The flower in the desert

Imagine a vast, empty desert stretching out as far as the eye can see. The sun beats down mercilessly, casting long, dark shadows across the sand dunes. In the distance, you can see a solitary figure walking slowly towards you, silhouetted against the harsh light of the sun. As the figure approaches, you begin to see that it is a human, walking with purpose but seeming to be lost in thought.

As the human draws closer, you can see the lines etched deep into their face, the weariness in their eyes, and the deep sadness that seems to permeate their being. You wonder what has brought this person to the middle of the desert, and what thoughts are occupying their mind.

Suddenly, the person stops in front of you, and you can see that they are holding a small, fragile flower. They hold it out to you, and as you take it, you realize that it is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen. Its delicate petals shimmer in the sunlight, and its fragrance is like a balm to your senses.

As you look up from the flower to the person's face, you see that their expression has changed. The weariness and sadness are still there, but now there is a glimmer of hope in their eyes. You realize that, despite the harshness of the desert, the beauty of this small flower has given this person a reason to keep going, a reason to believe that life is not meaningless after all.

As the person walks away, you are left alone in the desert with the flower in your hand. You realize that, like this flower, life may be fragile and fleeting, but it is also full of beauty and wonder. You wonder what other small, beautiful things might exist in this vast, infinite universe, and you feel a sense of awe and wonder at the possibilities that life holds.

There is no meaning to life. The universe is cold and neutral. Yet the negative emotion that we assign to that realization is not neutral. It is negative. Why?. That's not logical. Shouldn't the emotion be neutral too? In other words, nothing has meaning including the fact that nothing has meaning yet we automatically assign a negative value to the fact that nothing has value, thus self-contracting without even realizing it. So I wonder if the solution to that kind of existential suffering is not to find meaning, but to identify and remove the arbitrary emotional response one has to the fact that nothing has meaning. Maybe the reason we do this is that when we are doing something we perceive to be meaningful (even if ultimately that meaning is an illusion) we receive positive emotion. We then, for some reason, automatically attribute that positive emotion to the idea that the task had meaning, so over time we develop a mental association between meaning and positive emotion. I wonder if meaning is just a placeholder concept the brain uses because it cant self conceptualize its own reward system (the mesocorticolimbic circuit) in its unconscious levels of processing. Thoughts?

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Sam Harris' moral philosophy, particularly his merging of "is" and "ought," is irritatingly ignorant of advances in philosophy. Just as Sam takes care to differentiate between science and pseudoscience, I make the distinction between philosophy and pseudo-philosophy. The separation of "is" (descriptive) and "ought" (prescriptive) has been a widely accepted philosophical tenet since the 17th century, endorsed by British empiricists, including the eminent Hume. Hume's distinction posits that we cannot directly derive prescriptive, normative conclusions (what "ought" to be) from descriptive statements about the world (what "is"). This principle has been acknowledged by philosophers ever since. Yet, Sam Harris, a scientist with a modest background in philosophy, posits the contrary without offering an explanation. He asserts that morality can be determined based on the well-being of neurological systems.

Studies have shown that our brains make decisions before we're even aware of them. Isn't that enough evidence to conclude that libertarian free will is false? If you were truly free in your choices, you would be aware of them at the same time as you make them.

I asked A.I. to write a dialog in the style of Plato on the nature of beds. I found it amusing.

​

>Socrates: What is a bed?
>
>Glaucon: A bed is a piece of furniture that we sleep on.
>
>Socrates: But is that all it is?
>
>Glaucon: What do you mean?
>
>Socrates: I mean, is there not some deeper essence to a bed? Something beyond its function as a place to sleep?
>
>Glaucon: I'm not sure I follow.
>
>Socrates: Think about it. What makes a bed a bed, and not something else? Is it the wood it is made of, or the shape?
>
>Glaucon: I suppose it is a combination of those things.
>
>Socrates: But if we were to change the wood or the shape, would it still be a bed?
>
>Glaucon: I don't see why not.
>
>Socrates: So then what is the essence of a bed? Is it its function, or its form?
>
>Glaucon: I don't know.
>
>Socrates: Perhaps the essence of a bed is not something we can see or touch, but something more abstract. Perhaps it is the idea of a bed that defines it, rather than any particular example of one.
>
>Glaucon: I see what you mean. So then, if we were to imagine a perfect bed, what would it look like?
>
>Socrates: That is a question for another day, my friend. For now, let us simply ponder the nature of the bed, and all that it represents.

