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Curses omitted from this comment. If you would believe some materialists, we're ALL just biological machines with illusory feelings, though...
by pmarreck 8y ago
Curses omitted from this comment.
If you would believe some materialists, we're ALL just biological machines with illusory feelings, though...
- krapp 8y agoWe are all just biological machines, whatever that means. However, it would be a mistake to presume that our feelings are an illusion, or that pain is meaningless without some ephemeral abstraction beyond the material to grant it a Platonic "reality" that mere nerves and synapses can't aspire to.
- sam0x17 8y agoSee, I'm ok with that. That doesn't mean your feelings and the feelings of others don't matter.
- int_19h 8y agoFunny thing is, Descartes was approaching it from literally the exact opposite angle. To him, the soul was all the difference between real pain and "mechanical reaction".
- pmarreck 8y agoFor such a smart guy, to act on such an assumption without any evidence for either a soul in us or no soul in animals seems grossly out of character... although he probably predates the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution of thought
- goldenkey 8y agoillusory? In that real feelings exist in a more real form? The world is what our bodies make of it - its as real for me as it is for my cats. IQ doesnt imply worth.