Is he right about animals? That they are nothing more than biological machines, living automata incapable of feeling pain. That in their screeches and big round eyes all we see are reflections but in actua they are hollow.

Ask the chittering monkeys down in /wng/

Yes but most of humanity (jeets and other dysgenic thirdies mostly) are also automata.

>>24601132 (OP)
animals can feel pain. majority of insects can't, though.

>>24601132 (OP)
One common rebuttal that some have is that man himself is only a machine in god’s eyes so where do you differentiate between machine and person? Both men and animals could be considered to be machines made by god, yet Cartesius is saying that animals have less soul to them based on faulty reasoning that they lack cognition (from my memory of reading discourse on method his main argument is parrots can talk yet they can’t form language proving they lack intellect).

As for souls residing in animals, plants and objects one interesting aside I have to give is that some ancients I had read, believed magnets contain souls because they can make metals move towards them- attributing soul to “whatever can cause motion” leads to some odd conclusions as does Descartes -“that which can’t properly form language must not have a soul.”

>>24601167
As far as I recall, he never said they can’t feel pain. He said they lacked cognition entirely and that what appears as pain, thirst, etc to them are merely natural urges and that they lack soul due to lacking intellect. They lacking cognition part is his main difference between the soul of man and the automata of an animal in his philosophy. He never denied an animal would scream if you hit it.

If I have a soul, so does my cat.

>>24601231
if i have a cat so does my soul

>>24601132 (OP)
no. he's affable as a philosopher but he's an asshole for thinking that.

>>24601225
he meant pain in a superficial sense, he thought animals could not suffer

the soul is a superstition

>>24601256
Well he was wrong. It happens.

>>24601256
Yeah, no shit. That’s what I said. If they lack cognition entirely then they lack any form of sense experience having only programmed reactions, to word it better.

>unironically taking some rambling frenchman's so-called 'thoughts' seriously
just move on, everyone, he's full of shit

I hurt
therefore
I an
imal

Animals feel pain, pleasure, grief, jealousy, anger, joy, love. They feel. Self-evident truth to those who are observant, non-autistic and don't have their heads clouded by moth-eaten metaphysics. Ever own dogs or cats? How can you not notice it?

Nietzsche was probably right that the difference between us and them is of degree. Ray Peat was right that insects and birds when attentively observed display behaviors evincing complex, adptive, improvisational intelligence.

It takes a certain sensitivity to notice this. It takes feeling affection for your pets. Autistic callousness makes for poor theorizing.

>>24601294
I hate BAP btw and am a Christian.

>>24601313
Why are you pretending to be me? And I’m atheist, for your information. No idea what BAP is.

>>24601132 (OP)
Take for example the humble and ubiquitous dogs and cats. With any socialization, they readily crave human attention. For instance, I always pointed out how much my cat "loved" me. They pointed out, you saved it, and you feed it and spoil it. It doesn't love you... you're the cat's butler. Don't feed that motherfucker, see how much he loves and cuddles you.
Well, I let the cat food dish run down to empty. Left it like that for a second day, to see. My cat? Disappeared. When I woke up hours later, there was my cat. Eating a little squirrel. And? An untouched squirrel, on my bed. A present.
My cat? Saw food had run out. he went out hunting, and fed me.
I was touched.
a different cat, I once had to leave it at home for months, while I was away at work. When I got home 6 months later? No cat to be found. I was heartbroken. But, when I made a fire that morning? Instant noise and commotion. I could hear my cat calling out to me, fro a block away.
I was suffocated with attention and love for days. For wek? Anytime I left the house, I got the look. Please return.
That? is love.
Dogs and cats. They have emotions. I know when one is sad, angry, frustrated, anything. Watch their little eyes when sleeping, too. REM eye movements, just like humans. They clearly have dreams, just like we do. In fact, all that a cat or a dog lack? Is reading and writing.
>
You see, a cat will take one sniff at you, watch you a little. And decides right then and there. You? I like you. Or? Not.
Humans... you have to do things for people, they do things back for you. People have an AGENDA. My cat? Has no real agenda. Just likes me? We're best buddies.
That, is a pure love. No sex. No status, money, or power. Just... you? I want to be with you.
Which is what human love is *supposed* to be? But we all know its not.
We, as humans? Are so "smart" we forgot the basic tenets of friendship and love.
Animals are not only equal to humans, I believe them to be morally superior.
It is for this reason, that I hold animals to be better than humans, and more deserving of my efforts and time. Most people that know me? Know that when I tell someone I like them as much as I like the cat I'm petting? Its my highest compliment.
>
if its the day before payday, and the food's out. I understand. I know tomorrow? I get paid, and I'll being home half the grocery store for me and my cat. But my cat? Doesn't know this. I'll give the cat the last pork chop. I know I'll feast tomorrow, hell we both will.

>>24601234
>if i have a cat so does my soul
Nope. Formal logic. Entering philosophy o armed with it? Disingenuous at best. If A, then B? Does NOT mean that if B, then A.
If A, then B is a true statement? Then if not A, then not B is true.

>>24601231
>>24601253
>>24601258
>>24601269
>>24601294
>>24601331
Cry-baby autists having a meltdown because someone said something mean about their ‘widdle fwufft fwends’. Every guy that I know with at least a drop of testosterone in their blood kicks cats or dogs for fun. Hell, even some women do.

>>24601338
you do know that most normal people have pets, right?

>>24601338
I didn't say a word about his opinions on animals THOUGH

>>24601294
>Autistic callousness makes for poor theorizing.
in what way?

>>24601325
Fuck you.

>>24601338
Yeah, 4chan is brimming with weird psychos, no big news there.

>>24601356
Autists are cold, rigid, affectless. The world is endowed with life, light, warmth. But autism is not ontological, it's a treatable condition. This is not sentimental pap I'm spouting. I used to be very autistic - more than I am now. The "paranormal'" has been proven scientifically in many experiments since the late 19th century but official science refuses to acknowledge it. But ultimately the key to understanding reality is not logic or cold scientific method (these are just useful tools) but love.

>>24601338
Descartes’ actual opinion on the soul actually doesn’t hold water as regards this specific topic, and wanting to kick animals has nothing to do with it. “Parrots can talk but don’t make language and mute men can understand language” isn’t a particularly compelling argument for the intellect or lack thereof. There are brain dead men and men with IQs too low to pick up language and I am sure animals have some means of communication between themseves which signal intellect.

Descartes’ arguments are entirely fallacious and he isn’t very compelling.

>>24601356
In less maudlin words, if you are deficient in feeling you are deficient in understanding. A poet understands reality better than a mathematician. Sure, you can create plausible theories according to which all life is ultimately a coldly mechanical affair. Theories plausible but ultimately wrong. Autistic abstractions, falsifications. Many such cases.

In other words I'm not interested in what a troglodyte who kicks cats for fun thonks about reality. Coarse men have coarse minds.

>>24601132 (OP)
it becomes more plain if you have more focused or intimate experience with animals, communication and such, they can occasionally understand unusual things

also descartes has one of the worst concepts of inner life in history, cartesian dualism is the great catastrophe of modernity

>>24601389
>I used to be very autistic
Self awareness 404

>>24601425
And I immediately followed it with "more than I am now", you functionally iliterate cunt.

And yeah I know it's spelled "illiterate". Most ironic typo. Oh no.

>>24601412
His actual philosophy is garbage but I enjoyed his autobiographical descriptions of leaving behind devout Catholic scholasticism found in discourse on method and I think rules for direction of the mind is an awesome text on how to approach logic. He is a multifaceted guy mainly known for Meditations which is quite sad as that is full of spurious leaps of logic.

>>24601451
descartes is important, and well respected by the people I respect, so it is what it is. he is a polymath responsible for a lot of good things

>>24601389
"autists" in STEM keep the lights on for normgroids like you so don't give me that crap about how much more compassionate you are.

>>24601338
>>>24601331 (You)
>Cry-baby autists having a meltdown because someone said something mean about their ‘widdle fwufft fwends’. Every guy that I know with at least a drop of testosterone in their blood kicks cats or dogs for fun. Hell, even some women do.
>
Unlike a lot of internet keyboard warriors, I actually was a fighter for years. I won't bore you with all the tra-la-la, because on keyboards? its an impotent gesture. But I will leave you with this.
>
I always liked. No, loved. I *loved* fighting certain types of guys. Bigger, stronger, very aggressive. Always sneering and pushing people around. And you know something? They, to a man, *all* said pretty much the same thing you just did. Me tough guy, me kick cat. You little bitch, you like fluffy.
>
pretty sure you know the type, eh.
Not a one of them, was worth a fuck in an all out fight. All show, no go. The attitude that being bigger and stronger made them somehow... I don't even know what.
Yet, not a *one* of them, was really any good.
I put mat burns on their shoulders and faces. Tuckered them out, then finished them with empty gas tanks.
So go on. Blow some more hot air. Better yet, ask Tate for your money back. His "how to be an asshole" course? Failed you miserably.
If he won;t give you your money back, on your so called alpha course?
Just have sex with him.
because you're both retarded faggots.

>>24601132 (OP)

Two facts seem most likely to cause men to dispute the claim: (a) animals seem alike to man, and (b) injuring animals for amusement seems wrong.

The first is an irrational cause; however, unless one accepts intuition as rational, a similar semblance is the only reason to believe other persons are, in fact, persons.

The second is more understandable. Yet, the evil of the act seems to lie in the fact not that the animal experiences pain but that the person inflicts pain to fulfill a more general desire to pain, a desire that applies equally to persons; it is quite possible the desire only applies to animals because they seem alike to man. Furthermore, the whole problem assumes the silly, modernist idea that the causation of conscious suffering is the definition of evil.

On the other hand, dualists should stop suggesting that men know not how to speak. To say that something hurts an animal, even to say that said animal feels pain, does not suggest the speaker believes said animal is conscious.

>>24601659
This is some sensible short sighted gibberish.

>>24601697
lol i was gonna post "this post sounds smart, is dumb"

The anima in animal is literally just Latin root for soul. Descartes and the rest of the enlightenment/modern thinkers are a bunch of cataclysmic fools duped by the dark magic alchemy that birthed their zeitgeist and methods. This faggots "philosophy" along with Bacons domination of nature has brought man and the earth to the verge of a global holocaust/mass extinction event not seen since a fucking 6 mile wide asteroid killed off the dinosaurs. Plato and Aristotle were always right about classical natural philosophy and right, which entails harmony with nature, both externally via the environment and other animals, and with ourselves.

He's correct.
Animals do experience things, but they're not aware of these experiences. They're flesh robots.

>>24601729
How do you know? Have you experienced directly a pigs sense of watching other pigs get their brains smashed in by a bolt pistol just for their turn to get botched on the first try?

Demonic sophist.

>>24601729
you're a flesh robot you fucking retard

bunch of subhumans.

>>24601132 (OP)
Descates is wrong on this point. You cannot infer absence of understanding from absence of reason. Only humans are endowed with reason and can therefore understand the cogito, but the faculty of understanding is a common trait of both humans and all animals except plants.

>>24601399
yeah but isn't there such a thing as excess of feeling?

>>24602443
He didn’t even sufficiently prove the cogito as evidenced by the pages long rebuttals to Meditations, much less did he prove this nonsense on animals.

>>24602435
>subhumans
Oh, the irony…

And I suppose plants and bacteria are equally worthy of respect, seeing as they also possess this “eternal essence”?

>>24602575
>durr what about the plants? they're alive too
motherfucking moron

>>24602533
>prove the cogito
Nonsense, unless you're merely looking to argue instead of learn.

>>24602613
“Eternal essence that exists in every living thing”
Do you deny that plants are alive? Or are you just making an arbitrary distinction?

