There are actual brainlets on this board who think the materialist account of reality has true explanatory power

show me the higher exists then

>>there are actual brainlets on this board with such a shallow grasp of history and religion they will immediately accuse me of being a christcuck because if you're not a materialist you must be a rabid evangelical Christian

That's because you are, faggot. Now get on your knees and kiss those refugee feet

>it's a footfag pope
Let me guess, he browses /tv/ too
I want off this ride

>show me the Good

It can only be lived.

Higher what? Where is any shred of evidence?

Great dodge, you sure showed those "brainlets" with your non-response

*tips brain*

>d-don't tell me I have to a-actually l-live these principles, j-just tell if it's P or not-P already!!

Know thyself. the Good is self-determination. Becoming one's own principle, instead of being determined/conditioned by what is outside you.

>brainlets
I really like this word

You're spouting utter gibberish. I'm beginning to think that "brainlet" is just another word for non-retard

if you are going to make a thread you need to have arguments. If you don't have a single argument to make and continue to make nothing but assertions I will abandon your shitty thread

You think "not being a slave to your biology and the fickleness of the external world by becoming your own man" is utter gibberish?

I have no interest in convincing anyone. What's a Veeky Forums thread gonna do to change your mind? Those who have seen, have seen, and that's all there is to it.

If you're open to this, I'll level with you. You're obviously not, so why would I waste my time explaining something you have no reference for?

You're so out of touch with your own self and reality you need a bunch of premises and a conclusion all wrapped up in a pretty pink bow to even begin to point you in the right direction. That's sad, m8.

>You think "not being a slave to your biology and the fickleness of the external world by becoming your own man" is utter gibberish?

Not only do I think it, it demonstrably is

Your post really hits close to home because these are the exact things I'm thinking about all the time. I feel I am the brainlet you are referring to and the exact opposite at the same time. Can you please further explain your points so I can get some deeper understanding of things?

>having a handle on your shit is gibberish

I don't think you understand words, m8.

I can't take the way I see the world and plant it into your head. I don't know the One Truth, but I do know I'm much farther along than what these brainlets would call the "truth".

All I know is that only a willingness to dig deep into your interiority will get you anywhere. Try meditating. Don't get hung up on the sectarian or religious baggage: the goal is to get of your head, to see what it is like to shut off the background commentary in your mind and to simply BE in the present.

Time is change, the present is the Now, and because all time is experienced in the immediacy of the Now, the Now is also, paradoxically, the eternal, timelessness. The degree that you are awake to reenact of your existing instead of being pulled into the past and future by your mundane consciousness, the degree you go beyond the silly modern mindset that only reacts to and is dominated by phenomena instead of dominating those phenomena yourself.

once you understand you are not your thoughts, that what you are is, fundamentally, an awareness, an "I" a Self, and not your neurologically-determined cognition, you'll touch something much truer and deeper than the content of your thoughts and emotions.

>I don't think you understand words, m8.

I don't think you do. What do you even mean when you're "not a slave to your biology"? What even is being a "slave to your biology"? Biology studies all lifeforms, regardless of their behavior. You're by definition a "slave" of biology by virtue of being a living organism, you dolt

>there are actual brainlets on this board with such a shallow grasp of history and religion they will immediately accuse me of being a christcuck because if you're not a materialist you must be a rabid evangelical Christian
This part that you're preemptively trying to deny is the only undeniably true part in your post. Go home, retarded christcuck.

tl;dr taoism

True.

Biology, as in your particular physical and psychological makeup which you did not "will", you simply were born "in them" and thus determine everything from your favorite food to your tics to your preconceptions about people to your character flaws to even your fetishes.

Of course by being a biological being you are determined by that biology. that's the whole issue here. The difference is that man can become cognizant of his conditioning, he can catch it in the act, and thus, he can, with a lot of work, determine himself and transcend his lower nature.

It's literally what you're doing every time you don't let an emotion get the better of you, among other things.

Blimey.

This is some serious shitposting.

Can you go more into the conditionality of human mental constructs sufficing for intellectual depth point?

Not letting an emotion get the better of you is still purely a matter of biology.

