I have no idea how to dialog with you. Two things I do in these situations.
Try something different, an analogy or story maybe. Some other perspective.
Be specific. One question. One paragraph, with one theme. Remember Doug? Be succinct.
That could actually be easier to dialogue than your one liners.
It takes two to tango worth a darn. A little less stepping on my feet and a little more attentiveness could go a long ways.
It about arriving at conclusions about who we personally are as beings.
Specifically about our relationship with the thoughts we think.
It’s not about trying to imagine the “meaning” of universe - all that comes later.
Yes it does take others - so was?
Like being handed a dead rat.
stomp, stomp. …
What about dead-end philosophies? They’ve wasted plenty of time.
Well, I see you are not interested in my advice about how to dialog. And still apparently unaware of how you come across.
I recently read Ta-Nehesi Coates book, Between the World and Me. It’s in the form of a letter to his son. Coates grew up in a ghetto and used his intelligence to get out. While his friends were talking about who “owned” the streets, he looked at them and realized someone else did that urban planning and created the space where he and his friends had no real opportunity. The only opportunity was to leave, and that wasn’t easy either.
Here’s how those young men would respond to these questions.
They would define themselves in relation to the concrete and other poor and uninformed people they saw.
They would know their mother, and maybe a father. It’s unlikely their school would do a good job of teaching about the history of the universe and evolution.
See above. They would see the super highways cutting their neighborhoods but not know that some white people planned that without caring how it affected their grandparents.
With all of the pressures of that environment, questions of “why” or “how does my mind work” are unlikely to be central in their thoughts.
Their value and purpose would be defined by how well they can defend themselves by whatever physical onslaught the day brought, and if they’re lucky, by some love of a few family members.
Because of all of the above, something like understanding impulses wouldn’t occur to them. Coates was able to work his way out of that do that reflection. Most people on the planet don’t. That’s why it took 10,000 years to develop the methods that we now use to discern truth.
I don’t know what you see in the posts that I make that leads you to think I’m doing anything other than appreciating the history of humans, and how our brains developed, and how society developed to somehow throw off the yoke of oppression and overcome the ignorant idea that some people are naturally better than others. I don’t think, “why am I here” is a fundamental mystery. We have wars over who’s origin story is the correct one, but I see that as chicken and egg, the mystery is, WHY DO WE HAVE WARS?
The mythology of claiming to know about who we are is there to build community, which sometimes (often) takes the form of building armies and justifying fighting over land when we should be cooperating to make sure everyone is fed and cared for. The vast majority of people will tell you that the most important thing in the world is their family. Then there are a few who want more, who think to protect their family they need to get a bunch of people who look like them to go kill some other families that don’t look like them.
Getting the scientific answer to our origins is only a slight improvement. It has helped reduce the fighting, true, but it has also created new things to fight about and to use when fighting. The mysteries of how we get brain/bodies to understand that they are brain/bodies and we don’t need to find some ultimate truth, that’s a good one to start on.
I don’t have any problem with your concept of body/brain or the story of how you arrived at it. I critique how you are presenting and what you think it should mean to others. You take that to mean I’m dismissing it. I’m talking about language and how we can get people whose minds are in the 19th century to see the reality we are in now. I think we agree it’s a good idea to get people to understand modern science and we agree on a lot about the body/brain and how it functions.
Why you want to argue about the details of Berlin’s thoughts, I don’t know.
Because you shared it and his idealized version doesn’t work.
The devil is in the detail.
He wasn’t even happy with it.
That’s what good philosophy is all about, critiquing and learning, growing and evolving,
or?
But you don’t critique and learn. You do this.
Why is that question off limit’s.
Oh and I’m still talking about the same constellation of ideas, I’ve been developing.
And suddenly find myself lectured about life in the ghetto, and sounds like I’m being spanked for not reaching out them, or trying to relate to, or who knows what, sometime it feels like Gish Gallop land. I try to focus on something and you come at me with, yeah, but…
10/10 - Dialogue with “Buddha Science” - Conclusion (Steve Daut)
Yeah I think you’re creating all sorts of unnecessary and sometimes down right coy barriers to us communicating.
