I don't get why you can't see the difference between someone claiming that science can make falsifiable statements about morals and someone claiming that science can decide everything in the world that is meaningful. — Pseudonym

I think W is talking about science claiming moral authority, or, actually, certain individuals claiming moral authority in the name of science. To the degree that morality is 'visible' (certain practices that are publicly accessible), it's clear that predictions can be made. We have of course social and behavioral sciences.

But it's not clear to me how "the extent to which an action is right or wrong" is in the domain of science. What people tend and will tend to call 'right' or 'wrong' does seem to be in that domain. But what we (or specifically I or you) should seek as oppose to what we tend to seek does not seem to be in that domain. I can't think what it would mean to test an 'ought.' Science seems to live on the 'is' side of the is/ought divide. Just the preference-independent facts, please.

I don't generally share W's position, but I do think you are somewhat justifying his concern by sneaking over the is/ought line or misreading his point.

I think what has been misunderstood is that being moral somehow implies something innate or explicit, when it is a rational process that requires cultivation — TimeLine

What I have in mind is the attempt to impose a particular vision of the moral (like yours) on an autonomous person. I don't disagree with what you say about morality, but that's beside the point I'm trying to make. For you it is at least the attempt at a universal truth. But other thinkers have other visions. The autonomous person feels a certain distance from the claims of others. They may, of course, be persuaded.

Language is very dynamical and we have the cognitive capacity to calculate, contrast, and communicate that means that we are enabled or wired with the capacity to transcend conformity and start using our own autonomous, rational thoughts to understand and apply virtue aside from what we have learned. — TimeLine

Yes, I roughly agree. New personalities are possible that have never existed before. We can and do transcend and extend our cultural influences. For me there's a tension, though, between 'rational' and 'explicit.' It's hard not to read 'rational' here as partaking of something 'innate or explicit.'

Your body is regulated by the brain as much as your sensual impressions are formed through experience and maintained by the health of both the physical and the psychological; think of those individuals who have perversions or fetishes. — TimeLine

I agree that the body is regulated by the brain, and surely you'll agree that the brain is largely programmed by the environment, especially the social-linguistic environment. That's why I mentioned looks and physical strength. We learn who and what we are largely by how we are treated. Ideally we can reason ourselves through negative influence, but there are limits to this. And even here we are borrowing positive influences to work against the negative.

I don't know what you consider perversions and fetishes. Does that not change? Trans has exploded as a valid identity. I don't mind. It's not a big issue to me, and I don't like judging adult sexual behavior. But it's a good example of how something considered perverse can quickly be mainstreamed. Now those opposed to trans rights are themselves diagnosed with some kind of moral perversion. An autonomous trans person might feel secure in this identity before it was mainstreamed and an autonomous conservative, for instance, might shrug off 'political correctness ' (the intolerance by others of their own intolerance or at least objections.) Really I just associate autonomy with a strong personality that can act without or against the approval/disapproval of others respectively.

I was using "book larnin'" as smart ass shorthand for formal application of reason and will.

I think there can be progress toward authenticity and that may lead to improvement in moral behavior. That's been something I've experienced personally. As I've discussed, I see autonomy and morality as separate. No, I don't believe there is individual moral progress. For me, morality is not a state of being, it is behavior. — T Clark

All I mean by individual moral progress is some individual becoming a better person. In the ordinary sense of all the words. Nothing fancy. And, yeah, in their actions especially. In their state of being the kind of person who does or does not do X.

All good points. Frankly, I'm not against a gun-free society. I'm open to the idea of only the police having guns. But I don't think it's a realistic possibility here. Too many out there. Too much association with the American identity perhaps. But I don't think my openness to the idea will have a measurable bearing on whether it ever happens.

Something I worry about, however, is that there may be a kind of mass killing 'meme' that will seek other means. Yes, guns are part of the problem. But is there not some twisted desire for instant fame? A nobody can become a somebody in the blink of an eye. Vilified, sure, but no publicity is bad publicity for some nasty part of human nature. The killers seem to plot so that their numbers are respectfully obscene. One or two corpses in a school would make the news. Will they switch to bombs or poison? This is no reason to keep guns out the hands of the crazy little shits. I just wonder whether we can stop this kind of thing altogether (which is not to say we shouldn't try, just in case I need to emphasize that for partisan ears.)

Banno is fine. I like Banno. But he did jump on me initially with a bad paraphrase or misreading of my point despite my anticipatory disclaimers.