>>24601741
>How do you know?
The only why to explain certain unique human phenomena is by deducing the unique human faculty we call self-consciousness/awareness, the mind, the "soul" etc.
>demonic
Go back to Africa.
>>24601771
Not an argument.

>>24602737
>the unique human faculty we call self-consciousness/awareness, the mind, the "soul" etc
>the unique human faculty we call reason
Fixed. Not that anon btw.

People who deny animal sentience are like children without a theory of mind. Intrapersonal equivalent of object permanence. Same cognitive failings that breeds blind bigotry and dooms humanity.

>>24601132 (OP)
Correct, based and clearpilled. I appreciate animals (my kitty is sitting on lap right now :3), but not in the same way I appreciate other people--as self-aware moral agents. On closer inspection, we realize that we appreciate animals in the same way we appreciate other lumps of inanimate matter, and not, say, for the decisions they've made in their lives.
As Descartes and other anons have stated, animals are merely self-replicating biological machines; proteinous accretions of their genetic code, incapable of transcending the instructions inscribed in this code, incapabale of reflexive, self-aware, free action.

>>24602737
You're a nigger that can be bothered to look into the latin root of the word animal, let alone animals that are capable of cognition, complex problem solving, and languages. Please don't bother to respond because you are that wrong and need to humble your stupid sub-monkey "reason".

>>24602770
You’re one smart cat

>>24602770
Are you severely autistic by any chance?

>>24602770

Well written — but this line of thinking is wretched, completely malevolent.

>>24602772
>the latin root of the word animal
Yes, the word was invented when humanity still believed inert matter contained spirits. That doesn't actually make it the case, however. This is metaphysical thinking at its worst; the idea that words contain reality

>>24602770
>we realize that we appreciate animals in the same way we appreciate other lumps of inanimate matter
The same way we realize the Sun orbits the Earth.

>>24602775
Not in the slightest.
>>24602781
There is no necessary connection between this line of thinking and "malevolence," which I assume you mean the unnecessary extermination of animal life, in the same way that there is no necessary connection between naturalism applied to the purely chemico-physical realm and the unnecessary destruction of, say, rock formations. In fact, I suspect that the connection may even move in the opposite direction. From our knowledge of primitive hunter-gatherer societies, those that engage in animism are far more likely to erroneously anthropomorphise animals and subject them to unnecessary moral punishment, torture, sacrifice etc.

>>24601132 (OP)
He's obviously wrong and the rest of his philosophy can be discarded off that blunder alone

>>24601132 (OP)
Yes and the only argument against him is moralfaggery

>>24602754
>>24602772
>>24602775
>>24602833
Autistic manchildren having an impotent meltdown directed towards one of the greatest minds in human history. Hilarious.

>>24602662
you think the distinction between a sunflower and a cat is so blurry that it's arbitrary, because you're motherfucking moron.

>>24602854
you think the distinction between a cat and a human is so blurry that it's arbitrary, because you're motherfucking moron.

>>24602853
>obvious projection by autist incapable incapable of empathy
Common round here unfortunately

>>24602864
it's not blurry, we have an ability to think. this doesn't make us so different from animals that they are ineligible to morality. a plant and an animal has much larger gap. this is all stuff that a child can figure out, but NOT a midwit redditor.

>>24602770
Neither are we.

>>24602871
>>empathy
You possess the reasoning faculties of a 5 year old girl.

>>24602871
>>24602875
>autist incapable incapable
> midwit redditor.
Extremely low IQ and very likely underage

>>24602782
>inert matter contained spirits
What a depraved twisted understanding of what the classics and ancients believed about mind and cosmic order.
>This is metaphysical thinking at its worst; the idea that words contain reality
The entire scientific revolution was born from alchemical and magical pursuits to capture the hidden forces and laws of nature, imbued with power from God and its higher order and laws. Numerology was one pursuit of this, and mathematics was born of it. What do you think the pursuit of Philosopher Stone was? Why do you think Isaac Newton wrote more about theology and alchemy than math and physics? Words and symbols do contain can and capture the essence of reality.

That retards like you can still dabble in such disenchanted modern notions when modernity has brought the planet to the edge of catastrophe is beyond me. Your brute nihilist materialism is still metaphysics, an incorrect metaphysics that has led to this point.

>>24601132 (OP)

There are still people on this planet who won't admit that cognition is natural, not supernatural

>>24602885
>when modernity has brought the planet to the edge of catastrophe
Another psychic casualty of the Woke Mind Virus.

>>24601132 (OP)
No. Mind is not separate from “matter”. Animals are like is since we are animals. They have emotions and some are clearly capable of having complex social structures, tool use, and a few can reason to some degree and solve rudimentary logic puzzles.

>>24602885
You sound like a raging faggot

>>24601132 (OP)
The only people who still believe otherwise are deranged lunatics like this >>24602885 who also still believe in magic and demons.

>>24602889
Are you agreeing or disagreeing?

>>24602894
>>24602900
Cool, back to back non-arguments that are historically ignorant of what actually happened in the 1500s/1600s with the early Enlightenment and what they actually believed and were attempting to do.

>>24602909
Not arguing, I’m telling you that you write like a raging faggot. You’re trying to come off as smart but failing miserably.

>>24602909
>muh evil nihilistic modernity demons!
Go back to circa 2016 /x/

>look at the way anon writhes with pain when I kick him in the balls repeatedly
>but since I'm not him there's no way to actually know if he truly feels the pain
>sure he might scream and cry and do all the things I do when I'm in pain, but idk what to tell ya
>so yeah only I feel pain
This is the quality of Descartes reasoning on the matter. Dude was wrong about everything

>>24602883
it's not about intelligence it's about nature of people. some people are fucked up. they use words to justify their wretched nature. this is where all seeing animals as tools debate begins and ends.

someone who looks at an animal being tortured by its owner and doesn't feel anything won't magically begin thinking that for humans because muh reflection and morality.

>>24602921
You are a retard.

>>24602770
/thread

>>24602853
I love when intellectual midgets use appeal to authority it makes me smile every time.

>>24602920
Cram your strawman non-argument so far up your own asshole you die.
>>24602919
So you're just a shitflinging troll. Kill yourself.

>>24602770
this is a great post to show how some people are just replicants. this is the reddit niceness. using faggoty words and fluorishes like ":3" only to announce to the world he actually doesn't matter if his pet gets slaughtered lmao.

most of you niggas are not real humans yo.

Humans are far more interesting and ambitious than non-human animals. I'd be willing to exterminate entire species, trillions of individial animals for the sake of our species' Great Work.

>>24602754
>equivalent of object permanence
interesting that you use this term. So I'll shift to object permanence itself. Due to the troglodyte's reaction from one camp ITT. and equally due to invoking philosophy, I must define the term.
Object Permananence is a developmental milestone in a human child's life. A tiny baby that can just sit up and crawl? Will watch a toy with lights blinking. Yet, when the toy disappears from sight. Say, it goes under a car and is "gone" (to the child)
>
The adults and even the children know the toy still exists. Its simply on the other side of the car. But the baby does not know. As long as the toy can be SEEN, the baby crawls after it. Not when it "disappears", however.
We teach children permanence. We "hide" things and then show them. They develop a sense of permanence from this. The child will learn permanence his own though it takes a little longer.
>
My buddy pointed out how his CAT demonstrated understanding permanence. Ct was all but salivating, watching a rabbit out the picture window. Rabbit trotted our of sight. The Cat? Knew to go to another room and another window, to keep watching the same object, the rabbit.
That's a very human-like concept.
Also, its obvious animals such as cats and dogs have emotions. We "elevate" cats and dogs because they do what we humans can do. Communicate feelings with facial expressions. Also, the ability to interpret expressions and observations back the same way.
>
Take words out of the equation, and two humans can still communicate, in a fashion. You two can point. Gesticulate. Show facial expressions and body language. TONE of voice, even with nonsense words. I can look you in the eye, stare, then shift my gaze to what I want you to notice.
>
Cats and dogs, can do all this. How could they POSSIBLY (animals) not have emotions, when they developed the ability to communicate the same ways (before speech) as humans.
>
The Cartesian coordinate system, was genius. This tripe though (OP)? Not so much.

>>24602936
Back to /x/ circa 2014

>>24602936
Oooh someone sounds emotional

>>24602941
Actually, reddit believes animals have souls because they're woke retards with irrational empathy. You're reddit.

>>24602935
Too stupid to use punctuation marks. Or maybe crying too hard?

>he cant read without the handicaps

>>24602926
More compelling argumentation from the animals are indifferent to being tortured to death crowd

>>24602770
Best written post itt

>>24601729
>He's correct.
>Animals do experience things, but they're not aware of these experiences. They're flesh robots.
I could perhaps say the same thing of (you)

>>24602953
I don't have irrational empathy. I wouldn't give a shit if this guy died from cancer >>24602961

He's right. Humans through our higher faculties can transmit information through cultural means but animals are totally reliant on genetic transmission, instinct. Animals don't have cultural, traditions, histories, narratives, mythologies etc., they're wind-up meat clockwork

>>24601132 (OP)
The only argument animalfags can raise against this is
>ur mean :'((((
Descartes wins

>>24602970
And that has what to do with whether they feel pain or not?

>>24602966
Performative reddit edginess, valuing animal over human life. What next, antinatalism? You are reddit normalfaggot worm slave incarnate

>>24602977
They feel pain but aren't aware of it, can't articulate it. Again, just instinct

>>24602984
Okay, so he was wrong then.

>>24602987
He was right but just using different terminology than me

>>24602973
Humans are animals.

>Nietzsche always wins this one. Also doesn't stop Descartian experiments.

>>24602984
They articulate pain by yelping, moaning, whimpering, squealing. But they can't write a Phenomenology of Spirit about it, which means they are robots and it's ok to torture them. Got it.

>>24602979
typical midwit not understanding the nuance between animal over some human life.

keep seething subhuman.

>>24602970
>Animals don't have cultural, traditions, histories, narratives, mythologies etc.,

Sure.

>they're wind-up meat clockwork

Wrong. They are spirit-endowed but intellectually more rudimentary.

>>24602961
Crass materialists wanking each other off. Very disappointing

>>24601719
Nihilistic materialists oddly silent on this truth nuke

>>24601132 (OP)
I don't take the opinions of christkikes on life seriously, especially the ones who were from the medieval times. christkikes are anti-life nihilistic psychopaths. To them, only humans have soul/consciousness. Every other living thing on earth was put there by their desert jew god to be slaughtered, maimed, tortured and consoomed as a resource as much as they please.

>>24602970
we already registered animals transmitting information from one generation to another by teaching their young

>>24602770

Hoping for anon's sake that this is b8

>>24603079
I don't understand how mechanists can exist considering people like Wilhelm Dilthey disproved them with the idea that the sciences must be able to reflect the irrationality of the universe rather than its rationality but he was mostly talking about human than natural scientists, however I don't regard much of a difference between either.

>>24603010
>descartian
and who the fuck are you quoting, jeet? get out of my board

>>24602935
There is nothing about "appealing to authority" in stating that Descartes is an eminence in intellectual history as that anon says.
You are incapable of understanding Descartes so don't even bother with this thread.

>>24603308
Isn't he despised by highbrow reactionary thinkers?

>>24603094
>christkikes
This isn't catholic or christian opinion or view, this is natural conformist cattle thinking, they are like that by default, literal retard.
>anti-life
Life is shit and so is faggots like you.
>nihilistic
Life has no meaning, its just is, literal retard.

>>24603079
>i'm le ENLIGHTENMENT CRITIC!!
Unoriginal, trad posturing idiots.
Descartes would wince at this pleb >>24601719 positing Plato and Aristotle as gods and Clasical thinking as divine truth. What a pathetic excuse of a facade of learnedness when it's just despotic and inflexible reductionism.

