The Immortal Mind

[Westy]

Guys you're arguing/debating or trying to reason with a kid
who's still in school.

He's at that age and period of life where he thinks he's
learned it all already

Just walk away.

[Flipperk]

Hello Aces High BBS!

NOTE: I took this post from my own work on another thread because I felt that it didn't quite fit with the thread's idea.   

I am a self-taught philosopher (and have been described as such by numerous friends and family members).   Here is a short treatise that I have composed regarding death, thought and immortality:

The Immortal Mind
By Penguin

I think, therefore I am.  However, death is the cessastion of all biolgical processes, including thought.  Therefore I will cease to be when I cease to think; the cessation of thought is death.  Therefore, if I die, then I cease to be.  This raises the question, why should I wish to be?

To ask oneself why one wishes to be is equivalent to asking the meaning of life.  To ascertain the meaning of life requires thought.  The meaning of life, in and of itself, is a thought or thoughts.  If I cease to think, then I cannot ascertain the meaning of life, for it requires thought.  Furthermore, the enjoyment of life has the same prerequisite as the the meaning of life- thought.

One can derive from this logic that in order to enjoy and ascertain the meaning of life, one must think.  If death is the cessation of thought, then it is the cessation of the enjoyment and meaning of life.  Therefore, without death, life would continue to provide enjoyment and meaning.

If death ends the enjoyment and meaning of life, then life must provide enjoyment and meaning.  Therefore, I do not wish to die because if I were to then I would not be able to enjoy myself and ascertain the meaning of life.  With that established, I will now describe my conclusion in detail.

Enjoyment- endless life is equivalent to endless enjoyment, such as food, sex, art, science and adventure.  If I were able to live endlessly, I would be able to taste the most delicious food, make love with the loveliest women, appreciate the highest art, enjoy the benefits of the most advanced science, and go on the greatest adventures.

Meaning- enless life enables to ascertainment of its meaning via such lengthy research that its meaning can be prised out by trial and error if nothing else.  The endless debates, though tiring, would make my information infinite, allowing me to distill the meaning of life down to an essence.

To boil my point down to an essence: To live is to think, to live infinitely is to achieve infinite wisdom.

-Penguin

The quote I bolded above is not really correct.

Death is the only reason why we put status on any object. If there was no death then everything would have been enjoyed by everyone, therefor nothing would be special...it would just be another event.

[Guppy35]

Guys you're arguing/debating or trying to reason with a kid
who's still in school.

He's at that age and period of life where he thinks he's
learned it all already

Just walk away.

I was chuckling to myself about this one while on the road today.  Ahh to be as smart now as I was at 16.   It was amazing how dumb the adults got for me at that age. My Dad had absolutely no clue! 15-18 seems to be the prime, adults don't have a clue time frame.   Even funnier was when I had my own 16 year old and I heard my Dad's words coming out of my mouth to my son.  Right in the middle of that conversation I had to stop because I was laughing at myself.  Turns out old Dad had a clue after all

[ink]

I was chuckling to myself about this one while on the road today.  Ahh to be as smart now as I was at 16.   It was amazing how dumb the adults got for me at that age. My Dad had absolutely no clue! 15-18 seems to be the prime, adults don't have a clue time frame.   Even funnier was when I had my own 16 year old and I heard my Dad's words coming out of my mouth to my son.  Right in the middle of that conversation I had to stop because I was laughing at myself.  Turns out old Dad had a clue after all

 

so very true

[BnZs]

Hmmph...
Maybe I'm weird, I've pretty much thought my Dad was the smartest man I've ever met from "first coherent thoughts" to the present (I'm 31).

[Penguin]

bro someone has seriously messed up your mind.

I grew up with out love, trust me love is very needed by us humans, it is the most powerful emotion there is, with out love we humans are husks of nothingness.

to say we don't need love, might as well say we don't need air to breath.

think about this, every thing we need to live Air, food, water, with out these three we would die. yet each one of those could kill us, LOVE is something we don't need to be alive, yet no matter how much we get of Love, it can not kill us, it strengthens us, gives us purpose, with out love there is no reason to live. this is why we were created LOVE plain and simple. LOVE is the ONLY reason we are alive.

I seriously feel for you, someone has messed up your mind, it saddens me to know you think like this, I pray that you will see the truth before its too late.    

[Note, I don't want to troll, I'm just in the mood to play devil's advocate.  I agree that romance is fun- I just went to a semi-formal dance (read: grindfest).]

Ok; so you proved my point.  You don't need love at all- it's extemporaneous.  You need nutrition, water, exercise (you don't need to be jacked, but not moving for several weeks isn't going to help you), and air to stay alive.

Next, you say that love is the only reason we are alive.  How far back do you want to go?  Dinosaurs didn't feel love, and neither did the fish or cyanobacteria.  If you refer to us as Ink and Penguin, you could make that statement if your point is that we wouldn't be alive if our parents didn't have sex.

If you refer to the even more immediate notion of alive, it isn't the case either- there are many reasons that I am alive- I've eaten, quenched my thirst, run around, slept and taken a breath recently.  I also haven't made fatal decisions.  I also have not been attacked by a man wielding a teddybear stuffed with razor blades.  There are many, many reasons that all of us are alive, and love is one only in quite a contrived instance.

If you believe that crap, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you.  

Absolutely, my Nigerian prince brother would love to buy it from you.  Just send me your credit card number .  

