/lit/ - Literature

>>21947134
Shouldn't you be in church today?
Go back

>>21947162
>what are time zones?

>>21947134
Dennett isn't strictly a normal materialist, now is he? Even in terms of eliminative materialists, he is quite another breed. There, there, sheila, don't be a bad girl now.

As usual, most of the viewpoints are half-right. There are plenty of conscious people, because they have souls, but there are also plenty of non-conscious humanoid objects eg. psychopaths.

>>21947134
>full of
It's full of Christcucks, you lying Christcuck.

>>21947162
4chan has been Christian since the conversion of Denmark

>>21947134
I'm trying to remember a short story about a guy that wakes up in a room with books along the walls. The room and books are the entire universe.
One book says it was created by a god and that they aren't allowed to read any other books. They have to instead walk around in circles and repeat chants.
Eventually, they get tired or curious and check out other books. Some of them describe how the room was created by other gods and prescribe various rituals
But one is unique in that it describes the room from observation. Notes of how many bookshelves there are, how many books, measurements of the room and a predictive model of how it will continue to expand.

>>21947134
>full of
Have you seen /sci/?
Not that I'd recommend anyone to step foot in that place, but if you want to see what a board full of people busy at ontologically reducing themselves to bots, that's it, not /lit/.

>>21947134
Because the entire university world behemoth mass-produces materialists in the education pipeline all the time. Some of them come here. It is that simple. And the vast, vast majority of them have never challenged their worldview seriously by reading the NDE literature, despite one NDE researcher who has said that he does not know anyone who has read the literature on NDEs who has not been convinced by it.

Here is a very persuasive argument for why NDEs are real:

https://youtu.be/U00ibBGZp7o

It emphasizes that NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and when people go deep into the NDE, they all become convinced. As this article points out:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist

>"Among those with the deepest experiences 100 percent came away agreeing with the statement, "An afterlife definitely exists"."

Since NDErs are representative of the population as a whole, and they are all convinced, then 100% of the population become convinced that there is an afterlife when they have a sufficiently deep NDE themselves. When you dream and wake up, you instantly realize that life is more real than your dreams. When you have an NDE, the same thing is happening, but on a higher level, as you immediately realize that life is the deep dream and the NDE world is the undeniably real world by comparison.

Or as one person quoted in pic related summarized their NDE:

>"As my soul left my body, I found myself floating in a swirling ocean of multi-colored light. At the end, I could see and feel an even brighter light pulling me toward it, and as it shined on me, I felt indescribable happiness. I remembered everything about eternity - knowing, that we had always existed, and that all of us are family. Then old friends and loved ones surrounded me, and I knew without a doubt I was home, and that I was so loved."

Needless to say, even ultraskeptical neuroscientists are convinced by really deep NDEs.

idealism is a spook

>>21947605
I was really into NDEs when I was like 12
Can't believe adults actually buy into it
Easiest way to disprove god or whatever story you want to tell about an afterlife is with k-complexity
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rELc88PvDkhetQzqx/complexity-and-intelligence

>>21947605
>people who are alive have an experience of being alive while remaining alive
>therefore people who aren't alive continue to live
???

>>21947134
The Chinese government told me ghosts aren't real and they seem smarter than me.

>>21947320
Library of Babel. And book describing all others is a myth within the world.

>>21947697
>disprove god

>>21948093
That's what ChatGPT through too, but that's not it

>>21947134
>Why is /lit/ full of so many materialists?
I can't go to sleep because I cease. This also works with span of conscious attention and even within sentences. Actually inspect the ontological process of thought for a second.

It is in Mahayana and Heidegger for christ's sake.

>>21948632
DO you think the two first-person pronouns in
>I can't go to sleep because I cease
refer to the same thing? when thought through or said out loud? Or is your ontological fragility ineffable? just curious. I don't think there's a persistent subject of thought so i don't think that's what first-person pronouns refer to when used by me. I think they refer to a continued biological existence! I think I'm a healthy functioning human being, and will be no more once there's no more such, but only then...

