8-bit philosophy

[Mudhammam]

I'm sure you'll appreciate this channel on Youtube if you haven't already seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDaSgyi3xE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDNCv-ob87E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tf6BS9B2pY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y68mGbvZZZg

[bennyboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDaSgyi3xE

Awwww I was feeling special with my name in the title. I guess rules are rules though. Anyway, you were right-- I like these videos very much.

re: #1 video
This pretty much sums up my position as an agnostic: whatever I can be aware of, I can never have the means of knowing if/what lies behind it.

The same goes for cosmogony. We "know" that atoms, and now QM particles underlie our experiences. But what underlies them? More often than not, I hear "You think something underlies QM particles? Where's the evidence?" But what can I say other than that in my experience everything has something else underlying it?

[Mudhammam]

But what can I say other than that in my experience everything has something else underlying it?

Do you agree with the principle of sufficient reason?

[mralstoner]

"Man shouldn't be the servant of knowledge. Knowledge should be the servant of man"
-- Nietzsche

That's one of the few times I've heard Nietzsche say something succinct and meaningful.

Although monkeys, and presumably humans, will solve puzzles even if they don't get a grape reward...

[bennyboy]

But what can I say other than that in my experience everything has something else underlying it?

Do you agree with the principle of sufficient reason?

I think that's a dangerous path to go down, because we're extending a pragmatic face-to-fact assumption (this thing must have a cause) to either an infinite regress, or a cheat: God or a philosophical quantity "X" that performs the paradox-resolving function of God. If we take paradox as essentially binary ("This sentence is false.") then I'd say the truth of PSR will just get sucked into that yin-yang vortex of bullshit: it's right, it's wrong, it's both right and wrong. . . but somehow really neither right nor wrong.

Or, in short, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!"

But that doesn't stop me from looking at QM particles and saying. . . yeah, there's probably something underlying them.

[Mudhammam]

I think that's a dangerous path to go down. You are likely to end up, if not at God, with a philosophical quantity which fulfills the paradox-resolving functions of God. You have to tie a little multi-modal knot, right? As in: The universe was created by God, since only God can be a sufficient reason for creation. But the sufficient reason for God is not another creator, because that would imply an infinite regress. So you have to say God is caused by some divine principle or other mysterious quantity X.

I think in the end, insanity-- or at least an unwillingness to attempt a rational engagement with the PSR-- is the most rational response to infinite regress. We cannot imagine a universe that exists eternally, because if causeless, then we say, "Yeah, but WHY the fuck is it here rather than not?" Or if created, we say, "Where does the infinite regress end? Fucking turtles forever. . . really!?" While people sometimes confidently assert a position, or even mock others who don't "get" it, I'd argue those people lack sufficient imagination to properly wallow in the thorough fucked-up-ed-ness of reality.

That's my answer: agnosticism as a declared position, and "FUUUUUCK!" as a description of the problem as I experience it mentally. PSR kind of just gets thrown into the mix.

Allow me to indulge in some speculative philosophy.

Borrowing from Schopenhauer, whom I find much agreeable in his philosophizing thus far, perhaps the "will," or to use a term of Dostoevsky's, something more appropriately conceived as an "centripetal force," and Kant's Dinge-an-sich, only exists through the "representations" i.e. the material world as subject-object, knower-known, through individuals, ourselves intuitively and intimately understanding this will and coming to recognize it as the volition to act over and against natural stimuli or impulse; yet the representations are contingent on the will as well, as without das Dinge-an-sich there is no space, no time, and hence, no matter. The principle of sufficient reason could only be satisfied by circularity or a sort of reciprocal cause-effect, a struggle that exists in the force between representation and annihilation, Yin and Yang, God and Satan, Good and Evil, Natural Selection, etc. In other words, the objects disappear when the subject dies, for the will only knows itself in each individual (unity) on a spectrum that includes a variety of characters and animal intellects (plurality), and it is through a subject that the will knows, or realizes itself, as representation. The biggest challenge to this, which forces myself to even stop seriously entertaining such a notion, is that it would seem to demand that all events appearing in the collective past, before any knower existed, would only be virtually true, as only in the abstract. And then we're at Plato's Ideas. While I can't disprove it, it feels intuitively wrong, and one or two steps away from solipsism.

