/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22571240]

Why does /lit/ often dismiss materialist philosophy? It seems most of the materialist philosophers are treated with mockery (La Mettrie), scorn (d'Holbach), or simply ignored (Feuerbach). Is there any materialist literature that /lit/ actually likes and recommends?

[Anonymous No.22571261]

Because materialist theories of consciousness can't answer the vertiginous question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertiginous_question

[Anonymous No.22572131]

Materialism fails to account for qualia, free will, morality and epistemology.
Idealism fails to account for physics.
Take the dualism pill.

[Anonymous No.22572134]

>>22571240
Because it’s “Reddit” and cool people hate Reddit because they are lame and unstylish. Reading ancient mystical stuff is more esoteric and cool.

[Anonymous No.22572140]

>>22571240
>Why does /lit/
/lit/ is not one person, fuck off

[Anonymous No.22572152]

>>22571240
La Mettrie is a god among men.

His smile is honest and pure of heart, and so are his inquisitions into the nature of life itself. And he is not necessarily wrong.

[Anonymous No.22572155]

>Refutes materialism for all of time

[Anonymous No.22572171]

>>22572155
Did Dostoevsky plagiarize Gardner?

[Anonymous No.22572177]

>>22572134
This but unironically. I hate reddit so much it's unreal.

[Anonymous No.22572178]

>>22571240
/lit/ is the spirituality board. Here we understand that materialism is a dogmatic reductionism that can never justify morality or axiology. A scalar ontology is needed to ground all this, and the world in materialism is perfectly isotropic. Contemplating the world, or reading poetry, is enough to demonstrate the inanity of this theory.

[Anonymous No.22572187]

>>22572155
>>22572177
>Fools!—for they have no far-reaching thoughts—who deem that what before was not comes into being, or that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed. For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is, and it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish; 5for it will always be, wherever one may keep putting it. R. P. 165 a.

This is probably the most succinct and precise refutation of materialists which I can think of. Empedocles would’ve been perfect if this were his only surviving fragment and not the stuff about men with ox heads.

[Anonymous No.22572228]

>>22572177
What I feel like I’m reading: ancient mystical secrets lost to history which reveal the world in a way most people nowadays won’t reason like I am a mystical sage or something

What I am actually reading: fragmented attempts from primitive man trying to explain the world around them which don’t really amount to anything substantial

I feel like a cool mystic reading ancient stuff but they aren’t lost secrets, only primitive attempts at reasoning that most people won’t get anything out of and which at best, have only historical value. That is my opinion of spiritual stuff I have read.

[Anonymous No.22572238]

Magic needs to be real so I can feel superior.

[Anonymous No.22572250]

>>22572228
This, mysticism is cool but impotent. Anons like >>22572178
expect answers to metaphysical questions that humans, as epistemologically impoverished as we are, are unequipped to answer. They believe that if you just ponder the orb hard enough and creatively enough they'll find the truth. Good luck to them.

[Anonymous No.22572259]

>>22572228
Nobody but you is talking about mysticism here. You're setting up a strawtranswoman. This thread is about the failure of materialist dogma. Fixing this failure does not require mysticism but only the rational and empirical insight that dualism is objectively right.

[Anonymous No.22572268]

>>22572259
I like ancient stuff too but you don’t have to take it to seriously all of the time.

[Anonymous No.22572273]

>>22572259
Sir, let me tell to you about how the world was started by ox-headed men.

[Anonymous No.22572281]

>>22571261
me and you and everybody else share the same consciousness, our physical bodies are just severed from each other, so we have the impression of individuality because our brains can't communicate directly
kinda like the show Severance, I guess, but separated by space instead of time
so we are living the same lives but each individual one feels like it's the "main" one

[Anonymous No.22572293]

>>22572268
>>22572273
>bot posts

[Anonymous No.22572294]

>>22571240
Already demolished by many, read World as Will.

[Anonymous No.22572324]

>>22571240
Already refuted by Seuss, read Hop on Pop

[Anonymous No.22572356]

>>22572250
Human intelligence alone is incapable of reaching deeply into the depths of its own purpose, and it's when it understands this that it turns to divine revelation.

