Who (if any) do you think is right here? Explain why

nothing wrong with that
read aristotle

Too lazy. Spoon-feed me.

Shit, even Descartes says the intuition is the source of basic premises on which we base all our understanding. There is nothing wrong with obvious things being undemonstrable. There has to be a start to any series.

nah
gotta work for them good brain points

How about mathematics?

Math is based on impossible to prove axioms

Do you think we can understand everything with the way we are designed right now user? Can we really understand stuff like "why does something exist at all" or "what was before the big bang happened" without saying "its just is"

How so?

What is true knowledge then? Intuitive knowledge is true?

Maybe I'm dumb but I don't get how Mickey's answers totally negates Donald's point.

Brain chemistry is not beyond human grasp.
If we perceive that things that exist simply exist and that there needs to be no further justification for that this is precisely because of this brain chemistry as Mickey Mouse wisely points out.

So you agree that we can't really understand everything? That's what Mickey Mouse is saying

it doesn't

Rational reasoning is based on intuitive perception. If we accept that intuitive perception is not valid then the rational reasoning based on it is also not valid.
Donald is trying to justify his failure as a duck being on the inherent meaninglessness of existence. Mickey is challenging him to either embrace his fate and become a uberduck or accept his powerlessness was his own choice.

What did Tom mean by this?

Donald is saying that because everything can be broken down to chemical reactions, that there is no inherent value in life. Mickey is countering this claim; just as all knowledge relies on that which we cannot prove, so too does value, but that does not negate it and we should carry on. This seems like two diverging sides of Phenomenology to me.

1. True knowledge is subjective
2. Something is true if you're innately convinced of it being true

Define everything. There needs to be nothing beyond what we intuitively perceive. Existence is a justification of itself.

>embrace his fate and become uberduck
Can you articulate this with any more clarity? I don't understand what this entails--it seems needlessly arcane but maybe I am a brainlet

There was this fag in a Nietzsche thread once that said this was nihilism and accepting intuitive knowledge as true was unphilosophical.

I made my reply to this user I still don't think that existence is a justification of itself, my theory is that because those question control the qualities of universe that we know (are outside of it) we are not physically capable of grasping them because we are designed to understand thing inside the universe

Damn I wrote that so bad, sorry anoncI hope you understand what I'm trying to say

But if Donald claims there is no value in life, and Mickey says we cannot prove anything, doesn't that just strengthen Donald's argument?

Donald is saying "it's all chemical reactions" and Mickey is saying "we can't even prove it's all chemical reactions", which sounds like "it's even more meaningless than you think"

The last two lines are crucial. Mickey is pretty much saying "yeah so? Are you going to live with it or are you going to die?". Carving out one's own meaning, one's own truth, through your own will to power is the basis of Mickey's philosophy.

>you trust the chemicals in your brain to tell you that they are chemicals
donald duck thinks everything reduces to "absurd acts of chemicals"
mickey mouse is suggesting that this is an inconsistent belief to hold, since it implies that the belief itself is merely an "absurd act of chemicals" (so how could it be rational, meaningful, certain, etc.?)

This one's just retarded. Obviously it would still be preferable to wear a seat-belt to reduce the chance the of death.

The idea that human emotions are just a product of chemicals suggests that humans in fact lack free will. It's by our free will that we become aware of what is valuable and what not. Donald blames his own existential dread on his lack of free will. Mickey points out that it is only through his free will that Donald has become aware of the meaninglessness of life.
It is only by his own choice that Donald can find meaning in life.

not really

>I still don't think that existence is a justification of itself
Well, Mickey does.

Mickey is spooked as fuck.

>Mickey points out that it is only through his free will that Donald has become aware of the meaninglessness of life.
>implying Donald had any choice in the matter

What's true is what we believe to be true.

All knowledge is true by definition, you can't know something if it's false--you can know that it's false, but in that case you would know the true proposition "proposition X is false" and not the falsity itself. The question you should ask is "What is knowledge, conceived in general?" I don't think that there's an adequate answer that can be conveyed in words.

Feel free to correct me. I'm actually interested because I'm writing out of my ass anyway.

>implying Donald had any choice in the matter
He will after Mickey has enlightened him with his superior wisdom. Donald is just unknowledgeable.

