/lit/ - Literature

Berkeley also can't be refuted, it doesn't mean as much as you'd think

?
why can you choose not to eat yourself to death on sugary foods?

because human rationality transcends mere biological urges, even if the body is in part guided by them.

>>21060018
Everything is evolution. Things exist simply because they can. Emergence of order from disorder. All of our desires and mental patterns exist as they are because they just happened to help us reproduce

>>21060018
For a second I thought this was another Robert Brandom thread.

>>21060018
Biology is a hard science. It does not overlap with philosophy.

>>21060074
Philosophy isn't about making up dumb imaginary bullshit. It only matters when it reflects on reality.

Einstein and Darwin had more influence on modern philosophy than the gaggle of 19th century faglords they tell you about in college.

>>21060029
So Darwin was the beginning of the end of philosophy. Humans are their genetics. Rationality is arbitrary and even bad sometimes since it can lead people to think about how pointless life is. But then again, we can't say it's bad since rationality is arbitrary so who knows if it is truthful at all. Life is meaningless to our intellect but for some reason it strives to continue into the future even though there will be end if our predictions are correct.

What do now? Endless Hedonism? Larp as something? Kys? Pass on as much of one's genes as possible? Why?

>>21060024
It means Berkely was right. Darwin was retroactively refuted by Berkeley anyway.

>>21060018
It can be, exponentially. In all seriousness there would be no purpose to existence if everything was already predetermined. That includes emotions, beliefs, genetics, actions, etc. If you apply it broadly its a good pathway to mass suicide.

>>21060122
>It can be, exponentially.
So do it

>>21060103
There is no answer. Only despair.

>>21060103
>Endless Hedonism? Larp as something? Kys? Pass on as much of one's genes as possible? Why?
Because it feels good faggot.

>>21060156
Yeah it feels good today and bad tomorrow. What a retarded existence.

>>21060166
Just don't do things that make you feel bad tomorrow, dumbass

>>21060156
Why is feeling good better than feeling bad?

>>21060174
>going to do nothing all day and enjoy myself!
>oops i'm now starving and there's no heating

>>21060179
>>21060181
Are you both retarded?

>>21060199
Can you tell me why feeling good is superior to feeling bad? What if passing on your genes makes you feel bad? For example, if a self designated incel tried to talk to a woman in otrser to seduce her and he felt extremely anxious about it?

>>21060218
>otrser
order

>>21060137
What's your problem, anon? Want me to give you National Suicide Prevention Hotline or something because you're Buttblasted that not everyone is as miserable as you are?

>>21060199
Are you?

>>21060218
Because it does. That's why it's good.
>What if passing on your genes makes you feel bad?
Then he shouldn't do that

>>21060103
>Humans are their genetics
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising

>>21060227
>make unfounded claim
<hey could you please run me through your reasoning?
>what the fuck you are a suicidal idiot!!!
>>21060255
Why is feeling good superior to feeling bad? Why is feeling the ultimate judge of what is good and bad? What about things that may feel bad at one moment but good at another? For example recistance training and being in good shape.

Keep arguing, fools. At the end of the day, I always win.

>>21060292
We all win fren

>>21060218
I’m designed to prefer it

>>21060292

>>21060099
>It only matters when it reflects on reality.
Prove it.

>>21060291
Because feeling good feels good. If you find you feel good after working out then you should work out.

>>21060278
Personally I think my genes are quite good, if measured by how well they are fitted for surviving in their environment. Meaningless in the end.
>>21060297
Why is acting according to your designed preference superior to going against it or not acting at all (or any other option)?

Scruton refuted Darwin quite succinctly, at least through the lens of evopsych. Read The Soul of the World, he deals with it in the first section I think.

>>21060291
Yeah you're seething

>>21060314
Simply because I prefer it. You’re asking nonsense questions

>>21060307
But why should we feel good? What if in truth feeling bad sometimes or all the time is superior?
>If you find you feel good after working out then you should work out.
But what about the bad feelings during the work out? Heavy lifting or a long run (relative to your level of condition) hurts. And what is a good feeling anyway? Some inflict pain on themselves and they seem to enjoy it/prefer it to being in a state of not hurting. For example cutting.
>>21060334
I'm not. You make zero contribution to the thread by making unfounded claims and then not elaborating on them when asked. I pointed that out.
>>21060345
But why do you prefer it?

