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/lit/ - Literature

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2800775 No.2800775 [Reply] [Original]

ITT: Philosophy you did as a child

When I was in either elementary or early middle school, I concluded that colors as I perceive them could be completely different to someone else, since you can't actually describe what a color looks like; you could describe an apple as red, but you can't describe red as anything else. Therefore, me and another person's perception of "red" could potentially be wildly different, even though we both see red.

>> No.2800792

I went through a phase when I got really depressed and started psychoanalyzing my family from my room, and came up with a bunch of half-assed conclusions. Thankfully saved myself before schizophrenia set in.

>> No.2800793

What a novel insight.

>> No.2800802

People do the mean things they do almost always as a way of establishing power relationships. However, the mark of true maturity is to be nice regardless of how who you're dealing with.

Take
>>2800793
for instance. Probably has a small penis, usually ornery, generally regarded as intelligent but probably believes himself mostly unintelligent. So what's he do? He tries to be better than the other guy. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it's better than just sitting there, ornery and having a small penis.

>> No.2800803

That's not so much philosophy as it is the realization as it is the stage of mental development when a person realizes other people are their own entities, and that everyone precieves things differently than you do.

It had a name, just a nugget from a psych class. Nice thread idea though

>> No.2800805
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2800805

>>2800775
I got there in Kindergarten, dawg.

GET ON MY LEVEL

I still love you, though. <3

When I was about 3, I became aware of existence and told my mom how weird it was that "we're all here and living." Then she said something about Jesus or something, and I realized she didn't understand what I meant, and I shut up.

>> No.2800811

I theorized that love was a concept rather than immutable fact. And what one person meant when they said they love somebody is different from person to person. And that is because everyone feels love different.

I thought this after a random chubby girl, who I had never met before, called me over from 1/2 a block away and asked if I loved her... and after all of this time, I'll never forget that uneasy feeling that it gave me

>> No.2800812

>>2800792
>psychoanalyzing
I hope you mean that in the strict term of actual resistance/repression/transference and not just taking what somebody says as a lie.

>> No.2800818

I realised that life was a popularity contest

>> No.2800819

>>2800775
>babby's first scepticism

I know that exact feel. From there on it's gotten worse until I pretty much went full Pyrrho.

>> No.2800822

8 or 9

>>Drying myself off after taking a shower
>>Come to the conclusion that memory is like a roll of photo, and time acts like the sun when a memory is exposed to light/aging
>>You don't really see, think of, or feel a memory; it is a copy of the original

And then I am become Plato at 10.

>> No.2800824

>>2800818
HAH. True and wise words here.

>> No.2800826

>>2800775
did the same thing, but then I went a step further and asked myself if I heard the same sounds, smelled the same smells, etc. Eventually I questioned whether I was perceiving the same things as other people entirely. Did Joe really have is hair spiked up like that? I asked the rest of the class, but do I just hear the answers that affirm my perceptions? Am I actually asking if his hair is spiky? perhaps I say something different from what I hear or think or maybe others hear different then what I say and everything remains. Then if everything was different for everyone wouldn't that create inconsistencies? Perhaps my mind is blind to these lapses in logic or perhaps that explains such phenomenon as deja vu and other tricks of the mind.
Such thoughts kept me entertained while sitting in class bored.

>> No.2800828
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2800828

I remember when I first kind of consciously thought about how there's no meaning or reason or anything for everything and anything at all.

Sure, your average nihilism, but when it first hits you unprepared it's pretty devastating. Never gotten over it either, I still feel the divorce between my expectations and reality. Those phantom pains of amputated purpose.

Since then I've been pretty much unable to apply myself.

>> No.2800833

at 9 i came to the realisation that all i am is a collection of memories and nothing i do is of any consequence, soon after i cut off my plaits and renounced god and gender for a life of pleasure

>> No.2800836

Well, when I was about 14, I decided out that the best way to spite someone was to be a better person to than them right in their face.

>> No.2800840

>>2800811
I still have trouble with the concept of love. At first I thought it was just liking someone more then yourself, but then that seemed rather pathetic. Then I thought if just involved being good friends and lust, but then that would exclude family and friendship love and of course once you actually get in a relationship you realize it is quite different from that. Must be why love is such a popular topic for poems.

>> No.2800843

>>2800803
This.

Everyone has these moments.

And I remember I had an epiphany sitting in the sun on a boring afternoon at a very specific place in my house. Except I don't remember what it is. But everytime I go deep thinking "who am I?" the image of me sitting there as a child emerges. It was a moment of great clarity and without any previous knowledge, without reading books or being experienced.

I don't know. I just stopped to think about this again. I'll come back if I get somewhere.

>> No.2800845

>>2800836
Classic slave morality ressentiment.

>> No.2800846

I forget how old I was, but I thought up "Everything is relative," when I was under 12. It's a paraphrase of "Man is the measure of all things," more or less.

