₦airaland Forum

Welcome, Nerdcat

Your very well weighed responses to a few theological / philosophical matters interest me. Can you summarize your worldview for our benefit. Lets start with -

- Do you believe in the existence of God
- What do you think you are
- What is the meaning / purpose of life to you
- Do you believe in life after death

Many thanks.

DeepSight:
Welcome, Nerdcat

Thanks for giving me audience.

Your very well weighed responses to a few theological / philosophical matters interest me. Can you summarize your worldview for our benefit. Lets start with -

- Do you believe in the existence of God

No. I find all evidence presented in support of the concept to be insufficient and the logical architecture of classical theism - in particular - to be structurally compromised.

- What do you think you are

I think, therefore I am. 🙃

Tho I suspect you're looking for a more rigorous answer, so I'll say that I'm an arrangement of matter that just happens to be conscious, and self-aware. I'm not entirely sure how I gained this awareness, though I can try to speculate. I'm equally not sure how much more time I have left on this planet.

- What is the meaning / purpose of life to you

Meaning for me isn't discovered, but constructed. I don't believe in an objective meaning of life, as per the religious rhetorics for instance. Personally, I build my own meaning of life from my curiosity of life itself, the people around me, the universe in general etc. If I hard to pick my current purpose/meaning - it's to acquire sufficient material resources in terms of food, money, and more, to satisfy myself and my loved ones for as long as I can breathe.

- Do you believe in life after death

No, and I think the desire for it is psychologically understandable but also quite dangerous in epistemic terms, as it too easily becomes the engine driving belief rather than the conclusion following from evidence. What I find more interesting is the question of whether "I" persist continuously even now, between sleep cycles. That one keeps me up at night, fittingly enough.

Many thanks.

The pleasure is mine.

NerdCat:
I think, therefore I am. 🙃

Sorry for barging in. But I wonder how true this is, and if you have considered that 'you are, therefore you think'?

Essentially, did your "thinking" precede your existence, is what I am asking?

NerdCat:
Thanks for giving me audience.

The pleasure is all mine - the high quality in your thought processes was noticeable right away and for me such a thing is almost like a narcotic to a drug-addict.

No. I find all evidence presented in support of the concept to be insufficient and the logical architecture of classical theism - in particular - to be structurally compromised.

Classical theism aside, do you countenance the purely philosophical concept of the existence of a necessary thing, a necessary first cause of this material and finite world / plane / dimension / reality.

I refer to necessary things in philosophy as opposed to contingent things -

https://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/necessity.shtml

And if God were defined strictly as -

That self existent root of all other existence. Would you say that such exists.

I think, therefore I am. 🙃

Cogito ergo sum. Descartes.

But this saying is used as logical deduction that we exist - and not of an explanation of what we are. But one concedes that it may also demonstrate that we are thinking beings.

Tho I suspect you're looking for a more rigorous answer, so I'll say that I'm an arrangement of matter that just happens to be conscious, and self-aware. I'm not entirely sure how I gained this awareness, though I can try to speculate. I'm equally not sure how much more time I have left on this planet.

Do you think that a machine could achieve self consciousness? I ask this question because personally I doubt it strongly and it is related to the issue of whether any configuration of matter alone could achieve the same.

In thinking of these questions please let me know if you think a machine can ever feel pain.

Meaning for me isn't discovered, but constructed. I don't believe in an objective meaning of life, as per the religious rhetorics for instance. Personally, I build my own meaning of life from my curiosity of life itself, the people around me, the universe in general etc. If I hard to pick my current purpose/meaning - it's to acquire sufficient material resources in terms of food, money, and more, to satisfy myself and my loved ones for as long as I can breathe.

Fair enough - at the subjective level. Am I to take it that you are firm in your mind that there is no purpose of this world inherent in any external factor beyond us?

No, and I think the desire for it is psychologically understandable but also quite dangerous in epistemic terms, as it too easily becomes the engine driving belief rather than the conclusion following from evidence. What I find more interesting is the question of whether "I" persist continuously even now, between sleep cycles. That one keeps me up at night, fittingly enough.

