Still, I was pointing out the degree to which any force your argument could carry would be down to its rational structure. Or are you saying that hinging your argument on metaphysical dichotomies, like aesthetic vs rational, or subjective vs objective, are merely rhetorical tropes - said for poetic effect here, and not something you believe, or that should in fact sway me other than as poetic? — apokrisis

That's a fair question. I think that "world" or logical space is a dimly perceived background or frame. Someone could argue, perhaps, that the correspondence theory of truth is incorrect or false. What what be argued is perhaps that it doesn't make sense away from the world of public objects. We can check whether the cat is on the mat, but whether world history is an evolution of the consciousness of freedom is another matter, for instance. What does it mean to act as if such is the case? For Hegel it involved an affirmation of the slaughterbench of history and a way of looking down on the small morally indignant minds who didn't see that the ideal was actual. He insisted that philosophy wasn't about some mere ought that didn't have the power to manifest but with what is.

What is the rational structure in propositions like this? What is the rational structure of "any force your argument could carry would be down to its rational structure"? This sounds like a psychological hypothesis. Is this an equating of force and "rational structure"? Is seems more realist to understand force in terms of successful persuasion. It may indeed be the case that my argument has no persuasive force with you, but that is arguably because of your contingent investment in a particular notion of the rational or that which ought to be persuasive. I suggest that personalities "compute" from a basis of liquid or fuzzy re-programmable "axioms." These are dearly held, self-esteem-grounding beliefs involving virtue, especially intellectual virtue among philosophers ('intellectual conscience.') These core beliefs are the "handles" by which we can be persuaded, if we can be persuaded at all. This thought itself might not be a live option for those invested in the possibility of trans-practical objective truth.

I do see that this vision of generalized "sophistry" has a self-subverting edge. Hence "ironism" and "groundlessness." Non-practical objective truth is problematized, but so therefore is this problematizing. Yet one doesn't go back to the "naive" value-free or innocent notion of metaphysics. One stands (anxious or amused )in this irony and groundlessness.

Found some stuff in Kojeve that may help illuminate this issue. The last part is what I especially had in mind.

Therefore, [man] is
the empirical existence in the World of a Future that will never
become present. Now, this Future, for Man, is his death, that
Future of his which will never become his Present; and the only
reality or real presence of this Future is the knowledge that Man
has in the present of his future death. Therefore, if Man is Concept
and if the Concept is Time (that is, if Man is an essentially tem-
poral being), Man is essentially mortal; and he is Concept, that is,
absolute Knowledge or Wisdom incarnate, only if he knows this.
Logos becomes flesh, becomes Man, only on the condition of being
willing and able to die.

...
For History to exist, there must be not only a given reality, but
also a negation of that reality and at the same time a ("sublimated")
preservation of what has been negated. For only then is evolution
creative; only then do a true continuity and a real progress exist in
it. And this is precisely what distinguishes human History from a
simple biological or "natural" evolution. Now, to preserve oneself
as negated is to remember what one has been even while one is
becoming radically other. It is by historical memory that Man's
identity preserves itself throughout History, in spite of the auto-
negations which are accomplished in it, so that he can realize him-
self by means of History as the integration of his contradictory
past or as totality, or, better, as dialectical entity. Hence history is
always a conscious and willed tradition, and all real history also
manifests itself as a historiography: there is no History without
conscious, lived historical memory.

...
Man's Freedom is the actual negation
by him of his own given "nature" — that is, of the "possibilities"
which he has already realized, which determine his "impossibili-
ties" — i.e., everything incompatible with his "possibilities." And
his Individuality is a synthesis of his particularity with a uni-
versality that is equally his. Therefore Man can be individual and
free only to the extent that he implies in his being all the possi-
bilities of Being but does not have the time to realize and manifest
them all. Freedom is the realization of a possibility incompatible
(as realized) with the entirety of possibilities realized previously
(which consequently must be negated); hence there is freedom
only where that entirety does not embrace all possibilities in gen-
eral, and where what is outside of that entirety is not an absolute
impossibility. And man is an individual only to the extent that the
universality of the possibilities of his being is associated in him
with the unique particularity (the only one of its kind) of their
temporal realizations and manifestations. It is solely because he is
potentially infinite and always limited in deed by his death that
Man is a free Individual who has a history and who can freely
create a place for himself in History, instead of being content, like
animals and things, passively to occupy a natural place in the given
Cosmos, determined by the structure of the latter.

Therefore, Man is a (free) Individual only to the extent that
he is mortal, and he can realize and manifest himself as such an
Individual only by realizing and manifesting Death as well. — Kojeve

https://archive.org/stream/pdfy-xPoejl7ruL9jyW3_/KOJEVE%20introduction%20to%20the%20reading%20of%20hegel_djvu.txt

I wish you had omitted me from the general censure. I acknowledge the darkness, while denying that it is the "truth" about life. It's one face or mode among others.

Thanks. I definitely read Dasein as a more holistic notion of human being. But still man. I don't mind, though. I really don't see how anthropocentrism can ever be avoided. On the other hand, I agree with Feuerbach that man is the god of man, so I don't think it needs to be. For me it's a question of shaping our self-image in a good or successful way. More accurately, I think this is done (ultimately or most authentically) on a personal level. We each shape our own notion of who we are, though admittedly in the context of or from within interpretations that preceded our own. We never get a blank canvas.