What you're describing is an ascension above instinct, which is conditioned entirely by human biology juxtaposed to animal biology. One is going to be a slave to their biology for as long as one remains a biological creature.

>t. brainet

>The difference is that man can become cognizant of his conditioning, he can catch it in the act, and thus, he can, with a lot of work, determine himself and transcend his lower nature.

Only if he happens to have the right genes with the appropriate environmental conditions to do so.

>Biology, as in your particular physical and psychological makeup which you did not "will", you simply were born "in them" and thus determine everything from your favorite food to your tics to your preconceptions about people to your character flaws to even your fetishes.

Yes, except of course that this ignores the environment which you were born in, which determines whether you continue living to produce offspring, which has nothing whatsoever to do with genetic makeup

Also, for someone who is like OmG le Totally ENLighteneD, you have a hilariously reductionist and mechanical view of biology, one that many biologists don't subscribe to. You probably also think that human behavior of those dreaded "brainlets" (whatever the fuck that even means) is solely motivated by rational self interest, which only shows that all you've been doing in this thread is pushing over self-made strawmen

>It's literally what you're doing every time you don't let an emotion get the better of you,
You do realize human biology has a brain region designed specifically for this? Because going off on all your emotions immediately is not good for social cohesion and thus "not letting your emotions get the better of you" is adaptive?

>there are actual brainlets on this board who think the materialist account of reality has true explanatory power

Okay kiddo, explain to me using your magic non-materialist theory how you would get a satellite to orbit Jupiter.

>>there are actual brainlets on this board who think determinism is what's keeping them tied to their desks and jerking off

Whatever happens, happens and what's done is done. Are you saying conditioned habits are not real? Lemme hear about this new theory of free will you developed in your spare time.

>>there are actual brainlets on this board who think pointing out the conditionality of human mental constructs suffices for intellectual depth

This is meaningless word-salad

>>there are actual brainlets on this board who will deny the existence of truth or concepts such as the Good and then turn around and implicitly assume the hedonic wasteland that is their inner lives automatically applies to everyone

Couldn't really parse out this run on sentence.

>there are actual brainlets on this board who think chemicals somehow precede or determine mental activity themselves instead of just emotions and neural activity happening simultaneously

Do you have an example of a mental activity that precedes or determines a chemical activity?

>there are actual brainlets on this board with such a profane, elementary understanding of religious consciousness that they think because science has proved fairies don't exist that there is literally no reason to speak of anything in non-quantitative terms ever again

What do you mean by this cuddly "religious consciousness" do you mean believing what an old book says really hard? Or perhaps you mean, obsessing over a few rituals or practices, or embracing Mother Earth in our universal Oneness and brotherhood.

Of course, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from transcending these drives as far as you are able.

Just because ideologies can be dogmatic or conditioned by social and cultural factors beyond your awareness does not mean every subjective evaluation of reality (while all views are, at the ultimate level, empty of true content) is invalidated, and it sure as fuck doesn't make you profound or deep when Parmenides was talking about this two thousand years ago, just scared to actually take a real position.

>Of course, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from transcending these drives as far as you are able.
>absolutely nothing stopping you
>as far as you are able
Could you be any more of a doofus? Everything we do in its entirety is conditioned and limited by our biology. Literally fucking everything. Drop your dumbass point, you're wrong on it.

Be like the Tao, friend, and stop making an ass of yourself.

Based on my experience, anyone who uses it unironically is usually dumber than the person they're criticizing.

How are all views, at the ultimate level, empty of true content?

I was specifically replying to your biology point. Of course I'm not ignoring environment.

You're confusing the effect for the cause. More like, those who weren't hysterical weenies had a better chance of survival, instead of your explanation which reeks of an evolutionary teleology, as if Natural Selection^TM specifically invented self-actualization for the purposes of survival.

Your first point was a total meme reply. If I had been arguing for the actual, material utility of my views you'd have a point. But I'm not. Didn't read the rest

No, "self actualization" is a term made up by people who don't like the fact that they're brains. The ACC exists to control impulses, moderate emotions, etc. There is nothing magic about it.

