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PleiadesRising | Mar 13, 2015 10:30 PM
Is anyone familiar with the Mechademia book series? Here's a link: http://mechademia.org/They look interesting enough, so I ordered vol.3, Limits of the Human. After I've digested it, I'll make my decision on whether or not to buy vol.4 as well, War/Time (which is quite relevant to my interests). |
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Lithic | Feb 13, 2015 5:09 PM
@omponk_donk: Added |
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omponk_donk | Feb 8, 2015 12:02 AM
Kiseijuu, please |
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Awashima | Jan 29, 2015 4:49 AM
I'm liking it very much so far. I mean there isn't any 'deep' philosophy or anything. Its like an interesting take on the idea of Limbo and how they decide between which person goes to 'hell' and who gets to return to the cycle of rebirth through these 'games'. I'm interested in how the characters will develop from there and what kind of 'personalities' the people that are being judged will present |
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Lithic | Jan 29, 2015 12:17 AM
@Awashima Unfortunately, I haven't started watching it yet. How are you liking the show so far? |
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Awashima | Jan 24, 2015 4:10 AM
Any thoughts on Death Parade so far? |
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GonzoLewd | Jan 21, 2015 7:26 PM
I'll post another Quote Debate next month. Going to be quite busy in a few weeks. |
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Lithic | Jan 21, 2015 6:18 PM
It's been a while since I've popped in and checked on everybody. I hope everyone has been doing well lately. I've been busy with IRL things lately, hence my lack of presence. If there are some recommendations you might have for the club, or just something on your mind that you'd like to share with the rest of us, don't hesitate to post it here.With that, I bid you farewell. -Lithic |
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PleiadesRising | Dec 10, 2014 11:03 PM
Well, like Matoro Mahri said, you'd find a feral child - i.e. a child that didn't realize the features peculiar only to humans, e.g. human language. You wouldn't find, say, a wolf-child, since wolves aren't genetically predisposed to acquire language. Sure, the child might behave the same as the wolf, but that's quite something else than saying she was indeed an animal like a wolf.As far as natural selection goes, that does go some way toward pointing out important features of our behavior from an historical point of view. However, that's looking at it from a very long period of ongoing biological evolution, which isn't exactly the same when dealing with the feral child example postulated here (which involve elements other than biological facts, e.g. norms and morals). Whatever causally shapes "behavior" (whatever that's referring to) won't be exactly the same in both cases. We can presuppose the existence of a thing like "modern society" to set against the feral child as a controlled variable of sorts, yet we can't project it backwards into time. As long as we're clear about it, whatever was causally at work in both cases won't be exactly the same in each example. I propose a radical answer: currently, we shape behavior. I think it's radical in this context, since the discussion so far is working with the idea that the shaping comes from outside. Perhaps this outside refers to society or to the laws of natural selection or an environment, yet it curiously leaves out the entities that constitute them and even make those things intelligible in the first place: modern humans. I think this goes a step beyond a complexity argument, and one which ought to include the the fact that we are consciousness beings capable of affecting not only our own behavior (and thoughts!), but also the behavior (and thoughts!) of others, too. If the idea of phenomenal consciousness (arising due to evolutionary biology, but not to be confused with it) doesn't play a satisfactory role in any explanation of how we are now, then as I said before, it will appear as if there's always some mysterious thing out there in the world doing something to our collective and individual behavior, thus making us not much more than bundles of complex behavior reacting to an environment (whatever those are meant to be). |
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Matoro_Mahri | Dec 9, 2014 12:42 AM
I would say nature, and thus natural selection, but random chance plays a big role as well. If you take a set of animals with exactly the same traits and dump them in the wild, you're not going to get the same results each time you repeat the experiment. Current human society owes a lot to natural selection, but it would be irresponsible to say that every little thing we consider "polite," every trait we consider "well-brought-up" contributes directly or indirectly to survival. Done again, we'd probably end up with very different standards. A single child left out in the wilderness just doesn't have the system complexity to end up like that though, you need a society of humans. |
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omponk_donk | Dec 8, 2014 10:28 PM
Damn, the best answer I've got so far!So what is then? (the primary shaper of behavior) |
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Matoro_Mahri | Dec 8, 2014 8:16 PM
Mind if I contribute a little bit? In response to the question, I think you will most likely find a feral child--they will behave nearly the same as an animal. However, it's also important that this does not confirm nurture over nature. The complex behaviors we exhibit as a society nowadays are the result of thousands of years of evolution. For example, in the short-term, if someone steals your food and you kill them, it will give you the survival benefit. However, put together a society of humans who kill each other whenever food is stolen and they won't last nearly as long as the group that forgive or discipline each other the same circumstances. So yeah, on a single, individual level, it doesn't point towards environment as the primary shaper of behavior. |
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omponk_donk | Dec 8, 2014 7:43 PM
Hey, why don't you guys answer my previous question first,,What do you think you will find there in the mountain? A human? An animal? Or what? |
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Awashima | Dec 6, 2014 11:40 PM
