This is one of those posts where I think "I wish I could understand the post". Way to technical for me right now. I sometimes wish that someone can do a "Non-Technical" and Non-mathematical version of posts like these ones. (but I guess it will take too much time and effort). But then I get away saying, I don't need to understand everything, do I?
“To rationalize their lies, people -- and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose -- are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just.”
--Wendy Kaminer (A woman social activist)
You admitted to reading secondary sources.
Whenever, then, anything in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge of things, and are in the main ignorant of order and coherence of nature as a whole, and because we want everything to be arranged according to dictates of our own reason; although in fact, what our reason pronounces bad is not as bad as regards the order and laws of universal nature, but only as regards the order and laws of our own nature taken separately.... As for the terms good and bad, they indicate nothing positive considered in themselves...For one and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad and indifferent. For example, music is good to the melancholy, bad to mourners and indifferent to the dead. ---Spinoza
From the story of philosophy by Will durant
Can somebody tell me what is wrong with the above quote? Just curious, because I already see downvotes on it
Whenever, then, anything in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd or evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge of things, and are in the main ignorant of order and coherence of nature as a whole, and because we want everything to be arranged according to dictates of our own reason; although in fact, what our reason pronounces bad is not as bad as regards the order and laws of universal nature, but only as regards the order and laws of our own nature taken separately.... As for the terms good and bad, they indicate nothing positive considered in themselves...For one and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad and indifferent. For example, music is good to the melancholy, bad to mourners and indifferent to the dead. ---Spinoza
From the story of philosophy by Will durant
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked. "Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat. "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter." ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~Andre Gide
Wonderful post.
Because the brain is a hodge podge of dirty hacks and disconnected units, smoothing over and reinterpreting their behaviors to be part of a consistent whole is necessary to have a unified 'self'. Drescher makes a somewhat related conjecture in "Good and Real", introducing the idea of consciousness as a 'Cartesian Camcorder', a mental module which records and plays back perceptions and outputs from other parts of the brain, in a continuous stream. It's the idea of "I am not the one who thinks my thoughts, I am the one who hears my thoughts", the source of which escapes me. Empirical support of this comes from the experiments of Benjamin Libet, which show that a subconscious electrical processes precede conscious actions - implying that consciousness doesn't engage until after an action has already been decided. If this is in fact how we handle internal information - smoothing out the rough edges to provide some appearance of coherence, it shouldn't be suprising that we tend to handle external information in the same matter.
Even this language, I suspect, is couched in a manner that expresses Cartesian Materialist remnants. One of the most interesting things about Dennett is that he believes in free will, despite his masterful grasp of the disunity of conscious experience and action. This, I think, is because he recognizes an important fact: we have to redefine the conscious self as something spaced out over time and location (in the brain), not as the thing that happens AFTER the preceding neuronal indicators.
But perhaps I'm misinterpreting your diction.
I don't get you
Google says it's Kurt Vonnegut.
Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
yeah, very well put, every reason to give the art of rationality a chance
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You need to attribute quotes (and, as per the rules above, you can't quote yourself).
yeah, just totally missed it...edited now