I'm uncertain about the cost of uncertainty, too. I really don't know if my position is the good one. But I do believe that it doesn't matter much in the scheme of things. This is an uncomfortable thought, potentially. What if we are mostly picking out bumper stickers and making fashion statements? Do we enjoy breaking into 'tastes great' and 'less filling' groups? I think we do, and there's something dark in this that works against a willingness to tolerate the mere perception of complexity perhaps.

What I find hardest to grasp is why Americans are so very, very frightened of their own government. — Banno

I don't know if the average American is all that afraid. Lots of us don't vote. When I was younger, politics was a boring channel on TV. The phrase 'belly of the empire' comes to mind. I think we have to balance the fear you mentioned with the confidence Americans have in American might.

I also think that political conversations are missing important voices, namely the voices of those who don't find it worth the trouble to participate in the conversation. Believers care enough to show up, so they clash furiously and forget that nonbelievers exist.

Something that occurred to me earlier was a Catch-22 in the American liberal's position on gun control. On the one hand, the cops are (systematically) racists, and on the other hand they should have the monopoly on legal force.

But on fear of gov., of course the drug war is violent and involves home invasion and seizure on the part of the government. I'm pretty sure we still have the gold medal on the proportion of the population we keep in cages. So that's a little scary.

But I'm more worried about some asshole texting in his or her Toyota. Seriously. And then, you know, cancer.

I think, coming from a European country, this fear is probably exaggerated. — Benkei

Actually, I agree. Yes, it does happen. But it probably won't happen to me. There is a certain 'magic' or irrational attachment involved: 'happiness is a warm gun.' I think it's a bit macho. 'Guns are serious business, a real man's business.' But so is drinking and being proud of having a high tolerance. Or proud of having been a tourist in a risky country. Or the gentrifiers pride in living in a neighborhood that the less hip consider scary.

f it weren't legal, most criminals aren't murderers that need guns and rather not serve extra time for gun possession or be labeled a criminal merely for gun possession. Most burglars, street dealers, hustlers etc. will give up their guns as a result. — Benkei

That sounds plausible. If guns are banned, I'd give mine up. I don't know if it can happen here, though. And I would be afraid about what other parties might do. (It's just not a big issue for me. I just put my 2 cents in to pluralize the discourse a bit.)

I can understand this sentiment. Breaking in and entry is a high impact crime that has a lot of emotional effect on the victims. On the other hand, I doubt they are often committed with the intent to commit violence - usually it's cash, phones, computers and TVs. The insurance covers those. Why even risk killing someone? I would hope killing someone is still more traumatic than being robbed and should be avoided. — Benkei

I think it's Civilization and Its Discontents.

But you also assume prudence on the part of criminals. We are also a country of serial killers over here. Some of them will eat your privates. (That's meant to be funny, but it's true.)

Why do you put absurd in quotes? Don't you think it's an absurd situation? Perhaps you mistake me for a starry-eyed patriot. Nah, I was just born here. If Iceland will have me, I'm happy live in Bjork's garage.

...so kids get drunk and kill each other in cars - and therefore one ought not reform gun laws? — Banno

This is not at all to say that I oppose or favor this or that age restriction. — foo

This is not say that I am for or against this or that law, either. (I wouldn't expect a stranger's mere preferences to matter much, though I can imagine fitting into various pigeonholes in readers' minds.) — foo

The problem with heated political discussions is the tendency to misread and project.

I vote Democratic and would like to have voted for Sanders in the general election. Nevertheless, I find many of my liberal acquaintances too shrill.

I don't think the individual has much power to change things politically. I'm not saying they should or should not try. I'm bored with shoulds. Shoulds are as cheap as tapwater. I'm just saying that all the fervor has a certain absurdity for me. I may participate in a little earnest back and forth for the novelty, but I ultimately don't care what some distant stranger (or my next door neighbor ) thinks about the issues. Nonvoters or one little voter among millions of votes. And I'm really not sure what's best politically, and I don't mind being not sure. I do have a instinctive distrust of those who are very sure. At what cost that certainty? How homogenized is their social circle? How accurate is their sense of the kinds of people involved? For me a theoretical and imperfect neutrality is a way to stay out of red bubbles and blue bubbles where everyone sings the one true song about the bad people on the other side.

Have you watched The Good Place? A clever show.

I would like there to be a Heaven that is much like life at its best down here. I don't want there to be a Hell, and fortunately I don't think there is one.

Mass shootings suck, and they make the news that is shown between commercials. But young people are more likely to kill you by drunk driving than with a gun, I believe, in the US. This is not at all to say that I oppose or favor this or that age restriction. Nor is it to say that I don't get the point of the cartoon. But we could just as easily show a cartoon of an 18 year old signing up for the Army or getting an abortion and not being able to buy bourbon.