You can ask anything you want, but if you want dialog, then dialog. You claim you are dialoging. I say that question is not dialog. So, dialog with me about how that is dialog.
I don’t know what happened to this forum. it’s an exchange of ideas, we literally post lectures. Now everyone is complaining that they are being lectured to. Can’t you just read words and consider and them and then speak your peace? Emphasis on peace.
I’m critiquing your ideas about exploring who we are via the science of evolution and what we are learning about the brain. I love those things. I love talking them, but they don’t apply well to people who have not had the same opportunities you and I had to learn them and then apply them. I can’t get any other conversation going without you interjecting about the body/brain or Write4 interjecting about microtubules or math, or users whose names begin “d” telling me I shouldn’t vote for Biden. This isn’t a science based discussion forum anymore, it’s a radio that plays 5 stations at once.
Look at post #2. You accuse me of “yeah but”?? Really. Your post is nothing but. You ask for a description of the thing you quoted, which is a description of thing I’m talking about. What about it don’t you agree/get/like?
Well that’s your most constructive sentence in a long while.
I’ll probably get back to some other time and place.
Seems to me a philosophical concept, or series of scientific facts are not dependent on who all can understand them.
I appreciate what you say about opportunities, better than you can imagine, I’ve live an introspective life, organic life, hitchhiking dealing with strangers, working difference job & circumstance, which formed my futures, being a hero, shooting myself in the foot, planting roots and watching them grow and get pruned and so on and quite a bit of the rest of it.
The razor thin line between success and defeat, and how those things can flipflop. I know the underside of bridges, and passed through some homeless encampments and know there but for the grace of the universe, go I. I’ve thought long and hard about interactions between people - but trying to distill and present things I learned, are about me explaining myself, and thinking, hoping somewhere along line are other character with whom it’ll resonate, they will something of value. I can’t help it if someone didn’t learn to read, so they’ll not know any of the stuff I’ve been able to read, (unless they get luck too), I can only deal with my lot with what dignity and honor than I can.
As this paragraph goes along it turns into word spaghetti that doesn’t relate to real living, to me.
It’s a fractal of the Abrahamic thinking I critique society for - Self-absorbed, self-serving, and doesn’t do any justice to the natural world and our many connections to it.
So I was curious if you could define, or define, anything Berlin wrote, because reading on, I could find plenty to complain about, and explain why.
But seem you expect me to say, what a beautiful edifice, and be content.
I’m not we’re destroying ourselves, some should think about why it had to so inevitable.
I don’t argue with your concept. You think I do, but I don’t. You asked, “isn’t ‘who am I’ the question that every kid grapples with?” (post 12)That’s what I answered. That is a question about “who”. You asked that, I answered it, then you wrote long paragraphs about the concept and how I’m ignoring it and not getting it.
Is this summary anywhere near what you’re seeing? I’ve been asking you to separate the idea of body/brain from its practical applications for months now. This statement indicates you see I’m doing that. If I said, “the concept is wrong because some people can’t apply it”, then I could see why you’d have a problem with me, but I don’t think I said that.
I know I didn’t flesh it out in the OP, but I’ve discussed it since. This speech was presented to a woman who managed to convince her controlling father to let her go to college, and it was a giant step in her understanding that she could be something other than one of many wives to another controlling man.
If that isn’t justice in the natural world, what is? She studied history, not neuroscince and evolution. I’m sure she is now more aware of those things than when she was in her isolated home, but I don’t see why she would need to include facts about biology when writing about 19th century societal progress.
No, no, no. I linked Stanford, a giant critique. Critique away. But saying philosophers do nothing but self promotion* is not critique. Saying it’s Abrahamic thinking is a catch phrase, a sound bite, not a critique.
