Language itself is metaphorical. — Thorongil

Existence itself is metaphorical for Will. But there is still Will and Metaphor (representation). What I fear is that Will is being used as a magical device that wipes away the problem. Will is atemporal/ aspacial striving. The existence we are used to is that of representation.. temporal/spacial/causal there is a subject for an object. Things arise in this side of things, things don't arise on the Will side of things. You can only maintain this if we lose the idea of "objectifying" because Will- being aspacial and atemporal does not do "causality-like" things.. this is what @csalisbury is getting at.

Transcendentally, we can say that the knowing subject is atemporal. — Thorongil

Right, so ever present "knowing subject". The knowing is the keyword here. The thing is, in this construct, it seems he is saying that even though it "appears" that organisms arose in time qua the organism doing the reflecting, really everything is atemporal. However, being that the "illusion" of the appearances subsist, this illusion is also atemporal being that it cannot have arisen "anywhere". Thus, there is an ever present organism because it did not "arise" (because arisen would be as if there was causality when there really is not). The illusion cannot be taken out of the equation. It cannot be explained away because "really" everything is atemporal Will. There is still the illusion to be accounted for, and which CANNOT have arisen. I'm adding in what I see to be a necessary conclusion to Schopenhauer's framework which is the ever present organism part. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well though.

While in time, timelessness is unthinkable, but while in timelessness, time is unthinkable. — Thorongil

That's fine, but how about the prospect of an ever present organism or ever present "something" by which representation must subsist? I get ever present Will, but ever present organism? If you deny the ever present organism, you will then say representation came on the scene "after" and we both agree that cannot happen if all is Will.

Yet from a transcendental perspective, the knowledge of this whole history of objects depends upon a knowing subject, without which, nothing can be said to exist. — Thorongil

Hence the oddity of an ever present organism.. If all is Will, and there is nothing but Will, the organism for which representations exist such that time exists must also always exist as causality itself cannot exist before representation (which only organisms apparently have).

Well stick to Descartes if you don't like W. One talks of 'experience of' - an oasis, say - precisely to bracket off the possibility of illusion. The illusion of experience is a nonsense. — unenlightened

I agree. I think people do a switcharoo and try to explain the causes of consciousness as some sort of hitherto unexplored origin and then because it is some genus of causes which is not what we originally thought, they want to then go an extra step and say the actual consciousness is therefore an illusion. If we want to bring in Wittgenstein, we can bring it there. It's not even an illusion as much as something that was not what we originally thought. They are confusing everybody by misusing the word illusion.

'Mind is an illusion' is not a legitimate position in philosophy of mind. Or did you mean some other question? — unenlightened

I agree with that answer, but I guess now it has turned to this notion (influenced by Wittgenstein) that one cannot even discuss this matter because there is no "there" there.

1) there has always been a subject, we might say, but not necessarily a representing-organism — Thorongil

I'm not sure if you agreed or not but I laid out the argument earlier that there was no "before" or after in an atemporal world. I know you used words like Will is completely free in a positive sense, but either I don't understand or I don't think it actually does answer this question of how representing can "come on" the scene AFTER pure Will is on the scene. To my mind, representation is ALWAYS there along with Will (as it's flipside double-aspect) because it cannot "arise" when "arising" implies causality. Schopenhauer seems to admit to this conundrum in Book 1 section 7, and I don't think he really explains it other than it is like the myth of Kronos. It is very much one hand writing the other writing the other writing the other.. Time cannot "exist" all of a sudden, it cannot arise, it cannot just appear at some "x" time, so it has to have been there all along, which means, there has to have been an organism all along.

time is not recognized but supplied by this subject. — Thorongil

And this "supplying" does not happen after any original state of completeness, but has to always been there doing its supplying thing in order to not create the contradiction. And again, since organisms are the ones where this subsists (at least according to section 7 in Book 1), then it is a conundrum. Csalisbury also recognized this and is having a similar discussion in the "This Old Thing" thread.

