If I reach out and touch the bark and ask how large 'this' is, am I talking about the twig, branch, tree, forest, or something else? — noAxioms

Why did we ever conceive of the notion of “object” in the first place? Why did we not always know “when I reach out and touch, I am touching one giant dinstiction-free object?”

Why would a “twig” or a “tree” confuse us when we touch “this”?

Are we constructing the problem AND constructing the objects that purport to solve the problem?

Objects are at best particles interacting with each other according to physical law. — noAxioms

Physical, not mental, basis?

And I guess the distinctions between psychology and biology and physics are ideal only?

My point is, you cannot speak, we cannot form an ideal, without some real distinctions apart from the mind on which we make any move, perform any act, posit any field, say anything like “particle”.

We may always be wrong about the separate mind-independent object, except that it is there, otherwise we cannot speak. Speaking places the ideal back into a separate world of objects (letters, words, sentences, paragraphs), where, like the other objects, they can either float freely among, or butt up against, or connect with, the world. These words only express their meaning in other minds. But they are still particles, or in a distinct field that is there regardless of my idealistic abilities.

These tropes - doom and saving — Tom Storm

I’m not pessimistic. I just mean we will never end war, end murder, end lying, end hurting each other and ourselves. We will never build a utopia, never end poverty. There will always be self-absorbed people, there will always arise a tyrant, there will always be infidelity and betrayal.

But life on balance is good, and it’s worth trying to love and live, and teach and learn, and seek to be good, and be better.

Just being realistic. All of human history so far shows nothing changes.

What’s your trope, Tom?

How can one come to know all is one? One must only be that reality.
— ENOAH

I'm not disagreeing. But I'm pointing out that it might be easy to say that, but it's very rare to actually see it. — Wayfarer

I’m not disagreeing either. (Meaning, as I jump in here, that I agree.)

But if you see it at all, you aren’t fully being it, so aren’t really seeing it.

Losing the self while becoming, which is forever a becoming the self, is rare indeed.

To realize the oneness one must lose the ability to realize anything INTO the oneness. It’s why mystics call this enlightenment of losing the self both becoming one with the world consciousness, or one with total emptiness.

And it’s why I love paradox.

And mine is another world altogether…bills to pay, children to raise, prone to any number of distractions and ordinary human foibles. I came to realise that it's not straightforward nor obvious in the least. — Wayfarer

I think it’s also ok to be distracted, particularly when the distraction is another person. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking, since it is nearly impossible to devote oneself to not-oneself as the sages and saints do.

What makes you think gods comes from the outside? Are they not human creations, as fraught and manufactured as any ideology? — Tom Storm

If God isn’t other than us, then aren’t we already doomed, right? Why would we who create the world’s biggest problems along with false ideologies to build the factions that get to kill the unbelievers think we might make the world a better place, when today is always same as yesterday anyway? Some of us live a little longer today. More time maybe per life than 10,000 years ago. Otherwise just more time to find a faction to fight and kill and live and die for among the rubble.

The only hope, I see, is something else.

Doesn’t mean this world and each one of us isn’t worth saving. Just that we can’t do it alone. More like we won’t do it alone. We all think only some of us and some of the world is worth saving, and that shows none of us are capable of doing what it might take to save any of us, let alone all of us.

God is our last hope, and not if he or she is just one of us.

Pardon, but I'm concerned with social "view of the idea of God" preached in religious traditions and actually worshipped (i.e. idolized) by congregants. It's this totalitarian "view of idea of God" that significantly affects cultures and politics and pacifies collective existential angst (e.g. excuses social scapegoating, martyrdom, holy warfare, missionary imperialism, etc) rather than anyone's speculative "view of the idea of God" (such as yours, JuanZu, or my own — 180 Proof

It is not essential to religion that it build the “totalitarian” and “social scapegoating” and “warfare” and “imperialism”.

Whatever club or faction or group of people gathers in a herd, you get the same exact risks of “totalitarian” and “social scapegoating” and “warfare” and “imperialism”.

These are essential to being a human sheep, as so many are, jumping on the bandwagon of naziism, Leninism, colonialism, communism, capitalism, etc.

How many atheists would be fine if all the theists could be rounded up and sent to some colony for the delusional for the greater good of mankind? I’m sure a leader, using the latest political science and social reconstructions could produce cheering and promote mass killing with such a plan (oh right, Russia, China).

Religion and God can be an answer to human bad tendency. I happen to think God is the only answer, our only hope.

Nothing has changed among humans in 10,000 years. Even with religion. But if you look in the rubble of human history, it’s we who destroy each other, again and again. So the only hope for us has to come from outside. Nothing has changed with regard to that either.

Agree with this. The separate mediation is apparently not a 'thing'. It is just physics, motion of material and such, having no meaning until reinterpreted back into ideals by something that isn't me. — noAxioms

So if you would admit there are two distinct people in the universe, but don’t see any distinct physical objects apart from your own idealizations, is the distinction you make between you and me only ideal, or do I have to have some sort of physics to me that you can let speak for itself?

I wonder to what extent such a non-dualistic viewpoint offers a solution to the split between materialism and idealism, as well as between atheism and theism. — Jack Cummins

I see no reason to deny the physical world, and no reason to deny that mind incorporates the non-physical in this same world.

