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[Gizmonicgamer]

Then what is its relevance, exactly? Or was I simply being over-argumentative and trying to see dissidence (is this even the right word, i am exhausted right now and i have a feeling there is a word that sounds like that that should be there but i'm not 100% sure it's that one) where there wasn't much?

The entire point is that, assuming the entire consciousness resides in the brain, picking out an event as correlated with a chemical reaction in the brain is meaningless.

when you address it from that context, yes; but thats not the point. generally if the idea is going to be brought up, its going to be done in instances where others purport that isn't the case. where that evidence actually has meaning to begin with. its a justification of that particular viewpoint as a whole, so of course its meaningless purely within the confines of that.

the article still strikes me as being kind of pointless, potentially even counter-productive in its apparent glorification of subjective experience. subjective experience is evidently not always an accurate indicator of objective reality, so yes, to some degree finding a definable biological source or correlation should imply a form of reality to it. in fact, these things are often used as the foundation of the viewpoint that the entire consciousness exists in the brain.

so, yes, within the context defined by that evidence, that evidence doesn't really prove much; its "meaningless". but not everybody has that viewpoint, not everybody sees it that way, and not everybody is aware of that; this is why the arguments are still being used, or still being touted in some fashion. because it does provide a sense of reality to the situation when we know that it isn't just us, that it's not just an illusion or a hallucination or our subjectivity playing tricks on us.


ugh i'm rambling a lot

[dongle]

listen to black metal; kill yrself. 0 population. meaning of life questions become null, solved. \m/
 

[Chris Whitman]

the article still strikes me as being kind of pointless, potentially even counter-productive in its apparent glorification of subjective experience. subjective experience is evidently not always an accurate indicator of objective reality, so yes, to some degree finding a definable biological source or correlation should imply a form of reality to it.

Just give it some thought. It really isn't "glorifying subjective experience."

In fact, the only way neuro-realism works is via dualism. Finding a neurological correlate of a reported sensation is only relevant when there's the possibility that you wouldn't find one, in which case you're admitting the possibility that you've got some kind of feeling or sensation that isn't predicated on brain activity.

In all probability, everything relating to your mind happens in the brain. Now, either we know something about the associated neurological activity for something, or we don't. But whether or not we know much about the neurology doesn't change how real the phenomenon is, nor does it change whether or not it's genetically or socially predicated, or whether it's caused by predisposition or by lifestyle.

Ultimately it's sort of a science fetishism. We can say, "I feel sad," and whatever, but if we say, "the sadness centre of the brain is active," now it's WAY MORE SCIENCEY. And depending on what weird cult you subscribe to, either that makes it more real, because only sciencey-sounding things are real, or it makes it more fake, because emotions are only real when you can pretend they're magic. In reality nothing has changed.

[increpare]

And all this, "love and altruism are selfish, blah blah blah" stuff is a bunch of Ayn Rand bullshit. If you define selfishness so broadly that it even encompasses doing things which are harmful to oneself as long as they are in some way fulfilling, then it becomes a meaningless concept, and to then turn around and act like it still has the significance it did when solely applied to conventionally selfish acts is just equivocation.

The interesting thing for me is that I feel utterly swamped in that culture - even within the loving indie community I'm still feeling so many many mercenary aspects (or I'm blinded to the others) - it's like I've lost touch with this whole side of human existence, one with which I used to be familiar. I met someone who fit that Randian bill a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't actively disagree with them.  I used to want to be a nice person, and I look up enormously to really nice people, but I just don't feel like I have the capacity for it any more, and I look back on a lot of my old behaviours as facilely self-serving.  I hope I won't turn into a horrible person, but I definitely feel like I'm fighting a battle on that front

[Gizmonicgamer]

In fact, the only way neuro-realism works is via dualism. Finding a neurological correlate of a reported sensation is only relevant when there's the possibility that you wouldn't find one, in which case you're admitting the possibility that you've got some kind of feeling or sensation that isn't predicated on brain activity.

