What Extremist Views Do You Admit To Having?

My apologies for not getting into the spirit of this extreme thing. I'm obviously taking the suggestions too seriously.

~~ Paul
 
Illegal said:
... consciousness is an illusion.
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Consciousness is not an illusion. It's a name for a subset of brain functions. Take back the word from the woos!

Cleopatra said:
Think about Mercutio's proposal. If you ever need somebody to lobby for you and turn your belief according to which calling somebody a woo the way you keep doing all the time, constitutes civil behavior let me know because I have guts strong enough to include it in mylist.
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I never claimed it was civil behavior. However, the idea that we should outlaw public discussion of supposedly uncivil topics is absurd. Define religion.

So here is another of my extreme views:

The marketplace of ideas should not be restricted according to the desires of various upset people.

Kerberos said:
You presume incorrectly (in my singularly un-humble opinion), it's pretty clear that some of these suggestions are not views the posters really hold, but more like things they'd sometimes like to do, but know perfectly well are impossible and/or idiotic for a hundred different reasons.
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Oh, okay, then I feel much better.

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Consciousness is not an illusion. It's a name for a subset of brain functions. Take back the word from the woos!

Oh, okay, then I feel much better.

~~ Paul
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Paul, sorry but the word has been so hopelessly corrupted, might as well toss it.

Who is this "I" that makes you feel beterr? ;) I kid, I kid.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Consciousness is not an illusion. It's a name for a subset of brain functions. Take back the word from the woos!
~~ Paul
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"Illusion" is what we call something that is not, in actuality, what it seems at first glance. The "moon illusion", for instance does not mean that the moon does not exist, but simply that it appears to be larger on the horizon than overhead, while it takes up exactly the same retinal angle (i.e., is the same size). Consciousness does not feel to us like a subset of brain functions (even here, I would quibble--no brain has ever acted alone, so I would call it a subset of bodily functions, where the body--as most do--includes the brain), and so if it is indeed "a name for a subset of brain functions", it is by definition an illusion.
 
I believe that symmetry is a misguided ploy put over on humanity by an evil group of people who are evil.

I think that Marlyn Mason epitomizes what I am talking about (see Freakshow's avatar).

writing symmetrical
I

t
h
i n k bogus
is
taht

See how liberating my philosophy is?

I am making no headway with the masses, however.
 
But then every single thing we think and feel is an illusion, so the purpose of calling consciousness an illusion is lost.

Consciousness is a perfectly good word. Neurophysiologists are using it while trying to understand it. You just gotta be careful with it.

~~ Paul

Gah! I've hijacked this thread and turned it into an Interesting Ian discussion. Further profuse apologies.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
But then every single thing we think and feel is an illusion, so the purpose of calling consciousness an illusion is lost.

Consciousness is a perfectly good word. Neurophysiologists are using it while trying to understand it. You just gotta be careful with it.

~~ Paul

Gah! I've hijacked this thread and turned it into an Interesting Ian discussion. Further profuse apologies.
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Consciousness is a terrible word. It reifies a process, treats it as a mental entity to be possessed or lost, and perpetuates a prescientific view of human nature.

It is, like "sunrise", a perfectly good word for colloquial speech. It has too much baggage to be useful in science. Yes, Neurophysiologists are using it--and because they are, we get books like Searle's "The Mystery of Consciousness", collecting half a dozen different attempts at explaining consciousness as it introspectively appears. Because "consciousness" is defined dualistically, all attempts to discuss it appear incomplete. It is as if we are having to explain how it is that the sun climbs and falls through the sky, and are not yet at the point where we can say that the earth turns.
 
Okay, I give up. We'll dump consciousness. What will we replace it with?

I guess that's why Domasio called his book The Feeling of What Happens and Ramachandran Phantoms in the Brain. Someone inform Christof Koch! Someone fix those 19,379 PubMed entries!

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Okay, I give up. We'll dump consciousness. What will we replace it with?

I guess that's why Domasio called his book The Feeling of What Happens and Ramachandran Phantoms in the Brain. Someone inform Christof Koch! Someone fix those 19,379 PubMed entries!

~~ Paul
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I blame cognitive psychologists. Corey has a quote somewhere about cognition being to psychology what creationism is to biology...
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
My apologies for not getting into the spirit of this extreme thing. I'm obviously taking the suggestions too seriously.

~~ Paul
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For my own part I'd say I certainly meant what I said, but only as far as it goes. I think most of the posters know that a lot of these suggestions would be very difficult to impliment, and don't claim to know how it could be done. But what's being said is more along the lines of "I think this is something worth pursuing". At least that's how I took it. Still extreme, I think, but not claiming to have all the answers.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
However, the idea that we should outlaw public discussion of supposedly uncivil topics is absurd. Define religion.
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Actually from all the "extreme" or extreme ideas I posted this was the most serious one. I plan to start a thread on the issue, so we will have the opportunity to discuss it there.

The marketplace of ideas should not be restricted according to the desires of various upset people.
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Indeed but you must keep in mind that ideas will always upset people, the point is not to avoid to upset others but not to let upset people violate human rights on the pretense of the exchange of ideas. In my opinion of course(-----> I use imo because I know that you hate it :p )
 
I don't get it. How does the vegetarian diatribe differ in kind from the meat-eater diatribe? Perhaps it's just that the meat-eater diatribe is the default?

~~ Paul
 
Mercutio said:
Why do you think it differs?
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I don't know, which is why I asked. Perhaps there is no meat-eater diatribe, and so the veggie diatribe is annoying in its one-sidedness.

Both are food bigotry. I don't like either type of prejudice.
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Food bigotry? If someone claims that eating meat is cruel and inefficient, that's bigotry? That rather rules out discussing just about everything, doesn't it?

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
I don't know, which is why I asked. Perhaps there is no meat-eater diatribe, and so the veggie diatribe is annoying in its one-sidedness.


Food bigotry? If someone claims that eating meat is cruel and inefficient, that's bigotry? That rather rules out discussing just about everything, doesn't it?

~~ Paul
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I agree with Paul, how is bigotry? I'm not even a veggie and I don't see how you could frame it as bigotry.
 
Mercutio said:
I blame cognitive psychologists. Corey has a quote somewhere about cognition being to psychology what creationism is to biology...
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That's interesting. To me, behaviorism works much better as an analogy for creationism, due to its minority position among mainstream scientists, and its inferior explanatory power.
 
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