philosophy

I don’t know how there aren’t a myriad of problems associated with attempting to emulate the brain, especially with the end goal of destroying livelihoods and replacing one indentured servant for another. In fact, that’s what promoted this post- an advertisement for a talk with my alma mater’s philosophy department asking what happens when see LLMs discover phenomenological awareness.

I admit that I don’t have a ton of formal experience with philosophy, but I took one course in college that will forever be etched into my brain. Essentially, my professor explained to us the concept of a neural network and how with more computing power, researchers hope to emulate the brain and establish a consciousness baseline with which to compare a human’s subjective experience.

This didn’t use to be the case, but in a particular sector, most people’s jobs are just showing up a work, getting on a computer, and having whatever (completely unregulated and resource devouring) LLM give them answer they can find themselves, quicker. And shit like neuralink exists and I think the next step will to be to offer that with a chatgpt integration or some dystopian shit.

Call me crazy, but I don’t think humans are as special as we think we are and our pure arrogance wouldn’t stop us from creating another self and causing that self to suffer. Hell, we collectively decided to slaughter en masse another collective group with feeling (animals) to appease our tastebuds, a lot of us are thoroughly entrenched into our digital boxes because opting out will result in a loss of items we take for granted, and any discussions on these topics are taboo.

Data-obsessed weirdos are a genuine threat to humanity, consciousness-emulation never should have been a conversation piece in the first place without first understanding its downstream implications. Feeling like a certified Luddite these days

I recently leaned about how the dogma of divine simplicity shaped the history of philosophy, especially metaphysics and the problem of universals in the Islamic world as well as in Christianity. Basically it's the idea, that God is identical to each of his (her/their/just) attributes. By extension, each of the attributes is identical to every other one. So this obviously touches on the problem of universals. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) added the conclusion, that for God, essence is existence. Ibn Sina is key for this in Islam, as well as Christianity (because people like Thomas Aquinas learned his teachings and shaped scholastics for centuries).

Divine simplicity is central in the different schools of Islam and a dogma in Catholicism. Protestants kind of stopped talking about it, but never officially gave it up and Calvinists revived it. Only cool new streams like process theology distance themselves from it.

About the stupid joke in the title: Divine simplicity means, God has literally no parts you can point to (no pun intended), to determine their gender (no material parts, no temporal parts, no metaphysical or ontological constituents). If God has a gender, it must therefore be identical to all their other attributes, as well as themselves.

Question: If you got any religious education, was divine simplicity ever mentioned? Cause I never heard of it until recently, even though it's so central, that other attributes are typically derived based on it (for example immutability, infinity, omniscience) in official doctrine. Or, in Ibn Sina's case, even existence as well as every other attribute.

Do religious people still care about this? What would be cool pronouns for justice, freedom, truth, omniscience, etc.?

Edit: Also, do you know people who reject this dogma or accept it, but make mistakes around it? Like saying:"God might get angry or have wrath, but God IS love", which mistakenly elevates one attribute above the others.

I have no stake in this, as an atheist, just interested and willing to learn. And like I said it's historically relevant for the history of philosophy, no matter what you believe.

A long read for an article or blog post, but well worth it. If you or anyone you know suffers from a chronic illness, ailment or pain, you might relate to some of what is written here. I certainly did, and can share the author's dislike of positivity and therapy culture.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4842538

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4840505

*Forgive any formatting as I'm on mobile.

As I read in themes, I'm currently focusing on philosophy to try and understand it, see where I fit in the world and also reconstruct my own atheist/nihilistic worldview.

I just got done with Existentialist Cafe and got a really nice overview of all the main players in the Existentialist camp but want to finally take the leap into nihilism and absurdism proper. I've read The Stranger and Myth of Sisyphus and like Camus a lot so far but also wanna tackle Satre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty eventually but wonder if I need to read Husserl and specifically Heidegger and Nietzche since they are controversial because of their politics. Would I be able to get away with just reading synopses of their work? I do currently have Being and Time in my list of books to get.

Also, aside from Nietzche, who else should I read regarding nihilism? I'm currently working through The Trouble with Being Born by Cioran and wanna find some more by him but also have The Antidote by Burkeman and Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Ligotti in my backlog. I did read The Book by Alan Watts the other day and though it felt like reading my stoned friend's wild ramblings on society and how we exist in it, some coherent stuff did come through. But I don't know if it was what I was after. I did appreciate it for introducing me to some concepts like ego and self but maybe I should have saved it for another day?