It doesn't surprise me that there are 'absurd' situations in a democracy. The laws are not written by one personality. They are more like the result of sublimated civil war. This is not say that I am for or against this or that law, either. (I wouldn't expect a stranger's mere preferences to matter much, though I can imagine fitting into various pigeonholes in readers' minds.)

https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving

With respect to the last question - nothing is ultimately objective. I take that to be one of the most important implications of the Critique of Pure Reason. But I’m also not an out-and-out relativist. Understanding the implications of that is one of the main tasks of philosophy. — Wayfarer

Thanks for clarifying. I don't disagree with this 'ultimately,' but my anti-metaphysical streak (influenced by linguistic philosophy) ushers me away from 'ultimately' as it might from brains in a vat. So I can agree and yet think such an agreement is not terribly important. Why? Because 'ultimately' is so elastic that it can always be stretched to counter objections. I do see that objective reality can be understood as intersubjective overlap. I've been down the rabbit hole and came up with a sense that I didn't bring back anything valuable apart from a sense of the futility of trying to fuse all of our specialized vocabularies into one harmonious vocabulary.

We know that there is stuff out there that is not us, yet we have to be here for it to be here, etc. No matter. Never mind. The chair is atoms or waves. Or the chair is concept organizing sensation. Or the chair is a thing for sitting on. Or the chair is the product of human history. Or the chair is crystallized labor. Or the chair is a node in the one object, a self-contemplating God. Or the chair exists primarily as possibility, as what we might do with it or call it in the future. Or the chair is all of these things, and whatever I left out, including the interpretations that I can expect generally but not predict in particular. One can imagine how these statements would fit within various conversations and put to various purposes. I can understand the desire to tame this proliferation, but I no longer think it's plausible to do so.

I like exposing myself to many of these 'vocabularies.' Having done so, I find it hard to be completely taken by any particular vocabulary. I suppose I associate metaphysics with the attempt to give the true and binding vocabulary.

That would be in relation to something. The judgement of inferior and superior would be a judgement in relation to some objective, as progress is toward that objective, the goal, the desired end. Without that standard for judgement, there is no superior or inferior, nor is there progress, there is just change. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree. So when societies or individuals are diagnosed or accused, this seems to imply at least some blurry notion of a preferred state.

I think we have these blurry notions of virtue before we think to justify them. Indeed, thinking we need to justify/clarify our blurry notions was presumably motivated or in pursuit of another such blurry notion --one that tends toward its own clarification.

I'm a gun owning American (liberal/moderate, I suppose.) Maybe I can add some perspective. I would rather live in a society where I would never need a gun. Arguably I don't need the one I have. It mostly sits in the same place, just in case. And I surely don't want the legal trouble or the publicity that would come with using it.

On the other hand, I like knowing that I have some way of protecting my little family against an extreme situation. The anti-gun argument tends to ignore that criminals aren't going to obey gun laws. I don't relish the idea of being a soft target in a society where only the police and the criminals have guns and not law abiding citizens. I happen to fear criminals more than the state, and I don't especially fear violent crime (I'm more likely to be smashed by some texting teenager's Toyota). Nevertheless, the idea of being threatened in my own home without recourse is sufficiently odious to me that I'd miss my 'nuclear option' if it were no longer there.

I think that's only (potentially) true if I agree that book larnin' is the only path to moral behavior, which is the whole point I've been arguing against in this discussion. — T Clark

OK, but books were just an example. Here's the simple question: is there individual moral progess? In my view, of course there is. And progress is (seems to me) the move from an inferior to a superior state.

Just to clarify, I intended 'sophisticated' as having-progressed or having-evolved along some continuum. That word may have bad ring for some, but I associate it with virtue. I tend to like those who have become gentle and measured in their interactions. Books are not necessary here, though I do think they can help.

Really? Me civilly and respectfully objecting to something you've written is a claim of moral superiority on my part? Sorry. That's pretty silly. There is no "quest for moral superiority." I'm just trying to be a good person. — T Clark

Perhaps you took me in the wrong spirit. I wasn't complaining of being treated badly. I was trying to make a point that moral judgments imply a hierarchy. If it is bad to think that one is better than others, then we will think we are better than others because we don't think we are better than others.

Of course I realize you're just trying to be a good person. Me too. What's the alternative? Being a bad or a less good person. Now why be a good person as opposed to a bad person if being a good person is not to be morally superior? (This is almost tautologous. I think 'moral superiority' just has a bad ring which I did not intend.)