Paradox, to me, is a unity, not a defeat of opposites or a crack in any foundation.

We are the instantiation of dualism; we are the contradiction in the universe (the one word). We are a paradox; impossible yet actual. There is one AND there are many. Parmenides and Heraclitus were both right, and spoke of the same Being, the same Natural world.

I am not an idealist, or a realist, or a physicalist. I see that all of these features are given, are present in the impossible beings that we are.

We are only bodies. AND, we are only spirits. Because spirits are bodily things, and bodies are spiritual things.

I do think there is a unity, but it is paradox, not just ideal reason and thought, and not just one physical universe unfolding, but both in harmonious opposition, as is a human being.

idiosyncratic, placebo-fetish (i.e. cosmic lollipop) of choice. — 180 Proof

Such as the value of logic. The lollipop of logic. Or the applicability of logic to explain what an explanation should be, or has to be (logically of course).

I think claiming belief and not knowledge is paradoxical. The claim to 'faith' is, to me, an indication of dishonesty or delusion. — AmadeusD

Belief operates like knowledge but is not knowledge, so I agree, it maybe paradoxical to claim a belief.

But dishonesty and delusion??

The problem with that are all of epistemological problems of knowledge in the first place. If logic tells us we cannot have faith or believe in anything absent nonsensical paradox, then, because of the same logic, and the frictions with things in themselves and absolute truth, we can’t know anything either.

There is some degree of faith, or more simply, of choice and willingness, underlying any admission one would make about the things one knows, let alone believes.

It’s dishonest for any logical scientist to say “this is the absolute truth, and all statements to the contrary must be delusion.”

We are stuck with having to make a choice, even about what we claim to know.

On the one hand, you have Analytics who, burnt by incompleteness and undefinablity, decided that, since truth couldn't be defined to their satisfaction, it simply could not exist. The rules of their "games" were thus the ultimate measure of truth, and since they had very many games there must be very many truths, with no game to help them choose between them.

Elsewhere in the Analytic camp were those who became so committed to the idea of science as the "one true paradigm of knowledge," that they began to imagine that, if science couldn't explain conciousness, then conciousness (and thus conscience) must simply be done away with (i.e. eliminative materialism, which gets rid of the Good and the agent who might know it).

From the other side came Continentals who came to define freedom as pure potency and power, and so saw any definiteness as a threat to unlimited human liberty. On such a view, anything that stands outside man must always be a constriction on his freedom. Everything must be generated by the individual. Perhaps we can allow the world to "co-constitute" with us, but only if a sort of freedom and agency, which in the end is really "ours" anyhow, is given to the world.

The result is a sort of pincer move on the notions of Truth and Goodness (and we might add Beauty here too.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

That is really good analysis. Both sides want to eliminate the cake, yet eat it too.

I’m with you, Count.

I think what you expect to find is an object unmediated by our categories, for example. But that is like saying we are going to perceive something without perceiving. Every perception involves an adaptation, an interpretation. There is no access to reality that is not mediated, but we can ask why our means are embedded in reality, and above all, we can ask why they work and what the link is between the world we are in and our categories, our language, our ideas, etc. Therefore, the world would have something ideal-ish that allows our thinking and our perception to maintain a certain continuity with the world. — JuanZu

This is exactly what I’m trying to say.

There is a reason we can speak meaningfully to each other, that we can carry ideals to other minds; there is some basis in a world separate from both of us, something ideal-ish or objective.

Just because we can’t be realists, doesn’t mean realism is not there. It’s cloaked.

An objective world, by definition, would not require a subject or its ideals at all. — noAxioms

Are you utterly isolated, perhaps the sole being there is, fabricating each of the impressions or ideals in your experience?

Or are you utterly isolated, fabricating each of the impressions or ideals in your experience using incomplete and vague data from outside of you like a sort of mental clay? So you are not the only thing in the universe, you just cannot communicate with any of the other things, and instead translate and transform those things into nice packages for your own isolated world?

Or are you one of many physical things that occasionally has to avoid being hit when crossing the street to pick out a unique and distinct sandwich to be placed in a distinct belly to relieve a distinct and localized feeling of hunger, and you just can’t explain all of that clearly because of the second option?

The only way to save any knowledge of the thing in itself is to understand that we couldn’t have this conversation without something separate from both of us to mediate it. We aren’t using telepathy. We are using material objects between us. They exist with no need to declare their distinctions. Through things physical objects, we can demonstrate mental ideals that only other minds can take up. We make our own idealistic declarations out of those separate objects like when Intake the alphabet of shapely things in themselves and make the phenomena known as “alphabet”. But we who can translate sounds and colors into “objects” know something in itself is also declared when some other mind returns with a rebuttal that is not gibberish.

The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, — Bryan Magee Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Pp 106-107

I agree with this. We can replace “in space and time” with the “as we understand it” from your description above.

Because the OP asked about “physical world”, I am trying focus more on the thing-in-itself part of the equation, which as empirical, is the world mediated by senses.

