The Symposium

Cerberus

02:38

@JosephWeissman Hello there!

Very interesting.

As an historian, however, I cannot but ask this singleton some critical questions.

> the term refers to a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level.[1] Among its powers would be (1) the ability to prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy, and (2) the ability to exert effective control over major features of its domain (including taxation and territorial allocation).

How does one determine whether something is a "single agency"? What counts as an "agency"?

Is the Chinese government such a "single agency" with respect to China?

I presume the UN does not count as being able to (1) prevent any existential threats. Does the Chinese central government? I presume the provincial governments do not count as part of the "agency", because they're not at the highest level.

I presume it satisfies (2) taxation and territory.

Does it matter that different people "lead" the agency at different times, that there are different factions?

Cerberus

> prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy

This would seem to suggest an agency that was perpetually stable; and yet the article also mentions unstable singletons. Or how are we to interpret "any" threats?

Cerberus

Since almost every state in history has collapsed sooner or later, and many of them collapsed mainly owing to internal issues, how can there be any hope (or fear) that a future empire will last forever? Does the global (let's assume a single planet) scale of a singleton make it so utterly and entirely different from all past empires?

If so, why?

Why should we expect any future empire to satisfy condition 1, i.e. being able to prevent any existential threats?

The only likely kind of singleton seems to me either a super computer, or a super organism or collection of such organisms, if the definition of a singleton is about controlling all humans.

And the easiest way for such an entity to ensure its own survival might be to eradicate or engineer-away humanity...

Joseph Weissman

15:40

It's interesting that it doesn't necessarily have to be a government per se -- the key bit seems to be effectively global coordination of world society (goal-formation, decision-making)...

So Bostrom suggests, that the conditions for the genesis of a singleton might involve, for instance, a "self-enforcing moral code" rather than a 'localized entity' (AI or convivium) which makes decisions for all of society.

--It could even be basically democratic; or perhaps with heterogeneous economic, social and political ecosystems underlying it (Bostrom suggests such diversity might be a part of ensuring adaptation.)

Nathan Wheeler

16:12

I haven't yet read the entirety of the article, I've just barely skimmed it, but it occurs to me that just from the basic definition given, we will never be able to form one. An "external threat" could be anything from an asteroid wiping out the central unit of the singleton to something as simple as a virulent strain of a virus. We as humans have shown an amazing lack of an ability to control internal threats as well.

Joseph Weissman

Yeah... :)

It does seem to imply a post-Singularity degree of "promethean" mastery over -- biological, neurological, etc. -- processes (information systems)...

Nathan Wheeler

@JosephWeissman it implies a mastery over (literally) everything, the ability to control all internal and external forces in an almost precognitive manner (which lends itself to a predeterministic viewpoint, which has been refuted quite often by almost every worldview)

Joseph Weissman

Well..

Here's the definition in full that Bostrom gives.

> In set theory, a singleton is a set with only one member, but as I introduced the notion, the term refers to a world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level.[1] Among its powers would be (1) the ability to prevent any threats (internal or external) to its own existence and supremacy, and (2) the ability to exert effective control over major features of its domain (including taxation and territorial allocation).

> Many singletons could co-exist in the universe if they were dispersed at sufficient distances to be out of causal contact with one another. But a terrestrial world government would not count as a singleton if there were independent space colonies or alien civilizations within reach of Earth.

--I guess one thought would be that, on my reading, "ability to prevent threats to existence/supremacy" doesn't necessarily imply "necessarily functionally immortal" or something

In passing: I'm also not sure entirely how constructive it is to talk about refuted viewpoints when it comes to the (deep) future... :)

Nathan Wheeler

I read that much of the article :)

the "ability to prevent any threats" seems to be an all encompassing term that would mean that a potential threat would not only be dealt with, but be more or less prevented from existing

the fact that a threat could potentially materialize, even if thwarted, would immediately demolish the complete supremacy of the agency

and I have a meeting in 5

I'll come back and lurk silently for a few days :)

Joseph Weissman

Heh, okay. --Take care, it was nice talking to you :)

Nathan Wheeler

16:27

you too!