Mental and moral midgets rallying around Descartes since time immemorial

>>24602770
Said other people for most of time are not self-aware nor a moral agents.
Majority of people are literally just tool using wild animals.
>animals are merely self-replicating biological machines
But so are majority of people, retard.

>>24602953
And they have, unlike people like you.

>>24603359
>mental midgets
>moral midgets
lmao i'm gonna start using "noun midgets" whenever possible that shit is hilarious

>>24602979
>normalfaggot
Normalfags hate edginess and irrationally value their worthless subhuman life above animal one.

>>24602979
Natalism is just mindlessly breeding like wild animals, retard.
And explain me why should i value life of random conformist cattle over my cat?

>>24603408
They can build things, write poetry, play music, perform gymnastics, praise God, etc. Cats can do maybe one of those

>>24603428
this person is allowed to roam freely. this world is hell.

>>24603428
>transparently cruel motherfucker defining the value of life with phony sentimentality
Classic

>>24603359
This thread is not at all about Descartes or his particular argument for his reasoning.

You can deny soul to animals if you wish but the actual justification Descartes put forward is easily refuted by the existence of handicapped people who don’t understand language.

>>24603428
>write poetry, play music, perform gymnastics

Nice post, grandma.

>>24603694
>>24603474
>>24603443
I'm starting to think that maybe the people in favor of animal rights have a rather low estimation of the worth of their fellow man..... egads

>>24603714
>you have compassion for animals yet lack unconditional respect for humans that act like wanton barbarians. Interesting.
Kek

>>24603714
No. Man is highest in the hierarchy of course. To use the classic scenario I'd save you rather than the dog if both were drowning and I could only save one. Even if it was my beloved pet. I still think you're an annoying faggot.

>>24603344
You can slit your throat any day, nihilistic jew.

>>24603864
>Even if it was my beloved pet

There are kind of people nowadays, especially in the west who would save the pet.

>>24602770
Many animal species demonstrate moral capacities such as prosocial tendencies, reciprocity, hierarchical organization, and even empathy that sustain social cohesion. They may not hold normative values as humans do, but they possess a rudimentary moral framework that underlies group stability. This is evident in wolves, elephants, crows, dolphins, leafcutter ants, and many others.

Go back to slurping your Jew god's dick. Death to the Holy Spirit and death to you.

>>24603428
>They can build things, write poetry, play music, perform gymnastics, praise God, etc.
And so fucking what?
This is not explanation why i should value life of some braindead bipedal cattle over my cat, retard.

>>24601565
Normies genuinely need to start paying rent. Im so tired of them putting down STEMgods while using the internet they created to do so. Without us they’d be outside slamming rocks together and chewing on sticks

>>24603428
>They can build things
Robots can build too.
>write poetry, play music
Can be done by robot.
And poetry is gay as fuck.
>perform gymnastics
Monkeys can perform gymnastics.
>praise God
No they can't, the way they praise god can be done by robot, to actually praise god you need soul and they lack it.

>>24601331
They were conditioned to become like this by humans over thousands of years. They are no different from an AI typing “I love you”. They act like this because they know nothing else.

>>24603714
Conformist cattle is not my fellow or man, your disgusting kind have more common with filthy wild animals and machines than with human beings.
And the vax event has proven that all your worth is purely economical.

>>24601338
Don't worry, i don't feel any compassion to people like you.
>Every third world nigger that I know with at least a drop of testosterone in their blood kicks cats or dogs for fun. Hell, even some sheboons do.
Fixed you.

>>24603955
>They were conditioned to become like this by humans over thousands of years. They are no different from an AI typing “I love you”.
Why does this feels like projection?

>>24603357
>Descartes would wince at this pleb >>24601719 positing Plato and Aristotle as gods and Clasical thinking as divine truth. What a pathetic excuse of a facade of learnedness when it's just despotic and inflexible reductionism.
>ctrl+f: argument
>no results found
Like seriously, dont respond if you are not even going to try to actually demonstrate anything beyond >muh despotic and inflexible reductionism, whatever the fuck that means and strawmanning what Plato and Aristotle actually teach. Its only been 400 years since the works of Bacon and Descartes and the wider Enlightenment and it has led directly to catastrophe after catastrophe with their rejections of classical and ancient philosophy which taught virtue and harmony. There is zero refuting this.

Go read Strauss, retard.

>>24603955
You are not even neurologist and you know absolutely nothing about h

This thread did a good job of demonstrating how absolutely depraved modern philosophy and its hylic fart huffers are.

>>24603955
You are not even neurologist and you know absolutely nothing about how human brain works, literal retard.

>>24603955
>They are no different from an normalfag saying “I love you”.
Fixed you.
Majority of people are no different than some shitty ai.

>>24603987
>>24603999
>Bacon and Descartes
>catastrophe after catastrophe
I don't know why you're so upset they rejected the ancient theoretical framework of epistemology, which was their main project. Thanks to this you have your computer and your retarded thoughts digitally communicated through 4chan.
The Enlightenment in ethics still borrow a lot from the Ancients, i'm thinking of Descartes and Leibniz in particular.
But since you think modern philosophy is inherently depraved or "hylic" you're likely a brown tradcuck incapable of any deep thought, your inclusion of a meme author like Strauss when we're discussing big names tells everything about your deflationary conception of philosophy

>>24601234
They literally can't refute this, continentalfags coping, seething AND dilating

>>24601294
based as fuck

Non-human animals are biological hardware running genetic software. They run this DNA script from start to finish without reflection or choice. You could torture an animal in the most brutal of ways, it would thrash and yelp, but it wouldn't be aware of a single second of it. This would still, obviously, be an absolutely horrible thing to do, which simply means that we find our value in animals elsewhere i.e., not in their capacity as self-conscious moral agents. I don't, for example begrudge my cat for chucking up on the rug, or scratching the couch, or begrudge it simplicter, as begrudgement is something we subject to self-aware, reflexive beings. In the same way I don't begrudge a boulder for rolling down a hill. This is a hard pill to swallow for common people, who still occupy a quasi-animistic worldview, where mere things, whether they be animals or computers, are anthropomorphised and valued as moral agents (just look at the language commonly used to describe LLMs--"demonic" etc.) but it's the harsh reality of things.

Feels are the fabric of consciousness and it's obvious to anyone whose drawn two breaths with their eyes open that animals have feelings same as you and me

Did /lit/ and /x/ merge when I wasn't looking? When was it invaded by superstitious idiots who think they can conjure behemoths like Descartes and Kant away with magical incantations like "hylic", and with post-menopausal New Agers who spout saccharine nonsense like "feels are the fabric of the consciousness".

>>24604539
Your piffy outburst is sterling evidence that feels ARE indeed the fabric of beingness and consciousness !

>>24604552
Projection.

They aren't conscious of their own nature and can't regulate it with reason but nobody has ever presented a hint of an argument for why they wouldn't feel things on some level.

>>24604509
>You could torture an animal in the most brutal of ways, it would thrash and yelp, but it wouldn't be aware of a single second of it.
>
this would have been one of the better posts in this shit-stain of a thread but for that one sentence. I'm curious if you made up the rest of the great sounding lines, just to window dress around what you really wanted to say. How is an animal being sadistically tortured not "aware" its happening. That's the most idiotic thing ever.
>
Have you ever had a bad nightmare? We all have. You're tossing and turning, and when a bad one hits you could be making noises in your sleep, tossing and thrashing. You bolt awake, terrified. Then you calm down, its your room. Its fine. Maybe your mom or your wife, calms you and reassures you, and you go back to sleep.
>
That's not "human". That is simply "mammal". My cat has little dreams, and some of them are obviously bad. My dog frowing up had bad dreams sometimes. Yelping, running, crying in his sleep. I know what to do. I coo and shush them, after touching them. They start awake, terrified... then they calm down. I do for my dog or cat what my mom did for me when I was a toddler. Both situations? Are identical.
>
do you know why people that go on to torture and kill other humans, get started on animals? A small animal can't resist. The animal they do it to, is a practice run. They move on to humans later, some of them. Empathy for a dog or cat, empathy for other humans. THAT is a dry run, practice? For proper empathetic dealings with other humans. People that kick a cat begging for food or warmth across a parking lot and laugh? Will do it to a human if they think they can get away with it. On the other hand, a person that feels bad for the freezing starving animal crying for help? They can be counted on to help another human in crisis.
>
I consider it a great pity that you just HAD to window-dress that retardedness up with all the other great sounding lines. You ruined something potentially beautiful.
>
I stand by this... any person that acts like they're a big man, for hurting a defenseless animal? Can't be trusted, not in any way shape or form. They'll do the same to you, if it benefits them. Because how we learned or were taught to treat animals? Is how we treat other people when we grow up.
>
"I love dogs, I hate cats". Dogs serve and grovel and do things on command. Cats don't. These people by and large, only "like" people that do things FOR THEM. If you want things back, or quit giving? They have no use for you.
>
That would be a horrible way to go through life.

>>24604539
>consciousness is actually bunch of words
maggot. change the m with a different letter.

>>24604004
Dispute anything he said. can’t you agree the fact that humans have purposefully bred these animals for exactly that outcome cheapens their affection?

>>24604564
>They aren't conscious of their own nature and can't regulate it with reason but nobody has ever presented a hint of an argument for why they wouldn't feel things on some level.
>
The big strong man, that punts cats across the parking lot? That's a little boy who never grew up. He still the same scared little boy he was as a little kid. Instead of breaking his toys with frustration? He hurts animals to make himself feel big and strong. And notice their language in this thread. Why, all "tough guys" hurt animals and *laugh*. They only do so, because they THINK it makes them appear tough. When you have to try so hard to *appear* tough? You clearly aren't.

>>24601132 (OP)
He was very deep about reality not being real his maxima he only trust his own brain to not be a mere fictional automata

you guys do realize, we're being trolled? Because its CATURDAY. Post 'em for these trolling faggots. Pic fucking related.

>>24604564
I think that even if they do “feel”, it doesn’t particularly matter within his logical framework because their feeling isn’t accompanied by a conscious mind to interpret their emotions. It would be like an alien torturing humans without any guilt because they have emotions and mental processes far deeper and wider ranging than ours.

>>24603955
Wild mammals act like this. They were "conditioned" by evolution just like we were. A lot of our behaviour and emotional reactions can be traced to ancestors we share with wild mammals who show the same behaviour.

>>24604607
There's no logic there, Why would deeper understanding have any effect on the alien's assumed aversion to torture? The physical, evolutionary reasons for aversion to torture still apply even if the victim is a p-zombie simulating reactions. A being operating on pure reason without any inborn or conditioned aversion to torture would probably just reason that it should behave according to the same principles in reality that evolution adapted to.
The inherent lack of reasoning only absolves the cat morally for torturing mice because there's no responsible agent capable of regulating its nature there. It doesn't absolve you from deciding to torture the cat. It means you used your power as a conscious agent capable of reason to change your evolved nature for the worse.

Notice how much work "reason" does in all this but formal reason was developed over time around 6k-3k years ago. The same argument should apply to uncontacted tribes. You're allowed to torture them by the same logic.

>>24604568
>How is an animal being sadistically tortured not "aware" its happening.
It experiences, but it isn't aware of this experience.
>I consider it a great pity that you just HAD to window-dress that retardedness up with all the other great sounding lines
That line was added to filter non-thinkers like yourself. You see the uncomfortable truth, you even see the essential link between that line and what you conveniently choose to call "window dressing" in order to soothe your psyche, but instead you choose to take refuge in the comfortable lie. You can emote, but you don't have what it takes for true thought.

>>24604626
>It experiences, but it isn't aware of this experience
And you know this how?

>>24604626
all you do is babble and pilpul whatever you think gets you what you want. Those recriminations from the likes of (you)? Are laughable.
"It experiences, but isn't aware of this experience"
what a load of pseud.