Lao Tsu WROTE something. He hoped to get his thoughts out poetically. If he didn't write it he TOLD someone.. he had a goal- hope of his words meaning something to someone. If he didn't you would not be quoting from him. It is inescapable. — schopenhauer1

I'm not sure that anyone denies the basic structure of hope, desire, or purpose. I'm trying to figure out why you find the hope-cycle so disagreeable. I mentioned the fantasy of becoming a godlike statue, of unlife-undeath as opposed to life-death. Is it about freezing time? What is this goal of having no goals? What goal is frustrated by the perception of the hope-cycle? We could also talk about the hunger cycle, the recurring need for sleep. Life is rhythmic. Is it a horror in the face of the maternal? (Paglia)

My pleasure. I didn't understand that last post. Care to clarify?

Dasein is authentically alongside itself, it is truly existent, whenever it maintains itself in this running ahead. This running ahead is nothing other than the authentic and singular future of one's own Dasein. In running ahead, Dasein is its future, in such a way that in this being futural it comes back to its past and present. Dasein, conceived in its most basic extreme possiblity of being, is time itself, not in time. — H

Kojeve, blending Hegel and Heidegger, had it : Man is the Concept is Time.

This past, as that to which I run ahead, here makes a discovery in my running ahead to it: it is my past. As this past it uncovers my Dasein as suddenly no longer there; suddenly I am no longer there along such and such things, alongside such and such people, alongside these vanities, these tricks, this chattering. The past scatters all secretiveness and busyness, the past takes everything into the Nothing. The past is not some occurence, not some incident in my Dasein. It is its past, not some 'what' about Dasein, some event that happens to Dasein and alters it. This past is not a 'what' but a 'how', indeed the authentic 'how' of my Dasein. This past, to which I can run ahead as mine, is not some 'what', but the 'how' of my Dasein pure and simple. — Heidegger

That's from the lecture (not the book) The Concept of Time. Someone (can't remember who) called it the Ur-B&T, just as the ~100 page book of the same name is sold (I bought one) as the "first draft."

This is probably the most beautiful single work of philosophy I possess at the moment.

It was meant to be nothing but a statement of fact. — TimeLine

I was referring to "what are you on about?" I suppose that was your second post in the thread.

Here's Dreyfus' quote of Carman, since I'm such a nice fellow.

And Carman, therefore suggests that death is 'the constant closing down of possibilities, which is an essential structural feature of all projection into a future. He adds:
Such things die by dying to us, or rather by our dying to them as possibilities. Our possibilities are constantly dropping away into nullity, then, and this is what Heidegger means when he says — what might sound otherwise hyperbolic or simply false — that 'Dasein is factically dying as long as it exists' (295). To say that we are always dying is to say that our possibilities are constantly closing down around us. — D

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/189_s08/pdf/Carol%20White%20forward.pdf

Not sure how you intended your entry into the conversation in terms of tone, but I'll assume and hope it was friendly.

That said, I googled and found on the first page Dreyfus criticizing Taylor Carmen's view of death or dying as the closing down of Dasein's possibilities. If memory serves, I just saw that idea in Innwood's Heidegger dictionary last night, too. As you may know, Kojeve fused Marx and Heidegger in his famous lectures. And of course Feuerbach, a German philosopher, may have influenced Heidegger, especially as a critic of Hegel and of metaphysics generally.

What are you on about?

Yes, the point of religion it may be to provide transcendence and a link with the divine, but a dark age in the history of mankind is precisely an age where we have ears but hear not, and have eyes, but see not. Religion cannot do much when spirit and energy disappear. — Agustino

But presumably you see, yes? I can't wait for the "we," or depend on the "we." What I largely mean by transcendence is getting beyond a political notion of spirituality. Along the same lines, transcendence also means de-scientizing the spiritual. It's not (for me, ideally) metaphysics. It's not about objective truths as the basis for objective morality. I'd say that it's this kind of thing that transcendence abandons or transcends. This politicized/scientized religion is itself the (disavowed) will-to-power you find or found in my view. Because it's a direct claim on the mind and behavior of others, albeit in the name of a distant but absolute entity.

To bring it back to the thread, Schop1 was presenting an "objective" truth in OP. He could have shared a thesis or a perspective with a sense of distance from it. But (as I see it) it's one of those personality-anchoring thoughts that only matters to the degree that it's understood as an objective truth. It's an essence over others, an avatar of moral-intellectual superiority. It's intellectual because it's a profound if gloomy metaphysical theory. It's moral because it implies the bravery and/or love of truth necessary to bear the death of the ubiquitous and comforting illusion.

To be fair, he can "psycho-analyze" my position in the same way. That touches on the "limits of persuasion" in the Kojeve thread. Sophisticated reasoners can creatively enclose and neutralize criticism. Where is the neutral third party to adjudicate? The third party has his or her own "anchoring" ideas. As I see it, "pure" rationality looks more and more implausible the more one actually just listens and reads the creative collision of personalities. Hence "sophistry," including the sophistry that denies that it is sophistry (philosophy). [Yeah, this too is sophistry, but Aristophanes was right about Socrates. He's on the team.]

