Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–69 of 69 posts

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#61

Post by coldtea »

lngnmn wrote: post #60
coldtea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is contradiction with the original meaning and purpose of the whole endeavor - the search for ultimate reality, of what is. Only assuming reality is rational. Which is a pre-conceived notion -- and that's even more in contradiction with the original meaning and purpose of the whole endeavor. Though, even scientists can get it wrong (e.g. "God doesn't play dice", when apparently, she does).

Come on, rationality as a concept of the mind is unapplicable to reality. Reality just is. Genetic patterns, for example, are not rational or irrational. Some of them encode genes for proteins, so they are preserved by the evolution processes (mutations in, say, hemoglobin would be selected out). Some of them are random noise. The whole thing is stochastic - random mutation occur, so God plays a dice, but some patter…

>Come on, rationality as a concept of the mind is unapplicable to reality. Reality just is.

That's exactly the kind of non-philosophical argument that takes for granted what it should investigate.

Reality barely "just is". And even if it is, we have no way of accessing reality-reality, just our perceptions of it (which is the message of Kant, and to a different degree, Hume).

And whether reality is rational, Hegel would also like to have a discussion with you. He'll agree on the "reality is rational" part, but not in the way you think it (e.g. he accepts reality as contradictory at the ontological level, and event accepts contradictions in his version of logic).

>Genetic patterns, for example, are not rational or irrational.

Philosophical inquiry needed (akin to "citation needed").

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#62

Post by lngnmn »

coldtea wrote: post #61
lngnmn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, rationality as a concept of the mind is unapplicable to reality. Reality just is. Genetic patterns, for example, are not rational or irrational. Some of them encode genes for proteins, so they are preserved by the evolution processes (mutations in, say, hemoglobin would be selected out). Some of them are random noise. The whole thing is stochastic - random mutation occur, so God plays a dice, but some patter…

> Come on, rationality as a concept of the mind is unapplicable to reality. Reality just is. That's exactly the kind of non-philosophical argument that takes for granted what it should investigate. Reality barely "just is". And even if it is, we have no way of accessing reality-reality, just our perceptions of it (which is the message of Kant, and to a different degree, Hume). And whether reality is rational, Hegel w…

> non-philosophical argument that takes for granted what it should investigate.

It has been investigated. The experimental findings of genetics could prune out lots and lots of prior nonsense, the way a backtracking tree-pruning search algorithm would do. Philosophy need to be constantly revisited, to be up to date with what is proven to be the case.

One implication of genetics is that life is proved to be a "mechanical process" - in other words, there is nothing "extra" to it. God is proved to be dead.

The inquiry is quite short. As long as we have established that the mind is what the brain does, and brain is a product of this particular spot of the universe (it requires water, atoms and certain temperature) every concept produced by the mind is withing this closure, not parallel or outside of it. As an Indian philosopher would say, I am That (Brahman - the universe, what is), not something else. A lot of western bullshit could be pruned out that way.

You know, in the Pirsig's book the hero dismissed Indian philosophy, by attending a wrong sect of extreme advaitists, who are naively postulating that everything is an illusion.

To find the distinction where "what is" ends and an illusion (self-conditioning) produced by mind (and society) begins is the task of philosophy as an endeavor, not some scholastic branch. This is the way to see "That" more clearly.

"Before knowing what is lies outside know what lies within" as the ancient saying goes. Know how the instrument works before make any measurements.

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#63

Post by AnimalMuppet »

lngnmn wrote: post #62
coldtea wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Come on, rationality as a concept of the mind is unapplicable to reality. Reality just is. That's exactly the kind of non-philosophical argument that takes for granted what it should investigate. Reality barely "just is". And even if it is, we have no way of accessing reality-reality, just our perceptions of it (which is the message of Kant, and to a different degree, Hume). And whether reality is rational, Hegel w…

> non-philosophical argument that takes for granted what it should investigate. It has been investigated. The experimental findings of genetics could prune out lots and lots of prior nonsense, the way a backtracking tree-pruning search algorithm would do. Philosophy need to be constantly revisited, to be up to date with what is proven to be the case. One implication of genetics is that life is proved to be a "mechani…

> One implication of genetics is that life is proved to be a "mechanical process" - in other words, there is nothing "extra" to it. God is proved to be dead.

Not at all. God is proved to not be needed to explain certain things that are explained by genetics. That's all.

> As long as we have established that the mind is what the brain does...

You haven't. Nobody has. We have assumed, but that's not the same thing.

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#64

Post by lngnmn »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63
lngnmn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-philosophical argument that takes for granted what it should investigate. It has been investigated. The experimental findings of genetics could prune out lots and lots of prior nonsense, the way a backtracking tree-pruning search algorithm would do. Philosophy need to be constantly revisited, to be up to date with what is proven to be the case. One implication of genetics is that life is proved to be a "mechani…

> One implication of genetics is that life is proved to be a "mechanical process" - in other words, there is nothing "extra" to it. God is proved to be dead. Not at all. God is proved to not be needed to explain certain things that are explained by genetics. That's all. > As long as we have established that the mind is what the brain does... You haven't. Nobody has. We have assumed , but that's not the same thing.