To paraphrase, the below three say basically the same thing:

1. The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding,

2. The point is, the whole of the empirical world as we understand it is the creation of our understanding,

3. The point is, the whole of the empirical world that we take as representation is the creation of our understanding,

The first puts the separate thing in it self in context of extension and temporality which are features of the understanding. The second focuses on the operation of the understanding upon the thing in itself (really saying the same thing more generally and not just in context of space and time). The third focuses on the operation of the thing in itself upon the senses that build the representation.

But they build the representation out of two sources - the understanding AND the thing in itself.

There is a tendency to ignore the thing in itself in the equation. Just because our understanding can only be comprised of phenomena, this doesn’t mean phenomena are only comprised of our understanding. There still is (or can be I should say) an empirical world absent perspective and sensation. Such a world-in-itself is wholly inaccessible, like each thing we would intuit about the objects created by sensation, but nevertheless must exist to build up all of this apparatus called subjective experience.

It's a view which attempts to exclude the subject and subjectivity altogether, so as to grasp what is 'really there'. — Wayfarer

I see three things:
The world which is there (for ages).
Us in it, the human subject, also there, but now there with.
And our perspectival experience the unique picture made of the other two, existing only in our head, filled with “objects” that are unlike the other two things.

Like the subject is there with its phenomenal constructions, the body is there with other bodies.

Like we can’t have phenomena without noumena taken up in the subject, we can’t have sensations without objects in the world taken up by the senses.

We need all three.

The “objective world” that is “really there” requires not just the ideals to the subject, but also the idealized thing without the subject (however that thing appears to me, or better, to us.)

Hey Wayfarer,
No interruption at all!

Schopenhauer’s philosophy is built on the premise that our understanding of the world is mediated through perception and cognition. — Wayfarer

The phenomenal veil, of our own construction, that cloaks and hides the thing-in-itself. Yes, love it. Straight out of Kant, and I like Schop too, the old curmudgeon.

However, Schopenhauer extends this idea, positing that the will is the fundamental reality behind all appearances. — Wayfarer

Yes, the objects are ideal, and they are brought about when we will, will to hold them as phenomenal objects. We not only make them by mediation of senses and cognition, but we will the sensing and the cogitating. And also, the will is preserved at the heart of the things-in-themselves that pour in the data, wiling-themselves towards our senses and cognition, as we transform this into our phenomenal experience.

He (Schop) argues that objects, as we know them, do not exist independently of our perception. — Wayfarer

I bolded “as we know them” because that is the key to me. We have objects as we do NOT know them (things in themselves), we apply our senses and cognition to those objects (and/or those objects apply themselves to our senses and cognition), and we get the objects as we know them (phenomena).

According to Schopenhauer, what we perceive are representations (Vorstellungen), which are dependent on the subject (I would add, as well as the object, as I don’t deny that objects exist). — Wayfarer

I agree with your parenthetical. The things in themselves are existing objects. They are out there and I am with them. They shape my phenomenal experience too. I see no reason to conclude otherwise. We just only know those objects indirectly, mediated - we experience objects subjected to an influence outside or beyond those objects, namely me, the subject.

But this gets to noAxiom’s question. If we can’t know the objects in themselves and unmediated, then all “objects” should have quotes around them. They are ideal only.

But we just admitted there are objects separate from me, things in themselves out of which I fashion my phenomenal veil over them.

And the OP is about the “physical basis for what constitutes a thing or an object.”

I think we have to take the “physical basis” to be another term for “thing-in-itself”, in which case we may never be able to properly have this conversation or know a physical basis for what constitutes a thing.

In the end, I can only intuit that distinctions exist in physical form, in the various distinct many things in themselves, but I think they are there, apart from me and my cognitions. But I do so intuit.

And there are also clearly distinctions between the ideal forms we make, but that is not the question, and that is easy to find, since I can make the ideal distinctions clear myself.

The overlap, to me, is the phenomenal world that we take as representing the physical form.

I am trying to equate where you said “as we know them” with “that we take as representing the physical form.”

You said “them”. Objects as we know “them.” The “them” here are the physical forms. There are now objects, and separately there are objects as we know them or as we take them to represent things in themselves (as phenomena).

So we have two different objects (things and ideals, or, in-themselves and phenomena), and call them both objects. We should only be calling one of them the object. But we aren’t having any luck at that.

Which is why I said in my first post this might be an impossible question to answer (or pose), and in my last post above I said that I am losing site of the question.

We are tasked by noAxiom with using words to demonstrate some thing, some physical object, in the act (willing) of speaking for itself.

So I posted a word of gibberish in attempt to create such a thing right here, now, for us to play with.

My only solution to poke a small hole in the phenomenal veil is to triangulate towards the thing-in-itself by comparing the ideals from other minds who together investigate the same or at least similar phenomena. We both point to “that pumpkin” and we post it our ideal of where pumpkin begins and ends, where some thing in itself over there meets human sense and cognition, where we sense something apart from the single subject, and together sense where “that pumpkin” makes sense to both of us.

This sounds like Kantian transcendence, but I see it as more than that (because if the things will, it’s own essence for itself), enough to try and answer noAxiom’s question as “yes, there are physical objects that are not the same as our ideal objects, and we can know these objects exist.”

Just takes some willingness to see willingness apart from oneself.