(Speaking of which, one of the seminal writers for me was Theodore Roszak, who coined the term itself in his book 'Making of a Counter-Culture') — Wayfarer

I happen to know that book. I stumbled on a yellow copy in a used book store. He turned me on to other writers, and he was interesting in his own right.

Later in life, I've realised the profoundness of the classical Western philosophical tradition, on which I see scientific materialism as kind of parasitic outgrowth. — Wayfarer

I suppose we vary here. Though I have been intensely moved at times by 'positive' philosophers (those offering systems), I especially relate to the spirit of someone like Hume these days.

By the way, you didn't actually answer my question (which is fine if you don't feel like it, but I thought you might like to clarify your position.)

Are you saying this is theoretical or do you believe that this is what science is actually doing? — Rich

I think that's the ideal. As experiments get more complicated and technical and the entities get tiny or distant, the layman is unfortunately more and more in a position of having to trust specialists. Of course the average person these days doesn't know what a differential equation is, even if the entities were easily seen. Even smart people are often almost proud to be bad at math, but that's another issue.

On the other hand, I've have flown through the air above the clouds at hundreds of miles per hour. I ride little boxes 50 stories up in towers made of concrete and glass. I carry a little rectangle in my pocket that let's me communicate almost instantaneously at will with others who are hundreds or even thousands of miles away. I don't mean telegrams, either. I mean face to face video. This is proof in the pudding. For me it is finally about the tech. If the theorists love their absolute physical truths, fine. But would I care about science without its technical offerings? Maybe, for aesthetic reasons, but not as much.

Admittedly, religion or music or art can also provide proof in the pudding on an individual level. I like Coltrane. Others hate all jazz. But technology works whether I want it to or not, whether I believe in it or not. When an engineering student learns how to write an operating system, that doesn't strike me as particularly ideological. Does the damned thing do what we want it to do? Of course deciding what we want it to do is up to us, and I think that's where religion and philosophy especially have their say.

As far as political preferences go, I'm not particularly interested in debating those here, though I don't forbid myself an occasional indulgence. I mention this because some of your posts suggest that you view some common understanding of science to be socially detrimental. I don't think there's much payoff in that kind of thinking. We usually fail to persuade, in my view, and spend our energy more wisely in adapting to the world and its stupidities as we find and shall probably leave them. To be sure, this is a fine place to air out such things if one is so inclined.

Perfectly true. But how to do this in respect of what is good, or whether there is anything that is truly good - as distinct from useful, or instrumentally powerful - that is NOT simply a matter of doxai or pistis. And science doesn’t offer that, because its sole concern is with ‘the measurable’. — Wayfarer

Right. To me it's just metaphysics masked as science to twist science beyond its proper realm. In free societies, individuals are more or less expected to work out their own salvation in the usual ways. Science creates tools for the pursuit of goals that are synthesized with politics, religion, art, etc.

I want science for its neutrality (as something that gives me just the facts), because I want to decide what to make of them (perhaps or rather always with help from non-scientific culture.)

Philosophy, as distinct from science, has to accomodate immeasurables, and at least recognise unknowables. — Wayfarer

I'm not against this, but can it hope to do so objectively? The excessive claims of the metaphysical animal are one of the reasons we needed science to begin with. Even a metaphysician views some other metaphysicians as peddlers of superstition and confusion. In some ways, science is the matricidal son of philosophy.

Anyway, I understand that thinking inviduals will wrestle with the meaning of life (and immeasurables). Engineers can't do everything for us yet.

For me there's a tension in your writing between the cultural critic and the metaphysician, which I may be mistakenly projecting. Do you understand yourself to be stating preferences? Doing politics at an abstract level? 'Our culture would be better if...X' Or are you ultimately saying that science is blind to an important objective truth. 'This or that non-scientific approach nevertheless offers us objective truth, not just preference or opinion.' To be clear, I'm not implying that preference is unimportant. I'm just interested in drawing the line between what we might like to be the case and what is the case.

Hi. Thanks.

From what I remember, I think that was the hope. But I could never take Kant seriously on ethics. I've always related to being more of a realist than a dreamer.

I associate reliable knowledge with a kind of neutrality. I trust those who are more invested in being correct or objective than in supporting a righteous position. In my experience, the 'righteous' tend to 'forget' inconvenient facts and remember convenient facts. Moreover, it's not hard to justify a white lie if the enemy is pure evil or if the battle must be won at all costs.

