|
Post by glamhoth on Jan 18, 2017 16:40:39 GMT -5
A priori truths are still arbitrary in my book because they're inherently relative and contextual. 1 means nothing except in relation to other numbers. Just like something such as honor means nothing except in relation to other forms of it. I don't think forms can exist without memory of other forms to compare it to, and so to speculate about an ideal form beyond the experienced ones is to miss the fact that every form is an ideal version of itself. If 1=2, then 1+1=4, 2+2=1. You might say that's just semantics, but that's the point, a priori truths are fully-embedded in our psychological vocabulary. Vocabulary is relatively new in the grand picture, as I'm sure you know. You might even say that it is a form of technology. The ideal form is not beyond experience, it's within it. That's pretty much Heidegger's criticism towards Plato. Heidegger overcomplicates things a bit, but his take on truth as "non-concealment" rather than "correctness of view" is quite easy to grasp. Truth, in it's original sense, doesn't lie in comparison or relation between forms, or between mold and imperfect forms. Truth simply reveals itself, the very Greek term, aletheia, means "unconcealedness". The cave allegory illustrates this earlier concept, as going from darkness towards the light and having the "truth" revealed in the process. The entire path requires an adjustment and transformation of vision, a turning of the soul to what is disclosed with each step ahead. What is revealed along the path and engraved in the soul, that's the truth in its primordial sense, that's the "right idea" I was talking about. Truth as correspondence between an idea and the thing it represents is just a derivative, weak mode. You're right when you say "vocabulary is relatively new in the grand picture". Truth as "unconcealedness" can't be properly expressed in words, it reveals itself through a more primordial language, the language of the symbols. The symbol was the first thing known to man, through the symbol he was first able to acknowledge and conceptualize reality. The symbols went to be complemented with narratives, myths, from where what we know as religion emerged. Unless you upload your mind into a computer and become some lame robot you won't be able to overcome this. No amount of secular-liberal-relativism will set you free. That's why you need art. Even though your "evolved mind" understands truth exclusively as correspondence to forms you know, something completely disconnected from art, your intuition still recognizes the truth in its original, strong mode, and that's why you can experience something "magical" through contemplation of art. Because art is symbolic language, at this point radically diluted and weakened, but still strikingly powerful nevertheless. In modern sense art becomes introverted escapism, a mere "metaphysical solace" as in Schopenhauer, but that's because the primordial meanings were all lost. Once you find the proper keys, however, you can open all the gates, unveil all the truths. I didn't say the Spartan came and went in no time. We have been around for at least 200,000 years, most likely some 600,000-500,000 years. The Spartan way of life was closer to that of those who lived before them, going back to the dawn of time. It preserved a more primordial ethos, common to all European "barbarians", who all had similar community-oriented honor systems. What I referred as "no time" was the couple of millennia since the "awakening to the ego", to material and hedonistic individualism, vs. the hundreds of thousands of years in which people pursued honor and the common good of the tribe instead. We can't know if destroying the planet is part of a greater circle we can't perceive. I can't relate to a future in which we become computers or whatever, and/or are ruled by an AI god. I want my children to play outside under the trees, and their children too, and so on, and discover the same magical things I discovered so far in this lifetime and much more, all I wasn't able to because we were born oppressed by technological artificialism, a piss-poor life alienated from nature, from the truth and everything that matters... It's out of love for life, not contempt. If nukes are the only way back to a real life, so be it. I have extreme contempt for the meaningless life the plebeian masses live though.
|
|
|
Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 19, 2017 10:29:21 GMT -5
I'm of the thinking that we already are "some lame robots." Whether you accept the likelihood of the simulation hypothesis or not, idealism leads to the acceptance that mind is at the center of things, which means even if we are the very first batch of robots, we still exist as a creation of ideas, and therefore a form of technology.
|
|
|
Post by jondexter on Jan 22, 2017 6:56:18 GMT -5
Why some lame robots? Does not sound too enticing. Robots could not pretend to be us - we are better than that surely?Why would we have to be the first robots anyways if we don't accept the simulation hypothesis? If we don't accept it we don't believe we are robots in the first place? Just remember it is humans pretending to be robots not robots pretending to be humans, we are real not synthetic - not synthetic not real. Also when you said WE ( as in us humans) "already are" you prelude to the fact that WE might have been human at some point or at least that you are convinced of once being human sometime ago.
|
|
|
Post by andrewwerdna on Jan 22, 2017 7:51:07 GMT -5
I was facetiously quoting glamhoth when I said "some lame robots." I don't think we're lame now, and I still don't think we would be if uploaded our minds into computers.
I should've been more clear about that "first batch" statement. I was making a point that reality itself is a sort of technology, and technology, even as we normally think of it, is reality, so there is no inherent distinction between synthetic and real. Of course this point only works assuming idealism is true.
The simulation hypothesis doesn't automatically assume we are in a simulation, but I think its possibility is worth re-framing one's conception of reality and human history. And I don't give weight to the possibility because I have some reason to believe there was a "primary world" from which our reality sprung, but rather the logic suggests that if such a simulation is possible, it is most likely that we are in one ourselves, because the vast majority of all lives lived will have been in one of these simulated states.
Elon Musk exposed this idea a bit recently. Here's a good video on it:
|
|
|
Post by jondexter on Jan 23, 2017 6:34:09 GMT -5
I think it all comes down to 'looking after OURSELVES' ( as god-like beings) and maybe because we are indeed so selfless we seem to constantly overlook this basic premise - hence I don't think we are the artificial product of greater beings. Also I cannot conceive of us being synthetic because to me this does not sound A-grade enough so to speak - I don't mean to sound egotistical I am just being hypothetic , 'we bleed' -I believe we are 'the real deal'. We are IN FACT real - 'unreal' in terms of being better than real- simply because WE ARE- and that we understand deep down that the best way to remind ourselves of this fact, is through each of us unerringly setting up (in our OWN magnificent way) individual destinies which 'result' in coming about as a complete surprise to each and every one of us in a kind of happy awakening kind of way. Akin to when Frodo wakes up in The Lord of the Rings. But I can see how synchronised events could play a part in a robots 'outlook' -although I don't think machines could ever actually conceive of anything - because they were/are all just programmed by humans.
|
|