Philosophical materialism and other multiple groups

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

I'm an atheist and a philosophical materialist. I know a lot of people here aren't, and under most circumstances that isn't a problem. Live and let live, and all that. Maybe it's just that there are only two of us and we have pretty much nothing in the way of detailed inner experiences other than that, but there are some things that happen in other groups that leave me unsure, afraid of getting hurt.

Suppose a member of a gateway system decides to take a permanent vacation back home. Is there any way for me to interpret this that isn't disturbingly creepy? That and the whole traveling thing. Not so much when it's temporary, but when it's permanent it kind of makes my skin crawl.

I guess I'm just looking to see if anyone feels similarly. That, or some reassurance, maybe. ~.~

Comments

[catskillmarina.livejournal.com]

It would be scary to loose someone. Nowadays only 5/17 are regularly
out. Loosing one of the 5 would be devastating. Loosing one of the
others would be very frightening and would create a feeling of emptiness.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Why is temporary less disturbing than permanent vacations? And how does one distiguish between a permanent vacation and a really really long on-going temporary one?

Also, is it just the literal interpretation of gateway systems and similar travelling beliefs that bothers you? Would it bother you as much if the group viewed their worlds as imaginary, a metaphor, or something similar? If a group doesn't have another world but one of their members decides to permanently retire from physically using the body and goes so far as to stop interacting with the other members of the group as well, does that have the same creepy factor as Joe Blow wandering off into the great blue astral yonder on his way back to his home on La-La-land?

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

Why is temporary less disturbing than permanent vacations?

Same reason people consider sleep less disturbing than death.

Would it bother you as much if the group viewed their worlds as imaginary, a metaphor, or something similar?

Yeah.

If a group doesn't have another world but one of their members decides to permanently retire from physically using the body and goes so far as to stop interacting with the other members of the group as well, does that have the same creepy factor...

That too. I really mentioned worlds in the first place because people like us, who don't have any other place to go, tend to care more about sticking around.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) [head-poke] [pseudo-AOL] *nods* [/pseudo-AOL]

(The observed dissolution/disappearance of an individual without understandable cause (or, perhaps more importantly, known method of prevention): one of the most lastingly terrifying events in the history of this system.)

[/head-poke]

[pengke.livejournal.com]

I really mentioned worlds in the first place because people like us, who don't have any other place to go, tend to care more about sticking around.

That's not necessarily true. I think it just seems that way because of the things people like to talk about and the types of people who are doing the talking. It's been my experience that you find the same behaviors that you would in physical groups of people. Just like some people become hermits, some individuals find pleasure or comfort from being by themselves with just their thoughts and they won't care as much about physically using the body or interacting with others. For some people they're happy just to interact with the people that they share a body with instead of dealing with the dissonance of trying to fit into the body's physical life.

There's also no neurological reason to assume that someone has ceased to exist just because you can no longer prove that they're there. You don't know whether they're still around observing you or just daydreaming. In larger systems, you can never tell if someone is no longer interacting or if they're interacting with someone other than yourself and its just a matter of no one telling you.

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

don't see what atheism has to do with whether or not a person has an "inner world" or not..

[delancy.livejournal.com]

You could see it as going into a subjective world, I suppose. As retreating into an inner landscape. Unless you do not believe in inner worlds, and then I do not know.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

I don't see what you find creepy, honestly.

If you're looking at gateway systems thus:

World A joined by Gateway(the body, or the mind of the body) to World B, what does it matter whether system members are spending all their time in one place or the other, or 'eavesdropping' on both?

All places exist, the member isn't dying or self-destructing, just choosing where they're going to be.

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

Do they both exist?

World B might have hundreds or thousands or more in it. How can I believe World B exists when I must believe that if it exists, it exists within the computational limits of the human brain?

[thehumangame.livejournal.com]

Philosophical materialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism) is the belief that all phenomena are the result of the interactions of matter.

surely it would be sad and lonley rather than "creepy" if someone you interacted closely with left?