In one way, life makes me a little bit sad because of the philosophical nature of truth and reasoning. All truth and reasoning, whether you like it or not or admit it or not, is based on assumptions that may be true but cannot be proven true outside your blind acceptance. That's just how it is. And since we are known to be wrong about things sometimes, why should I have any faith in what I believe? Haven't you had moments where you thought you knew something but it turned out later to be false?

This is a question that’s been weighting on me pretty heavily: supposing all of our fates are predetermined and free will is a mere illusion, is it possible to commit any moral wrong?

Of course we all knew someone at one point or another who uses astrology as an excuse to be a bitch by saying things like “I can’t help being a Pisces” to justify their shitty behavior. This is what raises the question in my mind. If we entertain the notion (and I’m being completely hypothetical here) if our fates are predetermined, and we have limited or no control over who we are or become, then should we be held accountable for our misdeeds?

I’m new to this sub, and philosophy in general, so I don’t know if talking about the Bible is frowned upon, but Christians believe that through Jesus’ crucifixion, all people are forgiven and able to repent of their sins. At the same time they also believe that Judas committed the ultimate mortal sin, and he is in line with the devil for betraying him. Jesus knew that Judas would betray him, as was prophesied, and without his sacrifice (within the faith) no one could be made right with the Lord.

Judas’ fate was predetermined. If this action was predetermined did he have a choice in the matter? So if not, did he sin when he sold out Jesus to the Romans?

What is the point of university philosophy tutorials? I am taking two courses as electives and the tutorials seem to just cover what the lectures and readings already cover

As per suggestion, I will post here:

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This is a summary of a philosophical and mathematical work by a former teacher and mentor of mine. The work attempts to describe mathematical structures based on philosophical concepts that could potentially be applied in physics. I first encountered this work as a mathematics student, but at that time, I couldn't understand most of it. With this publication, I hope to attract interested readers to this work.

Abstract:
"UrEins and Algebra - The Concept of the ONE.
Implications of the Concept of the ONE.

This work was jointly created between the years 2000 and 2006. It is a philosophical-mathematical work with possible outlooks on physics. Philosophically, it resolves the contradiction between the views of Parmenides and Heraclitus, on which Western metaphysics failed, as Georg Picht elaborated extensively in his posthumously published work "On Time". Additionally, it meets Picht's further demands to make at least one step out of the crisis of Western philosophy. Parmenides speculated and argued with the concept of the ONE, in which everything should be united. Heraclitus, on the other hand, claimed that only "movement in being" was essential, and there was no "rest in the ONE."
The "movement in being" corresponds to "water" and also "fire". This movement is also referred to as Heraclitean Logos. It should be noted that even today, the view is still largely held that there is "rest" in the ONE and no "movement."
Picht's work "On Time" is incredibly important for criticizing Western philosophy because he makes further demands, but cannot fulfill them. It seems to us that in general language, this appears almost impossible. What Picht calls "being in time," that overarching mode in which past, present, and future are summarized as a possibility, is the mode of reflection that is embedded in the cosmos. Being embedded in the cosmos also means "being embedded in the past, present, and future." For with the view into the spatial cosmos, we also look into the past and recognize dynamic processes there that point to the future. Moreover, it is considered an unsolved philosophical problem what the present is, which transforms an unknown future into unalterable past. This requires a philosophical justification of the "ticking" of time, which must be considered not yet found. We propose a suggestion for this. Although time is measured with clocks in physics, the "ticking" of time, as well as space in its three dimensions, are simply assumed and described mathematically above the continuum of real numbers. Of course, there are already conjectures that space and time could be quantized.
Beginning a "lattice theory" of space is being tested for elementary particle physics.
In our work, the mode of reflection according to Picht will be expanded with the linguistic possibilities of mathematics. However, it will not be done in such a way that mathematics is added as a language from the "outside" to expand the mode of reflection. Rather, essential parts of algebra arise from the mode of reflection. Permutations as mappings play the fundamental role. Finite groups are introduced as a result. From these, finite rings and finite algebraic fields, called Galois fields, are constructed through endomorphisms of finite, commutative groups as mappings. The concept of mapping is central. This meets Picht's demand to break the boundaries of Western metaphysics. A curious view of possible physics of space, time, and photons emerges, but not yet of matter.
The method outlined is open to extensions.
AUTHORS: Dieter Beckmann, born 1941 Studied mathematics and physics from 1962 to 1969 Teaching activity from 1969 to 2005.
Klaus Pullmann, born 1934 Studied mathematics and physics from 1954 to 1960. Teaching activity from 1961 to 1996."
pdf in Archive (It is written in German.)
https://archive.org/details/Ureinsundalgebra