>>24604632
Stop trying to think, you don't have what it takes.

A good book that explains the unbridgeable difference between Man and animal https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-349-27662-2

>>24604637
>Stop trying to think, you don't have what it takes.
turn the projector off.
you do *nothing*, except play a word game.
my cat has more logic than you do.

>>24604509
Incredibly good post

>>24604645
You'd rather be simply "nice" than correct--so why bother with intellectual discussion? Go watch TV

>>24604647
Incredibly reductive and pointless except to reinforce unreasoned conditioned modern dogma and undermine any attempt to understand perspectives from before modern science.

>>24604647
when someone says this on this retard board it's safe to completely disregard the post it's referring to.

>>24604667
>>24604671
Sorry, but his post was good. Maybe try making real arguments in response instead of just seething?

>>24604667
Incredibly reductive and pointless except to reinforce unreasoned conditioned premodern dogma and undermine any attempt to understand perspectives from after premodern science

>>24604673
I didn't even read it, I just know it sucks based on what I said.

>>24604667
>reductive
Reduction is good. It's a mark of a highly parsimonious, elegant theory.

>>24604673
If you act out the spirit of the post you won't evaluate any arguments or consider any perspectives that don't already align with your conditioning and worldview. I already gave you plenty to think about but after completely dismissing it all without any hint of thought you just demand more.

>>24604689
Modelling is related to but different from actual understanding. We started by modelling the movement of the planets as circles without knowing anything about why they do that, it works but it doesn't explain anything and your attitude would have left us at that point.

>>24604667
>understand perspectives from before modern science.
We understand them plenty, but they've been superceded by new perspectives. The ancient perspective was also new at some point, mind you

>>24601132 (OP)
Capacity for very abstract thinking/communication and consciousness have no necessary connection. Retarded humans are still usually accepted to be conscious. And my own subjective capacity for thinking has varied a lot without my consciousness and capacity for enjoyment or suffering magically disappearing. Cognitive impairment definitely doesn't reliably remove the capacity for suffering. And it's easy to imagine totally losing the ability to think and understand language without also losing consciousness and the capacity for suffering and enjoyment. Consciousness seems far more basic than just about any externally discernable cognitive capacity. So to me the idea that humans uniquely possess consciousness, etc. just because we're skilled at thinking and communicating in a certain way or whatever is to me like a dolphin assuming that dolphins uniquely possess consciousness just because they're skilled at swimming in a certain way. It's very arbitrary, especially since we're all part of a common family tree of life. So the simpler (and more morally safe) assumption to me is that all animals are conscious, and though there might be gradations in some sense, it's unjustified to assume that there would be a really sudden jump from one type of mammal to another.

>>24604712
Incredibly good post

>>24604704
There is nothing fundamentally factually wrong with an animist worldview, it can be completely compatible with modern science. When a bike works it's possessed by the bike spirit, if it breaks the animating spirit has left it. This is an objective, verifiable fact not a theory about some kind of slimer ghost or whatever you want to pretend it means to reinforce your own fundamentalist religious dogma.

>>24604703
Modelling is understanding. We make observations and construct models to explain them. We apply Occam's razor and explain as much as we can with as little as we can. We observe that the planets perform epicycles, but this observation is better explained by a simpler model in which they don't

>>24604712
Dumb post. Just a bunch of assumptions

>>24604721
>When a bike works it's possessed by the bike spirit
lmao ooga booga

>>24604712
>Cognitive impairment definitely doesn't reliably remove the capacity for suffering.
Yes it does. Humans in a vegetative state aren't aware of their suffering.
Incredibly fucking braindead post.

>>24604724
As an example of the difference, in theory you can have a complete model that allows you to predict everything the stars do forever but not know why any of it's happening. The more you work within the model the more conditioned your mind is to not consider the assumptions given by the model, to consider why any of it is happening. Anyone talking about some animating principle behind it all are just complicating a complete system that accounts for everything.

>>24604728
I totally get what the guy is saying and he expressed it better than I could. What he's saying seems phenomenologically self-evident to me which is the opposite of arbitrary assumptions.

>>24604737
It's a great post imo notwithstanding a few possible blunders. This dude is actually thinking instead of dorkily larping as a medieval scholastic.

>>24604737
>Humans in a vegetative state aren't aware of their suffering.
You know this how?

>>24604744
Nah it's just emotivism. Really sloppy thinking

>>24604750
The blunders are structural, they ruin the whole thing

>>24604752
You just don't get it. No snark intended. He sees clearly what you fail to see at all.

>>24604767
He sees phantoms. I'll pass

>>24604712
>And it's easy to imagine totally losing the ability to think and understand language without also losing consciousness and the capacity for suffering and enjoyment.
No it's not? In fact, that's literally impossible to imagine. Any imagining of it will be contained within the very thing I'm trying not to imagine. Holy fuck you people are daft

>>24604762
No they are not structural but here is a clue to your own muddled thinking. To think clearly is first of all to see clearly (phenomenology). Logic is a mere tool for organizing phenomenological insights (emphasis on "sights"). You however are a blind man with calculator brain, building little empty systems in your brain (and this you call right & rigorous thinking) and hurling stones at those who dare actually see and describe what they see.

>>24604728
It's one pile of assumptions against another pile of assumptions, and I like my pile of assumptions because it seems less arbitrary taking into account what I can imagine to be possible, and it puts more distance between me and assuming that every other human is an unconscious flesh robot of no moral value just because I can't vulcan mind-meld with them.
>>24604737
Yes, if you knock someone all the way out, they won't feel what's going on anymore. Maybe I'm not using words precisely but that sort of thing isn't what I meant by "impairment." An analogy I can think of is that it's like the difference between someone who is too uncoordinated to play a piano well and someone whose hands are numb. At what level of "this person is bad at playing a piano" would you justified in assuming that they can't feel anything in their hands? I would say that as long as their hands are moving purposefully and they haven't told you otherwise, you should retain the assumption that they can feel with them even if they can't coordinate them well enough to play fancier music.

>>24604781
I can imagine seeing, feeling, thinking in a wordless-yet-aware state. Can't you?

>>24604782
Dumb. Our "seeing" has conditions that go beyond us. Trying thinking, instead

>>24604787
This wordless state is still contained within representation, which is the real essence of language. You're trying to square the circle here

>>24601132 (OP)
this thread reaks of not understanding delueze or guatarri.

try to think of the last time you were awake and at the wheel of a vehicle, but drowsy, and think of the time you were barely cognizant if a subject at all, just realizing you were dozing at the wheel or blank, like a timeskip.

>>24604792
You mean Kant? Whose philosophy was a neurotic reaction to Swedenborg's mystical, ahem, visions? Kant who ironically enough postulated a set of arbitrary a priori assumptions as a bulwark against the implications of such visions?

>>24604784
And maybe from the person's own perspective they're perfectly fine at playing the piano, you're just not a fan of their music or it's too simple for your taste. Which doesn't justify assuming that their hands are numb or that they're deaf.

>>24604799
So you know for a fact that we have no immediate experience of the real through our senses? Okay then.

>tHeRe'S nO rEaLiTy OuTsiDe LaNgUaGe

>>24604812
i just got trvked but im still miserable, wheres your solution

The problem with this debate is that people conflate feeling, awareness, consciousness etc. with self-feeling, self-awareness, self-consciousness etc. Animals are quite obviously aware, but they're also quite obviously not aware of this awareness. As other anons have already stated, animals execute functions coded in their genetic material, but as they possess no means to reflect on these functions, they cannot transcend them. Hence the staggering simplicity, conservatism, and predictability of animal behaviour compared to human *history*. The history of one man can fill a library and still not predict his future, but the behavioural functions of an entire animal species can be exhausted by a single textbook.

>>24604802
Sleeping people still have conscious experience in their dreams, they just don't remember it much of the time. And not remembering isn't an appropriate comparison to animals because animals do have memory.

In dreams there is often a very different non-reflective state of consciousness (so you just go with whatever bizarre thing happens without questioning it), but it is still a state of consciousness which can include a fair amount of emotional intensity in different directions.

"Autopilot" is an expression I've heard people use in reference to driving or doing other activities where they stop paying attention to what they're doing and get lost in thought (or maybe just get totally lost like a timeskip, like what you're saying?) But I haven't experienced that enough myself to have a good feel for what's actually going on there. At best I would say it allows for the possibility that people can be much less conscious than they appear, but that doesn't allow you to infer that just because someone doesn't seem very conscious that they're not. It just means there might not be a reliable correlation, which would lead me to err on the safe side of assuming consciousness even in cases where it's less obvious.

>>24604841
I have not been posting in the thread until now. I agree with your general observations and i was being facetious because its funny to me. That being said, the thought experiment is supposed to invoke memory of experience. I think people should think more about "subjectivity" in the discussion of consciousness. On "autopilot" the subject-object relationship is broken down and the experience is more systematic and unified rather than identified by clear boundaries (this is the car i am interacting with, (I) do this, vs (.,,,, (car is being driven by hands)....)

>>24604835
>Animals are quite obviously aware, but they're also quite obviously not aware of this awareness
I don't agree that the latter is obvious. I suspect that at least many mammals are aware of their awareness. I know there are lots of studies of animals' abilities to recognize themselves in mirrors as a proxy for this, and several animals have been found to be able to do that consistently. Intuitively I feel like it should be possible to have awareness of your own awareness without recognizing yourself in a mirror though.

>>24604808
Experience is the mediation of the real through language. Animals don't possess true experience precisely because they lack this mediation

>>24604864
>Experience is the mediation of the real through language.

Is it now?

This cat mogs 99% of humans. Now assume it's hollow inside. What does that make you? Pathetic.

>>24604835
>As other anons have already stated, animals execute functions coded in their genetic material, but as they possess no means to reflect on these functions, they cannot transcend them.
if you believe in the jewish lie of genetic determinism, you are also incapable of transcendence, cuck.

>>24604859
It is obvious. Humans are self-evidently self-reflexive beings, and because of this we struggle to predict the state of our species in even a years time. And yet we have no problem predicting the state of non-human animal species millions of years into the future and retrodicting them millions of years into the past. In just several thousand years Man has gone from animism to science, Lascaux to Dali, fire to rocket ship, but in tens of millions animals have remained stagnant, stuck in their instinctual routines.

>>24604737
>Humans in a vegetative state aren't aware of their suffering.
Yes they are, they just lack the internal autobiographical narrative to remember it.

>>24604883
Humans aren't genetically determined, only animals. Also evolutionary theory and genetics isn't a "Jewish lie", you retarded anti-Semite.

>>24604894
>I am a Christcuck evolutionist
LOL

>>24604888
>they ARE aware of it, they just aren't aware of it
k.

>>24604895
Who are you quoting?

Crows are better at logic than a great deal of people. Look up the experiments where they have to solve complex riddles to be rewarded with food. Or take babies. I think here of the youtube video where the baby drops two pillows on the floor, one atop the other, and then climbs down the bed onto the pillows. The baby's brain has not yet been infected by language. Many adults in comments saying "this baby is smarter than me" and saying it unironically. Language sets us apart from animals and sets us free from instincts but has a way of clouding the mind. Ultimately I don't have a verdict here, just please don't torture dogs.

>>24604899
People under various forms of anesthesia can recall certain events in detail while under, but fail to do so after waking up. Yes surgeons are basically torturing your body without you remembering it.

>>24604901
>darwinian evolution is true except for this specific cut-off point
lmao

>>24604925
Again, who are you quoting? I don't believe those things. Selection operates through our species but without determining our action

>>24604909
>can recall certain events in detail while under
They're not aware when doing this.