Guys you're arguing/debating or trying to reason with a kid
who's still in school.

He's at that age and period of life where he thinks he's
learned it all already

Just walk away.

So you've dismissed my point.  Now create your counterpoint.  I haven't learned everything already, that's why I post here.  I know I'll get schooled often but that's alright.

I was chuckling to myself about this one while on the road today.  Ahh to be as smart now as I was at 16.   It was amazing how dumb the adults got for me at that age. My Dad had absolutely no clue! 15-18 seems to be the prime, adults don't have a clue time frame.   Even funnier was when I had my own 16 year old and I heard my Dad's words coming out of my mouth to my son.  Right in the middle of that conversation I had to stop because I was laughing at myself.  Turns out old Dad had a clue after all

It's starting to happen to me, too.  I speak just like my father, it's quite frightening.

Hmmph...
Maybe I'm weird, I've pretty much thought my Dad was the smartest man I've ever met from "first coherent thoughts" to the present (I'm 31).

Isn't fathers' day coming soon?  I ought to get my dad something.

-Penguin

[ink]

[Note, I don't want to troll, I'm just in the mood to play devil's advocate.  I agree that romance is fun- I just went to a semi-formal dance (read: grindfest).]

Ok; so you proved my point.  You don't need love at all- it's extemporaneous.  You need nutrition, water, exercise (you don't need to be jacked, but not moving for several weeks isn't going to help you), and air to stay alive.

Next, you say that love is the only reason we are alive.  How far back do you want to go?  Dinosaurs didn't feel love, and neither did the fish or cyanobacteria.  If you refer to us as Ink and Penguin, you could make that statement if your point is that we wouldn't be alive if our parents didn't have sex.

If you refer to the even more immediate notion of alive, it isn't the case either- there are many reasons that I am alive- I've eaten, quenched my thirst, run around, slept and taken a breath recently.  I also haven't made fatal decisions.  I also have not been attacked by a man wielding a teddybear stuffed with razor blades.  There are many, many reasons that all of us are alive, and love is one only in quite a contrived instance.
...
-Penguin

Love is why we were created...that's what I meant when I said what I said.

[Penguin]

Careful, careful...

-Penguin

[Guppy35]

Hmmph...
Maybe I'm weird, I've pretty much thought my Dad was the smartest man I've ever met from "first coherent thoughts" to the present (I'm 31).

My Dad was the best man I've ever known.  He didn't change at all during my 15-18 age.  If I'm half the man he was I'll have done ok.   It wasn't he that had no clue at the time

[Meatwad]

Let's!!!

All hail

(Image removed from quote.)

A crab?

[FireDrgn]

That is a fundemental aspect of philosophy as far as I believe, leaving the possibility that 2+2=5 open.

Example of not logical is just that. The statement '2+2=5' is not logical. Obviously that is only a representation of what could be if we think outside of logic. I am not arguing that specific equation.
We cannot easily imagine an existence where logic does not apply, so we assume that logic always was.

Lifr on the most basic form shows how logic is not always true. Single cell division gives us the equation 1+0=2. You might argue that it gives 1/2=0.5, but it does not. Each cell is complete and whole after division. Life is not logical.

You can not understand 2+2=4 and keep 2+2=5 open.

You must not realize that you are USING logic to understand that logic is not always true. Therefore you can not come to any known truth using your philosophy. Including "logic is not always true".   Logic is not 2+2=4 Logic is how we understand 2+2=4  You are using a logical error.   your whole argument is based on the fact that 2+2=4 is necessarily true.  Meaning that 2+2=5 is necessarily false and not open.


It is impossible to think outside of logic. You must use the laws of logic to think outside of logic, therefore your concept is necessarily false. All you are really doing is claiming logic=truth<> not logical =false,but logic sometimes =false. and your deleting the FACT that.
It is impossible for any truth to ever be false. you violate the selfevident laws of logic which you are already using and are necessarily true.

It is clearly impossible to keep 2+2=4 open and make any truth claims.

If 2+2=5 is open then every thing else is necessarily open including 2+2=5. Your philosophy requires 2+2=5 to be closed. Do you see how you are equivocating terms? using logical error.. open necessarily means true or false. 2+2=5 must be true in order for your philosophy to even get stated.

[Meatwad]

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination

[hlbly]

Ok, now I see what you mean by saying that I was unoriginal.  I didn't think of my own premise, but Descartes' fit the bill so well that I didn't think anything of copying him.  I didn't mean telepathy (though it would be awesome if I could do that), I meant empathy; to understand how other people feel based on verbal and non-verbal cues and reacting to it in an intelligent manner.

I understand what you mean by not placing myself as the center of the universe, to try to view it from different vantage points.  If I place myself at the center, then I will contribute my own bias to what I see instead of seeing things for what they are. 

I think that the floating mind ties into that as well, having no barriers can help you.

-Penguin

I think it is more about feeling what another feels rather than understand it .

[Penguin]

Wrong.  First of all, we do not know that there are an infinite number of worlds.  Secondly, you claim that there is a finite number of inhabited worlds, yet an infinite number of uninhabited ones despite there being an infinte number of worlds.  

Without being to prove that, the rest of your post is utter nonsense.  If there were an infinite number of worlds, a certain percenage would be inhabited, not a finite number.

-Penguin

[Meatwad]

Nope, definately a finite number, not a percentage