The peculiar business of being human

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Designers do not determine the function of an object, only an intent.

But they do determine what it is designed for.

Had you said "A chair that functions only as an object for sitting does not exist", I would have agreed with you - especially as most of my chairs do double-duty as step-ladders on occasion. But you said "A chair designed specifically for sitting does not exist", which is not true.

[Trinity]

The fact that people go and get their "hair done" boggles me...

[maiforpeace]

I have put this in the atheism and religion section, though I am not sure it actually belongs here. Never mind.

Does the sheer bizarre strangeness of being human ever enter your mind? Today I had a sudden insight into it and it occurred to me that everything is contingent, contextual, human centred (from our perspective) and actually virtual in that we project all our meaning onto the world.

Before people understood light there were theories that it was generated in the eye and went out to the world to see it. It seems to me that this is exactly what the mind does. There is no 'chairness' just the idea of a chaor projected onto some wood, for example.

And this is just one small example of peculiarness.

I knew the acid would bite back over the years..

Brain strain. I think I need to get high now. Be right back.

[Feck]

Not sure I'm human ,bit of a label , human , too much of a generalisation .A zoologist would put me in that box, genetically you can't say a mitochondria is human,most of the rest of the DNA is common to all mammals, shed loads of it is viral ,and they are not even alive.
shared "kinship" with other beings of my "type"
If I was a "dumb" animal would I be any "less" ?

[Hermit]

Does the sheer bizarre strangeness of being human ever enter your mind? Today I had a sudden insight into it and it occurred to me that everything is contingent, contextual, human centred (from our perspective) and actually virtual in that we project all our meaning onto the world.

Nothing bizarre or strange about that. I have no difficulties accepting the limits to human knowledge (analogy of the cave, the problem of induction) at all. If you want something really bizarre, read up on what some illustrious philosophers say about existence. For a laugh, take Heidegger, for example:

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive case of Dasein's Being, and it implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship towards that being - a relationship which itself is one of Being. And this means further that there is some way in which Dasein understands itself in its Being, and that to some degree it does so explicitly. It is peculiar to this entity that with and through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein's Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological.

Martin Heidegger: Being and Time, John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (transl.) Wiley-Blackwell, 1962, p 32 (Link)

He wasn't even on acid when he came up with that "insight".

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Does the sheer bizarre strangeness of being human ever enter your mind? Today I had a sudden insight into it and it occurred to me that everything is contingent, contextual, human centred (from our perspective) and actually virtual in that we project all our meaning onto the world.

Nothing bizarre or strange about that. I have no difficulties accepting the limits to human knowledge (analogy of the cave, the problem of induction) at all. If you want something really bizarre, read up on what some illustrious philosophers say about existence. For a laugh, take Heidegger, for example:

Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. But in that case, this is a constitutive case of Dasein's Being, and it implies that Dasein, in its Being, has a relationship towards that being - a relationship which itself is one of Being. And this means further that there is some way in which Dasein understands itself in its Being, and that to some degree it does so explicitly. It is peculiar to this entity that with and through its Being, this Being is disclosed to it. Understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein's Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological.

Martin Heidegger: Being and Time, John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (transl.) Wiley-Blackwell, 1962, p 32 (Link)

He wasn't even on acid when he came up with that "insight".

Does it only apply to Dasein? Or any Ratz member?

[Trolldor]

The fact that people go and get their "hair done" boggles me...

I think anything in the "makeover" or "makeup" category pretty much draws a blank for me.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

[Jason]

Form Rumertron!

[JimC]

Its peculiar nature would be illuminated greatly when or if we are ever in serious communication with intelligent aliens. It is hard to understand a phenomena when it is a unique occurrence; multiple examples springing from different evolutionary trajectories would give a perspective that cannot occur when a species can only navel gaze...

[Blind groper]

When people start asking "why", I get a bit sour on it. I have great respect for science, and a small level of contempt for philosophy. Most philosophy seems to me to be an artifact of human cerebral deficiencies. There is no 'why'. There is only 'how', which is the domain of science.

People ask how can anything exist at all. Easy. Things may not exist at all, if we average the totality of existence. It is like the ripples on a pond. If the 'up' ripples are given positive values, and the 'down' ripples are given negative values, the total overall displacement of pond water is zero. Yet the ripples exist.

In the same way, if we have a multiverse, and everything in that multiverse is given a value of positive something for matter, energy etc., and a negative value for antimatter, anti-energy etc., the final total value may be zero. So nothing exists. This is not philosophy. It is basic maths.

[Tero]

Leave that medical marijuana alone, Rum. Even if it was back in 2009.

[Coito ergo sum]

I have put this in the atheism and religion section, though I am not sure it actually belongs here. Never mind.