It's... a matter of understanding. It doesn't matter if something is obvious, or if something is "most likely" that way; it is science's job to pursue the matter and comprehend it. It is still a process of learning, and the more we learn about something the better we are able to understand it; it's not so much discovering that it's in the brain, rather, discovering how it operates or where it operates within that defined guideline. Or, if the evidence indicates it, possibly even shattering that guideline and building a new one, as science is apt to do.

those articles are being published by the mass media: meaning, they're targeting pretty much everyone. most people don't have a background in science and most people don't know that much about "complicated" matters like this. guiding these articles towards people unfamiliar with the subject, or who might be under the impression that we don't know any of this, or who are of the mistaken belief that emotions are purely magic, is not a bad thing and it isn't at all pointless.

further:

Finding a neurological correlate of a reported sensation is only relevant when there's the possibility that you wouldn't find one

there is always the possibility that you'll find something you didn't expect. that's the point of scientific inquiry. even the "obvious", or what we assume is correct has to be prodded for information and evidence.

not to mention the potential practical implications of discovering and understanding how our emotions and feelings operate.


and, why should the acknowledgement that anything we "know" now could potentially be wrong have anything to do with dualism, when that assessment does not reach beyond that? it gives no alternatives, it defines no other side, it is simply a statement that what we know or assume may not be true or accurate.

[Chris Whitman]

Gizmonic: yes, I understand. Neuroscience is great. I know what science does, thanks. None of this really relates to anything I said.

The interesting thing for me is that I feel utterly swamped in that culture - even within the loving indie community I'm still feeling so many many mercenary aspects (or I'm blinded to the others) - it's like I've lost touch with this whole side of human existence, one with which I used to be familiar. I met someone who fit that Randian bill a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't actively disagree with them.  I used to want to be a nice person, and I look up enormously to really nice people, but I just don't feel like I have the capacity for it any more, and I look back on a lot of my old behaviours as facilely self-serving.  I hope I won't turn into a horrible person, but I definitely feel like I'm fighting a battle on that front

Well, you can definitely idealize people as well, right? And that's certainly no good. There's no point in pretending everything is always sunshine and rainbows, but, well, human behavior runs a pretty wide spectrum. I'm always skeptical of any philosophy that purports to claim some small part of human behavior as being "natural behavior," or to put some universal value on all behavior.

For example, when someone says all human behavior is inherently selfish, someone else always says, "Well, how about the mother who sacrifices her life for her children?" Then the response winds up being something along the lines of the biological justification:

- "It's selfish because she's just trying to pass on her genes." But that's a how, not a why. Evolution was just the mechanism for how we got to be beings for whom something like sacrifice is relevant. It isn't some "secret reason;" its existence doesn't change the moral value of an action unless you believe morality only exists if we were created by a wizard, which has always struck me as a really arbitrary statement.

or the Ayn Rand version:

- "It's selfish because she feels fulfillment from meeting the expectations of a role like the sacrificial mother." And sure, but in that case, what constitutes real altruism? It would have to be an action someone does which hurts them, which they don't feel is relevant or meaningful in any way, and which helps someone else. That's starting to get pretty silly. So maybe there's no altruism. Only you really just defined it away. Obviously most people still believe in it; it still populates our literature and our social values and our history. And if you're going to say people's subjective interpretation of their own values is wrong, by what standard are you making that comparison?


I figure the deep cynicism of Ayn Rand's philosophy is mostly the result of trying to fit something as deeply conflicted as human experience into some imagined objective moral standard. How did this person I trust suddenly turn on me? How is it people we believe are good can do horrible things? Well, they must have just been entirely self-serving the entire time. The need to see things in absolutes like that is just dangerous. The truth seems to be that most of us are muddling through our individual decisions as best we can. We also have a tremendous capacity to believe mutually contradictory things or behave in a way which is not self-consistent.

People can have great goals and fail to meet them; people can also be of two minds on an issue; some people, legitimately, say one thing and do another because they're just liars. It's complicated, but simplifying it down by chopping out entire realms of human expression makes your outlook less realistic, not more realistic. It's tempting, and it's also self-reinforcing, because when you adopt that kind of cynical outlook, you're validated by anything negative anyone around you does. And that kind of validation makes it way easier to deal with something hurtful.