>>21947162
>Go back
atheism is reddit

>>21947236
no it isn't. most complaints are made by atheists, come on now.....

>>21947605
Wrong.

>>21949290
reddit is you

>>21948632
What does any of this gibberish even mean? Are you implying you die when you fall asleep?

>>21947134
Materialists are preferable to the alternative

>>21949368
anon... christianity is not the only alternative to materialism...

>>21949363
>implying
Show me this "you."

I took a philosophy of the mind course as a free elective and half the time I felt I was too dumb for it while the other half I felt like the entire discipline was worthless semantic wank
interesting stuff though

>>21947134
What's the most idealist board? /tttt/?

>>21948093
No, Library of Babel isn't it. That has every book ever written, in every combination, but there isn't anything about god or not being allowed to read other books.

>>21947184
>non-conscious humanoid objects eg. psychopaths
https://aeon.co/essays/you-have-more-in-common-with-a-psychopath-than-you-realise

"They certainly aren’t incapable of telling right from wrong, making good decisions or experiencing empathy for other people. Instead, they suffer from a host of more mundane problems – such as being overly goal-fixated, fearless and selfish."

"They usually attend almost exclusively to the task at hand (whatever that might be), and ignore relevant contextual information – although when context doesn’t play a role, they do very well. Other studies have found that psychopaths have problems reversing their responses: when actions that were previously rewarded are now punished – or actions that were previously punished are rewarded – they have problems adjusting."

"the researchers discovered that psychopaths were able to muster a normal response. In other words, when explicitly told to empathise with another, psychopaths could do it."
"It turns out that doctors show something of the same response as psychopaths do when exposed to people being injected with needles. Since doctors are perfectly able to empathise with others when they need to, the thinking is that the reduced response must be due to the person herself exerting cognitive control over her emotions. Because they have to do things to patients that are unpleasant or even painful, doctors get used to it and suppress their normal empathic responses."

>tfw materialist that respects and understands the importance of immaterial
Don't get those panties in a twist you'll live longer

>>21947134
>Why is /lit/ full of so many materialists?
Because survival of the fittest. Materialism works, therefore its adherents propagate more.

>>21949673
If i point at myself would u be satisfied

>>21949683
At least it is one of the few categories of philosophy with a very definable sequence of problems, issues, and popular positions. Mind by John Searle does a good job at highlighting the development of ideas in Philosophy of Mind by focusing specifically on the problems at hand and their proposed solutions.

>>21949703
Oh so its just a retarded version of Library of Babel

>>21947134
Because are in a stage of Kali Yuga that is heavily characterized by ignorance

>>21951254
>kali yuga
>Some shit you only learned about from a book or the internet
>material things made by engineers
retard, you're sitting at the recieving end of all this work complaining that people are too materialistic. y

>>21947697
It's not entirely clear what the relevance of that essay to the afterlife post is, but the glaring error in it is the implicit assertion that the universe is a closed system. This is a core LessWrong dogma, because otherwise Solomonoff Induction wouldn't be the One True Way to learn the truth. But it's not actually a reasonable belief. One of the fundamental physical processes is quantum state reduction, which is random, i.e. it adds new bits of information to the universe each time it happens. Yudkowsky copes with this by asserting the Many Worlds Interpretation, which is the claim that the state reductions we observe are not "real", the "real" universe is constantly splitting into multiple branches which are all "objectively" "real", even though what we actually experience will only ever be a series of random reductions which aren't determined by a shorter program.

LessWrong is a useful resource because it's seemingly the only place where people actually aspire to understand and apply rationalism, while the typical Science Believer is a simple cargo cultist. But what you will eventually find (if you are seeking the truth, rather than confirmation that your gigantic analytical brain is Super Important) is that its most valuable contribution is demonstrating precisely the reasons why rationalism is an idol.