Are you denying I can choose my reactions to my emotions and circumstances? No? Okay, then, the human being, as far as he is able, can determine himself. Or in other words, biology, past a certain level of complexity, has the tools to determine itself. That's it. Don't belabor such a simple point.

All views are relative because they are the product of finite and conditioned beings. At the level of the system itself which "birthed" these beings, their views reflect nothing but their own particularly determined "life-feeling" and cannot possibly reflect the ultimate nature of the system taken in its totality. All dualism are reconciled. There is no good, evil, big, small, hot, cold, for the one thing that exists because there is nothing outside it on which we can form a comparison.

What is responsible for qualities, concepts, etc cannot be subject to them itself.

I never posited anything magical or immaterial. Please stop responding to phantoms. Our Self, a product of biology, is nonetheless self-determining and self-configuring as far as that biology allows for the prerequisite awareness of our drives.

Do you ever feel like the material world is really the spirit world? If everything needs an explanation then won't our explanations become circular and we will be left in the same position our ancestors were? Isn't the fact that anything should exist ineffable?

>materialists are so stupid with their "le epin" explanations and meaninglessness
>what? I never proposed anything immaterial. Stop chasing phantoms

You cannot describe the universe completely with any accuracy unless you're willing to admit that it's both physical and mental in nature.

>Are you denying I can choose my reactions to my emotions and circumstances?
As a matter of fact, I would. What you call "you" has no choice in any matter and is simply perception of subconscious decisions made before they rose into awareness.

> Okay, then, the human being, as far as he is able, can determine himself.
A rock can determine itself as far as it's able. This is a statement devoid of content, the only content it shows is your obfuscation of a conceded point. Everything we do is conditioned by biology. Having a more advanced social instinct than most animals is not "above biology" in any sense. Go fuck yourself.

I love how you declare yourself self-determined and way above the unenlightened scum that can't determine themselves, yet still deeply care about what that same unenlightened scum think about your views, as if those actions don't completely contradict what you believe.

If you were completely above the man beasts, as you think you are, you wouldn't give a flying fuck about our opinions. They'd be like a dog barking to you. Yet here you are, getting all worked up about people disagreeing with you. You debunk your bullshit yourself, through your own behavior. You show yourself that you're anything but the enlightened scholar you think you are, and, through your complete lack of self-awareness, show that you may be even lower than the scum you're supposedly superior to.

Why don't you come back when you can actually walk the walk instead of just talking the talk

All the mental is physical.

Let me explain this to you: just like a cripple or an average woman is more physically limited than a man, some people are more psychically, mentally and emotionally limited in comparison to others.
You can work to change things, but in the end the boundaries of what is possible are beyond your grasp. Trying to benchpress a ton is as much a futile struggle as trying to have Batman's willpower.

You need more stoicism, because you are desiring what you can't have.

honestly listening to Alan Watts was the biggest waste of my life thus far, such a hedonistic prick he died young and I'm supposed to give a shit about him talking for 3 hours about how you can't taste your own tongue or bite your own teeth

Everyone I know IRL who has tried to talk about taoism is a faggot too

meditation/Buddhism/eastern religion in general is a meme in the west that produces annoying women who want to travel in Tibet to find meaning in their meaningless vapid lives and cucked men who think being passive is a transcendent quality

Eastern religious sentiment is cancerous to actually getting shit done in your own life because it gives you an excuse to not feel bad for literally doing nothing all the time, it might as well be an accessory to cultural marxism for how effectively it turns people into dumb faggots

>there are actually people using the word "brainlet"

I feel dumber just for knowing this.

I'm having a discussion. I'm not worked up. And I never claimed I'm enlightened you okay?

I never denied intrinsic limitations, but as far as one is able realize an inner freedom the more he is able to control his distress at these perceived limitations.

Your views are closer in line to what you're trying to refute than you'd believe.

Cool story bro

More like being "above biology" just means a biology that has evolved to the poijtbit can override it's own programming, which is what I said like my second post in response to you. You need to tweak your definition of biological conditioning if that conditioning is not so set in stone with enough self-awareness. Or in other words, "biology" can implement its own higher-order conditioning to replace merely evolutionary conditioning

Look, bro. Think of it like this.