PS.
Maybe essence is will, in each thing in itself be it physical or not, and phenomena are these wills as object, where we attempt to capture the essence, the will of something beyond the subject. Maybe?

I think Schopenhauer’s will, taken up by Nietzsche, is an underdeveloped metaphysical wisdom. (Because Nietzsche shattered metaphysics.). It’s also in Aristotle as desire and telos.

who just wanted to justify doing whatever they wanted to do — Philosophim

Or, who didn’t want to justify whatever they wanted to do.

Classically individual morality and social morality are two sides of the same coin, not entirely separate and opposable. — Leontiskos

I would argue that all morality is social morality. Morality is sought and found among two or more persons.

Following one’s heart or not only becomes a moral question where the actions taken, the following steps, interact with or against other people.

Argument: You cannot knock out the target of practical reason (goodness) and then claim you can "pragmatically select a moral code," in order to get on in the world. This leads to an infinite regress that, in reality, must terminate in arbitrariness.

Ancillary point: abolishing the target of practical reason ends up destroying all of reason. You can't knock out this leg and still expect theoretical reason (whose target is truth) to stand. Eliminating the good ruins reason as a whole. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Full agreement.

No one will ever avoid the presence of truth and good in any statement that has a beginning an end, like this sentence. If I lie, then my falsity highlights the truth that contradicts my lie, showing it to be a lie. In speaking, about anything, you either posit a truth or good, or you attempt to distance (but not eliminate) the truth and the good.

Pragmatism and utilitarianism and any moral anti-realism simply assert we can satisfy the will to truth and good by ignoring the presence of truth and goodness (either in the truth or good of the pragmatic, utilitarian, anti-real statement, or in its looming presence in the infinite regresses you’ve made clear.)

Total agreement.

The energy beam itself (and not the gun) needs to figure this out. — noAxioms

I’m beginning to lose sight of the question (the object of your inquiry so to speak).

It’s a fictional thing, a laser gun that shoots an entire bug but leaves the shirt. The impossibility of that thing can be solved by as much fiction. The laser beam just does. Shirt is always fine. Laser beams are really cool. So is Midas’s gold. Problem solved.

It’s not the laser beam, right? Who gives a crap how ridiculous or accidentally accurate our fictions can be or can’t?

But if you are grappling with atoms and void and finding not enough void anywhere between groupings of atoms…

Or not finding any difference between atom and not-atom such that one or the other cannot exist and there can be only one…

Or are you saying a man can’t step into the same river twice, or even once, because no thing is identical to itself long enough to be a fixed object or be identified as such…

Or are you just being contrarian, because none of these problems have been solved down to a nice little explanation?

King Midas cannot avoid touching — noAxioms

Was there a before King Midas touched, when the world wasn’t gold, and then what happened to Midas’ finger afterwards?

Physical objects are distinguishable everywhere with no eyes and no words, you just can’t picture them or speak about them easily.

You guessed somewhere near my guess, and my guess now is that we could work it out. It was the black and the white where there were no words. Close enough.

I was reduced to guessing, which I did. That's the msc

That guess is likely wrong — noAxioms

We should compare guesses.

In order to communicate our guesses we have to speak words, so we will now be using idealizations for sake of communication. But my guess is the object looks like this at its borders:
h …. e with some black and white sections in the middle.

If we both guess the same, then we have the object itself as referent and the additional measurement tools of each other’s eyes.

With all of that in sight, if our guesses are at least similar, we have a reasonable basis to start using the distinctions we discover with our eyes to be brought to us from a separate physical object. Metaphorically speaking, the physical object “told” us its distinction.

If you guess z……x then we are back to square one.

How would I know? — noAxioms

You would have to use physical eyes and senses because it’s a physical thing, so you may get it wrong (as any eye would), but that’s the only way to investigate and find if you see border or edge or particular “object” if you need word for what we are talking about.

And this border is distinct from the center of “it” too at least that’s what I can see.

Making up a word with no reference is running away from the issue of a reference without a word. — noAxioms

It’s not word. Don’t idealize it.

It’s a physical pile of black and white. Can you see the border? I could go cut and paste it for you.

This is also underlined by the metaphysical problem of non-identity. — I like sushi

The problem of identity is a real problem, but if we admit this problem to the equation, then there may be no “me” who could fail to prevent suffering either.

We need to assume an agent, identify many agents, to build an ethic among them.

That’s not the issue, or we can never say anyone exists to suffer or more to the point, never say anyone exists to prevent suffering.

It is certainly a factual claim that if you do not exist you do not suffer. — I like sushi

Hmmm. Seems to me if something doesn’t exist then any reference to this non-existent thing makes the thing some theoretical thing. It’s not a real thing (because it doesn’t exist).

So the new ethics of AN demands we be ethical towards future potential beings who actually don’t particularly exist; and in the meantime we suck at being ethical now (not for the future) towards actual human being who actually exist.

Or, I wonder “if you do not exist, what do you do?” Obviously you do nothing, nor can you do anything because “you” in the first place are a fiction, a possibility at best. Why would a fiction suffer or certainly not suffer, or do anything?

It’s not a language game. Who or what is relieved of suffering but our imaginary friends who we spare from living in the first place?

