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How to Do Philosophy

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Do Philosophy

#161

Post by euccastro »

rms wrote: post #157
euccastro wrote: post #156

Metaesthesia (3/3) [This is a multi-part post. Read it before I'm killed from the site! :P Search for Metaesthesia to find the other parts.] Bandwidth? Yeah. If you have a connection as dense (or more) as your hemispheres have with each other, you can get some pretty strong integration, to the point the two selves dissolve into a new one. With a narrower link, like the one you have with your feet, each brain will sti…

Do you think stars metafeel? The universe as a whole?

How do you even think about this stuff? It's almost orthogonal to reason. The only useful engagement point I can find is observing the characteristics, especially the limits, of my own experience.

I think there is some 'metafeeling tone' everywhere, and that the intensity of it is somehow associated to our concept of complex dynamic order. Although it is a continuum, in parts of the universe that sport a dramatically greater amount of complex order than their surroundings, the feeling of such surroundings is lost as imperceptible line noise. Thus, isolated selves.

I think stars feel, although I can't see how their feelings could be much more interesting that those of a pot of boiling water.

The universe is more interesting. Since it is 'everything', it holds all the complexity, all the order, all the chaos, all the information flow, everything that you could relate to consciousness, or to interesting consciousness.

Yet, at a macro level, and at any timescale that can be humanly grasped, I suspect the universe is a rather dumb thing. AFAIK, there is not a terribly complex interplay going on between the top level parts, and I imagine interesting subparts have independent consciousnesses of their own, that the universe is essentially blind to: I don't think the universe is more aware of us than we are of the neutrons in our bloodcells.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#162

Post by stickler »

This essay needs to be corrected. There is a major historical error. Several times, it is implied that Aristotle's work held back European thought for hundreds of years, up until the seventeenth century. This isn't true. Aristotle's influence was absent from Europe for several of the intervening centuries, only really returning with the influx of ideas from the great Arab philosophers like Averroes.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#163

Post by euccastro »

ingenium wrote: post #159
the900 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you offer defense of that position please?

The brain is composed of neurons. Each neuron either fires or it doesn't, just like on or off in a computer. This is determined by chemical reactions in and outside the cell. A powerful enough computer can simulate this down to the atomic level, it's just physics. Just because the computers we build don't function the same as the brain doesn't mean that the brain isn't a computer. Some attempts at AI have taken this…

Yet that doesn't even address consciousness. Just behaviour.

I don't mean consciousness as in functioning state of the brain (i.e., as opposed to unconsciousness), or about the ability of a representational system to picture and reason about itself. I talk about the feeling of being (I wrote a semi-serious comment about this in this thread: search for metaesthesia).

You can rightly claim that this is not observable beyond the first person, and thus it's out of the scope of science. But I guess we all have a personal unscientific take on it, or we can make up one as good as any other when so prompted. That was what I was asking you about.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#164

Post by rms »

euccastro wrote: post #163
ingenium wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brain is composed of neurons. Each neuron either fires or it doesn't, just like on or off in a computer. This is determined by chemical reactions in and outside the cell. A powerful enough computer can simulate this down to the atomic level, it's just physics. Just because the computers we build don't function the same as the brain doesn't mean that the brain isn't a computer. Some attempts at AI have taken this…

Yet that doesn't even address consciousness. Just behaviour. I don't mean consciousness as in functioning state of the brain (i.e., as opposed to unconsciousness), or about the ability of a representational system to picture and reason about itself. I talk about the feeling of being (I wrote a semi-serious comment about this in this thread: search for metaesthesia). You can rightly claim that this is not observable b…

My take is that consciousness is probably unique to humanity. Yet other great entities, probably have something better than consciousness. Because of the limitations of our own consciousness and what our language allows us to express, we won't ever be able to comprehend the supreme state of existence that makes up what a star has that is better than consciousness. It just doesn't make sense to me to look at a star and somehow perceive ourselves as better or different than that dumb object because we think.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#165

Post by zoltz »

pg wrote: post #117
Neoryder wrote: post #113

PG, Does this mean you are starting a project of some sort?