Sidenote but I'm planning on moving back and force between philosophy and socialist theory so socialist philosphers are also welcome. Generally I'm open to all suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm

I think this is the passage he's highlighting:

“It will always remain a matter for astonishment how the Kantian philosophy knew that relation of thought to sensuous existence, where it halted, for a merely relative relation of bare appearance, and fully acknowledged and asserted a higher unity of the two in the Idea in general, and, for example, in the idea of an intuitive understanding; but yet stopped dead at this relative relation and at the assertion that the Notion is and remains utterly separated from reality;—so that it affirmed as truth what it pronounced to be finite knowledge, and declared to be superfluous, improper, and figments of thought that which it recognised as truth, and of which it established the definite notion” (26)

In logic, the Idea “becomes the creator of Nature.” (26)

Are most people here epiphenomenalists? Physicalists?

Maybe the last 500 years of Atlanticist colonialism has something to do with it.
And also maybe the CIA: Imperialist Propaganda and the Ideology of the Western Left Intelligentsia: From Anticommunism and Identity Politics to Democratic Illusions and Fascism

In this regard, the Frankfurt School under Horkheimer played a foundational role in the establishment of what is known as Western Marxism, and more specifically Cultural Marxism. Figures like Horkheimer and his lifelong collaborator Theodor Adorno not only rejected actually existing socialism, but they directly identified it with fascism by benightedly relying—very much like French theory—on the ideological category of totalitarianism. Embracing a highly intellectualized and melodramatic version of what would later become known as TINA (“There Is No Alternative”), they focused on the realm of bourgeois art and culture as perhaps the only potential site of salvation. This is because thinkers like Adorno and Horkheimer, with a few exceptions, were largely idealist in their theoretical practice: if meaningful social change was foreclosed in the practical world, deliverance was to be sought in the geistig—meaning intellectual and spiritual—realm of novel thought-forms and innovative bourgeois culture.

[…]

Finally, the evolution of the Frankfurt School into its second (Jürgen Habermas) and third generations (Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser, Seyla Benhabib, and so on) did not alter in the least its anticommunist orientation. On the contrary, Habermas explicitly claimed that state socialism was bankrupt and argued for creating space within the capitalist system and its purportedly democratic institutions for the ideal of an inclusive “procedure of discursive will-formation.” The neo-Habermasians of the third generation have continued this orientation.

I'm reading the introduction, and this comic is pretty accurate. One paragraph is compelling and then the next is the most virulent racism you could possibly write. Some of his conclusions seem to be ignorant of the very thing he just wrote as he is completely blinded by the superiority of Germans or some shit.

Big energy

Never try to engage with Ayn Rand's work in good faith: worst mistake of my life. She and her fanboys are basically the human version of brainy smurf. Even the name, Objectivism, is her bragging about herself. Thus since they are akin to brainy smurf, don't bother arguing with them because they will claim omniscience. Instead, deal with them as the rest of the smurfs dealt with brainy smurf.

Me: "Oil companies are using their private property to inflict environmental pollution that I do not consent to. Since they are using their property for evil, we should limit their use of a property. This way no one gets physically harmed, not even the oil tycoon."

Rand's Response: "This is stupid, how dare you tell someone what to do with their property. Live and let live! It is actually moral to let people use things that rightfully belong to them for immoral reasons."

Native Americans: "I just want to be left alone please."

Rand's response: "No! You are dumb dumbs so the government should steal from you! You clearly aren't blessed with perfect intelligence like me so you don't know what to do with your property. I do! Now make me some treats!"

Native Americans: "Didn't you just say people who own property should do whatever they please with it, and anyone who has a problem with it should mind their own business?"

Rand's Response: "Ugh, you fucking IDIOTS! Clearly you know nothing about my philosophy of IKnowEverythingIsm."

Me: "Uhhh...okay. I gotta say, insisting that you are the standing authority on all knowledge is a little dogmatic, it sounds kind of like a reli..."

Rand's Response: "UGH! RELIGION IS FOR IDIOTS AND IS AN INSULT TO THINKING!"

I genuinely wanted to read something from the right's POV so I could better understand them, lest I become as dogmatic as Rand here. So far, the closest I got was reading some classical liberal stuff like Plato's Republic, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and some Nietzsche. But it seems like anything further is just full on pompous dogshit. The Chapo book had more depth than this.