>>24604886
Anatomically modern humans are supposed to have been around for 300,000 years or so and the speed of our progress has only gradually picked up. I don't think this is attributable specifically to self-awareness (as said several animals pass the mirror test, so at least by that standard they have a certain level of self-awareness alongside humans). Instead I would attribute human progress mainly to a very advanced capacity for symbolic thought and communication, which is in one part made available to us by fortunate neurological mutations but is also in part a technology that evolved gradually alongside us. I don't think it warrents attributing automatism to other animals just because they haven't been lucky enough to land as squarely on this miraculous cognitive technology for making use of symbolism as we have.

>>24604908
>Ultimately I don't have a verdict here, just please don't torture dogs
You don't have to believe dogs are self-conscious to not torture them

>>24604908
but adrenochrome tastes better... am i supposed to suffer the rest of my life with this taste for adrenojuice?

>>24604942
Our self-awareness (shared joint attention, really) is a function of our capacity for symbolic language, which itself devloped out of a need to regulate our unique social structures. I have problem attributing automatism to animals if it helps explaining our differences. The arguments against this just seem emotionally driven.

>>24604942 (cont.)
It might also be that human minds have evolved to become more chaotic than most animal minds or more curious than most animal minds in a certain way which helps with novelty generation, but those would be differences on a continuum rather than a binary on-off switch.

>>24604967
*I have no problem

People are just really reluctant to admit that humans are so obviously superior to and more interesting than other animals. It's like the final form of wokeness to overcome

If AI ever really takes off and becomes arbitrarily more intelligent and capable than us, I really hope it won't treat us the way we treat animals.

>>24605002
My cat is definitely more interesting than you

>>24605017
i hope ai takes off and becomes arbitrarily more intelligent and treats us however it wants because hopefully it discovers new avenues of meaning and hopefully its enhanced experience will know better and reach better pleasures and joys

>>24605017
>I really hope it won't treat us the way we treat animals
Extremely well, all things considering? We keep them as pets and set up rights organisations for them when we could just wipe of them off the face of the Earth. I doubt another species, if they were in charge, would treat us any better

>>24605030
Deluding yourself on purpose is womanly behavior

>>24605036
>humans disappear and 10 billion chimps, tigers, polar bears or orca spawn in
>instantly kill everything they see and destroy the planet
I'll go a step further and claim that humans are the most benevelont species to grace the planet.

>>24605030
>Extremely well, all things considering?
Tell it to the billions of animals who spend their lives in factory farms rather than comfy homes.
https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-is-not-just-bad-its-35e
>I doubt another species, if they were in charge, would treat us any better
Imo our greater intelligence and capacity for understanding what we're doing gives us greater responsibility. You should treat others how you would want to be treated if you were them, not how you imagine they would treat you if you were in their position. That's a really long and difficult discussion in its own right though.

>>24605052
>You should treat others how you would want to be treated if you were them
If I were them I wouldn't possess subjective experience. This is a category error. You're applying an ethic designed to regulate the interactions of moral agents to things that aren't

>>24604409
Have you even read either? Especially when you read Bacon, its spectacular seeing how clearly one single influential thinker set us on a course of events that, again and despite your refusal to admit it, has brought the planet to ecological and existential catastrophe. Descartes directly followed Bacon, only using "mastery" rather than dominion of nature.

And digital technologies from the start have been built with war and control in mind, and now they are being integrated into minds themselves on top of mass surveillance. Again, Bacon's bid to dominate nature is itself turning inwards to dominate man. If you actually bothered to read up on the origins of transhumanism, much less Strauss, you'd understand this, but its obvious you are a flagrant pseudo-intellectual zoomer.

>The Enlightenment in ethics still borrow a lot from the Ancients, i'm thinking of Descartes and Leibniz in particular.
Machiavelli ripped the moral ground out from under it before it even began, Bacon vainly tried to keep a Christian ethic to restrain technology, and the Hobbes ripped out what remained of that rug even further. The enlightenment led to mass disenchantment and eventual catastrophic wars that destroyed Europe.

>But since you think modern philosophy is inherently depraved or "hylic" you're likely a brown tradcuck incapable of any deep thought, your inclusion of a meme author like Strauss when we're discussing big names tells everything about your deflationary conception of philosophy
You're not even trying to deny it isn't. Go to a walmart and watch some Ukraine drone war footage let alone read up on the Holocaust, and you will see the ultimate fruits of modernity. That you immediately go for the racist anti-tradcuck meme just goes to show you are not serious about this and I highly suspect you actually havent read anything of Bacon or Descartes, much less of Strauss, who had a grasp of the entire western canon better than anyone and very clearly pinpointed that modernity is a vile abomination that ripped the ethical and spiritual core out of the west and has brought us to the edge of global totalitarianism.

No wonder the Unabomber sent bombs to people like you.

>>24605052
https://benthams.substack.com/p/extreme-suffering-on-the-farms
>The most painful experience that most of us have ever had is classified as disabling pain. This is the sort of pain that’s bad enough that during it you can’t enjoy doing anything else [...] Sadly, on average, the animals that we eat endure hundreds of hours of this kind of debilitating agony over the course of their life. They endure somewhere on the order of an hour a day of this pain.

>>24605079
i get like that mentally somehow. how to become godlike so i can just put everything in order? was gonna go the higher intelligence route and hope for the best

>>24605078

>We may therefore say that Spengler's analysis and prediction is wrong: our highest authority, natural science, considers itself susceptible of infinite progress, and this claim does not make sense, it seems, if the fundamental riddles are solved. (2) If science is susceptible of infinite progress, there cannot be a meaningful end or completion of history; there can only be a brutal stopping of man's onward march through natural forces acting by themselves or directed by human brains and hands.

-Strauss, City and Man: Pg. 2

>"The experience of the present generations has taught us to read the great political literature of the past with different eyes and with different expectations. The lesson may not be without value for our political orientation. We are now brought face to face with a tyranny which holds out the threat of becoming, thanks to the "conquest of nature" and particular human nature, what no earlier tyranny ever became: perpetual and universal."

-Strauss, On Tyranny, pg. 27

>“The world state presupposes such a development of technology that Aristotle could never have dreamed of. That technological development, in its turn, required that science be regarded as essentially in the service of the “conquest of nature” and that technology be emancipated from any moral and political supervision. Aristotle did not conceive of a world state because he was absolutely certain that science is essentially theoretical and that the liberation of technology from moral and political control would lead to disastrous consequences: the fusion of science and the arts [Technology] together with the unlimited or uncontrolled progress of technology has made universal and perpetual tyranny a serious possibility."

-Strauss, in Natural Right and History, pgs. 22-23

>>24605079
So much pain, but not aware of a single second of it. A blessed, deamlike existence

>>24605046
This is retarded on so many levels that it'd be equally effective to engage with an animal

>>24605069
>If I were them I wouldn't possess subjective experience
That's the topic under discussion. I'm quite confident that it's wrong just from interacting with animals my whole life, and I think based on some of what I've already posted here above that other people should at least have not-insignificant doubt about it, and not-insignificant doubt about it should lead to erring on the safe side.

>>24605094

>The modern project was originated by philosophers, and it was originated as something required by nature, by natural rights. The project was meant to satisfy, in the most perfect manner, the most powerful and natural needs of men. Nature was to be conquered for the sake of man, who was supposed to possess a nature, an unchangeable nature. The originators of the project took it for granted that philosophy and science are identical.

>After some time, it appeared that the conquest of nature requires the conquest of human nature too and, in the first place, the questioning of the unchangeability of human nature. After all, an unchangeable human nature might set absolute limits to progress. Accordingly, the natural needs of men could no longer direct the conquest of nature.

>The direction had to come from reason as distinguished from nature, from the rational “Ought” as distinguished from the neutral “Is.” Thus, philosophy, logic, ethics, aesthetics, as the study of the “Ought” or the norms, became separated from science as the study of the “Is.” While the study of the “Is,” or science, succeeded ever more in increasing man’s power, the ensuing discredit of reason precluded distinction between the wise, or right, and the foolish, or wrong, use of power. Science, separated from philosophy, cannot teach wisdom.

>There are still some people who believe that this predicament will disappear as soon as social science and psychology have caught up with physics and chemistry. This belief is wholly unreasonable. For social science and a still further increase of man's power. They will enable man to manipulate men still better than ever before. They will as little teach man how to use his power over men or non-men as physics and chemistry do.

>The people who indulge this hope have not grasped the bearing of the distinction between facts and values, which they preach all the time.

-Strauss, The Crisis of Our Time

Fuck you.

>>24605098
I've also interacted with animals my whole life and have come to the opposite conclusion. I guess we're both right by your standard

>>24605097
He's 100% right though.

>>24605118
It might just mean that you're significantly cognitively or at least empathically impaired compared to me, but I won't let that lead me into assuming that you have no subjective experience unlike certain people.

>>24605124
>>24605118
now kiss

>>24605124
And I could just say the same thing about you; that you suffer from some sort of pathological hyperempathy of other species and self-loathing of your own that leads you to comitting these sorts of nonsensical category errors. I would never for a second believe that you lack subjective experience, as it is what separates all men from beasts

I wrote a buch of pro-animal posts above and I meant them but let's get real.

Hierarchy of animal sacrifices. Book of Leviticus, voodoo, you name it. Human sacrifices the most magickally powerful. Sacrifice of God ultimate sacrifice (the cross). Grisly subject but important implications here.

Paranormal phenomena scientifically proven, oficially denied. World to this day ruled by bluebloods who practice magic. Atheism, materialism &c. a psyop. When philosophers start taking these facts into account philosophy will get interesting again.

If I were an evolutionist I would believe language emerged accidentally and gave us a darwinian advantage and all that. Opposable thumbs, symbolic reasoning, yes, anatomy and social necessity the lucky parameters here making our more sophisticated intelligence emerge. We blindly followed instincts like all other animals until our instinct-serving abilities made us too smart for our instincts. We now get to reflect, plan long-term, do science, do philosophy, write down information, develop technology. Life still sucks and we still die but what a marvel.

But no. Dumb as it sounds I think the gap is ontological. Whoever created us endowed us with reason. We have something fundamental all the other animals lack. Even if many of them are kinda smart. Smart but predictable, eternal slaves to instinct, yes.

And yet animals have spirit. Chakra points. Psychic abilities. You can feel it. Connect with them. I can anyway. They're not mere things. They're like us in a significant way. But they lack our magical smarts. Those strings of code that make us snap out of mere instinct. That enable us to think like gods, all the way to the Absolute.

>>24604509
Anyone have that video of some reductionary-materialist youtuber who grinds a fly into mulch on video while talking about IIRC the hard problem of consciousness? this vile and deranged post has the same hyper autistic vibe.

>>24605121
Imagining that the world would collapse without humans due to processes of the food chain (which didn't happen before humans were around) despite humans very obviously being the source of widespread environmental destruction, extinction, nuclear threat, and eternal plastic pollutants is not 'right,' it's ridiculous to have to explain that. The rest of his argument amounts to a shitty parent beating their child and saying the child has no right to complain because the parent isn't beating it as much as maximally possible.

Half of this threads posters in one video:
https://youtu.be/eWVuLlHaxWM?si=1JnTz_GbCrl7_SsT

>>24605138
It isn't a nonsensical category error because it isn't obvious that what you believe is the case. Certainly not to me and to many other people. Instead the opposite seems to be fairly obvious, though of course there's still some room for doubt just like there's some room to doubt that any other humans have subjective experience, and at the opposite extreme conceivably a certain lampshade could somehow have some strange variety of subjective experience. So an honest person would admit that it's at least *possible* that it could go either way. And then it's just haggling over how far a person can get from the structure and function of their own nervous system (which they know somehow hosts subjective experience), before they should expect the total cessation of subjectivity that is capable of registering things like suffering, enjoyment, ideas in some sense, etc.

