> On 24 Jul 2020, at 00:17, PGC <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 5:55:53 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote: > >> On 21 Jul 2020, at 19:40, PGC <[email protected] <javascript:>> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Tuesday, July 21, 2020 at 12:16:09 PM UTC+2, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >>> On 21 Jul 2020, at 10:13, Philip Thrift <[email protected] <>> wrote: >>> >>> >>> https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n08/galen-strawson/the-sense-of-the-self >>> >>> <https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n08/galen-strawson/the-sense-of-the-self> >>> : >>> ... >>> Human beings, then, can have a vivid sense [though] of the self without >>> having any sense of it as something that has either personality or >>> long-term continuity. Does this improve the prospects for the claim that a >>> sense of the self could be an accurate representation of something that >>> actually exists – even if materialism is true? I think it does, although >>> the full argument would require a careful statement of what it is to be a >>> true materialist, further inquiry into the notion of a thing, and a >>> challenge to the problematic distinction between things and processes. >>> Perhaps the best account of the existence of the self is one that may be >>> given by certain Buddhists. It allows that the self exists, at any given >>> moment, while retaining all the essential Buddhist criticisms of the idea >>> of the self. It gives no reassurance to those who believe in the soul, but >>> it doesn’t leave us with nothing. It stops short of the view defended by >>> many analytic philosophers, according to which the self is a myth insofar >>> as it is thought to be different from the human being considered as a >>> whole. It leaves us with what we have, at any given time – a self that is >>> materially respectable, distinctively mental, and as real as a stone. >> >> >> That makes sense with materialism if the soul is made into an actual >> infinite. >> >> That makes sense with Mechanism, if we abandon the idea that we have >> ontologically existing bodies. In that case the selves comes from a unique >> consciousness which bifurcate by scission, and fuse by amnesia. >> >> The machine have a 3p-self, which is their body representation, >> and they have 1p-self (and of many different types) obeying to the laws of >> extensional and intensional (modal) self-reference, which is a chapter of >> mathematical logic/thepretical computer science. >> >> In my more ecologically tinged notes this notion of self is more like a >> portal to a web/multiplicity of relations to an unknown reality. It is >> membranous, not discreet, and the bifurcation/scission is a hallucination >> with the same kind of delusional character that would separate say an ant >> from its environment/histories/relations. > > Keep in mind that the machine first person, in arithmetic, is related to the > continuum. This follows precisely from the first person indeterminacy on all > computations + all (Turing) Oracles. So, the need of some not discreet > reality is not necessarily a symptom that Digital Mechanism is false. > Depending on the way that continuum behave might determine if Mechanism his > true or false. Today, the evidences are that it is true (which proves > nothing, as in science, we never prove anything). > > > > >> That hallucination, useful as it was for survival, promotes discourses of a >> problematic kind of individualism, which, not unlike the caricature of an >> ant or the simplification of humans in comics, entails otherness. Doesn't >> this otherness enable and justify violence that further reinforces itself? >> Is this inevitable? When said portal confuses itself with such notions of >> individuality, doesn't it pursue the destruction/harm/deletion of perceived >> others in some hope/delusion for self-preservation? > > The otherness makes love and hate possible. That is a general problem for > *all* universal machines. They are stuck in between the attraction to > security and the attraction to universality (freedom). That will give the > choice, when collection of similar universal systems appear, between > cooperating or not cooperating. By cooperating all the machine wins a lot of > security, but lose their individuality, freedom and (practical) universality. > It is a bit the doubt that cells have encountered a long time ago, as this is > related to staying unicellular, or cooperating in a colony/multi-cellular. > It can be related tp the difference between (strongly) typed lambda calculus > (security, no more Turing universal) and untyped lambda calculus (Turing > universal but totally insecure). > > People do balance security and freedom, as nobody in their right mind > considers going to live out in the woods alone to maximize their freedom.
