Now, did Thanissaro Bhikkhu actually say "life is not suffering", or did you perhaps miss out on a word? — baker

Life isn't just suffering. Apologies, my bad. If so, why all the fuss about nirvana?

We could understand physicalism as a scientific realism such as "our best scientific theory of the world tells us as much as we know about reality". We could also states that object such a consciousness doesnt exist. And then we have a complete — Nzomigni

Yet, science can't explain consciousness. Surely, it ain't the best then, no?

Removed comment. Not worth pursuing. — Amity

But why? My brain talking to your brain...two nonessential items vying for what appears to be the last position in the rankings.

Irrelevant — Amity

Why?

More facts about the brain:
https://www.rchsd.org/health-articles/brain-and-nervous-system-2/ — Amity

:ok: Thanks

Utter nonsense — Amity

State your norms of assertion.

Where did you drag all this up from and what do you hope to achieve by posting such ? — Amity

From what I know.

By the way, since this is a possibility I have to consider, is it possible that you - Amity - won't faint/lose consciousness when you lose roughly 25% of your blood volume? If you can remain conscious and in full possession of your faculties even when you lose a quarter of your blood, you have a case which I will then look into. Until then, adieu.

theism is not true — 180 Proof

If you're certain, you're most certainly wrong — Bertrand Russell

Keep an open mind on matters that are, by definition, not within either the grasp of language or within the domain of classical logic.

Might as well call a lobotomy with a 24/7 morphine drip a "solution to the PoE". — 180 Proof

That, for some reason, isn't funny at all and I'm not trying to pull your chain. What if that is the "solution"? Solution in quotes because it isn't, at least not one that is in accord with our sensibilities. What if, just what if, god, assuming fse exists, had exactly the same idea but soon came to the realization, as we have, that happiness simpliciter, happiness per se ain't gonna work. What's missing/what's wrong from/with "... a lobotomy with a 24/7 morphine drip...? Evil! Suffering! I'm afraid you've scored an own goal.

"PoE" is a pseudo-problem at best because theism is not true — 180 Proof

This is exactly the issue that I'm addressing. The best response against the claim of am omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient god is the kind of in-your-face evil we see all around us. Put differently, evil is a real and yet unsolved "problem" for theism.

My contention, for what it's worth, is that transhumanism gives theists a golden opportunity to tackle the problem of evil for, all things considered, the ship of transhumanism rides on the waves of the possibility that, what David Pearce calls, superhappiness could be made a reality. That is to say, true that suffering was/is actual, hence the problem of evil but what about superhappiness that, if transhumanist aspirations are given the necessary support, could be just around the corner for humanity given the pace and intensity of research in relevant areas?

The fact that, in religious terms, the earth can be transformed into a hedonic paradise for all living things should, at the very least, make atheists reconsider their position that an omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent god couldn't exist taking into account the problem of evil.

To clarify further, with the hope that this will clinch my argument, time has always been viewed as tripartite in nature - the past, the present, and the future. My point is that the problem of evil is real, no doubt, but dwells in the past and the present. The future, however, is an open question, anything seems possible, and one among them is the transhumanist state of superhappiness (paradise on earth). Basically, the problem evil may not be a problem for theism in the far future of posthumans.

As a side note, I recall mentioning that people, most of us, have a tendency to think of god in the past and present tense i.e. they believe god had to exist as some kind of prime mover and then to exist as a force that intervenes in worldly affairs every now and then. Quite impossible to miss in such a conception of god is the fact that god could be a being that will come into existence instead of having existed or exists. God is, could be, in the future. My hunch is that the first step toward creating god, literally, would be the so-called technological singularity, something you seem aware of. After that, AI will evolve exponentially so they predict and out, on the other side, pops out god, omniscient necessarily, omnipotent possibly, omnibenevolent hopefully.

FYI, the late Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011) [RIP] didn't quite like the idea of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient god. He likened it to a celestial dictatorship à la North Korea.

