The Philosophy Thread

[Louanne Learning]

If our lives are to mean anything, then like everything else, they must have an end, as depressing as that may sound. I'd rather not live forever, not even as a ghost or spirit.

What's your view?

This would depend on what form the afterlife would take, and indeed what form a "spirit" would take in that afterlife. If it is characterized by the parameters of human existence - the same kind of thoughts, sensibilities, judgements - then indeed it would be hell. But, what if instead is it characterized by a state of pure bliss? As of now, we only understand this plane of existence, but as I like to say, it does not follow that that means that is all there is.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Coming across the Hemingway quote below reminded me of something I once read: “We are all hypocrites.”

One theory used to explain behavioral inconsistencies is “modularity” – that our brains consist of “modules” that don’t always work together seamlessly.

Modularity suggests that:

there is no “I.” Instead, each of us is a contentious “we”—a collection of discrete but interacting systems whose constant conflicts shape our interactions with one another and our experience of the world.

And then that reminds me of Walt Whitman’s famous quote from the poem Song of Myself:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I’m trying to decide if it is better to embrace all our sides, or aim for consistency.

 

[GrahamLewis]

C

I’m trying to decide if it is better to embrace all our sides, or aim for consistency.

I suggest our only option is to do both at the same time. To refuse to embrace all our sides is to seek consistency over integrity.

 

[GrahamLewis]

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts about what you think this means.

View attachment 456

Too bad it doesn't source the quotation, but I bet it's from On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. I highly recommend it as an intro to Watts' writing.

 

[Louanne Learning]

To refuse to embrace all our sides

I think this might be connected to forgiving yourself if you don't quite meet up with the standards you set for yourself.

seek consistency over integrity.

How does adhering to your principles fit in with this? Is it not good to be consistent in your principles? i.e. a person of principle

 

[Louanne Learning]

Talking about the imperfections of the human mind...

I just now finished reading an article from Nautilus entitled Flat Earthers on a Cruise - a fascinating read.

It ends with this sentence (referencing Primo Levi):

Distrust all the prophets that manipulate the imperfections of the human mind.

 

[GrahamLewis]

I think this might be connected to forgiving yourself if you don't quite meet up with the standards you set for yourself.



How does adhering to your principles fit in with this? Is it not good to be consistent in your principles? i.e. a person of principle

Depends how you define "a person of principle." I lean toward it being someone who acts honestly and with compassion, and that would include being willing to be as honest as possible with oneself, which includes being willing to adapt to new situations and new understanding of oneself and the world. Being willing to change and let go if that seems appropriate. Principles need to change as things and people change.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Depends how you define "a person of principle." I lean toward it being someone who acts honestly and with compassion, and that would include being willing to be as honest as possible with oneself, which includes being willing to adapt to new situations and new understanding of oneself and the world. Being willing to change and let go if that seems appropriate. Principles need to change as things and people change.

Interesting, counting "adaptability" as a principle. Like a guiding principle.

Adaptability is of course central to the whole story of evolution, and survival as a species.

I guess then I would include flexibility in that - and this all reminds me of a quote I recently posted to the "quote thread" -


“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”

― John Maynard Keynes

 

[Louanne Learning]

Is laughter too frivolous to merit philosophical inquiry?
Some major thinkers who offered (rather humourless) reflections about laughter include:

…Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes, who believed that we laugh because we feel superior; Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer who argued that comedy stems from a sense of incongruity; and Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud who suggested that comedians provide a form of much-needed relief (from, respectively, ‘nervous energy’ and repressed emotions).

French philosopher Henri Bergson was unconvinced. He developed a theory of laughter, and expounded upon it in his book Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (originally published 1900) - which you can read online for free at the link.

Chapter One begins with the questions Bergson investigates:

What does laughter mean? What is the basal element in the laughable? What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque and a scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will yield us invariably the same essence from which so many different products borrow either their obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume?

In an Aeon article, the three general observations of Bergson are summarized:

We laugh at human attitude, expression, and caprice:

“The comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human.”

Emotions like pity, melancholy, rage, fear, etc. get in the way of laughter:

“Laughter has no greater foe than emotion.”

Laughter is adaptive; it furthers social bonding. In the words of Bergson:

“Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo.”

Why do we laugh? What do we laugh at? What can’t we laugh at? Is laughter necessary for a good mental state?

What is your experience with laughter?

 

[Louanne Learning]

Why do we laugh?

