/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15356981
You forgot your "t. Schopenhauer"
Also, read The Last Messiah.

>>15331466
Its not advice, its what every single human being does to avoid the burden of "knowing."
Once man realizes he's the universe's helpless captive, he's in a state of relentless panic until he finds his cope.

>Wrong, feel better because they have purpose beyond the day in, day out, of life.
You restated the function. Yes, and I'm just telling you why that is.

>>15142053
Philosophy chad here,

Vulgar materialism sort of dropped a bomb on philosophy. By this I mean the acceptance of natural selection, the ever increasing body of evidence that what we call identity and ego is just another organic function like a kidney scrubbing piss, and many other kind of crappy things for the human spirit like the sun will fry us, the ecosystem is fragile, etc.

Back to the mind stuff, philosophy really needed to insert something other than what it looks like is obviously going on around here. This is the root of all "profound" questions of identity. Its like one pinky of humans being anything special holding desperately onto the ledge.

Because the other option is no meaning, and that would be a crisis for philosophy. The most honest philosophers are the pessimists because they're the only ones to accept it. That's the thing about reading even a short pessimist text. It feels honest. There's nowhere to hide in there.

>>14710731
>why didn't they all succumb to mental illness?
It all depends on where the line is drawn. Once they reached enough sophistication to become self-aware, coming up with copes, whether knowingly or unknowingly, is exactly what they did. This is the central thesis of this essay. He's really addressing everything you two faggots are volleying over. Society and whatnot are the mechanisms man use has used, perhaps unwittingly, to mitigate existential terror.

>>14607477

>Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know him. He has lost his right of residence in the universe, has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from Paradise. He is mighty in the near world, but curses his might as purchased with his harmony of soul, his innocence, his inner peace in life’s embrace.

This is a philosophical essay on the disaster that was the development of consciousness. If you like, I encourage you to pursue the works of philosopher Thomas Metzinger and sci-fi author Peter Watts.

They focus on how the development of consciousness was not only accidental but ultimately harmful to the organism.