I suspect the "elites" here there and everywhere have been prepping for decades for decades-to-centuries-long survival in a bunker, etc remote from population-centers in order to ride out the coming civilizational shit-show collapse with family descendents and a "loyal" retinue of militia & staff because, y'know, they think they are the "smart ones" who will bring the world back from the shitter "when the time comes". :sweat: — 180 Proof

I've heard of such folks - survivalists, they're called I believe.

However, where they made a mistake was in thinking the collapse of civilization as was known then was imminent which turned out to be false. The other booboo they made was in expecting catastrophic events to be sudden and rapid; the alleged sixth extinction you mentioned before is actually rather slow it seems, it'll probably span, I'm guessing, at a minimum, a couple of hundred thousand years.

These humanly unimaginable timescales are both the problem and the solution. The problem with such long time periods is that people simply can't wrap their heads around it or, sadly, don't care since it doesn't affect them in an immediate sense. How such time lengths are part of the solution is it makes it possible to intervene and delay/halt the downward spiral into becoming fossils.

It still doesn't explain, why for millions of years god allowed many millions of beings, which god caused to come into existence, to suffer a life of horrific agony. — Down The Rabbit Hole

The potential for transhumanist superhappiness is quite different from the actual suffering much of life had to endure for eons.

I'm not quite certain about how good an argument mine is but, for some reason, it seems to take the wind out of the sails of the ship of atheism that relies on the problem of evil for its sustenance in a manner of speaking.

Yep, it's call the [i[sixth[/i] great extintion (we're living through at the moment) – end of the Anthropocene. "Twist in the plot" indeed. — 180 Proof

I've heard that before, the so-called sixth extinction which, supposedly, the earth is going through as I write this. Count me as a believer too but, as they say, a bad workman blames his tools and technology is, all things considered, a tool, right? Enough said!

Because tech has already solved so many global problems with no negative consequences.... — Pantagruel

We haven't reached the last page of this book yet. I have a feeling the author (mankind/god/random chance, take your pick) is a genius...expect an awesome twist in the plot.

At least, that's how I understand Peirce-Dewey, Popper & Haack's non-justificationist epistemology (re: fallibilism — 180 Proof

That sounds suspiciously like science but then you go on to say:

We're Sisyphusean rodeo clowns striving, at best, for better questions, Fool, not scientists with lab results or self-help gurus pimping fortune cookie (perennial) answers — 180 Proof

Did I miss the point you were making?

That aside, I suppose I do catch your drift to the extent allowed by my own abilities and...disabilities, let's not forget.

It also seems like you overlooked what I'm actually deeply interested in viz. is morality logic itself? Now, that sounds, even to me the questioner, wrong. To mention one obvious error in this line of thinking - logic is, after all, merely a tool used to study, analyze, and, with a little bit of luck, build the a/the moral theory from its foundations up to its highest point whatever shape or form that might take. I may have committed other gross mistakes but I'm presently not aware of them. Feel free to point them out to me.

While this isn't exactly what I had in mind, being rational/logical or being proficient to some extent in critical thinking seems to be the best option we have to navigate the moral universe given the conspicuous absence of a moral theory that is both, in Godelian terms, complete (covers all the bases) and consistent (is free from contradictions). In short, being rational/logical is, as of the moment, the least worst option available to us i.e. in a certain sense, being rational = being good or that LOGIC/RATIONALITY = MORALITY!!!

What say you?

Señor works better for me, amigo. Gracias. — 180 Proof

:rofl: My apologies Amigo!

"[T]he criterion problem" is only a problem for a (classical) 'justificationist' approach to epistemology. (SEP & wiki are your friends, TMF.) — 180 Proof

I'm genuinely curious, what other kinds of "approach" to knowledge are there over and above, beyond, justificationism (I hope I got the word right)? Would you, for instance, accept whatever alternative "approach" you wish to recommend or endorse sans justification? Wouldn't that make you something you seem loathe to be labeled as - irrational?

healthy or adaptable or rational for "moral" and the question self-evidently answers or negates itself. — 180 Proof

I like how the general thrust of that. Since rationality has been brought to bear on ethics for the better part of two centuries to my reckoning, I've always wondered why moral theorists never got to the point where they said to themselves, "enough is enough, let's reduce morality to logic" à la how Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, et al tried but eventually failed I believe to reduce math to logic. Is there something irrational about evil or conversely is good ultimately reason itself?