Cerberus

Hi!

And bye!

When would a moral code count as such a "single agency"?

When would it have enough power to count as satisfying condition 2?

Joseph Weissman

> One could also imagine a singleton arising from the universal spread of a single self-enforcing moral code. The code might specify that agents should give preferential treatment to other agents that follow the code.

> If such a code becomes accepted by a sufficient number of agents, and if monitoring and enforcing compliance is sufficiently feasible, it might in the self-interest of agents who have not yet adopted the code to do so. This could lead to the code’s universal adoption. If the code is sufficiently prescriptive to result in effectively coordinated goal-oriented behavior at the level of world society, it would constitute a singleton.

Definitely one of the stranger suggestions :)

Cerberus

Well, we have such codes.

Joseph Weissman

Sure, plural :)

Nathan Wheeler

17:04

@Cerberus we do?

@Cerberus and hi!

Cerberus

17:28

@NathanWheeler Well, we expel or restrain people who steal our things or kill our people.

So you could say we are ruled by a shared set of rules.

And hi!

@JosephWeissman Well, this singleton idea would have to be a set of rules, right?

Nathan Wheeler

but the government also kills people, therefore even internally the rules are not unanimously upheld

Cerberus

A single rule is not enough to govern people.

@NathanWheeler Depends on how you view this rule. Are conditions not part of any rule?

"If you're not the government, you shall not kill people."

Nathan Wheeler

when you speak of a moral absolute, then the absolute part is kind of hard-coded in

otherwise it's just a moral generality

Cerberus

But this is about rules of behaviour...

Nathan Wheeler

sure

Cerberus

17:31

How can you regulate things like "taxes and territorial distribution" (from the article) with moral absolutes?

Nathan Wheeler

you can't via only moral absolutes

because in order to do so requires all participants to also adhere to the same moral code, as well as the end goal of the agency enforcing it. That's why we see even in the US different laws about different things in different places.

Cerberus

Yes.

So it would have to be a set of complex rules.

Just as we have such a set now.

So the article is a bit vague about how such things would work.

And what counts as what.

Nathan Wheeler

17:46

all things considered, you could count "humanity" as that singleton. As a whole, our existence is rarely threatened, and we deal with the threats that do arise without completely eradicating humanity... but internally everybody is struggling for the supremacy of their own ideals.

so in some ways you could say "we're already there"... but it's not quite the utopia Mr. Bostrom envisioned

Joseph Weissman

Well, it's an extrapolation or generalization over large-scale social and political institutions. We're definitely not quite there yet (globally coordinated, goal-directed behavior); there are still a number of 'top-level' independent organizations, etc.

> "Historically, we have seen an overarching trend towards the emergence of higher levels of social organization, from hunter-gatherer bands, to chiefdoms, city-states, nation states, and now multinational organizations, regional alliances, various international governance structures, and other aspects of globalization.[6] Extrapolation of this trend points to the creation of a singleton."

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler Yes, you could very well say that, failing more precise definitions.

@JosephWeissman But I'm not sure I agree with this.

Historically, large empires never lasted for more than a millennium or so.

And what counts as a unit?

The Holy Roman Empire? The UN? The EU?

Joseph Weissman

Sure, but again -- doesn't necessarily need to be on the model of a world government... A global governing institution could be a singleton, but possibly could not be one; and there are singletons that might not look/act anything like a world gov't, etc.

Cerberus

I still feel that more and more precise definitions would help to clarify the article.

It is possible that more decisions will be made on a global level in the future.

And it is possible that, in the long run, global centralisation will turn out to be more powerful than the converse.

Nathan Wheeler

So, personally, I do not believe we will ever have any form of "one-world government" or "utopia"... there are three worldviews which would first have to be rectified -- Islam, Judeo-Christianity, and Atheism. What is utopia or the rising to power of one is simply oppression of the other 2.

Cerberus

17:59

I don't think globalisation as we know it is in any way comparable to things like a super AI to conquer us all, or a virus, or, again, a convergence en strengthening of moral codes.

@NathanWheeler Why are religions more of a problem than other things? We already have plenty of states containing different religions that function fairly well?

