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Author Topic:   The horror! The horror!
robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 1 of 84 (177183)
01-15-2005 1:14 AM


What I want to address is the following: I'm talking to all these very knowledgable people and they are blythely telling me that my mind is physical, and that my morality is subjective, and that I have no free will, and I am wondering if tney understand the philosophical implications of what they are saying.
They don't seem to understand that what they are saying is that we are mindless robots, living meaningless lives. I hope they understand that, and I hope they understand that they cannot with any consistency be insisting on moral imperatives of any sort.
I do not want to hear about your relative moralities, because, logically, they do not work. Anybody who looks at the question honestly will realize that. I do not want to hear that somehow our lives are meaningful if we are nothing but physical processes.
Therefore, we should all be nihilists--like me.
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-15-2005 01:17 AM
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-15-2005 01:25 AM
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-15-2005 01:27 AM
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-15-2005 01:32 AM

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 31 of 84 (177878)
01-17-2005 2:52 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by robinrohan
01-15-2005 1:14 AM


Sorry About That
Before I read the rest of these replies, I would like to apologize for this topic. I was drunk when I wrote it.

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 33 of 84 (177888)
01-17-2005 3:32 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Sylas
01-15-2005 5:57 PM


Sylas writes:
It's a burden you'll have to live with, unless you make a far better attempt to deal with views you do not share.
Sorry for the obnoxious tone of my OP.
I share the following views: 1. the mind is physical; (2) morality is relative; and (3)we have no free will (I guess). I was assuming that a physical process couldn't have free will.
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-17-2005 15:33 AM

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 34 of 84 (177900)
01-17-2005 4:16 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Rrhain
01-15-2005 7:41 PM


Oh, hell...not another "atheism = nihilism" thread.
You're right,Rrhain. Not a good topic--at least not the way I expressed it.

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 35 of 84 (177906)
01-17-2005 4:47 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by robinrohan
01-17-2005 4:16 PM


Re: Oh, hell...not another "atheism = nihilism" thread.
Maybe I can improve this topic and make it a little better than that crap I wrote in the OP. Here's a question that interests me, and hopefully somebody will have some thoughts on it.
Does it bother you--anyone--that in a few short years you will cease to exist?
It bothers the hell out of me.
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-17-2005 16:48 AM

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 38 of 84 (177936)
01-17-2005 6:30 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by Parasomnium
01-17-2005 5:27 PM


The Horror!
1.6etc writes:
We have become desensitized to some degree
I guess I've gotten a little more "sensitized" lately. People I've known all my life are dropping like flies. Just one funeral after another.
Para writes:
Doesn't it - the fact that it bothers you so much - make your existence a whole lot more interesting?
It does for me. If it didn't bother me, I might as well not exist
.
Now here's a different view on the question (as usual with Para).
I look up ahead and what do I see? I see the black hole, and there's not a damned thing I can do about it. Like the poet said--"nothing more terrible, nothing more true."
I keep trying to figure it out--keep trying to find some reason I have existed--but of course the answer is, there is no reason.
That's "interesting" all right--if that is the term.

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 Message 37 by Parasomnium, posted 01-17-2005 5:27 PM Parasomnium has replied

Replies to this message:
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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 41 of 84 (178073)
01-18-2005 8:40 AM
Reply to: Message 39 by lfen
01-17-2005 9:12 PM


Re: Oh, hell...not another "atheism = nihilism" thread.
Ifen, what is that book by Bernedette somebody? You mentioned it a couple of times.

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Replies to this message:
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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 42 of 84 (178080)
01-18-2005 9:21 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by Parasomnium
01-18-2005 3:50 AM


Re: Welcome to Kaufman's Universe
Para writes:
the paradox of our existence is that our contemplating the total absurdness of our situation is what makes it absurd in the first place
Well, yes, from a theoretical point of view, if we think about evolutionary brain-making, it's almost as though the process went one step too far. I think I read somewhere that consciousness (full human consciousness) is a "byproduct," by which it was suggested that we could very well have done without it. I don't know about that; I would think that consciousness would help you survive. But assuming for a moment that such an idea is accurate, the absurdity would be that consciousness is the only thing that makes life worth living, even though it also tells us that life is not "worth living," all this the result of a "byproduct."
So, yeah, that's pretty interesting.

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 44 of 84 (178224)
01-18-2005 2:41 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by lfen
01-18-2005 1:11 PM


Re: Oh, hell...not another "atheism = nihilism" thread.
Ifen I just read the first 3 chapters of Jaynes' book. What he is saying is rather amazing. Consciousness developing that late!
It reminded me of something else I read--I think it was in Augustine-in which the author was very surprised to find someone reading a book "to himself"--i.e., not outloud. Everybody read books outloud up til the 4th century!