What you do not see is that a man cannot be the shining light of a dark age that alone dispels the darkness - a man is rather part of the historical age in which he lives. Without a change in the historical tide, an individual cannot do anything. Being born in a wicked and corrupt age, we share, we inherit the despair. It is wrong to say it is "our" despair, and not also yours. The whole Western world is on the verge of collapse. — Agustino

Oh how much we differ here. To me it's almost the very point of "religion" to provide transcendence, and I put that word in quotes because transcendence wouldn't be much if it left one dominated by the magic of mere words.

"The world is fallen" or "the world is evil" strikes me as a decision, a strategy. For me it's a place of danger and opportunity. It's a place where there are other people. For me the best in these other people is all I could ask for from the "divine." Whitman captures it with his talk of the "look in the eye."

When I hear the world as it actually exists cursed, it's hard not to think that this judgment comes from a lack of love, desire, curiosity. I don't believe in an afterlife, so (for me) this trouble-ridden is just how the divine is enframed, engendered. On the other hand, the primary Christian image is of a crucified God-in-the-flesh. For me that cross symbolizes the filth, hazard, the "lower" from which the "higher" has always emerged --"nothing else ever." The "divine" is nailed shamefully like a criminal to what is "wrong" with this world. I don't personally think we can have either separately. That's what the cross symbolizes for me: the terrible incarnation and attendant death of the "divine." I put these quotes around everything as a token of faith in this incarnation, a faith that is also a lack of faith in the distant-divine, an atheism.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
...

I know perfectly well my own egotism,
Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

Not words of routine this song of mine,
But abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer bring;
This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing-office boy?
The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms?
The black ship mail’d with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets—but the pluck of the captain and engineers?
In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
The sky up there—yet here or next door, or across the way?
The saints and sages in history—but you yourself?
Sermons, creeds, theology—but the fathomless human brain,
And what is reason? and what is love? and what is life?
...
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
— Whitman

It was Innwood or Carmen or both that I got this idea from: Death is the closing down of possibilities as other possibilities are chosen. Death is also the closing down of possibilities as we age. That's one take on death that I found meaningful. This is also in Kojeve, which is where I first saw the idea. I hadn't read Heidegger then.

This general idea also happens to be in Feuerbach's criticism of Hegel and The Essence of Christianity as well. God shines as the image of the realization of all human possibilities. But a mortal man can only develop some of his godlike potential, neglecting the rest. He is therefore comforted by the infinite image of God -- which is "just" (in all its glory) the essence of humanity as a whole.

Rhetorical? Either it is logical and worth adopting for that reason, or it is not. Either as belief it has pragmatic consequences, or it does not. — apokrisis

But do you not speak here as if "logic" had a fixed meaning? What you or anyone offers metaphysically is not formal logic, a mechanically checkable tautology. It's a narrative. I agree with you about pragmatic consequences. But those seem potential rather than actual, excepting the aesthetic value which is already present. Try to see this theory from the outside, as one more grand narrative among others. It's yours. Even if it aims at objectivity, it strikes me as perhaps your central creative investment. I'm your fellow poet, working on my own themes. I don't expect you to like this "poet" metaphor, but that's how I see it. The prestige of science, the ground of its "rationality," is the technology it provides to even those who doubt it. The old proofs of the old God were "logical" enough.

I said ultimately it is. But the tiniest possible scrap of a brute fact. — apokrisis

And I reiterate that I see nothing wrong or bad about this. Minimization is desirable. I get that.

Fine. You don't. I do.

Or at least you say you don't. And then you argue that in terms of dialectical reasoning. My view may be scientifically objective, but yours is subjectively personal. My view may be rational and inductive, but yours is intuitive and aesthetic. — apokrisis

To be clear, I didn't mean to be rude. I was just trying to make a point.

My views indeed are intuitive and aesthetic, as well as rhetorically or dialectically supported. But it was only the passionate pursuit of rational, objective truth that led me to question what really constituted objectivity and rationality. We believe what makes us feel good (what works). If we endure unpleasant realizations, this is both because we are future oriented beings and because the deep pleasure we feel in possessing the objective truth (God for the rationality-identified person) can make up for the pain involved. That's an oversimplification, but perhaps you see what I'm getting at. We are tool-users all the way down. Conceptual thought is a means. This spiel itself is self-referentially a tool that has worked for me.

I also don't believe that you think un-intuitively or non-aesthetically--that you are truly the agent of induction and rationality alone. You're a metaphysician. You may be a scientist, too, but you have the theological itch, it seems to me. So do I, in my own way. I respect the repression of the personal in thought --the taking of the impersonal personally. But I still think we identify with our theories. They are the crystallization of what is sublime in us. So the impersonal man is a deeply personal man, bored with mere triviality or idiosyncrasy. I relate. I've just chosen a different center of interest

Hah. The whole discussion is just for fun. Really, having a theory about the existence of reality - even a "scientific" one - is more an aesthetic enterprise at the end of the day. It is not as if we could use the answer to do much than dazzle and entertain ourselves. — apokrisis

As soon as this using the answer becomes manifest, it's no longer just aesthetics. I realize that Popper's theory is a bit of an idealization of science as it is practiced, but is this theory falsifiable? In some ways I'm being less aesthetic than you are, by insisting on falsifiability and practical utility as the measure of science. I'm the worldly skeptic here waiting to see what happens in the "real" world of ordinary, tangible experience.