>> No.2800847

>>2800846
"Man is the measure of all things,"
Beware of the spook of humanism. The self is the measure of all things.

>> No.2800848

>>2800802
You're not being very nice.

>> No.2800849

AHEM.

Guys.

Take a good look at this link: http://amasci.com/~billb/cgi-bin/instr/instr.html

>> No.2800850

Our existence is equivalent to a book, and is being read by beings in a meta-reality

>> No.2800851

>>2800847

yuck tastes like stirner

>> No.2800853

>>2800836
it's called taking the high road and it really only works if you are sincere about it or you just end up looking like a bitch.

>> No.2800854
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2800854

>tfw I was an evangelical Christian from age 8 to age 17.

When the closest thing to philosophy you're ever exposed to is shitty pulpit pseudo-analysis of biblical concepts, and you're forced to take on these beliefs, you miss out on your own thoughts.

>> No.2800857

>>2800828
I think people don't see much difference in thinking and feeling when it comes to themselves. Sometimes we feel true terror or true joy and when it comes to explaining it's something as silly as "things have no meaning" or "it's alright". People won't get why you are so moved by it. Having nihilistic feelings is different than coming to a nihilist conclusion rationally. That goes for other things as well.

>> No.2800861

>>2800851
>not enjoying the taste of good cigars and the lingering coolness of a nice German beer on the tongue of a learned gentleman

>> No.2800865

I remember when I first heard about atoms I had an epiphany and told my teacher I was going to be rich and famous. He asked me for what was it and I refused to say because he was going to steal my idea as I was too young to be taken seriously. He promised me not to, so I told him.

I said that if everything is made of atoms, atoms are made of another thing and that thing is made of another thing and it goes like this to infinity.

He said ok.

>> No.2800869
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2800869

>>2800861
>mentioning beer after cigars

You're doing it very wrong

>> No.2800875

>>2800869
I don't understand. Explain.

>> No.2800881

>>2800828
yeah had those thoughts myself which lead to a rather pathetic suicide attempt. No one found out about it as all I did was the classic bottle of pills and vodka. Didn't take enough of either and ended up not sleeping all night and going to school the next morning just completely fucked. The next day I felt completely refreshed and for next two yeas had best time of my life until the next existential crisis emerged. The second crisis wasn't like the first, now I was questioning what does it mean to live a meaningful life. Ended up unemployed and living with my parents and watching nothing but star trek reruns for a full year before I moved myself out of that one.

>> No.2800966

I used to get confused as a kid and still now when I think about it about the necessity of identity. As in, why am I me and not someone else right now? Obviously I know the answer is that identity relations are primitive, that being identical to something is the most basic ontological state there is and has no explanation. But still when I think about it it causes me to feel perplexed. Why am I not someone or something else right now?

>> No.2800976

At very young age I was assaulted by the problem of whether I was walking over Earth or if Earth was the one moving under my feet.

>> No.2800977

i had a mid-life crisis when i was 7

>> No.2800987

So I always thought that every molecule/atom (didn't know proper terms) that I touched was being constantly replaced...I would touch a stool, and suddenly, leprauchans would replace every atom of the stool because it disintegrated.
Does that count?

>> No.2801008

>>2800966
how do you know you are not something else right now? There are people who think they are oranges, who is to say they are not really oranges and we just perceive them as people? Maybe your really a platypus that thinks it's a man. But then that would be going against what the common perception of a platypus is since we see them not being man-like, but then that's because if we did see them as man-like might we not understand our platypus nature? Perhaps we live a dual life with platypuses where they project their consciousness into our brians but are unaware of their mental origin and look upon their own bodies with no recollection? What if I were to consume the flesh of my previous body?

>> No.2801014

>>2800803
Epistemological solipsism I believe

>> No.2801017

>>2801008
Whoa man, I'm so high right now...

>> No.2801025

>>2800775
that's called shared subjectivity, or intersubjectivity

>> No.2801029
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2801029

>>2801008

>> No.2801038

On my tenth birthday, as I was going to bed, my dad comes to say goodnight to me, etc, and leaves my bedroom saying "you're halfway through your life now, son!" I know now that he was joking (the tone of voice he used was the one he uses when he's joking) but I didn't realise it at the time. That was when I really became aware of my own mortality... I cried myself to sleep that night.

(I've no idea why I didn't think 10 x 2 = 20, which is nowhere near a human's lifespan. Either I was too tired to consider it or I was just a stupid kid)

>> No.2801049

>>2801038
Your father was talking about your childhood, you were right to cry.

>> No.2801135

Why do you mindless cretins care about this untestable drivel?

What are its implications? How does it change or influence physical, observable phenomena?

rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage

Also, all modern theories of consciousness that agree with evidence disregard this petty concept of 'qualia'.