So, yeah, FUCK.

[Mystic]

I think that's a dangerous path to go down. You are likely to end up, if not at God, with a philosophical quantity which fulfills the paradox-resolving functions of God. You have to tie a little multi-modal knot, right? As in: The universe was created by God, since only God can be a sufficient reason for creation. But the sufficient reason for God is not another creator, because that would imply an infinite regress. So you have to say God is caused by some divine principle or other mysterious quantity X.

I think in the end, insanity-- or at least an unwillingness to attempt a rational engagement with the PSR-- is the most rational response to infinite regress. We cannot imagine a universe that exists eternally, because if causeless, then we say, "Yeah, but WHY the fuck is it here rather than not?" Or if created, we say, "Where does the infinite regress end? Fucking turtles forever. . . really!?" While people sometimes confidently assert a position, or even mock others who don't "get" it, I'd argue those people lack sufficient imagination to properly wallow in the thorough fucked-up-ed-ness of reality.

That's my answer: agnosticism as a declared position, and "FUUUUUCK!" as a description of the problem as I experience it mentally. PSR kind of just gets thrown into the mix.

Allow me to indulge in some speculative philosophy.

Borrowing from Schopenhauer, whom I find much agreeable in his philosophizing thus far, perhaps the "will," or to use a term of Dostoevsky's, something more appropriately conceived as an "centripetal force," and Kant's Dinge-an-sich, only exists through the "representations" i.e. the material world as subject-object, knower-known, through individuals, ourselves intuitively and intimately understanding this will and coming to recognize it as the volition to act over and against natural stimuli or impulse; yet the representations are contingent on the will as well, as without das Dinge-an-sich there is no space, no time, and hence, no matter. The principle of sufficient reason could only be satisfied by circularity or a sort of reciprocal cause-effect, a struggle that exists in the force between representation and annihilation, Yin and Yang, God and Satan, Good and Evil, Natural Selection, etc. In other words, the objects disappear when the subject dies, for the will only knows itself in each individual (unity) on a spectrum that includes a variety of characters and animal intellects (plurality), and it is through a subject that the will knows, or realizes itself, as representation. The biggest challenge to this, which forces myself to even stop seriously entertaining such a notion, is that it would seem to demand that all events appearing in the collective past, before any knower existed, would only be virtually true, as only in the abstract. And then we're at Plato's Ideas. While I can't disprove it, it feels intuitively wrong, and one or two steps away from solipsism.

So, yeah, FUCK.

What if there were spirits that witnessed the universe expanding and life coming to form? Some sort of demi-gods.

[bennyboy]

The principle of sufficient reason could only be satisfied by circularity or a sort of reciprocal cause-effect, a struggle that exists in the force between representation and annihilation, Yin and Yang, God and Satan, Good and Evil, Natural Selection, etc.

Okay, let me speculate some as well.

I'd call Yin and Yang a binary paradox, something like a couple Escherian hands drawing each other. I'd even say that it's possible this binary paradox is the fundamental building block of existence-- it may itself be the mysterious philosophical quantity "X" that solves the issue of paradox (infinite regress or self-causality). I guess that's what you're saying, except that I'd apply the word "paradox" to it.

You could even get silly with cross-talk and say that this binary paradox is itself the dinge-an-sich (since Schopenhauer points out that this must represent a unity), and that will is the expression of the thing-in-itself that manifests an apparent subject-object duality in a desire to resolve itself. So the ascetic subjection of the will would involve the collapse of duality, with a resulting direct experience of the dinge-an-sich. Sounds Hindu or Buddhist, methinks.

As an aside, I'm attracted the physical correlates of Schopenhauer's view on the dinge-an-sich, i.e. that since it's outside time and space, it cannot be differentiated, and must therefore be singular. Makes me think of the Big Bang and black hole singularities. Would this possibly mean that all black holes are really the same one, and that the Big Bang singularity represents a manifestation of will?

[Mudhammam]

Stated beautifully.

---

By the way, I dug the Escher reference. Aptly chosen.

[Cyberman]

What if there were spirits that witnessed the universe expanding and life coming to form? Some sort of demi-gods.

What if spiritual and religious claims didn't have to rely on what-ifs so much?