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no other species on earth has the ability to carry on conversations?
How absurd. Of course other creatures can talk. Not a naturalist obviously.
Watch the animals, especially the advanced speech ones like monkeys and birds. Thousand of distinct sounds and patterns.
I agree that animals can communicate with one another, it's clear from monkeys to dolphins to birds and across the animal spectrum. However, I'm going to have to go with my opinion here that they don't carry on conversations. I'm quite sure that "There's a package at the post office, could you pick it up on your way home" and "Who's going to pick the kids up from school today" and "Dear God would you look at what she's wearing today" aren't part of the communication that they share.
No, I wouldn't call myself a naturalist, thank you for pointing it out so kindly.
Deb ;)
I'm sorry if it has appeared in the last couple of posts I have made that I am picking on preacherman481 (or anyone else that mentions God/Jesus...). Its nothing personal, it just seems that there have been really good conversations lately in here, and that the ones I feel most compelled to blabber about are yours...Quote:
Originally posted here by preacherman481
I think sometimes we use chit-chat and other forms of constant noise and activity to cover up our own inner anxiety, loneliness and lack of meaning and joy in our lives. Our world has given us myriad ways of deadening ourselves to our inner spiritual hunger for God. You can watch TV, listen to music almost anywhere (even in the shower) and talk on the cell phone constantly. I think silence makes us uncomfortable because it gives us time to think about the inner anxiety and lack of meaning I mentioned earlier. Noise and activity can become a form of anesthetic that deaden us to our inner spiritual longings.
Anyway, I have been taking a really interesting philosophy class this semester called Philosophy of Loneliness (IDS 300.2)[why the course number matters, I don't know, I'm babbling...
As you can imagine preacherman481, a significant portion of what we have read has dealt with the God-vacuum inside of us. I don't personally agree with that, but I understand that stance, and think it perfectly logical, and well thought out. Definately a significant philosophicaal argument, but to accept it you have to accept one major premise and that is that there is a God. So obviously, I have the need to answer in a completely non-theistic way...
I think that chit-chat stems from a need within ourselves to identify "other". By identifying "other" we can more strongly identify "self". One cannot truly know the extent of something without knowing its boundaries, something definately true about the "self".
The problem is that we cannot ever be sure that another person is conscious. Our experiences lead us to assume that anything in the shape of a person, that moves like a person, speaks like a person, is a person, but this is just past experience. We are assuming. Of course we "know" that there has to be others, because why shoud I be, and no other? We even establish intimate relations with others. Close friendships, significant others..., etc.
This reaffirms that "we are not alone". Only through communication can we establish that the other person is a thinking thing. Much like the Turing Test, except with more qualification and less science. But, I don't want to sound like an empiricist.
We learn concepts while we learn language, and the more we learn the more concepts we have, then through interaction (socialization) we strengthen some concepts and weaken others. When we read literature or poetry or tech-books or watch star trek or where ever else we get different metaphors and other idees we obtain concepts. We imprint our mind with different ways of thinking, with different solutions to problems. You solve problems through Theology, I choose Philosophy, another may choose Science or Psych or Sociology/Anthropology, etc.
When we idly chatter, we are reinforcing some things and not others. Mostly we are reinforcing "self" and "other". When we "talk just to hear ourselves talk" we are reinforcing our conceptual self. When we talk about the weather, we are reinforcing "other".
I see the God-vacuum as a Self-Vacuum. Instead of needing God as the Ultimate Other, we just need to constantly engage ourselves with literature, poetry, philosophy, and conversation.
Sure this can be attacked through the solipsist routine, sure if you feel that you need God to fill the void you can disagree. I except most religious tenets as possibly being true, but the nice thing about most religion, it enforces community, it provides sermons (concepts), singing, and communiction. It works in my theory too, just not the way that some might want it to (the problem with systematic philosophy, you can make anything "fit" if you try hard enough).
Chit-chat has its place, so does silence. Community has its place, so does solitude. Humans aren't just a social-animal, they are also individual beings. We each attempt to make ourselves heard/understood to intersubjectively verify each others existence (self).
This problem is easily shown in IRC. Identify a bot when no one is speaking..., identify a "person". Without the human form to guide us, we never know if someone is in the pilot seat. Ask a Turing AI one simple question, you may not be able to tell if it is a person or not, ask it many questions and eventually something won't square with our conceptual language.
peace,
Dhej
Hmmmm after watching my pet dog I think the most common exchange between animals prolly goes somethinglike thisQuote:
owever, I'm going to have to go with my opinion here that they don't carry on conversations. I'm quite sure that "There's a package at the post office, could you pick it up on your way home" and "Who's going to pick the kids up from school today" and "Dear God would you look at what she's wearing today" aren't part of the communication that they share.
<male dog>Nice butt! can i stick my nose up it?
<bitch>Yelp! Jesus thats cold!!!
animals may not be into the chit chat thing - but it means their lives are ALOT less complicated. Animals thought process when encountering something for the first time....
can I eat it? -No-> will it eat me? -No-> Can i mate with it? -No-> Not intrested then!!
v_Ln
Dhej:
if we follow ur conclusion then what's bothering me (and probalby cF_nM) is that we are individuals and that we so often see more and more ppl becomming kinda social slaves... they simply MUST reinforce "other". They never reinforce "self" because they need "other" to do that for them... they have become slaves.. they can't congratulate themselves and need others to do it for them... It's kinda like when ppl do something new and are all worried if "the others" will find the new thing stupid.. they simply follow the others and sacrifice themselves... by only reinforcing "other" we kill individualisme, right? (or have I misunderstood it all... as I said before.. I'm no shrink :D )
this is what I often fear is happening when I see the many "clones" running around... they talk alike, they look alike.. and they all talk about the same lame things and they do it every day because that's the only way they are sure to satisfy "other"...
zion1459,
You picked up on a very important part of what I said. That is what I wrote my first paper on loneliness about, the second lays out what I said in the last post (thank you, ladies and gentlemen for allowing me to formulate my thoughts in here).