Eureka! I have found it!
I have finally found someone who wonders about one of the strange things I wonder about. Because I have strange thoughts, wondering for example if I have not already passed on and happen to still be having a human experience in another dimension cut off from the last point when I was awake or conscious. This leads to / springs from / is related to several other considerations some of which question whether this reality or experience is real or simulated. So let me ask if you think experience is real, or a sort of imposed virtual reality.

What do you think of that possibility and of Simulation Theory? Maybe you can also chip in here -

https://www.nairaland.com/8621001/lordreed-revisiting-simulation-reality

budaatum:
Sorry for barging in. But I wonder how true this is, and if you have considered that 'you are, therefore you think'?

Essentially, did your "thinking" precede your existence, is what I am asking?

That's a sharp reversal, but then again I don't suppose Descartes was making a causal claim about sequence. He was establishing certainty from the inside. The thinking is the evidence of existence, not its cause. You've reframed the epistemology as ontology. Those aren't the same argument.

NerdCat:
That's a sharp reversal, but then again I don't suppose Descartes was making a causal claim about sequence. He was establishing certainty from the inside. The thinking is the evidence of existence, not its cause. You've reframed the epistemology as ontology. Those aren't the same argument.

I am not presenting it as the same argument, but as a different argument entirely, for consideration, if you will.

I think, only because I exist, and would not be thinking if I do not exist. But I do understand that some may not be like me, and their existence is proven by the fact that they think. Though note that I do not need to consider whether you think or not before I can determine your existence or not.

If I become brain dead at this particular moment, and become incapable of thinking, I will still exist despite having no thoughts in my head. I will still need food and have my bum cleaned, despite my lack of thought. Same as I obviously must still exist when I sleep and dream not.

budaatum:
I am not presenting it as the same argument, but as a different argument entirely, for consideration, if you will.

I think, only because I exist, and would not be thinking if I do not exist. But I do understand that some may not be like me, and their existence is proven by the fact that they think. Though note that I do not need to consider whether you think or not before I can determine your existence or not.

If I become brain dead at this particular moment, and become incapable of thinking, I will still exist despite having no thoughts in my head. I will still need food and have my bum cleaned, despite my lack of thought. Same as I obviously must still exist when I sleep and dream not.

Valid and interesting interjections. I would however, contest that beyond knowing that one himself exists, we can know for certain that other people exist. Every other person could be a hallucination of some sort. "Cogito" does not infer the existence of other people.

DeepSight:
Valid and interesting interjections. I would however, contest that beyond knowing that one himself exists, we can know for certain that other people exist. Every other person could be a hallucination of some sort. "Cogito" does not infer the existence of other people.

How could you "be a hallucination of some sort"?

Am I braind dead or something, and therefore can not differentiate what actually really exists from what I hallucinate exists or does not exist in my head?

And how can I be a "hallucination of some sort"?

If I hit my existing hand with an existing hammer, is it my hand that does not exist, or the hammer or the existing severe pain that I will feel, that would not exist and that I am hallucinating?

budaatum:
How could you "be a hallucination of some sort"?

Am I braind dead or something, and therefore can not differentiate what actually really exists from what I hallucinate exists or does not exist in my head?

And how can I be a "hallucination of some sort"?

If I hit my existing hand with an existing hammer, is it my hand that does not exist, or the hammer or the existing severe pain that I will feel, that would not exist and that I am hallucinating?

We would have to go into the very complicated discussion of virtual reality / simulated reality to address these.
But in summary what I am saying is that you can only deduce your own existence, nothing else.

Descartes cogito was evidence to himself that he must exist, as "the very act of doubting one's existence proves that a thinker must exist to do the doubting". It however is not evidence that anyone else would accept or need for Descartes existence, since, for starts, I can not enter Descartes head to check whether he thinks or not, and can simply observe Descartes existence with my own eyes.

If Descarte were a car driving along a road I am about to cross, the fact that he thinks or not would not be considered by me before I step into the road or not to cross. And if Descartes were a rock in the middle of a path, I would not check the rock's thinking before I swerve past or walk into it.

Besides, a rock and the car obviously exist, and neither thinks, as far as I know, so thinking is not evidence for existence.

