Analytic philosophy has yet to come to a proper conception of what the self is.
This is unique to analytic philosophy. Continental philosophy, at least, is divided into competing schools of thought on the matter. Analytic philosophy is divided into its own, new schools of thought, arguing with each other while superficially analyzing discourses on the self from other schools of thought. While this leaves philosophy free to roam about in its own territory, its own framework prevents it from telling us anything meaningful about the self (or soul, or mind). Analytic philosophy is a paper tiger: its ethical doctrines are the most abstract and complex ever formulated, but they have nothing to do with the actions of the people who live in analytic countries.
Scholasticism was the Death's Head of the Latin cosmos; the Confucian Ru, similarly in the East, enshrined a code of ethics into the ethical lives of rulers. Analytic philosophy is still an abstract and indeterminate entity which will be overshadowed by a superior Anglophone ethic when the Eternal Anglo once again ejaculates into the temporal.
Self= awareness of your own body
>>946374
Care to elaborate?
Nice memes
>>944809
Thanks for the paraphrasing.
>>946374
"your" implies self
You are answering what self is by referring to self.
Your answer is circular logic.
>>944809
>le who is you meme
Why don't you first list all that you aren't?
>>944809
> He thinks that analytic philosophy is a school, rather than a method.
It's just metacognition.
>>947151
Doesn't "I" imply self as in "I think, therefore I am".
>>946374
>Self= awareness of your own body
found the hedonist.
once you are not aware of your body, you are aware of your mind.
>>947445
It is if you want. But if you pick that than you have basically confirmed analytics cannot come up with a decent concept of self. Descartes concept of self involves mind-body dualism. Analytic thought doesn't work too well with something like this: it's not emperical and it is attached to the same idealism they are trying to reject.
>>947504
>found the hedonist
Not that guy but do you know what that word means?
>>947236
It's not even a method. What method in particular are you talking about?
self is a word for an object from the perspective of the object.
>>947561
" i think therefore I am" says that in order to be experiencing thought the thought-experiencer must exist in some respect.
What is controversial about this?
>>949193
The definitions that Descartes ascribes to "thinking" and "material," for one thing; for another, the way the argument is phrased makes it hard to tell where premise ends and where conclusion begins. How is it not controversial?
>>949218
any conscious response to stimuli can be considered a thought.
the premise is that he is thinking, and in order to be thinking he must exist and hte conclusion is that he exists in some way.
similarly anyone reading that argument , if they are conscious and so having thoughts, can also be sure that they exist in some sense.
The only thing that might need to be elaborated on is why existing is a necessary condition for experiencing thought.
let us assume that there was thought-experiencing activity going on but nothing existed. nothing exists and so nothing is there to experience thoughts and so infact thought experiencing activity is not occuring so we have a contradiction. so existing is a necessary condition for experiencing thought.
>>949279
All this does is establish a concept of self. It doesn't elaborate on what it is. Is the self physical? Is it singular or multitude? Does it include the unconscious or not?
The point was continental philosophy has several different models which answer this, analytics don't.
"Analytic philosophy" is pretty much a failure because in order to draw logical conclusions you need axioms. So they just take their opinions and beliefs as axioms, which in turn leads to self-masturbatory wankery BASED on their beliefs instead of critically questioning said beliefs. While "contintental" philosophers aim to gain more knowledge and to refine their opiinions by discusing them, "analytic" philosophers take their beliefs to be facts and start their conclusions from there. Pretty much religion tier.
>>949385
>in order to draw logical conclusions you need axioms.
and rules of inferences.
These people fail to see that everything beyond empiricism is inductive.
what they call deduction is just the application, to statements, of inference rules that they qualify as deductive. but of course, both the statements and the inference rules are inductive. Anything stemming from your imagination is inductive. your whole imagination has the task to dwell in induction.