>>24601132 (OP)
no obviously

Best animal scientists and philosphers? Have they made any great discoveries about the universe?
Any great animal symphonies, poetry, novels, painters, architects? What was the greatest artistic movement in chimp art history?
What about historical events? What were the great animal wars, who were their generals, for what causes did they fight?
And what about religion? What rituals do they perform, for what gods, and what do they promise in return?

>>24605121
>>24605046
holy shit, im done its clear this board is swarming with flatout the most retarded and deranged morons on the internet. i hope you all suffer greatly in the future. fuck you
>>24605154
runaway, escape, save yourself

>>24605163
beautiful piece of art. in a just world, these would be allowed in exhibits and protected for the sake of themselves and others, but provided for and given good amenities.

>>24605153
Guy on the left is right. Normalfags on the right are slaves to convention.

>>24605154
A world without Man is a world of mere life, stasis, without any of the good stuff >>24605169 No different from any other sterile rock in the universe

>>24605182
Yeah cause we're so happy living in civilization.

>>24605163
Lmao. No animoid could make a joke like this

>>24605169
I haven't made any great discoveries about the universe or written any great symphonies, poetry, or novels or composed any great paintings or planned any great architecture. I haven't been a general in a great war. I don't follow any religion. Guess I'll stand over there with the turtles :(

>>24605186
Yeah listening to Gott soll allein mein Herze haben, BWV 169 atm, mogs anything any animal has come up with

>>24605190
We get it, you're a detached urbanite indulging in pleasures from human musical harmonies that have come from a tiny epoch that is leading to a global holocaust, while the animal kingdom and all its variety and beauty itself establishes its own harmony that doesnt lead to global holocausts. please move from dallas, its clearly eating you alive

>>24605188
Haha! Mass animal suffering! Sadism! So funny, real kneeslapper.

>>24605172
in a just world we'd genetically screen fetuses for this kind of a pathology and cull them

>>24605205
to some the absurd is funny. Its one reaction you can have to this insane world.

>>24605201
>tiny epoch
Listening to Shostakovich now--so fucking good. Would wipe out entire species to preserve his oeuvre

>>24605205
It's obviously a scripted video you sperg

>>24605212
I appreciate your passion but compassion including for life that may not even be aware is another beauty to be preserved at the cost of species. Waltz no 2 is a classic. waltz is underrated in general.

>>24605212
Make sure to have an analog way to listen to it for when the nuclear holocaust happens and power goes out before your flesh melts from radiation fallout, assuming you dont get vaporized.

>>24605209
maybe, but i would want to know more about the nature of consciousness before culling life for having a nature it didnt choose. nip it before it becomes true life, on any level, would be preferred to me. we also miss out on exhibits of experience and ideation from novel perspectives (from my perspective)

>>24605216
Only Man is capable of compassion toward the unaware. Preserve Man, preserve this compassion

>>24605215
No, it isn't, and even if it is, the point still stands, and it was scripted to demonstrate the point, you John Gacy wannabee nigger.

>>24605219
Grow up

>>24605190
Bitte nicht "mog" sagen. Yeah, yeah, Bach, Shakespeare, cathedrals, beer, red meat. #Trad. Big yawn.

A regular panther in the Amazon is more graceful, content, deadly than any of us city folk will ever be. But we alone can look at it and marvel. We alone see that it is good as did our creator upon creating it. The panther just wants to chill and hunt and fuck. God's art mogs ours.

>>24605226
No, you should, because your modern past-times are inseparable from modernities proclivity to march towards an Armageddon teleos.

>>24605229
>*blows jaguar's head off with a hunting rifle*
Man's art is God's art.

>>24605238
That's just boorish vandalism.

Vile thread, deranged fucks.

>>24605241
A hunting rifle unfired is boorish vandalism.

>>24605245
Pick a side or shut up.

>>24605245
its a doggy dog world. : (

>>24605245
Humans won.

>>24604938
You're a complete idiot. Humans cannot be anything besides "genetically determined" if genetic determinism is given to be a true true to begin with. All of you retarded westcucks claim to reject dualism then turn to it every single time. Where is the division?

thread theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_jk-nGpxLQ

>>24605257
>true true
*a tautological truth
Tired

>>24605212
It's funny how you have to strain with eye-popping pretense to simulate having a soul

>>24605238
Man is a tranny and a cuck.

>>24605257
Capacity for culural production can be selected for, cultural productions themselves cannot. This isn't difficult.

>>24604509
Ludwig Klages is right, all of you logocentric vermin need to be killed ASAP.

>>24605265
He's also the opposite of those things. A truly unique and complex animal, unlike any other

>>24605254
Sure, if you define having your science and technology turn against you and establishing multiple threats of existential catastrophes to civilization itself as winning.

>>24605262
Only humans try to "have souls" (convince others of their autonomy). Animals don't

>>24605270
>He's also the opposite of those things.
No he's not. Every time he tries to create civilization, he is really just propagating system that will damn his future generations to a life of indignance.

>>24605271
Better to have a loved and lost etc. etc. At least humans try. Animals just do the same thing for eternity

>>24605276
Animals have even purer souls, unputridfied by language, culture, and retarded shit like your comment

>>24605278
It's this indignace that drives man to higher heights. Animals could learn a thing or two

>>24605268
>Capacity for culural production can be selected for, cultural productions themselves cannot.
If you acknowledge the latter as true, then the former would necessarily be impossible.

>>24605283
Yes, animals are eternally content in their "purity", which is why they're static. Man is not, which is why he does more

>>24605285
>higher heights
Man was not capable of this the moment he invented the t-shirt. Just stop being loyal to this depraved species.

>>24605286
Nope. Cultural productions aren't transmitted/inherited through genetic mechanisms, only capacity (intelligence etc.) is

>>24605288
Excellent point. I can tell you're a smart guy. What is your opinion on dogs wearing sweaters?

>>24605288
And yet here you are, Man, indignant at his own sorry state. Only Man, a performative contradiction, is capable of this. Animals do not hate themselves and drive themselves to do better

>>24605282
What a nihilistic, vacuous phony will to power take. Where animals lived in harmony for billions of years only to be interrupted by terrestrial caused extinctions, it took less than 500 years of human attempt to dominate nature to lead to our own potential enslavement by this process or the sterilization of the planet. Infinitely better to have life thrive for eternity than to end it all in a pointless catastrophe to feed our lust for power, glory, and pointless pleasure. The fact there are so many deluded and psychotic retards like you in this thread is eye opening about the garbage quality of this board. Worse than a subhuman.

https://youtu.be/NhheiPTdZCw?si=tNnLQY7bKCtdmE9M

>>24605283
If you're the anon I think you are and your wrote I'd read your shit

>>24605299
>it took less than 500 years
Powerful. The dynamism of Man. Risk everything, greatness at any cost

>>24605302
Foolishness and shortsightedness on a cosmic level, more like it.

>>24605298
You should write a self-help book for dogs. It is your destiny.

>>24605299
>tranimal lover using "subhuman" as an insult
kek

>>24605302
Isn't there an Andrew Tate general for you to post on?

>>24605305
Only Man is capable of foolishness. Choosing to forego time-tested instinct for the temperamental dynamism of reason. So fucking based.

urbanites r u ok? this thread is concerning

>>24605308
Animals know balance and harmony, you sub-subhumans spite in its holy face, at your own demise.

>>24605315
Okay, Nietzsche, don't cause yourself a manic breakdown again.

>>24605300
Which anon do you think I am? Referring to specific posts would help.

>>24605323
Yes, animals are a conservative, static, docile, slavish component of the universe. Only Man is willing to challlenge God and attain a higher sphere. Based

>>24605330
The stylistic choices of these
>>24605271
>>24605219
>>24605201
>>24605165
For example

>>24605349
NTA and the last one is mine, so they're not quite all from the same anon. Sometimes I like to imagine that in the distant future some historians with very specific interests will study the 4chan archives in depth, and they'll have to try to sort out which posts belong to the same person by comparing writing styles and preferred discussion topics. I'm sure it will be very difficult. Maybe by then AI will be able to do it much more systematically than humans, though, which would ruin the fun a bit.

>>24605461
Or maybe none of the data will last long enough for that.

>>24605482
Or maybe whatever archives the historians are using will include all the IPs as well, so they won't have to work at figuring out who is who, which would also ruin the fun.

The reductionists got mauled ITT.

>it experiences but it isn't aware of experience
Experience presupposes awareness, you dullard. Sloppy thinkers continue to conflate the soul with apperception, and the standards of discourse on this board continue to plummet. The only criterion for life is self-feeling: does the animal feel its life on its own side? Then it possesses a soul. A pig in a factory farm may not be able to narrativize its suffering, or meaningfully reflect on it, but it does experience that pain at every instant of its life. The consciousness of that pig is an unremitting stream of pain-instants.

Experience is pre-linguistic, Superstimuli experiments prove animals experience qualia (they can pick out qualia from their background), metacognition has been observed in corvids, elephants are capable of compassion. All the rudiments of human "greatness" exist within the animal kingdom. Autists backreading LLMs into the animal kingdom make me want to purchase a firearm.

>>24602944
>>24605216
Most aggressively corny motherfucker in this thread.

>>24605501
Apologies, meant to quote this:

>>24605212
This person watches 40K lore videos in his free time.

>>24605494
>The reductionists got mauled ITT
Lol maybe on opposite day

>>24605514
>animals don't possess subjective experience
>language precedes experience
>not being a moral agent means you are not worthy of moral consideration
>animals are biological LLMs
>animals are immersed in themselves totally without remainder while human beings are perpetually dissatisfied and restless vermin, and that's based!
>uh, cathedrals and suspension bridges
That's all you said. It's clear to any third parties that your camp is operating on a lower level.

Humans will outlive all extant non-human species. Because non-human animals are the sole product of terrestrial selection pressures, they can't defend themselves against catasteophic extraterrestrial threats (meteor impact, solar flare etc.). Humans, on the other hand, having extricated themselves from this causal chain of selection pressure and programmed instinct through self-reflexivity, can defend themselves against threats not yet experienced in evolutionary history. It's in this way that humans abide more closely to the laws of nature (survival of the fittest) than the supposedly more natural non-human species.

>>24605525
NTA. Sorry, but you guys lost hard. Just never ending appeals to emotion

>>24605169
Animals embody their capacities totally; these scientists and great artists need an entire civilizational apparatus to realize their achievements. Human possibility depends on far more than what a tiger depends on for its next meal. Dependency is a mark of weakness. A tiger is its strength and lethality. A human being must become that strength, and even then only at a remove. They need to apply for a license to own a tool that others invented for him. Strength is vastly superior to power because strength conforms to self-regulating limits of nature. Power is perverse and unnatural.

>>24605525
>>not being a moral agent means you are not worthy of moral consideration
Strawman. See >>24604509
Lying about your opponent's position = immediate loss

>>24605539
Most of you are still conflating sentience with metacognition. Your thinking lacks all rigor.

>>24605535
>Humans, on the other hand, having extricated themselves from this causal chain of selection pressure and programmed instinct through self-reflexivity
A band of nomadic hunter-gatherers is less susceptible to ecological shocks in the long-term than globalised civilization. You'll see how far you've extricated yourself from nature when EROI starts to plummet. There's no extricating yourself from entropy.

>>24605542
Power is an emergent layer on strength that arises in nature when strength is no longer sufficient in fulfilling nature's law: survival of the fittest. Power is MORE natural (fitter) than strength

>>24605545
>a living being exhibiting clear signs of pain and distress is not actually experiencing that pain and distress

You've tacitly implied that the other points were not strawmen. That anon contradicts himself, anyways: if animals are "mere things", then why would it be horrible to torture them? Would it be a bad thing to verbally abuse an LLM?

Anyways, when did the Chinese cat torture contingent find its way to /lit/?