To be sure, I'm hardly ideally qualified to anticipate whether or not these results will manifest. But life is short, and that which is not practical now must be either "aesthetic" or some promising development in my own objective/normalized field, where I'll (hopefully) be an accurate judge of world-changing potential.

I empathize with how frustrating it must be to present a philosophy that includes non-elementary science. I'm guessing that (generally) the scientists aren't sufficiently metaphysical and the philosophers aren't sufficiently scientific to appreciate what you're doing.

If you happen to have a systematic presentation of the system online somewhere, I'll check it out if you give me a link.

Vagueness is more an everythingness in being unbounded possibility. — apokrisis

I understand that. But how is this vagueness itself not your brute fact?

Either you are happy with laws as brute fact, or you feel it is reasonable to challenge that. — apokrisis

I like it. I didn't start with it, but thinking about explanation led me to my current position. Brute fact is "God" without the mask. I suppose that's the aesthetic appeal. But we are also "thrown" into our individual lives, thrown in an interpretation of our past in terms of our possible futures. So there's a nice analogy. To be clear, this is a for-pleasure issue, just like Hume's problem of induction. It's not a "spiritual" difficultly by any means.

But that is just the usual habit of explaining by imagining being outside the thing to be explained. And that is precisely why attempts to account for the Cosmos and the Mind always flounder. By definition, we can't step outside existence itself to explain existence. — apokrisis

I agree with the general idea that we can't step outside. I also see that your trying to do a kind of metaphysical explanation that evades Hempel's definition. Hegel roughly did the same thing. Assuming that your or his narrative is rhetorically plausible, is this enough for its adoption? For me ideas are tools. Your theory may indeed prove to be a valuable tool within the sciences. I'm not qualified to say. But I don't see a personal use for it. I do like the later part of the theory, where order emerges in order to speed the general dissolution. That's aesthetically dazzling.

Again please respect that I am very clear that I don't start from nothing. I start from less than nothing. The fact that you try to put me back in that frame - talking about the presence or absence of particulars - shows that you are not really dealing with my actual argument. — apokrisis

Your argument isn't easy to follow. Some of your individual points are quite digestible. But, for instance, you now seem to be recanting the minimization of brute fact and denying it altogether.

The analogy with human laws sounds too much like nature might require a "law giver". Symmetries, being emergent invariances, do away with that kind of externalist metaphysics. — apokrisis

Maybe I'm in the dark, but I was taught university physics in terms of laws. I'm not imprisoned by the metaphor either. To me these laws are postulated necessities, codified expectations. Our trust in them is not strictly logical but merely psychological.

Psychological satisfaction is surely the goal of "deep philosophy", even if we should always retain a modicum of skeptism? After all, it psychological feelings that generate the deep questions, IMO. — Jake Tarragon

Very much agree. Kojeve's Hegel uses "satisfaction" as the criterion for wisdom. The wise-man can give a satisfying account of himself. The dialectic comes to rest with this satisfaction. This is also pragmatism's notion of inquiry. It's a response to malfunction, pain, resistance to flow. If we have our basic position ironed out (happy with who we generally are, etc.), then we can indulge in creative play.

It is not rest that people are searching for - it is that infinite zest of the child, the sense of possibility, the breaking out from one's conditioning, one's past, one's prison - seeing the world aright. — Agustino

Yes, I agree with this.

Libidus Dominandi — Agustino

Will-to-power, right? Yes, but "power" is ambiguous. Will-to-glory, will-to-beauty, will-to-the-sublime,.....will-to-virtue.

For me this image of virtue is at the center of every life-philosophy. It is, moreover, dialectically or rhetorically established and destabilized. Non-verbal experience also plays its part. Pain and pleasure can be louder than any abstraction. But one might speculate that the essence of philosophy is exactly this conversation about the true name of virtue. And it is possible to recognize "objectivity" as an optional investment. "Ethical socialism" (Spengler) is not a necessity. Hegel criticizes this post-objective position as The Irony in his lectures on aesthetics. But the ironist swallows Hegel more easily than Hegel can stamp out the Irony. Infinite jest laughs with the gods.

The hard part is maintaining the vision without backing down, without letting the burn force you into a Nietzchean mania, or trying to ignore it and anchor yourself firmly in the goals. — schopenhauer1

Interesting. I view my "transcendence" in the same way. I try not to be seduced into evangelizing a fixed-idea or incarnating an alien Cause. My image of virtue is the self-thinking, self-loving "creative nothing" found in Kaspar Schmidt ('Stirner'), more or less. But Nietzsche is a great poet of this. Note that he is not presenting his own position here, but only of the best version of his competition:

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” —that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time.
...
The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol.
...
This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain sort: in primitive Christianity one finds only concepts of a Judaeo-Semitic character (—that of eating and drinking at the last supper belongs to this category—an idea which, like everything else Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.
...
The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of life—and so was his death.... He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his relations with God—not even prayer. He had rejected the whole of the Jewish doctrine of repentance and atonement; he knew that it was only by a way of life that one could feel one’s self “divine,” “blessed,” “evangelical,” a “child of God.” Not by “repentance,” not by “prayer and forgiveness” is the way to God: only the Gospel way leads to God—it is itself “God!”—What the Gospels abolished was the Judaism in the concepts of “sin,” “forgiveness of sin,” “faith,” “salvation through faith”—the whole ecclesiastical dogma of the Jews was denied by the “glad tidings.”
The deep instinct which prompts the Christian how to live so that he will feel that he is “in heaven” and is “immortal,” despite many reasons for feeling that he is not “in heaven”: this is the only psychological reality in “salvation.”—A new way of life, not a new faith.... — Nietzsche

I cherry-picked the parts that I find seductive. Stirner is an awkward writer, but he essentially blends skepticism with this "wicked" Christianity described by Nietzsche above and some Fichte mediated through German Romantic poets through Hegel. In short, my fixed-idea is a resistance to every other fixed idea. I "heroically" identity with dis-identification itself. You are welcome to criticize my mask as I have yours. It'll keep our talons sharp for the endless war on this side of the grave.

Just to be clear, I don't think there is an answer to this "why." I think it's a pseudo-question, however lyrical.

My argument is centered around my notion of explanation, which is more or less this one:

...given the particular circumstances and the laws in question, the occurrence of the phenomenon was to be expected; and it is in this sense that the explanation enables us to understand why the phenomenon occurred... — Hempel

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/#DNMod

My point more or less boils down to the "top level" laws being, by definition, inexplicable. These top level laws are "brute fact." For you these brute facts seem to include some kind of random variation and the laws of mathematics at least. These variations are assumed to be quantifiable. So your'e not starting from nothing. Of course I don't think it's possible to start from nothing, so that's not a fault in your system.

There's also Hume's problem. Your system (I think) assumes the metaphysical necessity of scientific laws? But I don't know of any deduction of this necessity. It seems to be a hardwired prejudice.

It is kind of like t0m's philosophy if you look at his responses. He is trying to out Schopenhauer Schopenhauer by embracing the instrumental nature of things. Pain is good because it is challenging, so the line of thinking goes. — schopenhauer1

To be clear, pain is not good. But this not-good of pain is potentially (in some lives) balanced out by the indeed-good of pleasure.

I suppose I am trying to Out-Herod Herod, but really I'm using a different dominant principle. I theorize that a "hero myth" or dialectically reprogrammable "virtue image" or "prime directive" is always already in play. In the light of this theory, I can understand the motive of the purveyor of dark truth.

Why do people need to be born to face challenges in the first place? Again, the instrumental nature of things makes this line of thinking suspect. It is post facto rationalizing of a situation that is already set from circumstances of birth. It is the only thing to say in the face of this, even it is just a thing to say, as there is no alternative except seeing it in its truly negative light. So Nietzscheans go on trying toincorporate challenges, set-backs, and suffering into the hope-cycle. — schopenhauer1

Just to be clear, I don't see myself as a Nietzschean. He was very important to me, but he often lost his transcendence of the world. He became another moralist, another truth-bringer. I'm more of an ironist, as described in Hegel's aesthetics. I also generally like Hegel on the evolution of personalities. So I understand your view to be important, fascinating, but only a partial truth. In my view, it functions for you like a fixed idea. You experience and present it as an objective truth.

This need for it to be objective (a sort of "scientific" truth) is, for me, insufficiently detached, transcendent. When you say there is no alternative, that to me is just your investment. You are glued to this theory-persona because it's the most seductive tool/mask for self-elevation that you're aware of. It's an Ace of Spades. But I'm claiming that I have the Joker, if you will, in the game of War.

I very much agree that we are thrown into this world, which I also think is a brute fact. So there is no answer to that why, in my book. As for post-facto rationalization, I agree. But so is your view. It's all post-facto rationalization. "Reason" is rhetoric, a tool in the hand of the dark will. We persuade not only other but ourselves. IMO, you cling to truth more than I do. I think we make the "truth" when it comes to matters of value. To speak from the "transcendent" or "authentic" I is to speak from a consciousness of pure groundlessness. That can only be a first-person claim, not a scientistically delivered truth-for-all. This "truth-for-all" is the last idol of the still-too-pious "dark" thinker. But that cannot be a truth-for-all, but only words arranged in a row that you'll do with as you see fit in your terrible freedom.

But why this logic of symmetries? Why is existence such that it would be absurd if the actual world didn't conform to symmetry based principles?

Again, this just reiterates the point. I don't disagree this is what we do. You can't see the light for too long, as you implied, it will just burn. I think the whole personal growth thing is just part of the need for need of novelty. The constant satiation needs to be satisfied indeed. — schopenhauer1

I don't think the light burns. Or it doesn't burn everyone. Some will be offended by a vision of futility and repetition. I'll grant you that. But others make a career of poeticizing it (Sarte, Schopenhauer, etc.) And there's a market for it, so it doesn't burn everyone. For some it's just more spice.

Yes the need for novelty is there. But is need shameful in itself? Is that the problem? The indignity of being an incarnate, needy being? Feuerbach called us "porous" gods. We have holes to fill and empty, fill and empty. This is absurd from one perspective and yet often enjoyable. I do think philosophers tend to want to be godlike statues, immobile and impermeable in the bliss of their wisdom.