Is just that free will doesn't exist

>What's true is what we believe to be true.
how are relativists this naive even alive?

It does.

t. Sam "I swear it's not Buddhism" Harris

It is an unnecessary discussion because free will is indistinguishable from fate

>innately subjective value judgements have real ontological substance

Do hard materialists not realise they're limited by phenomenology? Was the world really flat when 100% of the intelligentsia believed it to be so?

I mostly agree. But it's a special kind of fate.There is a saying:
You can let fate guide you or drag you along.

>Was the world really flat when 100% of the intelligentsia believed it to be so?
to us no to them yes

>tfw you freely choose to embrace your predetermined fate
>tfw freedom is the essence of spirit and spirit is the essence of matter

feels vs reals, in a way they are both right but ultimately reals wins ebery time

So then it was the truth to them but then it became false? Doesn't sound like much of a truth to me.

The judgement that our mind is reducible to chemical interactions is at best a pertinent observation that will allow us to more fully grasp the truth, at worst a materialist laying claim to the noumenal world. Scientism is as bad as blind faith desu.

But the conclusion that it is not is also based on phenomenological perceptions. Just more sophisticated ones.
Of course, I also don't agree with "Everything you believe is true". But the intuitive beliefs that define our perception of the world can't be changed regardless of our knowledge i.e. even if I "know" that the Earth is round I will still perceive is as flat. It might not be "true" that it is flat but it is most definitely "true" that I perceive it as such.

I absolutely agree, we need to have some ground to stand on otherwise we're just jacking off to Derrida. However there is a difference between recognising that your judgements are part of a dynamic scientific process and asserting that those judgements hold absolute value.

>mickey=Camus
M'a fait réfléchir

you're just denying the existence of truth
"true to X but neither true nor false simpliciter" is indistinguishable from "believed by X"
but then your assertion that it was believed by X cannot be true either

>there is a difference between recognizing that your judgements are part of a dynamic scientific process and asserting that those judgements hold absolute value
It's not so much absolute knowledge about the value that a variable takes but an absolute knowledge that such a variable can exist.Or something?

>you're just denying the existence of truth
Yes. To me, what is truth is that which I am convinced is true. What is true to other people is what they are convinced is true. To us, understanding that the Earth is not flat, it is true that the world has never been flat. However, if at some point in history people believed the Earth was flat, then the Earth was always flat for them. In one hundred years, people will be making fun of us for our current understanding of the world, however it is true to us now because we have convinced ourselves that it is so.

chemical or no, the experience remains.

I'm too much of a pleb to have read Nietzsche or anybody important, I just replied what I think.

Why is accepting knowledge as true when you inherently feel it and are aware of it inherently unphilosophical? A source of definite knowledge is not better or worse than another.

Why is it hypocrisy to trust chemicals in your brain to tell you they are chemicals?

What does applying infinite regress to Donald's statement have to do with the universe having "intrinsic value" or not? In fact, he never rebuts the assertion that the universe has no intrinsic value.

>Will you fight? Or will you perish like a dog?

"OOGA BOOGA"

Donald is most likely to be correct.

I think you're missing the point

Then what's the point?

Friendly reminder that any chaotic system is prone to being solved as soon as we have enough computer power to process it.

Yes, free will as well.

Moore's law isn't a law or even a suggestion, it was an educated guess that has proven to be wrong with time. If what you say is true, which it may not be, it isn't important unless it can be proven that we can produce infinitely powerful computers.

Did you know that firefighters, who are equipped to deal with fires, die all the time in fires? I thought that was interesting.

donald

he understands that the world is beyond human understanding and accepts that there is some scientific calculations that is organizing things. we just can't comprehend them, because we can't admit we are limited

We don't need infinitely powerful computers because there's not an infinite number of atoms in the universe. I'm aware this sounds like extreme reductionism but you know what I mean.

About Moore's law, we still have quantum computers and carbon nanotube research are very likely to unlock

Feel free to refute it.

Not him but I believe his problem with that line is that it implies beliefs to be inherently true, without the need to proove those beliefs or ever second-guess them.

>Will you fight? Or will you perish like a dog?
I will do whatever I am disposed to, you rat.