Induction is just separating things in trying to see what resembles what and what differ from what.
the things whereon you speculates are what you feel, but equally what you think.
to any output of your imagination, there is an affect which means that you like it, you do not like it, or you do not care.
when it comes to the imagination, what you like is called ''it makes sense'' and what you do not like is called ''it does not make sense''
the problems of the people who have faith in their fantasies, in their imagination, in order to gain access to some fantasy of ''higher reality'', is that they know that inductions are personal. But the task of the rationalist is to believe that a structure is hidden somewhere, because one day the rationalist chose to have the thought that all this similarity and lack of chaos must hold at any time anywhere, and that this structure the ultimate reality.
so rationalists despise inductions and knowing this, while still clinging to their childish fantasy of ''objectivity'' and what not, they choose to invent a new class of ''products of their imagination'' which is ''the deductions''.
Their task now is to consider all the outputs of their imagination, to get rid of as many inductions as possible, to cram as many deductions as possible in their ''structure''.
>>949458
of course, rationalists are not happy to hear that all their fantasies, not matter how formalized, are just fantasies and they get very butthurt once you ask them to substantiate their claim that their speculations give indeed access to some non-subjectivity, when you ask them why their speculations matter, to them, to anybody else but them...
The best part is that rationalists, typically the scientists, do not even know why they choose to cling to their fantasies.
You can ask any scientist why he does what he do each day, and he will not be able to tell you, besides loving to be paid to speculate. What this says is that speculations call for speculations. There is no end to your fantasies, because the end of your fantasies, the reach of whatever reality you seek remains a fantasy itself.
>>949460
so why the love for speculations and the hate for empiricism (aka, for the rationalist, the chaos, sterility, non-speculation) ?
Well it turns out that your speculations relates to your love of hedonism. The problem of hedonism is that you must have the means to get pleasures AND you must fight boredom.
Your imagination serves your love of pleasures and hate of pains. You dwell in the past to have a better future, because you dislike what you feel and think so far. Your life sucks and you think that there ''must'' be a way to make it better.
Of course, ''making it better'' means having an easy life, which is why people love the scientists for bringing them computers and houses and tomatoes in winter.
Now you seek a reason why we cling to our deductions. The nice things about deductions is that people think that the notion of necessity and objectivity are reached through deductions. This feeds their deliriums of seeking a reason of their shitty life.
But what they refuse to see is the failure of their endeavour. Deductions do not work. When you try to fix your discomfort, after you imagined that you can get comfier, you may or may not erase this temporary discomfort, but discomfort re-appears again sooner or later. Even with pure pleasures, you see your speculations always failing to make your pleasures last.
This is what happens so far
-fear death, dislike your life
-create gadgets to live longer because you fear death, dislike your life
-even with all the gadgets you still fear death, dislike your life
-claim that technology makes your life better, even though you still fear death, dislike your life
>>949461
The underlying fantasy of the rationalist is that they can better themselves, and the whole humanity, in fixing his discomfort. They refuse to see that if you have car, thanks to the scientists, you equally have all the problems tied to a car.
You can built a wall in assembling rocks. IF you do it twice and that you like the result, you think that the wall will last forever and that piling rocks will satisfy you, always. And you whine like a child when your wall is torn apart or if you cannot even construct your wall.
They refuse to see that trying to feed your hedonism never ever gets you what you want: some permanent pleasures. each rationalist still thinks that, no matter all the failures in their lives, no matter the failures of other people for decades, for centuries, for millennia, he thinks that he can do better. He clings to his fantasy of success. Why because? because he has no idea how to do something different. He even claims that his way is ''necessary'' because he his not able to think otherwise.
The good news is that you get happiness once you stop having mental proliferations, once you stop clinging to your hedonism, but the rationalists love to talk for the sake of talking, so they despise this fact.
The best way to fix your discomfort is not through trying to fix it in moving around and speculating about the changing the world and creating stories about the world, but the solution is to change your attitude towards what you feel and think.
>>949380
my first post in this thread is here>>949193
which I followed with >>949279
All I am interested in doing is discussing your claim here:
> Descartes concept of self involves mind-body dualism. Analytic thought doesn't work too well with something like this: it's not emperical and it is attached to the same idealism they are trying to reject.
