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philosophy (pg. 4)
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| DJ Cinos |
| I don't believe in a god. However, I do in an afterlife of some sort. As a spirit or reincarnation - simply because I can't imagine non-existance. It just doesn't seem plausible that whatever makes up your consciousness disappears forever. |
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| OurManFlint |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Cinos
I don't believe in a god. However, I do in an afterlife of some sort. As a spirit or reincarnation - simply because I can't imagine non-existance. It just doesn't seem plausible that whatever makes up your consciousness disappears forever. |
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge…. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die…. How wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.
-Nietzsche
Can you think of what your conscienceness was before you were born? Can you remember anything before you were born? That's what it will be like when you die. A complete absense of conscience. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by astroboy
The term Intelligent Design has been pretty much appropriated (if not coined?) by the fundamentalist Christian right, and defined as a scientific theory (throught up by Michael Behe) contrary to evolution. Though it is not a theory inthe strict sense of the word, almost the entire scinetific community is very hesitant to call it scientific and if evolution is a scientific theory with holes in it than Behe's Intelligent Design pretty much is a giant hole with little bits of what looks like pseudo-scientific quasi-theory floating in it. |
You're being soft on him. Evolutionary theory has about as many holes in it to describe the change in species over time by environment as gravitational theory has to describe the affect of mass on particles by evironment. In other words, just because detractors lack the wherwithal to understand the concept behind what constitutes a scientific fact they shouldn't assume that they understand how a theory they know little about, like gravity, stacks up against a theory they know little about, like evolution. If detractors knew a lot about both they would be well prepared to attack both theories in an equal fashion. If that does anything to emphasize the ridiculousness of their attempt (unless they can muster a minimal amount of effort to do the least bit of research). |
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| DJ Cinos |
It's not a valid thought. Non-existance for eternity? It's like dividing with zero, impossible to imagine.
So I believe we all have souls. I have personal proof for it too, but I won't get into that, you'd come up with "explanations" anyway. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Cinos
It's not a valid thought. Non-existance for eternity? It's like dividing with zero, impossible to imagine.
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Non-existance and eternity seem like very complementary attributes. Or is everything you imagine destined for inevitable existence? |
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| OurManFlint |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Cinos
It's not a valid thought. Non-existance for eternity? It's like dividing with zero, impossible to imagine.
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What makes you rationality so special that it needs to be eternal? |
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| astroboy |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Cinos
It's not a valid thought. Non-existance for eternity? It's like dividing with zero, impossible to imagine.
So I believe we all have souls. I have personal proof for it too, but I won't get into that, you'd come up with "explanations" anyway. |
I believe that invisible pink hippos do not and will not exist. But hold on according to your theory they must exist (since non-existance for eternity is invalid)... and since they exist at some stage they must exist for ever (since from the moment they cease to exist they are non existent for eternity). So there you go according to your theory I have predicted with 100% certainty the emergence at some stage in history of imortal, invisible pink hippopotamuses (hippopotami?) |
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| Renegade |
| quote: | Originally posted by Epicurus
Several comments are in order here:
I would appreciate if, when you quote from text, you don't quote out of context: |
That first part is incidental. I'm willing to concede to you that it may have used in a different context to the one we're discussing here, but it was the second part that I was interested in. I'm not sure that there's anything ambiguous or context specific about the sentence "[Existentialism] declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view". As I said, given this sentence alone (to say nothing of the rest of the body of Sartre's work that I am familiar with) I would disagree with your claim that "it does indeed matter whether God exists or not to an existentialist atheist".
| quote: | | Clearly then, the non-existence of God does matter in his philosophy, in the sense that Man does not have recourse to God in order to justify choices as "good", "rational", or what have you, but has only himself to "fall back on". |
But man does not have this option anyway, regardless of whether God exists or not. To invoke God as an absolute subject, as an absolute instance of "the Other" (rendering the self, therefore, an object of judgement) is to engage in "bad faith". If we are, as Sartre says, an instance of "Being for-itself", then we can not ever inherently be "good" or "rational", because "Being for-itself" is man's inexorable condition of constantly "becoming", without ever actually "being". Therefore, to invoke God as a "reason" for one's "goodness" or "rationality" is to misunderstand the nature of human consciousness by rendering it as "Being for-itself" (that is, a fixed object) rather than "Being for-itself" (that is, a transcendental subject). Given this, in the context of Sartre's philosophy, invoking God as a means of escaping one's anguish at being confronted with absolute "freedom" is an instance of "bad faith" in the sense that it is a consciously futile attempt to escape the inescapable. If this freedom - which is central to Sartre's theory of consciousness - actually is inescapable, then invoking God will not change in the slightest the reality of our existence.
