Ironicwarcriminal posted:
i decided to call in sick from work last week and it wasn't because i was too physically sick or anything. I made a concious decision that I would rather fuck around at home

happy birthday IWC

GoldenLionTamarin posted:

bonclay posted:
Remember when they did studies that showed that people's body get ready to move before they make the "conscious" decision to move. Sounds like a bunch of malarkie

that was a load of crap, i think. it just means impulses happen and then a fraction of a second later we fully flesh them out into thoughts. what is it supposed to prove, really. that the things we do are controlled by our body? that the determinism is happening without us thinking things out in socially constructed words beforehand? sensationalist horseshit, i think

it's evidence from motor control which is not really relevant to the phenomenon we normally think of as free will and is yet another example of neuroscientists having an at-best-tenuous grasp of philosophy. that said its pretty interesting that motor centers can initiate movement before higher cognitive circuits are engaged and the whole suggestions that the role of those circuits in that process is to prune out unwanted impulses rather than initiate them is congruent with my understanding of how the nafs works

Meursault posted:
That is pretty much exactly what I said

there are angels in Islam also though and they are said not to possess free will

commodiusvicus posted:

Meursault posted:
That is pretty much exactly what I said

there are angels in Islam also though and they are said not to possess free will

ohhh. cool


It's cool how angels are like weird alien monsters in the Bible but now people think that dead people turn into angels?? And like guardian angels and stuff

babyfinland posted:

mistersix posted:

i think the concept of fate may be useful here, inhabiting a space between determinism and freedom.



similar is the role of past in heidegger.

adrian johnston and catharine malabou (and, i believe, zizek in his imminent 1000 page book on hegel, the universe, and everything) call in the concept of plasticity to loop the subjects interpretation of itself back into the material realm with causal efficacy. (this therefore takes place through what z in the book i mentioend (or at least a fragment i read on amazon) calls the "torture-house of language". so heideggers idea that man dwells poetically is in some sense a particularly optimistic description of whats really going on)

heres some audio from johnston and malabou (i havent listened to all of malabou's thing yet): http://donewithlife.mi2.hr/audio
theres also video of at least the main presentations (theres several people other than those two presenting various talks at this event) but i dont know if it includes the q&a after each presentation. and i think the q&a is where johnston summarizes his thoughts on it, in reply to ray brassier (who is more into a flavor of eliminative materialism)

where do johnston and brassier stand in relation to one another (i dont have time for all this youtubes right now unfortunately)

disclaimer, i havent listened to his talk from that event, but i think it took place the day before johnstons so if he had been saying something radically different than what johnston expected it would have come up probably. in a general sense: they were both also speaking at the "real objects, material subjects" event that was a couple of years ago and the impression i got is that they had each others backs against the dumber points from the object oriented ontology blogosphere crew (who werent really as bad as that makes it sound but w/e). in a specific sense: (and this is cribbing from another johnston talk, one where brassier wasnt also present heh) ray thinks that nihilism is one of the greatest discoveries humans have ever made and that we just need to deal with it. this leads him (and thats the causal relation in johnstons mind) to be keen on eliminative materialism, although hes more sophisticated and thorough about it than the churchlands. i havent read his book ("nihil unbound: enlightenment and extinction" -- pretty explicit about its agenda id say) yet, just cracked the e-cover a bit, so i cant say more. the sense i get is that johnston doesnt really have any problems with the conclusions brassier draws given those assumptions, but he thinks the assumptions are problematic. he emphasizes that the churchland stuff is based on neuroscience from ~decade ago and it doesnt really do justice to stuff thats happened since then like plasticity

later this week im going to finish listening to malabous talk, her q&a, and then i think theres a panel discussion that includes all of t hem plus others. in johnstons q&a he basically said all that stuff to ray in response to rays questions but then there wasnt much time left and other people had questions so they moved on, but im hoping there's some discussion between them in the panel and if there is i'll post about it

mistersix posted:

babyfinland posted:

mistersix posted:

i think the concept of fate may be useful here, inhabiting a space between determinism and freedom.



similar is the role of past in heidegger.