I think therefore I am does not establish a concept of self.
Self simply means >>949182
I think therefore I am is more important because it it says to a conscious entity "you can be sure that you exist in some respect or else how would you be experiencing these thoughts?"
So now a man knows that he must exist. Next is finding out about his existence. He receives a lot of information about his environemtn and existence from his senses, but how does he know it is real and accurate. He gets taught aout brains, nerves and sense organs, but what if his brain was always in a jar and the stimuli supposedly from his sense organs is actually being inserted directly into his nerves in a laboratory. but then if it could be the case that his sensory stimuli is being contrived by someone else then what evidence does he have to believe that brains or nerves even exist? So he concludes that there is no possible way he could know for sure anything about his environment.
But he also knows that he can't do anything about that if that is the case, so therefore it is in his best interests to improve his happiness by working under the assumption that his sensory stimuli is quite accurate and so about finding out how his environment works so that he can manipulate it into a state where he is more happy. The best way to find out how his environment works and develop the means to manipulate his environment is through the scientific method.
This is the beginning and end of philosophy.
>>949460
>of course, rationalists are not happy to hear that all their fantasies, not matter how formalized, are just fantasies
Not at all. you give the reason why they are not unhappy later
>for bringing them computers and houses and tomatoes in winter.
the scientific method (which is positivist) is the best way to increase happiness
You claim that these advances bring as much unhappiness as they bring happiness.
If you feel that way you're welcome to press this button which would let you be born again and have your single shot at life being born instead of a randomly selected person from 50000 B.c.
most people aren't so stupid to claim that they'd be just as happy without easy food availability and no medicine , but I guess philosophy students are so desperate to be viewed as still relevent that they'd claim such nonsense.
My underlying thesis is here that no effective ideology simply lies: an ideology is never a simple mystification obfuscating the hidden reality of domination and exploitation; the atrocious reality obfuscated and mystified by an ideology has to register, to leave traces, in the explicit ideological text itself, in the guise of its inconsistencies, gaps, etc. The Stalinist show trials were, of course, a brutal travesty of justice concealing breath-taking brutality, but to see this, it is not necessary to know the reality behind them—the public face of the trials, the puppet-like monstrosity of public confessions, etc., made this abundantly clear. In a homologous way, one doesn’t have to know how Jews really were to guess that the Nazi accusations against them were a fake—a close look at these accusations makes it clear that we are dealing with paranoiac fantasies.
The same goes for liberal-capitalist violence, of course—I have written many pages on the falsity of humanitarian interventionism. One does not need to know the brutal reality that sustains such interventions, the cynical pursuit of economic and political interests obfuscated by humanitarian concerns, to discern the falsity of such interventionism—the inconsistencies, gaps and silences of its explicit text are tell-tale enough. This, of course, in no way implies that the disclosure and analysis of facts are not important: one should bring out to light all the details of their atrocious brutality, of ruthless economic exploitation, etc.—a job done quite well by Chomsky himself. However, in order to explain how people often remain within their ideology even when they are forced to admit facts, one has to supplement investigation and disclosure of facts by the analysis of ideology which not only makes people blind to the full horror of facts but also enables them to participate in activities which generate these atrocious facts while maintaining the appearance of human dignity.
>>949532
>He receives a lot of information about his environemtn and existence from his senses, but how does he know it is real and accurate.
You've already presumed that his senses are seperate from him with no good reason
>so therefore it is in his best interests to improve his happiness
MASSIVE unfounded axiom. You can't just declare utilitarianism is an objective truth out thin air.
>The best way to find out how his environment works and develop the means to manipulate his environment is through the scientific method.
Did you figure this out with the scientific method? If not you have a massive hypocrisy problem.
>This is the beginning and end of philosophy
What you said isn't even philosophy...at best it's a series unfounded statements. I'm sorry I took you seriously. You're literally retarded.