>>21060350
What why? There Is no why needed. Feeling good feels good. If you find feeling bad preferable, be my guest but I'll call you an odd duck.

If you find that working out isn't worth the pain to feel good afterwards then don't do it

Just look what is moving all modern philosophers.
Somehow they all seem centuries and millennia in the past if one ignores all the snuck in failed neurologists, psychologists, statisticians, and biologists

>>21060350
“Should” implies preference. You’re asking circular questions. There’s no rational justification for actions. It all depends on preference

>>21060363
I guess you can't refute this if Darwin is right.
>>21060368
Doesn't matter when they can't refute Neo-Darwinism.

>>21060413
Darwin was the antichrist. Mankind is terminally sinful and could never be redeemed if people like him exist

>>21060350
Asking for evidence is bullshit in the long run. Any studies done on nearly everything are marred by nepotism and who is paying them for the results they desire.

>>21060430
So just believe whatever you want? Doesn't differ much from the logical conclusion you come to when you admit that Darwin is right.
>>21060423
>the
So where's the second coming then?

>>21060481
Science is religion now. Eat the bugs, wear the mask, take every vaccination. Its no different than the liturgy and vestments of a church congregation

>>21060255
>it's good because it's good

This is what /lit/ has reduced to.

>>21060568
It’s good because I like it. I like it because I’m designed to like it. I cannot give a logical argument for why I “should” seek what I like. That makes no sense. I have preferences and it’s up to me to decide to seek them or not. If you ask me why I do this I will just tell you “because I want to”

>>21060156
>If it feels good, it's good!
>If it looks red, it's red!
>If it seems true, it's true!
>If I say I'm a woman, I'm a woman!

>>21060018
>Was he the end of philosophy?
no. he was just an empiricist. he didn't make any philosophical development to my knowledge. he just applied empiricism in the line of newton and Hume to another subject just like many others did chemistry ,astronomy, eneneeiring, medicine, linguistics, etc.

>>21060074
dipshit.

>>21060579
>It’s good because I like it.
The Enlightenment and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

>>21060099
> complains about college philosophy
> unwittingly a positivist

>>21060608
Without preferences there is no such thing as the good

>>21060625
This is like saying without eyeballs there is no such thing as light.

>>21060018
>Biological Determinism
Meaningless hand wavey term. Not clear at all what it entails.

>>21060633
If I had no preferences then nothing would be good or bad to me. I would have no urge to change my environment or even myself for any purpose. All things would be equally preferable to me. How would you even define good outside of preference? You literally can’t. Cope and seethe

>>21060657
>If I had no eyeballs nothing would be light or dark to me. I would have no sense of colors in my environment or even my imagination. All things would be equally dark to me. How would you even define light without eyeballs? You literally can't. Cope and seethe.

>>21060676
Light is electromagnetic radiation of certain wavelengths (380-750 nm, which just happens to be the range that HUMANS can see). Now define good

>>21060703
NPCsisters..how will we recover…

>>21060703
Good is the realization of one's natural function

>>21060025
>in part
Imagine believing in miracles and thinking you can say anything about science.

>>21060018
the nature/nurture binary is dumb. biological determinism is rejected by most biologists for a reason. our genes influence the environments we seek out and gene expression is in turn influenced by environmental factors. its a feedback loop

Heh, nothing personal

>>21060703
Light is electromagnetic radiation of certain wavelengths (380-750 nm, which just happens to be the range that HUMANS can see). Now define colour.

Pleasure is a chemical reaction of certain molecules and cells. Now define good.

>>21060703
>Now define good

Proclus Prop. VIII

That which is primarily good, and which is no other than The Good itself, is superior to all things which in any way whatever participate of good.

