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Well, imagine how believing that you didn't exist would affect your worldview.
When saying "practical" - which purposes and goals do you have in mind in regards to which you´d judge an approach practical or not practical?Well if I really believed I didn't exist, then it would probably follow that nothing else I see really exists either, so it would probably lead me to do some pretty unusual and crazy stuff. But how is thinking about this practical?
When saying "practical" - which purposes and goals do you have in mind in regards to which you´d judge an approach practical or not practical?
Let me put it that way:Well anything useful that could come out of it would be a start. Hopeful something more than just "it is an interesting thing to think about" too.
Yes I am 15, and I'll be 16 on May 2 so I can finally get my damned drivers license. It's not so hard to be smart, you just need to take your time, be open minded, and often times really really lucky. But mostly just open minded.I think I like you already, truth. Are you REALLY fifteen? You seem a lot smarter than some of the older posters on the site.
Yes I am 15, and I'll be 16 on May 2 so I can finally get my damned drivers license. It's not so hard to be smart, you just need to take your time, be open minded, and often times really really lucky. But mostly just open minded.
For the love of wisdom?This might, for some of you, be one of the most ignorant posts you will read this year. But what actually is the point to philosophy as, as far as I can tell philosophy doesn't really get you very far.
I hear concepts such as free will, determinism, the fact we can't even be sure if we exist blah blah blah, and granted they are interesting topics, but also rather pointless. I mean, so what if I don't really exist, so what if I don't have free will, what difference does that make to anything? I believe I exist, I believe I have free will, and that is all that really matters, isn't it?
Feel free to flame away, call me an idiot etc.
So you imagine your brain to be inside your mind?I can only keep my mind so open. I don't want my brain to fall out, after all.
Let me put it that way:
Unless you have at some point encountered the concept "I/Me/Self" (as an a. distinct entity and b. consistent entity) as lacking for the purpose you (or someone else) used it for (in that it was too unprecise, too poorly defined, leading to contradictions or paradoxa), there´s probably nothing useful to be found in these considerations, for you.
For me, once I have encountered such shortcomings, questions for the usefulness of this concept (or the limitations of its usefulness) downright force themselves upon me.
There are lots of ways you could go from answering in the negative to "do I exist?"
You might become an immaterialist, if you mean that you don't think your physical body exists; that you are just a mind floating in a world of ideas. That was the view of my beloved George Berkeley, who wrote the most delightfully brief philosophical treatise which would be even shorter if he didn't spend so much time apologising for being verbose
Or, you might find the notion of 'I' dissolving altogether, and start to wonder where the bounds of your consciousness lie, or whether they exist at all. And this has profound consequences for ethics, and one's general approach to life.
But is any of that useful, for anyone?
What do you mean by "useful"?
If something gets us closer to the truth, I regard it as useful.
The experience of the dissolving of your selfhood can be deeply calming. It can also change the way you regard other people. I think this is useful as well, in terms of its therapeutic and psychological value.
Sorry for being cryptic. Keep in mind that I am not a native English speaker and therefore tend to be clumsy and wordy.Okay, I barely understood a word of that
Apparently not, at least not at this particular point in time.but I'm going to guess nothing useful can come out of me pondering that particular question.
Well if I really believed I didn't exist, then it would probably follow that nothing else I see really exists either, so it would probably lead me to do some pretty unusual and crazy stuff. But how is thinking about this practical?
So you imagine your brain to be inside your mind?
Imagine my amazement, cantata, when - after having discovered so many similar ideas - finding out that "truth" plays such an essential part in your approach, while it is completely insignificant in mine.If something gets us closer to the truth, I regard it as useful.
Um, yes, and surely the quote is catchy and all, but even if Carl Sagan said it it still doesn´t make much sense to me (unless I could succeed in imagining the brain to be inside the mind, that is).I'm pretty sure he's referring to the saying: "It's good to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that one's brain falls out."
This quote is often attributed to Carl Sagan, but I think he may have gotten it from somewhere else.
Um, yes, and surely the quote is catchy and all, but even if Carl Sagan said it it still doesn´t make much sense to me (unless I could succeed in imagining the brain to be inside the mind, that is).
Sorry for being cryptic. Keep in mind that I am not a native English speaker and therefore tend to be clumsy and wordy.
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