple of questions:
"they generally do behave in ways that we think of as moral or good". Is this ad hominem or am I simply acknowledging that "decisions just happening" rather than being intended leads to the same result? If so, free will is pragmatically a moot issue for ethics, and I'm uncertain on where that leads.
I also appreciate the (apparent) theme in your note about not being able to prove "that which is". So is conviction (I will stand *here*) more fundamental than truth?
Is truth even something we can know?
Does it really matter what is or isn't true (Sherlock Holmes & Copernicus)?
Also, I don't know meme at all. Can you talk about this or Blackmore's approach?
Thanks. -
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Re: Is being nothingness?
Wed, February 2, 2005 - 12:23 AMErgo,
An error with Tribe.net just wasted a bit of work I did on a reply to your response. I will try and write a brief summary of an immensely compact answer that I wrote in response to your question.
The Evolutionary Theorist and Biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term "Meme".
My definition of a meme is:
An information set that is transmitted by consciousness such as Humans, animals, and machines.
I do not have much to say about Susan Blackmore at this time. I can say though after reading her latest book titled " Consciousness: A brief Introduction" I do recommend it.
Truth is an idea I cannot talk about at this time. I am still working it out myself. Wittgenstein, Logical Positivism, Karl Popper and Falsification are what I am interested in right now concerning this subject.
Speaking of Copernicus, I think that Kepler is a better example of "proving" "that which is" in the domain of Astronomy. Kepler did his best to discover and prove the principle that manifests the eliptical orbits that planets in our solar system (and ALL others in the Universe?) follow.
One important note: ALL the memes that I lhave earned about are of less value at this time than a meme which I became clearly aware of in 1996. The Technological Singularity. I think anyone that wants to understand Existentialism should be aware of this theoretical human initiated universal transformation that may change the very definition of existence.
At this time I am very busy; I am a Singularitarian ; Working on many related projects and drafts of papers and I may be seeking assistance with some local projects in the future.
I will contribute what I can to this converstation and others.
My Best,
Richard Kowalski -
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Re: Is being nothingness?
Wed, February 2, 2005 - 12:26 AMMeme:
An information set that is transmitted from one consciousness to another; In my definition this includes information transmitted from Humans to Humans, Animals to AI, AI to Humans etc. -
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Unsu...
Re: Is being nothingness?
Tue, February 15, 2005 - 3:38 PMbeing and nothingness are what *you* make of them :) so I think a more relevant question is, what are you? -
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Re: Is being nothingness?
Wed, March 9, 2005 - 10:43 AMwe can clear all of this up by simply despensing with the word "is" here.
in fact the whole verb "to be" we should discard.
we don't know what is or what isn't, only what our own nervous systems can interpret at this time.
www.generalsemantics.tribe.net -
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This is the maximum depth. Additional responses will not be threaded.
Re: Is being nothingness?
Wed, March 9, 2005 - 11:33 AMI think retaining a concept of 'is' is useful and perhaps necessary - it just needs to be qualified by the appropriate modal operator.
From the perspective of everyday transactional usage, objects exist as the referents of words and thoughts. From the perspective of analysis, things do not truly exist in and of themselves. It is not that they are non-existent; it is that our concept of 'is' and 'is not' relies on our concept of 'things', which are not pre-given.
This view is derived from Indian and Tibetan ontological arguments which I find very persuasive.
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