For if all beings desire good, it is evident that the Primary Good is beyond beings. If it is the same with a certain one of beings, either being and The Good are the same, and this particular being will no longer desire good, since it is The Good itself — for that which desires anything is indigent of that which it desires, and is different from it — or, being is one thing, and the good another. And if some one being and The Good are the same, being indeed will participate, and that which is participated in being will be The Good. Hence, on this hypothesis, The Good is a certain good inherent in a certain participant and which the participant alone desires, but is not that which is simply good, and which all things desire: for this Good is the common object of desire to all beings. But that which is inherent in a certain thing pertains to that alone which participates of it. Hence that which is primarily good is nothing else than The Good itself. The adding of any thing else to The Good is to diminish it by the addition, making it a certain or particular good instead of that which is simply good. For the addition, since it is not The Good but something less than it, will by its association diminish The Good.

Proclus Prop. IX

Every thing which is self-sufficient, either according to essence or energy, is better than that which is not self-sufficient, and depends on another cause for its perfection.

For if all beings naturally desire good, and one thing supplies well-being from itself, but another is indigent of something else, the one indeed will have the cause of good present, but the other separate and apart. To the degree, therefore, that the former is nearer to that which supplies the object of desire, to that extent will it be superior to that which is indigent of a separate cause, and which externally receives the perfection of its nature or its energy. For since the self-sufficient is both similar and diminished, it is more similar to The Good itself [than that which is not self-sufficient]. It is diminished indeed by participating of The Good, and because it is not primarily The Good, though it is allied to it in a certain respect so far as it is able to possess good of and from itself. But to participate good, and to participate through another, are more remote from that which is primarily good, and which is nothing else than good.

>>21060025
human rationality IS a biological urge. You have a biological urge to be healthy. Most people instinctively dislike fatties for this reason. Even the religious instinct can be evolutionary beneficial (solidifies the in-group)

>>21060703
The good is what is common to all those thinks you seek for pleasure, and yet more inasmuch as those pleasures fail to satisfy.

>>21060122
>exponentially

Please explain. Exponentially as in exponentially more people?

Because a mass of people becomes an organism in itself. We are becoming a purely social species- where popularity is akin to survival. And this sort of organism is infallible, like cells, it divides into tribes when the integrity of too manys uniqueness (see importance) becomes endangered.

>>21062146
Disgust is an emotion, not rationality.

>>21060568
You:
>has to first write a 40 page paper to justify eating a slice of cake.
Me:
>see slice of cake, eat cake, yum. Good.

>>21062141
>the good is the goodest thing that's so good that it makes all the other good things good.
Insightful

>>21062160
You seem to forget that with the growth of new life displaces the old. You might come up 500 perfected species but on the other hand that means another 50 to 500 species must die since they lack the ability to adapt. Its a lot like the innovation argument in Schumpeters economic theory that jobs that have been out moded lay off several hundred workers, but that's ok because we have new technology so we can hire a whole set of workers to these new specialized jobs. If some people can adapt that's great but what about those who cannot? A modern allegory is like when truck drivers were laid off in the nineties by the Clinton administration but when they complained they couldn't find work they were told "oh just learn to code" feel me?

>>21062163
I think it's personally reasonable to dislike some pretentious art fag using a jar of feces as an allegory for slavery in an art exhibition.

>>21060018
If this was true we would still have monarchy.

Biological determinism simply doesn't account for decadence. It's proven to be false by history.

>>21060029
Including evolution. Its not right because it hss truth value, but because it helps you to pass on your genes.

>>21062319
>inbred cripples loosing power isn’t a perfect example of biological determinism

>>21060018
>tfw remember /lit/ is filled with entitled, raging faggots who don't read, don't cite sources and just vomit their childish, shallow opinions about everything as if they mattered; all of this in a stupid struggle to win an inexistent battle on le internet
>tfw remember this is why I left
>tfw bye

>>21062338
>inbred cripples
You just proved my point. They were once the best, but degenerated. If biological determinism was true they would've always known the best thing to do.

>>21062352
Op is just fucking stupid. They are countless examples of fuckups from notable families, and of geniuses being born out of nowhere. We have free will, not biology, which frankly we don't even understand.