I'd contend that attempting to define the self is an ultimately futile task, as language is simply insufficient for it.
>>949602
>You've already presumed that his senses are seperate from him with no good reason
here's a good reason.
If you cut out someone's eyes and ears they're still able to think.
>MASSIVE unfounded axiom.
and? you're welcome not to improve your happiness. why not just stop eating? There isn't any ojective reason why you should make your life more pleasurable as opposed to inflicting suffering on yourself. You can cut off a 20 cm^2 patch of your skin each day if you want. It would not bother me if you or other people decided to live your life like that.
>Did you figure this out with the scientific method?
It isn't hypocritical because finding out how the environment works is not the same as finding out about how finding out how the environment works works.
I did mis-speak a little so let me clarify. in terms of evaluating which method of finding out about how the environment works works best we can basically use supervised learning where the check is rate at which our ability to manipulate an make correct predictions about the environment increases. I.e. if our ability to manipulate and make correct predictions about the environment increases faster under the scientific method than under making up fairytales to explain natural phenomena, then adopt the scientific method.
So really yes, I should have said that the scientific method is the best way to find out how the environment works known thus far.
>What you said isn't even philosophy
sure it is. It's a mindset that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour :^)
you sound like you're butthurt about something.
>>949709
>If you cut out someone's eyes and ears they're still able to think.
This doesn't solve any of your problems. It just reveals more unfounded assumptions. You assume a person's body is not part of their self. You presume that it is "you" doing the thinking (as opposed to say another part of the body doing it and "you" is just a passive observer). Your presume that thought must constitute the self.
>you're welcome not to improve your happiness. why not just stop eating?
This is a strawman arrangement. There are already philosophers like Nietzsche which criticize utilitarianism and propose other modes of thought or simple thought experiments like the pleasure machine. I am not saying these are right, I am saying you havn't even bothered looking at actual philosophy before dismissing it. Saying "happiness makes me feel happy" is nothing.
>the scientific method is the best way to find out how the environment works known thus far.
And how did you figure this out. If you didn't figure it out with the scientific method it already shows there is a type of thinking above the scientific method, capable of figuring out things unapproachable to it.
>It's a mindset that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour
If you want to define philosophy in such narrow terms than pretty much all thinking becomes philosophy, making the word useless. Philosophy generally involves ideas from philosophers or at the very least thinking critically.
Your arguement so far has been
"self is the thing that thinks" which is not a helpful defination
"happiness is the only worthwhile goal because I like feeling happy"
"scientific method is the best way to figure out how to make me happy"
I don't think you actually believe the last line. You just want to say it. When is the last time you consulted the scientific method to increase your happiness?
>>949385
Really, it's reverse-religion. They know what they want to say, but have no justification in their belief, and can't have any without ceasing to be philosophers.
>>949611
Maybe it isn't all about defining the self anyway. Maybe the self is the experience of the self.
>>949798
>This doesn't solve any of your problems. It just reveals more unfounded assumptions. You assume a person's body is not part of their self.
Oh I see the point you're making with this argument. I thought you were making a slightly different point before.
Here is my definition of the self >>949182
I am not really interested in the game of pinning down "Is a person's fingernail or face part of him? or is it just his brain that is teh essential part of him?"
Those are semantics and value judgments to me.
the reason why I said
>>He receives a lot of information about his environemtn and existence from his senses, but how does he know it is real and accurate.
Is because the only part of you you can have confidence in existing is your ability to experience thought. That is why I write "from his senses", because his sense organs could be compromised.
> This is a strawman arrangement.
No it isn't. I say right here.
>There isn't any objective reason why you should make your life more pleasurable as opposed to inflicting suffering on yourself.
and there isn't.
It's a value judgment. there is no objective, impartial, universal, eternal, non-arbitrary reason to consider making yourself happy as "better" than making yourself uncomfortable. I and most people do it because we like it more than being uncomfortable but that doesn't make it "better".
The point is that any value judgment about what is a "better" way to live your life is going be based on an unfounded axiom or several.