Two and a half millennia later, Camus says committing philosophical suicide (i.e. willful irrationality: e.g. "leap of faith", "utopianism", "denialism", "physical suicide", etc) is akin to 'sin, or impiety, even without G/gs.' — 180 Proof

That resonates with me. Thanks for letting me in on some of your philosophical insights. Much appreciated señora/señorina.

Mind if you take a look at my post (above) again? I added some of my, what I believe are, insights in the last few paragraphs.

In a nutshell: Setting aside the matter of bitter truths which we could safely do without, in general we tend to fear the unknown. It's my understanding that, given the fact knowledge itself - Agrippa's trilemma, The problem of the criterion, etc. - seems deeply mired in controversy, every system of beliefs that we have at our disposal is, simply put, just a shoddily constructed buffer zone between ignorance and ignoramus (us).

Yes, of course there is no "sin" because there is no g/G to disobey — 180 Proof

:fire: :clap: Yet, isn't sin, understood as immorality/bad independent of god re Euthyphro's dilemma?

Nevertheless, your statement brings to the fore the fact that morality's beginnings can be traced back to humanity's theological instincts.

I'd like to closely examine the word "disobey" vis-à-vis morality. I suspect that the first humans to encounter the notion of morality discovered that morality boiled down to a list of dos and don'ts. Thus, if one were either good/bad one would be, in a sense, obeying/disobeying moral injunctions as they appear in the list mentioned above. Quite obvious is the fact that people would then invent or imagine some entity, a perfect moral agent, who they were obeying/disobeying when they're moral/immoral. In very simple terms that morality seems to take the form of laws, it's quite natural, almost inevitable, that people would conceive of a supreme law-maker (god).

Also worth mentioning is the difficulty in making morality a human affair. If it were me, as I am now, my first question to someone trying to school me on ethics would be, "why the hell should I do/not do as you tell me to?" This question, though simple prima facie, blows the lid off morality, exposes as it were a dark secret at the very center of ethics viz. that either morality has no foundation or that attempts by moral theorists to produce one have all failed miserably.

Ergo, necessarily that early moral theorists turned to or came up with a being/entity that can both prop up morality and also oversee its practice by people; this entity/being god. They had no choice - morality is just too god damned important to be left without a strong support structure and since none could be found, none have been found to date, the wisest move was to posit a god who, the hope was, would become morality's bedrock.

Despite the fact that this step - basing morality on a god - is ultimately nothing but interposing a more acceptable, even if false, belief system - theism - between humans and our pitiful ignorance of morality, it has an overall good track record I must say.

What flavour is that quark? I don't know bite it and see. Ha ha ha! — Metaphysician Undercover

:up: We do!

But will you be able to get hold of a plumber on Sunday mornings? — Tom Storm

If you can run, surely you can walk.

What do you intend to do about it in the next 24 hours? — baker

What do you expect me to do?

Unlike some, I have not fallen asleep at the wheel.

Referred to for the n-th time:

Life Isn't Just Suffering — baker

Read that article you provided a link to. A good exposition by all standards. The writer, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, explains that the idea that "life is suffering" is a misconception, and those who think Buddhism is pessimistic/negative, as he puts it, have got the wrong end of the stick so to speak. However, several paragraphs down he admits that there is suffering in the world and he pinpoints its cause as craving/clinging. Thanissaro then proceeds to talk about the Buddha's antidote for the craving/clinging which is, as every schoolboy knows, the 8-fold path. This is all very good, nothing seems amiss insofar as my own knowledge of Buddhism is concerned.

