This is interesting. Existentialism comes in various forms, including Christian existentialism. But isn't existentialism of the secular variety built upon similar notions as nihilism? The absence of meaning. Nihilism holds that life, existence and reality itself are devoid of inherent meaning, purpose, or value. It rejects the notion of any objective significance or ultimate truth. Existentialism tends to identify same lack of meaning and then moves in to fill the void. — Tom Storm

Yes, I think there's a dialogue there, but a distinction.

I would often consider myself to be a nihilist. But I don't tend to see this approach as one of destructive apathy, or assertive repudiation, rather a more cheerful springboard to make decisions about what choices you will make and what you will do. I would not consider myself to be an existentialist.

Heh OK fair. I'll eat my words, then, because now that you say this I feel like I know what you mean, but I'd also say this isn't the position I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines that nihilism is the end of value, and value is desired -- a kind of negative nihilism? Basically an extreme position that people wouldn't find attractive, but can serve as a conceptual benchmark.

EDIT: Though I'd still stand by my comment that Camus is no nihilist, I think, even of the sort you put here. I don't think a joyful springboard is what comes to mind when I think of Camus, but more of a resolute hero.

O man I read that in highschool and loved it. so so good.

Ultimately calling the existentialist approach to life “ethical” seems to misuse the term ethical to me. It’s not acting ethical to take responsibility for one’s absurd reasoning, it’s just the true nature of authentic acting. In the end, any particular act (murder or self-sacrifice, either/or) is meaningless in itself, beyond good and evil. — Fire Ologist

I'd say this is more the nihilist position.

Where I reject Camus is in his answer, but not in his question.

I think "taking responsibility" has a lot of ethical "weight", even if another disagrees with the reasoning -- even if they call it absurd.

The difference is that Camus answers his question, whereas you reject his answer and think everything is meaningless "in itself".

Let's see...

I think I'd make a pretty hard distinction between existentialism and nihilism.

Existentialism is the philosophical response to the necessity of nihilism: given how we've lived meaningful lives before, and given how things have progressed this world feels absurd: the absurd is always an encounter. And absurdism is different from existentialism in that absurdism is a little more specific -- Sartre was no absurdist, so far as I can tell.

Nihilism is something like solipsism, but in the ethical realm -- it's an extreme point that people diverge from in various ways, and few (if any) actually adopt it philosophically (though they may in practice).

This all depends what you understand a nihilist to be. I don't think all versions of nihilism preclude morality. It rejects inherent meaning and morality. — Tom Storm

OK cool. I wanted to note there are distinctions of nihilism, and so in some senses he's no nihilist and in others' he is -- the negative connotation of "nihilist" is mostly what I'm rejecting, at least as a way to say "nihilist" has shades.

I think you're doing a good job of comparing the texts to the summations.

But I very much doubt that the professor misunderstands Camus -- I think what you'll find, as you read more philosophy, is that there is more than one understanding of a text.

Keep at it!

But also remember that summations are meant to help you rather than the prove a point. To prove a point for Camus you'd have to write it in French ;)

I don't think I'd say that's his project, exactly. And I agree with -- Camus is no moral nihilist, and is a deeply ethical thinker.

In a rough-and-ready way I'd say sure to your description, but if I want to be more precise I'd say Camus is no nihilist, or at least would want to note distinctions.

Honestly, the most vulnerable part of my argument, as far as I can tell, is that there are, although not infinite, myriad ways of torturing someone by manipulating the chemicals in their brain, which inflates the number of earth-like events to gargantuan numbers if there is no limit to the unique causes of these painful neuro-chemical events. Not to mention the presence of these possible events in this life implies that an earth-like afterlife could consist of many of these painful neuro-chemical events if they are at all likely - although many of the worst ones would probably be very unlikely by virtue of being difficult to produce via events external to whatever is happening in the brain, i.e. even psychiatric medications, which are designed to produce certain mental outcomes, can only produce so many of these reliably.

That might still sound bad, but even in the worst-case scenario, there is a limit to how much pain you can experience via such manipulations, and there is no limit to how much pain you might feel in the kind of unknowable hell I talk about in the OP. So, the existence of brains kind of complicates things a little, but my argument remains almost totally unaffected. — ToothyMaw

OK so it sounds to me like you have a specific idea about what hell is not, and that this is what you're trying to get at.

I'm afraid I remain unmoved, though that's common in philosophy.