But ultimately I think the dogmatic insistence that all human behaviour is one particular thing both retards personal development and is just blatantly unrealistic. Life is, unfortunately, complicated and difficult, and people are jerks sometimes. But I think if you value genuine insight, as an author of anything (games included here!) really has to, you have to take a view that encompasses all this stuff, including both altruism and selfishness, rather than one that just makes life simpler and easier to explain and deal with.

[Gizmonicgamer]

None of this really relates to anything I said.

uh, considering that they are direct responses to what you said, then they kind of do.

[Nektonico]

In order to be moral one must see the world in absolutes sometimes.

If human beings had but a shred of true selflesness we wouldnt be living in the perverse system we do. Im sorry but i just cant see human beings in the relativistic way you do Whitman. Its precisely inconsistency and moral ambiguity that makes mankind malevolent. Saying human behaviour encompasses a wide spectrum to just brush off the fact that our underlying emotional and cognitive shared framework might not be as pure and as clear cut as most people hipocritically seem to assume is kind of a flawed avenue of thought.

But making an aside, how did you go from looking for the purpose of life in a forum about indie games to discussing neuroscience and mind-matter duality? Do we just give up on finding purpose to existence from a human standpoint in general and instead focus on just finding individual meaning through emotions? Is that why you derailed into a discussion about the physical substrate of emotions and the cognitive (and moral) dissonance related to some of them (case in point: love)?

What if you forfeit objective reason and just go searching for individual meaning only to come to the realization that most of your so called higher purpose meaningful thoughts, actions, and feelings turn out to be, in truth, muddled with petty double meanings stemming from the fact that you are no more than an animal driven by basic urges at the end of the day.

The thing isnt whether a perfect selfless human being exists, or whether there is some higher value absolute purpose to being, but that we have the intellectual stamina to imagine such things, and perhaps some day make them a reality / find them. Wouldnt that be desirable?


...And so the quest for meaning continues...

[jotapeh]

Reading the past few pages of this thread I am fairly sure that certain people are convinced the purpose of living is to be correct on the internet.

[Conker]

Id listen to your post but your display picture...   

[Inanimate]

Reading the past few pages of this thread I am fairly sure that certain people are convinced the purpose of living is to be correct on the internet.

Tangents; the most beautiful thing in the entire world. Well, tangents and puns. Portmanteaus, too. Did you know that the term "portmanteau" came from a type of luggage? Lewis Carroll used it in Alice in Wonderland as a new term. Lots of words have cool pasts, like "hearse", which comes from a kind of farming tool...

...and that's how you can make two whole tennis balls by cutting up one.

[Riley Adams]

...and that's how you can make two whole tennis balls by cutting up one.

My head hurts.

[Chris Whitman]

...and that's how you can make two whole tennis balls by cutting up one.

Can your pocketknife cut out non-measurable sets?

[theweirdn8]

the purpose of living is to do the Will the Father

[Chris Whitman]

I was trying to think of a good (and brief) answer to this:

In order to be moral one must see the world in absolutes sometimes.

If human beings had but a shred of true selflesness we wouldnt be living in the perverse system we do. Im sorry but i just cant see human beings in the relativistic way you do Whitman. Its precisely inconsistency and moral ambiguity that makes mankind malevolent.

Brushing aside the fact that most of history's greatest horrors have come from people in a position of moral certainty, I really wasn't trying to give a guideline on how to behave like an awesome person.

I was really addressing how I deal with these negative absolutist positions, with the added point that as an artist you have to be a reporter of humanity. I mean, it's possible that you're right in that there may be a particular idealized view of "the human condition" (if such a thing can be said to exist) that can make you a more ethical person, but certainly an artist who creates things from an idealized perspective is just a propagandist.

If you want to be an auteur developer who actually says something, then you have to do so with unflinching honesty, and whether or not looking at people in an absolutist way makes you nicer, it certainly doesn't make you more accurate, and that can only harm the relevancy of what you're doing. And I think that applies equally to both the position of "all humans are selfish monsters pretending to be good" and the position of "all humans are wonderful, transcendent beings just held back by their earthly desires." Either of those might work for you in one way or another in your personal life, but they just don't really describe people. And you can't show people who they are if you don't even know who they are.