However, it looks as though he forgot one important detail to wit, Saṃsāra. An excerpt from the Wikipedia page vide infra:

Saṃsāra in Buddhism, states Jeff Wilson, is the "suffering-laden cycle of life, death, and rebirth, without beginning or end" — Wikipedia

Clearly, Thanissaro is way off mark, at least in a Buddhist sense, in saying "life is not suffering", the title of his short, interesting but completely wrong exposition of the place of suffering in Buddhist philosophy.

A variation of the trolley problem I see. Like the original the idea is to present a dilemma. The choices on offer are all unacceptable in one way or another, and to top it all off, an unfortunate victim, couldn't be anything else, is asked forced to make a choice.

A couple of facts about dilemmas in general and this specific one need to be brought out into the open for all to see as it were.

1. Dilemmas are presented to the unlucky as choices but dig a little deeper and this turns out to be false. Imagine I offer you two vials both containing cyanide and I also stipulate that you must select one. Is that a choice at all? Both vials are identical in being undesirable. The same goes for the dilemma in the OP - they're identical i.e. both are equally things you wouldn't want to opt for. In short, a dilemma isn't really a choice and that makes the whole exercise of asking what you/I/anyone would do meaningless.

2. There seems to be deep misconception regarding dilemmas but it's likely that I'm alone in this. I've always approached dilemmas with an intention of making the right choice and having a good reason to back up my decision. This, it seems, is precisely the wrong thing to do. What dilemmas are purposed for is a closer examination of the belief systems/values/whathaveyou that give rise to the dilemma in the first place. Basically, dilemmas aren't meant to be solved, assuming the word ""solved" is apposite; rather they're like road blocks one sometimes encounters and should, if all goes well, force you to retrace your steps back to first principles and with a bit of luck figure out what's amiss.

It's time to issue a challenge to theists and atheists alike?

1. Theist, do you have a watertight argument for the existence of god? No, of course not! Why else would there be atheists?

2. Atheist, do you have conclusive proof that god doesn't exist? Certainly not! Why else would there be theists?

The very existence of each (theist/atheist) proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the agnostic position to wit, the existence of god is still far, very far, from being an open-and-shut case.

That being said, atheists have yet to produce an adequate response/refutation to/of St. Anselm's ontological argument.

1.What single proposition could socialism be reduced to? Darwinism? Jungianism? Freudianism? Modernism? Post Modernism? Platonism? — Janus

That's true in the sense it hasn't been done but my hunch is it's not impossible and thereby hangs a tale. Why do I think so? Mantras. In the vedic tradition of India, despite its many flaws, there's a long history of word contractions à la "will not" as "won't" and perhaps even along the lines of acronyms e.g. "UN" for "United Nations". The rationale behind it is lost to history I suspect but the word "Om" or "Aum" is supposed to be stand for ALL creation, everything there was, is, or will be. If the universe itself can be summarized as it were into a two-lettered, one-syllable, single word, doing this (coming up with a mantra) for all the isms in your list above and beyond should be, in a manner of speaking, child's play.

That said, a mantra seems more about sound than propositional content although we could tweak it to perform in such a capacity. I maybe mistaken of course but expect, at the very least, a grain of truth in what I say.

2. & 3. What do you take nihilism to be claiming apart from the usual denial of objective meaning? Are you extending that to the claim that there is no objective truth? If so, then nihilism would be saying that there are no context-independent truth, and more, that there are no subject-independent truths just as there are no subject-independent meanings (according to nihilism as it is usually understood).

What about empiricism? It claims that there are empirical truths; truths that can be confirmed by observation. This seems irrefutable to me. My understanding of rejecting isms is not to deny that they contain any truth but that whatever their truths are; they are relevant only to a context. I actually think this is also pretty much irrefutable, that it is not correctly referred to as nihilism, and does not itself constitute an ism at all; it is merely an acknowledgment of the limited and contextual nature of all human claims. — Janus

I've come to the rather disappointing conclusion that it's all a game but not in the sense of a game game but that life, living it, and the cosmos itself, operates under some rules and that the idea is to play by the rules, sometimes cheat (break/bend rules) if possible so long as the umpire/referee doesn't notice, and so on. Don't get me wrong, this particular viewpoint is not meant as advice on how to live life but is largely a description of the status quo. There's room for improvement in my humble opinion.

