The Cellar  

Go Back   The Cellar > Main > Philosophy

Philosophy Religions, schools of thought, matters of importance and navel-gazing

View Poll Results: A human being is...
...bio-automation, organic machinery. 1 14.29%
...sumthin’ more than bio-automation, not only organic machinery. 6 85.71%
Voters: 7. You may not vote on this poll

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 10-09-2019, 10:11 AM   #31
henry quirk
maskless: yesterday, today, tomorrow
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 2,162
"any level of actual is good enough."

I'm gonna take that as a vote for 'intrinsic'.
__________________
like the other guy sez: 'not really back, blah-blah-blah...'
henry quirk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 12:00 PM   #32
glatt
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 27,717
Quote:
Originally Posted by henry quirk View Post
is non human life capable of personhood (the answer depending heavily on whether personhood is intrinsic or bestowed), and on and on.
This is absolutely correct.

I don't think animals are persons, just because that's where I want to draw the line. To draw it anywhere else makes things messy. But some animals are clearly self-aware and can think.

If personhood is intrinsic, then some animals are persons.

I fall into the camp of personhood being bestowed. That way I can say that it's fine to eat pork, even though pigs are smart.
glatt is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 01:14 PM   #33
henry quirk
maskless: yesterday, today, tomorrow
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 2,162
"I can say that it's fine to eat pork, even though pigs are smart"

If a cannibal is one who eats his own species, what would be the word for the self-aware who eat the self-aware (assuming pigs are)?
__________________
like the other guy sez: 'not really back, blah-blah-blah...'
henry quirk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 01:22 PM   #34
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136
I struggle to justify a definition of the human experience which claims that what we think/feel about ourselves is-- in any objective sense-- different than what we refer to as "instinctive" behavior in "lower" life forms.

Our highly-vaunted ability to use logic and reason for problem-solving has been proven ineffective when compared to the unconscious deliberation that occurs on auto-pilot. Our emotional experiences are literally nothing more than a complex soup of hormones and neurochemicals—physical substances with predictable properties! Our feelings and therefore actions are dictated by a rush of impulses that drives us forward, just like an ant. The ant "experiences" this, no differently than we do.

The entire western view of man as a perfect "thinking, reasoning" entity with "self-awareness" is built on bluster and hubris. And, irrespective of the inconvenient implications, there’s no evidence to suggest we’re different in any meaningful way from other vertebrate, insect, or even "inanimate" plant life. We’re running a program written in the code of unfolding proteins.

So if we’re talking about objective definitions, there is no necessity for the concept of a "person" if based on "unique" properties –it is imaginary from its very inception.
__________________
******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio

Last edited by Flint; 10-09-2019 at 01:29 PM.
Flint is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 01:41 PM   #35
henry quirk
maskless: yesterday, today, tomorrow
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 2,162
"So if we’re talking about objective definitions, there is no necessity for the concept of a "person" if based on "unique" properties –it is imaginary from its very inception."

Well, that's one view.
__________________
like the other guy sez: 'not really back, blah-blah-blah...'
henry quirk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 01:43 PM   #36
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136
It's not convenient, but I can't avoid the conclusion.
__________________
******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
Flint is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 01:48 PM   #37
henry quirk
maskless: yesterday, today, tomorrow
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 2,162
"It's not convenient, but I can't avoid the conclusion."

Okay.

You'll pardon others who don't share that conclusion, yeah?
__________________
like the other guy sez: 'not really back, blah-blah-blah...'
henry quirk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 01:56 PM   #38
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136
Of course, since the world can't function if this is what we believed.

I misspoke by using the word "necessity" --I meant to say it isn't necessitated by following a trail of evidence.

It is necessitated by necessity.
__________________
******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
Flint is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 02:29 PM   #39
henry quirk
maskless: yesterday, today, tomorrow
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 2,162
Flint

You're a determinist, yeah?
__________________
like the other guy sez: 'not really back, blah-blah-blah...'
henry quirk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 02:45 PM   #40
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136
I suppose so. In the sense that we're skating on the surface of a layer of abstraction which we aren't designed to, and therefore it isn't possible for us to understand the web of interconnected causal relationships that underlie it. The part of life we experience and ascribe meaning to exists within an emergent state that arises from a network of infinitely complex mechanical operations. We can't understand it or see it--just as it is said of God. It works "in mysterious ways." And within that layer, where we live, there are properties that are disconnected in any meaningful sense from their deterministic foundation. Ultimately, though I find it inconceivable that the universe isn't an orderly hierarchy of causes and effects that operate by a set of rules.