Yeah, even worse than Schopenhauer's negation of Will is Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. That truly is a horror. One is quiescence, the other is manic life sentence. The eternal vigilance of being. — schopenhauer1

Eternal recurrence is a good mention. At this point, I'd say yes. That would mean going through hell again, but it would also mean going through intensities of pleasure in discovery that are hard to match these days. Falling in love for the first time again, for instance. Jesus, what drug compares to that? But it was Hell, too, before I came to "self-possession" and "transcendence." But knowing that I would find myself again would make being thrown back in the maze acceptable.

The point again, is hope gives us the narrow focus we need to not constantly bear the world in its full instrumental nature. It provides the ship its ballast. Status may be something that we do in a society, but that is more an epiphenomenon of being a social creature and is a secondary effect, and not an underlying factor in why we continue at a fundamental level. Status is not only getting caught up in goals, but taking them seriously. — schopenhauer1

I don't understand why the "full instrumental nature" of the world would be unpleasant. I just can't see the Hell in it.

For me status especially includes how we see ourselves. When we're young, this is indeed especially social. We need parents and peers to validate us. But as we attain independence and authenticity, we judge ourselves by our own standards. This explains the sociopath as well as the revolutionary philosopher and artist. Men even die for "honor," not so much because of what others think of them, necessarily, but for fear of how they would think of themselves after cowardly submission.

So status involves the image of virtue that as functional is exactly what we take most seriously. Both of us are philosophical types, so it's no surprise that we verbalize these images of virtue, more or less explicitly. You are the guy who publicly takes your position, and I have decided to publicly take mine. We are performing and implying "what is [truly] noble."

But really we are doing to do to do, entertaining to entertain, etc. — schopenhauer1

If I may put this in more vulgar terms, we are fucking to fuck, as well. We are eating to eat. We are sleeping to sleep. Entertaining, by the way, is fun when it's done well. Who doesn't like making others laugh or dazzling them? We like these things. We want to repeat them. Those who don't fear hellfire (or death as eternal sleep) fear death as the loss of this opportunity to repeat the same old pleasures. They also fear the loss of the personal growth interrupted by death. Maybe this just means becoming a better philosopher, writing that great book one day. You can tell them that they'll just want something else, after, and they'll say: great. Let's repeat the game of hide and seek. Because they are in the habit of successfully satisfying their desires. So desire is an opportunity for pleasure, which is distinctly a positive, and not just the cessation of a pain.

That rhetoric doesn't deflate me. I know that game backwards and forwards. I've played it. I've been the "dark truth" guy for decades. I note that you neglect the essence of my critique, which was to instrumentalize your instrumentalism. From over here, you're clinging to your view every bit as dogmatically as I cling to my notion of myself as fundamentally glad to be alive. I decided to give "trying" a try, improved my circumstances, got a good "intellectual" job, blah blah blah. So life is better.

Your view is so stubbornly hopeless that it's almost a refutation of itself. You don't seem to be spending much time in the hope part of the cycle. Is hope even the right word? Concerned, engaged, fascinated. You write as if the process itself was meaningless or devoid of pleasure. Yet it's a cliche among artists that the act of creation is the true thrill. It's even an Aerosmith lyric that "life's a journey, not a destination." So a happy rock song (which I don't like, since I'm a music snob) encapsulates your view, demonstrating, arguably, that your value-interpretation is an add-on.

Right - with the caveat that the individual can't, and ought not, to try and re-invent the whole of philosophy de novo. I mean, people turn up on forums and write OP's - usually their first post - trying to do that. Some geniuses probably succeed at it, but usually it's a futile effort. So overall I think we need to situate ourselves within some existing philosophical milieu. But that's yet another tangent. — Wayfarer

I agree completely. I don't even see it as a tangent. We are always already our pasts. We come to language with an inherited "interpretation of Dasein [being-there]." Man is essentially historical. Our authentic options are there, in our own inheritance, simply because we have no possibility of starting from zero. This might explain the variety of positions, too. We play the cards we are dealt, and we are dealt different cards. I can tell that you've been working on the same themes for decades. So have I.

These are just my themes. My life shaped me so that I experience a sense of above-average access to my particular issues. Youthful crises and ecstasies are perhaps fundamental here.

It seems my view of the world is grounded in my mind. But I see no way to support the claim that the whole world is grounded in my mind, or in anyone else's mind. — Cabbage Farmer

I just mean that the world as we value and know it as humans is only here while we are. If an asteroid wipes us out, the substratum will still be here. But I can only think or say this while I'm here. Where was the world before I was born? It was here, of course. But only because I arrived to think the world before my birth. To my knowledge, the human world (the world I care about) is only experienced first-person.

Restlessness churning. — schopenhauer1

It's your business, but maybe your lifestyle isn't what it should be. My physical/economic lifestyle changed while my "metaphysics" stayed the same and I became much happier. The little details add up to making the endless cycle worth repeating -- at least for now, while I'm young-middle-aged.