See for example:
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/
http://bme.usc.edu/assets/003/49758.pdf

>> No.2801144

>>2801135

can you test a sunset? what are the implications of a baby's first smile? how does a kiss in the rain influence observable phenomena?

>> No.2801152

>>2801144
Please go away, former /sci/ troll that now inhabits this cesspool of hipsters.

>> No.2801164

Fuck philosophy. All the heavy lifting has been done. If you're living in the 21st century, and you aren't having as much fun as possible while striving to help others around the world have as much fun as they can possibly have, you're doing it wrong.

>imo

>> No.2801169

>>2801164

but if people have fun talking about philosophy, by telling them they're doing it wrong you're violating the tenets of your own philosophy

>> No.2801172

>>2800792
Good for you. I... got diagnosed with schizophrenia.

>> No.2801190

>>2801135

Thanks for the link good anon, I am enjoying reading that wiki

>> No.2801210

>>2800840
It varies on how people define it. For me, it means I care more about the other person than I do myself. But I have a health self-image, so not a lot of people fall into this category. Family, good friends, and (some) girlfriends

>> No.2801223

I used to imagine that my consciousness would jump from body to body of all the different people I'd ever met every day.
Like, I would wake up one morning a totally different person, but I had all the memories of this person so it would feel like I always was that person. And when I went to sleep at night I would just forget everything and move on to the next body.

I would actually sometimes have a longing to go back to the person that I previously had been with a sense of vague nostalgia.

>> No.2801232

theorised pascal's wager at 8

>> No.2801260

>>2801135
>How does it change or influence physical, observable phenomena?
Why would that matter? We are not talking about physical phenomena.

There is a trend of materialists going on. It seems that everything that is mental, social, metaphysical, semiotic, mythical is denied... I understand ignoring paranormal or even fictional, but there is a lot of obsession going on with the physical and material, as if that represented the whole of reality. I think it's simply irrational to think that.

>> No.2801268

Realised in an infinite universe anything finite is so close to zero it might as well be (absurdist, 12-18), suffered from depression as a result (clinically diagnosed). Then I read Promethea (Alan Moore) and realised life is as important as you decide it is, that art is just as 'real' as real life, which was just a beautiful, affirming, lovely realisation for me. I've since been more positive about life and living, though I still struggle with my depression almost every single day.

>> No.2801276

>>2801260
>Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind.

>> No.2801281
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2801281

When I was a kid, maybe in the 4th or 5th grade, I decided that there must be life after death because I was conscious of experiencing shit, and that if I was just going to die and forget everything than I wouldn't be aware of anything because every moment I experienced would be a memory that would be wiped from existence the moment I died.

It's feels pretentious as all get out to me when I say it now, and I never told it to anybody else, but even if it's not "right" I still think it was a fairly unique thing to think of for being as young as I was.

>> No.2801286

> do we live on top of the Earth or in it?

>> No.2801296

From the age 8-12 I was hit with the idea that the past is really nothing more that our collection of incomplete memories, and that the past (that is, our moments we have as memories) would die. This terrified me, whenever I would pass a rock for example, I would become overcome with a dread. I would be terrified because I was suddenly aware of the rock, and should I leave it alone and keep on walking, I would never see that rock again. To me, this was like death, but it was happening every minute of every day. Of course, the dread I got from passing that rock would crush me, in an effort to maintain some sense of that rock, I would pick it up and stick it in my pocket so I could return to that rock (and in a sense, my past) later. I was terrified of death to the point that I wasn't just scared of my physical death, but of the death of any memories or mementos from the past.

I ended up with a roomfull of rocks and twigs, it was pretty weird.

>> No.2801316

Well, I used to think, when I was like 10, that everybody was a product of their place in the world and that you couldn't blame anybody for acting the way they acted, because it was only product of their experiences in life.
Also thought that trying to understand them was believing oneself to be better or bigger in some way, so I just had to roll along with my ethics and get pissed when people did shit that was wrong according to said ethics.

>> No.2801326

what if I'm insane living in the ruins of a once great civilization? and the only thing keeping me alive is me avoiding the reality of my predicament? Does it even matter if everything I know is imagined? What if everything is imagined, by me or some meta-being (I use that term now, I didn't have a term for it at the time other than "God"). Am I that meta-being, only unable to process everything so I channel it through the life of a kid? Why wouldn't I be a movie star or something? Then again why would that matter if the world is imagined?
I think I was in 7th grade when I thought that series of thoughts, over a period of a few weeks. After that I was essentially a solipsist for some months until I got fixated on something else.

>> No.2801327

>>2801296
Sorry to break this to you, but that's a clear cut case of autism. Have you been diagnosed?

>> No.2801332

I used to believe that everyone else thought the same things as I did exactly when I did. I learned later that this is only mostly true.

>> No.2801333

>>2801276
Again, you are confusing existence with the physical. When you do that you begin to think that everything that is ever mentioned is implied to exist in the physical world. Religious nuts will call that challenge and try to prove you Adam and Eve vs evolution, but that is not the case here.

