/sci/ - Science & Math

>>2749468
philosophically he was a fucking retard
>implying thought is evidence of a spirit

Was it him that thought that knowledge is in our brain since we are born, claiming that god put it there?

If so, i am dissapoint. Good try though.

>>2749474
You can do a lot worse. Consciousness as a soul isn't too bad.

I can't get over him using an ontological 'proof' of God as central to his philosophical path out of solipsism. It's making me rage.

>>2749488
Well, you've sort of described Plato. Though Plato's views on the soul were much less repugnant than his political philosophy.

>>2749489
Whenever I think of Descartes, I imagine ourselves as clouds of energy floating out of our bodies.

Anyway, his solipsism really bugs me. If our senses are wrong and the world is only subjective to our conscience, how comes every person has a similar understanding of physicals phenomenons (or sees them the same way)? Are we all wrong the same way? Also, freaking animal-machines...

>>2749544
The more I read his Meditations, the more I think that the solipsism is just a troll to make you like God more.

That's a fair argument against solipsism.

>>2749474

Agreed.

He's a prime example of how people can be great at logic (mathematicians, philosophers, etc.) but suck on drawing conclusions from reality. Scientists on the other hand are great at obtaining evidence but could use a little more mathematical/logical rigor.

Perhaps this fact is what makes my PI such a good biologist. He finished undergrad in physics, did med school, and is now the head of the biology department.

>>2749544
>If our senses are wrong and the world is only subjective to our conscience, how comes every person has a similar understanding of physicals phenomenons
How can you claim that every person has a similar understanding, when your premise is that you may very well be wrong in saying that they do, or that there is more than one person ?

Trying to establish a foundation for the sciences that would allow the same degree of certainty in them as we have in math was kinda cool.

Also, evil demon and dream-state skeptical undercutters for justified belief was a neat idear.

The only useful person to be produced by france EVER.
He was also a moron for wasting so much time on philosophy

He was an important figure, demonstrated the problem between the mind and body beautifully and introduced a concept (I think therefore I am & methodological skepticism) that would influence the next centuries of philosophy. But he failed at giving successful solutions to the problems he raised.

>>2749617

What's wrong with philosophy?

>>2749626

he could be doing more math

important

>>2749637
You should be posting that tier chart between fields now, bub.

>>2749637

By the same token, Richard Dawkins could be doing more biology (his field of expertise) rather than trying to build a new religion around himself.

>>2749626
He could have been doing something useful instead. Much intelligence was wasted on him.
Imagine if Newton decided to dedicate most of his time to useless musings about life instead of science, where would we be then?

>>2749652
He should be.
What's your point?

>Imagine if Newton decided to dedicate most of his time to useless musings about life...

Philosophy is useless musings? Sounds like you're doing some epistemology there bud.

>>2749608
Hum, that's exactly what I'm saying. It is not reasonable to assume that the senses are a priori wrong when we can make coherent scientific theories between each other. For someone who contributed to physics and maths, I would assume he'd think about the referential frame of human perceptions, but no.

>>2749657

There's more to life than just solving mathematical problems or working in a laboratory.

>>2749692
You're misunderstanding.
For your senses can be wrong and still send you consistent information about illusory phenomena.

>>2749617

Yes, because fuck Laplace, d'Alembert, Lagrange and, last but not least, Galois.

I mean, fuck; what did that faggot ever do? Just help establish a new form of mathematics? A form we still utilize today?

The denizens of you /sci/borgs are fucking idiotic, man. I don't even know why I peruse the threads here every now and again. Every time I decide to read a sentence from one of you cretins, I feel as if an abomination is occurring before my very eyes and infectious stupidity has seeped into my frontal lobe.

Holy fucking Christ.

>>2749767
>tripfag
>inflates his sentences with unnecessarily long words
>thinks anybody cares about what he thinks
You're in the wrong place, buddy.

>>2749723
Ok, my mistake.

But then, are all humans having false representations of the univers? Assuming they do and that they have all the same false perception, they can produce theories or laws and predict the false phenomenons (we can already to that to a certain extent). Then, those real predictions of false phenomenons are assumed real since, for us, they make sense and are coherent between each other. But, doing so, we get to the same point that someone who would see "the real phenomenons", but in other terms. If we say that the apple falls because of gravity and that he says that the zimurck floats to the Earth because of ziprokx (assumings zimurck and ziprokz are real and gravity and apples are false perceptions), we both are able to describe something happening, but with different perspectives. So, in this way, the false perceptions are not really false since we attain a similar truth. Unless I'm mistaken.

