[eusman]

Isn't an essay based on the assumption we don't exist doomed from the beggining?

We are not cells and molecules. We are souls. Strange that an essay that talks about philosophy doesn't have even once the word soul.

Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotel seperates animals from humans as beings that have soul and the ability to think.

His work "Physics" tried to capture concepts people ignore even these days, and tried to examine in an amazing use of reason various metaphysical phenomena trying to find balance between whats real, fake and imaginary.

If you read the works of Aristotel and others, in original Greek you will be amazed by his astonishing ability to convey truth in a wonderful ingenious word of speech.

--

Plato talked about many not-connected subjects in a very indirect way to put the reader in becoming part of his works. Ingenius!

A very important concept of Socrates and Plato is the world of ideas. A seperate existance/entity/world that we all have access to. Modern science doesn't accept that, as there is not proof for that. But doesn't the fact that a lot of people share similar ideas at different place and time may be a small clue of exactly that?

[ingenium]

See, the problem is that you are simply wrong. I do not believe in the soul, and I cannot say for certain that it does not exist. I CAN say for certain that we are just cells and molecules. Our brains are composed of neurons, which are simply complex chemical reactions. The cell is basically a test tube, separating off the chemicals from everything else. A certain threshold of a chemical interacts with a molecule on the neuron surface, and it "fires", which causes it to release chemicals to an adjacent neuron, and this repeats.

If we had a powerful enough computer to simulate the physics of how each cell works or simulated the connections of neurons, do you really think it won't be able to "think" like we do? Our brains really aren't any different from a computer. A neuron either fires or it doesn't; on or off; 1 or 0.

Humans aren't special. Other animals can clearly think and react to their environment to make "decisions", but they just aren't as powerful of a computer as we are.

On that note, I assume you also believe we have free will? Well, we don't. With a certain set of stimuli, you will make the same decision/"choice" every time. If you understand what I said above, this would become apparent.

With regards to the soul, where did the soul come from? Do primates have souls? If they don't, then it had to come into existence at some point. Was there a set of parents who were soulless and had a child who magically had a soul? What about groups of people that had a long time in isolation to evolve separately, such as the indigenous peoples of Australia and the Americas? Do they have souls? How about the "hobbit" that was found in Indonesia that's 12,000 years old and is a separate branch from homo sapiens? What about neanderthals?

If a human gets a soul upon conception, and identical twins are caused by a zygote that splits, does each twin only have half a soul?

[eusman]

DNA evolved from RNA and it took billion years to do just that. DNA tried to perfect it self through its evolution. Your human body to evolve during its growth a lot of cells are destroyed of course while you are shaping.

So basically we are all derivatives of that process. Everybody knows that.

The point is that philosophy is not about getting a claim and considering it substantial to eliminate other probabilities.

Metaphysics is not feasible they are part of a material world. they react with it of course but it exists whether you can accept it or not.

Everyone is trying to understand what happened to all that antimatter that was created during the bing bang. For every molecule there is another anti.

And what about time? who can explain that mystical concept? in the possibility that you can go beyond it, means it may not even be valid as a concept as we know it.

In all these strange ideas, it's impossible to be satisfied that everything is only molecules.

If everything is a chemical random chain reaction how can we all have similar ideas or visions of the future? and note that Greeks never considered chemistry as different from Physics. Only recently did Chemistry claim it's independence.

[kc5tja]

The point is that philosophy is not about getting a claim and considering it substantial to eliminate other probabilities.

But this is precisely what PG identified as being wrong with philosophy as it is currently taught.

Metaphysics is not feasible they are part of a material world.

What?

they react with it of course but it exists whether you can accept it or not.

If it reacts with the material world, it leaves the realm of philosophy, and enters the realm of testability (and hence, science). It ceases to be metaphysics, and becomes normal physics.

Everyone is trying to understand what happened to all that antimatter that was created during the bing bang. For every molecule there is another anti.

As I understand it, we have a pretty good idea as to what happened to all the anti-particles. Nature seeks the state of equilibrium at all times. Anti-particles would be attracted to their opposites, and destroy each other; this would be detected today as the cosmic background radiation, and represents the boundary in time at which the universe ceases to be opaque.

The question should be, why is there more matter than anti-matter? This is the actual question that is being pondered by cosmologists.

And what about time? who can explain that mystical concept?

Einstein.

In all these strange ideas, it's impossible to be satisfied that everything is only molecules.

These ideas happen to be testable in a laboratory, and the results are reproducable.

If everything is a chemical random chain reaction how can we all have similar ideas or visions of the future?

Because we communicate with each other. You didn't learn what you know today in a total vacuum. You were raised in a family. You went to school. Everything you know and value in your life is through indoctrination via institutions external to you. As you grow older, you internalize them. And as we all know from studying everything from perceptrons to propeganda, the more you beat something into someone's brain, the more they're going to accept it as truth.

This is what happened in philosophy. Three Greeks decided to write down what they thought they knew. Three people. Only three. Yet, they shaped the course of ALL humanity, directly or indirectly. We're still feeling the repurcussions of their thoughts today. The very fact we're having this discussion is because of them.

Only recently did Chemistry claim it's independence.

You state this as if it were some kind of political movement, just in its ways, and noble in its endeavors. In fact, most chemists of yesteryear thought that chemistry (which evolved from alchemy, remember, and had nothing to do with physics at all) was not related to physics. But as time progressed, there was an ever-increasing unification between physics and chemistry. Today, a chemist will more often than not agree that it's a narrow subset of what we call physics.

It's very highly specialized, but it is still physics. When I was most recently going through college, that was the first thing that the instructor mentioned. Chemistry is so thoroughly influenced by quantum mechanics that to deny it is itself pseudo-science. Nearly all of the early atomic research was performed by chemists (who, at the time, did NOT think of chemistry as a branch of physics). It was only when chemists wanted to peer into the behavior of their chemical reactions (from ionic bonds to fission, and all points in between) that the seeds for what we now call Quantum Physics were planted.

No, the realization that (quantum) physics and chemistry are essentially concerned with the same things is itself a very recent phenomina -- late 20th century at the earliest.