God is a word, a label. That label could be meaningfully attached to one of the two concepts - the process, of which we are by-products, which is running by the machine we call Universe, or, to the language-possessing, self-conscious mind, looking at which the ancient people created their anthropomorphic toy-gods.

One famous Sufi saying goes like this "Nothing can know god but god [itself]". This, intuitively, gives one a hint about the correct labeling and the recursive definition hints that it is all inside the mind, mere mental concepts and social constructs.

The machine which runs all this... Well, it could be called god too, and Hindu mystics did it three or four millennia ago, destroying all the Vedic anthropomorphic gods as mere products of imagination.

Modern science leaves no place for any god, but one of these two.

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#65

Post by wahern »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #53
wahern wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One freedom I lack is the freedom from the limitations of my brain, limitations which I can barely even fathom. But the limitation I was specifically referring too was that suicide isn't like other personal choices because your body and mind act in concert against self-agency. And thank goodness that they do, but the point is that like infants we're trapped in an environment that is constitutionally hostile to any ca…

>"One freedom I lack is the freedom from the limitations of my brain, limitations which I can barely even fathom." Okay, let's play along with this. If you feel your brain is holding you back, you must have an idea of what it's holding you back from, otherwise you wouldn't see it as limiting. In other words, it's only limiting in comparison with another way of being. With this in mind, if your consciousness could exp…

I don't know. Perhaps it's not a relevant limitation, or perhaps it's not a limitation relevant to the notion or my experience of freedom. Or perhaps it's a limitation that channels choice and thus enhances or even defines freedom.

What I do know is that I'm tired and stressed this afternoon and can't even _think_ about that question... ;)

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#66

Post by Nomentatus »

narrator wrote: post #44
wahern wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really all comes down to pricing theory, right? Marxism says that labor has intrinsic economic value. That's fundamental to Marxist communist thought, from economics to social theory to theories of history. Liberal economic theory says that there's no such thing as intrinsic economic value. See Diamond Fallacy. Optimal price signaling through a free market would be a necessary corollary. (And I think the Halting P…

The truth is is that all labor is of equal COST, that being one hour of a person's time, but all labor is not of equal VALUE. Someone building a machine to do something is more valuable then the equivalent time spent doing the task by hand for example. The calculation of whether the machine should be built and then what it should be used for, especially if its function is very non-specific, such as a lathe, is where…

Touch of ableism here.

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#67

Post by Nomentatus »

Nomentatus wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the communists wasn't the "oversimplification of marxist economics", after all capitalist policies are based on similar oversimplifications. It was the power struggles, and the controlling party elites.

Other than human nature, it had everything going for it.

re "The subtler arguments against socialism are not amenable to sound bites." History is unsubtle - especially where communism is concerned. Many arguments can be put forward to discredit it, but none are really neede. There's another couple soundbites (more accurately, aphorisms) for you.

The (lack of recognition of the) unconscious mind cripples socialism. Interestingly, Christianity and Buddhism both sneak it in, in one roundabout way or another; the next social movement needs to start right there, with the unconscious mind - tackling the conundrum of our deeper motivations including sexual selection. That might be possible. Sexual selection (often aided by our unconscious) overpowers every version of socialism so far. We need a version that can cope with that extreme pressure on human action.

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#68

Post by Nomentatus »

coldtea wrote: post #57
Nomentatus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than human nature, it had everything going for it.

If capitalism (and more merely wanting to make a profit when you can) was so great fit for human nature, one has to wonder why people were forced out of their villages, beaten, trained, enslaved in colonies, and policed, to adopt it in any large numbers. Compared to these processes, Stalin was a small-time crook. Humans have lived and thrived without capitalist economies and with other priorities (from moral to relig…

It's a crude fit for human nature, yup; now I beg you suggest a better one. The medieval church was a pretty crude fit too, coping with unconscious motivation fairly well, encouraging innovation not so well. I think we can and will do better one day, but the socialism we have now is far too naive. I think kindness, responsibility and shrewdness about human nature might be put together in one system, but such a working system isn't clear to me, and we aren't doing much to think one up.

Re: How Camus and Sartre split up over the question of how to be free

#69

Post by emmelaich »

emmelaich wrote: post #46

So Camus against violence and Sartre for. Makes sense; the philosopher or revolutionary most in favour of violence comes from the middle or upper classes, not the lower.

Rereading my comment I see it can be interpreted different ways.

So to clarify I was thinking of middle-class advocates of radical left wing causes - such as Che Guevera.

Post reply on HN