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Whaleboy
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Please make all cheques payable to Whaleboy
Jan 2003
time: 05:29
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No conscious thought = no logic
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Ummm wtf? How is that even possible if you accept unconscious thought, how can it operate on anything other than logic?
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How about once again, in less opaque terms? Sometimes it's really hard to figure out what you are trying to say because you just weave all over the place.
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Read harder.
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You are saying that love and altruism do not orginate from the subconscious? I mean, you don't need to think through it to fall in love with somebody, it's just hormones surging around in your body.
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 No I am not saying that, different things work on different levels in our minds, you're thinking about it in very black and white terms which as you may or may not be aware of, doesn't actually work in real life. Our consciousness merely takes things about us and dresses them up, it is our consciousness that takes something in us (predicated by egoism) and turns it into a delusion.
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Besides, who's to say egoism is more basic than love? Without love the species is dead, at least for K-strategists.
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No-one is denying love, with K-selection theory it is unaffected, as is any feelings of love we might ordinarily have... why? Because as I have said two or three times before, my argument is descriptive and not prescriptive. Love is a delusion but for those willing/able to be deluded, it becomes their reality.
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How do you distinguish "evolutionary instincts" (whatever those are) from individual instincts? I posit that is impossible.
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If you had read my argument then you would know that that is precisely my contention re. your earlier point  . Your logic would predict a difference in individual behaviour and evolutionary behaviour.
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Wait a minute here, you are moving the goal post. You used to say that individuals can't be really altruistic because of egoism, but you are now claiming that self-interest is for the species. Are you admitting that individuals can be altruistic, i.e. placing the welfare of others above one's own?
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No because I'm not distinguishing between the individual and the species. Are you asking me if egoism directly refutes the proposition "humans feel altruistic", then no. Egoism refutes the notion that "humans are altruistic", in other words we take actions we feel to be altruistic but aren't. Why we feel that? See ahead...
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What about religious fanatics such as suicide bombers? How do they relate to this propagation of the species? |
Our potential is in our nature and we are actualised in different ways by our nurture. Life twists us, actions taken for us as individuals/species don't always have that consequence, but this is not a consequential argument. I suspect that same statement will apply for any of the numerous examples you resort to bringing into this debate, without actually addressing what I've said.
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If the survivial of the individual is not the most fundamental instinct, on what is this so called "egoism" based? How does this make somebody willing to die?
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A postulation is sex and power (species, individual, where one comprises the other, i.e. sex = power, power = sex). Which leads nicely to...
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At any rate, what you submitted is not observed in nature. Any animal strives to survive: to find food, to fight back when cornered, and to find a mate when the time comes.
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Yes, where that is contextually called for. All my argument is saying is that survival is not absolutely fundamental, since contexts can and do present themselves for certain lifeforms whereby survival is put at risk for other things, and I am saying that the sex-power equation applies throughout.
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Propagation of the species is not benefitted by individuals dying. It is better served by individuals surviving and creating offspring.
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If you die to save a thousand of each gender of breeding age, I should think that death benefiting the species.
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So you are saying that you can't explain how behaviour occur because of egoism, but you are positing it as the primary motivating factor?
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No-one who proposes either egoism or altruism can take that as his premise and then construct a deterministic model of human nature. I am illustrating that this is not a consequential argument, i.e., we take actions with an egoistic intent (subconscious) but the consequences is left to a throw of the dice so to speak.
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On what level does "self" appear? It appears that only humans and perhaps a few other species have the ability to recognise the self, yet the survival instinct is there in all animals. Therefore, it seems that the claim that seemingly altruistic actions are based on egoism does not have basis in fact.
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Egoism transcends the self for the simple reason that the notion of "self" is relative to other people. Perhaps in that light it is best that this be described as lifeform-centric behaviour but that's just semantics. Though of course egoism means "I", hence subconscious when conscious or ego exists, perhaps we should continue using that term for the sake of expedience.
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"self" insterest is for the survival of the species.
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But you assume there to be a difference there.
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"self" insterest is for the survival of the species. Note the "individual" in definition [1].
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I'm using definition 1b. Dictionaries publish the vaguest definitions, or multiple variances, in debates like these it is crucial to be precise hence a specific exploration of a given term.
Now you have failed to answer my key question of you. How can a logical machine such as the brain *not* act upon its own premise and for its own interest in the sense that I use it here? How can it possibly act upon a purely external stimulus?
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Kidicious
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Diety of Kidiverse
Mar 2003
time: 21:29
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Originally posted by Whaleboy
Now you have failed to answer my key question of you. How can a logical machine such as the brain *not* act upon its own premise and for its own interest in the sense that I use it here? How can it possibly act upon a purely external stimulus? |
wtf??? The brain just does. This is like asking if the universe exists or not. There is nothing forcing us to act in our self-interest. We are free to do otherwise.
As far as the philosophical argument I'll leave that to UR so long as you understand that it doesn't really matter who wins. You know when I was taking philosophy I read arguments about crazy things like whether the universe existed. I thought there was some truth in the argument, but philosophy is as far from truth as you can get. It's so abstracted from it that people who rely on it are utterly confused about such simple things.
