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> Of course the mind is irrational. And of course our sense of self is an illusion. You admit this in one paragraph, but pretend it doesn't matter... > It is

> Of course the mind is irrational. And of course our sense of self is an illusion. You admit this in one paragraph, but pretend it doesn't matter... > It is important to continuously reevaluate what we think the mind is because it is representative of how we see the world. ...and then in the next paragraph, you're talking about "reevaluating" as if that has any meaning if there is no rationality. If you've eschewed rationality, you're not evaluating facts--facts can only be established through rationality, be it observation or logic. A philosophy which eschews rationality is fine, I suppose--it's a creative process which can be entertaining just like any sort of fiction or art. The problem is that you're both eschewing rationality and claiming facts which can only result from rationality. It's just a special pleading to try to present your creative ideas as fact without having to prove them as fact through rationality, and I'm not fooled.

creep 9y ago
But that's exactly the thing: if I were claiming anything it would be that the mind is chaotic. But to arrive at that, like you said, I must use processes of rationality. That doesn't mean the mind isn't chaotic, and it actually exemplifies what I'm trying to say quite well. We exist in a reality that is inherently chaotic. We can approximate but never reach. But our approximations help us move around, because as we can see the chaos also has some kind of structure (think of the Lorenz attractor). We can't explicate the structure, but we can certainly create our own structure-- which is where rationality comes in. If we constantly re-evaluate the mind, we constantly build new structures which are adaptive to the energy of the era in which we conceptualize, and we are better suited to continue to create within this reality.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  > We exist in a reality that is inherently chaotic. We can approximate but never reach. But our approximations help us move around, because as we can see the chaos also has some kind of structure Yes, obviously models can be useful approximations of reality. I'm not rejecting all models, I'm rejecting the models which do a poor job of approximating reality. But if they're too inaccurate, they aren't useful. The point here is that the coherent, singular "self" model of reality is too inaccurate to be useful any more. Neuroscience has demonstrated the idea of a coherent, singular self to be wrong. When we're asking questions like at the beginning of the article ("Did Anna Karenina really want to die?") the singular, coherent model of self isn't useful. This shouldn't be taken as a criticism of those who believed in the singular self before neuroscience. They created hypotheses, and the experiments which tested those hypotheses and resulted in our current understanding of the self would not have happened without their work. We can remember them as history. But we can't treat these disproven hypotheses as equally valid to more nuanced understandings of the self, out of some sort of nostalgia for philosophy. This isn't a rejection of the practice of modeling reality, it's a rejection of the models which our understanding has grown beyond, in favor of more accurate models.
  - creep 9y ago
    Okay, but as you can see from my first post, I agreed with you (opinion, not fact) that the self is an illusion. What are you trying to say, exactly? It seems you are trying to argue with me but haven't found anything concrete to latch onto.
    - kerkeslager 9y ago
      You said, "That doesn't mean we should dispose of philosophy altogether." I am saying we should dispose of philosophy as it pertains to modeling the self, because the models of self which philosophy has given us have long outlived their usefulness.
      - creep 9y ago
        Not really. I use my sense of self every day. So do you.
        kerkeslager 9y ago
        How so?
creep 9y ago
I'm also not trying to claim anything as fact.
- deleted 9y ago
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creep 9y ago

But that's exactly the thing: if I were claiming anything it would be that the mind is chaotic. But to arrive at that, like you said, I must use processes of rationality. That doesn't mean the mind isn't chaotic, and it actually exemplifies what I'm trying to say quite well. We exist in a reality that is inherently chaotic. We can approximate but never reach. But our approximations help us move around, because as we can see the chaos also has some kind of structure (think of the Lorenz attractor). We can't explicate the structure, but we can certainly create our own structure-- which is where rationality comes in. If we constantly re-evaluate the mind, we constantly build new structures which are adaptive to the energy of the era in which we conceptualize, and we are better suited to continue to create within this reality.

kerkeslager 9y ago
> We exist in a reality that is inherently chaotic. We can approximate but never reach. But our approximations help us move around, because as we can see the chaos also has some kind of structure Yes, obviously models can be useful approximations of reality. I'm not rejecting all models, I'm rejecting the models which do a poor job of approximating reality. But if they're too inaccurate, they aren't useful. The point here is that the coherent, singular "self" model of reality is too inaccurate to be useful any more. Neuroscience has demonstrated the idea of a coherent, singular self to be wrong. When we're asking questions like at the beginning of the article ("Did Anna Karenina really want to die?") the singular, coherent model of self isn't useful. This shouldn't be taken as a criticism of those who believed in the singular self before neuroscience. They created hypotheses, and the experiments which tested those hypotheses and resulted in our current understanding of the self would not have happened without their work. We can remember them as history. But we can't treat these disproven hypotheses as equally valid to more nuanced understandings of the self, out of some sort of nostalgia for philosophy. This isn't a rejection of the practice of modeling reality, it's a rejection of the models which our understanding has grown beyond, in favor of more accurate models.
- creep 9y ago
  Okay, but as you can see from my first post, I agreed with you (opinion, not fact) that the self is an illusion. What are you trying to say, exactly? It seems you are trying to argue with me but haven't found anything concrete to latch onto.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    You said, "That doesn't mean we should dispose of philosophy altogether." I am saying we should dispose of philosophy as it pertains to modeling the self, because the models of self which philosophy has given us have long outlived their usefulness.
    - creep 9y ago
      Not really. I use my sense of self every day. So do you.
      - kerkeslager 9y ago
        How so?

creep 9y ago

I'm also not trying to claim anything as fact.

deleted 9y ago
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