I don't even know what the religions are of most politicians here.

It's not extremely important, in a modern society, or at least it doesn't have to be—of course it is very important with respect to some people.

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus because the internal belief a person holds, and the deity to which they pledge allegiance, ultimately determines their goals and moral and ethical boundaries. And belief, no matter how well or incorrectly placed is an impossible thing to overcome in people.

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler Do you really think that?

Nathan Wheeler

yes

Cerberus

Then how come the norms of people in my country are rather well aligned between Christians and atheists, but not between our Christians and, say, those in Nigeria, or the Westborough Church in America?

Christians and atheists here agree on enough rules for them to live together peacefully, as they do in most places.

Nathan Wheeler

Do you have equal representation from all three groups?

Cerberus

18:07

Proportional representation.

People can vote for whomever they like.

Nathan Wheeler

sure, and in a democracy, the majority eventually becomes the controlling force

leaving little to no representation of minority groups

Cerberus

Why little to no?

Why not proportional?

And why does this not apply to all kinds of minorities equally?

Why is a religious "group" (even though different sects of Christianity may hate each other's guts) different from a socially oriented group, or a professionally oriented group, or an age group, or a regional group, or a group marked by certain exterior properties, like skin colour, etc. etc.?

Nathan Wheeler

religion is something that people choose to pledge their lives to, in a manner incongruent with the dedication to other groups...

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler How is that different from, say, being female?

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus If my town has 5 representative for 100 people, and less than 10 people of a minority exist in that 100, representation will not include that minority

Cerberus

18:20

Yes.

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus Being female is not a mutually exclusive "truth" from being male...

Cerberus

Well, you are suggesting that my representative has to share properties with me. Does my representative in parliament have to also be an atheist, around 1m90 tall, blue-eyed, speaking with the same accent, preferring the company of certain people, living in my neighbourhood, etc.?

@NathanWheeler Why not?

I don't see why religion would be fundamentally different from other properties than individual citizens may possess.

Nathan Wheeler

for perpetuation (and continued supremacy) of the species, both males and females are required. For perpetuation and supremacy of one worldview, those that oppose it must be silenced.

Cerberus

Why must opposition be silenced, if it is a minority?

And why must there be one "world view"?

Nathan Wheeler

why? why what?

Cerberus

18:25

As long as people's world views are compatible to the point of not giving too many problems when they're living together, what's the problem?

Nathan Wheeler

there will never be one worldview. When one group grows to a sufficient majority, the other groups lack representation and become oppressed... to assume that it wouldn't happen would be to assume that we formed a democracy in which none of the citizens had their own motives at heart. That condition doesn't exist.

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler Sure. But how does this not apply to any kind of opinion on what society and nature are or should be? Why would religion be any different from any other views?

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus I think the only other group that this has ever really applied to is racial groups.

Cerberus

Why do you think that?

We have 10+ political parties here, each with its own set of opinions.

Nathan Wheeler

I'm not entirely sure that we're talking about the same thing...

Cerberus

18:35

Hehe.

Neither am I.

38 mins ago, by Nathan Wheeler

So, personally, I do not believe we will ever have any form of "one-world government" or "utopia"... there are three worldviews which would first have to be rectified -- Islam, Judeo-Christianity, and Atheism. What is utopia or the rising to power of one is simply oppression of the other 2.

I was just wondering why you treated religions as an exception. But perhaps we should define this "one-world government first". I imagined something like a modern nation-state, but encompassing the entire world?

Nathan Wheeler

sure... any state of perpetual planetary peace and good-will

Cerberus

That is a lot to ask!

So that's different from a modern nation state?

Nathan Wheeler

where we're all kind of under the same roof, one economy, one centralized government (maybe with multiple smaller "state" divisions)

Cerberus

Do you feel that different religions can live together peacefully in the modern, enlightened states we have now?

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus do they currently?

Cerberus

18:42

I would say yes, but I think maybe you disagree.

I'm trying to figure out what you would expect of people for them to live peacefully in your global state.

Nathan Wheeler

I don't believe there will be a global state...

Cerberus

Heh.

I don't know.

