Scientism

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  • Rats of Multa
    Rats of Multa Posts: 250
    Rats of Multa wrote:
    i read an article this morning that is relevant,......
    "Great art is not just reactionary; instead, it creates the world we eventually inhabit."

    http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/knight/cl-et-west12mar12,0,5943477.story?coll=cl-art-knight
    we don’t know just where our bones will rest,
    to dust i guess,
    forgotten and absorbed into the earth below,..
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Rats of Multa wrote:
    "Great art is not just reactionary; instead, it creates the world we eventually inhabit."

    http://www.calendarlive.com/galleriesandmuseums/knight/cl-et-west12mar12,0,5943477.story?coll=cl-art-knight

    Actually, great art is in the eye. I looked at those pictures, but they didn't do anything for me. And the mona lisa sucks.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    scw156 wrote:
    if God created everything, then who created God? He can't create himself.

    Religion runs into the same "problem" as science when it comes to the "where did (insert thing here) come from" when you go far enough back in time

    No see, you can only argue that against science. You aren't allowed to use logic with religion, because religion is alogical, just like everything else that doesn't make any sense.

    I'm going to start saying science is alogical, that makes it better some how.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • scw156
    scw156 Posts: 442
    Ahnimus wrote:
    No see, you can only argue that against science. You aren't allowed to use logic with religion, because religion is alogical, just like everything else that doesn't make any sense.

    I'm going to start saying science is alogical, that makes it better some how.

    as humans, we are too smart for our own good.
    The Sentence Below Is True
    The Sentence Above Is False
  • Rats of Multa
    Rats of Multa Posts: 250
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Actually, great art is in the eye. I looked at those pictures, but they didn't do anything for me. And the mona lisa sucks.
    yeah, the mona lisa is overblown, but thus serves as a great example of cultural-overindulgence.

    so, i half agree with you. i think art is less about imagery and instead about heart. maybe spirit is a better word here. but this is exactly the point, because there is no definitive answer, only the truth that today's art is tomorrow's history--the future exists always in the hands of the present.

    do you know of Marcel Duchamp?
    we don’t know just where our bones will rest,
    to dust i guess,
    forgotten and absorbed into the earth below,..
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Rats of Multa wrote:
    do you know of Marcel Duchamp?

    Uhh, did you he use to play hockey? I may have hit a few pucks around with dude.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    scw156 wrote:
    as humans, we are too smart for our own good.

    Yea, I think we will always come up with arguments that can't be refuted.

    Like metaphysics. It cannot be proven that some is metaphysical, because we exist physically and all of our instruments are physical.

    Shit, I mean, it took them decades to observe dark matter, it's suppose to be some kind of metaphysical thing, but it absorbs light, so it's not metaphysical. Still people will push the metaphysical agenda, so that they can have their fantasies.

    Ok, everyone who's not atheist hurry up and go extinct or something. I want the future now. :p
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    I gotta quote this guy, some very interesting points
    Og wrote:
    The soul concept (dualism) is the reductionism. It takes the massively complex structure of the human brain and reduces it to some silly little monad that can put on and off bodies like clothing. Here's reductionism.. 100 Billion neurons.. hundreds of trillions of connections amongst them.. Massive social influences to form the internal structure of the brain after development.. Oh yeah.. that's all not real. It's just a soul in a body.

    The term is like "pro life" it's not a philosophic term. Pro life is a charged stance that indicates that the other side is "anti-life" which it is certainly not.

    Soul is a metaphor. Love is a metaphor. When you say "that is love," or "I feel love," you are using a metaphor. It's describing a highly complex process in a biological entity. It does not cheapen the idea. It can not cheapen the idea. This realization can only clarify the term and give it more strength as a metaphor.

    If it hurts your idea of love to describe it for what it is, then I suggest that your idea of love is also linked to other ideas in your head such as your need for answers and simple structure to things (i.e. god/devil/people) to get through life. That would be the system that's being targeted when love is talked about as a chemical/electrical process, NOT the metaphor of love.

    I'm reading the "Brief Introduction" to consciousness book from oxford press which is part of a good series of primers on topics. The book is by Susan Blackmore and she keeps on stating that the problem that makes dualism keep holding is that she says that it doesn't "FEEL" like consciousness is neural activity.

    That statement alone is just silly.

    I say its proto-christian because it seems to continue to imply that the flesh is weak and sinful (in less obvious terms) by indicating that neural activity doesn't seem like consciousness. The fact is that it DOES seem like consciousness, it's just that people like susan blackmore seem to be inextricably linked to the idea of the soul as separate from flesh.