If I, who now exist, died, it can be said that I do not suffer. I’ll accept that (although there are various ways to dispute that as well, including my own argument against un-procreated beings). But you can say I don’t eat chicken anymore either, or play music, or stub my toe, or have a toe. You can say lots of things about me that are over now. That’s because I existed, and knew suffering and had all of these things about me to lose with my life. There is an “I” from which things that go along with this “I” can be removed, like my suffering, or my toe.

But if there is no one there to exist, no “you” as in a “you never existed”, there is no one saved from suffering. No procreation ends human life, and no human life means no humans suffering (or playing tennis); but you cannot particularize this and say “YOU or HE or even IT never suffered” about a “you” who never existed.

Because you cannot particularize this prevention of suffering in a particular “you” who doesn’t suffer, AN is acting ethical towards no one, no one who ever exists.

It very much seems you cannot since there's nothing that says to continue while it's a pumpkin, but not beyond, where it ceases to be pumpkin. And certainly nothing to say that 'pumpkin' is what matters in the first place. — noAxioms

You couldn’t give the example of how a pumpkin is not a distinct object if there were no distinct objects. You certainly couldn’t covey such a thought to me from your mind if you didn’t place an object, like a pumpkin, translated as “pumpkin” into language, but otherwise able to be thrown in the direction of my head, in between us. You could have said “gourd” or “cheese sandwich” but you made reference to a distinct thing instead.

You don't get any discrete boundaries if you exclude any reference to minds.
We seem to be in agreement then. — noAxioms

That contradicts this:

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they?
— Metaphysician Undercover
Only to an idealist. — noAxioms

Unless you, like me think, some distinctions are ideal, and others are physical.

You just want an example of a physical distinction, but one separate from words. And you want me to use words here on this forum to demonstrate it.

How about this word as a physical example of a physical object that has no words attached to it: hgtiigumsolee. There an object of light and dark distinct from everything else you read. Here are two distinct examples of an object defining itself before your very eyes, out in the world that has no words to it, something you cannot even conceotualize but here it comes again twice: hgtiigumsolee. hgtiigumsolee

Idealize that. It’s only particular. Like a pumpkin might be.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese.
— Fire Ologist
Per your weird assignment of terms, it would be an attempt at a pizza with dough but without the cheese and sauce, except that the dough seems undefined without sauce on it. — noAxioms

But dough, then, like the whole pizza, becomes the whole object, with its own extension, idealization, and language. Just as you just used language to distinguish your weird assignment from my weird assignment (and mine was more weird.)

You can’t say that extension (which is a concept) without putting it in something extended (like dough). The ideal and the extended are of the same distinction.

Minds are obviously "real" and so their relationships to things, including demarcating them, seem like they should be plenty "real enough" to define individuals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

All distinctions are ideal, and not physical, aren't they? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t know about “all distinctions”. There is no reason there can’t be physical distinctions. They would work well to explain the difference experience of getting up from chair and realizing my back and knees hurt from sitting. It is just an experience, a phenomenon, something epistemology hasn’t settled yet. But no physical distinction? Seems to me if there exists anything physical at all, whether it be one physical thing (say a giant ball of clay), you have distinctions and really many physical objects to distinguish.

So we minds may only work through the medium of our idealized distinctions, but it does not follow that all distinctions are ideal. The world may itself have physical distinction in it (and I don’t mind simply assuming it does, like any physical scientist has to assume.)

This is all a battle between motion and stillness. Or between fixed identity (objects) and change (not finding any objects). Motion seems to overtake everything that was once still and is now gone, including any non-ideal sense of stillness. So stillness, like the “object” noAxiom is trying to find in matter, seems the weaker component, and possibly only ideal (so not real, like motion is real).



Objects are still. The moon treated as object is the moon never changing. Visible mostly at night, white and grey, appears to reflect light and not generate any light to my eye - the moon. Fixed. We all know about it. The same moon.

But the moon moves and is slowly minutely always undergoing massive changes; so because of change, the still object referenced in the “moon” is really an ideal moon, because the actual moon isn’t a still object. Like every physical thing, nothing is a thing for long.

Unlike an object, which has a clear definition, clear border delimiting it and distinguishing it as a particular “it”, motion changes things, undoes their definitions, and reveals the ideal moon which appears fixed, is not quite accurate.

But we are smart. We can reference the moon anyway, holding it still with our minds, knowing it is changing and might not remain the moon for long. And while we hold the spinning, decaying moon still, we can show it is distinct from the sun (another moving target, but always moving distinctly from the moon).

So distinctions can be in the world, but right before our eyes they just don’t last as long, unlike the idealized distinctions we can make right before our minds that say “moon”.

Physical objects, holding themselves together for a time, is what the world looks like. Whether the distinctions last long is another question. Whether the distinctions we see and idealize create useful references, that are translatable to language like “natural satellite” instead of “moon” is another question. But whether physical objects exist is another question. And once you admit the physical, you’ve simultaneously admitted physical distinction.

not the objective limits of a thing's extension. — noAxioms

I think you’ve given yourself an impossible task maybe.