(The only way that the introduction of God would change Sartre's philosophy, is if such an introduction were to eliminate the possibility of free-will. Given that I'm not familiar with any religion which states that God does not permit the possibility of free-choice in his subjects, I'm not sure that this is an issue.)
| quote: | | This is of critical importance in his attempt to articulate a system of ethics. |
Again, the existence of God would make no difference in the context of Sartre's ethics. Man is still condemned to choose for himself (and - by extension - for all men) whether we invoke the existence of a God or not.
| quote: | Now, with regards to the last paragraph that you quoted, your explanation is accurate but severely incomplete, which leads me to disagree with your conclusion:
To be fair, if one reached that conclusion based solely on his/her reading of "Existentialism is a Humanism", then one cannot be fully blamed for that considering the fact that within philosophical circles, that text is considered ambiguous at best, and furthermore too condensed to do justice to Sartre's positions on many things (including God, his ethical system etc). |
I'm not sure if this was an implication that I'm not familiar with Sartre outside of that essay I quoted, but I can assure you that I am familiar with Sartre's philosophy and that is precisely why I feel that - given what I have read both by and about Sartre - I can state authoritatively, that while Sartre was sometimes "concerned" with the issue of God (again, only to the extent that he sometimes contrasted his own ideas with the religious perspective) it is ultimately inconsequential, in the context of determining the veracity or applicative scope of his ideas. As Sartre himself put it with regards to atheistic existentialism, "even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view".
Also, when I say that Sartre often contrasted his theory against the religious perspective, I do so with the understanding that, as an atheist, Sartre was often necessarily going to have to define his ideas in the context of God's absense. So long as there was a dominant train of though that suggested God existed and that Sartre's ideas were deemed to be antithetical to that train of thought, then Sartre was going to have to address it.
To quote from Being and Nothingness (Conclusion, p.792):
| quote: | | Everything happens as if the world, man, and man-in-the-world succeeded in realizing only a missing God. Everything happens therefore as if the in-itself and the for-itself were presented in a state of disintegration in relation to an ideal synthesis. Not that the integration has ever taken place but on the contrary precisely because it is always indicated and always impossible. |
So, as Sartre says, the "ideal synthesis" (i.e. that of God) is always indicated (either by the human apprehension of the state of the world, or merely by others - Sartre isn't clear here, but it amounts to the same thing) and, as such, Sartre's theory may therefore look like an attempt to "disintegrate" this synthetic union of the "for-itself and the in-itself" (Sartre's conception of the nature of God) and as such, Sartre has to justify on what grounds he can "disintegrate" this union within his philosophy. Sartre's point, however, is that he didn't "disintigrate" any synthesis at all, as there was never a synthesis there to begin with. Therefore, it's not as though he is defining his stance on opposition to the theory of God (in which case the existence of God would matter) but rather he defines his stance independently from and in the complete absense of any "possible" theory of God.
Throughout the entirity of Being and Nothingness, there are plenty of little asides about God like this, but they are never central to his argument, nor are they used as examples of antitheses that could make or break his philosophy depending on their veracity. If Sartre defines himself as an "atheist", then some aspect of his philosophy is necessarily going to be defined in opposition to "theism" (as that is, after all, what atheism is) but there is no aspect of his philosophy that is dependent on the assumption of the non-existence of God, hence my continuing assertion that - to Sartre - the existence of God really doesn't "matter" to his philosophy.