>>21062361
> If biological determinism was true they would've always known the best thing to do.
Hahaha no
Highest evolutionary fitness =/= somehow instinctively knowing about gene defects from incest and also =/= inability to loose the top spot

>>21062381
>instinctively knowing about gene defects from incest
Of course. Any healthy person knows simply by smell who not to procreate with. Again, you fail to account for decadence. Wealth brings an easy life and people become deviants.

Also, the health of the baby depends on a lot of things. If the mother is a decadent whore it doesn't matter how good the genes are.

>>21062312
No, i do not feel you.
what does any of that have to do with what I wrote?

Expert on biology and philosophy here. Darwin was originally a natural theologian. His explanation of evolution did explicitly not collide with his theological beliefs. He was more alligned with an evolution not driven completely by randomness but guided by a divine force. In recent times this idea has been made more rigorously and consequently been proven by Chris Langan's CTMU. Anyone who believe in determinism is a soicuck NPC redditard.

>>21062402
That's too bad. Maybe you'll come to your senses someday

>>21062330
Yes it does. Decadence is subjective anyway. What you see as decadence is other people acting in a way that you see as defective evolutionarily speaking because your evolutionary strategy differs (all determined by genes btw). Different evolutionary strategies arise when different kind of evolutionary pressures (or the lack of them) are introduced.

>>21062459
My senses are fine. You are dictating a disconnected tangent from my original question.

You are talking about people beingade redundant and new generations being able to take up the new roles required. I was talking about humanity being a social organism fueled by individuality, and the fragility of individuality leading to separation of communities like cells.

In other words, you're a cunt. Just saying.

>>21062641
Well "cunt" means something different in say, Australia than the United States, so sure I guess I'm a cunt. Oh well.

>>21062671
If its any consolidation, I got your drift.
>We are becoming a purely social species- where popularity is akin to survival

Right, thats why things like popularity should be strictly delimited

>And this sort of organism is infallible, like cells, it divides into tribes when the integrity of too manys uniqueness (see importance) becomes endangered.

Agreed, however, individual rights in regards to passing on genes should be a universal project

>>21062698

Genes have zero value. In a purely social environment anybody can be excommunicated, and psychologically disassembled. Whatever genetic predisposition you might have will only see you throw to the worst of those that look like you

If you want your specific genetic structure to continue donate sperm and blood. Fucking simple

Popularity can not be mediated nor moderated. How would you even begin?

The anon who responded to the essayed you green text is a cunt and beyond tangential. Self absorbed is more appropriate


>>21062671

You didn't actually approach anything I said, so it seems like your cuntishness does indeed span both sides of the pacific ocean. Go suck Murdoch's flacid dog cunt. Clear now?

>>21062738
>Genes have zero value.
Genes determine your place in the social hierarchy. If you are born with a genetic disorder you're fucked and are doomed to a life of suffering and isolation. This includes manletism, which I would call a genetic disorder as well. Popularity is all about looks and looks are genetic.

>>21060018
epigenetics refutes determinism though?

>>21062757
>Whatever genetic predisposition you might have will only see you throw to the worst of those that look like you

Are you fucking 2d?

>>21062738
>Genes
This is a Social problem, yes
>Sperm
No, sperm banks practice eugenics too
>Popularity
Popularity correlates with autonomy, this can be fixed by simply legal means

>>21062757
Its unfortunate factor of the social world, but its not optimal if we want to increase happiness. At least for men.

>>21062802
>Popularity correlates with autonomy

How the fuck do you justify that? Autonomy and popularity and contrary as far as I can tell. Autonomy has not relationship to other people, popularity in completely at the behest of others

How are genes a social problem? In terms of short cunts, or tall cunts? These are extremities, just like the trannies, and in the grand sceme or scope of people are irrelevant. You nonce

>>21062826
Well look at this way, the reason why some people move up the food chain is because society gives them to pick and choose their mates at random. If you're low status or whatever else is wrong with you, you tend to have fewer options and thus less sexual freedom. I don't why pointing this out somehow makes bugmen like you sperg out but it needs to be addressed.