I think there’s a genuine distinction between the terms, and the reason the distinction has been lost is indeed metaphysical. That is why we can only understand things on a horizontal plane, so to speak. — Wayfarer

As far as I can tell, you are making a metaphysical point against other metaphysicians. Reading some of your other posts in this thread, it seems to me that your opponent or the target of your complain is not really the scientific worldview but rather a small group of metaphysicians who build their metaphysics around science rather than the philosophical or religious tradition.

As I understand, science doesn't need more than a certain minimum of metaphysics. Similarly, math doesn't need a metaphysical position on numbers. What really matters are the tangible criteria for progress in the discipline. Metaphysical or religious preferences fall on the other side of the public-private split.

I don't see how we "can only understand things on a horizontal plane." It may be that certain scientistic metaphysicians intentionally pursue this project self-consciously with or without a sense of its limitations. But I think you'd have to make a case for this 'we' at large seeing things horizontally.

Consider also that anti-metaphysical positions are possibly motivated by the desire not to be trapped in systems. Metaphysical systems can themselves be read as attempts to flatten experience with 'magic' words.

There’s more to mind than experience - which is after all textbook empiricism. But as Kant showed, the mind makes use of the categories of the understanding, the primary intuitions, and so on, in order to understand. So there’s more to that than just ‘experience’, there’s also intellectual capacity. — Wayfarer

Yes, I know Kant and Hume. But I wasn't using 'experience' in some fancy way that alludes to books that were long ago state of the art. Reading the traditional books liberated me from the authority of traditional books. Allowing for some exceptions, I think the flight from ordinary usage tends to involve a mystification.

I don't want to be a jerk here, but you are telling me above that there is also 'intellectual capacity' in or 'to' the mind. That is to say that you are telling me nothing. The way you interpreted me to mean the word 'experience' suggests to me that (without realizing it perhaps), you can only see other metaphysicians 'out there.' Those who think science is a trustworthy source of objective knowledge must have some metaphysical as opposed to epistemological position. But we don't have to have some position on what things 'ultimately' are.

We need rather a way of separating fact from opinion. This is a matter of life and death for both the individual and the species. We have a tendency to deceive ourselves or be deceived. We have a tendency to exaggerate the importance of our own discoveries and to mistake our opinions for facts. In my view, this is what grounds our need for science. In this context, it makes perfect sense that science would be built around the measurement of public and non-controversial entities.

'Just the facts, mam.'

This distinctness is really the cognitive capacity to rationalise and reason with common sense — TimeLine

It seems to me that being reasonable is a learned, virtuous conformity.

but central to this prospect is the autonomy that wills such agency, so it is not really about the separate and unique body that we possess - aside from the health of your brain - neither is it entirely our formative and unique childhood but autonomy is the motive or will that we possess that gives us the capacity to regulate our own behaviour and therefore legitimacy or authenticity to our moral actions; it is moral actions that make us human or good. — TimeLine

Ideally, I may agree. But I can't follow this downplaying of the body. We are just such social, sensual creatures that a healthy brain in body that is considered ugly will likely lead to a very different formative childhood than a healthy brain in a body that is considered beautiful. I think we are like plants that develop in the direction of recognition.

Second point: Is there not a tension between autonomy and 'moral' actions? If I am incarnate autonomous reason, I may decide that my culture at large is wrong about some issue. I may decide that some kind of prohibited violence is actually good and even a duty. Those who proscribe such actions while celebrating autonomy will presumably do so in the name of 'reason.' But this is to deny autonomy or to identity it with the incarnation of reason. But then who gets to speak in the name of reason? We are back to the same situation. Autonomy with any bite is dangerous. An autonomous person is not easily persuaded by the claims of those who identify either with God's will or universal reason (variants of the basic idea of authority.)

I think using the phrase "relatively enlightened" in reference to us, I assume, is pretty presumptuous and disrespectful to those you consider relatively unenlightened. — T Clark

I understand your objection, but it seems to me that the very notion of philosophy is hierarchical. If there is something to be learned from life with the help of books, then those who have partially learned this 'it' are 'relatively enlightened.'

If we look at the context of our conversation (this thread that diagnosis a culture rather than an individual), we see an example of a structure common on internet forums. A poster objects to some kind of broken-ness of the world and suggests a cure. This is implicitly parental, metaphorically speaking. For what it's worth, I try to be especially aware of what is presumed in the projection of problems and solutions. I'm especially interested in what the form of communication says about the communication which is not made explicit within or by that communication.