>>2749779

What're you going to do about it, faggot? Besides, although the words were relatively long, they weren't out of place. Sorry you had to sound out more syllables in your head, asshole.

But really, what that guy(or you) said was/is idiotic. Also, you MUST be fucking new here if you're jumping on my ass for being a tripfag. Go pester aether or EK; both of those tripfags are far worse than I.

Well .. EK's kind of cool, but she's a bitch sometimes. aether's just downright awkward.

>>2749796
Perhaps you should consider other potential sentients in a solipsist sense, ie you can't confirm anything. Meaning that that person agreeing with what you see could be merely a production of some part of your mind.

>>2749810
also, tripfag, go burn in a fucking fire.

It's an anonymous forum for a reason. Go play on gaia if you want acknowledgement.

goddamn tripfaggots

>>2749779
>long words
Jesus Christ I hate you.

>>2749848
just because you're an attention whore when you get a unique name...

>>2749848

You mad as fuck. Relax; it's only a message board.

Really, man. Calm the fuck down.

>>2749796
>But then, are all humans having false representations of the univers?
Maybe. But the point is, you've got no grounds to assume that you are human or that there is other humans, other than your sensations that can be false.

It could be some kind of video game, I could be some kind of NPC, and the apple and the earth might just exist as images in your mind.

>>2749868
I guess, but how would this change how I live my life?

Its like string theory. Yes, it's a nice interpretation, but what changes when we believe this?

math was important an awesome
a lot of his philosophy is makes me rage though especially the common shit that you hear everyday that people use without even knowing it came from Descartes. specifically his separation of the "mind" and "body" into separation two axioms thus all the mind-body bullshit or worse mind, body, and soul bullshit. Also, his stance that what human beings do is unnatural or artificial. Thus at least once a week on this board i have to explain to someone that what human beings do is perfectly natural.

Sure is entry-level in here.

Go eat a dick. I don't have tripfags tell me what to do.

Seriously, go suck your tranny mothers dick.

>>2749875
Maybe you won't care that much about future generations. Maybe your opinion on suicide or murder will change.

>>2749844
Ok, I see what you mean. The fact (or what I assume is a fact) of the person agreeing with me could aslo be a false perception. But didn't Kant say that the Natural world (or the Univers) was defined, but just couldn't be really understood for we are subjective creatures? His solipsist assumes, like Descartes, that we can not really understand the world outside our mind, but for Kant, the world was still defined and people would experience it the same way, only they could be leaded to wrong conclusions about it.

In Descartes' theory, we use reasoning to obtain thruth since perceptions are false. In Kant's theory, we use reasoning since we know that our perceptions are biased, but not false. Descartes' solipsism is based on nothing and destroys any chance of using any kind of refenrential frame because "your frame isn't shared by no one".

>>2749894
Maybe.

As far as future generations, I think most of the things we could do to fuck up the future would have real consequences now. I might die before the problems hit, but there are plenty of 20 somethings (simulated or not) who would be pissed and would have no trouble letting me know.

Also, I reserve my right to suicide no matter what.

As far as murder is concerned, I take no pleasure in arbitrary violence. I think those that do would exploit it regardless of their philosophy.

I do acknowledge there are very personal arguments, not sure if I can generalize more just yet.

>>2749947
l2grammar, mate

Kant seems to believe in the idea of a noumenal and phenomenal universe. The phenomenal universe is what humans can sense, while the noumenal universe is reality as it truly is. I can not stress enough that this is not solipsist.

You've struck the main problem with solipsism. There's really no where to go from there. If you think solipsism is valid, you either ignore it, change beliefs, or you cannot live as if our perceived reality is true. This doesn't mean you'll let yourself starve to death or anything like this, but you will probably be insane. At least, I would be insane if I actively doubted every single piece of datum to reach me via my senses.

Gotcha. My mistake about Kant's (not) solipsism and the poor grammar. But then, where does solipsists minds comes from? For Descartes, it is really a divine gift, and so is Plato's mind (since, I assume Plato's idealism is solipsist). But does solipsism really assume that you can not go further? Socrates, through the Cave's allegory (of Plato's Republic), showed that with reasoning, you could approach reality and that reasoning would mean, grossly, of talking with others. So, in this case, you would obtain or get near truth using those same false perceptions, thus meaning the mind itself can reach the real and false world. Unless I'm mistaken

>>2749468
Boss, de Cart! De Cart!