The only way we could ...

possess the means to follow the process of discovery through to its end or figure out its details — ToothyMaw

... is if we are alive after we die. To initiate the process of knowing what's after life is to end the process that is life, which makes it rather hard to know about while still alive.

Isn't the target here more the method to be adopted in doing philosophy?

Roughly, is philosophy to be public or private? — Banno

I agree with that.

Interesting that the text she wrote was forced private until now... tho unfortunate.

I believe philosophy ought be public. However we get that to be the case.

I think my reaction is mostly based from an "OK I agree but I'm an anarchist and you don't seem to understand I'm saying", but also...it was 70-ish years ago, I can't blame her.

She's a philosopher everyone ought to read.

I agree with your defense of Descartes.

But I wonder if Descartes is the target? Not really, I don't think. More people inspired by Descartes in a certain way?

Maybe not tho. What you think about that?

As I say in the OP, what makes one earth-like afterlife (even one you might call hellish) any more likely than another is how well it abides by the logical rules we might develop and whether or not it exists within the boundaries of possible human experience. So, if that is what you are talking about, then I would have trouble with that. — ToothyMaw

My interest here is in wondering how it might be possible to rationally think about such imaginings that are widespread in human culture.

So the more interesting question is where you have trouble. Obviously this is just a hypothetical since neither of us believe -- but I'd encourage you to talk more about where you have trouble in thinking through this thought. That's the best stuff.

I'd say it too, which makes it a "of course we would say that!" -- which of course we would. :D

I'm a Bachelor in the sense that all Bachelor's are unmarried men.

I voted yes all the same. Partially due to @Fooloso4 -- sex and family are not the same now, and I have kiddos in my life, and I have no doubts about others' existence or interiority.

So I thought "Yes" still qualified in the sense that she's designating, but then there may be an objection on the basis that I'm unmarried and so don't have a real insight into what she's saying.

Great men, simply by their ignorance of a topic, can lay a remarkably strong taboo on the mention of it even where it happens to be entirely relevant. I saw a singular instance of this lately in a correspondence about the law of abortion. A writer pointed out that many women who had wished to be rid of their child two months after conception were eager to bear it three months later, and finished apologetically, “Expect no logic from a pregnant woman.” But of course there was nothing wrong with the logic. The premises were changed. A child at two months feels like an ailment; at five months it feels like a child. The woman had passed from the belief, “I am not well” to the belief, “I am now two people”. And the only thing wrong with that belief is that it is one which is unfamiliar to logicians. That, I suspect, is an unphilosophic objection. — Midgly

I get along with the conclusion, though. And with the opening -- I don't think philosophy is an exercise in proving myself correct or the other person wrong or some such.

Let's take a practical example.

Suppose you present your reasoning to a literal fire-and-brimstone Christian where sinners go to hell for eternity unless they are saved by Christ.

The task for you, as I see it, is to argue how you can know any one afterlife is more likely than another while simultaneously denying others' appeals that likewise do not rely upon evidence.

Do you think your reasoning here would persuade someone with different good guesses?

OK no shows so I'm shutting it down now.

Probably gotta get more agreement on times and such to make it happen since we've just been picking times and nada.

I started the meeting early -- playing games until I hear someone hop on.

https://us05web.zoom.us/j/82479111508?pwd=5DIZCYRP7m2BSDHgj6ZK4DR2amD8xK.1

Meeting ID: 824 7911 1508
Passcode: 7RrQY2

Didn't see anything so I thought I'd make a link.

Heh you flatter me too much. I'm not sure what's going on in scientific circles, in such a general sense -- and I have no pretentions that I'm somehow influential or representative. It's just my day job that I like to do, and I like to think about that here since I've always liked thinking about what I'm doing or what's going on -- life, the universe, and everything, and all that rot.

Sure. I was specifically pointing out that it would be a misunderstanding to think that philosophy governs science. — wonderer1

Yeh, OK. I don't think there's a relationship of governance.

Popper and Kuhn elucidated things that have been valuable to scientific thought, but I'd say that if it makes any sense to talk of something governing science 'Mother Nature' is the one laying down the laws. — wonderer1

I wouldn't go that far, though.

I'd say there are no laws.

But that's at an abstract level.

In practice we have good enough measurements, theories, and predictions that make sense to enough of us to get along.

"laws", however, is a human concept we use to make sense of the regularity we happen to be able to collectively perceive. It's something of an interpretation rather than something that can be laid down, just as there is no mother nature that can lay it down.


At least to my mind -- tho this is getting to a level where I feel I'm just expressing what makes sense to me rather than arguing.