adrian johnston and catharine malabou (and, i believe, zizek in his imminent 1000 page book on hegel, the universe, and everything) call in the concept of plasticity to loop the subjects interpretation of itself back into the material realm with causal efficacy. (this therefore takes place through what z in the book i mentioend (or at least a fragment i read on amazon) calls the "torture-house of language". so heideggers idea that man dwells poetically is in some sense a particularly optimistic description of whats really going on)

heres some audio from johnston and malabou (i havent listened to all of malabou's thing yet): http://donewithlife.mi2.hr/audio
theres also video of at least the main presentations (theres several people other than those two presenting various talks at this event) but i dont know if it includes the q&a after each presentation. and i think the q&a is where johnston summarizes his thoughts on it, in reply to ray brassier (who is more into a flavor of eliminative materialism)

where do johnston and brassier stand in relation to one another (i dont have time for all this youtubes right now unfortunately)

disclaimer, i havent listened to his talk from that event, but i think it took place the day before johnstons so if he had been saying something radically different than what johnston expected it would have come up probably. in a general sense: they were both also speaking at the "real objects, material subjects" event that was a couple of years ago and the impression i got is that they had each others backs against the dumber points from the object oriented ontology blogosphere crew (who werent really as bad as that makes it sound but w/e). in a specific sense: (and this is cribbing from another johnston talk, one where brassier wasnt also present heh) ray thinks that nihilism is one of the greatest discoveries humans have ever made and that we just need to deal with it. this leads him (and thats the causal relation in johnstons mind) to be keen on eliminative materialism, although hes more sophisticated and thorough about it than the churchlands. i havent read his book ("nihil unbound: enlightenment and extinction" -- pretty explicit about its agenda id say) yet, just cracked the e-cover a bit, so i cant say more. the sense i get is that johnston doesnt really have any problems with the conclusions brassier draws given those assumptions, but he thinks the assumptions are problematic. he emphasizes that the churchland stuff is based on neuroscience from ~decade ago and it doesnt really do justice to stuff thats happened since then like plasticity

later this week im going to finish listening to malabous talk, her q&a, and then i think theres a panel discussion that includes all of t hem plus others. in johnstons q&a he basically said all that stuff to ray in response to rays questions but then there wasnt much time left and other people had questions so they moved on, but im hoping there's some discussion between them in the panel and if there is i'll post about it

i think thats an accurate summation of brassier's project. thats cool, i like johnston's zizek book a lot and i think it's way more about his own ideas than zizek (i mean it's much more focused on kant and schelling and lacan than zizek actually)

babyfinland posted:

shennong posted:

babyfinland posted:
angels: a modern mythby michael serres is a great book

whats it about

its an attempt to rehabilitate angels into modern philosophy by examining their function as divine messengers, and goes so far as to say that the information economy is "angelic" in certain ways

french~

this looks kool

blinkandwheeze posted:

babyfinland posted:

shennong posted:

babyfinland posted:
angels: a modern mythby michael serres is a great book

whats it about

its an attempt to rehabilitate angels into modern philosophy by examining their function as divine messengers, and goes so far as to say that the information economy is "angelic" in certain ways

french~

this looks kool

http://www.harikunzru.com/michel-serres-interview-1995

Transient_Grace posted:
the entire conception of free will and agency as applied to humans is foolish and demonstrates how poorly defined concepts can pass off as 'real things' and give birth to millenias of fruitless discussion on meaningless topics.

it is obvious that people, as well as many other species, are capable of 'choosing' their next action, this choice is clearly effected by many different factors but that isn't the issue here, the 'creature' as an actor is faced with different possibilities and will try to achieve its own goals, if that's not agency what is?

determinism has nothing to do with it really, neither does God.

is the way you use "actor" and esp "goals" really any less reified than "free will" and "agency"?

Superabound posted:
from any given set of initial conditions, a particular human has exactly 1 possible response. varying the initial conditions may vary the response, but the internal mechanism of the human mind is still only a static interpreter

that's just the deterministic argument, when you observe a process after it's concluded the probability of it happening as it did is always 100%.

Transient_Grace posted:

Superabound posted:
from any given set of initial conditions, a particular human has exactly 1 possible response. varying the initial conditions may vary the response, but the internal mechanism of the human mind is still only a static interpreter

that's just the deterministic argument, when you observe a process after it's concluded the probability of it happening as it did is always 100%.

the "process" for him though was reoccurring several times a minute, for an entire day. With absolutely no variance in result, ever.

when i say "from any given set of initial conditions, a particular human has exactly 1 possible response", you have to understand that Time is one of those initial conditions. When you repeat any experiment, you are not repeating it exactly, because the two experiments have occurred at two separate points in time. Thats the only reason human responses seem to "change" in an indeterminate fashion, because the factor of time is variable. Lock down that variable (in addition to all the others), as is the case with TGA (the minds ability to judge time is completely dependent on memory. no new memories = no change in perceived time), and you get the same, singularly possible response, 100% of the time