We can say we laugh because it feels good. When I was caregiver to my husband who was disabled by MS, laughter was really important to us. We laughed every single day. It was kind of a repudiation of the very serious thing we were going through. Take that, MS. You’re not going to take our good time away from us.

The ability to laugh kind of puts things in perspective. Sure, we had our down moments. But laughter lifted us out of them. Laughter sometimes is an act of rebellion.

But, short of all that, laughter means you’re willing to see the absurdity in this existence.

 

[Louanne Learning]

 

[Louanne Learning]

In my inbox, an article from The Culturist with the title – Why Does Beauty Matter? – began with Plato and Aristotle, who called beauty, together with truth and goodness, the “transcendentals” – that which “rises above” – and “have the unique ability to take you to the brink of human experience.”



A similar sentiment comes more recently from Thomas Dubay:

“The acute experience of great beauty readily evokes a nameless yearning for something more than earth can offer.”

Transcend, rise above, something more ...
- maybe this is what Poe meant by referring to beauty as an “intense and pure elevation of the soul.”

Anyway, most agree that beauty is subjective. The article uses two paintings to make the point:

“Saturn Devouring His Son” by Francisco Goya



“Flaming June” by Frederic Leighton





Which do you think is more beautiful? Why?

Does what you consider beautiful depend on its meaning? On the feelings it elicits in you? Its intensity? Its truthfulness?

Are our ideas about beauty learned, or instinctual? Is there any objective ideal for beauty?

 

[Louanne Learning]

“The acute experience of great beauty readily evokes a nameless yearning for something more than earth can offer.”

Hmm ... thinking about this ... the absolute most beautiful thing to me is life itself - the absolute wonder of molecules involved in tremendous complex chemistry that produces the ability for me to type these words here and understand what they mean.

Am I confusing awe with beauty?

 

[Louanne Learning]

Hmm ... thinking about this ... the absolute most beautiful thing to me is life itself - the absolute wonder of molecules involved in tremendous complex chemistry that produces the ability for me to type these words here and understand what they mean.

Am I confusing awe with beauty?

Maybe I'm not, if I pay attention to what Richard Feynman had to say about it in his Ode to a Flower:

I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe…

I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Taking it from the angle of perception, here’s what the poet Walt Whitman wrote about how you might look at grass:

***

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say
Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

 

[Louanne Learning]

here’s what the poet Walt Whitman wrote about how you might look at grass:

Oh! reading on in the article about Whitman - it seems "grass" was a term used for poetry in the mid-19th century:

Back in 1855, when Whitman published this poem, “grass” was a name for poetry. I think that, when Whitman tells us how “grass” can mean many things at the same time—the Lord’s handkerchief, the uncut hair of graves—he is looking at grass the way we should look at poetry if we want to become fascinated by it. If you ask Whitman what grass is, he says, first, “I don’t know,” but he doesn’t stop there. He moves on to “maybe this, maybe this, maybe this, maybe all of this.” And this way of looking at poetry (I mean, grass) unlocks all sorts of strange, even unreasonable, reflections.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Is technology making us less moral? For example:

People are more likely to cheat when they delegate tasks to AI

“Artificial intelligence is moving from being a mere tool to an active partner in decision-making, but when we offload misconduct to machines, who bears the blame?”

 

[Rath Darkblade]

"...when we offload misconduct to machines, who bears the blame?”

That's easy. When a person asks ChatGPT to cheat, the blame should be attached to the person.

ChatGPT is a tool like any other. A carpenter doesn't make judgements on the moral failings of his saw or casts aspersions on the ethical qualities of the timber. Blaming ChatGPT for cheating is reducing it to the level of a scapegoat for our own failings as human beings.

In short, ChatGPT is amoral, in that it doesn't understand the implications of a moral failing (like cheating). It is not immoral (in that it does understand them, but cheats anyway). In that lies the difference between the tool and its master.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I sometimes wonder how technology is changing humanity - I think we're in the midst of some great evolutionary leap - but I am not sure where it is leading. Opinions are divided. Will humanity have the resources to win over technology?

 

[Homer Potvin]

I sometimes wonder how technology is changing humanity - I think we're in the midst of some great evolutionary leap - but I am not sure where it is leading. Opinions are divided. Will humanity have the resources to win over technology?

It has completely butterflied humanity and rewired the species. Some of us "older" folks will carry the discussion on for a bit, but posterity won't--or already doesn't--know there's anything worth discussing. Not to be cliche, but the train has long left the station and it ain't stopping.