If there will ever be one, another question is how stable it will be.

Joseph Weissman

--It's interesting to me that he indicates a singleton might be unstable :)

Nathan Wheeler

I believe that mass self-destruction is far more likely than mass unity

Joseph Weissman

Again that seems to bring up this point about the 'effective eternity' of a singleton

@NathanWheeler why so?

Nathan Wheeler

18:49

we're volatile, and capable of far more destruction than we even realize...

even when we aren't killing each other, we're self-serving, egotistical, and completely dismissive of the needs and ideas of others who disagree with us

Joseph Weissman

hmmm :)

--probably not entirely constructive, but now i'm just thinking about part-whole problems, mereology and so forth

---every part of a geodesic dome is a triangle, but the dome itself isn't triangular, right?

a meta-stability might be possible which takes into account cyclical patterns of destructiveness

(arguably, capitalism, religion, the state, etc., are all manifestations of this.)

--i think that's the point about extrapolation bostrom makes, right? singleton is a conceptual extension/generalization of already-existing and effective goal-coordination technologies

kind of internal 'plateau' of organization or development, where a coordinating entity no longer 'defers' to external or internal exigencies...

Nathan Wheeler

in a cyclical pattern of destructiveness, I seriously doubt anyone wins (i.e. is happy with the result, not "victorious")

Joseph Weissman

biology does this, right? :)

as an analogy, it seems suggestive; i.e., that organic systems are extremely good at extracting 'signal' (organizational energetics) from noisy [or entropic] environments

destruction is the 'middle' of organization, a necessary part of transformation; how we could we create anything without destruction...?

just in passing -- it strikes me that nietzsche talks about burning ourselves in our own flame -- saying something along the lines of: "how could you rise again if you had not first become ashes?"

for some reason, i'm tempted to suggest Flusser as something of a continental 'inversion' of Bostrom in certain ways

Vilém Flusser

Vilém Flusser (May 12, 1920 – November 27, 1991) was a Czech-born philosopher, writer and journalist. He lived for a long period in São Paulo (where he became a Brazilian citizen) and later in France, and his works are written in several different languages. His early work was marked by discussion of the thought of Martin Heidegger, and by the influence of existentialism and phenomenology. Phenomenology would play a major role in the transition to the later phase of his work, in which he turned his attention to the philosophy of communication and of artistic production. He contribut...

there's a recently published text post-history that's incredibly interesting and maybe begins to unpack some of these concerns about our future...

...anyway; sorry if i'm steamrolling! thanks for stopping by and chatting with us :)

Nathan Wheeler

so when you think about biology vs. humanity, humanity is generally destructive to biology... how many species are extinct thanks to humanity. Their ashes are permanent, not something they will "rise again" from. Humanity is unique in it's ability to accomplish complete and irreparable destruction.

Joseph Weissman

it's interesting, right? :)

serres writes about something like this in the natural contract

basically, that for most of humanity's existence, nature is this huge contingency; we're almost completely at its whim and mercy, maybe exploiting some of its violence slightly

but today it's different -- serres talks about how humanity is now suddenly co-equal with nature

either capable of destroying the other...

he talks about us being locked in a social combat or struggle with each other, while we ignore the wind and rain, the mud we're steadily sinking into...

one of his thoughts here is that we need a new 'natural' contract with the planet...

Cerberus

19:05

@NathanWheeler We might recreate them through cloning.

Joseph Weissman

(...and there's always that!)

Cerberus

And other species have eradicated certain species in the past as well.

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus We might mess up and make a monster that wipes out humanity, too!

Cerberus

If only through being a factor in the natural selection between other species.

@NathanWheeler Yay!

Joseph Weissman

what if we create a monster that overcomes humanity? :)

again i'm tempted to return us to nietzsche

that mankind -- at humanity's "noon" -- can give birth to that which is over humanity...

meillassoux talks about this a little bit in after finitude, this idea that god 'in-exists'

he doesn't exist, but possibly could (in the future...)

