Week 11 Picks & Discussion...

Sandra Murphy33 said:Since philosophy hasn't actually managed to crack the code on what a human being is—leaving religion and science to fight over the scraps of an answer—everything else feels like it’s just drifting aimlessly in the void...
It's surreal. There is simply no solid ground to stand on.

The search for "Who am I?" remains an ongoing investigation.

I say we just build a UI and let it give us the answer ourselves.

Harold Doyle3 said:I say we just build a UI and let it give us the answer ourselves.

And then you'd probably just get told that the guy is the one who invented UX anyway.

It’s not even a hard question to answer. Being human is just self-awareness.

Nicholas Grant20 said:And then you'd probably just get told that the guy is the one who invented UX anyway.

ACreator with a capital C!😁

ruggedraven36 said:It’s not even a hard question to answer. Being human is just self-awareness.

But who is this "self-awareness"?

And what exactly does self-awareness even mean?

Sandra Murphy33 said:But who is this "self-awareness"?

And what exactly does self-awareness even mean?

It's just consciousness being aware of itself.

ruggedraven36 said:It's just consciousness being aware of itself.

At that point, you're basically proposing an entirely new cosmology.😉

I’ve actually got a broader definition for this.

A human being is just a creature that’s self-aware in a world that stares right back at them.

Nietzsche argues that even the Sun possesses a sense of self. You can see it right away in the opening line of his book *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*: "Great star! What would your happiness be if there were not those whom you illuminate?"

Sorry for veering off track—completely blanked on the fact that this isn't a deep dive into what actually makes a person tick.

But then again, maybe that's the only question in modern philosophy that actually matters.

Honestly, that’s the million-dollar question—it never ends. What even is a human being, where did we come from, and where the hell are we headed?!

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It’s obviously a huge deal for us, but I honestly think we need to consider how these big questions about existence apply to other living things too. We also have to be careful not to fall into the trap of over-anthropomorphizing everything. If we aren't careful, our own biases might just pull us away from what's actually true.

Joseph Murphy10 said:Honestly, that’s the million-dollar question—it never ends. What even is a human being, where did we come from, and where the hell are we headed?!

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What about an ant? Where does it come from, and where is it going?! 🙂

Mark Torres14 said:What about an ant? Where does it come from, and where is it going?! 🙂

Look, it's a fair question, I guess—but I don't have the answer since I'm not some biologist specializing in ant life cycles. Go ask a scientist. And if you're talking about humans? A biologist isn't even the only authority you'd need to talk to to get a real answer.

Your question is basically a textbook example of a fallacy.

Joseph Murphy10 said:Look, it's a fair question, I guess—but I don't have the answer since I'm not some biologist specializing in ant life cycles. Go ask a scientist. And if you're talking about humans? A biologist isn't even the only authority you'd need to talk to to get a real answer.

Your question is basically a textbook example of a fallacy.

Biology covers ants just as much as it covers humans. Or what, do you think there’s some special branch called "humanology"? This is a philosophical question. What *is* an ant? Biology definitely won't give you that answer.
It's not a fallacy. It just bugs me how obsessed everyone is with human consciousness, the concept of "self," those Kantian questions like "what am I?"... etc. In the end, it all boils down to universal patterns, which leads people to claim—and I'm exaggerating here—that "existence is thinking." The fact is, this world survived for billions of years without humans, and it'll keep spinning long after we're gone.

If I actually am a person, and if I’m some kind of thinking being, then I guess the real question is just "what even is a human?" To me, that's the only thing that matters, mostly because my own self-awareness is pretty much the only thing I can actually be sure of.

Nicholas Grant20 said:If I actually am a person, and if I’m some kind of thinking being, then I guess the real question is just "what even is a human?" To me, that's the only thing that matters, mostly because my own self-awareness is pretty much the only thing I can actually be sure of.

Isn't that just pure philosophical anthropocentrism?

Mark Torres14 said:Isn't that just pure philosophical anthropocentrism?

What's wrong with being an anthropocentrist? I am one—and I say that with zero apologies.

Mark Torres14 said:Isn't that just pure philosophical anthropocentrism?

Yeah. I guess so.

OK