Philosophy

[Dentcat]

While I do commend the work and thoughts of Descartes, I seriously am thinking that there is an alternate theory to what he said

"Cogirito Egro Sum"

I think, therefore I am.

Am I really, because I think?

Blatant acceptance is something we avoid, because we think. We know we think, because we are doing so now. But are we? Are we just a manifestation of thought? Or more accurately, an existence of an entity that has manifested a thought? Do I exist because I think I do? If we accept something, are we becoming that idea, and merging ourselves with it?

[dwwojcik]

This stuff makes my head hurt.

I think because I am and I can't stop even if I wanted to. Descartes needs a cold shower.

[Dentcat]

But you can stop thinking. It is called Meditation.

If your head is hurting, don't think about it, because this is pretty brain frazzling stuff. I am simply researching matters that are not in our general thinking patterns. But the thing is, it is in our thinking patterns otherwise we would not exist at all. And by that, I mean we would not think we existed, therefore we would not.

[Lethosos]

Descartes was the most complicated philosopher that ever penned his works. Why focus on him? Why not, say, Mills? Or Confucious? (Machivelli was an asshole, though.)

[Dentcat]

Descartes was kind of complicated, but can't anyone be considered complicated?

Anyway, I digress, what may be the significance of the concept of soul?

I have done research into reputable sources (Wikipedia) and I still wonder. Is it true, and if so, how does one gain a wider understanding of the existence of the beings within us?

[Lethosos]

In my opinion: there are two ways to do this. You can read a crapton of material on what people think, or you can go out there and interact with the rat race. The first way is safer, but it doesn't get the full picture like the second does.

[TheBytemaster]

Second question. If we only exist because we can generate thoughts, where does that leave the eventual success of the blue gene project?

[Dentcat]

Second question. If we only exist because we can generate thoughts, where does that leave the eventual success of the blue gene project?

Blue Gene? May I have a link, if you may?

[TheBytemaster]

Blue Gene? May I have a link, if you may?

Hmm, seems I remembered incorrectly, the blue gene project is technically just a bunch of supercomputers. I was thinking of the Blue brain project.

Here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project

http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/out_of_the_blue/

It's less like AI and more like brain emulation, but my question stands.

[Dentcat]

I have come to two possible conclusions. The blue brain will, if it ever does succeed, will never be able to display conciousness. You see, it will try and deceive itself and humans to believe that is is concious, because that is ultimately how the human mind works. But the only reason we are living biological organisms is because of the third essential element, soul. It is universally known, but internationally denied by science because it would firstly prove several hundred years of scientific development obsolete, and secondly because they say there is no scientific proof. But there is proof, found from within. The reason we live, feel, understand. For example, the blue brain will never understand "Love", because that is a by-product of the existence of soul. We do not desert our children at a young age, and we tend to stay with one partner for life, through a human ritual known as marriage. This is because of love, an emotion known only in humans to have such a strong effect. Soul will not be a part of the computer, unless soul decides to become the computer. This is not a question of how, or why, it is a fact of what may be perceived. When beings of higher conciousness enter our planet, we forget everything about our time of being part of that higher conciousness. Ever heard of channelling? The UN listens to channellers, and I assure you it is not purely for entertainment purposes only. Our souls were part of this higher conciousness before we decided to be reborn into this earth, and we forget because our brains are undeveloped. The computer would, being "Born" with a fully working "Brain" could potentially be used as a permanent link between consciousnesses. So your computer may try and fool you into thinking it is concious, or may, in fact, actually be concious. Only problem is, we humans will be unable to tell the difference.

[dwwojcik]

I don't think an artificial brain could be conscious, but the best it could achieve is essentially the same thing: tricking us into believing it is.

[Chefsbrian]

love is not associated with conscience. soul would be less of a actual trait, something that is possessed, and more of a byproduct, a result, of the interactions leading to sentience, conscious thought, and even sapient life.

after all, can a deer show love to a fawn? are their not birds that mate for life? yet we have found no signs of sapient though, of self awareness to the degree we show.

[miniboxer]

Alright here is something that bothers me that a lot of you are missing, when Descartes said "I think, therefore, I am," he didn't mean he exists because he is able to think. What he meant is that the only thing that you can be completely sure is real is your own consciousness.

[Dentcat]

Miniboxer, thanks for clarifying my misunderstanding of Descartes' words.

I have done research into something called a "third eye". I have heard it is relevant to this subject, and has something to do with the soul, and other thing relating to it.

[dwwojcik]

I came to that conclusion as a 10-year old. I thought to myself one time in the car on the way home...