Now, from the perspective of the affirmation of the will, we are obliged to say that the will has always affirmed itself, and thereby that the world as representation has always existed. But from the perspective of the denial of the will, we are obliged to admit that representation is illusory.

This is simply a feature of transcendental idealist philosophy. Two seemingly opposed positions might be simultaneously true depending on what perspective we take. From the perspective of time, we cannot but apply this category to all things, but from the perspective of the non-temporal, no such category exists. — Thorongil

My argument was that representation "always existing" comes with it the very odd notion that there was a representing organism that was always there as there was no "time" before "time" and "time" is only recognized in a representing organism according to Schop. However, the contradiction goes away sort of, if we interpret Schop as a panpsychist and that micro-representations are around even BEFORE the first blown conscious organism, such that micro-experiences have always been occurring in force, matter, etc. Schop does say as such when he discusses force and the like, so this can be a legitimate move.

However, if we do not make that move.. we are stuck with an ever present organism such that representation can always be in the picture. It "seems' like time happened billions of years before this organism, but the organism itself has to always be around if that is where representation "exists".

As far as the illusion thing and denying the Will, I can understand denying the Will as an act of symbolic rebellion but as to leading to an actual metaphysical state called Nirvana where the life-denier is in some sublime state- this might be questionable. Maybe ego-death means that one just doesn't give a shit about eating, doing, being, not being..but even if ego-death exists, one's body and object/subject is still subsisting, and such, so one is still "in" the world of representation. It seems like not ego-death, but death death probably ends representation.

Where is where-ness is not a better question than what is what-ness, or when is when-ness. I could point to a place in your experience where your experience happens - 'the human brain'. Or more poetically I could say 'It's behind you.' Or I could simply and more usefully say it happens in thought, which is to say that it is not an event in the world. But even this is wide open to misinterpretation, because thought is a physical process; it is however not the physical process that is the content of the thought. — unenlightened

Yep I agree with all this. I know you are trying to do the Witt preciseness of language and kind of make it a linguistic tangle so we can see that a real question cannot be even asked (no what-ness, where-ness)...but cutting the bullcrap, what is your answer to this besides that it is "no-thing"?

Again, the thing is Schop explicitly discusses the will affirming itself in different ways before the debut of representation-forming animals.

If the will affirms itself in different ways, then there is change. And somehow, for Schop, there's change before time. Which doesn't make any sense at all (though you can paper it over with vague generalities about the will and atemporality which ignore the problem altogether) — csalisbury

Yes! This is exactly the point I am trying to make in the Illusion thread.

As to why the will affirms itself, Schopenhauer does not venture to say, preferring merely to speak of it metaphorically as the original sin. — Thorongil

Will affirming itself, seems a bit magical.. just like a bunch of biological molecules interacting with the environment "giving rise" to consciousness. There is always something missing. Also, again, I can be in agreement with the will "affirming" itself, if the affirming never takes place at any "x" point but is simply the double aspect of Will. If the affirming is "after" some more primary stage, then that is suspect as there is no causality that would have a before (primary ONLY WILL) and after (WILL AND AFFIRMING OF WILL). It would have to be there from the beginning with Will. Original sin implies there was a Garden of Eden "before" this fall into time, but that cannot be the case.

The word mind usually connotes the brain functions that give rise to consciousness. To state that it is an illusion would be to state that one is conscious that one's own consciousness is illusory, which is absurd. — Thorongil

Agreed. But, in a way, Schopenhauer claims it is an illusion (like Maya). How can it be real if there is something "that feels like it is real" even if it is not? The actual feeling like it is real is still something. Tying this back to the other thread- that is why I claim that Representation is not secondary (it does not "come from" or "derive" or "arise") from the monistic Will, but must be simply the double-aspect of Will. To claim that the Will "does" anything to itself so as to make an illusion is to anthropomorphize Will and give some sort of Neoplatonic unwarranted superstructure that one cannot fairly posit without jumping to some wildly speculative ideas.