Coming to what I'm trying to get across to the reader, consider my enterprise - rejecting ALL isms - a game. So long as we adopt this attitude that it's just play, we free ourselves from the constraints of isms, any and all, which your post by and large is about. It's just an experiment.

schizophrenic world — Anand-Haqq

I concur but only with the caveat that my grasp of reality is wanting in many respects. Just out of curiosity, what else is on your differential diagonosis? The reasons being that in some circles, probably ones that have a zen kinda spirit, it's believed that "there's method to someone's madness" and that "there's a thin line between genius and madness".

Trust in doubt — Anand-Haqq

:up: I can't make sense of that but my feelings tell me you're on the right track. If you'll permit me a corollary, trust your enemy. I'd give my eye teeth to be able to do that, assuming, unbeknownst to me, I'm not already doing it.

My question, though, was as to what it could mean to "reject" them all. — Janus

Vide infra as to what rejecting ALL Isms entail:

1. An ism can be, if all goes well, reduced to a single proposition i.e. an ism can be true/false/unproven but in all cases they're sold to us as truths.

2. If I reject ALL isms, I deny the truth claims made by them. This drops us off at the station where we can catch a train that leaves for nihilism. Nihilism, as far as I can tell, claims that no claims (isms) are true or true enough to be worth belief.

3. I now, just for kicks but with the hope that something substantive might lie at the end of this road, refuse nihilism. Note here that nihilism, to my understanding, claims no claims (isms) are truthful. Ergo, step 3 leads us to the conclusion that some claims (isms) are truthful.

4. Some claims (isms) are truthful...the path forks here. One sets up a task for us to wit, sussing out which claims (isms) are truthful or concord with reality.

The other, more challenging in a logical sense, takes us back to nihilism by assuming, if only in an exploratory sense, that the claim (ism) that's truthful is nihilism itself. This immediately results in a paradox: Nihilism both affirms and negates itself. If it affirms itself, it must negate itself. Nihilism can't be true on pain of a contradiction.

5. Since we rejected ALL isms, even if only for the heck of it, and since nihilism, a result of refusing ALL isms, itself is untenable, we're, in every sense of the word, in some kind of philosophical limbo. Mu???

And this isn't :point:

the "ism" is a mind thing — Anand-Haqq

??? :chin:

I do appreciate the idea though - very zen, always manages to get my juices flowing but my enthusiasm usually fizzles out.

Human beings, by nature, cannot have any belief system. — Anand-Haqq

That itself boils down to a belief in my humble opinion. After all, it's a proposition which qualifies it as a belief given a good justification.

You believe only things which you don't know. — Anand-Haqq

Lovely! You're on some kind of wonderful journey I'd like to accompany you on. I find this proposition an impossible one though. Why? If I believe something then I must, in some sense, know it or, at some level, believe that I know it.

Belief grows only in ignorance — Anand-Haqq

Did you perchance visit this thread: Summum Delirium?

For your information, it's not mandatory to reply to the above.

Stop confusing yourself and go study some actual Buddhist doctrine instead of relying on popular pseudobuddhist soundbites. — baker

I fully second that motion. No one pointed out that particular possibility to me though, except you of course. That said, I wonder if there's a way of parsing the buddhist tenet "life is suffering" that isn't open to an interpretation along lines similar to mine.

In Early Buddhism, there are two types of desire: the bad one (tanha) and the good one (chanda) — baker

That, acceptable though it is, is, right or wrong, the easy way out. Let's engage in some role play. Suppose I'm your teacher. Your assignment is to solve the paradox as outlined above, keeping in mind "life is suffering" is to be understood as it is with no provisos/caveats/conditions as those that appear in your ingenious solution. Can you?