The thing that the word "dragon" represents is not material, so looking for it in the physical world is unnecessary. There is no intention from my part to even begin searching for evidence of a physical dragon, because I too don't see how that is possible.

But who came up with this word anyway? How is it possible for people to imagine things that aren't there physically? Shouldn't all discussions have remained physically if that was all there is? Then where does this come from?

What materialists take absolutely for granted, without even taking a moment to think, is that the dream, the fiction, the illusion, don't come from absolutely nowhere (afterall, how can things come from nowhere in the first place?).

cont.

>> No.2801334

I used to pretend that the ceiling was the floor and the floor the ceiling. I also used to pretend to feel the earth spinning, I imagined the air was water, and I used to to stare at wood grain or detailed patterns until they danced and moved. Sometimes I would move my hand and make myself believe that the world was turning around my hand instead. I used to pause out side doors and pretend that reality was spinning like a roulette wheel on the other side and the minute I opened the door the wheel of my reality would stop and I would forever have to live with my choice. I would have day dreams with characters and worlds I felt as real as the classroom I sat in (although looking back my school days seemed like a dream themselves). How this applies to philosophy...no Idea.

>> No.2801335

>>2801333 cont

>The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.
Something IS going on inside your head for you to get to there. And that's exactly what we are talking about and interested to understand, without ignoring it in a completely irrational way, giving the half-ass answer that "it comes from a mistake of the mind, a random drift, nothing at all, just a lie".

And that does not suffice, when there is enough evidence to support that the mind has a systematic way to understand things. That the "mistake" is just as a mistake as anything else that it's perceived, because what is perceived changes when it enter us, so there is no correct, no ground to support how things are supposed to be seen, only convention.

And that convention is as well systematic and complex, social and mental, on the stories that survived the test of time even if they did not happen in the physical world.

What we say to each other always comes down to believing it. That is the fact that is often denied. We take for granted that words mean the same thing for each one of us, that our instruments are without flaw, that we should somehow see the same things. And that is a demand no one can live up to. All there is left is the false idea that our conventions and illusions are more real than all else that falls for disagreement.

cont.

>> No.2801336

>>2801335 cont. just to finish

To think and talk about the mind is exactly about how on Earth does this whole systematic way of believing and seeing and experiencing different things work. That two dots and a line can be 'mistaken' for a smiley, that the word "challenge" can be 'mistaken' with the image of a dragon. Not whether or not you'll find fossils of a dragon or a living species in my garage. That is a dichotomy that was never the case and that some people make it the center of all discussion for some unexplained reason.

>> No.2801337

>>2801327
No, and it's gotten better. Now I don't have the same dread.
Although I think I may have (or at least, had) OCD, I would also do things like snapping my fingers compulsively and I still have trouble touching door-nobs.

>> No.2801361
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2801361

The only thing I can remember was asking my dad if a fish knew it was wet, because it's always in the water and doesn't know what dry feels like.

I forget how he responded.

>> No.2801366

When I was 14, I remember laying on my friend's trampoline for 2 hours. It was during a band practice (me and 5 other friends were in a band, you know how it goes), and I wanted a little bit of time to myself, so I went and just layed on the trampoline.
It was in the very late afternoon, maybe 5:45 or so, and in summer, so there was a bit of light out. I just looked up at the sky, saw the swallows whirl about, the trees sigh in lazy, balmy breezes, and felt at peace. I continued to watch the sky as the gloaming came on, and the cicadas cried, and the leaves shivered, and I felt as if I was on the border between the intense and the utterly relaxed; I felt like I was seeing the sky in its totality, not from the vantage of the trampoline. I continued to lay there, the bats and swallows departing across the sky in great fleets, the clouds dappled vermillion, and then I was witness to the emergence of the first star of the night. /lit/, I don't think I've ever seen anything more beautiful than that star softly scintillating into vision, like a single diamond casting its luminescence. I was so moved that I began to weep. This, I think, was one of the greatest moments of epiphany in my entire life, when I realized how truly beautiful and ephemeral our lives are, how gorgeous things can be even as they are dissolved, how much luminescence a single spark can hold. This came over me in collective waves of shattering consciousness, and was more a consommé of vague realizations than a single, clear upheval, but it was a world changing epiphany without doubt.
cont'd

>> No.2801368

>>2801366
cont'd

My soon to be girlfriend, who was at our practice, came out of the house and asked if she could lay next to me. I said sure, and then she asked why I was crying. I couldn't explain it to her, but what I did explain was my feelings for her, feelings that she had shared all along. Then I pulled her to me, looked her in the eyes, and kissed her long and deep.That series of moments were probably some of the greatest of my entire life. The entire thing was like something you would find in a movie.
God damn I get chills thinking of it.
Anyway, when I look back, I realize its one of the foundations of how I think today. I don't know if all that could be considered philosophy or anything though. But it was certainly profound to me!