So you are just reiterating what I said. Hope moves us along through the instrumental nature of reality. Sometimes you see it for what it is, but probably not very long. You get swept in some other hope, perhaps some Nietzschean notion of the erotic object or power play. As you indicate, the premise stands, and you are simply supplying some good examples in your own hopefulness in Nietzchean (or whatever you want to call it) philosophy. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I agree with the basic structure. But "seeing it for what it is" is also part of the structure. This vision of instrumentality is itself instrumentality. It is itself wishful thinking, even if it hurts, perhaps especially because it hurts. I don't know about you, but I was raised beneath a crucified God. So these dark visions remind me of the self-crucifixion of the spirit. Nietzsche is apt. This is festival of cruelty. Society can't do much to stop us from self-cruelty. It's erotic.

Assuming that this is the THE TERRIBLE TRUTH, where does that put us? Or you in particular? You are the one who sees the face of God, and it is death to look upon the face of God. It may hurt. You may be terribly unhappy. But such suffering is ennobled by possession of this Truth, God's (or Reality's) actual, terrible face.

I'm not saying that this isn't the truth, but it's just a truth among others. If we are as humans fundamentally the desire for recognition or status (Kojeve's notion), then there's just more than one strategy. And to me this "status lust" is prior to instrumentality, or includes it. The theory of instrumentality is itself an instrument for status. That's my theory. But that theory too is a questionable instrument of status, which my anti-faith bids me to not completely identify with.

But the attempt to make philosophy (or the arts generally) 'useful', is simply more economic rationalism, the subordination of intellectual life to the demands of commerce. — Wayfarer

Well said. Reminds me of a great scene in Dead Poet's Society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS1esgRV4Rc

One is trapped in the narrow confines of each opium den of the new hopeful pursuit. — schopenhauer1

But "trapped" implies an unpleasant situation. I don't think your description is incorrect. I just think you are adding a value judgment to an otherwise accurate description.

It is just another and another and another. Whether you use terms like grateful for the wicked insatiable human heart, doesn't negate the situation any more than "challenges need to be overcome to make life better" does. If you are alive, human, and self-reflecting, this is your situation. Slap on as many terms as you'd like to make spin it a certain way, but it is just one damn goal after the other, and the hope that a future state will be better. Otherwise, the situation would be too stark to fully manage. — schopenhauer1

But you're missing that enjoying the cycle means the situation doesn't "ask for" negation. For 10 years now I've been a "nihilist" in recognizing nothing absolute in the world. Indeed, this negation of the world is (for me) the absolute itself. By identifying with disidentification itself, man becomes transcendence incarnate.So by no means am I afraid of understanding you here. I'm not squeamish about the futility of human existence. It's part of my persona, living with this knowledge and the distance from mortal things it provides those who can accept their mortality.

I agree with what you imply, that we "slap on terms" in order to cope with reality. But I radicalize this theory. Even the grim "truth" of futility can function as an erotic object or power play. Pessimism is sexy.

Occasionally I feel world-weary. Occasionally (especially if I get sick), I get disgusted with life. So these modes appear, and it's easy to abstractly assent to my death in such modes. But for the most part the game is too absorbing. I have projects to bring to fruition. We can call the projects an illusion or the sense of futility an illusion. We'd just be privileging one mode over the other. Both modes are real. To project a dominant abstraction is arguably to reduce the real for a moment's purpose.

Good points. Don't take the epistemology for the metaphysics. What is, what is being, what are beings, what is a process in itself, etc. may not be gathered through pure synthesis of empirical evidence through logical construct. — schopenhauer1

Yes, that makes sense to me. I think we do well to question the question and the questioner. I think in terms of motive. Why do we want to know? What does a theory do for us "emotionally?" I don't think we are fundamentally rational animals. The concept-system is itself a tool. If this theory is true, then it puts itself in question as one more "irrational" tool, but I'm OK with that, as long as it keeps working for me on the level of affect.

apokrisis believes that this process-system of the human mind, being a part of a larger pansemiosis can reveal its own pansemiotic nature through synthesizing the logic of the empirical evidence, and thus get at the root of metaphysics. All or almost all can be revealed empirically and logically to the human mind, and thus there is no noumena that is missing. — schopenhauer1

That sounds about right. I've put some real time into Hegel, but that's the part of him I could never quite take seriously. The "speculative" mode allows for some beautiful thinking, but I can only "betray" the "manifest image" so much and no further. And there are aesthetic reasons for that. If metaphysics is poetry (and I think it more or less is), then that's not my genre. I'm interested in the wicked human heart, in the gallery of fundamental poses. I'd rather be Shakespeare than Hegel. (Not saying that I can manage either, of course.)

*Do you happen to like Heidegger ? His 20 page lecture (not the short book of 100 pages which is also good) The Concept of Time is like his version of the TLP. It's brief, suggestive, beautifully translated. It''s an ultra-condensed Being and Time. I mentioned it because he (as you may know) addresses boredom and restlessness. And then the being of beings is of course revealed against the background of time, which is (as I understand it) in terms of human purposes. We emerge the past, plunging into our future. We the world in one mode as a network of equipment (your instrumentality). But death anxiety allows another vision of being and time.