| quote: | | At any rate, you are right to state that within Sartrian philosophy, whether God exists or not, Man would still have to choose his moral system (either to accept a currently existing one, whether it be secular or theistic, or create a new one), but wrong in concluding that therefore, God's existence "does not matter" within Sartrian philosophy. I wish I had more time to get into this in detail, but I don't, so I'll simply quote Frederick Copleston's explanation of my position, since I happen to fully agree with his interpretation of God's role in Sartrian philosophy and its connection to his ethical system, based on all my readings and understanding of Sartre (this is taken from "A History of Philosophy, Volume IX, page 365-366") |
So Sartre's essay about his own philosophy is "too condensed" and too geared towards the "layman" to avoid possible "misinterpretations" of his said philosophy, but two pages from a book entitled "The History of Philosophy" is complete enough to stand as an authoritative exposition of Sartre's ideas? Vous sérieux, mon ami? :p
From the bolded part:
| quote: | | At the same time, if there is no God, there can obviously be no fore-ordained divine plan. There can be no common ideal of human nature which man has been created to realize through his actions. He is thrown back entirely on himself, and he cannot justify his choice of an ideal by appealing to a divine plan for the human race. In this sense the existence or non-existence of God does make a difference. It is true that if a man accepts the ethical norms which he believes to have been promulgated by God, this implies that he has freely projected his ideal as that of a God-fearing man. The point is however that if in fact there is no God who has created man for a purpose, to attain a determinate end or goal, there is no given moral order to which he can appeal to justify his choice. |
Let us, then, presume that there is a God who has a "fore odained divine plan", a "common ideal of human nature" and who promulgates "ethical norms". Presuming that this God does not choose to impinge on human free-will (and that, therefore, Sartre's conception of humanity as a "Being for-itself" remains valid) how does this in any way change man's cirumstances as a being-in-the-world that is both condemned and responsible to choose "for itself"? Of course, if God were to be revealed, along with these said expectations he has for humanity, some (probably most) will decide to "appeal" to him as a reason for deceiving themselves into believing that they have anything but absolute free-choice. But how is that any different, in the context of Sartrian existentialism, from appealing to any other authority (be it religion, another human being, a letter box, or anything else) as justification for the abdication of his responsibility? How does the positing of an "absolute other" in any way change the nature of man as a "being for-itself"?
Sartre even addresses this in Being and Nothingness (Part Three, Chapter One IV, p. 385):
| quote: | | [S]hame before God [...] is the recognition of my being-an-object before a subject which can never become an object. By the same stroke I realize my object-state in the absolute and hypostasize it. The position of God is accompanied by a reification of my object-ness. Or better yet, I posit my being-an-object-for-God as more real than my For-itself; I exist alienated and I cause myself to learn from the outside what I must be. |
In other words, if we accept the existence of God and then "hypostasize" our existence as "Being in-itself" rather than "For itself", then we are indulging in mauvais fois by defining ourselves as a type of object, in deference to our relation to some "outside" instance of "the Other". Therefore, even if God does exist, defining ourselves in relation to him would, for Sartre, still be an inauthentic mode of existence, meaning - yet again - that nothing is changed whether or not God actually exists. In all cases, man is still free and man is not a fixed object.
| quote: | | Note that, again, this is an explanation of the Sartrian position, not a attack or a defense of it. If you agree with it (which I do), then his belief that God does not exist does indeed play a role in his philosophy, specifically as it pertains to his ethical system. Hope this helps in clarifying my position. |
Yes, most enlightening. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by astroboy
I believe that invisible pink hippos do not and will not exist. But hold on according to your theory they must exist (since non-existance for eternity is invalid)... and since they exist at some stage they must exist for ever (since from the moment they cease to exist they are non existent for eternity). So there you go according to your theory I have predicted with 100% certainty the emergence at some stage in history of imortal, invisible pink hippopotamuses (hippopotami?) |
Of course invisible pink hippos don't exist. Why that's just silly. If this is any attempt to disprove or make a mockery of the invisible pink unicorn goddess, than you're going to get a smoting when she hears about it ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_pink_unicorn
All hail her holiness:
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| Dervish |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Of course invisible pink hippos don't exist. Why that's just silly. If this is any attempt to disprove or make a mockery of the invisible pink unicorn goddess, than you're going to get a smoting when she hears about it ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_pink_unicorn
All hail her holiness:
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Pffft thats just crazyness I'm gonna belive in this cool carpenter who was actually part of another religion who was written in a book by some other people and then the book was translated by other people but it's still the holy book and every word is 100% correct by the way. |
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| D-res |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ Cinos
So I believe we all have souls. |
well what constitutes a soul? what is a soul per se? do you think when you die your and your soul goes to heaven its an exact physical replicate of you? i can get nitpicky and say that while your soul would be physically just like you, quantitatively identical, it wouldnt be numerically identical, but i wont get into that because then you start arguing about can there be two yous. if you took your brain and made a replica, then placed the brain in two cloned bodies of you, who is you. both brains contain the same memories and consciousness of being you but only one was really you. i dono that gets too complicated.
none the less how do you explain souls. are they just mental states? are they a floating ball of consciousness? what the is consciousness? how could it be physical?
| quote: | Originally posted by astroboy
The term Intelligent Design has been pretty much appropriated (if not coined?) by the fundamentalist Christian right, and defined as a scientific theory (throught up by Michael Behe) contrary to evolution. Though it is not a theory inthe strict sense of the word, almost the entire scinetific community is very hesitant to call it scientific and if evolution is a scientific theory with holes in it than Behe's Intelligent Design pretty much is a giant hole with little bits of what looks like pseudo-scientific quasi-theory floating in it. |
i dont have much experience with behe's theories. the one thing i do have some history in, which ties into intelligent design, is his theory of irreducible complexity. behe states that things are irreducibly complex because there are biochemical systems that, if broken down into smaller systems, would not longer fuction properly. he defined it as a single system which is composed of several smaller parts interacting together which contribute to a basic function. when you remove any one part the system stops fuctioning. this idea supports intelligent design but isnt a very strong one. a good example of irreducible complexity was the flagella of certain bacteria constitute a molecular motor that required the interaction of 40 or so complex protein parts and if you took any one of the parts out, the flagella wouldnt function.