If your brain is big enough in relation to your body mass, you are able to hunt prey (i.e. be a carnivore). If your brain is even bigger, you can form complex societies (i.e packs). Later on, you can eve become self-aware by noticing your reflection in a mirror is actually you.

The more and more bigger the brain gets in relation to your body mass, the more complex things it can perform. One of these things, which is found in humans, is conciousness.

That's it. If you bundle enough neurons together, you get consciousness. There's no further "meaning" to it. There is no "purpose".

It "is" what it "is".

Why do you think repeating shit back at me I understood when I was 15 counts as an argument?

Of course it is what it is, and my being able to choose to become a better person, enabled by my consciousness and by the very principles of well-being that are in effect everywhere in existence, also is what it is.

Because you clearly think some sort of mystic magical life-force is at play here-otherwise you would accept scientific theories on consciousness and get on with your life.

Science will lead us to space colonisation, lengthened lifespans, and a post-scarcity economy. Philosophy will answer questions about ethics that have little to no effect in increasing the living standards of human beings.

>there are people that are so boring and unlikeable that they have to resort to having a sense of intellectual superiority on an image board
>there are people who still don't accept that consciousness is a physical phenomenon
>there are people who don't realize that the brain is an intentionality-producing system, and this is remarkable without even referencing qualia
>there are people who waste the only life they likely have worrying about unfalsifiable noncognitive nonsense

No, I don't. All "I" am is my internal, moment-to-moment, the contents of which I can make an effort to improve. This has nothing to do with the theory of evolution, scientific theories of consciousness, whatever epin science lesson you have in store next.

If you're gonna posit some magical subconscious entity that is who I REALLY am and making all these decisions for me, you're literally talking about the fedora version of a soul, where instead of being a divine principle instantiated in Man it's le epin deterministic ghost in the shell that pulls your strings.

And please don't give me that junk about "living standards" when material prosperity has been emotionally proven not to correlate with happiness. Come on.

>you're literally talking about the fedora version of a soul,

He clearly isn't.

> instead of being a divine principle instantiated in Man it's le epin deterministic ghost in the shell that pulls your strings.

That would be genes and environment, son.

"Le ebin ghosts" etc etc don't come into it.

Are you seriously making this thread again?

Yes OP! I'm rooting for you, materialists are such a bore, "Subjectivity isn't real, the actual manifestation of feelings in the human consciousness isn't real, I can't understand the difference between the body and the soul" stop denying yourself the examination of ACTUAL REAL subjective phenomena just because you love science and technology so much, the subjective itself is a lot more interesting and beautiful than empirical explanations of the mechanization of the universe, a thing is beautiful because it resemble the beautiful itself, explain what makes it beautiful all you want I rather concentrate on experiencing the beautiful itself as much as I can, a much better reality then the endless systematic inquiries as to how it works that only gets most people entangled in thinking that nothing has meaning because they forget that what's important is the thing itself not how it works or what it is made of.

You think my genes are equivalent with my internal experience? Do you seriously think I'm contesting we aren't products of our genes?

What's good bro. I don't have any problem with the empirical, mechanistic understanding. It's beautiful in its own way, because it is, in fact, what gives us beauty, but that said materialists who don't think matter and mind are not two sides of the same coin are smoking some good shit

They're not two sides of the same coin, they're the same side. Mind is made out of matter and energy, and not bullshit mystic ~energies~ but literally electric charges. You have never justified why the ability for life to arise is in any way divine, saying the word "epin" over and over in place of an argument.

I never once posited a mystical force. Mind is indeed matter, and matter is mind. The materialistic fallacy is granting an arbitrary primacy to matter because it can be quantified, and therefore objective, and therefore "truer" than subjectivity, as if the phenomenon of subjectivity in itself is not a phenomenon as objective as rainbows or earthquakes.

Please actually read my posts instead of propping up strawmen between the lines.

It is beautiful when it remains in its right place of being inquiries into an infinite unknown, I also enjoy basking in the logical complexity of the universe, but when people put said inquiries as if they are above the thing which they inquire itself and treat it as more important that I get annoyed, it leads them to say that meaning doesn't exist because they can't explain the mechanism of the whole of the infinite universe and than unaware of their folly proclaim in existentialist fashion that it is absurd or that morality and good and bad do not exist, it drags our civilization down and it's sad really because they actually believe they found some profound truth.