"Well that's what makes it so exhausting to be human in a highly capitalist society, your whole value is based on how well you can adapt to situation and you constantly adapting to them to meet your basic needs. It's basically like being a wild creature out there in the world. We just don't realize how stressful it is."

-Stacey Higginbotham

the context of the quote comes from a discussion about an advanced AI being defeated in the game of Go. The players had finally defeated the Ai with a tactic of grouping. The computer couldn't understand or recognize the pattern of grouping. To most players the this seems very obvious however the Ai will learn and adapt and so will humans.

What I found striking about the quote was that here we are 2023 thinking that the role of hunter/gatherer is behind us and yet Stacey points out that we're still performing the age old role of hunter/gatherer, and accurately defines value in our society.

You can here the full conversation on :This week in google, episode 707.

Interested in you tearing apart my thinking so I can mature my thinking:

Consciousness emerges from physical states. For instance, the arrangement of atoms in a human brain.

The continuous sense of identity a given consciousness feels relates that arrangement of atoms. For instance, I feel like the same person as I was an hour ago, even though the brain that existed an hour ago no longer exists and instead my current one does

The multiverse is vast and may contain multiple physical states that replicate the same or equivalent physical states that produce a given consciousness. For instance, a functional human brain and body may appear due to a quantum fluctuation for a moment in space (‘boltzmann brain’)

The existence of at least one corresponding arrangement of atoms is required for a unitary sense of identity (whether or not space brains or souls exist, at least our brains matter)

Therefore, we may experience a subjective immortality upon the death of our ‘’current’’ body

The current body and brain we have experiences is able to effect change on the world and experiences a sense of non-deterministic free will. Whether or not this is true, it presents a perceived opportunity to reduce the suffering available to the universe that may or may not exist to ‘future’ subjective identities we may have

Does anyone have any recommended readings, thoughts, or musings on the idea of "truth"?

Do you guys have any good podcast recs?

I've listened to a rendition of the Republic. I've also listened to Understanding... By Laurence Houlgate. Both of his series are absolutely incredible.

I don't mind incredibly dry so long as it inspires thought.

I read this New Yorker article today detailing an unconventional familial arrangement, one shared by a professor in philosophy with her graduate student-turned-husband and her ex-husband. I am in awe with how individuals choose to enter a wide range of possibilities for their relationships that aren't the usual straight, monogamous, typical varieties.

More radical, is my recent discovery of the swinging lifestyle, in which couples swap their partners sexually for a night. That discovery shocked me.

My questions:

• To what extent can we normatively evaluate alternate kinds of relationships? Polygamy on the whole is perceived as divergent but not radically abnormal. But this valuation would not extend to incestual love, or pedophilia love. Are there limits to who we have sex with and love? What are the criteria in deciding them?
• What does our surprise, awe, disgust, in reaction to these alternate arrangements tell us about ourselves? Does sexual prudishness indicate a lack of education? Or fear of progression? Or to maintain a stable paradigm in the way we see the world?

Suggestions of further readings (philosophical/fiction) into alternate sexual and family arrangements would be very much appreciated.

Have you ever noticed that many philosopher, scientists and thinkers that negate Free Will, very rarely admit having been irresistibly coerced and forced into believing that? (and everything else btw). On the contrary, they tendt to act like they came to this conclusion after careful reflection, sound logical reasoning, deep discussions and critical thinking.

