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Personallity; Are we really alive?
Topic Started: Jan 13 2007, 09:31 PM (1,441 Views)
That guy on the forum
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Hey I'm new here, and I'm only 12 so my post and grammar will suck, but I love learning about life and who we are so don't hate me. Try your best to understand my horrible talking skills.This thread is kind of like that free will and happiness one, and my question is similar. Are we really alive?

My sister had a lack of Ceritonim (the chemical that makes you happy) in her brain. This made her really mean and rude (and sad of corse) but then she got on a pill which made her act like a different person. The thing that got me think was the fact that the chemical was natural, our emotions are controlled by chemicals in our brain. This made me think, are we actually alive? Our brain is just a bunch of brain cells conected by energy and chemicals, and our brain cells themselves are made by atoms.

I started thinking about the stuff that made us who we are, Which is our personallity, knowledge, and emotions. But these things aren't controlled by us, our personallity is based off of the people we meet and our genes which come from our relitives. If you think that you are nothing like your parents or the people you know, mabye that is because of your horoscope. My family has this book on birthdays, and it has everyday in it. All you do is look up your birthday, and the descriptions are so fitting it is mind bogoling. Does this mean who we are is just based of off our relatives, life style, and horoscope? The knowledge we learn also effects who we are, and it's pretty obvious that that's from the outside world and people we know.

Basiclly all I'm saying is, who we are is allready "determind". Not determind by a mind or anything, but our fate is allready planed out. Once again, not planed by a person of somesort, just we have no controll over it.


I hope you guys had no problems reading over my post, I'm really bad at explaining things.
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Comrade Jim
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Welcome to the world of nihilism (spelling?)

You explained things fine and as I can't answer any of your questions I'll ask you one what happens if a someone like me took Ceritonim?
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Comrade Jim
Jan 13 2007, 09:43 PM
Welcome to the world of nihilism (spelling?)

You explained things fine and as I can't answer any of your questions I'll ask you one what happens if a someone like me took Ceritonim?

It probable wouldn't affect you unless you took it everyday. Then I guasse you'de just become very, very happy.
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Zer0
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Pills can completely change a person. I've seen it happen, and it's somewhat depressing.
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Comrade Jim
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On a similar note, as we are made up of atoms and every seven years or so we have lost all the atoms that were in our body seven years ago and got new ones does that mean that the "old me" has gone. Also I was thinking back to when I was younger I had a very different personality and behaviour but now as that personality has gone from the earth does it mean that that "old me" is dead and I'm just a copy with differences and when my personality changes again will that mean my current self is dead with a new one born- is it the equvalent of a aged clone in that the old me is compltely gone. I hope that made some sense.
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Dizzarth Stumpy
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Jan 13 2007, 01:31 PM
Basiclly all I'm saying is, who we are is allready "determind". Not determind by a mind or anything, but our fate is allready planed out. Once again, not planed by a person of somesort, just we have no controll over it.

ahhhh, determinism, how i loathe you... saying our selves and our lives are already determined, and basing any moral choices on that, is just plain silly... it's impossible to prove or disprove this in any way shape or form (astrology isn't proof, it's bullshit) and living your life NOT believing in it wont hurt anything, but living your life BELIEVING in it COULD end up hurting something, if you turn out to be wrong (of course, how could you TELL whether you're right or wrong?)...

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On a similar note, as we are made up of atoms and every seven years or so we have lost all the atoms that were in our body seven years ago and got new ones does that mean that the "old me" has gone.

this is where there whole notion of the "self" comes in, and i'm actually studying it in my philosophy class right now (yeah, i took a philosophy course in college... i needed a fourth course)... it's this whole argument that your memories, your physical body, your personality, EVERYTHING about yourself changes over the course of your life, so what makes you YOU?
STUMPY WAS RIGHT. HIS TOUCHING SOLILOQUY HAS MOVED ME, TRULY A MANIPULATOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I HAVE ALLOWED HIM USAGE OF HIS PREVIOUS ACCOUNT.
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piercehawkeye45
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Stumpy brings up a great point.

I will argue for determinism but I try not to think about it, too depressing for me to ponder over it. We can't prove if we have free will because we don't know if we live in the 4th and the 5th dimension or only the 4th. We know we get to point A to point B but we don't know if we could have taken a different route or gone to point C because if we did, we would just call it point B.
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Darth Stumpy
Jan 13 2007, 09:55 PM

this is where there whole notion of the "self" comes in, and i'm actually studying it in my philosophy class right now (yeah, i took a philosophy course in college... i needed a fourth course)... it's this whole argument that your memories, your physical body, your personality, EVERYTHING about yourself changes over the course of your life, so what makes you YOU?

Good point. But is there even a You to begin with? I don't think we are anything more then just a bunch of atoms, and after reading Comrade Jim's post, I'm starting to think we aren't even that. What's the differnce between us and inanimate objects? Is there even a differnce?
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Dizzarth Stumpy
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Jan 13 2007, 02:14 PM
Good point. But is there even a You to begin with?

well that's a question philosophers have been asking each other since socrates... most believe yes, there IS a "you", a self... for some it's like a religious "soul", something permanent that persists throughout our lives and into death... for others it has more to do with the mind, like kant who says that our "self" is what allows us to take sensory input and organize it, while someone like hume believes that there IS no self, because there is no empirical evidence for it...