It appears to me that a substantial fraction of philosophers (or at least those who fancy themselves philosophers) find PoS to be justification for being pretty ignorant of science. — wonderer1

:sad:

I'm not sure how to parse philosophers from those who fancy themselves philosophers, but I'd say that Philosophy of Science is more like the Olympic sport of philosophy.

And those who wanted to remain ignorant had no need of phil-o-sci.

Philosophy of science does not govern scientific practice. — wonderer1

I'd push against this a bit.

It's not like scientists cite philosophers of science, of course, tho Scientific practice could have its own philosophy -- one which, I suspect, isn't so general as "philosophy of science" might suggest.

But perhaps there are underlying philosophical presuppositions to any given science?

In which case there'd be a philosophy of science ... tho not governing, at least influencing scientific practice.

The rocks, all along, were the most dedicated quietists.

The creation of this thread is motivated by a claim made by Chet Hawkins:

Knowledge is only belief.
— Chet Hawkins

Chet elaborates:

So I could/should rest on that statement alone as it is incontrovertible.

But the quislings out there will want to retreat behind 'facts' and 'knowledge' delusions. So, it's best I turn my hat around and address the concepts more thoroughly.

But let's take this outside.
— Chet Hawkins

I think there is a valid distinction between knowledge and belief, although I also think that much of what is generally considered to be knowledge might be more accurately classed as belief. It may well turn out that I am sympathetic to Chet's belief. Let's see...

Chet says that statement is incontrovertible. I would like to see an argument to support that contention. — Janus

I'm afraid I'm more inclined to these approaches:



And laid out an excellent argument against the statement "Knowledge is merely belief" -- sometimes, to expand on @fdrake, knowledge is action, and has nothing to do with what people say! A totally orthogonal category to yourthe notion that knowledge is merely belief.

Same, especially cuz it's the weekend.

I just kept the first guess cuz no one else said it was bad, meaning anyone interested is good to go :)

From the 6th--7th ? To use your previous format:

Sunday, 06 April

I have it set for 10am NZD which is
5pm Saturday EST
2pm Saturday WST
9pm GMT

O yeah.
Especially cuz it's not like exposing yourself here will help you professionally. :D

that's the thought that keeps me coming back: while we're a collection of weirdos thinking our thoughts in an attempted free way, we try to keep it seperate from the professional consequences of our thoughts.

That seems the closest one can acomplish when it comes to free thought.

To say there is no evidence of a type we cannot have is to say nothing at all. — Arne

That's the bit I'm struggling with.

I believe @ToothyMaw has a notion he's coming from.

I'd like to understand that notion, cuz I think that's the only thing we can really do on a philosophy forum -- understand one another.

If there's no evidence @ToothyMaw -- then I'm asking how you decide between the likelihoods of guesses. It's ok if it's not rationally thought out or just a guess, cuz that's what I think -- but I'd have a follow up in that case.

If we have no evidence, and no probabilities, on what basis can we say that our guesses are better guesses?

You still say that a prediction in favor of an earth-like afterlife has more predictive power than Eternal Torture afterlife. And even that an ET afterlife might be more likely than an earth-like afterlife. But then note that this is different from what potentiates a good guess based upon our perspective.

what makes a guess good is not just whether or not it satisfies the condition “the afterlife is an eternal hell” or “the afterlife is earth-like”, but rather that it predicts specific events, how many of those specific events occur, and in what order. Also, their causes and consequences, but that introduces much more complexity, so I’ll leave that alone. But how many events can we truly guess if it is ET? Probably very few - even if we accurately guess that it is indeed ET for everyone across the board. — ToothyMaw

Considering we have no knowledge of the afterlife I'm still inclined to say we cannot truly guess about events in any afterlife; that is, from our perspective, there is no better guess because we don't know what we're talking about.

I'm not just saying that an earth-like afterlife is more predictable, but rather that we can compare the likelihood of an earth-like afterlife to any other, and conclude, based on the potential for accuracy within each possibility - earth-like or ET, in this case - that the earthy predictions stand to be truer than other guesses. — ToothyMaw

So we compare Afterlife 1 to Afterlife 2. How do we do this comparison?

You say "based on the potential for accuracy within each possibility"

So that's not probability, but a potential for accuracy within a possibility, and it's not based on evidence. So what's it based on?

How does one evaluate the potential for accuracy within a given possible afterlife?