>> No.2801387

>>2800828
>phantom pains of amputated purpose

That is fucking beautiful and sums up succinctly all of my feels. I am going to steal that, steal it hard.

These phantom pains of amputated purpose
has me wishing for God's reflection to fool my brain
to throw all hopeless learnings to believer's furnace,
burn conscience mind, sad extension of nothing.

>> No.2801411

>>2801387
pretty awful poetry, my friend. but you're heart's in the right place

>> No.2801415

When I was a kid I started thinking about the fact that you never remember what you were doing just before you fall asleep. Essentially part of your memory gets erased, and then as I lay in bed I wondered "What if I fall asleep and forget this in the morning? In what way is the person who thought this still alive?" thoughts like that still make me hesitate when I'm trying to sleep sometimes.

>> No.2801416

I self-realized nihilism when I was about 4 and have been on-and-off suicidal since (mostly off these days). A few years after that I had a solipsistic idea that life was actually just a complex arcade game, which I had entered under the premise that if at any time I did not want to play it anymore, I could just kill myself.

>> No.2801418

Around age 13 I began thinking of everything as the past. For example if someone was doing something irritating, I would think, "Well, in the future we're both already dead and I won't have to worry about this person, so why worry now? And a few years in the past, neither of us exist yet, so it's not a problem there, either." And so then I would feel uninterested in taking anything too seriously, and wouldn't feel the need to correct people who wanted to disagree with me or something, and if I was sad I would think, "Well, at some point in time I am already happy, so I might as well see what I can get out of being sad while I'm experiencing it."

Around the same age I decided that there really is no point to life, and instead of feeling depressed by that it's like I suddenly became very lively and excited, knowing that whatever I or anybody did, and that anything that ever happened, could never objectively be the wrong thing; therefore every outcome was the "right" outcome, so I stopped feeling anticipation and disappointment for most things. I still maintained a personal sense of right and wrong, but I didn't view them as the ultimate Right and Wrong of the universe, only what one living being had come up with to survive in the world, and, as I realized was desirable to me as I got older, to establish a personal plot/narrative/structure/meaning etc.

I still tend to view myself in the third person and to view all time as having already occurred, if you get what I mean. I read Slaughterhouse-Five when I was 15 or 16 and the whole Tralfamadorian thing really got me, because it was the sort of thing I would think about and the weird point of view I would try to invent for alien creatures and stuff when I was a kid (watched alot of Star Trek, so, lots of alien make believe)

>> No.2802530

>Therefore, me and another person's perception of "red" could potentially be wildly different
I think everyone thinks that at some point in their childhood. Nice thread idea OP. Bumping.

I sometimes feel that the most interesting concepts came into my mind when I was unfamiliar with science.
As we grow up we grow more dismissive of existential wonder, dismissing such things as childish and of no "practical use".

>> No.2802538

>>2802530
>as we grow up we grow more dismissive of existential wonder, dismissing such things as childish and of no "practical use".

No we don't That sounds like scientism dogma to me! Burn him at the stake!

>>>/sci/

>> No.2802554

>>2802538
By "we" I meant people in general, not me.
I don't subscribe to /sci/'s utilitarianism.

>> No.2802557
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2802557

I didn't do Philosophy. I did Scientific Theories. True story. I was seven when I concluded that if you go fast enough, everything else should slow down until full stop. But I also may have suffering from intense wake-dreams at the time, so take it with a grain of salt. At 10 it the split realities and parallel universes. At 11 it was black holes and infinite/stretched time.

Now it's: WHAT DO MY FINGERTIPS FEEL LIKE?

>>2800805
At three I was a fucking smartass. I kept asking my mom questions I knew the answers to, to see if I could trip her up.

>> No.2802575
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2802575

>>2800977

>> No.2802595

Assorted concepts from nihilism, existentialism, relativism, skepticism, solipsism and similar that I rediscovered later in life. I was kind of proud to have "self-realized" most of it considering I had never picked up a book on philosophy.

>> No.2802597

>>2801366

that sounds more like a planet than a star

>> No.2802603

>>2802530
>As we grow up we grow more dismissive of existential wonder, dismissing such things as childish and of no "practical use".

Americans maybe. The rest of us know very well our philosophies aren't very "practical". It doesn't really affect us. It's just there, like some kind of metaphysical universal truth.

>> No.2802607
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2802607

>>2800854

>pastor's kid
>existential crisis by high school
>tfw member of the congregation hands me The Sickness Unto Death and Fear and Trembling

>> No.2802612

I tried to wrap my head around the issues of time travel.

Namely, it would be extremely dangerous to travel back and forth through time because if I land in the exact same spot where I started I might be stuck in space since the Earth is constantly rotating and may be in a different point on its axis by then.