>>21947605
Are you STILL shilling this book?

>>21948632
Refuted by Berkeley

>>21949673
I would show you a mirror but you would die from how ugly you are

>>21947605
Spirituality (aka the occult or supernatural) is something real and it's extraordinarily evident, pic related is one examples. This is a hidden side of nature that most people are not aware of thanks mostly to the jews and the christgolems, as well as in most recent times skeptics who are liars and apologists for capitalist, mainstream science and academia.
They're apologists because they're as dishonest and fallacious in their reasoning as much as the average defender of the abrahamic faiths. When they don't argue against theories like the flat earth or young creationism or other abrahamic belief, at best they will make a good argument against the weakest proposition of an idea.

>>21949368
This meme would be better if jewsus had a shlomo shekelberg face with a hooked nose.

>>21953323
lol why on earth would there be a massive global conspiracy to prevent people from reading the newspaper to get their daily fortune? and don't you think it'd be pretty difficult to fabricate an entire worldwide tradition in the physical sciences just to undermine the claim that your personality is determined by where a planet was when you came out of a vagina? you're dumb as hell

>>21953373
>you're dumb as hell
He writes while not understanding the following
>astrology and its possibilities
>power
>capitalism
Either kys or go back to r.ddit

>>21947134
It is? I never particularly noticed. I'll be more wary of NPCs now.

>>21947134
It's the standard brainlet worldview, so they adopt it uncritically despite ironically seeing themselves as smart and critical thinkers. It's the eternal irony of materialists.

>>21947182
Dennett literally claims to be unconscious, which is simultaneously more logically consistent yet stupider than the average materialist who claims that qualia are somehow "material", whatever that word is supposed to even mean, or that the phenomenon of qualia has some mundane "physical", whatever that word is supposed to even mean, explanation. The brain generating consciousness is as explicable as a genie popping out of a lamp after you rub it.

>>21949774
There is no such thing as "right" or "wrong".

>>21949791
Exact opposite is true. Atheists have very poor fertility rates.

>>21947134
Because appealing to the bhagavad gita is not a solid account of consciousness.

Two ways to deal with consciousness.

Either treat it as overly mystical and ascribe some supernatural property to try and explain it.

Or

Treat it as matter of fact and proceed to explain it in terms of cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

Both of these constitute extremes, and it is difficult to strike the appropriate balance.

The former is not an answer and the latter cannot hope to give one. But philosphers do want an answer, so they start off on the more concrete foundations of the latter side. Where is the balance best struck? I don't know.

>>21953616
Lol
Not a materialist btw.

>>21947134
Because materialism is the midwits' kingdom and /lit/ is full of them, as is the nature of any public forum.
Todays mascots of materialism, the Dennets and Dawkinses, display such a disregard for serious scholarship that one doesn't even know where to start critiquing their positions. They have caricaturesque ideas about religion, spiritual traditions and (non-analytic) philosophy, clearly lifted from shallow popular treatments.
Same psychology is at work in a major part of /lit/izens who love the battleground action of defending strong opinions on books they never read and aren't even particularly interested in.

>>21947537
Is /sci/ good for math?

Because there is only one metaphysics and that is naturalism.

Spiritualism is ALL bull.

>>21947605
>Needless to say, even ultraskeptical neuroscientists are convinced by really deep NDEs.
Needless to say, even I am convinced that you are low iq and can't make a good argument for this without referring to an authority

>>21953636
>Exact opposite is true.
A truly religious person would either be stuck in a semi-medieval shithole with no access to anything that matters, or confined to a mental hospital (try to suggest a crusade, see what happens).
And a lot of people who call themselves religious, are just larping. When they get sick, they go to a doctor, not a priest. They are materialist as fuck.