A simple example might be what the grading structure of the university class says that the lectures do not say. An instructor might verbally emphasize the importance of X, while the silent grading structure sends a second and dominating message to the shrewd students who see through the sentimentalities about pure knowledge to their economic situation in the world at large. The 'A' they seek is itself a tool to be put to use. The instructor is essentially an 'A'-dispensing machine that has to be understood and operating correctly. This is not the whole truth, but it's the 'ugly' part of the truth of the communicative situation. Similarly, the 'ugly' part of the world-diagonising and world-curing pose is the implicit assertion of the world-fixer's superior 'spiritual' or 'moral' status.

I'm not offended, but even your lines quoted above imply your moral superiority to those who imply their moral superiority (to me, for instance). From my point of view, the quest for moral superiority is a fact of life like digestion. What varies is the understanding of what constitutes this superiority.

Yes, I agree. Conformity is mostly grease on the wheel. 'Bad' individuality involves a vain transgression for transgression's sake, whereas 'bad' conformity is perhaps attempted conformity to the 'lies' of advertisements.

To be clear about 'the problem,' I think about it from an individual's point of view. For some individuals, there must always be a social problem as a prop for their role. As I see it, life is difficult sometimes even for the relatively enlightened. Also, social problems are often directly related to individual freedom. If we want freedom, we will pay for it by tolerating the freedom of others (to be stupid, etc., by our lights.) So the 'broken' world is a mirror of our broken selves (our own ambivalence as complicated creatures.)

'Individuality' is a collectivist ideology constructed to overcome barriers to the system, just as we have laissez-faire to promote capitalism. — TimeLine

I think that's part of the truth. But we do have unique bodies and unique formative childhoods, so that we are indeed distinct. I agree that this distinctness can be exaggerated or feigned for ideological reasons, but what I have in mind is the genuine uniqueness that is allowed to manifest itself in a person who is not being self-conscious, who is not performing. Let's imagine the differing behavior of those who are not being watched. Maybe the rest of humanity is somehow gone. No one will ever know how they choose to pass their time in this thought experiment. I'll grant that we carry virtual societies within ourselves, and that selves are largely constructed in relation to and dependent upon other selves. Nevertheless, I think you can see the continuum I'm pointing at. In short, I think that people can indeed more or less authentic, which is roughly to say more or less flowing, trusting, uncensored.

I think it's more or less true. What we do is a function of things we did not choose (of the body and the environment that was given to us.) Moreover, I think we are only intelligible to ourselves to the degree that we see ourselves as functions. That's largely what intelligibility is, I think --a putting of things under 'laws.'

This is not to say that we will or should stop acting as if we are little sparks of pure freedom deserving of reward or punishment.

Last point: some kind of partial determinism at least is implicit in the very idea of there being a human nature. What can psychology and much of philosophy be if not a search for laws that bind our actions and that can be used to predict and influence them?

I've seen some bad textbooks. As others have mentioned, Durant's book is good. From Socrates to Sartre is also good.

Yet, we increasingly have people saying that the possession of firearms by civilians must end. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't think you have to worry about it happening the US. I believe that plenty of male liberals (moderates?) (including myself) are quietly intent on keeping their guns. The public conversation tends to be dominated by extremes, which paints a misleading picture perhaps.

Viewing the film isn't endorsement of behavior; it's a crapshoot to see if the film itself was good or not. — Noble Dust

Indeed, and that's part of the charm of art. The artist makes an object separate from him or herself that has its own life. This object may be wiser and brighter than the artist, made possible by a kind of control an artist may have of a medium which none of us have over life itself. Fame is often envied, but it looks to have a nightmarish aspect.

But what are the criteria for a succesful definition? When is a definition of X correct or adequete? — PossibleAaran

To me the correct but slippery answer is utility. How best to define utility? In a useful way, surely. With words like 'utility' and 'good,' I think we approach something like a bark or a meow. One feels success or goodness.

I have long believed that there is a meaningful difference between the terms ‘reality’, ‘being’ and ‘existence’ which is often overlooked in current philosophical discourse. This is because distinguishing 'reality', 'being', and 'existence' is practically impossible in the current English philosophical lexicon, as they are usually considered synonyms. But there are fundamental differences between these terms. — Wayfarer

What occurs to me right away is the context dependence of these words. Any of them standing alone is utterly worthless, it seems to me. Yet any of them could be put use by a skillful writer in a way that brings them to life.

I must say that I think they are synonyms. It also seems to me that any fundamental differences would be the result of a text imposing such differences (as yours does here). Of course you are free to build a system of distinctions from ordinary language (other philosophers have), but I wonder if it's worth the trouble.