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What's the differnce between us and inanimate objects? Is there even a differnce?

well, for one, we can move and think by ourselves, rocks and such cannot...
STUMPY WAS RIGHT. HIS TOUCHING SOLILOQUY HAS MOVED ME, TRULY A MANIPULATOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I HAVE ALLOWED HIM USAGE OF HIS PREVIOUS ACCOUNT.
EHRHRHRHRNGGHH
LC is the best and brought back my embarassing sex tapes.
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Darth Stumpy
Jan 13 2007, 10:20 PM
That guy on the forum
Jan 13 2007, 02:14 PM
Good point. But is there even a You to begin with?

well that's a question philosophers have been asking each other since socrates... most believe yes, there IS a "you", a self... for some it's like a religious "soul", something permanent that persists throughout our lives and into death... for others it has more to do with the mind, like kant who says that our "self" is what allows us to take sensory input and organize it, while someone like hume believes that there IS no self, because there is no empirical evidence for it...

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What's the differnce between us and inanimate objects? Is there even a differnce?

well, for one, we can move and think by ourselves, rocks and such cannot...

Good point about us being able to move and think, but thinking is just brain cells and chemicals isn't it? So, what makes us different then chemicals, other then the fact we are alittle bit more evoled?


Even ig there is a soul, what is it? I personally think there is no soul, other then the energy that is our thoughts. But I'm back to my originall question, if our thoughts are made up of knowledge, genes , and the people we know, is there an us?
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Dizzarth Stumpy
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Jan 13 2007, 02:47 PM
But I'm back to my originall question, if our thoughts are made up of knowledge, genes , and the people we know, is there an us?

unfortunately, i don't have all the answers, but i tend to agree with kant (in this matter at least)... we're not just a swirling mass of chemical impulses in the brain resulting from sensory input, there is a certain structure and organization to our thoughts, and THAT is the closest thing you can point to as the "self"...
STUMPY WAS RIGHT. HIS TOUCHING SOLILOQUY HAS MOVED ME, TRULY A MANIPULATOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I HAVE ALLOWED HIM USAGE OF HIS PREVIOUS ACCOUNT.
EHRHRHRHRNGGHH
LC is the best and brought back my embarassing sex tapes.
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Darth Stumpy
Jan 13 2007, 10:54 PM
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Jan 13 2007, 02:47 PM
But I'm back to my originall question, if our thoughts are made up of knowledge, genes , and the people we know, is there an us?

unfortunately, i don't have all the answers, but i tend to agree with kant (in this matter at least)... we're not just a swirling mass of chemical impulses in the brain resulting from sensory input, there is a certain structure and organization to our thoughts, and THAT is the closest thing you can point to as the "self"...

Good point. We are smart.
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piercehawkeye45
Jan 14 2007, 06:01 AM
I will argue for determinism but I try not to think about it, too depressing for me to ponder over it. We can't prove if we have free will because we don't know if we live in the 4th and the 5th dimension or only the 4th. We know we get to point A to point B but we don't know if we could have taken a different route or gone to point C because if we did, we would just call it point B.

OK, first I find this whole "determinism equals depressing" thing very weird. Facts are not depressing. They are facts. What is depressing is responses to facts.

What I find depressing isn't determinism, in short, but rather that people seem to think that facing up to the truth -- we have no free will and that the very concept (no matter how many dimensions you want to play with!) is complete and utter nonsense -- is somehow a Bad Thing that will inevitably lead to a Bad End.

We faced up to many ego-bruising truths over history. We used to think the Earth was the centre of the universe. We were wrong. People panicked and whined, then got over it. Then the solar system was. We were wrong there too. People panicked and whined, then got over it. Each step of the way we became less important to the cosmos as a whole -- and yet, if anything, we've become less psychotic as a whole.

Keep in mind that it wasn't all that long ago -- back in the day when almost everybody believed in that fantasy novel character "God" -- that it was perfectly OK to make up shit about a black guy so you could gather up a few dozen friends and kill him. Since that time we've moved on. Fewer and fewer people believe in this overpowering imaginary friend. We're even less convinced of being the centre of the universe and, as a result, we're actually humbled. (Not the faux humility of the "we must bow to God, an all-powerful being who yet loves us and wants us to be with Him" Pollyanna types but the true humility of realising we are not important to anything in the universe.)

So let's take the next step toward humility. Let us finally confess that we aren't special in any way whatsoever. We do not have special powers to fight the universe with our mysterious "free will". We are as much a part of the universe and as beholden to its laws as that rock over there.
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Dizzarth Stumpy
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personally, i don't give a damn whether or not i have free well, i'll never know for sure anyway so it's not really a concern of mine... but i'm going to damn well ACT like i have free will, because indifference towards events because it's all ready pre-determined is just a silly thing to do (it just so happens i CHOOSE to be apathetic, but for different reasons entirely).. of course, the only people i can imagine using determinism as an excuse to not act are the "LOL LIEF IS MEENINGLESS AND WE SHUD ALL JUST GIEV UP AND DIE YOU STOOPID CONFORMISTS LOLOL!!!" types...
STUMPY WAS RIGHT. HIS TOUCHING SOLILOQUY HAS MOVED ME, TRULY A MANIPULATOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I HAVE ALLOWED HIM USAGE OF HIS PREVIOUS ACCOUNT.
EHRHRHRHRNGGHH
LC is the best and brought back my embarassing sex tapes.
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piercehawkeye45
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[][][], the difference is control. Humans like to have control over their lives and the lives of others. Us being the center of the universe or the thing with God is something we have no control over, while with free will we do.

I personally like the feeling that I can change something and if we don't have free will, that sense of accomplishment or defeat is diminished.

Now I will admit that I am nothing special and am no greater than anything in this universe, but we as humans have evolved a trait of confidence and a sense of meaning which helps us prevail over obstacles. Even though I know these are bullshit, I intend on using these traits to their fullest.
Dropped the atomic bomb let them know that it's real
Speak soft with a big stick do what I say or be killed
I'm America!

I have found the enemy and he is us.
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