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

Really that's what I thought when reading this essay. And I agree that some of your essays are exactly what philosophy should be. But most are advice about startups rather than philosophy (although you can still see they were written by a philosopher), and some state specific observations. Maybe the philosophy essays deserve their own directory?

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#166

Post by dpapathanasiou »

pg wrote: post #76
dpapathanasiou wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato, despite his intellect (or perhaps because of it), turned out to be, as you say yourself, "naive and mistaken". Yet Diogenes was able to see that about Plato then, as a contemporary. And while it's true that he never sat down to write anything himself, his work has endured via written accounts of others (Diogenes was a real person, not a mythical figure).

Every reddit commenter is "able to see" that my essays are mistaken. Does that make them smart?

I don't know what motivates people on reddit (don't they all upvote you automatically, like the people here?), but Diogenes' criticism of Plato was not simple whining, it was criticism based on a serious philosophy (cynicism) which stands in stark contrast to Plato's.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#167

Post by dpapathanasiou »

pg wrote: post #75
dpapathanasiou wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Influential, yes. Plato was an elitist to the extreme, and his notions of a rigid class hierarchy did shape early feudal civilization in Europe. But most important? Would you want to live in his Republic?

Can you explain how the Republic influenced the Merovingians?

Not sure what you're referring to there, but the feudal ideas of class determined by birth and lack of social mobility were adopted from the Republic (though the ruling classes certainly took some liberties in their interpretation; some analyses of the Republic suggest it wasn't meant to be quite so rigid).

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#168

Post by twinings »

lst wrote: post #160
twinings wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this evolution versus adaption/assimilation/conformation argument before, from a very religious person. Their idea is that evolution may be happening on a small and limited scale, but no further than that. They don't want to think about the more long-term and general implications of the theory. That is - if small adaptations can occur over a few years, what might happen over millions of years? Assuming t…

Religion apart, only a fundamentalistic person would say that the earth is only 6,000 years old. The problem is not earth, but animals. The real problem is that 'millions of years' period. Anybody can make up a nice theory involving 'millions of years'. But how do you prove it? You can't. That's the real question and real problem with the evolution theory. It's only a theory which nobody can prove. (But a time machin…

What problem do you have with 'millions of years'?

Forget about proof. Just consider this: Imagine small changes, occurring continuously over millions of years. Would they still be 'small' changes after a while? Of course not. They would be small_changes * millions_of_years = big_changes

Or do you disagree that millions of years passed?

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#169

Post by dpapathanasiou »

yters wrote: post #67
dpapathanasiou wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plato, despite his intellect (or perhaps because of it), turned out to be, as you say yourself, "naive and mistaken". Yet Diogenes was able to see that about Plato then, as a contemporary. And while it's true that he never sat down to write anything himself, his work has endured via written accounts of others (Diogenes was a real person, not a mythical figure).

For a better presentation of the contemporary view of philosophers like Plato, you should read Aristophane's Clouds. It's also alot deeper in meaning than a mere facile mockery of poorly understood ideas.

It's been a while since I read the Clouds. IIRC, it was a lot of scatological and Mae West style humor (i.e. "Is that a sword under your tunic, or are you happy to see me?").

Aristophanes has literary value, but he was just exposing holes in Plato's logic for comedic and theatrical value; he was not himself a serious philosopher.

Re: How to Do Philosophy

#170

Post by pg »

dpapathanasiou wrote: post #167
pg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how the Republic influenced the Merovingians?

Not sure what you're referring to there, but the feudal ideas of class determined by birth and lack of social mobility were adopted from the Republic (though the ruling classes certainly took some liberties in their interpretation; some analyses of the Republic suggest it wasn't meant to be quite so rigid).

You're simply restating what you said before.

The germanic tribes already had class structure before they crossed over into the former imperial territories. And in any case, every settled agricultural society in history (Egypt, India, China) has had so far as we know a rigid social hierarchy. That of medieval Europe was by world standards comparatively porous. So unless you can point to some specific evidence that the germanic tribes that ruled early medieval Europe were influenced by the Republic, we should assume that they were just doing what they would have done anyway.

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