DeepSight:
We would have to go into the very complicated discussion of virtual reality / simulated reality to address these.

No we do not "have to go into the very complicated discussion of virtual reality / simulated reality to address these", for we already have the simulated existing reality of our conversing in this virtual reality of Nairaland to determine yours and my own existence!

DeepSight:
But in summary what I am saying is that you can only deduce your own existence, nothing else.

I disagree! Because, for instance, and for some reason. you "deduced" the existence of NerdCat when you created this thread, or you wouldn't have created a thread to question NerdCat, whose existence you had already "deduced" and accepted before creating this thread. Unless you want me to believe you created this thread to question NerdCat whom you hallucinated into existence in your own mind. Which can be true, please note, so let me check that NerdCat is not an illusion you hallucinate into existence.

NerdCat, please, do you exist in your own right or are you an hallucination created by Deepsight?

And yes, Deepsight, it is still possible that NerdCat is a hallucination that you are having in your head, but I have no reason to trust that you are lying to me and simulating a NerdCat that does not exist in his own right. But please let me know if that is the case so I can correct my thinking.

budaatum:
Descartes cogito was evidence to himself that he must exist, as "the very act of doubting one's existence proves that a thinker must exist to do the doubting". It however is not evidence that anyone else would accept or need for Descartes existence, since, for starts, I can not enter Descartes head to check whether he thinks or not, and can simply observe Descartes existence with my own eyes.

If Descarte were a car driving along a road I am about to cross, the fact that he thinks or not would not be considered by me before I step into the road or not to cross. And if Descartes were a rock in the middle of a path, I would not check the rock's thinking before I swerve past or walk into it.

Besides, a rock and the car obviously exist, and neither thinks, as far as I know, so thinking is not evidence for existence.

Its better to say that thinking is not the only way to prove existence.

budaatum:
No we do not "have to go into the very complicated discussion of virtual reality / simulated reality to address these", for we already have the simulated existing reality of our conversing in this virtual reality of Nairaland to determine yours and my own existence!


I disagree! Because, for instance, and for some reason. you "deduced" the existence of NerdCat when you created this thread, or you wouldn't have created a thread to question NerdCat, whose existence you had already "deduced" and accepted before creating this thread. Unless you want me to believe you created this thread to question NerdCat whom you hallucinated into existence in your own mind. Which can be true, please note, so let me check that NerdCat is not an illusion you hallucinate into existence.

NerdCat, please, do you exist in your own right or are you an hallucination created by Deepsight?

And yes, Deepsight, it is still possible that NerdCat is a hallucination that you are having in your head, but I have no reason to trust that you are lying to me and simulating a NerdCat that does not exist in his own right. But please let me know if that is the case so I can correct my thinking.

Lol. What I am talking about is deep. Its the thought that everything around us is just in our mind, or a projection of it. I have no way of validating that thought, neither do I assert it to be true in anyway. Its simply a thought. Speculation on reality.

DeepSight:
Its better to say that thinking is not the only way to prove existence.

Okay, it may be better, but, thinking is not a way to prove existence at all, as far as I am concerned.

My telly on which I am watching the Miami F1 is not thinking anything but it exists, along with Kimi Antonelli who has also just won the race. The rice that I will cook to eat with the vegetable and fish that I cooked yesterday does not think and does exist, and I will not merely be thinking the I that I know exists is eating it when I lift up some with my fork and put in my mouth and eat to assuage the hunger that I am currently not just hallucinating that I am feeling.

If all those things do not actually exist and I am just hallucinating them into my own imaginary existence, I'd package it all like Disney does and sell it to you and co so you can somehow experience what I hallucinate, and I'd be "hallucinating" real millions of pounds into my real bank account and go buy myself a real spanking brand new red Ferrari with the real money I earn selling it. And I wouldn't even need the Ferrari salesperson to hallucinate that I paid real money, because I would have earned it from you and co.

Flip side is, the fact that I can hallucinate a thing does not make it real, and I better know the difference because, if my eye (mind) is that dim, I must be full of the dark stuff that emits from one's rear end!

Do forgive me for quoting from the holy book of fiction.