Typically, in our extroverted and objectively-oriented culture, we accept that ‘what is real’ is what is 'out there'; compare Sagan 'cosmos is all there is'. But Being is prior to knowing, in the sense that if we were not beings, the cosmos would be nothing to us, we would simply react to stimuli, as animals do. Our grasp of rational principles, logic, and scientific and natural laws mediates our knowledge of the Cosmos, that comprise the basis of ‘scientia’. However what has become very confused in current culture, is that the mind, which in some sense must precede science, is now believed to be a mere consequence or output of fundamentally physical processes - even though what is ‘fundamentally physical’ is still such an open question. — Wayfarer

What comes to my mind is a child learning the word 'real.' As I remember and project it, the real is 'out there' in the sense of being shared by others. The child learns that no one else can experience her dream first hand. She has to use words to paint a picture. The people in her dream (her parents perhaps) weren't really there. If they were really there, they would remember it.

I still think that's the best way to think of 'reality' or objectivity. It is shared.

As far as 'mind' goes, that seems to be a synonym of experience. At the same time, because perhaps we see 'through' the lens of a particular brain and body, it is understood also as the condition for the possibility of experience. It is a vessel 'in' which or 'through' which experience pours and is shaped. It is the dancer and the dance, but in a way that's confusing. Nevertheless, we successfully use 'mind' when we're not trying to find a context/purpose independent definition of mind and its implied other. Sometimes metaphysics seems be exactly this thrust against particular context and purpose. This is sometimes great, since the result is less context and purpose dependent. [But the dove that flies faster in thin air doesn't fly at all in a vacuum.]

So, consciously, you are told that getting married to a trophy wife, working in a secure job, having two kids and living in the suburbs will bring you happiness. You do what you are told. You find that attractive wife, but she is mindless, you cannot have great conversations with her or laugh with her about similar jokes, but you think she is right for you because she epitomises what you are told to find attractive. You are silently suffering because you are blindly following, but you cannot articulate why because there is a totality in your conscious thoughts as dictated by your environment that you actually think that you are supposed to be happy because that is what you are told will bring you happiness. .

We are told that selling ourselves as objects - to be attractive, powerful, wealthy - is the requisite for this success, that we feel accomplished when we post a photo on Instagram and get likes for it despite the fact that it is completely meaningless. The more likes, the more worthy the object. There is an inherent emptiness in this, a lack of relatedness, or substance that despite the fact that we are dynamic, active, energetic and doing things, all of it is really nothing.

The congratulations that we receive from others who are also experiencing the symptoms of this pathology satisfy us consciously because we think there is some unity in this approval, but deep within we understand the self-deceit or the sacrifice to our own self-hood, but we simply cannot articulate it. — TimeLine

This is very well written, and I think I know what you mean. This is a great description of erring on the side of a kind of conformity (a conformity to billboards and perfume ads, which is now probably a conformity to the Instagram feeds of those who strive to incarnate such ads.). John Berger comes to mind on this: "Glamor is the happiness of being envied." On the other side we find a disagreeable insistence on 'individuality' that is little more than transgression, a mere negation of the norm which conforms in its own way.

I've tried to learn to trust my own first-hand experience. The photoshopped ads say one thing. The public sentimentality say something similar. The fullness of life, however, says things that cannot be fit conveniently into particular manipulative/marketing strategies. Even benevolent manipulation (political activism) tends to hide the part of the truth that muddies its message.

I don't honestly think people can actually get their heads round 'infinity', and most people when they talk about it are really just imagining 'a very long time'. — Pseudonym

I think of it simply as the negation of the finite. No end. No death. So instead of thinking in terms of duration, we can think in terms of the absence of a threat that is otherwise present.

Religion may play into the desire to strive for something that goes on beyond death, but I'm highly doubtful that it actually satisfies. — Pseudonym

I personally don't believe in God and/or afterlife, but I think the idea itself offers satisfaction to some people. In any case, I think that's what the nihilistic longs for --the eternity that he was possibly taught to expect by a childhood exposure to religion. Or the nihilist is just experiencing the same itch that helped inspire religion in the first place.

Of course I see that raising children and working for the benefit of the community is a medium-range satisfaction of this itch for objectivity or durable value. I understand this to be educated, liberal common sense. Heaven is now just participation in Social /Moral Progress, including Parenthood. That's fine. I'm not in the business of complaining about the world. I'm in the business of understanding how I can effectively live in the world I actually have --the only one I believe in.

b

As mentioned, a person could consciously enjoy the consumerism, have a perfect life, partner, family and everything could be great, but they are deeply miserable and are unable to ascertain why. — TimeLine

Respectfully, this is risky territory. How is one consciously enjoying a consumerist life, for instance, and yet deeply miserable? A misery that never becomes conscious is hardly a problem.