Last edited by Kidicious on 24-01-2005 at 19:52
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Whaleboy
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Please make all cheques payable to Whaleboy
Jan 2003
time: 05:29
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Whaleboy, please explain to me how a soldier sacrificing himself for his unit is in his own self interest. He does not gain from it.
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Read my posts and then ask.
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The only reason it survives is because it is public funded and required in school.
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 Where? Cos I need to emmigrate!
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And all a person can do is examine his own mind, because to study something you have to examine it, and you can only indirectly examine a person's mind. To do so you have to depend on what that person tells you that he or she sees.
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And you would argue that nothing can be seen beneath that? What of inferences being made from the properties of the brain, or the head, or even the nature of sensory experience (if not the subjective essense), and used to look deeper, behind what people say? By your logic, I could claim to possess the amalgamated personalities of every famous person from the 20th century, or claim that I act for the sole reason of urinating in space... and one cannot disprove that. My argument is that we can do so, and that we can describe human nature, beyond what any individual case holds it as.
It is conceivable after all, that someone could claim their cells do not contain DNA, yet it can be shown otherwise. How is this situation any different, where my assertions can be verified by neurology?
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Kidicious
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Diety of Kidiverse
Mar 2003
time: 21:29
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Originally posted by Whaleboy
And you would argue that nothing can be seen beneath that? What of inferences being made from the properties of the brain, or the head, or even the nature of sensory experience (if not the subjective essense), and used to look deeper, behind what people say? By your logic, I could claim to possess the amalgamated personalities of every famous person from the 20th century, or claim that I act for the sole reason of urinating in space... and one cannot disprove that. My argument is that we can do so, and that we can describe human nature, beyond what any individual case holds it as.
It is conceivable after all, that someone could claim their cells do not contain DNA, yet it can be shown otherwise. How is this situation any different, where my assertions can be verified by neurology? |
Claiming that you are altruistic is not the same thing as claiming that you possesss someone elses personality. If you are to believe that altruism does not exist then you have to bring more to the table than mere speuculation about how another persons mind works, becuase no one in their right 'mind' whould take your word for something that you have no real first hand knowledge about against the only person who really knows the mind - the subject.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:29
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Originally posted by Berzerker
che
Exporting food was British policy, not free peoples exchanging goods. |
It wasn't British policy. It was Irish landlords, who owned the land, selling the crops produced on their land where they could make more money, rather than feeding the people of Ireland who were starving to death or fleeing the country. There are, of course, notable exceptions, where landlords instead tried to aid their tenants. This is the same thing that happened in Somolia just a decade ago. Profit over people.
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The Brits ordered American colonists to produce and "sell" certain things too, one of the reasons for the Revolution. |
Yes, almost 100 years before the famine. Even so, that was still capitalism. The means of production were privately owned and they were exchanged for a profit. The fact that state coersion was involved doesn't change that. It may not be the most "efficient" way to manage a capitalist society, but that doesn't change the fact that it was capitalism. Adam Smith didn't invent a new system, he desribed the society in which he lived and suggested policies for making it better.
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Ireland (and India) was a caste system, and caste systems are typically employed or manipulated to govern. Not surprisingly, Britain was still suffering from a caste system imposed by earlier invaders. |
Irrelevent. Capitalism doesn't require social mobility. It may work better with social mobility, but it doesn't require it.
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Sheesh! You mean socialism or communism requires I use what I make? |
No, you fool. The primary purpose of production in capitalist society is to produce goods for sale. Selling commodities is the means by which surplus value is extracted in capitalism, as oppsed to feudalism or slave societies, in which surplus value is extracted directly by appropriation of the labor or goods produced themselves. It was more susinctly put by a US Steel exect who said, "U.S. Steel is not in the business of making steel. We're in the business of making money."
In socialism, the market will still exist, goods will still be sold, but not as a means for realizing surplus value. It will simply be a means of exchange. The primary purpose of production in socialism will be to meet the needs of the populace, not to make a profit.
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Forget it, che, that massive state interference is called "central planning", not capitalism. |
One does not preclude the other. Capitalism does not require a free market, only a market. Numberous capitalist states have had central planning, only during periods of extreme crisis, however.
Capitalism isn't a policy, which you can switch on or off. It is a whole economic system, with people who have entrenched interests and a system of property ownership. This doesn't change simply because of the whim of one person, but requires the overthrow of a whole system of relations. You don't cease being capitalist simply because a political party imposes a tax or a leader imposes regulations. You cease being capitalist when the whole means of production are taken from the capitalists, either by bureaucrats, aristocrats, or the proletariat.
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Even now India is near the bottom of the economic freedom index, |
Irrelevent.
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Just because India isn't communist doesn't mean its capitalist... |
No, the fact that its economy is primarily driven by privately owned means of production where goods are produced to be sold for a profit means it is capitalist.
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It ain't capitalism when politicians or royalty are deciding if you can have land, what you can do with it, and what happens to your labor and production. |
Says you, two hundred years after capitalism was a fact. You don't get to change definitions a postieri just because you don't like the society you have. Capitalism evolves, just like every social system. It would be like me claiming you aren't Berzerker, because you aren't the same person you were at the age of five.
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24-01-2005 09:43
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