A Talk Between Two

A conversation between two imaginary philosophers.


Why do anything?

What are you talking about?

I said: why do anything at all? Like why do u do what u do?

Well I don’t know. It depends on the situation.

So give me an example?

I go to work so I can make money in order to live so I don’t die.

Why don’t you want to die?

There are experiences I want to have, plus I don’t know what’s to come after death.

But if you die, what difference would it make if you had them or not?

Your being really nihilistic. I’m alive so I want to keep on living because it feels good to be apart of the world.

No, you cant face up to the fact that you‘re a machine. You exist only to carry out routines and habits. What makes a human any different from a machine?

We have feelings and experiences which machines just don’t have.

You don’t know that for sure. It may be possible that consciousness is realizable in more then just brains. Perhaps in non-carbon forms like silicon or plasma.  To think otherwise would make you some kind of brain-meat chauvinist. Humans are just machines with a distorted sense of self identity. A GENE MACHINE!

What’s with the anger? Are you mad at your situation? I don’t mind being a machine, what ever that means. Seems like you do though.

You don’t seem to understand. Let me make this perfectly clear for you. Your sense of free will is an illusion. Your sense of self exists in order to veto certain behaviors while solving never ending problems. That’s why humans like drama, it simulates the problems their brains are supposed to solve.

We all like a good story, but its nothing worth working yourself up about. I feel like I’m in control, that’s all that matters. So will you carry on with your day, or will you keep on pestering me with your nihilistic delusions?

I’m just trying to send some truth your way.

For what? To make me miserable? You with your materialistic worldview of truth needs some modification. I suggest you read about the philosophy of pragmatism and what it has to say about truth. It proposes truth to be what works for the individual. What works for me is what feels good. If I need to look past some material factoid that changes with each new scientific instrument, then so be it. Feeling good works for me, so that becomes my truth.

But scientific realism is the sensible truth. It’s based on evidence!

What qualifies as evidence is dependent upon what bubble your in. You happen to be inside of a rational/empirical bubble. We all have our bubbles. Mine is a pragmatic one. In your bubble evidence means repeatable experience behind a theory. For me, evidence is what works practically for a person. For a religious person, evidence may be their doctrine. So you see, your factoids don’t bother my sense of well being.

Your in denial! These are the facts which make up the universe!

That’s if you define the universe as what you can measure outside of yourself.  

We are at an impasse.

No, we are in our separate bubbles.

Any way out of the bubble?

That would be to die. To live, is to include. To include,  is to exclude. To have a self is to have an other. No way out the bubble as long as you are a you. To go back to what you first said, I don’t think your idea of truth is working well for you.

That would all depend on my definition of what works, something you have no idea about.

What a way to use what I said against me. Touché!

Yeah, whatever gene machine.