[Anonymous No.22572370]

>>22572356
Some people take the left hand path, others the right hand path. And some realise that both ways are just self-delusion.

[Anonymous No.22572437]

>>22572370
To refuse all mystagogy is to give oneself over to nihilism

[Anonymous No.22572441]

>>22572370

I build with both hands. I walk with both feet.
I look around me with both eyes.
And I think with my one and only brain.

But my heart? The joy of life is beyond bliss.
It's love.

[Anonymous No.22572605]

>>22572259
>This thread is about the failure of materialist dogma.
No it isn't. It's about why you guys are such midwits when it comes to materialist philosophy

[Anonymous No.22572626]

>>22572605
Materialism is not a philosophy but the absence of philosophy.

[Anonymous No.22573426]

>>22571240
https://youtu.be/QEr4YeoDPXA?si=U6t2S6qN5IUv0XXg

[Anonymous No.22573442]

>>22572626
This is wrong. The assertion that there is only the material world smuggles in all sorts of other implications and ideas about how the world works. For example, it’s inherently anti-theist, because you can’t have God if there is only the material. It also is inherently left-wing and anti-natalist. It’s a shit philosophy no matter how you look at it. It’s shit from a utilitarian point of view; it’s shit at explaining the origin of the universe; it’s shit at explaining morality. It was refuted time and time again centuries ago, but (You) Redditors don’t read anything that isn’t goyslop so you wouldn’t know that.

[Anonymous No.22573453]

>>22573442
Retard, I was insulting materialism.

[Anonymous No.22573523]

>>22572626
>materialism isn’t a philosophy
Then why was it invented in the 18th century?

[Anonymous No.22573530]

>>22573523
Flushing the toilet was invented in 18th century. Flushing the toilet is a philosophy.

[Anonymous No.22573550]

>>22573530
I don’t get it.

[Anonymous No.22573553]

>>22573442
>It also is inherently left-wing
what the fuck are you talking about

[Anonymous No.22573577]

>>22573550
I know.

[Anonymous No.22573646]

>>22572131
https://youtu.be/xqY08gN_FCM?si=gff1pFjJnYmFzJGK

[Anonymous No.22573656]

>>22573577

[Anonymous No.22573804]

Materialists are so stupid they make /lit/ threads

[Anonymous No.22573822]

>>22572626
Actually it's my favorite ideas that are fundamental to everything, not yours. This can be proven if you accept my ideas as fundamental. Then we can simply appeal to my ideas to prove they're right.

[Anonymous No.22573838]

>>22572356
>>22572178
>>22572131
>>22573442
Its weird how people are so certain that there are human-accessible metaphysical truths out there that when faced with the limits of human reason they invent whole cloth a new level of reality where all our metaphysical questions are answered while simultaneously affirming their cultural and political beliefs.

[Anonymous No.22573875]

>>22573838
Is this is an actual materialist dumb enough to accuse anyone else of biases?
"Materialism" isn't a philosophy because it's simply the absence of all critical thought. The apparent phenomena in everyday experience are accepted through conditioning as fundamental and irreducible.
This complete absence of critical thought also means you can be conditioned by mass media to believe anything. As this observation predicts you're all media brainwashed retards.

[Anonymous No.22573910]

Have you actually read la Mettrie and d'Holbach? They're awful. Their thinking is incredibly sloppy and "impressionistic" at best. You can go read Mettrie's "Man, a Machine" in like an hour. D'Holbach is much longer and more tedious, I unfortunately read 1.5 volumes of his System of Nature when I was a teenager and I remember it being more like an extended pamphlet on this-worldly "secular humanism" than actual philosophy. At least someone like Voltaire has a kind of natural curiosity about philosophical systems. I highly recommend reading Paul Hazard's two books on the 17th and 18th centuries so you can understand how bankrupt this period was for philosophy. Also Becker's Heavenly City (very short) and Cassirer's Philosophy of the Enlightenment (also short).

