Quote from: Reckall;1128519Sounds like something that Carl Gustav Jung and Marie Louise von Franz already nailed at the beginning of XX Century.

Or Douglas Adams a bit thereafter.

"The two missiles are transformed, respectively, into a whale and a flower pot, high in the planet atmosphere. What are their thoughts?" You can find the answer in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, vol.1

Sometimes philosophy isn't about the meaning of life. It is about desperately finding a new meaning to life, so that you can call yourself "a philosopher" when all the cool ideas are already been taken.

No.  Not even close.

Quote from: TJS;1128588No.  Not even close.

From the article:

Ask yourself: what does your toaster want? How about your dog? Or the bacteria in your gut? What about the pixels on the screen you're reading off now--how is their day going? In other words, do things, animals, and other non-human entities experience their existence in a way that lies outside our own species-centric definition of consciousness?

Right here you have the whale and the flower pot scene from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Of course you can delve more into how a whale thinks and feels. Maybe science is helping you and will help you even more - but you will never be a whale, or a toaster, or the dust under your bed.

So you have the concept of "projection", mostly from Jung: what do you think your PC monitor thinks still comes from you - from your inner idea of what a PC monitor's consciousness could be/feel/act. Once again, you can try to "transcend our own species-centric definition of consciousness" - something inherently impossible, because what comes from your consciousness is still part of your consciousness. Your consciousness can try to sideline itself, and understand and emulate a different consciousness. Guess what is making the effort? And how can be justify different results from different people if we don't start with the specific differences in, even, the very concept of consciousness they have?

Really, I'm amazed that we are having this conversation in the first place. "What does the pixel on your monitor thinks? Can I role play a Phillips electric razor?" is a fun mental exercise, made even better if you are stoned. Something more? No. Not even close.

Article is junk and clearly doesn't understand the philosophy.  Hence the transparent nonsense.

In a nutshell OOO is/was trying to break with standard forms of Continential Philosophy that are overly holistic (the legacy of Hegel/Marx and Saussure) that argue that we can only really understand things by looking at the world as a total holistic system.  At the same time it's trying steer away from the opposite extreme that sometimes emerges from philosophies based on modern science that tends to treat phenomena as ultimately reducible to their consituent components.  (Or at leasat that was the argument).  Basically it's a metaphysics that sees reality as something like a series of russian dolls.  A conglomeration of individuals is as real as the individuals it consists of.  Basically it's an attempt to articulate a theory of objects that both treats emergent phenomena as not reducible to it's components but also sees objects as ultimately detachable from the systems that incorporate them.

It's also tries to break with the dualistic assumption that that there are subjects (people) who act and objects (things that are acted upon) - this is where it gets tricky and loses people.  The idea that a toaster wants something is the kind of silliness that arises when one tries to understand the philosphy while sticking within the very assumptions it was created to call into question.

The idea that your toaster is an actor doesn't mean that it "wants" anything (at least not in the sense that a subject wants something).  Or to look at it from a perhaps more useful perspective - A large corporation (or a superannuation fund, or a nation state) is not a conscious entity, but we can easily see how it could be argued to be, in it's state as an emergent entity consisting of a whole lot of people just doing their job,  an object that acts upon the world.

Amusingly the article conflates OOO with pansychism which I suspect the author also doesn't understand (at least in the modern variant of the idea that some philosophers and neurosceintists take seriously).

Fine. Now let's imagine the following scene:

The group just finished our latest Call of Cthulhu campaign, with great satisfaction from everybody (the Investigators were nuked by Hastur half into the first session). We all agree to try something new. As the GM I say:

"Today we will try to break with standard forms of Continential Philosophy that are overly holistic (the legacy of Hegel/Marx and Saussure) that argue that we can only really understand things by looking at the world as a total holistic system.  At the same time we will strive to steer away from the opposite extreme that sometimes emerges from philosophies based on modern science that tends to treat phenomena as ultimately reducible to their consituent components."

OK, I admit that I can feel the emerging consciousness from the staring group. I really do.

And still I'm left with the doubt that Bill Hicks already said it better in the '80s:

"Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves... here's Tom with the Weather."

Wait are you suggesting that an obscure movement in Anglo interpretation of continental philosophy has no relevance or application to gaming?


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Yeah, I don't think it will be this, but I'm sure it will be something just as stupid as this.

Very philosophical, of no practical use because Red Dwarf already answered the question of what a toaster wants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec

Quote from: Reckall;1128519Sounds like something that Carl Gustav Jung and Marie Louise von Franz already nailed at the beginning of XX Century.

Or Douglas Adams a bit thereafter.

"The two missiles are transformed, respectively, into a whale and a flower pot, high in the planet atmosphere. What are their thoughts?" You can find the answer in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, vol.1

Sometimes philosophy isn't about the meaning of life. It is about desperately finding a new meaning to life, so that you can call yourself "a philosopher" when all the cool ideas are already been taken.

Quote from: Bren;1128547Steak knife?

"Blood and steaks for my Lord Arioch" just doesn't have the right sound.

Well duh. He needs a good dry red wine with it.