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 46 of 84 (178880)
01-20-2005 9:23 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by lfen
01-18-2005 10:51 PM


Re: Oh, hell...not another "atheism = nihilism" thread.
Ifen writes:
self consciousness is what I think he is talking about. Sentience , or primordial awareness which is what I call consciousness would have been prior.
The distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness is something I have a problem with. I don't see how you can be conscious without being self-conscious.
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-20-2005 09:23 AM

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 47 of 84 (178927)
01-20-2005 12:40 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by robinrohan
01-15-2005 1:14 AM


Back to the "the horror"
Let me see if I can make these incoherent ideas of mine more coherent, as I should have done in the first place.
The phrase "The horror! The horror!" comes from "Heart of Darkness"; what I was always struck by in the story was the way this world that Marlowe steps into is constantly described as absurd and "unreal"; the people he meets are "empty inside." For example: "I let him run on . . . and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing but a little loose dirt, maybe." The person referred to is a brickmaker who has been in Africa for a year but has not made a single brick (missing some material). More absurdity.
This was always very suggestive to me of the plight one finds oneself in when contemplating the philosophical implications of modern science.
The "horror" consists of the feeling of pointlessness and absurdity, a feeling that is generated by various factors. No God, the brevity of life, and the questionable status of morality I've mentioned (along with the possibility of determinism), but the feeling of the "unreal" nature of life is caused by what seems to be The Negation of Private Experience.
(Dennet's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea," a book I just started, addresses this very issue of nihilism in the wake of Darwinism, so perhaps I will learn something more about this topic in a few days).
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-20-2005 12:41 AM

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Replies to this message:
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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 49 of 84 (179033)
01-20-2005 6:03 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by robinrohan
01-20-2005 12:40 PM


Re: Back to the "the horror"
Dennett's paraphrase of Searle's idea: "According to Searle, automata (computers or robots) don't have real intentionality; at best they have mere as if intentionality . . . This creates a problem for Searle, because whereas AI says you are composed of automata, Darwinism says you are descended from automata. It is hard to deny the former if you admit the latter; how could anything born of automata ever be anything but a much, much fancier automaton?
Exactly.

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 50 of 84 (179208)
01-21-2005 1:46 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by robinrohan
01-20-2005 6:03 PM


An evening of Modernist Poetry
I always wondered why this weird, incoherent stuff always attracted me, and now I am beginning to understand it--after all these years!
It's all about Darwinism.
"Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many . . ."
"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!"
--T. S. Eliot
"There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charming, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books."
--Ezra Pound
"And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow,
With no expression, nothing to express."
--Robert Frost
Automata!

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 52 of 84 (179406)
01-21-2005 4:52 PM
Reply to: Message 51 by Parasomnium
01-21-2005 3:31 AM


Re: Back to the "the horror"
Para writes:
Our subjective experience of existence may not coincide with the absolute truth about the world, but it is our experience, it is our truth. We may be allowed a glimpse of objective truth every now and then, which will then prompt us to reappraise our views, but the fact that we have these views in the first place cannot be denied. So, even if the whole of objective truth is unobtainable, we still have our own truth, and it is, although not absolute, very real.
I don't how one can have "one's own truth" and still call it truth.
But my point is that all of science converges on the idea that our private experiences are fantasies--illusions. The scientists aren't coming to these conclusions to be fashionably pessimistic; they are coming to these conclusions because they are true (presumably).
1. Consciousness is an illusion, many say (not you).
2. Mentality is really physicality, all say (including you).
3. On another level, all human motives and behavior are evolutionary motives and behavior(many say, not all).
4. On another level, all actions, thoughts, and feelings are at bottom electro-chemical reactions (you could take it to the subatomic level if you wanted to) which are automatonic events.
5. So we are automata, although it sure doesn't seem like it. But this fantasy we have in our brains has developed for evolutionary reasons.
In fact, ALL reasons for everything as regards life forms are, at bottom, evolutionary reasons.
Such a view gives rise to the feeling of "the horror" which is felt not just by me but by others as well. One of the reasons Dennett wrote the book was to address the problem of nihilism: "Others ground their highest concerns in entirely secular philosophies, views of the meaning of life that stave off despair . . ."
Note that: We have to "stave off despair." Why should we have to do that with our relatively comfortable lives (in a material sense)?
"From the outset, there have been those who thought they saw Darwin letting the worse possible cat out of the bag: nihilism" (18).
It's out.
Para writes:
If consciousness is an emergent property of something physical (the brain), then why not entertain the thought that a sense of meaning, or purpose, and of morality, could be emergent as well, and in that sense just as real?
I now understand why you were so insistent that consciousness is real. Otherwise this argument would collapse.
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-21-2005 16:56 AM
This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-21-2005 17:00 AM

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robinrohan
Inactive Member


Message 59 of 84 (180286)
01-24-2005 5:14 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by lfen
01-22-2005 12:36 PM


Re: Back to the "the horror"
Ifen writes:
The horror is one way of looking at things. It may even be one of great themes but your reaction to the "horror" demonstrates that there is something beyond it.
In that I am aware of the horror? Or in that I am preferring one part of the dream to another--preferring the delightful to the horrible?

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