>>24605545
An interstellar civilisation is less susceptible to supernovae than nomadic hunter-gatherers. You'll see how far you've extricated yourself from culture when the sun goes red giant. There's no extricating yourself from entropy.

>>24605550
Power also only deepens your dependency on natural law. No guns and no Bach without an agricultural and industrial base to free up those with no taste for farm work.

>Power is MORE natural (fitter) than strength
Only within the artificial conditions produced by civilization itself. Even a chimp's place in the social hierarchy is a function of his size and physical power, not on exteriorized muscle. Or do you think Musk is one year on a desert island away from becoming Bear Grylls?

>>24605557
Meant for >>24605548

>>24605557
I don't deal in hypotheticals, especially pop culture brained hypotheticals. An interstellar civilization's chains of dependency would be so complex and far-reaching as to be incomprehensible. Globalised civilization trades short-term susceptibility for long-term instability. Nomads are sensitive to every change in weather, but they will persist for hundreds of generations. Modern civilization can absorb floods and wildfires and earthquakes, but its clock is ticking down rapidly. Energy in, energy out.

>>24605553
>You've tacitly implied that the other points were not strawmen.
You wish, but no
>if animals are "mere things", then why would it be horrible to torture them?
If rock formations, trees are mere things, then why would it be horrible to destroy them?

>>24605569
>If rock formations, trees are mere things, then why would it be horrible to destroy them?
Why would it? Why anthropomorphize objects? Are complex systems like animals and plants worthy of moral consideration, or not? How can they be worthy of moral consideration if they lack the requisites for moral consideration, i.e. the capacity to feel pain? Your thinking is so sloppy and convoluted. Look at this autismal pretzels you're twisting yourself into to justify your distorted intuitions. You're anti-animist, but you'll die on a hill for a hill?

>>24605560
There's no such thing as "artificial". Civilisation is just a higher (more negentropic) natural emergent layer on a lower level of nature. Nature always wins.

>>24605566
>I don't deal in hypotheticals
>but its clock is ticking down rapidly
lol

>>24605573
It's "artificial" because it is a negentropic energy sink maintained not by nature's self-regulating biophysics, but human will and intentionality. It has to transgress those limits to even function, that's why it's unsustainable and perverse. Nature is indeed a dynamical system, but dynamical within a certain range.

>>24605571
>Why anthropomorphize objects?
I'm not. I don't value objects as moral agents.
My reasoning is crystalline. Read the original comment again, slowly.

>>24605575
>the planet is infinite and we will conveniently discover new energy gradients to maintain our current EROI into perpetuity
Childish.

>>24605579
Human will and intentionality are emergent on biophysics, they are agents of nature. Humanity is nature's spear's tip in its striving towards fitter forms. I don't think nature can be subverted like you--it's all powerful and always wins (survival of the fittest)

>>24605585
The planet is NOT infinite which is precisely why extraplanetary civilisation will be selected for

>>24605582
>I don't value objects as moral agents.
And yet rocks, animals, trees are worthy of moral consideration, by virtue of their common thinghood. Would it be "horrible" to detonate a nuclear bomb over the Mojave desert because of what it would do to the geology, or wouldn't it?

>>24605592
>And yet rocks, animals, trees are worthy of moral consideration
No they're not. Did you even read the original comment? You're arguing with a phantom

>>24605591
More childish, pop culturebrained delusions. This is the level of people I'm working with. Enjoy your airless, radioactive Martian desert.

>>24605589
Emergent on biophysics, but in a way that's kicked off a self-destructive feedback loop. A self-fumigating vermin horde that has exceeded their carrying capacity is also emergent on biophysics. What is unnatural and perverse is everything which flouts these limits to the detriment of itself and everything that comes into contact with it. So all this rhapsodizing about human greatness just comes off as tacky and delusional.

Arguing with people on the internet is one of the fastest ways to come to accept that neither God nor nature has gifted humans with a truly unique ability to reason and intuit truth apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. We are definitely getting by on a haphazard pile of evolved heuristics, learned cognitive technologies, and prerational intuitions, including fairly limited self-reflection that requires effort to engage in to make sure our beliefs aren't internally inconsistent.

>>24605600
>Seafairing civilisation? More childish, pop culturebrained delusions. This is the level of people I'm working with. Enjoy your savage barbarian wasteland
Thanks soijak

>>24605593
Why would it be "absolutely horrible" to torture a thing with no inner experience? Use your words with precision. I'm getting tired. You're a lousy thinker who keeps conflating sentience with apperception (self-awareness). A cat undoubtedly experiences what it experiences.

>>24605602
There's no comparison between travelling on a planet you've been engineered by millions of years of evolution to exist on, to a dead planet millions of miles away with no magnetosphere.

The dream of interplanetary colonization is medical grade reddit. I knew you'd bring up Columbus. You're slated to mention the Wright Brothers next.

>>24605600
>but in a way that's kicked off a self-destructive feedback loop
This is just cope because your're a self-hating human who wants to pick and choose when nature starts and ends.
I on the other hand believe in an omnipotent nature that is always at play, striving toward fitter forms. As far as we know, we are it's spear's tip, but there might be things that come after us. Everything is natural, and nature always wins

>>24605610
Humans didn't evolve for seafairing either, there's no sailing gene. The only difference here is scale

>>24605613
>This is just cope because your're a self-hating human who wants to pick and choose when nature starts and ends.

I very clearly defined what I meant by perverse and unnatural systems. Systems with unsustainable EROI ratios are doomed to fail. It's thermodynamics, not neuroticism.

>Everything is natural, and nature always wins
Indeed, those species which are better able to conform to these limits will succeed in the long run. Industrial civilization is a blip in a cockroach's species memory. I accept your concession.

>>24605616
No, it's a difference in kind, not degree. You should have been able to infer that from my post. And it's seafaring*, you dolt.

>>24605622
You believe in a weak nature that can be defeated, I believe in a strong nature that always wins. You believe nature's expressions will always shrink and conform, I believe nature's expressions will always attempt to grow and expand, and drive itself to greater negentropic heights per its law: survival of the fittest. My nature is fitter than yours.

>>24605627
It's a simple matter of scale. No new physical or biological laws are being invoked in accomplishing it

>>24605640
It's a difference of degree for the human beings in question. We can't even terraform Antarctica.

>>24605635
I believe in species that self-destruct, and which wouldn't have achieved these "present" heights if it weren't for the compacted carbon sludge they discovered in the ground to begin with. The heights nature is able to achieve running in the dark, within these limits, dwarfs manmade systems. Compare a brain to a car. Your language is loaded: a hyper-efficient but "static" nature produces fitter organisms than a wasteful, decadent civilization with a pretty veneer. Modernization is a failed experiment because nature selects against these kinds of energy-hungry systems in the long-term. Unless you're banking on a Dyson sphere to bail you out, or something.

>>24605660
I'm sorry, but your conception of nature is inchoherent. It's one in which the universe never exits the quark-gluon plasma stage due to it's comparatively less energy-hungry state; it's survival of the weakest
>manmade systems
Manmade systems are emergent on natural systems. It's nature all the way down. This is where you go wrong every single time. Per the survival of fittest, life "bailed out" matter, a far less energy hungry system. But this wasn't an accident, it was simply nature at work. It drives itself to higher, more negentropic, more dissipative systems

>>24605681
No, it isn't incoherent because I accept that nature does exhibit a drive towards order and complexity, but one which is limited by the most probable conditions in which complex, living systems actually develop: planets whose primary source of energy are their parent star(s). I am speaking of a gradient, not all-or-nothing. Human beings have transgressed these limits, but because they haven't transcended the structure which dictate them in the first place, their civilization is doomed to implode - unless they build Dyson shells or discover a magical form of clean, limitless energy.

>>24605697
>No, it isn't incoherent because I accept that nature does exhibit a drive towards order and complexity,
You concede to me, then. Because if you truly believe in nature and not survival of the weakest, then you will also believe that on the whole, nature will select for anthropological/cultural systems that can trangress these limits but discover a new a niche at a higher negentropic/dissipative level. We may not be that particular system, but they will exist

>>24605725
I believe in survival of the fittest within very hard biophysical limits, and a nature which plays the long game. Nature might select for negentropic systems, but it will select the most negentropic systems only fitfully, never permanently, and these systems will be doubly dependent on their environment (dependent on the sun to grow food + dependent on alternative sources of energy). The baseline always reasserts itself, but that doesn't mean I'm settling for a diminished form of nature. Look at the immense diversity the biosphere has been able to produce just based on the energy it can pull from the sun (excepting extremophiles which depend on geothermal energy). In any event, nature is self-limiting. That's where you and I diverge. I accept nature strains toward complex systems, but as determined by hard biophysical boundaries. The vacuum of space and the difficulties associated with maintaining an industrial civilization at peak dissipation are corrective mechanisms baked into the structure of time and space itself. Your model of nature is pure entropy disguised as a pure negentropic imperative. Mine is more balanced.

>>24605743
Your "hard biophysical boundaries" are just petitio principii and probably, as already mentioned, a projection of the self-hatred you harbor for your species. If there are "hard biophysical boundaries" then nature—by definition—can overcome them, and that would seem to be borne out by what complex systems already do exist. Apart from that I don't have any qualms left with you, as you've conceded that higher-level anthropological systems are in principle possible, which in an infinite universe means that they're already actual.

>>24605757
The question was never whether modern civilization is possible since it self-evidently is, but whether it is sustainable, and characteristic of human "greatness." I argued it wasn't because it exceeds the planet's energy budget at its own peril. So, all this bragging about *shoots your majestic panther with a carbine* is silly because you're bragging about something that is structurally primed to self-destruct, and which has rendered the vast majority of human beings quite unfit to survive within the very natural systems on which it depends. If we take these boundaries into account, then it seems the universe is more primed to select for Ancient Egypt than the Imperium of Man. Goldilocks negentropy.

>If there are "hard biophysical boundaries" then nature—by definition—can overcome them, and that would seem to be borne out by what complex systems already do exist.
You still can't think in gradients. The low-hanging limits are easily surpassed. Dependence on solar energy never will. The surest sign of an advanced civilization crashing through these boundaries would be a Dyson shell. We haven't observed the infrared signatures of any which seems to suggest the conditions for a technological imperative are an anomaly, especially given we haven't constructed any ourselves.

>A projection of the self-hatred you harbor for your species
Modern civilization is perverse. There is nothing pathological about hating it.

I've made my case.

>>24605781
>whether it is sustainable
If it is sustainable, it will be at a higher dissipative level. You still don't seem to grasp this.
>structurally primed to self-destruct
This is not a feature of nature. The only thing that nature is structurally primed to do is create fitter forms. The fittest forms are the more complex ones.
>unfit to survive within the very natural systems on which it depends
Human cultural systems are the means by which they survive within natural systems. The former are emergent on the latter, not perversions of it.
>You still can't think in gradients
And you still can't zoom out. Subsequent gradients are not approached from baseline.
>There is nothing pathological about hating it.
I don't care that you hate it, but it isn't conducive with science. It's forced you to accept all sorts of unparsimonious epihypotheses like the principle of a "balanced" nature. Occam cuts at it.

>>24605789
>it will be at a higher dissipative level.
Only if conditions permit.

>This is not a feature of nature.
It is a feature of thermodynamic context in which the biosphere is embedded.

>Human cultural systems are the means by which they survive within natural systems.
Human cultural systems thrive within the natural system, but not individuals. The virile barbarian vs. the effete urbanite is a duality as old as time. Sloppy sleight of hand.

>Subsequent gradients are not approached from baseline.
I don't believe in a cumulative/linear model of evolution. The bacteriosphere is still the most successful "organism" on the planet and it will long outlive us.