Let’s equate an “object” with a whole pizza, and “extension” with the dough, and “language” with the sauce, and “concepts/minds” with the cheese.

You are trying to define an object separately from the other components of the same object, like trying to define a pizza without any dough, or without any sauce or cheese.

These “components” as I’ve called them are inseparable, so not really components. (Unlike a pizza so it’s tough to make a metaphor for something that would apply to a single pepperoni as it would the whole pizza). We make concepts out of things and can think of them as components, but like “mind” and “concepts” might be distinguishable as two concepts, when is there ever a concept without a mind? Are they inseparable, are they interdependent in order for either to be?

So separating a physical “object” may require a mind like an idea requires a mind. That doesn’t mean there is no dough, no extension. That doesn’t mean there cannot be natural kinds that would be distinguished and separate individuals without minds, but it means that because I happen to have a mind, when I point to a distinct object, I am always adding my own mind to the state of affairs, and that addition is now a “part” of the “object” distinguished.

↪Dogbert Dude, you propose an answer that merely begs the question (i.e. precipitates an infinite regress). Argument from incredulity – lack of imagination – is also fallacious. Talking out of your bunghole, Dude. "That's just the way it is" – brute fact of the matter – suffices. — 180 Proof

How about the question “how” instead of “why?”

How is that?

Your final answer still: It just is, so don’t ask again.

the … experiential transformation from typical matter into a human is literally unimaginable. — Dogbert

I agree. The individual human experience, with its questions, explanations, and willing beliefs, is impossible. Yet it is.

We will never be satisfied with “it just is” when what we see it just is, is impossible to be. The absurdity of reason in the face of the impossible demands some homecoming, some reunification with “it just is that way” because the way it just is cannot be, and yet it is.

Accepting the impossible with “it just is” is ignoring the problem, not resolving it.

What I’ve learned is that I must use more than reason to justify reasons. And instead of justifying it, I have to justify myself seeing this paradox. I am a paradox, so if all for me is paradox and unresolvable, it is because of me and not because of it. So I must understand something else besides the rational; take myself out of the picture and keep myself out of the picture, in order to see where I fit in the picture.

But everything is connected, or nothing is. — noAxioms

In order for everything to be connected, you have to have separate things that connect. So saying everything is connected, is saying everything is separate as well. Otherwise you are saying all is one thing and nothing else.

My liver is connected to my brain but my liver is separated from my brain. Maybe we have to keep moving the lines as we define the point where these separate things connect, but we don’t need to see that my liver is my brain.

1) If humans came here naturally, then anything can be justified as it came about from humans, which came here naturally so anything we do is technically "from nature".. reductio. — schopenhauer1

So do antinatalists believe we humans came here UNnaturally? What did ethics come from then?

Look, I think we are talking past each other.

My wife was just scratching our dog’s neck telling him how good he was with my daughter’s dog who he hates who just spent a few days over the house. Finally went home today and my dog is happier than ever. My dog of course had no idea what my wife was saying just that it sounded soothing as she massaged his neck and ears. All he knew was all of his suffering was gone, he was master of his house once again and feeling at peace staring into my wife’s eyes as she gently petted him. That happy 30 seconds was worth hours of suffering (which of course it took to build), and was just a dog’s life.

Happiness is so much more than suffering; moments are worth a lifetime of suffering. Moments of human happiness are worth millions of years of evolutionary struggle for survival.

We show this in our choices and lives all of the time. We don’t suffer only because of life. We suffer because of what we want, we suffer on purpose when we work towards something we suffer to achieve, we struggle to realize, we wish we knew before but we know now and we are glad we at least know this at all. All for those fleeting moments where now is joyous, where our work is done, when we’ve achieved our goal, as we realize our vision and know enough to say “good”.

We all say “good” everyday. I defy you to get through one day without saying “good”.

Life is suffering? How could you know this if life was not good?

I agree that life includes suffering, but I don’t agree suffering is bad.

Like the antinatalist just asserts as a given that life is suffering and suffering is bad, I simply assert life is a series of joyous moments and these things are good, and good enough, not at all like suffering, and not bad at all.

Don’t you see that at all? If not, can’t you let someone else wish that joy upon everyone, wish that they get to experience a moment of joy that would fill a hundred lives? Uou really think no one could feel this way in this life, this life is so bad?? Can’t you let someone have that? Let them have their joy along with their suffering?

Now back to the syllogism.

If the suffeting in life is what counts most for you, then fine, find your ethics in the prohibition of suffering, and build your ethical behavior out of ceasing procreation.

But if suffering is just one of those things, a stumbling block to a lifetime understanding even the concept of “bliss”, where suffering is just a challenge you’ve beaten so many times by simply living, if you can make a trifle of all the suffering in the world when compared to the good life also brings, then the whole antinatalist argument fails. It is a syllogism in which “life is suffering” is the main premise, linking procreation with unethical failure to prevent suffering, so if you just don’t care about life’s suffering to the point where it’s prevention is the highest good, the whole argument fails.

That’s my starting point - life is good. Suffering is a part of life, but so what? Life was good first and still good now that I suffer while living my life.