But like I said if you would prefer to suffer than improve your environment then go ahead. I can't "prove" that you should.
>>949798
>And how did you figure this out.
I already said here.
> we can basically use supervised learning where the check is rate at which our ability to manipulate an make correct predictions about the environment increases. I.e. if our ability to manipulate and make correct predictions about the environment increases faster under the scientific method than under making up fairytales to explain natural phenomena, then adopt the scientific method.
> it already shows there is a type of thinking above the scientific method, capable of figuring out things unapproachable to it.
So what? The scientific method is a way of finding out how the environment works. It doesn't need to be able to evaluate which method of finding out how the environment works works best.
>"self is the thing that thinks
I didn't say that but I can see why you reached that conclusion, I hope I've cleared up this confusion
>"happiness is the only worthwhile
nope. never said that
>"scientific method is the best way to figure out how to make me happy"
Nope, that isn't right either. I said
> finding out how his environment works so that he can manipulate it into a state where he is more happy. The best way to find out how his environment works and develop the means to manipulate his environment is through the scientific method.
I did not say that the exact manipulations you should make to your environment that will make you more happy are revealed by the scientific method.
The fact that you couldn't even follow this and so asked
>When is the last time you consulted the scientific method to increase your happiness?
Is quite embarrassing.
You just seem to be butthurt that I have shown the study of philosophy to be redundant.
>>950017
Look if you want to lead a personal life doing something that's fine. Philosophy deals with broader things.
You might not personally have an investment in identifying a decent version of self or looking in depth at how values are judged. Other people do. Going into a philosophy threat that has to do with this and declaring you don't have an interest in the question is just being a contrarian smart alleck.
>The scientific method is a way of finding out how the environment works. It doesn't need to be able to evaluate which method of finding out how the environment works works best.
This is a self-contradicting statement. Methods are part of the enviroment. Now if you really think scientific method is so great, answer the question. How have you used it today to "figure out how manipulate your environment?" How do you plan to use it tomorrow? When is the last time you used it for your personal benefit? If you have trouble answering this you might want to rethink your premsis.
>>949279
>conscious response to stimuli
Is that how Descartes defines 'thinking?' I really get the impression that you haven't actually read Descartes.
>>950206
I went into the thread to correct you on descartes.
I'm not required to " objectively prove" value judgments to you which obviously can't be objectively proven. I already said
>The point is that any value judgment about what is a "better" way to live your life is going be based on an unfounded axiom or several.
And you know that this is true so why are you capering around and pretending otherwise?
As I've said before if you don't want to make yourself more happy then don't. You could give yourself an enema with battery acid if you want to. There isn't an 'objectively correct' way to live your life.
Also lmao at you don't even attempt to defend your inept and totally incorrect characterisation of my argument:
>
>"self is the thing that thinks
I didn't say that but I can see why you reached that conclusion, I hope I've cleared up this confusion
>"happiness is the only worthwhile
nope. never said that
>"scientific method is the best way to figure out how to make me happy"
Nope, that isn't right either. I said
> finding out how his environment works so that he can manipulate it into a state where he is more happy. The best way to find out how his environment works and develop the means to manipulate his environment is through the scientific method.
I did not say that the exact manipulations you should make to your environment that will make you more happy are revealed by the scientific method.
The fact that you couldn't even follow this and so asked
>When is the last time you consulted the scientific method to increase your happiness?
Is quite embarrassing.
>
>Methods are part of the enviroment.
no they aren't. The environment here is the physical universe.
>How have you used it today
I haven't much today, but it's a species-wide thing. A proportion of the population use the scientific method and progress science and technology and the whole species benefits.
>>950206
for example I'm able to manipulate my environment to make myself happy by getting food with relative ease thanks to advances agriculture (fertilisers, greenhouses, insecticides) thanks to science, without which I would have the suffering of hunger or limited diet.
the conclusion of >>949532
isn't that everyone should be a scientist, but it benefits the species/society.