Well, I doubt he's taking a Schopenhaueran approach, but it seems to me that Un's "no-thing" means simply that consciousness is not a 'thing.' It's not a homunculus or a pineal gland or a super-platinum soul-gem. Its a process, a verb, something that happens. It's not nothing, because it happens, but it's certainly not a thing. — csalisbury

This is where I think the Wittgenstein influence probably makes people stop at a dead end. Because it is the very process which all other processes and things arise, it should somehow be considered nonsense to discuss? Also, how does this make it an illusion because it is "no-thing"?

I think Un's right to call it "no-thing." I mean, I know Schop calls will the 'thing-in-itself' but he's playing off Kant. There's no sense in which the will is a 'thing.' — csalisbury

If that is what he means, then I would be more sympathetic with the argument, but is that what he is getting at that no-thing is similar to the "thing-in-itself"?

No one (no-thing) is awake... Psychological time is the result of identification with the past and future, giving rise to fear and hope, suffering and pleasure. This is the sense of continuing, the stream of consciousness that is indeed the narrative voice. It is wrong perhaps to call it an illusion; it is real enough and fills one's life from day to day, yet it is a fabrication of thought endlessly reacting to itself. It is not a precondition of life. — unenlightened

So "where" is thought endlessly reacting with itself the aether? Because your "no-thing" and "nowhere" is pretty much code for that. In what way to does calling it the "no-thing" change anything?

Not just all other things, but 'the very "you"' itself as well. In which voice one objectifies subjectivity, making consciousness an intimate thing. (Mumbles something about beetles in boxes...).

Or I could liken it to Kant's space and time, as a condition of talking meaningfully about thing-hood and therefore necessarily no-thing itself. One can talk of time being an illusion as well, but what is one saying? — unenlightened

Ugh, Wittgenstein. It's like code for "stop philosophizing". So what if I can't point to an actual consciousness. It is the very platform for which everything is conditioned, and thus rightly, you brought in Kant's space and time. The very fact that you say, or objectify anything, including your own consciousness is because you have one. But I think it's rhetoric to say it's "no-thing".

Representation is not atemporal, though. — Thorongil

Yes, I wasn't saying in Schopenhauer's conception, this was in my own conception. I was trying to solve a conundrum that I see in Schopenhauer as far as I interpret it. How can representation "arise" when there is no causality in Will? That is to say it doesn't "arise" (at least not in the common sense notion). Rather, it is always there "with" will in that there was not point "x" when representation started.

But in this case, the right answer, I believe, is 'fuck off with your meaningless question'. No thing, but not nothing. But I haven't the energy today to do the full Wittgensteinian exposition. — unenlightened

Please do. Tell us how the question itself in nonsense. I see it as a conundrum and a head scratcher, but meaningless, not as much. We are referring to something quite readily available to us. In fact, it can be argued the most intimate thing as it is the very "you" that all other things become some-thing.

I'm with Descartes on this one; that one can be deceived about anything and everything, except that there is a subject of deception. That said, I would also suggest that one commonly is deceived into identifying the subject as something distinct from other 'thinking things', rather than as no-thing, having no characteristics bar emptiness, which implies that it is not individual or personal. — unenlightened

Yeah, but you don't "get" it man..we are all one with no separate minds and you are living in an illusion. I'm not even saying this right now.

Oh wait, at the end there it looks like you do "get" it. Here's the thing, even if consciousness is mirage-like, this mirage "exists" in some way, even if the origins of the consciousness is somehow descriptively from something else. What's funny about Dennett's position is he seems to go into painstaking detail to say he is not committing the homunculus fallacy but then does so by saying the mind is an illusion. Why? Because the illusion has to subside somewhere. Explaining the "actual" origins of the illusion, and ways in which it "we" are fooled, means that all these tricks and mirages are happening "somewhere" and that implies that there is a projector of mind where the illusion is playing out and that is the homnuclus fallacy. The illusion itself has to be accounted for as something that "feels like" it is happening.

I would resign the chess board and recognize your victory IF one condition could be met:

IF I could show that your view of life was entirely and objectively true and my view was entirely and objectively false.

