On 18 Aug 2012, at 17:55, Platonist Guitar Cowboy wrote:
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 15 Aug 2012, at 14:46, Roger wrote:
But humans are not entirely governed from outside, they have their
own agendas.
We have a top level agenda: maximise self-satisfaction, and minimize
self-dissatisfaction. This can be programmed in very few lines, but
needs a very long time to bring sophisticated being like us.
But doesn't concept or computation of "self" makes this statement on
self's agenda much less clear than it looks?
Is "self" some conceptual cartoon or program, like individual
isolated humanist "bag-of-flesh + brain soup", a consumer in a
market with bank account, a career, set of personal experiences, a
class idea, is it a tribal idea, or is it some esoteric notion of
"Gaian world soul", a family notion etc.?
It is more like a control structure. The self is really defined by the
ability of some program to refer to their own code, even in the course
of a computation, like an amoeba can build another similar amoeba. Or
like when you look into a mirror and recognize yourself. It is the
third person self, like in "I have two legs". Then the math shows that
a non nameable deeper self is attached with it, and obeys a different
logic (the soul).
Satisfying oneself, in nature, is mainly drinking when thirsty, eating
when hungry, mating, peeing, etc.
But with its big neocortex, the man has made things more complex. By
incompleteness (or akin) he is never fully satisfied, want more, get
addicted, refer to authorities, and then to forget how happiness is
easy.
Assuming that some form of opportunism is a default operating system
or theology, with a high success rate in this local history/
geography, leads to question: why complicate things with "gods,
religions, truth, science, art, progress, their distinctions" or any
other set of ideologies?"
By the impossibility for all souls to escape the attraction of truth,
even when fearing it, also.
Further, are these attempts at framing "the self's" fundamental
operating processes, merely a sort of Kant transcendental mask for
different flavors of opportunism, a vain ticket to convincing
ourselves of increased freedom/slavery?
Opportunism is good. You know the story of the chinese or japanese
monk who was the prey of some tiger or dragon. In his attempt to
escape, he fell in some abyss and succeeded to hang himself to a
little tree, for some second. At that moment he saw a blueberry. He
ate it, and found it delicious, just before the deadly fall.
There is nothing wrong with satisfying yourself, in all circumstances.
On the contrary, the more you are happy, the more people around you
will be happy, unless they suffer from incurable jealousy, but that is
their problem.
The morally bad is when you satisfied your self by knowingly hurting
other selves.
The actually bad is when someone else satisfied him/herself by
knowingly hurting you.
I wish you all good songs,
I wish you the best Mark :)
Bruno
PGC aka Mark
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