>This means “me” is never a solid concept or identity, it must actually change to make way for new life to continue through the lens of evolution. Adaptation and plasticity are the defining, and arguably most powerful characteristics of most, if not all life.

It just seems like they haven't properly defined self and have some confused idea of what self is, rather than having any real issue with the concept. It seems to be they are using some kind of Buddhist definition which makes no sense, similar to Sam Harris. Oh wait they do come out and actually say it.

>From the Buddhist perspective, the idea of ‘individual self’ is an illusion.

I agree the Buddhist definition of self is an illusion, incoherent, makes no sense and doesn't really match up with what people actually mean by self. So I just avoid using such definition and lean towards more materialist definitions.

I like to just use a definition of self = body, but I'm also partial to some dictionary definitions

> : the union of elements (such as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person
>
>https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/self

In cognitive theory, emotional experience is a consequence of interpreting sensory experiences. E.g, sensing threat=feel anxious.

Trusting anything requires a leap of faith but it's easy to see that our feelings will be skewed to the extent that our interpretations is skewed. Feeling anxious doesn't prove that a threat is there since we have limited access, through our senses, to what is really there.

>Ideas from people like Ayne Rand about selfishness being a virtue runs counter to millions of years of evolutionary history

That doesn't sound right, evolutionary scientists aren't writing books called "the selfish gene" for no reason.

I would argue we have billions of years of selfishly passing on genes, with being social just a tool to selfishly pass on genes.

I definitely concur w/ accepting it.

>It just wouldn't make much sense for reality to be made up by just myself right now and nothing to exist.

You're conflating "making sense" with "able to be proven." It doesn't have to "make sense" to you when nothing else can be proven in any way, shape, or form... But that doesn't mean you have to act based solely on what can be proven.

And there are very good evolutionary reasons we are social species, and this social nature of our being in turn constantly feeds information to change the "self". If one holds strongly onto a particular idea of "what is me", they are going to feel threatened continuously and cause chaos by retaliating unnecessarily.

and their own lives, she spent her entire career railing against the idea of a social safety net and those pathetic enough to need it and then wound up living out the end of her life poor and on welfare.

You can accept that it's a leap of faith and still not drive yourself crazy over it. We rarely have perfect information on anything in this world, yet we still need to ultimately make conclusions. It's nothing new.

We are a social species fundamentally, and we should always keep that in mind in our place in the world

Ideas from people like Ayne Rand about selfishness being a virtue runs counter to millions of years of evolutionary history

Submission statement:

The modern world romanticizes finding yourself, your style, your type, etc. This “quest” is even glorified to the point that you would feel compelled to lie about what is “you” all the time, just so you could gain a foothold in society. Ironically, dwelling on this image of “self” neither helps you find your true nature, nor to find your role in the larger world. Feeding this ego of “what is me” limits your consciousness and freedom, it distracts you from the more important issues in life, from experiencing, endeavoring, and experimenting in the grand, holistic world in an unbiased way.

All in all, this article argues the futility of glorifying the “self” (giving it too much importance) from the point of view of Buddhism e.g., attachment to something impermanent and untrue must cause suffering, as the true essence of existence is a dynamic interconnected whole; from findings in biology and evolution: niche partitioning is an invariant evolutionary outcome of all life, everything continuously evolves and adapts, even within a single lifetime of the same individual, whatever you think is your "self" will be "forced" to change in no time; from the point of view of neuroscience and information: internally recycled beliefs are bad data for building a mental model, one has to obtain “experimental data” by learning from the real-world effect of your actions.

you give one example of the failure of a single sensory ability from a certain distance under a certain set of circumstances and you claim that invalidates all sensory experience

nonsense

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I think the leap of faith Goff is claiming is pertaining to the principle of induction rather than our sensory experiences. I don't need faith to smell a guava for example. But I do take it on faith that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has done so every day in the past.

>Sensory experiences do not necessarily logically reflect a world out there - they could very well be akin to a mirage.

This is one of the most basic questions of philosophy famously presented by Descartes. He answers it by saying that even if our sensory experience is a mirage, our experience of the mirage is real, and so there has to be "a" world.