ESPECIALLY that there are "special" rules and exceptions for a "special" group of bipedal apes that are hallucinating a version of reality based on a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, and ascribing "special" meaning to it based on how their big brain chemicals makes them feel.
__________________
******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
Flint is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 02:54 PM   #41
henry quirk
maskless: yesterday, today, tomorrow
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 2,162
Well then, I guess I'll put you in the 'bestowed' category.

Well then, I guess I'll put you in the 'bestowed' category (cuz, obviously, you don't think personhood is intrinsic [or, as a category, special]).
__________________
like the other guy sez: 'not really back, blah-blah-blah...'
henry quirk is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 04:02 PM   #42
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136
You could say that a deterministic universe makes everything intrinsic, but something as ephemeral as the "true nature of person-hood" is so many layers abstracted from the deterministic substrate, it's difficult even to suggest that we're bestowing something we're intrinsically determined to bestow.

I do think that's possible, but it would mean the main category of "un-person" is neuro-atypical individuals.
__________________
******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
Flint is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 04:11 PM   #43
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
From a Darwinian perspective, humans are utterly unique. Just looking at outcomes: we are able to defeat all predators, adapt to all conditions, learn across multiple generations, artificially extend our lifetimes, etc. The list goes on.

This wild advantage is just enormous. We're the only species living on all continents. We managed all these things within a hundred thousand years of our existence. This is unique.
Undertoad is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 04:28 PM   #44
Flint
Snowflake
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Dystopia
Posts: 13,136
I'm pretty convinced the apex organisms are any number of bizarre parasites which phase through multiple unrelated forms, each designed to strategically manipulate their hosts to achieve very specific goals. As a category, they've been shown to control so many key aspects of organism behavior that they essentially control the entire planet.

Are they aware that they control the entire planet?

To me this always comes down to the tautological exercise of measuring thing using "human-like qualities" as the yardstick. OF COURSE there's only one species that's the best at being itself. That's true of EVERY species.
__________________
******************
There's a level of facility that everyone needs to accomplish, and from there
it's a matter of deciding for yourself how important ultra-facility is to your
expression. ... I found, like Joseph Campbell said, if you just follow whatever
gives you a little joy or excitement or awe, then you're on the right track.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Terry Bozzio
Flint is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2019, 04:41 PM   #45
Clodfobble
UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 20,012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Undertoad
From a Darwinian perspective, humans are utterly unique. Just looking at outcomes: we are able to defeat all predators, adapt to all conditions, learn across multiple generations, artificially extend our lifetimes, etc. The list goes on.

This wild advantage is just enormous. We're the only species living on all continents. We managed all these things within a hundred thousand years of our existence. This is unique.
It's only unique right here and now. The fossil record is shockingly spotty, when you really start looking at it. (I say this as someone who just walked through the Museum of Natural History yesterday...)

Everything we know about some of the most famous, "classic" dinosaur species is based on a total of three complete skeletons, worldwide. There are numerous species for which we have literally nothing but a single arm bone, or similar. Meanwhile, just this year we confirmed a new hominid species we'd never known about before, which shifted our understanding of when various hominids moved across the continents by tens of thousands of years.

For all we know, a precocious species of dinosaur (or something else) industrialized in the last couple thousand years of their millions of years of existence, but as it turns out no dinosaur computers sank into a peat bog to be preserved. Even a plastic bottle takes just 450 years to decompose--a lot if you're the manager of a garbage dump in postmodern humanity, but a fucking eye blink compared to the 65 million years between us and a Tyrannosaurus. A billion years ago, Mars was a lush, extremely habitable world. Could have been a whole, fully industrialized civilization there that died off and is now eroded to nothing. And there's nothing to say that, should we manage to kill ourselves off, some highly intelligent species of parrot, or dolphin, or octopus might not advance in our place and become "able to defeat all predators, adapt to all conditions," etc.

I'm with Flint. As individuals we're just bags of chemicals, and as a species we're not remotely unique.
Clodfobble is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:41 PM.


Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.