>> No.2802640

>>2801144
I love you.

>> No.2802658

First of all I discovered atoms and was blown away by the idea that everything in existence is kinda like a room full to the ceiling with tiny playpen balls and things are essentially many of them stuck together swimming through the sea of balls.
then someone told me atom is made up of mostly nothing and it didn't make sense.

then gravity came along and my idea of "up" and "down" as all wrong because "down" is only towards a centre of gravity and "up" is away from it. this applies in all directions and in space there is no north/south except for towards worlds and stars or further away from them.

>> No.2802705

I thought of solipism, I didn't know what it was until maybe last year

>> No.2802752

>>2800865

ahahaha

>> No.2804074

>>2802705
My mind was blown when, as a kid, I realized that I was the only thing I knew for sure was sentient.

I was also tortured (lmao) by my realization that there are infinite numbers in between any two numbers, and that these numbers could go on forever.

>> No.2804087
File: 18 KB, 367x479, 1339614524135.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2804087

>taking summer philosophy course at a community college for GE credits at uni
>teacher brings up things like this and the argument around free will, everyone is fucking amazed

>> No.2804107

When I was a wee lad watching Star Wars, C-3PO's eyes really got me going. I thought about it and I was like, wow, it's all just shit sent into his brain processor where the image is created, it's like the entire world as he perceives it is in his head...
And then I thought "holy shit that's just like me and my eyes and my brain.."
I started freaking out because I thought that the world was solely in my mind and that everything was a construct of my subconscious or something like that.
There's a word for that, but I can't remember it.
This was all in/around fourth grade.

>> No.2804109

>>2804107

>>2802705

>> No.2804114

-Contemplated that our universe could be a tiny little part of a piece of dust or a leaf or something in a much bigger world, where human beings live but don't realize every time they take a walk through grass they're destroying civilizations etc

-not really philosophy, but thinking swearwords can't be all that bad since other words are worse but not frowned on, e.g. sadomasochism, torture etc. Heard Stephen Fry make exactly this point years later and it all came back to me

>> No.2804115

>not paying attention in 1st or 2nd grade (like always)
>start thinking about time travel
>figured out the ol' time travel paradox
>going back in time to fix a problem doesn't make sense
>once you fix it, you would never have had a reason to go back in time, thus you would never have gone back in time to fix it
>realize that you can never fix any past events
>realize that since the past is scorned into eternity forever, it must mean that the present, and the future must also be set.
>I can't change the future
>I have no free will
>everything I do is part of my destiny
>start yelling loudly in class because that was my destiny
>teacher sends me to office
>feelsbadman.jpg

>> No.2804116

>>2804114
The act of torture is worse than the act of swearing, but I don't see what that has to do with the word torture.

>> No.2804122

I remember when I was 14 I read some book about space and time travel. I walked into the living room and found my dad leaning against the patio doors watching the rain outside. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked "Dad, if time travel is possible wouldn't we know about it because in the future they could come back and tell us about it". I remember he turned around and beat the shit out of me, leaving me concussed for days. Not until weeks later when I'd fully recovered from a minor coma that this man wasn't my father, but a thieffrom the future

>> No.2804125

>>2800775
I thought everybody realized that at some point.
>we perceive colors in exactly the same way. >it's not like there are huge,inexplicable variations in the optic center from person to person.

>> No.2804127

>>2804116
No I mean the word fucking is sexual, and the word shit is about faeces. The word torture relates to something far worse than faeces, yet we use it freely

>> No.2804130

>>2804125

>tfw colorblind
>tfw no idea how all of you perceive colors

>> No.2804134

>>2804127
The word fucking can be about something sexual and the word shit can be about faeces. However, if I say "Fuck you, you little shit" I am not saying that you are a small poo that I want to stick my penis in. It's really there about offense and trying to hurt the other person on an emotional level. The word torture is ordinarily not suited to this.

>> No.2804140

>>2804134
they didn't start out that way, though. Swear words became used like that BECAUSE they were made profane and taboo, not the other way around.

>> No.2804143

Back in kindergarten I would go to the after school program where my favorite teacher was this old art-dude who told awesome stories.
Anyway, I remember asking him "whats the meaning of life" because I overheard something (as I usually did). We had a discussion that went from "to reproduce," to "there is no meaning," and finally "whatever you decide it to be." So I worked out the throes of scientific pragmatism (?), to nihilism, and existentialism fairly early in my childhood, haha.

>> No.2804144

>>2804140
The only reason they are "swear words" is because they are profane and taboo. Prior to being profane and taboo they were just words for things, not swear words.

>> No.2804150

>>2804144
denoting a word as a swear word is what makes it a taboo. I could grant you that they were profane beforehand, in that they tend to be about things socially perceived as dirty, but they reach a new level of profanity when made taboo

>> No.2804161

>>2804150
No, the point is that they weren't profane at one point. Shit was like the word poo at one point, cunt like the word labia or virgina. What they once literally denoted has little to do with them as swearwords now, there is something like a meaning of pure taboo.