Indeed. The amount of mess that a universal machine can bring in any reality supporting her is nothing compared to the amount of mess brought by two universal machines, not mentioning, 3, 4, 5, … Up to some numbers, they will organized themselves and become a new single organism, and the cycle continue at a higher level. > > Apparently we need 195 nation states, millions of organizations, nuclear and > weapon arsenals, huge tech companies, energy-, global finance-, media-, > science-, education-, health sectors etc. to manage such a balance. > > > >> >> Violence never succeeds in this style of discourse as the damage is never >> isolated to the perceived delusional target but to the web/multiplicity of >> relations. > > I thing that violence never succeeds, except when confronted to violence, in > a defensive way. Only in legitimate defence can violence makes sense. > > > >> Every violence would therefore equate to self-harm and self-defense would >> have no individualistic meaning; it would only have meaning as the absence >> of violence towards the whole. This kind of common ecological conception of >> self and individuals runs counter to reducing selves to their body >> representation. > > OK. > > >> And while that hallucination of separation led us to war and science, an >> ecological approach to these questions would still pursue whether the >> violence entailed is absolutely necessary, and whether life could manage to >> at least mitigate the damage by moving towards stronger equalities that >> would stabilize the web/multiplicity and render the portion of it that we >> have some control over more resilient. > > I believe that democracy + free market, and the rules of laws is the > solution. The problem is that in the old democracies, the separation of power > begin to leak, and the free-ness of the market disappear, like we have seen > with prohibition of medication (an utter nonsense, except for the drug > dealers…). > > >> is that discreet selfhood, strong forms of individuality etc. are >> problematic from pov of ecological, psychological, social, linguistic >> perspectives. PGC > > > The problem is that when we succeed to cooperate for a long time, the > possible gain of cheating grows, and soon or later, some individuality will > try to exploit this. At least, in a democracy, we can change that, but it can > be hard if we acquitte someone cheating. An example is Trump, who might have > won the 2020 election the day that the Senate decided to not look at the > first hand evidences, and to acquit him for cheating, and actually, to help > him to do so, probably because they are themselves dishonest and feel > protected by him. > > I think that the brain is already a result of cells practicing democracy. > Democracy is a natural thing in neoplatonism, or in any system where the > leaders are enlightened enough to know that they … don’t know (making them > listening to each other). > > The pandemic brings the world into economically strange territory, where MMT > style (macro-economic) descriptions appear to resonate with people. Kelton's > "The Deficit Myth" is perhaps notable. A pandemic is global and international. This is a case where we can make money for nothing, and invest it in fixing the economical problem. The entire world should use the pandemics as an opportunity to give to everyone a universal allocation, and then let everyone becoming as rich as they want, but only by honest mean, and dishonesty in merchandising should be severely punished. But for this we will need some “Nuremberg” like trial of prohibition, and that is not for tomorrow. Yet, you can see that people like McConnell try to make bill to protect all the dishonest financial behaviours. > > Looking at multi-objective optimization, non-dominance, and Dialethic logic > these days… I tend to believe that the “modern democracy”, with the rules of laws, and real power separation is basically the only progress in the human science since Plato… But the pesudo-religiouis prohibition (the belief in “drugs”) has show how much a democracy is fragile, and we must improve its health… before it is too late. > There's something about ambivalence, embracing simultaneity of truth and > falsity, That leads to relativism, which leads to arbitrariness. I think. I am even against the “religious right”. The right to believe what we want is equivalent with the right to lie. Personally I would not take a plane whose pilots believe that the Earth is flat, or that clouds are elephant. I think the same for theology. Its separation from science has led to make religion into wishful thinking, with absurdities like praying a god who is omniscient… That are just tyran tricks to take control and steal the people… Orwell is right: the genuine freedom is the right to say 2+2=4... > playing early stage strategy games purposefully NOT pursuing objectives too > ambitiously to maximize later degrees of freedom... and philosophically > questioning individuality with equality in the sense of "doesn't equality > mean more degrees of freedom for individuals generally?" that intrigues yours > truly these days. With a strong notion of equality, any cheater is as visible > as the unfair advantage obtained. PGC Equality in the social domain means equality of right. I am not sure what you mean by “strong equality”, and very generally, I don’t think there is a mean to make all cheater visible. Bruno > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/f04a2f98-4440-4315-b2a7-e8709923c5b6o%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/f04a2f98-4440-4315-b2a7-e8709923c5b6o%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/3754F382-B6BD-4602-A208-336791D50BFD%40ulb.ac.be.
