/lit/ - Literature

>>15689833
>remind me again why anyone should read the fucking Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle
yeah bro, you're right. totally BTFO'd by the neuroscientists. everyone should just start with Panksepp instead

in fact why even bother reading that. read Csikszentmihalyi and you will never have to read another book of psychology ever again

The Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle? nah bro, i would rather study the details of the interactions between mirror neurons and how that means i shouldn't stop staring at my phone for 5 hours at a time before taking my meds because it will give me even more depression

>>15691389
Keep seething, pleb

>>15691484
I'll stop seething when I hear a neuroscientist name-dropped in casual conversation

>>15691529
what did he mean by this

>>15689833
>>15691389
>>15691484
>>15691529
The lot of you are being totally autistic. It's possible to SIMULTANEOUSLY acknowledge the significance AND shortcomings of classical philosophy. And to SIMULTANEOUSLY appreciate modern science alongside ancient natural inquiry.

>>15692077
Based anti-polemicist

But cringe fence sitter.

>>15692077
Checked.

>>15692091
More like just cringe fence sitter. At least he got dubs.

and how do the neurosciences BTFO Aristotle exactly?

>>15689833
>takes 2000+ years and countless independent scientists working over 3000 hours a year for 40 years

>>15692151
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system
This concept invalidates the major concepts of Aristotle's work (e.g. that we do stuff by our own will and that we can control ourselves in specific situations). You should keep up with the advancements of science, brainlet.

>>15692184
There was no active work during all that time since we could start exploring the brain adequately in the last century.

>>15692200
If the reward system is part of our brain and mind, and we're the ones who engender its uses, than how is it beyond our own will?
Even so, you act as if humans can never go beyond ingratiated structures of species-based pleasures based on survival instincts. In reality, these things are malleable, and humans have proven to be capable of altering them to absurd ends for their own reasons. Examples include former drug addicts and self-immolation.
Aristotle and ancient humans were well aware of base drives towards food and sex, and other types of pleasurable ideas (good friends and good reputation).

>>15692229
>former drug addicts
You can get off drugs if you go on a specific program where you replace the original drug with something less potent and keep going like that until the addiction wears off, but if you just stop taking the drug you won't make it

>>15692250
But there exists cases where people quit a substances "cold turkey.| Common with alcoholics.
It's not a good way to do it for the body, and can even kill people. But that's all besides the point. The point is that people prove that they will go beyond the realms of feedback systems that exist for survival purposes, on the behalf of relatively transcendent ideas. And there's ideas in neuroscience that relate to this, because we have a prefrontal cortex.

>>15692229
This is the actual problem with these “advancements”; they produce models of humanity that look great on paper but fall apart with reality.

>>15692299
>The point is that people prove that they will go beyond the realms of feedback systems
You can't go beyond the realms of feedback systems, it's like claiming that machines can go beyond the level of their programming (and this works both if you're an atheist and a religious person who thinks god created us).

>>15692308
>realms of feedback systems
Which ones?
There is a sense in which you may correct, because we have a "will" which is the product of many complex systems in the brain, themselves coming together in an almost Platonic sense which interact with the environment and body to produce our persons, having an image reflecting the totality of ourselves, "a soul."
If you go for the route that it's only survival and pleasure-based feedback systems, that Buddhist monk burning himself alive proves you wrong. And I would hesitate to call those excursively "reward systems," because they're arguable more complex than that.

>>15692302
Care to elaborate?

>>15689833
>*gets BTFO by neurosciences*
examples such as?

>>15692200
The reward system validates Aristotle's idea of habit being the method of bringing about moral improvement, if anything. It doesn't explain behavior deterministically, just probabilistically - there's clearly other factors that influence behavior than the reward network reinforcing singular vicious behaviors.
The way you're portraying it makes it as though addictions are impossible to treat.

>>15692398
read the thread, brainlet

>>15692343
Any books about this my dear anon?

>>15692415
>are impossible to treat
impossible if you just use your will (your body will die from the withdrawal symptoms)
one of aristotle's main concepts is voluntary actions and how you have control over most of the stuff

>>15692346
On what? The fact that human behavior is more complex than a modeled system based off neuroscience? I recently switched out of working in psychology, specifically with young disabled kids, because of this issue. The main problem we kept facing was administrative types and researchers who pushed these models, which look great on paper, and allow for large amounts to be written, but fail to account for human reality. It’s easy to explain to the people funding you these models, but humans, especially ones that aren’t functioning, constantly elude predictive modeling.

>>15692444
I think I saw you in one of the /lit/ threads a few days ago.
>constantly elude predictive modeling
We're certainly working on this. The brain has limits, in due time we will be able to read all the actions and behaviour in general. There are already various patterns related to stuff, e.g. sexual attraction.

>>15692450
I don’t doubt you saw me, I’m heavily against the things you’re pushing. There’s already better solutions that don’t involve sidelining the people who can’t fit into the models.
>the brain has limits
Do you actually work with the people who are made to apply these models, or only with the models themselves? There’s a fundamental inhumanity at the base of what you’re doing, people aren’t limited to the point where you will be able to succeed with this work, assuming you’re actually doing the research.

>>15692437
In classical philosophy:
unironically Plato. A lot of of the politically minded miss the point entirely, but The Republic brings up this question, and it's a deeper question of the will and man's selfish desires, etc.
The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhaur.
Kant's Prolegemena, though not as much about this ethical question of will, is an interesting read. His Introduction to Logic is an easier breach.

>>15692450
People aren't brains, but it is possible to rear people who at least approximate to nothing but animals.

>>15692583
>but it is possible to rear people who at least approximate to nothing but animals
What exactly to you mean by this? That the more base someone is the more you can control him? If so, are you implying that people who aren't tied to the pleasures can somehow rise against this?

>>15692507
Thank you friend

>>15692443
>>15692443
>impossible if you just use your will (your body will die from the withdrawal symptoms)
Those withdrawal symptoms are not due to the reward system, but because of other changes to neurons that cause physical dependence. If it were just the reward system, then all addictive behaviors would cause lethal withdrawal symptoms.
>the voluntary would seem to be that of which the moving principle is in the agent himself, he being aware of the particular circumstances of the action
You're thinking of his use of voluntary from too much of a Cartesian lens. If you read De Anima you will see that Aristotle's account of the soul is actually pretty deterministic - it's just that since nutritive soul, which is the basically the idea that life is defined by what we would now talk about as the replacement of cells, growth and decay, and reproduction are what define something as having the form "alive" in Aristotelian metaphysics, so one can speak of a living thing as being an agent because it has a form which gives it an internal necessity, rather than a purely external necessity (though there is an external necessity - one needs food to stay alive for instance). That means that because the soul is the concrete form of a living thing which thus has a certain level of independence.
The initial discussions on what the soul is - the form of the body, not something separate from the body - are much more naturalistic than any other ancient account of the soul. Hopefully they should clear these things up for you.

>>15692656
Good point, I should have read De Anima. I'll do that soon.

>>15692656
Are there any philosophers who expand on hylomorphism after Aristotle? I'm mostly familiar with it through Feser.

>>15692714
I not sure. Maybe some of the Neoplatonists do since that is a synthesis of Aristotelianism and Platonism.

>>15692091
Anti-polemicist and fence-sitter are basically synonyms