from Hacker News

Head-Trapped – Descartes, Dawkins, Hobbes, Marx, Mill, Darwin

by k1m on 5/28/23, 2:22 PM with 31 comments

by nickelpro on 5/29/23, 11:45 AM
> If I identify with the anger, if I think it’s me – ‘I’m angry’ – I’m very likely to pursue, and act on, the angry thought and feeling. After all, I’m just me being me. But because I’m actually the observer of my thoughts and feelings – because I’m separate – I can think: ‘There’s anger in me.’
Ah, mis-step here. You just said that thoughts and feelings are things one cannot have, but merely observe.
You cannot think, "There's anger in me." Without a consciousness that independently generates thoughts, which violates the thesis statement:
> I know that ‘I am’ because I am aware of thoughts, emotions, external objects, not because I think.
Can't have it both ways I'm afraid.
I'm a bigger fan of framings that allow for different abstraction levels or lenses of thought, all of them belonging to the same consciousness. "Emotionally I feel this, but logically I think this, and instinctually I believe this."
by jemmyw on 5/29/23, 1:06 PM
`There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.’ (Hobbes, ‘Leviathan’, Oxford University Press, 1998, p.41)
> This is fundamentally wrong
The author has an axe to grind. You might disagree with the statement by Hobbes or you may agree with it. Either way, it's not the kind of thing you can say is fundamentally wrong. It's a philosophical statement about the mind.
Besides which, it seems true to me, you can not be perpetually at peace. Eventually you're going to get hungry and whatever your process of gaining nutrition it is unlikely to be mediative.
by thx-2718 on 5/28/23, 3:00 PM
"This is why the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was so wrong when he wrote:
```
    ‘We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.’ (Richard Dawkins, ‘The Selfish Gene’, preface to 1976 edition, Oxford University Press, 1989, p.v)
```
We are not ‘blindly programmed’ at all. We are aware of the thoughts, passions and instinctual programming that drive us."
Author lost me there when they failed to understand what Dawkins is saying here and insufficiently refuting Dawkins (probably due to lack of understanding it).
Observationally we have become aware of our base instincts over time (through science) however we're pretty much at their whim.
We don't choose or control or have any real influence other than following our programming as to what we find sexually attractive or not.
by james-bcn on 5/29/23, 12:16 PM
Sorry I normally wouldn't post this kind of thing here but this video of Eckhart Tolle talking about "I" put to music is very relevant to this and very cool I think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1iWK3dlowI
by pgorczak on 5/29/23, 12:28 PM
> There is an observer and that which is observed, the thought. I am the observer, not the observed.
Why couldn’t you be both? The duality of physical and metaphysical self is beautifully illustrated in the Tree of Jiva and Atman from a few thousand years ago: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Jiva_and_Atman
by gregfjohnson on 5/29/23, 6:14 PM
A person's mind or quality of consciousness is a work in progress. It evolves and develops over a lifetime. We can in fact self-referentially make choices that affect the trajectory of our mind's development. A meditation practice is one such choice that I have personally found helpful. My hoped-for trajectory is toward the following: thoughtful, mature, wise, sane. The opposites provide a useful contrast: unthoughtful, immature, unwise, insane. Other characteristics on the hoped-for trajectory: calm, aware, caring.
However, this all poses an evolutionary quandary. If a company or movement or institution wants to spread, one highly effective means is to facilitate a consciousness in the public that is manipulable, reactive, ignorant, and controllable. Advertising sometimes seems to be dual-purpose: convince consumers to buy products, and also, more subtly, shape consumer consciousness so that it is more amenable to manipulation.
Bad religion, bad companies, and bad social movements very effectively use this strategy. And they succeed. Good religion, good companies, and good social movements also exist. But these often seem less effective and less successful, at least in the short term.
It is a paradox: How does an institution encourage and facilitate inner freedom, wisdom, and all of those good things, and also get people to do what it needs them to do in order that the institution itself can survive and continue to exist?
by m4nu3l on 5/29/23, 1:53 PM
"Obviously, the past does not exist; it is a collection of mere memories, impressions in the mind. But the future also does not exist; it is a collection of ideas about what should or might happen"
It's been proved beyond reasonable doubt that time is as real as space and what is an illusion is the flow of time. There is no "present" moment. Every moment and place exists in time-space with different versions of you thinking they are in the present. So it's exactly the opposite.
You could say that taken one of those points in time and named it "present" you can say that the past and future do not existent within that moment. But because of the relativity of simultaneity you now also have to pick an arbitrary frame of reference to define "preset".
by 3rdthoughtsmay on 5/29/23, 2:28 PM
> "What is an illusion, is the flow of time. There is no 'present' moment.
So We don't choose to control, or have any influence?
> If you realize that "we" are observers of our thoughts, and not necessarily thinkers, it may be weird to value the worth of an (one only!) introspection.
But you can have a thought that you object to, or a thing, something materialistical and assign that thought another thought?
Hint: 2nd Art Law, 'Mass can be trained around Informationpoints of a Reality'
> A 'metathought' dualism -or you may call it a kind of 'mechanistic-thinking'
?! ^^
by bloomingeek on 5/29/23, 1:56 PM
I came up with a word of advice at work because of something that happened to me, "If you want to screw the company, that's none of my business, but don't screw me because I won't screw you." I know this is overly simplistic, however it speaks to the idea that if you come up with some action or idea, consider how it may affect others. Selfishness is a huge root of all evil.
And yes, after giving my advice, I also tell them screwing the company was a bad idea.
by kayo_20211030 on 5/29/23, 1:53 PM
The joy is in the doing. Darwin was rescued by the doing; Mill by doing differently. I have no particular opinion on meditation, but it just seems like some form of "doing" too. Provocative, but let's not be calling everybody wrong, when they're just doing as best they can.
by mensetmanusman on 5/29/23, 1:25 PM
Debating axioms is the oldest tradition in philosophy.