>> No.2804165

>>2801387
ur a fag.

>> No.2804177

>>2804161
Ok, that's reasonably similar to where I'm coming from. I guess I kind of misunderstood that right here
>>2804140

What the guy before was saying is that the things that they denote are not so bad, at least that there are non-swear words that denote worse things. You're saying that it doesn't matter what they once denoted, because that has been transcended since they became swear words.

All I'm saying is that what words became swear words was pretty arbitrary, and that words that denote worse things could've became swear words and also transcending their old meanings to be used like fuck and shit are.

>> No.2804189

>>2804177
>All I'm saying is that what words became swear words was pretty arbitrary
More or less what I'm saying. It's useless to say that the act of torture is worse than the act of fucking, that has nothing to do with them being swear words. Fucking is something good, if anything.

>> No.2804191

>>2804189
Yea, I got confused. I thought you were saying the opposite, it confused me that you said "The word torture is ordinarily not suited to this." because I thought you were bringing in common denotations

>> No.2804195
File: 12 KB, 245x300, Descartes.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2804195

As a child, I had vivid dreams, and I remember once waking up and wondering whether the dream world was in fact the real world, and the waking world was the dream world.

>Fucking Descartes

>> No.2804204

>>2804191
No I was just getting at if I wanted to hurt your feelings, I'll probably be able to do it with swear words. But if the word torture happened to have a special meaning to you in that situation. Like if you were raped or something the word rape might carry a particular emotional weight to it.

>> No.2804344
File: 129 KB, 353x450, Zhuangzi.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2804344

>>2804195
Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Zhuangzi. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi. But he didn't know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuangzi. Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

>Fucking Zhuangzi

>> No.2804382
File: 166 KB, 608x421, 1340758870618.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2804382

>>2804344
It's because of situations like this that I have decided, recently, that all I know is a dream. The world as I know it , more or less, is under the control of my mind and its tricky ways. Sorry, lol.

>> No.2804418

>>2804382
You didn't ask me, but I'd say we shouldn't focus on the external world, as it may fall apart like a dream and we shouldn't focus on the inner world either, because that would be simply alienation. I think the conversation between mind and the world is what counts, the emotion, the knowledge, the meaning that we juice out of what we perceive and what kind of things we are able to create as we give that back to the world, yet transformed.

>> No.2804463

Here I was waiting to hear some crazy, maybe nostalgic, ideas of children, and the thread just becomes about how early on we discovered nihilism without any help.

> look, daddy. I did it all by myself!

>> No.2804468

>>2800826
this isn't OP. OP was talking about person - to person, not isolative.

>> No.2804632

Back when I was about 6, I wondered why I could not feel anything when other people think. To me, I had no means of determining whether anyone else had thoughts at all, other than the fact that they claimed to. So I came to the conclusion that I was the only truly conscious being, and other people were simply automatons that mimicked thought.

I was semi-solipsistic for at least a year or two.

>> No.2804656

I'm not sure if you could call this philosophy but I realized from a really early age that everything is ultimately pointless and that I need not bother myself with living a traditional lifestyle.

>> No.2804663

When I was 10 I realised that god as my teachers described him can't possibly exist. Omnipotent, benevolent, yet still there's evil.

>> No.2804675

>>2804663
There's evil because we allow it to exist. We were allowed free will and we choose to harm ourselves and harm others, both directly and indirectly.

>> No.2804679

>>2804663
Not exactly anything new.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil

>> No.2804695

I used to think about shapes a lot. As in, how a blank space on a wall would have infinite potential, could be any shape, until someone actually took a marker, or a knife, and made an exact shape out of it, but even then there were infinite possibilities within that shape again, and about what it would mean for that new shape to be inside another shape - was the space contained in the first shape smaller now, or did it include the smaller shape as well? What was the smaller shape if it was still just a piece of the space occupied by the original shape?
I was a distracted child.

>> No.2804698

>>2804675
Do we allow it to exist in heaven as well?

>> No.2804699

>>2804698
No, there is no evil in Heaven.

>> No.2804716

>>2804699
So, we don't have free will in heaven?

>> No.2804797

didn't want to start a new thread, does anyone have that picture of the "entry-level" philosophy books? It has different tiers, the first are movies and the second has zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance and sophie's world.

>> No.2804818

>>2802607
Me too. Except for the last part. Those fucks only read the bible and Max Lucado.

>> No.2804876

>>2804675
>>2804679
Evil doesn't exist, dorkwads. It's just a lie we attach to things that don't gel with the private worlds we build.