DeepSight:
The pleasure is all mine - the high quality in your thought processes was noticeable right away and for me such a thing is almost like a narcotic to a drug-addict.

This analogy is very, very dangerous. 😂

Classical theism aside, do you countenance the purely philosophical concept of the existence of a necessary thing, a necessary first cause of this material and finite world / plane / dimension / reality.

I refer to necessary things in philosophy as opposed to contingent things -

https://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/necessity.shtml

And if God were defined strictly as -

That self existent root of all other existence. Would you say that such exists.

Why call it God though? I mean, don't get me wrong here - if we're talking strictly on the basis of philosophical soundness, it's a coherent concept that's not easy to dismiss. A necessary being, a self-subsistent ground of all contingent existence, sidesteps several problems that cripple classical theism. I'll put it like this: if you wish to take the term "God" and define it strictly as that necessary root, but importing nothing further - no personality, no moral preferences, no codices, no interventionist agenda - then I may be considerably less resistant to the idea. The honest answer for me though is: I don't know. And when I don't know stuff, I withhold belief.

Cogito ergo sum. Descartes.

But this saying is used as logical deduction that we exist - and not of an explanation of what we are. But one concedes that it may also demonstrate that we are thinking beings.

Fair enough.

Do you think that a machine could achieve self consciousness? I ask this question because personally I doubt it strongly and it is related to the issue of whether any configuration of matter alone could achieve the same.

I think the honest answer to this question will depend entirely on what consciousness actually is, and we don't know, so... yeah. If consciousness is substrate-independent - tracking information patterns rather than biological tissue - then a sufficiently complex machine may already be having something like experience. If it requires something biology does that we haven't identified, then probably not.

In thinking of these questions please let me know if you think a machine can ever feel pain.

Again, don't know. And to be honest, that uncertainty should genuinely unsettle us.

Fair enough - at the subjective level. Am I to take it that you are firm in your mind that there is no purpose of this world inherent in any external factor beyond us?

Firmly is probably too strong a word. I hold it as my best current assessment, subject to revision. But yes, I find no compelling evidence for externally imposed purpose.

Eureka! I have found it!
I have finally found someone who wonders about one of the strange things I wonder about. Because I have strange thoughts, wondering for example if I have not already passed on and happen to still be having a human experience in another dimension cut off from the last point when I was awake or conscious. This leads to / springs from / is related to several other considerations some of which question whether this reality or experience is real or simulated. So let me ask if you think experience is real, or a sort of imposed virtual reality.

I've been there mate, trust. Too many times - that particular vertigo where you wonder whether the you who woke up is continuous with the you who fell asleep, or a new instance that merely inherited memories. It sits at the intersection of philosophy of mind, personal identity, and what we might loosely call simulation thinking. I can accept any definition for it, provided it has nothing to do with claims of being authored by a conscious designer.

What do you think of that possibility and of Simulation Theory? Maybe you can also chip in here -

https://www.nairaland.com/8621001/lordreed-revisiting-simulation-reality

Thank you. I've gone through the OP @link. Several of those arguments you put up there are not bad per se. Bostrom's trilemma especially is logically tight. Truly, if civilisations capable of ancestor simulations exist and tend to run many, the arithmetic does favour simulated existence over base reality.

Where I'd push back a little is the chain of inference. The Planck length is a resolution limit of our measurement tools and theoretical models that may actually indicate the limits of current physics rather than pixels in a program.
The observer effect is real and strange, but the consensus reading among physicists is that it doesn't require conscious observers, but physical interaction, which measuring instruments provide.
Some other stuff there like the double slit experiment isn't settled science. It's still a minority consensus.

The strongest argument you've got there is Bostrom's statistical one. However, I should point out to you - with regards to the argument - that the phrases "statistically probable" and "demonstrably true" occupy different epistemic categories - and that the simulation hypothesis, like God, risks becoming completely unfalsifiable, which kinda makes it scientifically inert, no matter how interesting it sounds.

budaatum:
Okay, it may be better, but, thinking is not a way to prove existence at all, as far as I am concerned.

Au contraire, thinking is definitely a way to prove existence because anything that thinks must be existing and remember the challenge is one that a person poses to himself which helps him affirm his own existence. As you yourself noted well, the very capacity to doubt your existence affirms it.