    Their statement of "consciousness doesn't feel like neural activity" is their basis for continuing to argue dualism and the statement itself comes from the fact that they're dualist to start with and have an idea of what neural activity "feels" like based on what they think about the nature of reality (i.e. flawed).

    Dualism is more dogmatic junk offshooting from religion. It's part of the same control structure that is entirely myth and metaphor.

    And as I mentioned before, it's easy enough to call dualism a reductionist view when you cast the mind/body as one in terms of the real understanding that modern neuroscience has about the structure of networks and the massive complexity of the system that is our brain.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Rats of Multa
    Rats of Multa Posts: 250
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Uhh, did you he use to play hockey? I may have hit a few pucks around with dude.

    nah, i dunno about hockey, i think he was like french or something. he was a fairly renowned chess player though, so maybe you two crossed bishops or something?
    we don’t know just where our bones will rest,
    to dust i guess,
    forgotten and absorbed into the earth below,..
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Rats of Multa wrote:
    nah, i dunno about hockey, i think he was like french or something. he was a fairly renowned chess player though, so maybe you two crossed bishops or something?

    Maybe if he was in the highschool chess club. I wasn't, but I took 'em on once in a while.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • catefrances
    catefrances Posts: 29,003
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Actually, great art is in the eye. I looked at those pictures, but they didn't do anything for me. And the mona lisa sucks.

    hallelujah!!! i am not a fan of the mona lisa either. i fail to see what everyone sees as so special about her. i'd rather gaze upon botticelli's judith's return from the enemy camp. so yeah beauty is in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to Art.
    hear my name
    take a good look
    this could be the day
    hold my hand
    lie beside me
    i just need to say
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    catefrances wrote:
    hallelujah!!! i am not a fan of the mona lisa either. i fail to see what everyone sees as so special about her. i'd rather gaze upon botticelli's judith's return from the enemy camp. so yeah beauty is in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to Art.

    And people. People are hard to see though.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • lucylespian
    lucylespian Posts: 2,403
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Yea, everyone wants to be unique. Like the goth girl who is not a goth, but all her friends are goth and she looks like them. Then I ask, what is not goth about her?

    I've met a number of people like this in different sub-cultures. They want uniqueness so they go Emo or Punk, or Goth or something. Then end up meeting a bunch of other people like them. Then they will say they are not like the others, they are unique.

    Fuck that, I'm like the other billions of people on the planet. I got a brain, skin, skeletal system and some muscle tissue. No piercings, tattoos or other bodily augmentations. Perhaps that makes me unique for just being happy with what I am.



    NO, I don't think that makes you unique, cos I'm like that too. I think we just belong to the last minority, by having the following charastics

    White , I'm assuming
    Employed
    No religious affiliation
    Hetero, again assuming
    No tribal tattos, piercings, drug habit,
    NO identifying illness
    Pretty well adjusted, ie no criminal record, kind to furry animals, don't run littel old ladies down or throw beer cans at passing cars
    Music is not a competetion.
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    lucylespian wrote:
    NO, I don't think that makes you unique, cos I'm like that too. I think we just belong to the last minority, by having the following charastics

    White , I'm assuming
    Employed
    No religious affiliation
    Hetero, again assuming
    No tribal tattos, piercings, drug habit,
    NO identifying illness
    Pretty well adjusted, ie no criminal record, kind to furry animals, don't run littel old ladies down or throw beer cans at passing cars

    I am white, employed, atheist, heterosexual, no tattoos, no piercings, no identifying illness, kind to furry animals, etc..

    I do have a habit of smoking tobacco and marijuana, I have no adult criminal record, though I had one as a minor.

    Not sure what all that means to you, but PM me if you are interested ;)
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • lucylespian
    lucylespian Posts: 2,403
    Ahnimus wrote:
    I am white, employed, atheist, heterosexual, no tattoos, no piercings, no identifying illness, kind to furry animals, etc..

    I do have a habit of smoking tobacco and marijuana, I have no adult criminal record, though I had one as a minor.