I am also arguing not that there is only one most likely afterlife based on the fact that earth-like afterlives can be more accurately predicted, but rather that the proliferation of ideas about earth-like afterlives stand greater chances of being more true when compared to any one unearthly possibility - such as ET. — ToothyMaw

Why would the proliferation of ideas about any unknown influence its chances of being true?

If we are to judge whether an idea is more or less likely to be true then we can either --

Stipulate the likelihoods in order to make a computation.

Or have some measurable in order to compute likelihoods or at least be able to make comparisons between probabilities.

If what you're saying is that assuming the afterlife is earth-like then it would be more predictable then isn't that a bit obvious?

But for the latter -- I don't think you can count "number of ideas" as a unit for judging likelihoods.

As such I think neither proposition -- ET or Earthlike -- can be evaluated on the basis of likelihood since there is no evidence for either.

I think all we're left with is a generic appeal to what makes sense to us, and clearly that differs between people.

First off, I don't see how you could support the assertion that eternal torture is more likely. I think you would need some evidence. — ToothyMaw

Fair. I agree there. We need evidence to support assertions of likelihood.

But then I think -- we have no evidence of an afterlife being a particular way. At least I would not count various intuitions of persons as "evidence", though it seems you might.

When I say that the fear of death is adequate as an explanation, I mean that all the theories of the afterlife are directed towards that fear, rather than the literal words they use. "Hellfire" afterlives are usually part of a culture where some actions are bad and avoiding those actions is the most important thing.

There's an interesting relationship to be had between what people do with their lives and their beliefs about an afterlife -- but for the most part I don't think it holds for most people. Most people will do what people do, regardless of the truth of their view towards the afterlife, because none of us have evidence about it -- so my suspicion is that all thoughts on the afterlife are something like fiction.

I suppose that's why I brought up Vulcan Olympics, though it didn't work.

Is it equally likely, for instance, that someone might mount a jetpack on a pig and send it flying, or that a pig might sprout wings? In both instances the condition that pigs can fly, which is unlikely to be true, is met, but, given certain constraints, such as the near impossibility of sprouting wings, one conclusion is more likely than another.

Thus, a guess about what might happen in the afterlife, although unlikely to be true, could be more likely than another, even if both could accurately explain why the afterlife consists of certain events - why pigs can fly. — ToothyMaw

In you first example you're talking about things we know about.

But the afterlife? Because we don't know about it we cannot say what is more likely.

I can say what persuades me that there is no afterlife, but unless that argument sits well with you I have no method of proof for what an afterlife might be like, even if it might not be.

Furthermore, there are no constraints regarding what might be possible if the afterlife is not earth-like. Thus, if there is a similar chance of the afterlife being some sort of eternal hell or earth-like, the fact that the equally likely earth-like afterlife could be more accurately predicted indicates that those who have ideas about an earth-like afterlife have more predictive power regardless of the truth of whether or not it is earth-like. — ToothyMaw

I think this is the bit that's causing me to reply most -- if there are no constraints then there's no predictive power. It's an imaginary. Just like since there's no evidence for any of the afterlives, we cannot infer that one afterlife is more or less likely than another -- we have no evidence as these are just beliefs that arise due to the fear of death.

Oh sure.

I could have also been more careful in reading, and so forth.

That was super cool.

The organ version has become too cheesy to evoke -- that was a great rendition.

Mkay.

I thought you were saying the opposite in describing Sartre as misinterpreting Heidegger here:

The notion that existence precedes essence is pop-psychology. Heidegger says our existence is our essence and Sartre misinterprets Heidegger as saying existence precedes essence and now all proceed as if if "existence precedes essence" is an existential given. It is not! — Arne

So you're more saying "these are not fundamental" -- which I hope you see we agree on.

Reading over again -- yeh. I don't believe there are any fundamental tenets of existentialism, and "existence precedes essence" is one I'd count as not being a fundamental tenet.

I was caught up on the notion that Sartre misinterprets Heidegger.

And I make my argument for the sole purpose of cautioning "someone who is trying to understand all that is existentialism." Please see original OP. — Arne

Gotcha.

First thoughts and all that.

The notion that existence precedes essence is pop-psychology. Heidegger says our existence is our essence and Sartre misinterprets Heidegger as saying existence precedes essence and now we all proceed as if if "existence precedes essence" is an existential given. It is not! — Arne

I've heard that claim before. I think they were both creative philosophers with very different aims, but somehow the philosophy bridged them.