Even though without this first premise the antinatalist argument fails, I recognize that I haven’t proven that life is NOT suffering, or given you any reason to abandon your position that life is basically suffering. That’s up to you to prove your premise is valid. You also haven’t proven to me that life is NOT good, or its goodness cannot dwarf its suffering.

But now you know, if you want to convince me of the soundness and validity of the antinatalist argument, you should be convincing me that life sucks. Otherwise the rest of the argument will fail for me.

If you did convince me that life sucked so bad it was worth considering an ethic that held “all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented in others”, you would still have to convince me that preventing procreation is preventing suffering. Suffering only has a chance to be suffering after there is a person who suffers. The person in whom you might prevent suffering, therefore had to exist before one can prevent suffering, because suffering doesn’t exist until after the person suffers. So never procreating is not preventing suffering, it is preventing a person. Period. Unless preventing a person is some other good ethic, nothing good is done by preventing a person from existing. They haven’t existed yet; you haven’t prevented suffering yet. You may have a rule “all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented” but you can’t apply that rule to any actions that do not involve other existing beings who actually exist and therefore can actually suffer (if not prevented). Potential, future beings do not actually suffer; so if you prevent a potential future being from existing, you prevent no suffering at all, since there is no actual suffering that could possibly be prevented, as there is no actual person who could possibly suffer.

I know you don’t like this argument but it sits in the bigger question: why would anyone even care to be ethical in their treatment of other people, if procreating other people is not a good? Who are we being ethical for? Ourselves? Will we suffer any less as we go on living? All that we’ve done if we stop procreating is we assert our judgment that the existence of people doesn’t matter as much as the ethical rule “all suffering that can be prevented in others should be prevented.” But ethics is for people (which you have said), not people for ethics.

Lastly, even if you could convince me that the suffering outshines the joy as the essential feature of life, and even if you could convince me that by procreating, we are doing anything specific toward any specific person, let alone by not procreating we are preventing anything specific in any specific thing (like a person), you still could t convince me that the rule “all suffering that can be prevented should be prevented.”

I’m not going to go into it again but suffering isn’t what is bad in life to me. Evil and sin are. Unethical choices are. Suffering is a consequence, not a raw material, of life, but not always a consequence, and sometimes non-existent in life (for moments, many moments).

So there is no need to convince me that I am wrong. You can if you want, but then you would have to show me I don’t really mind the suffering enough to justify discarding the joyousness.

I admit I have been focused on the logic to try to convince you that you are wrong. Beat up the premises to snap you out of the conclusions. But it’s up to you to see for yourself.

I can’t make you see the good that is life and how suffering can be minimized and defeated. All I can ask is that you honestly answer this: if someone thought life was good, in fact amazing, would they be immoral to want to share this with as many people as they could, including by hoping for children and doing everything they could to raise children?

Or if someone thought ethics only applies between existing moral/ethical agents, that ethics can’t apply to the dead or the uncreated, then wouldn’t an ethical rule forbidding procreation because of its infliction of suffering be misapplied? Or Maybe even unethical in its ignorance towards actual people as opposed to potential people?

Or if someone thought suffering could be something so important in the shaping of who one actually is in this life, that suffering was sometimes good in itself as something not only to be accepted, but embraced and promoted at times, wouldn’t a rule that ended all suffering by ending all people seem opposite of the good one sees in other people, in other lives, and in life itself?

If you grant me my premises, am I still wrong to think procreation is a great good?

And I think I’ve said my peace. Antinatalism seems unneccesssry if it be based on simply suffering, seems anti-ethics while it puts ethics above ethical people, and simply ignores the joy in life.

And the boredom. Life is boredom - we should all kill each other in a final bloodbath just for sake of some excitement in these otherwise insufferably boring lives. Ridiculous? Not if life is only boredom.

Life is way more than suffering. Maybe only human beings can recognize this. Why kill ourselves off because of a little suffering?

Yeah and again, no humans, no ethics needed. No problem. — schopenhauer1

But humans came here naturally. So ethics, which tells you how to live good and rightly, came here naturally.

We kill all humans off, and ethics is gone, who’s to say nature won’t evolve a new species of sentient, ethical beings. By ending humans you are leaving the world empty of ethical beings who could have prevented nature from spitting out more sentient suffering. Totally irresponsible of you.

That's not reification. Reification is this:
Reification is when you think of or treat something abstract as a physical thing. — schopenhauer1

Like reifying an abstract “good not to inflict” in the physical act of procreation.

the unique thing about procreation is it is completely preventative — schopenhauer1

So we are allowed to inflict lots of suffering throughout our lives, but the rule not to inflict suffering is super important when looking to consent to the naturally produced function of procreation. Got it.

It’s completely preventative of ethics too. No more ethics along with no more suffering that the ethical ones couldn’t stomach inflicting on others (except they could stomach the risk of inflicting suffering by every other act they take besides procreation).

That is a weird reification to me. — schopenhauer1

Antinatalism is a weird reification of being ethical, of the “good” as in a good choice being choosing not to inflict life with its suffering.

we often have very unpleasant experiences in the present that we often smooth away later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the unpleasant experience. — schopenhauer1

Then we often have pleasant experiences in the present that we rough up later with our cherry-picked and more subdued memories of the pleasant experience. That’s all psychology.

