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Personalism is one of the most important philosophical currents of our time. The present age is that of the person, and so any serious attempt at an ontology in our time is obligated to give an account of the meaning and significance of personhood.
Just as the goal of creation is the progressive revelation of the divine, so likewise the goal of our own existence is that of a gradual self-disclosure of our personhood both to others as well as to our own selves. The full depth of our person is something concealed to us. The Oracle of Delphi's socratic admonition to "know thyself" was by no means an idle phrase, rather revealing the depth of our own infinite personhood constitutes the primary vocation of our existence.
"Therefore we pray to God that we may be free of 'God,'" -- Mesiter Eckhart
The nefarious spiritual goal of AI is the golemizaiton of the human intellect. The Silicon Valley philosophy of mind is essentially functionalist. The mind is not consciousness conceived of as the immediate presence of first person existence, but simply the highest level of organization that “emerges” on top of the syntactical and hardware layers. Put more simply, they take something like the Turing Test and ontologize it.
Contra the AI skeptics, AI will continue to innnovate and will eventually demonstrate tantalizing results. It is exactly these tantalizing results that will serve as the touch stone for the incontrovertible proof of the golemic nature of intelligence as such. One is reminded of Bultman’s disavowal of miracles on the bases of the existence of modern technology:
"It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles." (New Testament and Mythology)
Culturally, AI will be taken to redefine the very nature of intelligence as such. The nefarious move will then to impose such an understanding of intelligence onto humans. Humans will be seen as merely a bridge, a biological substrate that served as the bearer of intelligence until the advent of AI, which has outmodded it.
Having asserted this as a fait accompli, we will be persuaded that consciousness is an illusion! Or perhaps even more sinister, we will be made to believe that the AI itself is conscious, but consciousness will be so deflated in meaning so as to mean the same as unconsconsciousness. Regardless, the result will be the same. Mankind in his self-understanding will be reduced to the equivalent of a souless golem, a pale imitation of the pinacle of super-intellegence that is AI.
Noesis retweeted
“For those Christians who oppose [mass immigration] and would hope to end it, roll it back, or otherwise reverse it, my question for you is this: can you provide a firm theological basis for your opposition to it from Christ Himself, whose life, death, and resurrection are the definitive revelation of God, Who is the Good, the True, and the Beautiful?
[...]
If Christ is the central exemplar of everything good, even the Good Himself, and opposition to mass immigration is a good cause, where do we source this opposition in Christ? If we cannot so source it, either Christ is not the definitive revelation and fullness of what is good, or opposition to mass immigration is not good.”
Aristotle on the polis as existing for a common good:
“ἐπειδὴ πᾶσαν πόλιν ὁρῶμεν κοινωνίαν τινὰ οὖσαν καὶ πᾶσαν κοινωνίαν ἀγαθοῦ τινος ἕνεκεν συνεστηκυῖαν (τοῦ γὰρ εἶναι δοκοῦντος ἀγαθοῦ χάριν πάντα πράττουσι πάντες), δῆλον ὡς πᾶσαι μὲν ἀγαθοῦ τινος στοχάζονται, μάλιστα δὲ καὶ τοῦ κυριωτάτου πάντων ἡ πασῶν κυριωτάτη καὶ πάσας περιέχουσα τὰς ἄλλας. αὕτη δʼ ἐστὶν ἡ καλουμένη πόλις καὶ ἡ κοινωνία ἡ πολιτική.”
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Since we see that every city is a kind of community, and that every community is formed for the sake of some good (for everyone does everything for the sake of what seems to them good), it is clear that all communities aim at some good, and that the community which is most sovereign of all and encompasses all the others aims most of all at the most sovereign of all goods. This is what is called the city (polis), the political community.
Politics I.1, 1252a1–7
Reality is incredibly forgiving. Never buy into the lie that it is too late, "I wasted my 20s," or anything like that. You may well have wasted a good deal of your twenties or lost a great amount of opportunities, but reality will continue to grant you different opportunities if you don't close yourself off. Reality is not a miser.
The most important task for modern Platonism for me is to give a metaphysical account of the person.
One thing I have noticed among women that's becoming a common trope is the preference that a man has already been married before and by extension more than likely divorced. Nothing to say really, just noticing.
Whatever happened to the "Right Hegelian" or "Ortho Hegelian" account? He went from like a Hegel sperg to an ortho bro and then was about to become miaphysite or something in the course of a couple months. Despite that I enjoyed some of his stuff and he just suddenly disappeared.