​

>There’s no good argument against external world skepticism.

"External world skepticism" denies the very platform of logic on which it stands asking to be dispelled.

In that case, are you sure I’m not a bot just responding to this thread, or worse, an AI struggling to achieve consciousness? There’s no good argument against the belief in God to religious believers because there’s no empirical evidence of His existence or lack thereof. I can’t tell if this is all a dream so I will let Descartes spend his life answering that question for me. Whether a dream in the 1600s or a computer simulation now is the same concept just with better internet. Is it a leap of faith for me to accept reality? I can pursue this rabbit hole thinking until I am insane. So for my own sanity I accept that I am real and that the world is not a simulation. I accept I am real and not in an elaborate dream.

Your point, though, is well taken because I have to think of a response. Or am I just collecting data from my confined environment and spewing it out mindlessly?

>he argues it’s a contradiction of trust our sensory experiences to tell us something about the world in a way we do not trust our moral, or emotional experiences, to reveal something about the world.

what if i have experiences that tell me that my sensory experiences should be treated in a different way to my emotional ones in how they relate to the world? seems like the statement about what goff said oversimplified things.

 

obviously the knowledge we hold and act on knowledge doesnt require infallibility and so, when we think about it, its hard to actually rule out that any of our beliefs could be contradicted in the future (and this seems more likely for some beliefs than others); however, rovelli is right that anyone who wants to make sure their knowledge is as accurate as it can needs to have their ideas open for debate. neither do i think many everyday acts and things we do are adequately described psychologically or cognitively as a leap of faith.

There doesn't need to be evidence against external world skepticism to make a good argument. It just wouldn't make much sense for reality to be made up by just myself right now and nothing to exist. And even if something as extreme as that were the case, what would change about my reality? There is no leap of faith required to trust my senses or emotions, that is literally the default behavior of a human.

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Of course it takes a leap of faith. There’s no good argument against external world skepticism. Sensory experiences do not necessarily logically reflect a world out there - they could very well be akin to a mirage. In fact, this is a core question examined in thousands of years of Eastern philosophy.

I like Rovelli’s point. But the headline is interpretive. I don’t believe it requires a leap of faith to trust your sensory experiences. It takes knowledge and understanding and perhaps empathy to understand that you view the world not only through your eyes but through your emotions. You will have a much different perspective of an event if you’re feeling sad or if you are feeling elation. Same event, different visceral reaction. Knowing this is an absolute you can try to view the event as objectively as possible despite your emotional state in order to come to as clear an understanding of the situation as possible. This is no small effort but it is also no leap of faith.

Abstract: In this debate, Philosopher Philip Goff, human rights activist Shami Chakrabarti, and physicists George Ellis and Carlo Rovelli debate the role of faith and belief in politics and science.

Ellis argues an element of faith is necessarily required to navigate our everyday lives, but we must question those beliefs – in science and politics as in anything else.

Chakrabarti agrees that being human necessarily involves both faith and reason – emotion and logic – and argues we must examine and interrogate the intersection of those drivers, claiming the dichotomy between science and religion does not map onto the divide between emotion and reason.

Rovelli argues it makes no sense to draw a line between so-called blind faith and provable facts. Instead, our views about the world should always be up for debate in an effort to find the best possible answer. The best of humankind, he claims, is bourn of openness and a willingness to be convinced your ideas might be wrong.

Goff claims that the only thing we have direct access to is our own conscious experiences, and that in trusting our sensory experiences we must deploy and element of faith. While he advocates for this leap of faith, he argues it’s a contradiction of trust our sensory experiences to tell us something about the world in a way we do not trust our moral, or emotional experiences, to reveal something about the world.

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From my experience language is read and written in a linear way but thoughts aren't linear. We've habituated ourselves to linear expressions since it is an effective strategy for conveying meaning in a common way. Still our thoughts aren't linear and the first time I realized this was when I reached a moderate level of fluency in a second language. I started noticing that the second language had a different kind of shape to it. I had a big leap in progress once I started thinking in terms of the shape of a thought and now I can think in that second language.

The only chip I'd have any interest in is embedded in a cookie.