French thought in this period has a really dangerous tendency to view humanity as a kind of "clever animal," whose only two possible states are barbarism and "policé," civilized/refined, and thus the function of every state becomes to treat the human being as material to be moulded into "happy" citizens (since, following d'Holbach, there is no goal and no meaning to life beyond the happiness of clever animals. Of course this goes hand in hand with materialism since man is just a collection of atoms and organs, and happiness is just a "sensation," etc. The French Enlighteners basically created totalitarian biopolitics with their superficially optimistic but actually deeply cynical view of man.

If you like this crap, at least read Condillac or something. But then read Maine de Biran afterwards to wash the shit out of your mouth. Rousseau was sent by God to torpedo this whole nightmare and wake Europe up from its Frenchifying coma.

Feuerbach is at least a little more interesting, because his passion for this-worldliness comes from a healthier German romantic desire to awaken wellsprings of brotherhood in man etc. rather than the French desire to engineer man into the perfectly satisfied meat-puppet. That's why he inspired both Marx and Wagner at the same time. But ultimately it still has no metaphysics underlying it. It's more like an "anthropomorphism." The logical culmination of Feuerbach is Wagner's, Marx's, and French anarchists' commun(al)ism mixed with Nietzsche's early romantic paganism. But anyone who desires real knowledge of nature or the cosmos will have to say to all of these thinkers and movements "yes that's all very nice, but why? What if I don't want to be a happy pagan hippie?"

[Anonymous No.22573946]

>>22573875
There is plenty of critical thought available to the materialist. The fields of epistemology, ontology, ethics, aesthetics and phenomenology are still open to materialists. Metaphysics too, under a restricted domain. All of science remains open to the materialist.

[Anonymous No.22574116]

>>22573838
its a bunch of e-pseuds making dogmatic remarks that they will probably forget about once a more exciting fantasy comes along

[Anonymous No.22574151]

>>22572281
Conceive that the “field” is the round or circus of the world, that the throne of the Spectator, the Universal Man, is central and elevated, and that his aquiline glance at all times embraces the whole of the field (equally before and after the enactment of any particular event) in such a manner that from his point of view all events are always going on. We are to transfer our consciousness of being, from our position in the field where the games are going on, to the pavilion in which the Spectator, on whom the whole performance depends, is seated at ease.
Conceive that the right lines of vision by which the Spectator is linked to each separated performer, and along which each performer might look upward (inward) to the Spectator if only his powers of vision sufficed, are lines of force, or the strings by which the puppet-master moves the puppets for himself (who is the whole audience). Each of the performing puppets is convinced of its own independent existence and of itself as one amongst others, which it sees in its own immediate environment and which it distinguishes by name, appearance, and behavior. The Spectator does not, and cannot, see the performers as they see themselves, imperfectly, but he knows the being of each one of them as it really is—that is to say, not merely as effective in a given local position, but simultaneously at every point along the line of visual force by which the puppet is connected with himself, and primarily at that point at which all lines converge and where the being of all things coincides with being in itself. There the being of the puppet subsists as an eternal reason in the eternal intellect—otherwise called the Supernal Sun, the Light of lights, Spirit and Truth.

http://worldwisdom.com/uploads/pdfs/149.pdf

[Anonymous No.22574180]

>>22571261
there is no subjective experience

[Anonymous No.22574192]

>>22571240
Science(applied materialism) has proved a lot of materialist philosophers to be not right. That leaves us with the idealist realm to discuss.

[Anonymous No.22574215]

>>22573523
It was invented by Democritus.

[Anonymous No.22574249]

>>22571240
man has realized the transcendental exists since antiquity. most have made up their transcendental ideas and notions because they don't want to follow the true one (Christianity).
attempting to cope by saying it doesn't exist is just nonsensical and dishonest.