>> No.2804903
File: 37 KB, 458x600, 1340967637349.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
2804903

>>2804818

>tfw most of the congregation has a babby understanding of Christianity and I didn't even want this anxiety

>> No.2805433

Slowly hit me at about the age of 7 that nothing truly matters at all, morality is, at its core, completely meaningless and people mostly do things for reasons that are completely baseless. People should just do things that they want to do. I was a pretty sociopathic preteen.

Thing is, this still underlies basically everything I do and think about. I feel like I'm in a way "humouring" life and people insincerely, but why should it be undesirable to live like that? Says who?

>> No.2805453

When I was a kid and in third grade, while in line after recess I tried getting a handle on the nature of experiencing time. Upon realizing that there is no single "present" and that everything is flux, albeit not at all in such complicated wording, my juvenile head nearly exploded.

>> No.2805464

At about 10 I went through a phase of touching random things I saw because if I didn't do it at that exact time the event never would have happened at that moment, and I felt this incredible loss when I couldn't touch something I'd set my mind on, and grieved whenever I realised I couldn't touch everything forever.

>> No.2805473

>What if I'm the world's first android and they're testing my realism and capabilities by putting me among humans.

>What if everyone is a robot and I'm put here in my artificial world so that 'they' can observe the effects of a human being raised by non-organic creatures.

>TFW I first saw Matrix and realised how close it was to my childhood thoughts

>> No.2805489

When I was ~13 or 14 I realised that 'good' and 'evil' were just labels and buzz words. I realised that morality was subjective, that nothing is black and white even though that is how it is often made out to be and that stupid people love to stick labels all over everything.

>> No.2805493

>12
>art lesson, teaching is giving shitty basic overview of ideas in painting
>says something really fucking unfounded, can't remember what, get annoyed
>prove to teacher with some unnecessarily roundabout argument that realism as the rejection of idealism is in fact idealism
>get put in gifted classes in all subjects

>> No.2805548

>>2805493
>prove to teacher with some unnecessarily roundabout argument that realism as the rejection of idealism is in fact idealism
be nice if you could remember that. you'd maybe get it published in a journal if it wasn't in fact complete bullshit.

>> No.2805571

>>2801296
That's retarded. It is true that when you pass a rock, it's so unimportant to you that you will forget it, but the rock STILL stays there. (Well, it stays there until it gets destroyed)

>> No.2805580

>>2805473
But Anon how can others be Androids if they have the body as same as yours (they have a heart, brain, etc etc).

>> No.2805582

>>2800843

I used to have these moments of 'self-questioning' too. I sat on an empty space in the schoolyard during lunch in 1st or 2nd grade. I was about 6 or 7. I remember sitting there with a plastic lunchbox or a water bottle, and I remember the matte texture of those tiles sliding against my pants. Others would assume I was daydreaming; I can even recall teachers and multiple schoolchildren screaming at me in the top of their lungs. But I knew I was unique and was doing something productive: But what was it really? I would be sitting there slouched against a wall; children shoving, pushing and poking against me-- I would completely block them out. The questions circling my head were something along the lines of "What are you? What am I? What is 'mama'? Why am I here? What will I become?". My forehead would strain and on certain occasions I could see myself sitting with my legs crossed in the corner of my eye. Time would pass by really quickly, and eventually it was time to get back up to class. Even when I was younger, 2-3 years old, I would watch certain TV and have deja vu. Kinda strange a lot of us have been having these thoughts, maybe supernatural entities do exist.

not spam

>> No.2805583

>>2805493
I think I get what you mean and agree, but the terms realism and idealism don't match in this context. You are right on a more basic level, though, it's just that the terms are not that absolute all in themselves.

>> No.2805757

>>2801135 your fucking kidding me right? Ramachandran disagrees.

>> No.2805772

When I was about 5-6 I had the idea that I might just be a creation on some guy's computer. Like the whole world is just a game of Sims.
Then one day my dad said the same thing after reading it in a magazine. I was annoyed because I thought I was the only one to think it, so I said "What!? What idiot thought that up?"
and I looked like an idiot.

>> No.2807127

I came to a profound understanding of the concept of god when I was very young.

I realized that if he was all-powerful, and capable of anything, then he has no practical need for our worship. So either his power was finite and somehow reliant on our faith in him, or he was a conceited fuckwad.

I told this to my priest, and he got pissed. His reaction paved the way for me to start becoming an atheist.

>> No.2807178

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't think it was fucking weird that I was human as opposed to another organism (for some reason, that "other organism" was always visualized as a deer in a forest).

Also, I went to a Christian school, and one of our assignments was to write on whether we thought God created the universe and just let it run on its own (watchmaker theory) or actively participated in its functioning. I wanted to write in defense of the watchmaker theory, which I preferred, reasoning that (and I realize I am putting a shamelessly adult face on this) miracles would have been pre-planned if God had planned the entire course of history before creating anything rather than being quick fixes to unexpected consequences. So I thought that the watchmaker theory was more respectful to God. For some reason, my mom disagreed. (I was 8).