You are right, there is a problem with what you said. I big problem, but I think I have a reasonable explination.
What I laid out before was related to lonliness, there is also another very important idea, solitude.
The extent to which one "other-identifies" is important. Should one excessively look towards the "other" inviduality starts becoming a problem. It is sort of like trying to write a research paper. You can collect ass much data as you like, but unless you can sort through it and make sense of it, it is useless. When you look towards "other" to excess, you are collecting more input than processible. The metaphor I fear is clowdy.
Loneliness can be explained in the very Aristotilian manner of vice vs. virtue, in terms of excess, deficiency, and mean.
When someone has too much intersubjectivity (social-interaction, other-identifying) one begins to loose the part of themself that is distinctly them. Total subjectivity wipes away right/wrong, good/bad, beautiful/ugly, total intersubjectivity wipe away individuality, you spread yourself thing. This excess brought to the extreme could be demonstrated through looking at ants, or the "borg", or Rand's "Anthem". I know that when I am forced to interact with people for an extended period of time without the oportunity to sit and sort my thoughts, I get to the point where I cannot deal with "other", and even an "others" presence begins to make me distictly aware of a "self-less" feeling.
When someone has too little intersubjectivity, falls into deficiency, the lose the human social quality. We can ever do this to the utmost extreme. When we are young our intersubjectivity takes the form of socialization. We obtain language, and the concepts which go with it, and pick up on social rules. When we are older intersubjectivity is reinforcement of those things we picked up on while we are younger, but then it also takes this new quality of providing reinforcement to self through other, and it allows for the "propagation of ideas". But, when we lose the good level of intersubjectivity we start to feel isolated, or perhaps even lonely. When it goes further we lose our ability to communicate our ideas well, or at least we feel we do. When the seperation hapens suddenly, like an extended car ride (say 18 hours alone WI to PA), we start talking to ourselves, listening to the radio and talking to the anouncer, and babbling at the poor gas station attendant.
The excess and deficiency are vice. The mean is virtue. When we properly go through life we interact with people to a certain extent, know the bounds of our relationships, think for ourselves, and abide by social guidelines for behavior (to a certain extent, we may break some and live by others). We are the social individual, distinctly different from being a "social animal". When we push things to far, we become either a social animal (excess) or an individual/isolated animal (deficiency).
Solitude is a major player here, the vice of excessive intersubjectivity lacks it to any quantitive or qualitive degree (and it is less likely to ever show up, as the person would probably fee uncomfortable alone, and as such be lonely). The vice of deficiency lacks in any qualitive degree (so much so that it is not really solitude, it is isolation or aloneless).
zion1459, I hope that I cleared up my philosophical standing for you. Any other questions I'd be glad to respond to, I need to prepare for next year when I present my senior statement, the culmination of my philosophy major. Basically I present and then defend my own personal philosophy in front of every philosophy professor, and anyone else that shows..., so I figure I need the practice. And the intersubjectivity, but not to any excess or deficiency ;)
peace,
Dhej
zion1459 pretty much summed up what I was feeling there (nice one man)...your last post also sums up the phylosophy of one of my favorite bands (Tool), which is 'Think for yourself and don't blindly accept any piece of information.' (paraphrase)
Anyways, I finished reading Fahrenheit 451 yesterday for my Novels class, and I need to write some 'reader's respones' on it, and I decided I'm going to write one or two essays on it. I'm pretty much finished with the first one (just need to type it and proofread) after I'm finished, I'll post it here and see what you all think
This is by far the most interesting thread that I've been involved in, and I must say, I'm quite proud of this one :D
cF_nM: yea this is an excelent thread and I'll look forward to reading ur essay... And Tool r0x! :)
Dhej: I agree 99,9% with u... the lacking 0,1% is just that somewhere at some point some1 is gonna break the pattern u so clearly explain :)
The spacing got kind of screwy on this and I think I may add a little to it (kind of short :P), but here it is:
I was very surprised when I read Clarisse McClellan's conversation with Guy Montag about how no one talks about anything of any importance. The night I read that portion of the novel, my grandparents came to my house to have supper with my mother, her boyfriend, and myself. About ten minutes into the meal, I thought of what I had read earlier and decided to test it. So I sat, ate a little, and mostly listened. Although I usually say much, because honestly, I don't usually have anything to say about their topics. After about fifteen minutes of this, I realized that in this particular situation, Clarisse was right.
One conversation they had was about a nearby road being re-paved. As they talked about it, I thought to myself, "So the road is being re-paved-so what?" You would think that a conversation like this would last only a few measly seconds, but they managed to keep this topic alive for about five minutes.
After the meal, I called my best friend and told him about it. His response almost literally knocked me off my feet. He said something to the effect of, "See, that's why I don't read-it makes you think to much!" That statement is exactly what Fahrenheit 451 is all about! It took a few moments for me to realize the power that statement had in it and what exactly it meant, but it hit me like a brick wall. The next day while I was at school, I listened to everyone's conversation around me like I had done at home, and came to the same conclusion with a few exceptions.