>>21953931
>. When they get sick, they go to a doctor, not a priest. They are materialist as fuck.
It's one of my fondest wishes to snatch a few of these people, put them on lie detection tech and then later truth serum drugs, and have them explain to me why it is, honestly, that they persist in the religious utterances.

>>21953931
>>21954027
I feel like the non-materialists who inhabit /lit/ generally give a poor example of who they are supposed to represent.

>>21953735
>the highest IQ country is 60% religious
atheistbros... we got humiliated again

>>21954074
Buddhism confirmed as the big brain religion

>>21954074
>>21954113
Singapore also has some of the strictest anti hatespeech laws in the world and three times as many muslims as germany
*thinking emoji*

>>21947134
>This program of self-destruction is now being programmatically advanced by American pseudo-phenomenologists such as Daniel Dennett, whose ‘heterophenomenology’ no longer even takes account of Husserl’s most basic phenomenological distinction - between phenomena as such and ‘objects’. Instead they confuse phenomena with objects co-posited as pre-given entities independent of consciousness - and then use such objects to ‘explain’ consciousness. This is the very opposite of phenomenology. It seems then, that Husserlian phenomenology, with its challenge to the unthought presuppositions of ‘The European Sciences’ – the ‘objective’ sciences - has now itself become an object of intellectual subversion by a reductionistic and scientological pseudo-phenomenology of consciousness.
oh no no no no

>>21953735
>almost 100% of the correlation is due to Africa and Latin America
>soi atheists accidentally becoming race realist nazis in their attempt to own le christkeks

>>21954074
>>21954118
that special moment when anti-semitic and racist Christian (jew worshipping) Neo-Nazi is reduced to extolling Muslims for their High IQ as the only example of intelligent persons entertaining their jewish theology.

>>21954160
>anti-semitic and racist
Israel's IQ is dragging down the IQ of its bracket

>>21954178
i'm just pointing out the extreme paradox, my little friend.

>>21954141
>spirituality is literally niggerism

>>21953634
Thanks for your input, Shlomo.

>>21953735
This shows nothing other than blacks are dumb lmaoooooo

>>21949352
no u

>>21947134
>you're either a materialist or a christcuck!
You guys know there are alternatives to materialism that dont rely on religion, right?

>>21955582
and all of them are weak

>>21949683
I have become really bored of philosophy of mind because the major issue of the field, whether consciousness is reducible to purely material states or not, only has solutions that rely on going back and forth with premises each side denies. People like Searle and Chalmers claim that conscious experience has actual content and is a legitimate point of data while people like Dennett claim its just an elaborate illusion that cannot be verified scientifically. Since Dennett won't accept any claim which cant be verified from a third person perspective, any kind of proof for the validity of conscious experience is impossible from his point of view by its very nature (consciousness is first person). At the same time any materialist explanation someone like Dennett gives to solve the hard problem of consciousness will just be denied as only giving a third person account of something that by its nature is first person. There is nothing left to do on either side but to retreat to your own preferred premises and circle jerk them. Its an interesting subject to read about at first but once you're familiar with the major positions it basically becomes an argument about theology.

>>21955594
I think panpsychism has pretty solid arguments in its favour, at least if you accept that qualia actually exist.

>>21955645
Every view has solid arguments in its favor. That's why you have to look at arguments for or against panpsychism. A big argument against panpsychism is that it's retarded and doesn't explain anything.

That counts more than the arguments for it, which is that it doesn't have the problems associated with explaining how conscious beings are constructed out of non-conscious matter, but that's because it just sweeps that question under the rug and replaces it with a dumber one based on more dubious questions (why do conscious particles only constitute conscious composite objects some of the time?)

Also panpsychism is explicitly a physicalist materialist program, so you're a moron who doesn't know anything about philosophy of mind. The whole panpsychist gambit is to say that actually conscious properties ARE the fundamental physical properties, so physicists have been studying consciousness this whole time weeheee we're not anti-psychicalists

>>21955659
>why do conscious particles only constitute conscious composite objects some of the time?)
All particles are conscious. The actual question is why its "divided" into local parts. To explain this you need some kind of metaphysical framework

Why do people dismiss Dennet when he claims to be, essentially, a philosophical zombie?