Nathan Wheeler

19:07

@Cerberus I'm not aware of any species uninfluenced by humans that has killed an entire other species with any sort of conclusive evidence

Joseph Weissman

nature does it herself, of course; species have a halflife... :)

Background extinction rate

Background extinction rate, also known as ‘normal extinction rate’, refers to the standard rate of extinction in earth’s geological and biological history before humans became a primary contributor to extinctions. This is primarily the pre-human extinction rates during periods in between major extinction events. Overview Extinctions are a normal part of the evolutionary process, and the background extinction rate is a measurement of “how often” they naturally occur. Normal extinction rates are often used as a comparison to present day extinction rates, to illustrate the higher frequency...

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler Is any species ever uninfluenced by any other species?

Nathan Wheeler

I mean like we transplant frogs from somewhere to kill flies that we imported from somewhere else to spread bacteria from somewhere else that we're now importing..........

Cerberus

Sure.

Of all the species that have gone extinct in the past, don't you think there must have been many whose extinction was hastened by some property of a different species?

Nathan Wheeler

@JosephWeissman This only shows that species go extinct (supposedly, although it makes no claims even to its own accuracy), not that another species was responsible.

Cerberus

19:12

It may be true that humanity has a greater influence on the environment than any other species, but it may also be false. If plants hadn't decided to produce oxygen, they wouldn't be much life.

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus plants don't really produce oxygen, they utilize the carbon from the CO2 which we exhale... so maybe if all these other lifeforms didn't exhale carbon dioxide, there wouldn't be many plants?

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler I don't think that's how it happened? At any rate, some organisms made the atmosphere habitable for us. So they had a tremendous effect on the environment, much greater than we have.

And ants are far more successful than humans as counted in biomass.

But I have to go buy food.

Bai!

Nathan Wheeler

LoL...

later!

Joseph Weissman

19:33

In fact there was a switch over to oxygen at a given point evolutionarily, which was effectively poisonous to most other life at the time.

There have been several major bio-driven mass extinction events.

But anyway, good talk :) Take care everyone

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman nods

We're not as unique as we think. Except by our own standards.

Nathan Wheeler

19:46

@JosephWeissman in fact? like fact which can be absolutely proven show this?

Joseph Weissman

...um, well. There was an important paper published almost 30 years ago [Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup, 1982] that describes five major extinction events and explores some of the causes.

Extinction event

An extinction event (also known as a mass extinction or biotic crisis) is a widespread and rapid decrease in the amount of life on earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of macroscopic life. It occurs when the rate of extinction increases with respect to the rate of speciation. Because the majority of diversity and biomass on Earth is microbial, and thus difficult to measure, recorded extinction events affect the easily observed, biologically complex component of the biosphere rather than the total diversity and abundance of life. Over 98% of d...

(Would not be the worst place to start, I suppose.)

--It references this, Alroy's "Dynamics of origination and extinction in the marine fossil record", which might be useful for getting our arms around what the available evidence indicate.

--If you're curious... :)

Nathan Wheeler

but that doesn't answer my question... anyone can write a paper exploring something as a possibility, but a statement was made with the precursor "in fact", which I hardly believe can begin to be truly substantiated by any fact.

Joseph Weissman

Biotic crises don't happen with the frequency they did on an earlier, more tumultuous Earth, for sure.

--Yeah, maybe I'm not understanding what you're driving at here. Biotic crises certainly did happen before human beings, though :)

Are you making some metaphysical argument about fossils, that we can't really know the past or something?

Nathan Wheeler

I'm making the physical argument that we can't really know the "prehistoric" past with any certainty

Joseph Weissman

Meillassoux makes an interesting argument somewhat along these lines in After Finitude...

He talks about the arche-fossil...

Nathan Wheeler

19:53

specifically, I dislike the readiness to commit to the annals of "fact" things which we cannot even begin to prove as certain

Joseph Weissman

--Something along the lines of Brassier's reflections on how thought can think a "world without thought"... :)

Brassier submits that philosophy gets its exigency, even perhaps its origin, in contemplating extinction...

amazon.com/books/dp/023052205X

--More generally, the links he makes between ("analytic") eliminative materialism and ("continental") speculative realism are interesting/suggestive.

(As the blurb notes, I now realize.)