They expose their opinion almost as if they really weighed the alternatives, selected and then chose (!) the best thesis.

Isn't that strange? Is there a philosophical explanation behind this curious behaviour?

Spinoza was a badass

I found his Ethics mindblowing. Never again I’ve come across anything like it.

Are rationalism and his questions so out of fashion that he is considered not relevant anymore in the current philosophical debates (whatever these may be)? Or have the critiques to his thought exposed too many mistakes? Or what? I just don’t see enough Spinoza around.

What do you guys think?

How to reconcile the idea of free will, lack thereof, and responsibility for one’s reaction to stimuli?

We do things? Why? Why do we want to do things?

If someone acts on us, we have a choice on how to respond. If they’re trying to agitate us, we can choose not to engage, to get upset, etc.

Then we have the nature vs nurture argument.

Also, the altered state of consciousness one deals with when under the influence of mind altering substances, or dissociative influences of traumatic brain experiences.

Where does free will start and stop?

I’m relatively new and I was wondering if there was somewhere to look about the value of immaterial/metaphysical things vs the value of material things. I was thinking of the value of person’s idea or emotion vs a person’s bank account or properties

Hi, does anyone have experience in using structural existential analysis to analyse qualitative data? I am conducting my doctoral research on the experience of being cyberbullied from a phenomenological and existential perspective...

Well, I want this to be my very last post at reddit. I'm not an english native speaker, so it may not be quite precise on the language. But let's try.

I'm posting it here because I consider it as related to philosophy, but it's also me venting something. So, either because it doesn't get considered as philosophy or because it gets too boring, it may be deleted.

*

I studied a lot of different subjects, and it showed me many relations I never thought it could be possible. The Metaphysics also showed itself as the meta-thought, that is, there is the chaotic information on a subject, but then you may create categories on it. The more you think about these categories themselves, the more the thought jumps from the particular topic to a general way to think about ordering. This metathought, that is the thought about the thought, opens the door to the sense of Metaphysics.

Anyway, by doing these studies, I actually got pretty much depressed. I mean, a lot. I summarize this experience like this: one thing is to get to know the evil (the imperfect, the ugly or whatever). It's easy to see, and easy to imagine. The more you know evil, the less you believe there is good, and whatever shows as good seems to you like something disgusting, because you end up believing intuitively there's an imperfection hid somewhere. The other way, though, hurts more: if you get to know good, the more you try to get to know higher goodness, the more you realize the lack of it around. Notice this: one thing is evil, the other thing is lack of good. They are, let's say, the same "gap of goodness", but the first way you see it as expected or disgusting; the second way you see it as what it could be of good. And that hurts much more. The more you train this vision, the more you start to see how the world could be of good, and realize it is not that. Evil doesn't matter, but the lack of goodness is saddening. It is Tristesse, like Chopin expressed it.

So, I went through this path and from my experience I tell you guys: Plato said evil is the lack of knowledge, and it seems he's pretty much right. Knowledge has a theleology: any knowledge can be used to direct an intelligence to understand itself. In the center of intelligence, the mechanism that makes it work, there's Good. But I won't prove it here, since this is my last post ever, or so I hope. For anyone who wants to investigate it, try paying attention to your insight: when it happens, how it happens, what it brings, what it is related to, how does this relation builds the insight content and so on.

​

Anyway, I consider today as the end of my journey. I found out something that is my limit. I call it (for now) "the map of learning".

I studied my culture and the public education of my country as much as I could, and it led me to realize some lacks, great lacks. It's not quite the fault of anyone, it just happened that no'one seems to have thought about these ideas (according what it can be read through the main educational discussion). And I'm no'one, I shouldn't even have investigated none of what I did. I was supposed to be a worker and nothing else, but my curiosity led me to some weird tracks. And now is the time to head back to the main path.

So, anyway, this map is about the problems of learning. I already had made a "map" on how many of cultural works end up being close to useless because the author wasn't really sincere about it. Now, even though the person is sincere, still there may be some errors.