On the other hand, I understand that someone can have it all on paper and yet be miserable. But this is real or conscious misery. If they truly have it all on paper, then it will probably be called 'depression.' Of course we don't really have it all if we don't have ourselves in a state that enjoys.

What comes to my mind reading your post is the image of an ambitious person who dutifully gathers what one supposedly gathers to be successful/happy -- and yet is not happy. I'm sure that happens, and it's a good theme. A person can be envied and hang themselves, quietly desperate. Or a person can be looked down on and yet be happier than those who look down on him.

Why futile? — Pseudonym

Don't forget that I wrote "relative to this desire at its most absolute." At its most absolute, the desire wants something that lasts forever, something indestructible, something outside of the cruelty and bounty of time.

Some religious people have this. But others (often with critical/scientific minds) determine that no individual human and seemingly not even the species at large can escape the hand of time. If you tell me that most of life involves other non-futile desires, then I agree. My purpose was to clarify what I see as the essence of nihilism. The 'nothing' involved is that which escapes time.

In my view, we are usually sufficiently satisfied with medium-range objectivity. If I have a community now with standards that more or less mirror my higher ideas/values, then I can find my effort non-futile. I can imagine an unrecognized artist, too, thinking only a generation or two ahead, which will recognize him posthumously. One function of God has arguably been satisfy the unruly itch to transcend time and chance, or attain permanent status and security for one's essence if not one's body.

I read the link. New to me. What I get is that Einstein had help, though, and not that he wasn't himself important to the genesis of the idea. Still, he was apparently a jerk to let the credit fall only on him.

To the extent my opinion means anything, I have always been whole unimpressed by Einstein's philosophical musings and as far as science is concerned, his refusal to accept the probabilistic nature of quantum theory throughout his career is dumfounding. He may have been more about ego and glory than a real investigation of nature. — Rich

I haven't read much of his prose, so, when I think of Einstein as a philosopher, I think of the philosophy implicit in his science. He thought about time and space in a new way. His thought experiments were triumphs of imagination that led to technical revolutions.

I agree that he was a bad boy. It's possible though that achievement and a kind of selfishness go together. When Einstein is selfish, for instance, he's selfish for 'science.' His personal achievement is also an achievement of the species. Similarly a novelist or composer might be a nightmare in personal relationships and yet a kind of saint in his or her development of potentially shared symbolically stored awareness. To be sure, lots of self-proclaimed geniuses (actually mediocre or worse) are probably out there being a-holes in the name of their universal mission. But if the future cannot be calculated in the present (which is to say that a genuine future exists), then it's not easy to sort out the geniuses from the mediocre a-holes.

Everything in life is exactly how it is being experienced. There are no illusions. — Rich

I agree. There is a strong tendency to call primary experience an illusion relative to some true but hidden reality. Yet this hidden reality can only manifest itself as an idea within experience and the experience of its consequences.

As far as I can tell, 'illusion' is relative to purpose. To hallucinate an oasis in the desert is to an experience an illusion with respect to quenching thirst. But the hallucination may be success for another purpose. Maybe I go to the desert to have visions.

(In the first post I responded to, I like how the comment you quoted revealed the metaphysical baggage (what we think we know about time) that we tend to bring to a quantitative and geometrical theory. I suspect that some of Einstein's power came from seeing the situation with fresh eyes. I've read a bio or two, and he was a strong personality, even a bit of a 'rock star' (confident nonconformist) as a young man.

And if they’re not dimensionless, then they can be divided, so they’re not indivisible (which is what atom mean, ‘a’- not ‘tom’ cuttable.) — Wayfarer

Not to be contrary, but how does this follow? Let's imagine that the physical world is made of tiny cubes. The cubes are so tiny that our eyes cannot see them individually. Of course we don't have modern technology to rely on either. Just because we could imagine slicing that cube into pieces would not entail that we could in fact do so.

Also:

The theory of Democritus held that everything is composed of "atoms", which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that between atoms, there lies empty space; that atoms are indestructible, and have always been and always will be in motion; that there is an infinite number of atoms and of kinds of atoms, which differ in shape and size. — Wiki

So where does 'dimensionless' come from in the post above? That's what caught my attention. Democritus would not have been plausible at all if his atoms had no volume.

Also:

If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis, or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it, that all things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence you will see an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied. — Feynman