>>21062838
How do you get up that food chain? Social currency, not height.

>bugmen
>spurge

These are clear indicators of you trying desperately trying to flex your social currency - knowing the shit in the loop. It is the same in the non-piss-bottle-in-the-corner-of-your-room, but out there reality. It is just sad that your can't see how ingrained social currency is, especially here, anon, where height is completely irrelevant, but bugmen are.

I know plenty of short assholes who get laid constantly. Trust me, height isn't the problem, it is the assumption of uniqueness, without any demonstration of tangible uniqueness (this also transcends height). Get off your fucking stool short cunt, and sort yourself out

>>21062851
>desperate
Not even. Just pointing out facts
>muh exceptions
Low IQ take. Exceptions are not rules

>>21062853
Am I not also pointing out facts?

As mentioned earlier short people and tall people are all exceptions, so you point is fucking void. The average is the mass and also the social dictatorship

Also, flouting ingroup slang is a desperate attempt to cling to social currency. Did you coin those terms? Are they common usage beyond here and redit?

Nice how you disregarded the meat of the post.

Good evening you fucking bin juice soaked used tampon.

>>21062864
>admits to browsing "redit"
Fucking LOL I am done

>>21062869
When? I only tickled the soft parts of your assumed superiority. I don't use that hole, and haven't been here in years.

Yet you still can't even approach any aspect of the meat of the arguments I made.

>>21062314
Disliking that person for being disgusting is a separate act from disgust.

Worse, there's a huge vestigial genome that's still in our DNA, a kind of fossil record of our distant ancestors. Why would it be there if we weren't evolved from lesser creatures over timei?

>>21060018
God, shut the fuck up, you dumb retard

>>21063972
There are no "lesser" creatures in evolution.

>>21060018
>Was he the end of philosophy?
If you have the wrong definition of philosophy, then sure, why not. He both ended and started, and continued it if your definition is wrong.

>Biological Determinism can't be refuted it seems.
That means there are convincing arguments for it. Lay them out.

Worse, there's a huge vestigial genome that's still in our DNA, a kind of fossil record of our distant ancestors. Why would it be there if we weren't evolved from lesser creatures over timei?

>>21060018
>What if real life is just 19th century British economy
What a genius

>>21060018
it ended more than two thousand years ago

>Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

>Finally, I come to the question as to whether there exists a complete parallelism or a condition of reciprocal interaction between mind and body. In the case of the female, psycho-physical parallelism exists in the form of a complete co-ordination between the mental and the physical; in women the capacity for mental exertion ceases with senile involution, just as it developed in connection with and in subservience to the sexual instincts. The intelligence of man never grows as old as that of the woman, and it is only in isolated cases that degeneration of the mind is
linked with degeneration of the body. Least of all does mental degeneration accompany the bodily weakness of old age in those who have genius, the highest development of mental masculinity.

>It is only to be expected that the philosophers who most strongly argued in favour of parallelism, such as Spinoza and Fechner, were also determinists. In the case of the male, the free intelligible agent who by his own will can distinguish between good and evil, the existence of parallelism between mind and body must be rejected.

>>21060018
You say that like it favors you

>>21060018
We think there is "me" in "my" body, and we have biology and either have free will or not. Science then "refutes" free will, we then say "I don't have free will because biology determines what I do". But that "I" is biology. "I am determined by my biology" merely means "biology is determined by biology", or in other words "I determine myself".
There's no "I" entity in the body or mind that does or doesn't have free will. There's no I that wills, there's just willing, of course will that is still conditioned and caused. In this sense there is a kind of free will, but there's no one to have it. When, conventionally speaking, you make a choice, the choice wasn't imposed on you and compelled by your biology appearing in your mind as desires or character etc, it was you who made the choice because it was what you are that the choice rests on and was made by.
(And no, none of this necessarily denies/refutes religion or spirituality).

>>21064516
Wouldnt the refutation to this be to say there is no "I" at all?

