Nick227 said:
If it is accurate then the desire is satisfied. Agreed? But the desire does not seem to me to be satisfied. People still want knowledge. I think that it is thus valid to consider if there are endemic issues here with objectivity, rather than it merely being a question of getting there one day.
The desire might not be satisfied ever. Precisely like a brand new Porsche might be seen as total fulfillment when you don’t have a car at all; even the first couple of days or weeks having the Porsche might constitute as such fulfillment. But when it is ten years old and rusting in the garage you might already have started to gaze at something newer and better (perhaps a Lamborghini); something that: “surely would keep you satisfied if you only could get it.” This might however be an infinite quest which always seems to betray some of us as time passes.
It is here where the variety of people’s psyche seems to play a crucial role in regards to “fulfillment”. For some the solution is trying to rid oneself from desire altogether (i.e. attachment leads to suffering). For others it is the quest that’s ultimately the satisfying element, thus seeking new adventures and goals might in and of itself be a kind of fulfilment in terms of finding new meanings all the time.
The building of the LHC seems to have evoked interesting reaction among a few physicists. Some of them saying that they wish it didn’t confirm the Higg’s boson, so that they could start working on totally new avenues (if the standard model would somehow turn out to be unsatisfactory). For them, that would be great, for others, not so much.
It seems to me that there are 2 areas of examination here. Firstly, there is objectivity derived from what might be considered the earlier evolutionary route - the midbrain mediating defensive reactions and acquisitional behaviour. Secondly, the role of thinking and language in creating selfhood as a linguistic and notional construct.
The second is to me clearly orientated along the same lines as the first - language is object-orientated and makes constant use of the basic objective proposition - subject-object. However, thinking and language clearly have the possibility to extend the scope of investigation far more widely than mere sex and survival. We can for example pontificate on all sorts of philosophies.
Yes, seems like a good way to put it.
Language and abstract reasoning can both solve some problems and create new ones – like going nuts when contemplating solipsism.
…Probably because the same underlying mechanism for feelings and sensations play a role in thinking as they do with basic survival urges. Thus people who loose much of their abilities to sense emotions find it hard to behave rationally, which also is the case when emotions flood the thinking mechanism.
Being hardwired through natural selection – constantly looking out for something as a natural condition – might indeed make it almost impossible to be satisfied when those mechanisms also regulate higher brain functions (at least to a degree, if not fully).
Yet, in pontificating and assessing the relative merits of various philosophies and scientific propositions there are certain things that need to be borne in mind...
(i) our brains are acutely biased through evolution towards only objective evaluative strategies. Evolution has made us feel good about objectivity but this does not mean that objectivity can necessarily satisfy all needs.
(ii) desires are inevitably understood as goals. But philosophical goals, for example, may not be achievable through examining the world from a goal-orientated perspective. There may be a confusion occuring in the brain because of the way it has learned to interpret and articulate desires. Mentally translating a desire into an object-orientated strategy for acquisition could thus proclude the fulfilment of the desire in some cases.
(iii) thoughtless awareness experientially teaches the brain that (ii) above is likely so. Some desires may be fulfilled through object-orientated transactions. Others require a dropping of the whole subject-object viewpoint.
Yes, seems like it’s more a question of unsound expectations in regards to objectivity that undermining them. For sure, understanding the mechanism for feeling hungry does not directly satisfy me, only food does, momentarily. It would be silly to expect objectivity to fill my stomach in this regard.
Nevertheless, at least in theory, it could be possible to manipulate such mechanism, thus creating a situation where you never ‘feel’ hungry; you would only infer that you should be hungry. We don’t know how the situation is with other feelings of desire or urge. Could we perhaps just tweak the brain into only registering fulfillment signals? I don’t know. But if we adhere to physical explanations, then it seems that feelings of fulfillment are also physical, thus at least in theory subject to direct manipulation. This would of course be done trough objective investigation, albeit with some help via subjective guidance. I however doubt we will go down that route, at least in the immediate future, or even if we should.
It seems that some think dropping the subject-object viewpoint is a universal solution, I however doubt it. Precisely in the same way as I doubt objective knowledge would make my desire for food vanish. If your expectations are to high, disappointment is waiting around the corner.
