/lit/ - Literature

this is our generation's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, God Delusion, Godel Escher Bach, The Selfish Gene, A Brief History of Time, The Road to Reality, The Ego and Its Own, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and On the Origin of Species all rolled into one.

i'm in awe of its erudite dismantling and reconstruction of the whole explanatory narrative of consciousness we have wrongly construed up to this point. the precision with which it obviates the archaisms of christian morals and metaphysics makes its staggering critiques of such systems definitive and final. its unprecedented execution of evolutionary-grounded epistemology is unparalleled in accuracy and profundity. it is a physicalist triumph and tour de force which puts all immaterialist accounts of existence squarely in the garbage bin.

i need to buy more copies of it and send them to my co-workers, leave them ostensibly forgotten upon subway seats, and nested in the mailboxes of unsuspecting theologians

What would it take for people to accept that consciousness is the result of a purely physical, biochemical process, and that mind-body duality (or any other idea which places consciousness above the material world) is just an egoist coping mechanism we employ to deal with our existence being nothing more than the result of a bunch of amino acids ensuring that they are replicated in a particular order?

Like what if I literally recreate the first form of life in a lab from just water and carbon atoms then put that organism in a simulation that speeds up the process of evolution and show you that 4 billion years later they appear to be sentient and self-aware? Would that be good enough evidence?

What would it take for people to accept that consciousness is the result of a purely physical, biochemical process, and that mind-body duality (or any other idea which places consciousness above the material world) is just an egoist coping mechanism we employ to deal with our existence being nothing more than the result of a bunch of amino acids ensuring that they are replicated in a particular order?

Like what if I literally recreate the first form of life in a lab from just water and carbon atoms then put that organism in a simulation that speeds up the process of evolution and show you that 4 billion years later they appear to be sentient and self-aware? Would that be good enough evidence?