Sunday School

[StregaModerator]

I read this article this morning. In my head, I can’t trace the route from cell consciousness as described, to the almost non-sequitur of changing reality.

Basically they’re proposing that our cells have a consciousness and actually make decisions – and then somehow that affects reality and we’re reshaping our future.

Opinions would be super welcome

Scientists say our consciousness may actually be altering reality

[StregaModerator]

@unseen you made the exact point that I also thought. Empathy is the feeling when you can relate to an injury or event because you have been through similar events and you  feel knowledgable sympathy. You do not feel anyone else’s experience.

You hear people all the time saying their empathy forces them to feel everything (usually bad things) from other random people. That’s just bollocks.

Simon if you think your empathy for someone else’s toe stub in any way makes you ‘feel’ their pain, go stub your foot again and quickly compare. Empathy is not some Vulcan mind meld. It’s just ‘experienced sympathy’

 

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

But if I see you stub your toe, and I am at all sympathetic with you, then I will feel your pain by empathy. We’ve evolved that as part of the human suite of cooperative abilities.

What is it like to be a Bat?

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

This new London Tube map is excellent!  Article.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

In Wittgenstein’s famous discussion of pain and private language he points out that there is no way to know what someone else senses. If you and I coincidentally stub our toes at the same time and react simultaneously in a similar fashion, is this sufficient to declare that we both feel the same thing? No, and there’s no way to verify the notion.

Yes, Wittgenstein argued that there’s no way to verify if two people feel the same thing internally. His “private language argument” basically says that sensations are private, but the language we use about them is public and is only meaningful because it connects to public criteria like behavior and expressions.

I am reading Kai Nielsen’s Atheism & Philosophy at the moment. He argued that the question of whether two people feel “exactly the same pain” is not something that matters in any practical, verifiable sense.  If the behaviors, responses, and language use are the same, that’s all we need for the concept of “both feeling pain” to be functional and meaningful. Whether there’s an extra, hidden, unknowable “sameness” in sensation is a non-question — it’s not something we could verify, falsify, or meaningfully investigate, so it just drops out of serious discussion.

In other words, Nielsen would agree with Wittgenstein’s skepticism about the internal comparison but lean even harder toward dismissing the worry as philosophically idle — what matters is shared public criteria for use, not metaphysical guarantees of inner sameness.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Yes, Wittgenstein argued that there’s no way to verify if two people feel the same thing internally. His “private language argument” basically says that sensations are private, but the language we use about them is public and is only meaningful because it connects to public criteria like behavior and expressions.

But it’s very important to be able to take the perspective of another, and also, to have empathic concern in response.

If I see someone stub their toe, I literally feel pain.  But it’s sympathetic distress rather than a pain in my toe.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Try explaining what water is to a fish.

[StregaModerator]

Empathy is informed sympathy

Someone has told me they are an Empath. What is an Empath? Is there a Sympath as well?

[UnseenParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

In other words, Nielsen would agree with Wittgenstein’s skepticism about the internal comparison but lean even harder toward dismissing the worry as philosophically idle — what matters is shared public criteria for use, not metaphysical guarantees of inner sameness.

I think that is essentially the conclusion Wittgenstein reached in his “language game” theory.

Take it away from pain for a moment. Imagine two people, you and a friend, and as a matter of fact, your friend sees the world as a photo negative of the way you see it. What could possibly happen to reveal this difference as long as you both talked about the world the same way?

You think you get a tan by getting out under a white hot sun set in a blue sky while he thinks the way to get a tan is to go out under a jet black sun set in an orange sky. I wonder what might happen to give away that what you are seeing is totally different? There are few areas in everyday life where two things can be totally different yet the difference be 100% irrelevant.

What is it like to be a Bat?

Or a dolphin, a submarine, or a migrating bird.

Speaking of birds, it seems they may use quantum entanglement to guide them in navigation. I would love to know how that feels on a sensory level.

[UnseenParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Try explaining what water is to a fish.

I think the limiting factor there is probably the fish’s level of intellection.

You can certainly explain to a human of reasonable intelligence who’s awake what air is.

[jakelafortParticipant]

No expert and just my impression but empathy is chacterized by creating a relatable impression that is experienced/felt when one organism observes another. Does not have to be same species. Mirror neurons and other neural junk whose name(s) escapes me and neural pathways are activated when something observed causes alarm or joy/ecstasy. If one is high in empathy watch a movie and start crying or repulsing the automatic response to some tear jerker shit. Zeus ex machina or some shit.

Evolved shit in humans and other mammals, and if i had to guess birds as well that advances survival in that it enhances social bonds, parenting, and quicker response to danger.

Sympathy is a human construct.

[UnseenParticipant]

Strega wrote:

@unseen you made the exact point that I also thought. Empathy is the feeling when you can relate to an injury or event because you have been through similar events and you  feel knowledgable sympathy. You do not feel anyone else’s experience.

Indeed, if I stub my toe and keep quiet about it, who is going to say “I feel your pain”? If, on the other hand, I shriek, a person in the next room might ask “What happened?” “I just stubbed my toe badly on a table leg.” “Oh, man, I feel your pain.”

It’s like the tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it. If i stub my toe while home alone, nobody else is going to wince.

[_Robert_Participant]

13,100 children under the age of 5 die every day. 9 kids a minute. Many starve or just don’t get medicine they need.

We love our pets. More than half a million cats are snuffed out in shelters each year.

Mother nature is absolutely ruthless. How many creatures are eaten alive every day?

Should one have empathy for someone who stubs a toe? It seems rather meaningless, relatively speaking.

If empathy is what it takes for us to do the right things, that’s great. However, the dichotomous situation of living standards always throws me for a loop.

[UnseenParticipant]

_Robert_ wrote:

If empathy is what it takes for us to do the right things, that’s great. However, the dichotomous situation of living standards always throws me for a loop.

In a recent Facebook post answering a person who likes to remind leftists like me that the Democrats were very keen on the KKK and it was a Republican who freed the slaves, I said that the two parties flipped sides in 1964 with Pres. Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill. He countered that with the notion that, no, the Dems are still the party of slavery. They just do it through public assistance programs whereas the GOP standss up for self-reliance.

So, maybe Lincoln was wrong then to free the slaves rather than letting them self-reliance their way out of slavery, whenever that would happen(?).

[_Robert_Participant]

Unseen wrote:

_Robert_ wrote:

If empathy is what it takes for us to do the right things, that’s great. However, the dichotomous situation of living standards always throws me for a loop.

In a recent Facebook post answering a person who likes to remind leftists like me that the Democrats were very keen on the KKK and it was a Republican who freed the slaves, I said that the two parties flipped sides in 1964 with Pres. Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill. He countered that with the notion that, no, the Dems are still the party of slavery. They just do it through public assistance programs whereas the GOP standss up for self-reliance. So, maybe Lincoln was wrong then to free the slaves rather than letting them self-reliance their way out of slavery, whenever that would happen(?).

The responsibility to be self-reliant ended when they were chained in the hold of a slave ship. Then denied the same rights and respect as everyone else for a century. But do explain to that person that the red, conservative, religious southern states receive the most Federal aid per capita. They are learning all about that now anyways.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sarah-huckabee-sanders-arkansas-lawmakers-urge-trump-reconsider/story?id=121105810

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