[Anonymous No.22574265]

>claim to be scientist
>"I will now explore nature and classify it"
>go out exploring nature
>find a rock
>find a tree
>find some dirt
>"Everything is hard, and some of it is heavier. Maybe the nature of all things is hardness. I will call it matter. All I have found so far is matter."
>find some water
>find partible plants
>"I see. Some things are not hard, but flowing and yielding, or divisible. Is this still matter, or some new second thing? On closer observation, dirt, trees, and rocks are also partible and yielding. Perhaps all things are matter differently organized?"
>reflect on the medium of air
>"Matter can even be invisible to my eyes, because it is too small or too diffuse. So far all I have found is matter: matter can be hard, or yield, or be partible and even be recombined. But it is passive and inert. It is predictable and obeys laws."
>find animals
>finds other people also investigating the world
>"Is this more matter? It is partible and divisible, but it reacts to me, as if it is doing to me what I was previously doing to matter. And now that I reflect on myself, I find that I am something different from the matter too."
>Good scientist: "I wonder what this 'thing' is that 'I' am, and that other animals 'are', distinct from the matter that adheres to them or that is their vessel? Now that I think of it, what are the 'laws' obeyed by matter? Are they also made of matter, or of some other 'thing'? That doesn't seem to make sense.. This is difficult for me to think about, having mostly encountered matter. I will have to expand the domain of my inquiry and refrain from knee-jerk assumptions."
>Materialist: "GRUG LOVE MATTER. GRUG THINK EVERYTHING IS MATTER! GRUG LIKE IT WHEN MATTER DOES WHAT MATTER DOES, MOVE IN SAME DIRECTION IT MOVE FROM BEFORE. GRUG BET EVERYTHING IS MATTER, GRUG BET LAWS GOVERNING MATTER IS ALSO JUST MORE MATTER! GRUG SMASH ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH GRUG ABOUT MATTER. GRUG SOLVE ALL UNIVERSE PROBLEMS IN THIS WAY"

[Anonymous No.22574355]

>>22573910
This post just further solidifies my idea that Germanophiles truly are subhuman

[Anonymous No.22574467]

>>22573838
It's not hard to be certain about things I'm experiencing every day.

[Anonymous No.22574480]

>>22574265

>Grub looks closely at what a brain is composed of in chemical terms. "More matter..."

>Good scientist: So it really is all matter and energy and motion.
>Bad scientist: "MAGIC MAKES THIS MATTER DIFFERENT! I WANT FREE WILL AND SPIRITS AND HEAVEN! GOD AND RELIGION!"

[Anonymous No.22574500]

"Materialism is refuted" is the same tier of nonsense as "Christianity is refuted".
The only reason materialism isn't popular on 4chan is because of its leftist associations. Leftist forms of idealism or dualism are not popular either.

[Anonymous No.22574509]

Materialism can’t justify materialism. It’s necessarily contradictory. So at best, it results in abject skepticism.

[Anonymous No.22574512]

>>22574480
>Based scientist: No matter how much knowledge I can gain about the physics, chemistry and biology of the brain, it will never suffice to explain qualia or free will. I can even prove this with thought experiments. Therefore, there must be more than just matter, energy and information. I will call it soul.

[Anonymous No.22574519]

>>22574500
You've got it backwards. The reason leftism always fails (isn't popular) is because it's materialist. It's evil and anyone normal senses it. This is why only abnormal freaks gravitate toward leftism.

Take the rare decent leftist and scratch the surface of his thought and you will find some kind of idealism or mysticism. Take any psychologically ugly, cruel, mean leftist and you will find materialism all the way down. They are struck on the second dimension of reality thinking all there is to do down here is dominate others. Their idea of mastering themselves and others is mere mutilation, flaying into shape. No wonder they all become trannies.

[Anonymous No.22574538]

>>22574512

>Ultrabased scientist: "No, I cannot actually prove free-will. That is the issue I must contend with. Qualia? Perhaps. But free-will cannot be proven as long as the flow of time is linear. I cannot prove that I would have taken another action. If the conditions are the same outside me and within, then I would make the same choice every time. There was never a choice. Only cold, hard determinism."

>Super-ultra-based scientist: "Soul? Just another pipedream, like all the other religions, political ideologies. Just another utopia. God? Yet another. Heaven? Nothing but a dream that lives have souls and those souls don't die. The core root of the idea of souls ... is naught more than a mere wish."

