Consciousness can be modeled, and the brain can be modeled. The models can be correlated, and this is useful to us to get on the same page about what constitutes reality as a picture of "things hanging together in harmony" (compossibility). Consciousness is most important to us as a set of observation statements about us, and it is solely up to us to decide how to interpret those statements.
This can be done for other species, and this will tell us whether or not our thought-patterns are actually indicative of right-thinking, thus deserving to be repeated across larger regions of space-time.
If you use <table>s for layout, you will ignore W3C Validators. If you ignore W3C Validators for one language, you might as well ignore "validation" for all languages.
The whole point about semantics is that <div><div><div> and <table><tr><td> have virtues or otherwise because of what they mean. If you complain that the quantity of elements is the same, you're missing the (qualitative) point. Learn what semantics are, and why they're important. Agreement is important; it matters what we call things, because we're the only ones that will call those things what they should be called.
You should be as vitamin-conscious as someone who takes supplements, but with Food.
The crux of the problem is with epistemologies like Popper's and Putnam's and the muddled thinking of interpretation of a hard science while lacking a "philosophy of" for that science. Users of the scientific paradigm think of themselves as derivative scientists, on the assumption that scientists know better.
It's "mythos" in the sense of metanarrative: it is the deferring of epistemic responsibility, just as Ancient Greek thought deferred the explanations of the natural world to rulings of the God's whimsy.
It is beyond me that you read my first paragraph and probably started thinking "close-minded." It's beyond me that you fail to see the sense of betrayal and defeatism in a person who feels cheated by his country.
Did you even read the post, actually ? You found ONE word, which I in fact tried to use to conceal the fact that I was talking about a person generally of the West, and not specifically American, -- you found that ONE word to harp on. Your entire response is nothing more than a turn on that one term, one word, which plays a very insignificant role in the entire post.
And the rest you ignored, unless you forget that America is the leading consumer power of the world. Did you actually read the post ?
Americans, for the most part, today behave like a large population of people who have been systematically acculturated with principles of consumerism. I am here sharing my grievances with that, and these effects of their personality will ultimately prove negative in the face of a world (a set of countries) which can easily and readily identify members of a (hyper)consumerist culture.
Just that. That. Read it twice if you have to. It's called a spade. If calling a spade makes you want to tell me to "leave," considering what the spade is: You leave, consumer-programmer.
"For me it is the internal that is important though someone who puts a high priority on external ornamentation as an indicator of personality and character would never know if you just went by my external appearance."
Liar. It's "external appearances" all the way down to the colorscheme you use for syntax highlighting.
I find it absolutely titillating, electrifying that it's perfectly well and good for Terrance McKenna or someone else to cry that we're all consumer whores; and that we've unearthed all this evidence about the The Fed and its goal to turn us into hyperconsumerists.
But you have to be a certain kind of ethnic in order to cry it from the inside. "Just leave!" or "we're so cerebral!"
Yeah, now, after about 50 years of culturally conditioned guilt and the Failure of the Extrovert education agenda. No yr all too fearful to say anything provocative except what yr console tells you. Yet another reason to, yes "Please, leave the US." You're all living so cushy, there's no genuine reason for you to "rail" against anyone. You're just passing the time while you compile.
I wish all the best for the U.S., but this country has only presented fear and obstacles to my family, and demands loyalty, recognition. I am a Citizen of the World, and it will be strictly incidental should I corroborate with the U.S. in any way. I bring peace and sharing —
But I will not be lied to, and I will not be coerced into a lifestyle not of my choosing, and I will not be intimidated. I deserve better. The United States has driven me to a life of constant fear, fear not based in delusion but in the severe mismanagement of its society. Daily I find myself at the mercy of its community, whose fear shake the seat of my soul: beliefs of technological domination, spying, etc. I will no longer provide free consultation, on doorsteps or coffeeshops; nor will I abide the complaints of American peoples.
Of this decaying society (U.S.), its peoples will manically accuse anarchism or even the grossest fictions, due to an untrained intellect. Of this decaying society (U.S.), its people must find someone to blame — at which point anarchism becomes indistinguishable from treason.
The United States has mismanaged not only its government; it has injected a venom against intimacy, intelligence, and true investigation. I cannot trust the United States to secure my freedom of intimacy, freedom of intelligence, nor can I trust its integrity or investigation.
I find it disrespectful to myself and undermining to my initiatives to qualify my identity with "U.S. Citizen."
In any event, most people who look at me assume I do not speak English. You cannot coerce someone into looking like an American, and a majority of Americans only look at me with abjection or fear since I have "wild" dreadlocks, which to them look unkept. In many cities, I am heckled on the street with terms like "nigger" and "faggot"; and in polite society, potential peers are taken aback at my personal history ("You can't REALLY be from there!") or even the mere fact that I am a trained philosopher and Web developer. In many ways I look like a "primitive" man largely on account of very matured dreadlocks, and this society is simply too naive, sexually repressed to allow for people who look like Russell Brand to walk the streets: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADJhErmJuoQ.
Every one of my days in public with you Americans reminds me of that interview. Even yesterday some square approached me to ask if rolling up one pant-leg was a "new fashion thing." I will not be trapped in a country of style-vultures-spies-after-our-personal-brands XOR complaint-ridden-poverty-stricken. I deserve better.