>I never once posited a mystical force
What's your phrasing? The Divine is the laws that allow for life to arise in the first place, because conciousness is so special there must be something in the makeup of the universe that caused it?

It's still just mysticism, no matter how you try to disguise it.

This guy knows, world will fall when people use a tool instead of a book to think

>You think my genes are equivalent with my internal experience?

Like it or not your genes and environment are what decides your internal experience.

You literally just agreed with me that matter, the very makeup of the universe, is what causes mind. So yeah, your ideological inertia notwithstanding, I am perfectly justified in believing consciousness is intrinsic to the universe not because little fairies told me but because it's what reality itself is giving me by being composed of an unconscious substance that becomes conscious in the appropriate configuration and complexity.

Neuroscience is just confirming ideas about reality that have been in play for thousands of years, that matter and mind are inextricable properties of the One Thing this existence is, whatever that Thing may be.

I'll never understand why pointing out what we're made of somehow invalidates the very perception that can make that judgment in the first place. it's mind boggling to me. Science and religion complement each other beautifully

*cringe*

Bravo OP you got yourself some attention. What's the next part of your plan?

Holy shit, why are you even trying to say "it's mysticism brah" to a good explanation, like that magical fucking word makes it worthless, to make something in a specific way takes some level of intelligence and self awareness, the laws of the universe themselves are a complex system to produce specific results as any scientist would agree, following that wouldn't it be a pretty good explanation to say that something with some quantity of intelligence made the universe specifically the way it is, that something being God? why do you deny the assumption as untrue, in a world where truth is the illusion of sufficient belief?

Great, which is exactly, EXACTLY, what I said like 70 posts ago. And while they decide my internal experience they are not actually my internal experience. I am my internal experience, an internal experience that can understand itself as the product of biological aggregates/environment and thereby take steps to minimize that conditioning and cultivate that "I" as opposed to indulging blind impulse. Do you see the distinction?

>I am perfectly justified in believing consciousness is intrinsic to the universe
As long as you accept that it is exactlt as intrinsic as stars, granite and beaches, yes.

>Neuroscience is just confirming ideas about reality that have been in play for thousands of years, that matter and mind are inextricable properties of the One Thing this existence is, whatever that Thing may be.
Exactly what is neuroscience proving that , in any way, discounts a materialist view of conciousness?

t. useless passive """"""Buddhist"""""

You're making an artificial distinction thanks to your genes that allowed you to be such an obnoxious douche

I agree - further, anything that Neuroscience doesn't know yet isn't a pass to say "muh mysticism/subjectivity" it's just something we don't know yet, like literally everything that's been figured out in all of history

>we don't know yet
>"muh god" "muh god"
>ah! we know now
>uhhh
>hmmm, now here's something else we don't know
>"muh god! muh god!"
>rinse and repeat

>to make something in a specific way takes some level of intelligence and self awareness,
False. Solar systems are made in a specific way without intelligence or self awareness.

>the laws of the universe themselves are a complex system to produce specific results as any scientist would agree
False, unless you can produce some peer reviewed article that claims there is an intentionality or goal to the universe to produce "specific results."

No, not really. This seems like a word salad.

There you go again trying to drag subjectivity down to the seeming insignificance of matter. Stars and rocks and shit are expressions of the matter side of the coin, mind is the expression of the conscious side. Both equally intrinsic and mutually supportive. No one is granted primacy over the other. The universe isn't made of epin meaningless atoms but atoms that can be both dead shit and symphonies.

Neuroscience has confirmed the Buddhist doctrine of the skandhas. The dual-aspect nature of matter has its parallels in tantric metaphysics. The innate irreducibility of consciousness (how do you reduce a living, subjective experience to its particulate components?) says much about the accuracy of Buddhist teachings in regards to non-self.

Continue to """"debate"""" stupid materialists.

How can you create something specific without being aware to what it is you want to create?