>>21063987
There really isnt any meaningful qualitative statement in evolution at all. Every statement is a tautology

>>21064516
To add to this. Even if we are some kind of soul or self entity, whether metaphysical or physical, controlling our body and mind (I have reasons to believe we're not but I digress), it's incoherent to say we as this soul or self have ultimate free will that isn't just random or erratic, as we would need to have preferences to make choices, but then we would have to freely choose our preferences, but to freely choose our preferences we would need to freely choose prior preferences ad infinitum. Even claims like the soul's preferences are fundamentally born/aligned with the ultimate Good means that they are determined by it. No coherent form of free will is free from causes and conditions, it requires them.

>>21064541
If we go with a kind of realism in which The Good is an actually existing external entity and add that we are rational creatures and it is the function of rationality to apprehend reality, then free choice is just the intellect seeing what is truly good and desiring to possess or partake in it. The infinite regress of preference would be unnecessary.

>>21064526
Refutation to what I said? Maybe I wasn't clear enough but my point was that there's no real substantial "I". There's no "I" manning or riding around in my body or mind that's the subject or cause of reading your post and typing this. Language creates an illusory distinction. I can say "I am reading" or "I am typing", but there's no discrete reader somewhere in this body/mind reading or typer typing. In reality "I'm" not reading or typing, reading and typing is just happening.

>>21064605
The causal factor or agent which makes the typing happen is the "I" no?

>>21062893
There is nothing to be addressed, the mere mention of my points caused you to call me a "cunt". Why does it bother you so much? You need to answer why.

>>21064234
Yeah, really.

>>21064281
Lol did he just call women dumb?

I should probably read Sex & Character when I get the chance

>>21060103
> Why?
The worser torture than existence is non existence.

>>21064616
Not really. You could perhaps say that the entire "system", i.e. the body and mind (not necessarily implying these are separate but it's not really relevant), is the "I". It's the body and mind that does things and thinks, sees, hears, reads, types, etc. Which would make "I am doing x" less misleading. But the usual experience of "I" is not an experience of the whole system or of merely body or mind. This usual experience or feeling of being a discrete substantial "I" or thing in the body or mind that is the experiencer of experience and the doer of actions is an illusion. This is what many Eastern traditions get at, but it's also true and experienceable in a secular or materialist context.

>>21064585
Interesting. But if it's in any way your innate function to desire and do a certain thing then to me this doesn't seem like an acausal/undetermined free will. To be clear my position is not that I don't think free will can exist, but that it requires causes and conditions to exist or even be coherent. So what you say, if I understand correctly, would to me be a form of coherent free will.

Why would you want to refuse biological determinism (aka base reality) unless you were a filthy pig fucking tranny?

>>21060103
Just literally do whatever you were doing before you knew this, absolutely nothing about your experience has changed besides how you're thinking about it. Your experience, when you're not ruminating about what it supposedly is or would prefer it to be, hasn't changed at all. I experience certain things as meaningful so for me there's meaning in life. Sure, maybe outside my experience it's meaningless and it's all biology and shit coping, but fortunately we can't experience outside our experience nor experience biology. We experience that which we call "meaning", "happiness", "love", "pleasure", "pain", "depression" or "meaninglessness", "desire", "aversion", or "hunger" for example. We don't experience neurochemicals or biology. Just believe in God if you want, no one can stop you.
Making an abstraction of your experience and then saying that this abstraction that forever lies outside your experience is a problem for you is a common delusion. As a matter of experience, biology is merely a tool or map for our own uses. To despair that it's all objectively meaningless or whatever is to confuse the map for the territory, or the menu for the meal.

>>21060024
Empiricist Horikita?

>>21064735
I guess it comes down to the relationship between will and intellect. Im gonna have to revisit my book on Thomism because thats the only place Ive ever seen it elaborated.
Does anyone know of any Plato's dialogues where discusses that?

>>21060140
Hello, Søren.

>>21060074
>Biology is a hard science. It does not overlap with philosophy.
Finally, someone with a brain.

>>21064906
I will go back to thinking God exists, the soul is immortal, and that free will is unconditionally real then.

>>21064831
last time I checked religious people weren't trannies. also it helps to know that atheists have a stronger preference towards polyamory and sharing one single whore amongst several men.