As in, your quote, “What do you suppose the goal of philosophy is, beyond creating a name for oneself ?” post 13.
You mean your #14
None of that was in the OP - and you didn’t even include a link to her story.
I forgot all about her as soon as I started reading about Berlin.
Guess, that’s my bad. Sorry.
Justice in the natural world?
Or do you mean poetic justice?
I can’t follow the rest of that because I don’t know her story.
Oh so critique is acceptable? 
Not all philosophers, but the popularizers wouldn’t be on the top of the hill if they weren’t also focused on self-promotion. Go back to Descartes, he was profound thinker, but that thinking and the spells he could weave, or failed to weave in other cases, was also his meal ticket (finding sponsors) and colored his thoughts and output. Nothing wrong with that, it’s how life works. And he worked it, for all he could. In fact, I’ve read some good arguments that he considered himself a mathematician, and would have be surprised, if not hurt, to think, people would remember him a philosopher rather then a concept discovering, accomplished mathematician.
It’s more than a catch phrase because it’s definable. Abrahamic thinking spawned the three most important religions - after many centuries the inadequacy of religion gave the birth to Philosophy, which eventually gave birth to science.
Boiling down the Abrahamic down to a couple fundamental concepts from which all other derive: Self-absorbed thinking and Self-serving action.
And it is reflected in pretty near all of Western history and empire building, the age of expansion and colonialization and this same undercurrent runs through the science that enable our great feats of discovery, subjugation, and exploitation
That collective disregard for the flip side of the coin -we’re like hopeless junkies; car weren’t enough, we need self driving cars, computer power wasn’t enough, now we need machine that will do our thinking for us.
And people continue to believe free energy will be the answer to everything. it’s like kindergartners all around, leaders even worse that regular Dick and Janes.
And if we are destroying our very life support system - no problem the billionaires will ferry us to other planet’s and a new home.
Yeah, sorry. What applies to some doesn’t apply to all. Usually I delete stuff like that, sometimes my guards not up.
Sometimes, I’m more rattled and despondent about the situation than others,
with the torrent of bad news constantly reminding me of our unraveling society together with biological unraveling, on pretty near every level.
Not to mention the continued low regard for Earth systems, and how we are transitioning them to an entirely, radically, hotter more energized global heat and moisture distribution engine. While we continue our continued obsession with, “out there” rather than paying attention to what’s happening down here. Why should out great thinkers and opinion drivers share some blame for our collective mental complacency.
But I know the choices have been made, I’ve being a spectator to history since being they killed President Kennedy, I’ve been witnessed many knowingly counter-productive decisions, that promised nothing but more problems - it was knowable, but on they went. Now we reap the harvest of what they sow, and frankly, yeah, on a certain level I’m as p’ed off as dadada. It’s going to blow a little steam know and then.
Now all the stuff (think trajectories and vectors) all the people wanted to ignore, and for the most part did ignore, are playing themselves out governed by “physical realities” that don’t care, and their long ago pipe-dreams and promises, or my own upset, simply don’t matter.
Nothing I can do will change it, take a chill pill petie, hang on for the ride and focus on my self and the immediate world situation, deal with the things I can and should deal with. Worry about my own choices more than anothers, and so on. I try, but as dadada demonstrates, there’s an awful lot of upsetting stuff out. - so much, we are forced to ignore great swaths, or drown in self-loathing and absolute nihilism.
gotta run
This discussion seems to invoke this prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.[[6]]
(Serenity Prayer - Wikipedia)
Which is a wish and which I have modified for atheists to read :
“Brain, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Which is a command to self.
1 Like
you misunderstood that
I followed up and clarified the story more than once. I quit. You are not even trying.
We are definitely having two different conversations.
Unfortunately, spring time and days have become really crowded and I simply haven’t had the chance to do the homework to catch up “her” story and then to catch up to your conversation.
Sorry,
No offense or insult intended.
.
.
,
Catch up? I literally put it in this thread. I used small words.
Or, if you have whole 2 minutes to spare