I mean, imagine when you try to learn a language. You can either:

I) Learn it by a course (a formal list or order)

II) Learn it by yourself (chaotic)

I knew too many people who passed through courses and didn't learn almost anything. But chaotic learning also mostly doesn't work. The idea of today was to organize my experience on this. This is kinda Lao-Zi's search of Tao. Well, by the end, I found out some things really sad. And that was the final blow. I'm officially depressed lol

So, well... I know it's not written entirely, nor explained and so on, but I just needed to share this somewhere. And that's all. I got bored of all of this search for knowledge. I want to do my destiny, which is to be a hard worker. I wasn't supposed to be here, I wasn't invited to the symposium, I got here by accident and feel very ashamed for trying to usurp a place I wasn't supposed to be in.

So, I didn't appear very much here, but I've read posts here and comments, and I'd like to thank you guys for them.

And also I'd like to thank for all the reddit. This is really a great place. I like this structure, which is close to old forums. Facebook and specially Instagram don't have enough space for a real discussion.

Thank you for reading this venting.

You know, when you get to a point, everything just seems bad. That's the end of philosophy. "It sucks... but i don't know if that's true."

I'm trying to formulate an idea of epistemology and I would like to see if it stands up to scrutiny. Imagine you have three sources of authority in your model of epistemology, A, B and C. Sometimes those sources disagree or contradict each other, so you use another source, which we'll call D, to adjudicate the disagreement and decide which one is correct. Given that type of scenario, would it be logically sound to say D has a higher tier of authority than A, B, and C?

Assuming that's true, a simplified secular epistemology might look like this:

>1. Reason
>
>2. Intuition, sense data, outcomes, authority figures (doctors, scientists, etc.)

And a simplified religious epistemology might look like this:

>1. The Bible
>
>2. Intuition, outcomes, authority figures (pastor, theologian), sense data

Regardless of what you put in the #1 slot, there must be only one authority source in that slot because it there were two authorities there, they might disagree, which would require another higher authority to adjudicate the disagreement.

Does that make sense?

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Does anyone believe that the universe preserves itself just as how humans do?

Personally, I think that since humans preserves themselves, animals preserve themselves, cells preserve themselves, RNAs preserves themselves, that probably all things preserve themselves just by being themselves. Likewise the universe preserves itself just by being itself. So this is probably one of infinite timelines. Does something change in the future? IDK, but there’s always gonna be another one.

This is based on an assumption though. I can’t see there being nothing forever since there is currently something and this must have come from something, nothing, itself atleast right? I mean, I am here currently…

Humans, individually, cannot make any real impact. All change in the social world and environment is due to the choices made collectively as a species.

Hope,

Hope makes you weak, it gives you a false belief that one-day, something good will happen.

The society has made us fool. We were never meant to accomplish greatness in our life. Our purpose was to born-live-die.

But how can you make humans live, there would be chaos if they know that most of them doesn’t even matter. Its hope, always this hope, it’s a drug, a drug which this society forces you to consume, because if you don’t, you will start to see things what you were never meant to see.

The more you give humans this drug, the more they become addicted to it, the more they chase it.

We have consumed this drug so much, that we think, we can’t live without it. We believe we will simply die, or go mad if we don’t have hope.

But that’s not true, it was never meant to be true.

Hope shatters you from within, the moment your hope breaks, you simply fall and you will be at your lowest which you could have never imagined. During that moment you will start to question yourselves, all of your beliefs begins to shatter, the only question that comes to your mind is- Why, Why Me?

Hope is like devil's apple, we eat it because we believe it makes us strong, but what we don’t realise that at its core, the presence of its poisonous seeds. But we still eat it till we start to consume that seed too and it starts to poison us, choke us. But do we stop, NO, we still keep eating it, because that’s what devil wants, that’s what society wants. And we keep on eating it till the poison consumes you, and now even we can’t save yourself.

How is the life without hope, one may ask. It’s not beautiful, it’s not heaven. But what it really is, it’s the Reality, the world that humans were meant to be in. The world where you live only to fulfil your duties without asking for something in return, where you are at least live in peace because you know, in the end you don’t matter to this world, and this world was never obliged to give something to you in return.

Do, humans will ever live without hope, Never, because that’s what makes us humans. We would rather live a beautiful lie rather than live a harsh reality.

But now I will not cling to this Hope. I once had hope, but after it has always betrayed me, I have realized how evil it is.