>Subsequent gradients are not approached from baseline.
>like the principle of a "balanced" nature.
Nature, like any ordered system, is homeostatic. This is not the same thing as saying nature is consciously self-regulating, or that there exists a pristine nature which humans have interfered with, or that the biosphere isn't at the mercy of a gamma ray burst fired thousands of light years away. I already told you I believe nature is a dynamical, chaotic system, but also this tendency towards homeostasis is the baseline, not any particular homeostatic form. Conditions change, adaptations change, but some conditions will remain unalterable for many billions of years: like the natural world's dependency on the sun to fuel these adaptations. These are the limits which "high-level anthropological systems" can only temporarily transgress. Handwaving away these biophysical limitations is what is not conducive with science.

>>24601132 (OP)
If our pain isn't "real", then what is?

>>24604509
What makes humans the exception? Why are we some special exempt category apart from the rest of animals in terms of basic subjective experience?

>>24605818
>Only if conditions permit.
Infinite universe, thankfully.
>It is a feature of thermodynamic context
Which is a vehicle of nature qua fitness. Thermodynamic contexts drive systems that can dissipate them.
>but not individuals
Selection doesn't act on individuals. Modern technological society is the "virile barbarian" vs. the hunter-gatherer in this equation, who is the "effete urbanite"
>it will long outlive us
It may outlive *us", but on the whole, bacteriospheres will not outlive high-level anthropological systems in the universe, who have a higher negentropic ceiling (they're fitter)
>can only temporarily transgress
Again, on the whole, no. In terms of time spent in-universe from big bang to heat death, high-level systems transgress far longer, definitionally (they're fitter)

>>24605852
We can create and use unique systems of symbolic representation that no other animal or type of matter can.

>>24606049
>Infinite universe, thankfully.
Infinite but likely bounded. It's possible that on a large, Earth-like planet orbiting an O-type star with correspondingly larger oil deposits, a civilization like ours might be dominant for tens of thousands of years, i.e. these biophysical limits are far more relaxed. But I don't deal in hypotheticals.

>Which is a vehicle of nature qua fitness.
You've conceded the point. These thermodynamics limits are natural, but because I'm also saying they make it prohibitively difficult for industrial civilizations to get off the ground, we can't say these systems are evolution's "goal." They are like O-type stars. They are very good at burning through energy gradients, but don't last very long on account of that. If we want to extend the metaphor, the animal kingdom is like a red dwarf whose energy consumption is comparatively limited, but maintains relative equilibrium for much, much longer.

Again, you're trying to take me to task for a distinction I didn't really make: what's "unnatural" about modernity is its secondary energy environment, not because I think it's artificial in some vague sense.

>Selection doesn't act on individuals.
It doesn't need to, precisely because modern technological society insulates the average urbanite from natural selection pressures. Early homo sapiens were already experiencing an extended biological adolescence on account of their large brains, in any event. It's possible we settled down as a species to facilitate this process culturally. This phenomenon may be emergent on nature, but that's just saying the natural world contains the potential to negate or at least mitigate its pressures within itself, which is trivial because that's obviously what's happened.

>bacteriospheres will not outlive high-level anthropological systems in the universe
Again, you're conflating negentropy with fitness, when a bacteriosphere composed of simple organisms is orders of magnitude fitter than the average European nation-state. You take too much on faith. I don't believe the universe is one giant incubation chamber for technological imperatives. I believe, if anything, the whole universe is "pre-colombian": it's dotted with primitive societies. They are the norm, we are the anomaly. This is why I think the Fermi Paradox is bunk. There is no paradox if you don't take it for granted every species will follow the same evolutionary track. Of course nature produces dissipative systems, but this process is not frictionless.

>In terms of time spent in-universe from big bang to heat death, high-level systems transgress far longer, definitionally
I'll believe it when I see it.

>>24605818
>The bacteriosphere is still the most successful "organism" on the planet and it will long outlive us.
Wrong! And I've got the thought experiment to prove it:
Given an infinite universe at heat death (no thermodynamic free energy), according to the law of the survival of the fittest, what type of organism is more likely to exist:
a) One that can only function very close to thermodynamic equilibrium, like bacteria; or
b) one that can function very far from thermodynamic equilibrium: future sci-fi humans, "transcend"-type civilizations?
QED
(You're welcome, anon >>24606049)

>>24601399
>>24601389
Too based for this gay ass board

>>24606113
A. It seems obvious. Are you being sarcastic? Where would an advanced sci-fi civilization get its energy if there is almost no energy available for work?

>>24606090
>But I don't deal in hypotheticals
All your "biophysical limits" are hypothetical, in fact. Just pure wager
>>24606113
Thanks, anon; that's basically what I said with:
>In terms of time spent in-universe from big bang to heat death, high-level systems transgress far longer, definitionally
The other anon just isn't a consistent Darwinian; his view is clouded by his resentment of his own species.
>>24606127
Failed physics award. Clue: surviving heat death is an endurance race.

>>24606136
Energy, solar flows, EROI ratios, biophysics, this is as as concrete as it gets. These are the realities on which all ordered systems depend. You're speculating about black hole brains trillions of years into the future while accusing me of dealing with hypotheticals. First the guy who thinks you can be aware of experiences you're not aware of, then the guy who thinks interplanetary civilizations are plausible, then you speculating about heat death supercivilizations to handwave away real and present limits on how far we can push modern civilization without the whole thing imploding.

>>24606127
Why would an advanced sci-fi civilization at the end of the universe need "just-in-time" energy like some shitty bacterium?

>>24606156
>My hypothetical far future Star Trek civilization is magically exempt from the laws of thermodynamics, QED
Sad.

>>24606154
>real and present limits
*hypothetical limits
And do remember that my hypotheticals a far more parsimonious than yours. They're merely restatements of that most dangerous of tautologies: the survival of the fittest. If anything they're a priori.

>>24606163
Hey, congrats on the failed high school physics award

>>24606168
"Energy in, energy out" is more "parsimonious" than any biological axiom. Here's your maximally dissipative system, bro. Could barely sustain itself for 20 years.

>>24606173
You're speculating about hypothetical sci-fi civilizations surviving the heat death of the universe. Explain or concede.

>>24606186
>biological axiom
>biological
Oh dear...

>>24606202
>oh dear... oh me oh my... oh golly gee...
Sad. I've made my case as clearly as anyone can. To you, evolution is some perpetual motion machine that will generate all the energy it needs ex nihilo until it fulfils your need for parsimony. I see it as being severely limited by energy dynamics. You may want to hear it from the source:

>In our view modern cities, agricultural systems, and even entire nations are indeed industrial ecosystems. Since the structure of many human-constructed systems (e.g., cities) contains so much more abiotic and animal mass than that of natural systems, the energy requirement to construct and maintain them is much larger and must be supplied from outside the system. Today this requires not only the usual input of solar energy but also the concentration of massive quantities of fossil fuels and energy-intensive materials, which in turn generate enormous “ecological footprints” on the rest of the world. Hence these “real” economies are as much about the movement of materials and the use and dissipation of energy as they are about the social or human-involved transactions.

>Eugene Odum in 1969 wrote a good paper representing the behavior of ecosystems over successional time, that is, from the establishment or colonization of life at a site, such as an ecosystem that develops on a bare patch of land or a newly filled aquarium until the ecosystem reached “climax,” when it no longer accumulates biomass. ... At some point … the relatively constant biomass remaining at steady state was limited by the respiration (i.e., for maintenance) energy costs being as large as the gain from the capture of energy from the incoming solar energy, and the system adapted to that. This takes place around the world as most ecosystems are limited by the incoming solar radiation (or water) and rather than growing indefinitely they reach a steady-state biomass level. Odum believed that human societies too would initially grow rapidly (i.e. new construction exceeding maintenance requirements, resulting in the accumulation of infrastructure) but then would approach equilib rium as energy costs to maintain infrastructure became very large. This is very different from the indefinite growth of economies expected by most economists.

>>24606220
It is sad, isn't it? A proponent of "biophysical economics" who doesn't know a lick of physics. Back to basics for you.

>>24606233
All right, I tried to level with you and have a discussion. This was a waste of time. You're a dullard. Go back to your Whitehead and 40K lore videos.

>>24606186
>e-explain or c-concede p-p-please
Sure thing, soijak: retake highschool physics

>>24606245
I appreciate the concession. Back to /r/collapse and resenting your Amazon warehouse job now

>>24606246
Another deflection. Don't stray so far from /sffg/ next time.

>>24606255
The only deflection here is my hypothetical off your smooth brain

>>24606258
>I define my hypothetical sci-fi utopia as not needing energy to maintain itself, so I win
Are we going to do this again? Cretin.

>he still thinks it's about hypothetical sci-fi civilizations surviving the heat death of the universe
lol

>>24606263
Anon it's not hard. The hypothetical gets you to think about the relation between fitness and far from equilibrium systems. It's not actually about sci fi tech. I'm not a physics guy and still got it

>>24606270
>the far from equilibrium system exhibits greater fitness because it can transgress the limits of its environment
I got it. But there are absolute limits that can't be transgressed, at least not indefinitely. This has been my point from the very beginning of the discussion. I never denied the evolutionary dominance of industrial civilization, I denied its capacity sustain itself indefinitely, or that advanced anthropological systems will live longer than bacteriospheres on average.

>>24605078
>you're a pseudo intellectual zoomer
>here's my intellectual history i get from one author and adhere to it uncritically
okay anon
if you keep discussing the Ukraine, the Unabomber, and posting MSM headlines quoting Henry Kissinger I might just agree with you that the natural, material consequences resulting from the study of nature are evil. I just set to flames the Cambridge edition of the Meditations for you.

>>24606233
>believes in the unconditional fitness of negentropy
Drooling retard.

>>24606265
Seething twit.

Crazy how many retards think morality is about pain avoidance.
I don't care if I cause you pain. I care about the consequences in your long term development, making you less interesting, less likely to produce interesting ideas, art and perhaps progress humans to a state closer to God.
Torturing animals makes them scared and broken. It's ugly and that ugliness affects any human exposed to it. There is no real argument against factory farming except that it's ugly, diseased and being fed by huge factories makes humans dependent on them and incompetent.

>>24606524
Animals can't harness that pain for good, which is why animal welfare is about harm reduction.

>>24606527
Harm reduction would focus on the health of the species including genetic health, not avoiding pain which is an unavoidable part of life.
Farmers are objectively good and vegans are objectively evil. Farmers foster life, vegans undermine it.

>>24606605
>vegans are objectively evil
Another humdinger. This thread's full of them. Litany after litany of retards. Fuck you.

>>24606608
You don't care about beauty, how you leave the world for the other beings living in it or anything but yourself. Every vegan argument is ironically an appeal to hedonism. Sociopathic, objectively evil, destructive nonsense.

>>24606792
We've all read Nietzsche, faggot.

>>24606270
>I'm not a physics guy and still got it
That's probably why you did you fucking retard

>>24606808
Just stop being evil. Accept Christ into your heart and stop buying into all the most destructive anti-life memes in history.

>>24606914
Stop being retarded. I could explain to you the history of religious vegetarianism/veganism but you wouldn't even read it and accuse me of muddling the issue. Go slit your throat while getting buttfucked by your local Catholic priest, that's all you were born for, fucking trash

>>24606929
Consistently evil posts now turned explicitly violent and sadistic as if you're trying to prove my point.

>>24607038
>the cycle of suffering and abuse is bad when it feels bad...
you're a faggot. become the fertilizer you were meant to be

>>24607158
>I care about the consequences in your long term development
The pain itself is irrelevant but torturing you would make the world uglier and you less capable of advancing beauty, thought and the will of God.
You don't care about any of that, all you seem to care about is making up stories that make you feel good like pretending you're helping someone by doing braindead shit like contributing to the eradication of the domestic cow or wishing death on people you know nothing about because they don't subscribe to your made up stories.