Why don't we just believe him? His entire worldview makes sense if he was born with some sort of brain deficiency or something, and he's completely unconscious. He just can't understand what subjective experience is like, because he has none.

I believe him.

>>21955659
>panpsychism is explicitly a physicalist
Not in the traditional sense its not. Panpsychists are arguing for something very different from traditional physicalists. You can play the semantics game and claim its actually "physicalist" because it makes consciousness a part of the physical world but the ontological implications of that are very different from those associated with traditional physicalism. Also, it doesn't "sweep" the problem of consciousness under the rug it posits it as a fundamental component of matter. That's like saying that we are sweeping the problem of gravity under the rug because we cannot explain where it comes from or why it exists.

>>21955659
You have a warped view of panpsychism. Consciousness exists ALL OF THE TIME, it just exists at higher levels as complexity increases. According to a panpsychist even subatomic particles possess consciousness. I agree that how lower level consciousness combines to form discrete experience is a major problem for the viewpoint but this is a lot less problematic than conscious experience coming out of something which has literally none.

Also calling panpsychism physicalism is a bit retarded. You and I both know its a radical departure from what we refer to when we talk about physicalism. If we take physical things to be anything that exists then the term becomes meaningless and basically any position in the philosophy of mind that posits that something exists is physicalist.

>>21955667
I presupposed that all particles were conscious in the formation of my question. learn to read.

>>21955709
I didn't say it sweeps "the problem of consciousness" under the rug because i specified multiple problems for consciousness, including one that panpsychists are gleeful about not having to try and answer anymore, namely
>how conscious beings are constructed out of non-conscious matter
even though they're faced with a stupider version of the same question,
>why do conscious particles only constitute conscious composite objects some of the time
learn to read.

>>21955757
yyeah, talking about "levels of consciousness" is retarded. sorry. also if you don't like calling panpsychism physicalism you must hate panpsychists because thats like a core tenant of the project.

I mean Goff is a russellian monist and russellian monism IS physicalism since everything that has mental properties has physical properties and vice versa

>>21955793
>>why do conscious particles only constitute conscious composite objects some of the time
They dont only do it some of the time. The question is, once again, how precisely the division works. If a neocortical pattern is one such entity then the question is why and how its boundaries function.

>>21955797
oh, so tables and chairs are conscious? i guess you disagree with all the leading panpsychists then

>>21955793
>I mean Goff is a russellian monist and russellian monism IS physicalism since everything that has mental properties has physical properties and vice versa
This is stupid semantics. Yes, panpsychism is physicalist in the sense it supposes consciousness is a thing that exists in physical matter. Nonetheless, there is a huge ontological difference between what we normally call physicalism and panpsychism and I don't see a problem with referring to them as different positions.

>yyeah, talking about "levels of consciousness" is retarded
I don't see how its any more retarded than hard emergence.

>>21947134
because it's easier to understand something and explain it if you actually believe it exists

>>21955811
The chair is made up of conscious entities. The chair itself is very unlikely to be a single such entity. It depends on what theory of synthesis you believe in

>>21955686
Because non entities can’t have ideas of their own

>>21955844
Yeah DUH. So now ask why the human body, also made up of conscious entities, is different, and turns out to in fact be conscious. Think long enough and you'll realize you're asking the same question everyone else has been for centuries, just bogged down with unhelpful premises.

>>21955819
ok, then "Hard emergence" is retarded too. Look at you, thinking like a philosopher. So proud of you Jason.

>>21955855
>ok, then "Hard emergence" is retarded too.
Unless you are in favour of eliminativism it would seem that we are stuck between two retarded positions.