??? I wouldn't. But clearly these governments will.
We're getting muddled here. Stop asking "me" as if you are asking me, this user: wittysense. Whatever I personally would do is irrelevant, and the answer to your questions are NOT easy. They don't come easy. You don't just get the answer to these questions in passing in line at a coffeeshop, dude. And no one is calling these books with positive, pompous, bourgeoisie descriptors.
I said DRY. BORING. ANALYTIC. BORING. I didn't have fun reading this crock of shit, and I don't think I'm cooling on behalf of it. But talking about "what if they point a gun at me" premisses is so uncritically off the mark, and absolutely not at all even the beginning stages of how these people are thinking at an international or federal level.
The only way we can avoid fucking it up is by giving ourselves the opportunity to understand the conceptual schemes they are using. They use these schemes to produce vagueness and unclarity which results in MISMANAGED human lives (people shooting people because they follow orders) which results in SOMETIMES carnage and death. Yes, sometimes people just mug you. Shit happens. We're talking about GLOBAL if not effing INTERGALACTIC surveillance.
THIS is not a "shit happens" scenario. We need CRITICAL THINKING. May I say "critical thinking" without seemingly advancing some posh 1% tone? Everyone agrees with critical thinking. I am here trying to point you in the direction of those people who have given us critical thought on concepts like "amorality" and by analogy "alegality."
I'm [not] going to teach it to you. I had to read it myself, and I am quite confident I am not WAY of the mark. I can say "I have a degree in philosophy from a top school" but that won't convince anyone of my points. So I'm not arguing in that way. I'm telling you that "I have a degree in philosophy" at least affords me the telling of which authors one should read. Have SOME faith in that. Or just bloody a Google search. "Error Theory" "amorality" -- my typings here are DENSE with connected keywords.
"What if the President points a gun at you?" is the obvious response. It is RADICALLY different from "What if Joe points a gun at you?" You're asking the latter. I'm underlining the former. Why are they different? Why is one representative of this debate and the other not?
[EDIT: Some of my typos are so bloody self-defeating.]
Alain Badiou, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky. The only reason we're all seemingly fucked is because the U.S. DID a decent enough job to lock down knowledge and disseminate according to their time tables.
I'm not going to answer your thought experiment. I've been through it too many times. Go read HLA Hart. Go read Donald Dworkin. If all you can think in terms of is coercion, you are NOT in a good spot intellectually to deal with these problems. "So what if I hold a gun to you?" is so demonstrably non-critical, HLA Hart had to write a book "The Concept of Law" in order to demolish it with VERY, VERY, VERY boring to read, DRY analytic philosophizing.
Stop feigning dissent, and actually start reading.
This response is exactly the problem: "Live and let live." In the face of anarchy, this is not a mature or safe philosophy to hold for oneself or to recommend to others.
You have to understand that we are talking about (A) a legal system and (B) a moral system. We generally have moved away from absolutist moral systems, thus becoming more "error prone" there. At the same time, we all fully admit to the _belief_ that morality is "fuzzy" or "vague." So we allow for interpretation. However, no one will say thus vagueness entails a lack of any coherent system all together. So, they deduce that it must come from some supernatural substratum. Whatever. Belief in whatever you want in terms of metaphysics, but we are still in agreement about the phenomenological structuring of morality: it is underpinned by our capacity to agree or disagree. The moral system is available in virtue of our capacity to go one way or the other. Of course, the only "response" to a moral nihilist is to "slap" that person.
That's all within the framework of morality. What happens when we say it is METAPHYSICALLY impossible for there to exist disagreements at the LEGAL level of critical thinking? So ASSUMING that morality is the bedrock of legal systems, we're suggesting supervenience of properties related to the "spooky" properties that belie moral disagreement. Thus, legal systems (assuming the parasitic nature of the legal on top of the moral) become "error prone" and by John Mackie's argument: essentially erroneous.
We admit that law can be an artform. Who wants to allow for Dadaist lawyers ?
"That's a-legal" is just a can of worms, and you hackers are going to fuck it up.
Previous poster said all of that -- all of language, all of that "thinking outloud" -- ultimately to stick you with the oh-you-shouldn't-be-surprised "I don't have any theory of rights or justice, I'm just pointing out the violence that government tries to hide."
Of what Noam Chomsky has said time and time and time, and time, and time, and time, and time time time time motherfucking time again: "See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence."
It's like you GUYS ACTUALLY do not read, and if you do, we ALL know EXACTLY what it is you've read.
We are not prepared. We "hackers" today will be the anthropologists of this dystopia; nothing more.
It's like you're all hiding the belief that philosophy has not progressed since the time of Plato, and you don't want to admit it. Now I have to watch you all become your own little Socrates, from pg all the way down to the bottom of the barrel -- "hey, get a degree in philosophy sneee! it'll make you more well-rounded! sneee! haha! we're life hacking with the remnants of the failed capitalism cut us some slack -- play ball! sneee!"
Call it rambling, because you CHAPS just overanalyzed a whack-a-mole game (i.e., Snowden) all over my Web. Would MOST of you PLEASE go read a modern legal philosopher?
This can be done for other species, and this will tell us whether or not our thought-patterns are actually indicative of right-thinking, thus deserving to be repeated across larger regions of space-time.
I recommend a read of http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369939.Philosophical_Foun....