How can h2o equal water without something pointing it to be that specific thing?
The laws of the universe themselves are a manifestation of God's meaning

Take it one word at a time. Anything you don't understand isn't word salad. I can't believe I have to spend nearly ten posts to convince you my subjective first-person "I" isn't literally a string of nucleotides, god almighty

Neither is your ignorance of exactly what I'm talking about an excuse to post your epin god of the gaps argument every time thinkers of the past and epin science men of the present happen to agree.

>There you go again trying to drag subjectivity down to the seeming insignificance of matter. Stars and rocks and shit are expressions of the matter side of the coin, mind is the expression of the conscious side.
And there you go trying to separate conciousness into its own magical category somehow as fundamental to the universe. Mattet isn't even that fundamental, really, but somehow one particular arrangement of one particular type it is half the equation? If you fuck up the molecules and the charges, you fuck up conciousness. It is really that simple.
>The universe isn't made of epin meaningless atoms but atoms that can be both dead shit and symphonies.
Yes, it's almost like you arbitrarily deciding something is meaningless because it isn't magic is fucking stupid. A symphony being ink on a page or a particular pattern of neural activation doesn't make it "meaningless" because meaning is already a subjective term.

>Neuroscience has confirmed the Buddhist doctrine of the skandhas. The dual-aspect nature of matter has its parallels in tantric metaphysics.
Jesus. What does this even mean?
>The innate irreducibility of consciousness (how do you reduce a living, subjective experience to its particulate components?)
By examining each component part and then examining them as a system. So exactly what is actually being done.

> Science will lead us to space colonisation, lengthened lifespans, and a post-scarcity economy.
Utopian nonsense. This is why theists acuse you of being a religion. There is no evidence that any of that will occur beyond your blind faith.

It's more likely that science will lead to our extinction as a species. Your kind already deny that there's anything special about consciousness. It's only a matter of time before your kind go further, and decree that it is an anachronistic relic from a more primitive age and an obstacle in the path of to your "post-scarcity society", so it should be done away with.

People like you are why I abandoned my faith in science.

When hydrogen and oxygen are put together, the electronegativity of the oxygen causes the electrons to move in such a way that the positive charge of the hydrogen nuclei is partially exposed. Thus, the overall bond has a positive and negative end, and since there are two hydrogen and one oxygen there is a charge pattern over the entire molecule. When enough of these molecules are together, we call the resulting mass "water." The properties of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, plus the properties of their interactions, cause a phenomenon. No intentionality anywhere.

I don't really care what you expect. Your conscious self is still a result of a combination of nucleotides.

You understand that these components are a part of the physical universe the fact that they themselves exist and produce the very specific and intentional result you have mentioned no matter how complex is what I am talking about, you again try to explain the mechanism as if it is more important than the thing itself, marking "water" like it don't exist, what makes water water is its quality of being water, everything else is just trying to understand what are the components of water but there will always be an infinite distance between what a thing is and what it is made of, if you can't understand this concept any further arguing is pointless.

What are you even arguing about? What even is your point? You're confused. The whole point of the thread is aimed at fedoras who dismiss subjectivity because they're unfeeling meme drones who have no understanding of the philosophical positions they disparage.

I'm not making consciousness a magical category, I'm identifying it as a very special phenomenon (don't have a heart attack) by very virtue of the fact it is an alive thing that emerges out of what is inert and unconscious. Which means the fedora has to either modify his view of matter or still somehow explain the world in such a way that consciousness is acknowledged as a real thing but still dismissed within the paradigm of "le epin meaningless quantum fart" that they think reality is, which would be absurd.

You don't get what I'm saying, do you? Are you so lost you don't even see that I'm partially agreeing with you? Hahaha oh man

The metaphysical confuses the heck out of me. I don't even know where to begin.

>very specific
Yes.
>intentional
No.
>what makes water water is its quality of being water
No, what makes water water are the properties of its components, the properties of their interactions, and the properties of the overall interacting with outside elements. Hydrogen and oxygen both predate their product, and their product predates the concept of "water".
>an infinite distance between what a thing is and what it is made of,
There is no infinite step, it is literally just the difference between examining components in isolation and examining the system.