Of course i think that his theory was sort of disproven by shanks and joplin's idea of redundant biochemical complexity. it stems from the realization that many biochemical processes are redundant. they're the product of a large number of overlapping and slightly different processes. it's also found in the existence of the back-up systems which take over if the primary systems fail. again its found in convergent biochemical evolution where similar biochemical fuctions are chieved regardless of the systems of evolutionary history. they used an example of a cat. a cat and a mousetrap both catch mice. while a mouse trap would be "irreducibely complex" in that you remove any part of the mousetrap and it no longer catches mice, a cat, if for example loses an eye, it will adjust quickly to having one eye and because the way the cat has evolved over the years, the cats vision is still 3 dimensional because of the placement of its eyes and the complexity of its brain. none the less, if a cat loses an eye, it can still catch mice.
and since we're talking about intelligent design, how many of you are fimiliar with paley's watch analogy? for those who dont know, it goes like this: a man is walking in a field one day and sees a stone. it would be stupid to ask how that stone got there. obviously people dont usually ask questions like that about stones, but it also could have been there for all known time so the conclusive answer would be found. however while walking through the field you came across a watch, it would be reasonable to ask how it got there. the reason assumptions about the stone cant be applied to the watch is because it exhibits design and has a variety of different parts all working together to produce motion. thus you would have to assume that there was a creator of that watch. at some point in time, somewhere, someone had to design and build that watch. using this analogy paley argues that the world also exhibits complexity and so on this basis you can assume that there was a designer of the world. in my opinion its a weak argument. although it is a very old argument (over 200 years old)
EDIT: i apologize for any spelling or gramatical errors. i'm kinda hungover and dont have the motivation to go back and fix it. that and i was copying what i wrote from questions i answered a couple weeks back on these subjects and in my hungover state, i mistyped plenty of things while "translating" from paper to the computer |
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| Spirit5 |
| quote: | Originally posted by astroboy
The term Intelligent Design has been pretty much appropriated (if not coined?) by the fundamentalist Christian right, and defined as a scientific theory (throught up by Michael Behe) contrary to evolution. Though it is not a theory inthe strict sense of the word, almost the entire scinetific community is very hesitant to call it scientific and if evolution is a scientific theory with holes in it than Behe's Intelligent Design pretty much is a giant hole with little bits of what looks like pseudo-scientific quasi-theory floating in it. |
I understand this, I know that many of these guys were also Christians and that Intelligent Design in itself is not scientific, but when put in a philosophical concept (this thread is titled "philosophy") then it could work. I don't believe it should be taught in classrooms, well maybe in philosophy, esp at a college level, but not in place of evolution, merely working with it. Evolution is the scientific basis for life, what has been pretty established by science. Intelligent Design can explain factors outside of just Earth. I don't think of Intelligent Design as some benevolent God who created Adam and Eve, and or our planet, but rather a God who created (and then worked through) the Universe. From this, God allowed the ingredients of life to take shape, on this planet and many, yet explored planets that contain life (probably thousands or millions of planets). I don't apply this to Earth, nor to science but to philosophy.
I don't think it's hard to phanthom some force, greater than us, to have created the Universe, something had to have sparked the big bang, and something had to have existed before the big bang, whether it was another Universe, or something else completely. Who knows, but science cannot explain everything that goes on, yet...in hudreds or thousands of years we might have a clearer picture, but right now there's a limit to our understanding of the Universe and Reality and why we are here, and neither science nor religion offers a truly convincing argument for either. Again i'm NOT endorsing Intelligent Design (i've believed in Evolution since I was a kid) in the context exactly of what Michael Behe and others put, I'm applying it to the UNIVERSE, not just the EARTH. This is not creationism, it is merely stating that there are forces that science cannot explain yet, that a God *could* have created (or maintain some type of order) within the Universe. Some of this is left up to philosophy and theology to offer an explanation, but again they too are only scratching the surface of these unanswered questions. |
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