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| Author |
Message |
md
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Emerson's advice to Grex
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Dec 1 14:12 UTC 2001 |
Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real.
Perhaps they are.
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| 56 responses total. |
senna
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response 1 of 56:
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Dec 1 16:04 UTC 2001 |
There is no evidence that peole are real. Any ar4guments to that effect are
pointless and absurd.
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rcurl
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response 2 of 56:
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Dec 1 17:40 UTC 2001 |
Arugments that arguments that people are real are absurd are pointless
and absurd.
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senna
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response 3 of 56:
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Dec 1 18:44 UTC 2001 |
Nonsense. Arguments suggesting that arguing the absurdity of the argument
that people are real is absurd are absurd and unfounded.
You might have to read that a few times, but since you are not real, you
don't.
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remmers
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response 4 of 56:
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Dec 1 18:54 UTC 2001 |
Read it a few times? I'd prefer not to read it at all!
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brighn
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response 5 of 56:
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Dec 1 19:44 UTC 2001 |
#2> There's a sizable philosophical literature, the bulk of philosophy, going
back millenia, that argue whether people are real; Plato argues as much. Are
you saying that Plato's arguments were absurd and pointless?
(Sorry, Grex, couldn't let two gauntlets in a row lie still. ;} )
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scott
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response 6 of 56:
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Dec 1 20:07 UTC 2001 |
Quite a lot of what Plato & his conteporaries said was absurd; they were great
at coming up with theories but not so good at actually testing them. For
instance, "ice floats because it is flat, while rocks sink because they are
round and able to break the surface of the water". Apparently they didn't
try to float any flat rocks.
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rcurl
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response 7 of 56:
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Dec 1 20:15 UTC 2001 |
Plato argues no such thing. His argument, summaried at
http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture8b.html, is that
"Building upon the wisdom of Socrates and Parmenides, Plato argued that
reality is known only through the mind. There is a higher world,
independent of the world we may experience through our senses. Because the
senses may deceive us, it is necessary that this higher world exist, a
world of Ideas or Forms -- of what is unchanging, absolute and universal.
In other words, although there may be something from the phenomenal world
which we consider beautiful or good or just, Plato postulates that there
is a higher unchanging reality of the beautiful, goodness or justice. To
live in accordance with these universal standards is the good life -- to
grasp the Forms is to grasp ultimate truth."
This is a far cry from arguing that people are not REAL. Plato only
argued that our knowledge of people is only in our minds - a tautology.
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rcurl
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response 8 of 56:
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Dec 1 20:15 UTC 2001 |
#6 slipped in.
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flem
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response 9 of 56:
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Dec 1 21:12 UTC 2001 |
I'm offended at the suggestion that I ought not to question the evidence of
my senses. There is no evidence for the existence of other entities besides
the brain-in-a-jar that is me; in fact, any such "evidence" must necessarily
be the result of circular reasoning. Note that I avoid the (mis)use of the
term "logic" here.
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senna
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response 10 of 56:
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Dec 1 22:36 UTC 2001 |
Give the greek scientists a break--they had no bodies of evidence to base
things on. :) The all-powerful scientific method was not well known.
It depends on what you mean by "real," Rane. Most philosophers don't argue
against the reality of our existence so much as our perception of it.
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brighn
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response 11 of 56:
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Dec 1 22:48 UTC 2001 |
#7> If you're going to summarize the entire works of Plato into 10 lines and
pretend that that's a sufficient and complete answer to my criticism -- which
referred also to all the other philosophers in the meantime -- and further
distorts my assertion (I did not say that plato argued that humans were not
real, I said he wrote articles about WHETHER they were real, i.e., about the
nature of objective v. subjective reality, which articles you provide a
summary for), then there's no point debating the point.
In other words, you agree with my assertion. Plato provided an argument abour
whether things in the universe (including people) were real. Do you disagree
that you agree with that?
#10, para 2> At least SOMEONE got my point. Thanks, senna.
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rcurl
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response 12 of 56:
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Dec 1 22:55 UTC 2001 |
I didn't mean anything by "real": I was quoting an analysis of Plato.
But Plato had a point, even though not knowing what was to come. If you
were the size of a quark and materialized in the body of a horse, what
would you make of it? Certainly not a "horse". Perhaps something closer to
Plato's Ideas or Forms - masses of swirling fields. Our ordinary concept
of horse is conditioned by the interaction of light with one and our
consciousness (whatever that is), and our expectation that we cannot walk
through one, even though both the horse and we are (about) 99.9999999%
space empty of matter (or, at least barionic matter).
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rcurl
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response 13 of 56:
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Dec 1 23:06 UTC 2001 |
Re #11: Do I disagree or agree with what? Your statement in #5 that
"Plato argues as much" I understood to mean you were saying that Plato
argued that people were not "real". That's not how I understood Plato.
But if you didn't mean what I thought you meant... you should be
clearer.
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drew
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response 14 of 56:
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Dec 1 23:34 UTC 2001 |
Seems to me Plato was just overestimating the effect of surface tension...
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richard
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response 15 of 56:
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Dec 2 03:48 UTC 2001 |
who knows who is real. apparently on AOL, there is a virtual user, a
user that is actually a program. This user chats with others and
goes into different chat rooms. presumably, as a program, it can only
offer simple responses and couldnt answer questions that require non
generic answers. But the item I read indicated the virtual user has
fooled some. So who knows what the future holds, when programming gets
more sophisticated, and more interactive, and you really can't tell whats
real or not.
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janc
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response 16 of 56:
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Dec 2 04:14 UTC 2001 |
It would be boring if people weren't real. So they are. Q.E.D.
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rcurl
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response 17 of 56:
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Dec 2 06:20 UTC 2001 |
Many people find unreal fantasies entertaining and hardly boring.
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senna
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response 18 of 56:
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Dec 2 08:06 UTC 2001 |
Some of them take those fantasies more seriously than others.
The way we perceive reality is also a fun subject. Kant's structured
perception, for instance. I think the "sense deception" argument used for
basing reality upon the intellect alone has been wiped out by scientific
advance, however.
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mdw
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response 19 of 56:
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Dec 2 08:33 UTC 2001 |
Richard's "virtual user" has been around for years in IRC-land, in the
form of various "bots". The most common bots these days respond to
simple commands to adminster the room, but there are many other forms,
some of which go to some length to mimic human behavior. The idea of a
"virtual user" can also be traced back to the 60's, with programs such
as "Eliza".
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senna
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response 20 of 56:
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Dec 2 18:58 UTC 2001 |
We've had a few on here, and there've been more on mnet.
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rcurl
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response 21 of 56:
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Dec 2 22:48 UTC 2001 |
Did you enjoy 'Eliza', Marcus?
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md
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response 22 of 56:
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Dec 3 02:39 UTC 2001 |
Emerson is only saying, treat men and women AS IF they were real. He
isn't trying to make the case one way or the other for them actually
being real. More interesting, I think, is that he seems to be implying
that treating men and women as if they were real means treating them
well.
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brighn
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response 23 of 56:
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Dec 3 04:25 UTC 2001 |
#13: I was very clear. I wrote:
#2> There's a sizable philosophical literature, the bulk of philosophy, going
back millenia, that argue whether people are real; Plato argues as much
That is, Plato presents arguments whether people (and things in the universe
in general) are real.
I don't think I was unclear, I think that you assumed that I was saying
something that I didn't.
So, do you disagree that Plato presents arguments about whether people (and
things) are real?
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mdw
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response 24 of 56:
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Dec 3 04:52 UTC 2001 |
Eliza had long since been translated into Basic, before I encountered
it.
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