Yeah. I find it difficult not to, sometimes - more's the pity :sad: — Amity

Same here. What's up with that? Care to share?

No. Wot wiv my atroshus gramma an' all :gasp:
However, I enjoy writing here - as a way to enlightenment :wink: :sparkle:
You ? — Amity

You have a way with words that I must confess my envy for. Anyway, good to know writing's on your list of favorite things to do.

Speaking for myself, I face a lot of problems putting my thoughts into words but I suspect it's because I don't think as well as one is supposed to for writing (well).

I sense this discussion has come to the end of its natural life. G'day sir/madam as the case may be.

Fortunately or...not, the only evidence we could rely on with any degree of certainty would be memory of past lives but then one has to consider the possibility of memory implants against a background of us being some kind of experiment being conducted by some advanced, intelligent, life-form from another dimension as one among many others.

Yeah, have moved on to prisms. Of light. More fun :wink: — Amity

You had to reply didn't you? Nice play on words though. Are you a writer by any chance? You know, like, having written novels, articles, in an official capacity?

Thanks for the invitation but ''No Thanks'' !
The thread provided some lovely quirky moments - a nice mix of serious and fun...but I'm done... :cool: — Amity

Really? It looked like you two just got started! Thank God!

TheMadFool is practising absenteethism — Amity

Our teeth continue to rot as if nothing happened. — baker

:rofl: It's all so funny until someone loses an/a eye tooth.

Having fun, guys/gals as the case maybe?

Carry on!

"Confusion"? Only in so far as the thesis is incoherent. — 180 Proof

Excelente Amigo. It appears that confusion comes in two strains, at least to the extent I'm aware, 1. Confusion as incoherence (self-contradiction, inconsistency) within a thesis or antithesis but not betwixt them and 2. "Confusion" as thesis-antithesis pairs which we seem to have a difference of opinion on.

My simple response would be that the duo of anti-thesis is incoherence and hence the appropriate reply to:

I don't see the issue — 180 Proof

Some isms are, debatably, not possible to reject. For example (debatably) it's not possible to reject the view that there is a world outside our own perceptions. — Cuthbert

Good to know. Reminds me of René Descartes' cogito ergo sum. The proposition, "I think" can't be rejected for to do so requires, most intriguingly, that I think.

However, I'm at a loss as to whether the proposition, "I think" is amenable to the construction of an Ism based on it. I was told or I read it somewhere, I don't recall, that Descartes did exactly that, putting, or attempting to put, all of philosophy on what to him was the firm bedrock of the cogito ergo sum. Ithinkism :rofl: can't be rejected.

Hmmm....@Banno, @180 Proof can you take a look at this.

"There's no escape from isms"- ↪TheMadFool

Ism there? — Janus

...so you are an ismist. You espouse ismism. — Banno

Though I don't doubt the value of the many Isms that roam the philosophical jungle, I was contemplating the possibility of rejecting ALL of them even if only for my and, hopefully, your amusement but with tiny chance that such a position - no position - might have real and significant consequences for philosophy in particular and life in general.

To my understanding, to reject ALL Isms, including nihilism, itself can be treated as an Ism and that's what the title of this thread spells out - "There's no escape from Isms".

It's something like the Buddhist desire conundrum which defies a solution. Buddhists à la Siddhartha Gautama, believe that desire is the root of all suffering. Thus buddhists are of the view that to end suffering one must put out the fire of desire. Unfortunately or...not, to not want to desire is, salva veritate, to want to not want to desire. In other words, we can't end desire without the desire to do so. :chin:

It's impossible to not be part of an Ism for to not want that itself is an Ism just as its impossible to end desire for to do that one must desire.

Can it? Rejecting the purported overarching status of any ism looks like an ism... — Banno

:up: :ok: Show the fly the way out of the bottle, sir/madam as the case might be. :smile:

Not all isms end with “ism”

To reject all isms is another ism. “Rejectism” let’s call it. — khaled

Vide supra...show the fly the way out of the bottle.