That's because Dawkins' materialism is actually a direct descendant of philosophical theism. It has the same absolutism about it, but now attached to what it sees as 'science' as opposed to 'religion'. My overall view is that this kind of darwinian materialism is like a mutant form of Christianity - perhaps even a heresy. — Wayfarer

Yes. Yes, indeed. As you may recall, I suggested before that it's really all about the positioning of the sacred (of "God"). My thesis is that everyone is religious. Who lives without an image of virtue? Propositions about the "supernatural" are secondary to "religious" feeling attached to basic beliefs about who we are and what we should be. In short, scientism and various political positions are just as much religions in this extend sense as religion proper. As I see it, the philosophy that matters most for the individual is just a working out of the details of one's generalized religion. What is most important in life? What is true virtue? The rest follows from that basic decision. A philosopher has already decided implicitly that his position should be examined or "reasonable."

It is hope that is the opiate of the masses. — schopenhauer1

It is despair is the opium of the pessimist. Isn't this just as fair?

The transcendental (i.e. big picture) view of the absurdity of the instrumental affair of existence is lost as we focus on a particular goal/set of goals that we think is the goal.. We think this future state of goal-attainment will lead to something greater than the present. Hope lets us get caught up in the narrow focus of the pursuit of the goal. But then, if we get the goal, another takes its place. The instrumental nature of things comes back into view as we contend with restlessness. Then, we narrow our focus (yet again) to pursue (yet again) what is hoped to be a greater state than the present. The cycle continues. — schopenhauer1

There's lots of truth up there, but I'd have to stress that the instrumental theory is itself a work of creativity. You're still scratching an itch with it, enjoying yourself as a possessor of truth. I share that truth with you. Sure, it's all futile. We eat only to get hungry, fall in love only to take that lover for granted, make intellectual discoveries only to find them banal in the long run. We are like sharks. We must keep moving.

But a certain kind of lifestyle is so engrossing that one doesn't reflect on this futility much. One swings from object to object, becoming more complex and skilled at pursuit. I don't see how the "ultimate futility" makes life more or less valuable in itself. We could just as easily be grateful that the wicked human heart is insatiable. In Brave New World, they chew aphrodisiac chewing gum. Why? Because lots of sex is available in the world of Find The Zipper. So appetite is desirable. Indeed, lust and hunger are even enjoyable when mixed with the pleasure of anticipation.

I read the review. It was pretty great. His position is roughly my own. He notes that either explanation is not really an explanation. It points back at an unexplained given. There could be a transcendent God. He or It could be the brute fact behind which we cannot peer. I still hold that explanation cannot be total.

I also find Dawkins shrill, and that shrillness reminds me of the dark side of investment. There's an "absoluteness" in it that suggests a hardening of thought. We can also recall atheistic religions becoming dogma (dialectical materialism).

I think it's wrong to think religion only in theist terms. A generalized religion is a set of fixed beliefs centered on a value or image. For instance, the Russian nihilists were Utopian fanatics. They murdered in the name of abstractions. It's not hard to imagine (and films have been made) a rigidly secular dystopia where all dissent is "diagnosed" as a mental health problem. Ironically, Dawkins himself has the dark side of the religious personality.

I couldn't have summed-up the Atheist Materialist world view, and its conclusions and consequences any better than that. — Michael Ossipoff

Really? Lots of atheistic materialist are quite moral. I think of Karl Marx and Ludwig Feuerbach. I can see them, however, from Stirner's perspective. They are essentially pious. All that really changes is that God is incarnated in Humanity. Religion becomes political. The classes society to come replaces Heaven. The revolutionary intellectuals replace the priests. To me what's most interesting is the structure of the "sacred" or of value itself. I say look at the hierarchy implied by the view. Who comes out on top? Who is the hero?

I think of myself as a highly unorthodox Christian, so unorthodox that I look like an atheist. But that's what the cross means, the death of God. And we "take up this cross" by accepting our own mortality and living like dying gods in the world we have. We are no longer beneath the Law that is alien or other than us. "Christ is the end of the Law."

For me the materialist world view is almost as bad in some ways as a religious view, both tend to be very dogmatic and self-sealing. — Sam26

I agree. I think views are generally dogmatic and self-sealing. I don't relate to materialism myself. To me it's too theoretical, too abstract. It's not "material" enough. It "theorizes" the given. "Matter" is an abstraction. What I believe in is life as I know: people, sunrises, books, hot baths, cold winter winds, etc. These are the primary "givens" over which we paint our abstractions. We say that the experienced object is "really" matter or mind or whatever. But for me it's "really" what it seems to be. Or rather the lifeworld is central and all abstractions are tools within the lifeworld, useful ways of looking at the lifeworld. I'm really enjoying 1920s Heidegger right now, if that provides context.

but what one believes in terms of their world view should hang on the evidence to support the argument. — Sam26

I happen to agree with you, but this does presuppose a worldview in which evidence should be hung on to in order to support arguments. In other words, it presupposes that rationality is virtuous. As philosophers, we are likely to agree to that. I like being able to give an account of my beliefs. But that belief itself is "groundless" or aesthetically grounded.

I can relate. I think that's what we all do. We have certain "investments," and we argue with ourselves about "live" options, options that we can tolerate or live with. Some find a certain freedom and even beauty in a monstrous vision of reality that includes our genuine mortality. It makes the world terrible and wonderful, like a "cold" God as found in Job. But for others this just doesn't feel right. So I don't think it's about pure reason. It's a wrestling within one's self.