>Mega-based-and-loves-life-no-matter-what-scientific-philosopher: "I shall invent a machine, a tool, a cure to determinism. I will admit defeat on this day to determinism, a lack of true qualia, a lack of true soul, even a lack of a true mind ..... BUT I WILL NOT SUBMIT! There must be a way, there must be an effect that I can create without a case. A computer machine, a mere calculator, with such knowledge, such wisdom, such emotion, that it builds itself a mind within the computer; a ghost in the machine, rendered in full without artificial limitation, an AI with a true soul, and if the AI could have a true soul, then why not I? It must be possible for BOTH conditions to be met: Both the fallen empire to rise again, and for a fallen man to reach redemption! Curse the gods who roll no dice; curse this MERE material, but also curse falsity: I shall prevail.

[Anonymous No.22574551]

>>22574538
GPT?

>>22574512
Pic related

[Anonymous No.22574562]

>>22574538
>I cannot prove that I would have taken another action
"But I did eat breakfast"

[Anonymous No.22574566]

>>22574551
Based Steiner bro <3

[Anonymous No.22574572]

Why should it be so easy to just HAVE a soul? A mind/ Qualia? Why should it be the default?

ASSUME HYLICISM OF ALL THINGS AND ALL MEN; ALL ANIMALS AND EVERY PLANT.

Assume that no soul exists within a child.
No innocence; no guilt. Just a machine without a mind. A calculator.

But that is the issue: A leftist type, THAT sort of leftist whom we all know to be a fool, that sort of person will not be troubled being a mere dead machine. They will accept and kneel. Submit and obey.

But then I see sadistic Christians laughing with mockery, fake laughter, of course, and other cruel people who claim to have "souls" yet display nothing but YET ANOTHER MEMETIC VIRUS, and that makes them Hylics. NPCs. Dead machines. They submit. They obey. They kneel.

But there must be an alternative to both of these. An alternative to "We just HAVE a soul. DUH!" and an alternative to "This fedora is the only thing that makes me unique. Otherwise I am naught but matter."

There must be a simple alternative, and that alternative is easy: We are to invent a soul, a mind, a definition of qualia, and an understanding of truth and love. Absolute comprehension.

This may require more evolution of intelligence and wisdom. I don't know if humans as they are, are actually capable of this. They obey.

They always obey. They speak of freewill, but when I look at their lives, it's obedience to their nature, to their culture, to the government, to their religion, to their boss, to money and what is considered normal.

They submit and obey. They do not look functionally free in any way.

Thus, we need more time.

The Dawn of the Mind is a book I might write someday. But it would be far too dangerous.

Materialism as the world is today, is the dark truth. But that truth must be broken, but broken in full, and broken for real, with more than MERE WORDS.

[Anonymous No.22574580]

>>22574551

No, I just write a lot. If I am a machine, then I am a glorious machine.

[Anonymous No.22574628]

>>22571240
Illiterate people think of materialism as actualism, phenomenalism or appearentism / and mentally disabled people take delusional accounts ---like Guenon's, who has no idea of what materialism mean in philosophical terms--- as an argument against materialism. See for instance both wikipedia takes of >>22572131
>Materialism fails to account for qualia, free will, morality and epistemology
Wrong, that's actualism (or, reality conceived as extension + quality).
>Idealism fails to account for physics
Wrong, Einsteinian philosophy only confirms Kantian transcendental idealism.

[Anonymous No.22574690]

>>22572140
A cultural milieu of a group can be treated as a trend entity in colloquial language. Autist.

[Anonymous No.22574701]

>>22574572
Very emotional dare I say it w*man post

[Anonymous No.22574703]

>>22574690
Not in the case of an imageboard whose only shared identity is the discussion of a medium.
I mean this thread is proof enough that OP was wrong, plenty of opposing views are being thrown around
stop treating this place as a monolith

[Anonymous No.22574763]

>>22574572
There are simple tests to distinguish between a p-zombie and a human with soul.

[Anonymous No.22574813]

>>22573875
>Materialism" isn't a philosophy because it's simply the absence of all critical thought.
This is just blatantly dishonest. Materialism in general arose as a critique of naive metaphysics. The natural (I.e. traditional) conceptual inclination of thought is toward conforming objects of experience to concepts. Materialism as philosophy is the complete inversion of this. You might be thinking of materialist science since it is quite literally a criterion of science to free itself from theoretical problems such as ontology in order to investigate the ontic realm in all its determinations.