I don't think it's a misinterpretation -- at least no more a misinterpretation than what Heidegger does with Aletheia; the man got criticized for not representing the notion historically correctly, but I do remember Heidegger's name and not the critic so there's that -- I just think they were both creative philosophers with different sentiments dealing with similar themes in wildly different circumstances.

EDIT: Though, to be fair, in my quadrivium of existentialists I pair Heidegger to Levinas, and Sartre to Camus.

I know Simone de Beauvoir was a contemporary, too, and I haven't mentioned her.

I do think that existentialism has something of a masculine energy to itusually.

EDIT2: Well... things change. There's definitely feminist existential phenomenology, among other things -- but the quadrivium which sets the stage in my mind is masculine. Derrida spoke of Levinas' work as obviously written by a man (and I agree there -- there are criticisms from other angles to be had; not that the masculine is bad, but the attempt at a universal frame kind of cuts off all the non-masculine existential-phenomenologists)

Meh... I'm not satisfied with that. There's a relationship there, but I don't have it thought out.

the fear of death is an adequate explanation for why people bring up the notion of an afterlife.
— Moliere

Another good point. — ToothyMaw

To use your precision/accuracy distinction...

We can see the general commonalities between various descriptions of the afterlife -- some of them have hellfire, some of them depersonalize you into a nous of some kind, some of them are re-occuring, some of them give rewards for doing good things in this life.

With how I read you: You're saying these guesses are imprecise, but perhaps accurate, and if we accumulate these guesses we might be able to say which or the other is more likely.

I don't think the distinction between precision/accuracy is relevant here. I tried to think through it and it just doesn't make sense to talk about precision/accuracy with respect to, say, fictional characters.

We can say "Bilbo Baggins is shorter than Gandalf", and I think that's true. But we cannot say how precise/accurate that statement is -- we infer it from the story on the basis that Bilbo is a Hobbit, and Hobbits are shorter than Wizards, and Gandalf is a Wizard. or something like that.

This seems the same to me as applying the precision/accuracy distinction to the afterlife, along with plausibility.

Aesthetics is somewhat like this in that we're looking for ways to reason about how we make decisions on art. That's why the topic interests me a lot as a possible philosophical jumping point.

But it's not an easy topic to do more than simply state our opinions on. It's hard to do philosophy here.

I definitely do, sorry if I came across as unwilling to engage. — ToothyMaw

Oh no worries -- I was just making a bit of a joke. You were right to give more focus.

That's actually good. Maybe you could point out what doesn't make sense to you? — ToothyMaw

Cool. Let's start with this part:

Agreed. I bypass this discussion, however, by stipulating in my argument that one either goes to an afterlife or one doesn't after dying. This is true regardless of whether we can evaluate the proposition 'there is an afterlife'. Then, to follow, if there were an afterlife, what might we expect it to look like? From there, my (bulleted) argument is mostly straightforward. — ToothyMaw

I'm going to try and draw an analogy here to point out how this seems like a difficult question to answer with any sort of probabilistic reasoning about the veracity of what might be:

Suppose on Vulcan they host an Olympics, very much like our own but instead with Vulcan sports. By virtue of the form "Either one goes to the Vulcan Olympics or one does not go to the Vulcan Olympics after being evaluated to go to the Vulcan Olympics by the Vulcans"

Does this sidestep whether or not the Vulcan Olympics exist in order to then talk about the more probable paticulars of the Vulcan Olympics? How could we possibly evaluate something which we have no familiarity for?

To bring it back to the difference between Eternal Torture vs. an Earth-like afterlife: With how much we know we'd be just as much in the right to claim that the Eternal Torture afterlife is more likely.

Or, at least the philosophical difficulty that I see is -- how could you make your version of the afterlife more rationally appealing? Or, if philosophy be not defined by rationality, just philosophically appealing in a manner that isn't simply a statement of our intuitions on the manner? How do we make arguments about such an ephemeral notion?

A thought -- perhaps we should do a Saturday-to-Sunday timeslot rather than a Friday-to-Saturday timeslot.

Heh, you mean you don't want to just hear my opinion on the matter? :D

Fair enough. Though reading through your post again I can say I'm not sure I understand your chain of reasoning.

It seems to me we can either evaluate the proposition "There is an afterlife" as true or false, or we cannot evaluate it as true or false. If the former then I'd say the premise is false, and if the latter then I'd say we have no way of knowing what it would be like if it exists -- and that the fear of death is an adequate explanation for why people bring up the notion of an afterlife.

That would kind of defeat the purpose of having an afterlife I think if one stops being oneself upon dying. — ToothyMaw

Exactly! :D