Knowledge exists outside yourself. You might think something is true and then somebody else comes along and explains why you're wrong.
That doesn't mean what you've believed so far is necessarily wrong, it may just not have been using enough information to be accurate enough to be considered true.
It may simply be a subjective matter, up to ones whim.

An instinctiual, intrinsic knowledge of some very base things is within all of us, and we can offer no rationale beyond "instinct", "chemicals", or whatsoever, but these things are as true as the fact that the sun is an extremely warm fusion reactor, something I'm not innately aware of, something I had to learn.

>because we can't admit we are limited
I am limited
/counterexample

Is there such a thing as absolute truth?

Here's my analogy for consciousness and reality using a movie theatre:
Perception: The movie displayed on screen. All knowledge is based on this.
Consciousness: Each individual's emotional bias of such movie. They all see the same thing, but through a different lense.
The Unknowable: The other side of the movie screen. It is beyond our perceptive abilities

>Perception: The movie displayed on screen.
bad metaphor that has confused myriad thinkers
>Consciousness: Each individual's emotional bias of such movie. They all see the same thing, but through a different lense.
they don't see the same movie since they aren't the same percipient.
>The Unknowable: The other side of the movie screen. It is beyond our perceptive abilities
how do you know it exists, then?

Donald is starting with the premise that the motion of atoms is "absurd" likely meaning that he believes their motion to be unplanned or random. Implying that that's true and there is no God or meaningful universal plan (which seems to me a pretty heavy implication), it does not necessarily imply that all things withing the universe birthed by "meaningless" atoms are by derivative meaningless. A single card in a house of cards may be insignificant, and its placement apparently random. The house itself, the construct of the atoms, may still have intrinsic meaning even if that meaning is only the resistance to entropy. The fact of positive being is itself significant. The view of being is absolute. Donald states that intrinsic meaning does not exist, but his argument of composition echoes like a logical fallacy.

Donald seems claim that for things to have intrisic value, they shouldn't be possible to be observed through the method of science. How so? If Moses saw a burning bush, should there not be a spark? If God existed, he would work through his own creation after all. Whether the method is visible to man is irrelevant.

That doesn't fit the definition of consciousness.

Re-reading this I realize I misread the original as atoms and not chemicals, but I feel the analogy can still work with something similar to a thought construct. Oxcytocin and vasopressin might explain attachment but they didn't write Shakespeare's sonnets.

Mickey is going in all sorts of directions. He seems to be starting with an incredibly thin meta-argument calling into question Donald's ability to consider the issue at hand with or without presuppositions. His statement that "All knowledge is ultimately based on that which we cannot prove." is montrously ignorant of one's own agency.

You may not be able to fundamentally prove a theory but every discrete moment of your observed life is a cascade of evidence in favor of our observable universe being real. His argument also doesn't address Donald's central point, and skirts it to say that Donald himself is weak. Why would something being impossible to prove make anything more meaningful? I would rather the opposite, that it is inherently less valuable if it is actually illusory. Does fighting make one more valuable? Mickey's expression is only a knee jerk against something he finds uncomfortable.

>Both statements lack teeth.

>Knowledge exists outside yourself. You might think something is true and then somebody else comes along and explains why you're wrong.
At which point what you believe has changed and remains true.

i agree w this interpretation

Your knowledge of the world is limited by your senses. You will never be able to understand more than four dimensions. Quantum physics tells us there is more to this universe than we can ever experience. So why deny all possibility of greater meaning, given what we know about the importance of observers?

I'm not saying that there is a god. What I'm saying is that the philosophical dualism of materialism vs idealism limits our understanding of the world in a way where both the arguments that all is Mind and all is Matter are equally true.

I for one recommend the study of idealist and monist philosophers and an open-mindedness to what is happening around us. I personally had my fair share of strange coincidences.

There is no real point, it's just an absurd joke.

I never understood this. If you don't trust the chemicals in your brain, why would trust a source that you can't know and describe?

The same source that is telling you your conciousness is made up of chemicals?

Could we even consider Mickey wise, or simply destined from birth to be the type to talk about being brain-chemical-enslaved?

>Carving out one's own meaning, one's own truth, through your own will to power is the basis of Mickey's philosophy
That doesn't seem to follow from what the meme is implying, that you are a hypocrite if you rely on materialism

What I don't get is how that disputes Donald's claim that there is no intrinsic value.

its a meme you autist

>absurd acts of chemicals
Everything affects chemicals, environment, interaction, etc . It's all reactive. How is that not a function in nature?