Does the sheer bizarre strangeness of being human ever enter your mind? Today I had a sudden insight into it and it occurred to me that everything is contingent, contextual, human centred (from our perspective) and actually virtual in that we project all our meaning onto the world.

Before people understood light there were theories that it was generated in the eye and went out to the world to see it. It seems to me that this is exactly what the mind does. There is no 'chairness' just the idea of a chaor projected onto some wood, for example.

And this is just one small example of peculiarness.

I knew the acid would bite back over the years..

We're strange, but at bottom we are no stranger than anything else. LOL.

[Coito ergo sum]

When people start asking "why", I get a bit sour on it. I have great respect for science, and a small level of contempt for philosophy. Most philosophy seems to me to be an artifact of human cerebral deficiencies. There is no 'why'. There is only 'how', which is the domain of science.

"Why" is only one of the questions that can be answered via philosophies. Philosophy has various aspects, including "epistemology" (how we know what we know -- the nature of knowledge), and there is "metaphysics" which deals with first principles and abstract concepts such as "being," "knowing," "cause", etc. Then there is "axiology" which is the study of values and value judgments, and of course "logic."

I think many complaints about philosophy stem from the view of it that it is somehow divorced from reality or deals with a world that doesn't really exist. Like when people refer to philosophy as something that isn't expected to bear any resemblance to real life. The thing is, a good philosophy will harmonize with and explain reality in some way, or some aspects of reality or some aspects of real human behavior. If a philosophy isn't useful, then it's a bad philosophy. And, of course, some philosophies do turn out to be demonstrably wrong or incorrect.

People ask how can anything exist at all. Easy. Things may not exist at all, if we average the totality of existence.

That doesn't make it easy, actually. The average of existence and nonexistence is what? What is the "average of the totality of existence?" Do you have any experiential basis for this? Is there even such a thing as "nonexistence?" Have you seen any "nothing" with which to average it out with existence? Where is that "nothing" and how much "nothing" is out there?

It is like the ripples on a pond. If the 'up' ripples are given positive values, and the 'down' ripples are given negative values, the total overall displacement of pond water is zero. Yet the ripples exist.

Yes, and the troughs exist, and the peaks exist - you are averaging something, all of which exists. The trick would be to find some actual nonexistence with which to average or offset the existence. One may just as well say that there is no such thing as "nothing" or "nonexistence." There just "is" what "is" and it always will be. The ripples merely change the form of that "is." In the end, the smeared out density of matter will approach 100% entropy, and that will be as close to nothing as we can get, but it wouldn't be nothing, nor would it be the average of nothing and something - it would just be the most smeared out and homogeneous something that we can have.

In the same way, if we have a multiverse, and everything in that multiverse is given a value of positive something for matter, energy etc., and a negative value for antimatter, anti-energy etc., the final total value may be zero. So nothing exists. This is not philosophy. It is basic maths.

Show your work.

One - we don't know that there is a multiverse, so that's a big "if." A huge "if."

We also don't know that there is the same amount of antimatter as there is matter. Our universe's mass is mostly matter, so far as we have observed. There is a comparatively small amount of antimatter.

So, while your basic maths are basic, they assume a state of affairs that has not been shown to exist -- that matter and antimatter are equal, which observations so far have shown they are not, and you've attempted to allow for that by suggesting a multiverse (presumably where another universe exists that has mostly antimatter and a little bit of matter to "offset" or average out with our universe - that kind of thing) -- but there is no empirical evidence that there is a multiverse.

And, the maths really aren't that basic. What you've described, if you could actually do the maths -- i.e. if you could write out the theoretical physics for it -- would earn you a Nobel prize in physics and put you alongside Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Hawking and Feynman in the world of theoretical physics.

EDIT -- and I would add that the collision of antimatter and matter don't produce "nothing." Such collisions produce large amounts of energy, and matter and energy may be converted to and from each other. Energy is not "nothing." The matter is not destroyed -- it is only changed in form. Nobody has shown how to destroy matter/energy -- even with the collision of antimatter and matter -- it's only a "change in form."

[Blind groper]

Show your work.

One - we don't know that there is a multiverse, so that's a big "if." A huge "if."

For a start, it is not my work. I am not a good mathematician, and this is beyond me. But other people, who have greater minds than mine, are working down this path.

The basic equation, by the way, is 0 = x - x (x is whatever number we need to describe the totality of existence). Nothingness is the same as somethingness, if that somethingness is composed of equal parts of positive and negative material.

The multiverse is just the term I used to mean the sum total of everything. Does not matter if many universes exist, or just our own.

the collision of antimatter and matter don't produce "nothing." Such collisions produce large amounts of energy, and matter and energy may be converted to and from each other.

I am well aware of this. That is why I added energy and anti-energy to the description. This is, of course, speculative (though not my personal speculation). However, if we add into the theoretical description something we call negative energy, we can make the equation balance. It may be (probably is) much more complex than this. But the basic principle is sound.