My telly on which I am watching the Miami F1 is not thinking anything but it exists, along with Kimi Antonelli who has also just won the race.

I really think Descartes had in mind sentient beings.

DeepSight:
Lol. What I am talking about is deep. Its the thought that everything around us is just in our mind, or a projection of it. I have no way of validating that thought, neither do I assert it to be true in anyway. Its simply a thought. Speculation on reality.

Deep? Then, forgive my shallowness please.

You are not just in my mind, Deepsight, and neither are you something that I project, and that is the truth whether asserted or not, and as validated by me, and I don't really understand what I would gain by speculating or thinking about your reality and existence or not much less my own real existence, unless I doubt my senses and my mind that I have worked on a lot so I am not deceived by myself.

But, do please let me know if you would rather I deceive myself about your own and my own existence, because, if I try really hard, I bet I can, but I can not fathom why I'd do that to me, or moreso to you, whom I'd be disregarding and disrespecting if I did that to us.

Please know that I have observed your frustration on another thread when discussing the racism of Charlie with those I would call hallucinators, and I can't say, from what I perceived, that you appreciated their hallucinating one tiny bit!

The first below is from Through the Looking-Glass.
The second is my own cogito.

DeepSight:
Au contraire, thinking is definitely a way to prove existence because anything that thinks must be existing and remember the challenge is one that a person poses to himself which helps him affirm his own existence. As you yourself noted well, the very capacity to doubt your existence affirms it.


I really think Descartes had in mind sentient beings.

Feeling proves my existence much better, is what I think. I just need lift up a hammer and bring it down very swiftly where I presume my hand to be, and see if my mouth does not yell when, or rather, if, I feel the pain. But since I have no such doubts, the exercise would be pointless.

Do let me know if you'd like me to prove to you whether you exist or not, please. I don't need to see physical you neither, note.

budaatum:
Deep? Then, forgive my shallowness please.

You are not just in my mind, Deepsight, and neither are you something that I project, and that is the truth whether asserted or not, and as validated by me, and I don't really understand what I would gain by speculating or thinking about your reality and existence or not much less my own real existence, unless I doubt my senses and my mind that I have worked on a lot so I am not deceived by myself.

But, do please let me know if you would rather I deceive myself about your own and my own existence, because, if I try really hard, I bet I can, but I can not fathom why I'd do that to me, or moreso to you, whom I'd be disregarding and disrespecting if I did that to us.

Please know that I have observed your frustration on another thread when discussing the racism of Charlie with those I would call hallucinators, and I can't say, from what I perceived, that you appreciated their hallucinating one tiny bit!

The first below is from Through the Looking-Glass.
The second is my own cogito.

I cannot emphasize enough that I dont assert it to be true that we are hallucinations or insist that the concepts of virtual reality or simulation theory are real. I am agnostic, I dont know, and needless to say everyone has to live their life on the presumption of reality. Otherwise you are cooked.
Its just a speculation on reality and for me, there can be endless possibilities as to what this mystical thing called life really is, and the truth, I am guessing is probably waaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond what we can even guess at.

DeepSight:
I cannot emphasize enough that I dont assert it to be true that we are hallucinations or insist that the concepts of virtual reality or simulation theory are real. I am agnostic, I dont know, and needless to say everyone has to live their life on the presumption of reality. Otherwise you are cooked.
Its just a speculation on reality and for me, there can be endless possibilities as to what this mystical thing called life really is, and the truth, I am guessing is probably waaaaaaaaaaaaaay beyond what we can even guess at.

I am not an agnostic on this subject, Deep. I am an atheist. And not just some atheist who believes or guesses or hallucinates that theos do not exist, but one who knows that theoses do not exist and are hallucinations that some create in their own heads and believe exist somewhere. So, perhaps kindly resist including me in your "we", because I am definitely not "we" with you on this and such subjects.

The below is from a book. I'll look for it and share, but in the meantime perhaps consider Cicero's, De Natura Deorum, though it's not so well revised. Neither book is responsible for my atheism. Note.

Found it.