>>21955686
But Dennett doesn't believe in p-zombies, or that he doesn't "experience qualia". His entire point is that "qualia" is a meaningless term. Hell, the entire point of the p-zombie is to defend idealism as a philosophical project, not as an actual serious neurological theory.

This is because he does ironically suffer from a brain deficiency (he was born autistic and then got hit in the head, which apparently made him normal).

>>21955855
>the human body, also made up of conscious entities, is different, and turns out to in fact be conscious. Th
What is concious is a pattern of electrical signals in the brain, presumably. And idk local cohesion of some sort?

There is one thing greater than consciousness. What do consciousness and unconsciousness have in common?

Whatever you may be, you are still me.

>>21955855
>Think long enough and you'll realize you're asking the same question everyone else has been for centuries, just bogged down with unhelpful premises
Its not really the same question, the framing of the ontology is different. If panpsychism is true, the thing we call consciousness is now an emergent property of some kind of proto-conscious property that lower entities possess. This makes it akin to how fundamental particles can create planets, even if the properties present in the planet is not present in the fundamental particles by looking at the interaction of all the different components that make up a planet starting from fundamental particles. For a panpsychist "consciousness" is the same as a fundamental particle. For a physicalist the question is how is conscious experience coming from something with no conscious experience whereas the question for a panpsychist is how does fundamental consciousness combine to create our consciousness.

>>21955976
*starting from fundamental particles we can work our way up to the properties of the planet.

>>21955916
wow thanks Karl Friston

>>21955976
yes, so you have the same task, of explaining why shit bumping around inside the skull in the right patterns coincides with conciousness. but now you have a "different" ontology because you made a bunch of retarded assumptions instead of being able to approach the question with an open mind. lol so you got nowhere

>>21956020
Not an argument

>>21955880
OMG! Based on a bunch of preconceptions about the relationship between mind and world, I'm forced to choose between nonsensical elaborations of my pretheoretical commitments! Whatever will I do? Just choose a random one and defend it on 4chan?

>>21956029
not an argument for or against what? I asked you a 'why' question and you started naming things you thought were conscious. Do you not speak english very well?

>>21947605
>hallucination doesn't exist

>>21956027
>yes, you have the same task
The way each view executes this task is distinct which is my entire point. Also dismissing a view because you find its metaphysics implausible seems pretty close minded to me :)

>>21955931
You are me in the Brahman sense but in no other sense

>>21956034
Why do you type like such a faggot?

>>21947134
Because I care about what makes me feel good and what is useful.

>>21956191
It was a riddle. It was not meant to be taken literally.

>>21956193
blow me pussy

Hjb

what else does one have?

>>21953617
>I don't understand what these guys mean
>Trying to draw a connection between verifiable phenomena and dependent subjective ones is the same as a fairy tale!
Great argument, you seem smart.

>>21953617
> the phenomenon of qualia has some mundane "physical", whatever that word is supposed to even mean, explanation.
>pretending not to understand what the word physical means
O i am laffin

>>21956981
Youd like that wouldnt you, gay boy

>>21947134
Because of those schizos: >>21947605

>>21955793
>how conscious beings are constructed out of non-conscious matter
Emergence. Just like ice is constructed of individual water molecules in a crystal lattice, consciousness is constructed of a complex network of neurons operating in tandem.

>>21958741
Its really not that simple. The properties of ice can be found in the interaction of the properties water molecules just as the explanation for water molecules can be found in the interaction of the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. No such explanation exists for how the properties of consciousness could emerge from inert unconscious matter.

>>21958741
>Just like ice is constructed of individual water molecules in a crystal lattice, consciousness is constructed of a complex network of neurons operating in tandem.
Kek is this what materialists believe? That ice which is tangible, measurable, observable is the same as consciousness which they don't even know what it is? Holy cope

>>21947134
mods are hypocrites, they removed the natalism/antinatalism thread but won't remove others that clearly have little to do with literature and are more philosophical.