Also, expand and elaborate on "Not all isms end with 'ism'". The statement gives off an air of profundity that calls for an investigation. Is it, as I feel, deep or is it, as I think, just another Dennettian deepity? Vide infra my response to Jack Cummins

I am not sure that we are just restricted to isms. For example, one can be a Jungian and that is not an ism. Generally, I think that isms are about putting ideas into boxes, and I am not sure that we need to make use of such boxes to label our ideas, but rather juxtapose them in the most creative ways to develop our viewpoints. — Jack Cummins

You're looking at this from a linguistic perspective, words to be precise and that too only at how they're spelt. Isms aren't about spelling, they're conceptual frameworks usually developed in order to make sense of particular aspects of or the whole of reality. Your view on this, taken to its logical conclusion, would require us to conclude that ethics isn't a study of anything because it doesn't in "ology" like theology, epistemlogy, and so on.

Depends on what you mean by "reject". The purported overarching status of any ism can be rejected without that rejection being an ism, but rather just an observation of the diversity of human fields of inquiry and opinion — Janus

Interesting to say the least. Kindly explain further. What makes you think this is so? Perhaps one needs to look into the definition of "Ism"

I was gonna say 'Escapism' - but there ya go...you just can't get away...and perhaps it is a good thing that we can't avoid -isms. — Amity

See my reply to Banno and Khaled vide supra.

I'm going to have to repeat myself I'm afraid: show the fly the way out of the bottle.

Maybe it is about having an encyclopedia or not, crystallizing works to make them comparable to each other.

Like a butterfly collection but with thoughts being held down by the pin. — Valentinus

Nice metaphor. Unlike the butterfly collection which one can reject and be left with no butterflies, rejecting the entire collection of Isms is, good or bad, itself yet another Ism. It's like this time when I wanted to get adhesive paper off my fingers to which they were stuck firmly. I used my left hand to peel the paper off my right hand but then the paper clung to my left hand. I then used my right hand with the same results. I then proceeded to use my feet and the paper bound itself to my shoes. Suffice it to say that my attempts to free myself were futile just like Isms, which if we want to get rid off results in us being sucked into yet another Ism.

Any conception can be rejected merely by re-thinking the conditions for it.

While re-thinking is the exchange of conceptual validity, which is an entailed judgement alone, re-thinking is not necessarily conceptual substitution, which is a separated cognition incorporating its own conditions.
(Re: I can easily think some concept does not belong to its cognition, without ever thinking which concept does so belong.)

Therefore, rejecting an -ism, which at the same time explicates rejection of the concept appended to it, does not necessarily require another —ism and its appended conception be substituted for it.

It follows that the statement, “rejection of -isms is itself an -ism, and hence contradictory”, is false. — Mww

The above passage needs @Banno's, @Janus' and @khaled's attention.

As far as I can tell, Mww seems to be saying rejecting an Ism doesn't amount to endorsing another, usually antithetical Ism. Every Ism no matter how complex or expansive, in my humble opinion, can be whittled down, distilled as it were, to a single proposition that can be true, false, or unprovable/unproven.

Let's work with an example, say matters divine. There's theism which boils down to the proposition, "god exists". If I give up theism, I'm essentially saying, either 1. god doesn't exist or 2. we don't know god exists. Both, as we all know, are Isms, atheism and agnosticism respectively.

As the example above illustrates beyond doubt, abandoning an Ism, keeping in mind the three truth states (true, false, unproven/unprovable) of the key proposition of an Ism, results in adopting another Ism.

In conclusion, Mmw view doesn't hold water.

From what I understood, philosophy is supposed to be about the way one thinks and talks about things, not about coming up with definitive narratives about "how things really are". — baker

Point made, point noted. Yet, there's this underlying sentiment, a deep desire/wish to know the truth i.e. "...coming up with definitive narrartives about 'how things really are'..." is, all said and done, the primary objective of doing philosophy. That philosophers have to settle for less - work on "...the way one thinks and talks about things..." - is due to the undeniable fact encapsulated in the title of this thread viz. summum delirium and the accompanying text that attempts to both describe this state of confusion and explain it.