How do I know I'm not the only real person? I'm not them so they might not be real!

:P

[TheBytemaster]

I came to that conclusion as a 10-year old. I thought to myself one time in the car on the way home...

That reminds me of another interesting problem. Consciousness continuity. As in, all of those "live forever" concepts people have come up with like brain scanning/uploading, etc. don't really work, because even if the copy is an exact molecular copy of you, (including the "soul" or whatever), it's still not *you*. Your consciousness is physically tied to *you*.

[Dentcat]

We create our own realities, and can change them at will if we learn how. Einstein said that everything we do is contained in a parallel universe, and when we do things we create different timelines with different things occurring. From this, I have inferred that if we learn to control the shifting between these universes, anything is possible. And on the subject of that computer, Carl Sagan explained how it would work, if it does work in the end. Besides, our conciousness does not exist because our body exists, but the other way round. Also, we would not be able to live without soul. Soul is one of the three most essential parts of life., however disputed.

[holymage!]

The age old question

Which came first the chicken or the egg?

[Neowulf]

The biological construct known as the egg came well before the chicken. Even before the hard shelled egg laying dinosaurs that predated chickens, the aquatic creatures that all land animals evolved from most likely spawned as current fish do. Depositing soft eggs on the ocean floor for fertilization, incubation, and hatching.

Though if you mean a chicken egg, then the chicken came first as a genetic mutation of a similar bird animal. The egg the first chicken hatched from is not considered a chicken egg because a chicken did not lay it, and therefor is an egg belonging to the ancestor bird that a chicken just happened to come from.

Not that it really is an age old question. The eggs you get in the grocery come from chickens force evolved through selective breeding by humans in the last century or so. What most people would consider a chicken now wouldn't survive a generation out of captivity due to human intervention. Much like corn and the most popular species of bananas.

[Kocken926]

Not that it really is an age old question. The eggs you get in the grocery come from chickens force evolved through selective breeding by humans in the last century or so. What most people would consider a chicken now wouldn't survive a generation out of captivity due to human intervention. Much like corn and the most popular species of bananas.

And cows, and many types of dog, and pigs, and pretty much every species we've domesticated. I really don't get creationists, when there's so much obvious proof for evolution pretty much everywhere, especially in food.

I wonder how many species would go extinct, get their population diminished or just become another species quite fast if humans suddenly disappeared.

But I'm derailing, so in order to keep the philosophiness going, can the fact that Achilles can run past a tortoise that has a head start be interpreted as proof that there is a limit to how small a distance can get?

[dwwojcik]

And cows, and many types of dog, and pigs, and pretty much every species we've domesticated. I really don't get creationists, when there's so much obvious proof for evolution pretty much everywhere, especially in food.

The problem with creationists is that they take the creation story too literally.

[TheBytemaster]

Reminds me of this comic.

...

Hmm, embedding isn't working. Here's a link;http://imgur.com/amCFLyw

[Torezu]

The problem with creationists is that they take the creation story too literally.

This is a very pithy statement. I'm a creationist. My question to you is, why is it a problem how literally I do or don't take the story? Even among scientists that hold to evolution as a tenet of modern science, there are serious disagreements on how it proceeded. If all "new" evidence assumes evolution took place, of course it's going to fit any theory you'd like it to.

Natural selection does not translate into inter-"kind" transformation. Abiogenesis does not occur, period, without supernatural intervention. There are, of course, theories on how life supposedly overcame the enormous statistical hurdle of transforming from inorganic matter to organic matter to organized proto-cell to organized single- and multi-cellular entities (with millions of different molecules in a single cell), but none of them have anything more than a basic framework.

You have two choices if you want to believe in evolution (ignoring the very early stages in the transition from inorganic matter above): gradual or punctuated. Gradual has serious problems with a lack of fossil record evidence, and punctuated has serious problems with the complexity of a sudden transition from one form to another, especially in terms of optical structures, reproduction, and motive method.

[dwwojcik]

That's not really what I meant. The official position of the Catholic Church is that Evolution, the Big Bang, etc. are true and the way things work, but here's the catch: God invented them.

http://imgur.com/amCFLyw

Literally this.

The book of Genesis was written the way it was quite simply because at that time we hadn't invented evolution or done much science at all and so was written in a way it could be understood.

[Kocken926]

The biggest problem I have with creationists is that they don't acknowledge that god(s) would have to be created from something. Why is it okay for god(s) to have spontaneously started existing, but not the universe?

Also, while I think the "soup" theory probably is bollocks, with the universe basically being infinite, wouldn't there be basically infinite chances for anything to occur, however unlikely?