But can't you say that all these different actions that we as humans are capable of are just in the end, some of the many behaviors of human beings? If it was human behavior to do things as effectively and efficiently as we can then it makes sense why we would say send robots across the world to kill rather than go ourselves. Or if it was human behavior to do harmful things despite knowing it is harmful then we do them. It might even be in our behavior to explore and travel. In this case we really are no different than other animals other than a difference in complexity of our behaviors. There seems to be an underlying assumption that humans are not necessarily superior to other creatures but inherently different from other creatures. |
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PleiadesRising | Dec 6, 2014 10:58 PM
I'm sure sure how my brief comments could be read as asserting the "superiority" of humans, especially when I highlighted how we have the potential to do the most immoral and destructive things ever seen (our ability to recognize the wrong and harmful, and yet to bring it forth into the world, regardless). I'm pointing toward how we're capable of interacting with our environments (big and small) in ways other species don't, and we do it in ways which require our participation to fully understand what sits beyond behavior, as it were.We can poop on a canvas and call it art. Heck, we can get birds to poop on it, and we can still call it art. We can choose to raise children in cases of extreme social isolation (Kingsley Davis wrote a paper on this). We can manufacture the industrial production of corpses and keep track of the body count with the help of IBM computers. With that, I've covered many of the issues you raised, omponk donk: growing up, socialization, and raising children (extreme isolation of children), pooping (conceptual art), and death (WWII death camps). We do those things in ways animals show no signs of doing, and aren't fully intelligible if given descriptively in an objective biological way. Animals can kill, but we can send flying robots halfway around the world to do the job. They can communicate, yet we can help to shape the environment around us by communicating our opinions in many ways, and usher in a totalitarian society to "shape my identity" as belonging to the chosen race (which reveals one of the flaws I notice in social determinism, which views humans as too malleable, thus as objects of manipulation). Again, we're capable of doing things in ways animals don't, which doesn't necessarily smuggle in a notion of superiority along with the way. From landing technical objects on comets to refusing to kill out of a sense of moral duty, we differ from animals in that we can have an active hand in our "nature" which transcends the behaviorist list you've mentioned: "We being born, grow up, learn, eat, poop, communicate, socialize, reproduce, raising children, die. Just like animals do, right?" When you pose it that narrowly, then it almost does sound like there's some kind of secret ingredient missing, beyond our grasp. Indeed, it's a mystery when perhaps all things come from outside in the environment. We don't know where that extra comes from, since observing mere behavior alone only takes us so far. We keep wondering what that "something else" is. |
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Awashima | Dec 6, 2014 9:32 AM
hmmm... I think we would then need to define a definition for action both in terms of the actor and in terms of the observer. As an actor, the philosophical zombie isn't 'acting'. However, to an observer, the philosophical zombie, being conceptually the same as normal people but only lacking sentience, will seem to be 'acting'. But wouldn't all these differences just be a case in which our experiences are different. There is no way such that even as two people look at the same scenery, they experience the exact same thing. All those things that we do, self-reflection, etc, etc. are a result of what we experience in that it is because of something in our experience that we self-reflect, it is because of our experience that we find something we wish to change, something about our experience that we come to like/dislike something |
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omponk_donk | Dec 6, 2014 6:45 AM
Newcastle 2-1 Chelsea (FT)Yeah! Awashima, Lazhward Please continue.. |
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Lazhward | Dec 6, 2014 6:18 AM
A zombie wouldn't perform 'action', it would have some effect on the world, but it's not a unique effect, there's no 'heroic' story to tell about a zombie; a zombie just does its thing, and that's kind of where action differs I think.I agree that one's personal identity is shaped by the environment, but I don't think that's what makes you 'you'. I think that lies more in the expression of the self, the things you say and do. There's also a self-reflective quality to personal identity, you are influenced by but not determined by the environment. You can decide which things are more or less important, which things you wish to change (about yourself or the world), what is right and wrong etc. You're sort of this singularity where experience comes together, but you have a certain influence on how these things are then organised and ordered. |
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Awashima | Dec 5, 2014 9:30 PM
There was a psychology case study of a child who was trapped in a basement for like 10 years or so with limited stimulus. Its not exactly the same as the animal case perse, but it showed a lot of insight as to the important of external stimuli in a lot of the things we have and are capable of such as a development personality, language, motor skills, etc. As horrific as the circumstances surrounding the person of the case study, it did was one of the few important case studies of psychology. and also has a lot of philosophical implications as to what separates humans from other animals as well as what makes personal identity. |
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omponk_donk | Dec 5, 2014 8:02 PM
Lazhward, tell me more about this "personal identity" thingIn my opinion, our personal identity is shaped by the environment So, what makes me me, is my environments What if, What if a human child got separated from his parents (age 2), spent his childhood away from other humans, no contact at all. Let's say he live in a mountain, with animals, and live through it. Then you find the child (age 8). What will you find? A human? An animal? A werewolf maybe? |