The situation is analogous/comparable to one in which one's favorite cola, Coke, is unavailable and one makes do with Pepsi. I'm a Coke person; maybe your tastes are not the same as mine but swap the drinks if you wish or even replace them with your own best and second-best beverage and the analogy still holds.

I'm going to take a rather formulaic, rather dull, approach to answer your question.

The question, "what do you NOT know?" is surprisingly easy to answer, at least for someone like me whose ignorance exceeds faer knowledge. For instance, I don't know what real analysis, a branch of math, is. I suppose everyone is a similar situation with regard to some subject or another. If not and there's someone who knows everything, we have on our hands a person who could very well be god, in the sense of being omniscient.

What piques my interest is not so much what we don't know but what we can't know.

As I warned you from the beginning my response will probably be an anticlimax. Here goes...

Definition of knowledge (that which can be known)
1. Justified [Agrippa's trilemma]
2. True [Falsehood/lies]
3. Belief [False belief]

I have included in square brackets against each condition for what knowledge (what can be known) the circumstances in which we fail to satisfy the definition of knowledge. We can't know what is posited sans justification but the bigger problem is Agrippa's trilemma; we can't know falsehoods or lies and this seems to be linked to the last condition, failure to meet it to be precise, which is that believing something doesn't make it true and so, can't be knowledge i.e. in this case too, as in the others outlined above, we can't know!

What's more fascinating and more problematic I suppose is the question, "is there a proposition that's true, justifiable, and believable but unknowable?" Though syntactically error-free, at my level of linguistic skill, the question seems semantically nonsensical (excuse the tautology) All I can say is, I'm at the frontier of what I know.

wouldn't it be summa perplexitas? — Alexandros

Why not? Latin isn't my strong suit.

Tension creates energy. I think it's a feature of the universe to create itself in counterposing forces. — Pantagruel

This rings a bell - Taoism. I wonder if Laozi's quasi-philosophical work, the Tao Te Ching, was meant to as an exposé of the underlying "...tension..." which I consider an euphemism for perplexity. I suppose though that there are occasions in which to call a spade a spade isn't the most appropriate thing to do. This might be one of them.

I'm rather poor in logic but I love paradoxes despite not being able to understand them, forget about solving them.

That out of the way, what matters most in the hangman's paradox seems to be the word "surprise" - duh!. It means the prisoner on death row, given how the judge informed him about the particulars of his day of execution, must always expect to be strung up. He can't/shouldn't do anything that would give him a reason not to expect execution. In other words, the prisoner's fatal, literally, mistake was/is that he, rather foolishly in my humble opinion, convinced himself that he couldn't be taken to the gallows which, unbeknownst to him or so it seems, made the execution a surprise and thus something that can be carried out.

The notion of an actual infinite makes zero sense if, as per my assumption, actual means what it seems to mean to wit, completed in one sense or another for it flies against the definition of infinity as being necessarily that which can't be completed.

Maths, set theoretical infinities, kind courtesy of Georg Cantor, is an altogther different story as maths is essentially an axiomatic system, anything goes so long as you don't contradict yourself within one.

I don´t believe at all, that all antinatalists don´t have suffered.

And let´s suppose, that even if you are right on this, "life is suffering" is not the only argument antinatalists have. — Antinatalist

Quite shocking news I must say. It was a zen moment for me. We've been so preoccupied with suffering - that's how powerful it is - that we couldn't see past it. I wonder what other reasons are there for pushing the antinatalist agenda? Can we, for instance, convince a denizen of paradise (supposedly bliss taken to perfection) to not want to live or, at the very least, refuse to have children?

...and so in order to survive they migrate to the Philosophy forums.

Perhaps we make the environment too comfortable. — Banno

Philosophy is the junkyard of science — Woe is me who forget the name of this philosopher