    Not sure what all that means to you, but PM me if you are interested ;)

    It's not so much what it means to me, as what it just means in general. We are a kind of sub-culture in ourselves, by dint of not belonging to any other sub-culture. I fogot to mention that I am a working drop-out too, in that I still participate in society by working, driving a car, shopping for food rather than growing my own, but I don't watch TV, read papers, go to any of the myriad social/sporting/nmass entertainlent events as a rule etc.
    ONe of the "ordinary guy" minority, the only one without any claim to particular rights.
    Music is not a competetion.
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    lucylespian wrote:
    It's not so much what it means to me, as what it just means in general. We are a kind of sub-culture in ourselves, by dint of not belonging to any other sub-culture. I fogot to mention that I am a working drop-out too, in that I still participate in society by working, driving a car, shopping for food rather than growing my own, but I don't watch TV, read papers, go to any of the myriad social/sporting/nmass entertainlent events as a rule etc.
    ONe of the "ordinary guy" minority, the only one without any claim to particular rights.

    Yup that's me and I feel like a minority.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • Rats of Multa
    Rats of Multa Posts: 250
    Ahnimus wrote:
    Like metaphysics. It cannot be proven that some is metaphysical, because we exist physically and all of our instruments are physical.

    Shit, I mean, it took them decades to observe dark matter, it's suppose to be some kind of metaphysical thing, but it absorbs light, so it's not metaphysical. Still people will push the metaphysical agenda, so that they can have their fantasies.

    i happen to think light is a metaphysical "thing"--this is what i was alluding to yesterday in fact. i quoted wikipedia, if you remember, because "by definition" there is no definitive quality of light by which physics may ubiquitously comprehend light. edit: except for velocity, but that is of course too abstract to satisfy the scientific method.

    the existence of light is fundamental to the existence of life, and with the lack of any deeper understanding of light one can easily draw the conclusion that everything in Nature, animate or not, is hence tinged with aspects of "metaphysical" being.

    i mean, youre right that something cannot be proven to be metaphysical, but what shouuld be said is that some things cannot be proven to be physical, therefore these elements of existence can only be considered by realms of thought beyond purely physical limitations. i'll cite the general existence of mathematics--is math physical? surely it can be, but there seems to be much, much more occuring beneath the formulas of "Nature's properties".
    Ahnimus wrote:

    Ok, everyone who's not atheist hurry up and go extinct or something. I want the future now. :p

    i'm mostly interested in "what use(s) might be best given the limits and extensions of knowledge?"; or, "how best might we use knowledge?",...
    we don’t know just where our bones will rest,
    to dust i guess,
    forgotten and absorbed into the earth below,..
  • Ahnimus
    Ahnimus Posts: 10,560
    Rats of Multa wrote:
    i happen to think light is a metaphysical "thing"--this is what i was alluding to yesterday in fact. i quoted wikipedia, if you remember, because "by definition" there is no definitive quality of light by which physics may ubiquitously comprehend light. edit: except for velocity, but that is of course too abstract to satisfy the scientific method.

    the existence of light is fundamental to the existence of life, and with the lack of any deeper understanding of light one can easily draw the conclusion that everything in Nature, animate or not, is hence tinged with aspects of "metaphysical" being.

    i mean, youre right that something cannot be proven to be metaphysical, but what shouuld be said is that some things cannot be proven to be physical, therefore these elements of existence can only be considered by realms of thought beyond purely physical limitations. i'll cite the general existence of mathematics--is math physical? surely it can be, but there seems to be much, much more occuring beneath the formulas of "Nature's properties".

    i'm mostly interested in "what use(s) might be best given the limits and extensions of knowledge?"; or, "how best might we use knowledge?",...

    Who is to say? Gravity so far is metaphysical. But in both light and gravity they are only known through their interaction with physical elements. Some speculate a particle "Gravitron" as the source of gravity. Who knows? But we do know that photons are particles of light. Photons may be massless, but they interact with physical reality.

    On supernatural, everything is natural, nothing can be supernatural. I see metaphysics as the same deal.
    I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
  • emily18
    emily18 Posts: 489
    farfromglorified wrote:
    While I don't disagree with your post above, I'd encourage you to consider the following question in order to understand the potentially false perception you have about the difference between science and religion:

    Can you prove that you exist?

    me and my dad were talking about that a little while ago actually...jokingly, but we were still talking about it.
    we were trying to figure out how we can prove we exist, or how we can prove that other people exist and aren't just a figment of our imagination. it's craziness i tell you.
  • lucylespian
    lucylespian Posts: 2,403
    When you "dark matter has been observed", are you referring to cold dark matter ?? I thought that it had been inferred, not observed, and tehat disute still rage about this, becasue by it's very nature it can't be seen or measured by any current method.
    Music is not a competetion.

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