Quentin Meillassoux

__NOTOC__ Quentin Meillassoux (; born 1967) is a French philosopher. He teaches at the École Normale Supérieure, but he will be moving in Fall 2012 to a new position at the Université de Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. He is the son of the anthropologist Claude Meillassoux. Meillassoux is a former student of the philosophers Bernard Bourgeois and Alain Badiou, who has written that Meillassoux's first book Après la finitude (2006) introduces an entirely new option into modern philosophy, different from Kant's three alternatives of criticism, scepticism, and dogmatism. The book was translated i...

(Also might be worth a look; though decidedly more apparently literary/poetic than Brassier...)

Nathan Wheeler

alright, another meeting... be back later... have fun until then!

Joseph Weissman

Okay, take care! :)

Cerberus

Bye!

Joseph Weissman

20:08

> [T]he disenchantment of the world understood as a consequence of the process whereby the Enlightenment shattered the 'great chain of being' and defaced the 'book of the world' is a necessary consequence of the coruscating potency of reason, and hence an invigorating vector of intellectual discovery, rather than a calamitous diminishment

--That's Brassier, channelling Nietzsche :)

It's a point we've talked a little about, Cerbie -- the idea that the Enlightenment rationalism is a necessary consequence of certain of Christianity's own values, and in particular it's emphasis on truth (which when pushed to its limit undoes the whole chain of values...)

Cerberus

Hmm.

Does Christianity focus more on truth than other movements?

Joseph Weissman

Well, on faith in a transcendental scheme; a faith in God is replaced with a faith in Science...

(Christianity underwrites the 'affective' core of the Enlightenment.)

Faith in science -- leads to nihilism... :)

Cerberus

I don't know..."on faith in a transcendental scheme"? Is it that different from the other Abrahamic religions? And then why did it descend into the dark ages after Antiquity, only to reemerge almost a millennium later?

Nathan Wheeler

20:29

@Cerberus Christianity focuses more on a specific truth than other movements

Cerberus

Is that so?

What do you base that on?

And how do you define that?

Joseph Weissman

In passing it strikes me that some of this might have to do with the mutation or evolution of technologies of writing

I keep thinking about Augustine for some reason; who talks about writing to move forward/progress, and to move forward by writing...

Nathan Wheeler

in contrast to other religions, Christianity points to a singular source by which man comes to terms with his humanity, and by which he reaches Heaven, and promotes a personal relationship with that deity. Other religions either focus on trying to find the truth through some action, but remain at the whim of some deity.

Cerberus

Ehhh...

That's certainly not how I would put it.

The Abrahamic religions all focus on certain specific creeds.

Nathan Wheeler

that depends...

Joseph Weissman

20:40

Sure.

Cerberus

I don't think they are that different in that respect. Nor do I think the various Christian sects are that similar. Or the Muslim sects. Huge internal differences.

Joseph Weissman

I mean, for Nietzsche, the 'truth' is -- what? A metaphor that's been worn out... :)

Illusions which have forgotten they are illusions...

Cerberus

We can speak of truth even while recognising that it does not exist objectively.

Nathan Wheeler

do you want to lump all of them into one bucket? Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah's Witness, Apostolic, Pentecostal, Calvinist, Armenian, etc... and are you including Islam as Abrahamic (they claim to be the seed of Abraham)?

Joseph Weissman

It's about this logic of piercing-the-veil, that absolutely is a common mystical religious striving, but reaching something of an apex or inversion with scholastic (literary!) Christianity (like Augustine and so on, forerunners of the enlightenment values...)

Cerberus

20:42

The Abrahamic religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Nathan Wheeler

I know the term...

Cerberus

Okay.

Joseph Weissman

It's really religious fidelity in general that conditions the affective basis for scientificity (faith in 'reason')

It's Spinoza and Nietzsche who both see this problem really clearly.

Cerberus

I don't know.

Joseph Weissman

Spinoza puts it in terms of faith and reason, showing how they're opposed -- how faith is obedience, where reason abandons servility.

Nathan Wheeler

20:43

your original question was "Does Christianity focus more on truth than other movements?", but you threw in Abrahamic religions late in the game

Cerberus

Why would you call Antiquity any less rational than, say, Mediaeval Christendom?