All of this interestingly points out that no one can judge another’s suffering, or that they are suffering at all.

It is false to say life is insufferable. Just way too much whining about the day you stubbed your toe. Way too much discounting of the day you saw someone you love happy and laughing, or laughter itself.

It is false to say we are never right to inflict suffering. Just not a tailored ethic anyone could ever follow. We can follow a rule to not steal. We can not lie or murder. But never inflict any suffering?? We would need to not ask anyone to ever do anything. We couldn’t tell someone we loved them for fear this would burden them and increase their suffering. Teaching someone about antinatalism could inflict tremendous suffering on them - the meaning of life and all their plans dashed because they involved a family and kids. It is NOT true that “Happiness is not obligatory, whereas preventing suffering is.” Neither happiness nor preventing suffering are obligatory. You reify your ability to reduce suffering, and the ethical rule that tells you this is the highest good.

We lost sight of the twig because of the tree. How is that different? — noAxioms

No you didn’t. You said “twig” and then said “tree” and then noticed how they were “touching” which still sets out two separate objects in order for “touch” to make any sense either. THEN one can look closer at the two things touching and learn they are so connected they might be one thing, in which case you are just back to the same starting point where you said “twig” or carved out and identified one thing.

The process didn’t eliminate difference and identity, it just shows how it can be harder or easier to observe and delineate.

Proof only exists in mathematics, which is never about the physical universe. Therefore, it is impossible to prove anything "concrete". That is not how proof works. — Tarskian

100 %.

We don’t prove existence. We prove relations among the existing things we posit, or assume, or hypothesize, or believe, or know. You don’t prove the existence of a premise; you need a premise first to prove something in conclusion. Or you aren’t doing proof.

We might be able to prove a god wouldn’t struggle, or a god wouldn’t need sleep, but we can’t prove that struggle-free, always awake god exists.

Midas touches a twig. What turns to gold? The twig, branch, tree, forest?
— noAxioms

That's an easy one; it would be the tree in its entirety that turns to gold. Not the branch nor the forest, for neither of these are standalone things like the tree is, unless the branch is broken off the tree. — NotAristotle

Right. Just because everything is touching, like the tree touches the forrest floor, touching the whole Forrest, etc, etc, doesn’t mean you lose sight of the separate things that are touching. You need separate things to have a question about where to draw lines where separate things touch and overlap. You can’t lose site of the trees because of the forest either.

To - some - degree, i get what you're saying. — AmadeusD

Mission accomplished.

This anthropomorphizing of nature seems delusional — AmadeusD

Really? You don’t use metaphors to make the text more interesting? Ok if you think that’s “delusional” of me how about simply:

Arising by the necessity of chemistry on earth, life began. This led to animals, which by the natural necessity of evolution led to animals on land, which by necessity led to humans, which by necessity led to logic and ethics, which by necessity led to antinatalism, which, if practiced well, necessarily leads to the end of all of this living necessity (at least of the ethical kind). The natural evolution of ethics in the world was necessary so that ethics could be ended by these ethical animals.

Basically, all the rest of the living things by necessity procreate, as procreation is part of the very life that has now spit out ethics, and our ethics is to end life itself, unlike every other natural, necessitated living thing. Seems like natural necessity gone astray because of our “ethics”. Or, just

overwhelmingly: suffering. — AmadeusD

seems like it’s based on a preoccupation with suffering too much maybe?

Not quite sure how to respond, in this case. — AmadeusD

But it hasn't anything to say about antinatalism. — AmadeusD

I really don't know what you could mean here. — AmadeusD

Can I use these statements too? In response to the other things you said? :razz:

The analogy would be to God if anything. God removing people because they suffer too much in the face of his arguably more important creation - the Ocean. — AmadeusD

What?

most people are "wrong" about hte quality of their life. — AmadeusD

Wow. Philosopher king hath spoken to the little suffering people. Is anyone ever “wrong” when they judge what is right or wrong about the quality of OTHER PEOPLE’s lives? Maybe wrong anbout some of the “most people”? Isn’t it THEIR lives? It’s none of my business to say your life is suffering, just like it’s none of your business to say my life is anything. Maybe “most antinataliats are wrong about the quality of their lives.” Possible? Killing off all procreation might be a little rash?

The coming together of a sperm and an egg is not what leads to suffering. Though, most antinatalists probably would recommnd avoiding this. — AmadeusD

So by procreation, you have to mean conceiving, growing the fetus, giving birth and feeding/caring for a new person. So it is wrong to “procreate” in this sense because only after some or all of these steps has suffering been inflicted on a person. Not just conception. This way, conceiving a fetus isn’t yet procreating, and we can kill the fetus if we want, without inflicting suffering. But then, a man could have sex and conceive many fetuses and never brake the rule of antinatalism. It is only the woman alone who can complete the steps it takes to inflict the suffering of procreation. The man inflicts a fetus that can be killed on a woman (or maybe inflicts is harsh, but antinatalists know how to read “inflicts” between the lines), but only the woman chooses not to kill it and inflicts suffering on a new person, eventually. Right? To be consistent with the notion procreation inflicts suffering, much harder for men to break the antinatalist rules? If ever?