Numbers are abstract, they don't exist in the material world.

share coincidences pls? am curious

Where's your proof?

They are set, not proven.

Donald's right. If you think of a number and let a random number generator spit out numbers it'll eventually get it. The interaction of all the molecules in the universe has led to this moment of Donald thinking of and telling Mickey this statement. Mickey is right as well to say Donald's actions are hypocritical because what he does is the summation of what he is and in that moment he acted as a hypocrite. Mickey might be wrong to say Donald is a hypocrite but we wouldn't know because we don't know what the sum of random molecules that constitute Donald has experienced in the past. Mickey is also wrong in saying that Donald trusts the chemicals in his brain to tell him they are chemicals because he is the chemicals that out of pure coincidence made him, the sum of chemicals, think of and say such things.
In fact all they've said have no meaning beside randomly generated words by a random brain that is constituted of random acting molecules.
If there is any confusion, it is because our arbitrarily formed language forces a self independent of our being.
In short, the universe is a mass of random molecules and everything we think and do is caused by a series of random reactions of molecules. These molecules form us and there is no concept of us beyond these molecules. Any concept of free will and autonomy is also caused by random molecules.

inb4 nothing can be that coincidental
The chance of a particular person being born is, to take the safer estimate available given by Christine Mason McCaull rather than Ali Binazir who gave the estimate of 1 in 10 to the power of 2,865,000, approximately 1 in 400 trillion. The chance of every single person living in the world right now existing together at this moment would be approximately 1 in 400 trillion to the power of 7 billion that is 1 in 4 times 10 to the power of 98 billion. Tell me that's not a unlikely event.

>is monstrously ignorant of one's own agency
In fact he is making the point that Donald is unaware of his own agency by attributing his choices to an agency outside of himself.
Mikey's argument is that even if our thoughts and feelings are a result of chemicals we still perceive them as being enacted by ourselves and that this awareness precisely constitutes our personal agency.

>You may not be able to fundamentally prove a theory but every discrete moment of your observed life is a cascade of evidence in favor of our observable universe being real.
This is precisely Mikey's argument. Donald argues that free will doesn't exist because of his belief that it can't be proved. Mikey argues that if one has definite perception of the reality of one's free will then it definitely exists in reality. Nor is Mikey denying that there can be a scientific explanation to this so he is not saying that
>something being impossible to prove make anything more meaningful
but simply refuting Donald's argument that being able to scientifically understand the psychically determined mechanism of consciousness disproves the existence of free will.

Thus I can't disagree with Mickey's argument. Still from a sub-textual perspective it is indeed flawed.

Donald's view, while more ignorant from a philosophical perspective, is, as Donald's argument suggests, necessitated precisely by this lack of knowledge. In this sense Mikey's superior attitude, interpreted as a desire to distance himself from something he finds below himself, implies the presumption that he has come to acquire a more accurate knowledge of the world through the fully independent agency of his free will, rather than that the faculty of his self-consciousness has allowed him to become aware of this psychically imperative act as pertaining to himself. Thus Mikey dismisses Donald on the basis of the belief that free will can allow one to become aware of circumstances that one could possibly have had no physical knowledge of.

Mostly strange events that converge in peculiar ways. I'll give you the most prominent example below:

My grandmother always used to say that the impious get rain for their wedding while the pious get rain for their burial. When my grandfather was buried it rained on his grave and when my grandmother was buried a few years later the same happened. The peculiar thing was it only rained during the procession and the burial. The rain stopped afterwards and we had sunshine for the rest of the day.

You can explain this wholly rationally as some kind of coincidence but I think Jung was onto something when he introduced the world to his idea of synchronicity.

>You will never be able to understand more than four dimensions.Quantum physics tells us there is more to this universe than we can ever experience.
It is only through our intuitive understanding of the world that we have come to coin such concepts in the first place. If something were inconceivable then we simply wouldn't have been able to conceive of it.
>So why deny all possibility of greater meaning
What is meaning? The concept of meaning can only be defined within the context of consciousness. There can be no meaning in what we are incapable of conceiving of.