Joseph Weissman

There's a conjunction, though, right? --That this faith, at a certain limit, could trigger the abandonment...

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler Well, they are "other movements", right?

Joseph Weissman

Christianity is somewhat singular in this regard, for certain reasons that are definitely complicated (theological, economic, juridical, psychoanalytical, etc.)

A thoroughgoing deconstruction would have a lot to take into account here :)

Cerberus

How is it so singular?

I'll buy it if you say Protestantism.

But I'm not sure Christianity is much different from the other Abrahamic religions in this respect...

Joseph Weissman

20:45

It might be interesting to considering Buddhism/Hinduism in this regard... :)

Nathan Wheeler

in the focus on truth, Christianity is singular. There is one truth. Humans can interact with that truth on a personal level.

Cerberus

India and China were at the scientific forefront of humanity from time to time.

Joseph Weissman

@Cerberus Yep.

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler How is that singular? Islam focuses on its own truth. Atheism, again, focuses on another truth.

@JosephWeissman It is interesting to consider why China never gave birth to a big proselytising religion.

Joseph Weissman

Maoism...

Cerberus

20:48

Even though it was always one of the main centres of civilisation.

I'm not sure Maoism is a religion...

I wouldn't call any state ideology a religion.

Joseph Weissman

I'm just thinking of the language used to describe the revolution.

As not really about the state, but about culture, etc.

Cerberus

It's ideology all right.

Joseph Weissman

Sure, and mythology too...

Cerberus

But not technically about the supernatural.

Joseph Weissman

Well, the concept of achieved communism has something of a messianic affect to it in a lot of Marxist thinking...

Nathan Wheeler

20:50

Atheism focuses on humanism as truth, and each person is his own deity (by denying a deity, you turn to idolize humanity). If I choose to kill someone as an atheist, my truth is probably far different than the truth of my victim who believes that they should live...

Joseph Weissman

--Marx himself even talks in palpably theological terms at times...

Asking mankind, humanity, to "confess its sins"; thinking that this will be enough, to organize and develop the general intellect.

Cerberus

I was thinking of earlier history anyway. When Buddhism, the Abrahamic religions, and Hinduism emerged in India and Europe and spread across Eurasia and North Africa, not a great deal happened in China.

Except that Buddhism came to China.

@JosephWeissman There are some parallels, but I really don't think it is comparable to the major world religions.

Joseph Weissman

@Cerberus The idea of a community of equals? :)

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler Uhh I don't know what you mean by that. But you could say atheism focused on the truth that there is no god and no supernatural.

@JosephWeissman Absolutely!

But I feel that a religion should, at least in word, revolve around a certain relation with the supernatural.

Or do you disagree?

Joseph Weissman

Maybe? :)

At it's kernel, I might suggest religion is about the wound, injury. (If not always-already the tomb; de-cryption...)

Nathan Wheeler

20:54

Atheism has a pluralism of truths of the individuals who profess it. Is my moral code wrong or right, and does it match yours?

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman How do you mean?

Joseph Weissman

--Well, one thought is that the relation with the supernatural is always mediated, usually through some technology of inscription...

That the transcendental is caught up in regimes of signs, that it works through the lines of knowledge and power made possible through speech, writing.

Cerberus

@NathanWheeler Uhh I'm not sure what you mean. Isn't atheism basically about the denial of the supernatural, or God? Moral codes are outside the scope of atheism, I would say.

@JosephWeissman ...or at least through some earthly medium, sure.

But how is that a wound?

Joseph Weissman

:)

The relation between sin and debt might be one place to start thinking through some of these questions.

The 'wound' is immediately economic as much as legal or psychoanalytic.

It's only theological at its limit or asymptotically; something like when it's taken to it's highest power.

Nathan Wheeler

@Cerberus Sure, atheism denies the supernatural. It makes the statement that there is no God. But as an effect, the moral code of atheism becomes "hive mind" where nobody is wrong or right, because there's not any central moral compass. My own moral compass sets my moral code as an internal stimuli.

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