It would be both. If someone left and cut off all contact with the rest of their group, I would have a hard time believing that they even still exist. This would really disturb me if that person were someone I cared about.

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) One can exist in the sense that others exist--software encoded in the wetware of the brain. Accepting that one individual can exist exist within one brain, it isn't too much of a stretch to consider that multiple people can.

Scaling it up to, as the originator mentioned above, thousands of people and/or a persistant mentally simulated world is a stretch of numerous orders of magnitude.

...and I probably shouldn't be posting at this time, but will anyway. (Oh, well.)

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) 'But that software isn't material. There isn't a physical correspondance to every single last multiple person inside the brain.'

Isn't there? Maybe there isn't a section or specific group of neurons that one can point to in each case and claim 'That is the region that deals with so-and-so's mental processes', but what evidence is there that there's anything else involved besides the interactions between neurons?

Then again, this could partially stem from a confusion as to what you mean by 'material'. Could you define it, please?

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Hmm.

'That 1:1 ratio would be the basis for your materialism theory.'

Not necessarily. A 1:1 ratio isn't required; only a ratio, which doesn't exclude the likely possibility of [insert hard-to-describe phenomena here].

Another example would be the process of daydreaming--one can daydream about a wide area while using a volume of grey matter much smaller. Or take a computer, which can simulate vast game environments (and/or 'levels'), as well as NPCs (several or many at the same time), though the computer itself occupies a relatively small volume. Then, one gets to the matter of slowing due to too many tasks and things to handle at the same time.

(Also: 'more than 1:1 in this world'--'this world' being inner, or outer? Again, I apologise if I'm heading down an unrelated tangent due to a misunderstanding, terminology-related or otherwise, on my part.)

[kasiawhisper.livejournal.com]

are you worried that because there's only 2 of you, that one day one of you will just decide to leave and you'll be alone?

[our-menagerie.livejournal.com]

Philosophical materialism holds that the only thing that can truly be said to exist is matter; that fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions.

Sooo im confused, how would that make the outside world any more real than any other world?
~shawna

[sharpsight.livejournal.com]

N) Perhaps whether the 'other world' exists as solid earth and plants and air in physical space, or as a simulated environment within the neural network of one's brain, in which case one runs into computational questions.

...and if the world is treated as physical in the same way that the outside world is, then one runs into transmission questions.

[/head-poke]

[pengke.livejournal.com]

I don't think that's really a product of philosophical materialism. It's more along the lines of solipsism; unless you can see the person, interact with them, or see the product of them using the body then they don't exist. At least, that's how I would interpret it since your feelings don't change even if you remove the metaphysical components of your original post.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

You could view it as a sort of dormancy/latency of the "patterns." I'm not sure any more whether my own views are completely materialistic or not, but I don't believe in 'the personality' in the Cartesian sense-- it's just a succession of behaving/reacting/thinking patterns which are constantly being re-imposed on top of other ones. Something that becomes latent can re-activate months or years later; or it can go permanently dormant. I don't believe in a 'dissociation continuum' either, but I think having different 'me's' for home and school, for instance, and having 'me's' that are experienced as so distinct from each other they seem to be separate individuals, *are* points on the same spectrum.

I've seen singlets who, for instance, changed their own ways of thinking and reacting at some point in their life that they literally seemed to have been replaced by a different person. They didn't conceive of it that way, but it did very much seem, in such cases, that the person I thought I had known no longer existed. It was disturbing, and I didn't know what to do about it; if their new patterns fashioned around their sense of "I" suit them better than their old ones, who am I to tell them they must drag the old ones back out again? And is this even possible? Yet it seems to me that, at least, if someone has conceptualized a set of patterns as being a person, it might make it easier for them to pull it back out again for use in the future, even if they seem to have 'permanently left.'

~Riel

[chaos-self.livejournal.com]

There is someone/s inside my head who don't want to exist. They are trying to stop their existance by killing my/our body.

I would prefer they just left, just disappeared.

I fantasise that when they leave, it will give me a little more room in my head and a little more time to breathe.