I can't, so... I do not resign the board. — Bitter Crank

That is fair. Objectivity is quite slippery here. I can only try to do this several ways all of which will probably be unsatisfactory (although I wouldn't mind an unexpected satisfactory). I am going to assume that empirical means verified through the scientific process as it is accepted in the academic community of verification. This will probably never be the case. I can argue that being value statements, they never will. You can argue value statements are at the least nonsensical statements (shades of Wittgenstein) or at most charitable, based on the predisposed attitudes of the individual. Anyways here are three attempts:

1) If all of "this" (meaning both unwanted pains and the very internal flux of our individual (lowercase) epistemological wills) are manifestations of a vaster (uppercase) Will, then perhaps we can say that encoded in the DNA of metaphysics is very design of our suffering. Will is playing itself out- striving forward with no design and with no final ends. Of course Will being considered "the-thing-itself" it cannot, in principle, be verified using empirical standards of space and time. It can only be seen by first-hand observation of one's own introspection. Then this is analogized to others, objects, and the universe itself.

2) If pain is to be measured in any "empirical" way, it would have to be judged by either objective or subjective standards, then it would have to be measured in a precise way such that each feeling is measured for quality, condition, and quantity of particular mental states. If these studies suggest that indeed we are always in suboptimal states and then this may be "evidence".

3) One cannot say "aha, you are lying, you really feel this way", but one may be able to get a consensus that while optimistic aesthetics (feeling connected, feeling like one has it figured out, etc.) last a little while, the pessimistic aesthetic (even if just rudimentary form) always comes back to the fore when the others do not seem to work out. Like a "broken tool" the pessimistic aesthetic may be behind the optimistic ones that seem right only in short durations.

That said, I have gained some respect for your argument. I don't like it, but for anyone so inclined it makes perfectly good sense. — Bitter Crank

Thanks for the acknowledgement. At the end of the day, that's all we can do with arguments whose premises we disagree with but see the validity in the points.

Does that make me a crypto philosophical pessimist? Maybe, but I am disinclined to take the additional step of concluding: Given that the world offers an inconsistently unsatisfactory arrangement, is it reasonable to voluntarily discontinue the species, non-breeding pair by non-breeding pair?

The key to my unwillingness to take this step is located in the phrase "inconsistently unsatisfactory". The world is also inconsistently satisfactory.

There will be unexpected pleasures in the world.
The world imposes on us the needs of survival and the possibility of realized dreams within certain environmental and cultural constraints.
"Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure".
"These "truths" are independent of one's general temperament".
"One cannot choose to turn off their needs and wants- they are a part of their situation".

While granting the truth of your several points, it does not require a wholesale rejection of everything you said to place one's self CAUTIOUSLY on the side of philosophical optimism. — Bitter Crank

Crypto-philosophical pessimist- I like the sound of that! Perhaps there are thousands more!

BC Premise: Your basis for supporting procreation is the possibility of unexpected pleasures, and this reason should override the very burdens that the world imposes in the first place.

schop1 rebuttal:
1. The very instrumental nature of existence overrides unexpected pleasures. To have a child so it can experience a Nietzschean tragic-comedy seems dubious. Your position, so it seems, is "we may win or lose but the fact that we experienced the game is what matters" (this is the way interpret it at least being that we know that unexpected pleasures are not all that exists). To de facto force a person to deal with instrumentality for the possibility of brief pleasures (with the ironic twist of living a tragic-comedy of life) does not make sense to impose on a new person when there is no one who is there in the first place. People should not be grist for their own mill just so they can experience their own lives being played out for better or worse.

2. Are you sure you do not put your hopes into an imaginary version of what the next generation will be? Hope can be an addictive drug that very likely distorts the reality of future pleasures. As Schop/Buddhists state, pleasures are temporary, often accompany pain, and often are the cause of suffering when they are frustrated. The fact that when pleasure/flow/concentration is not met or has already been achieved, we see reality in its relatively blah/ennui state tells us something.

3. Accommodating to life is often seen as the "realist" attitude (pragmatic attitude). But that is simply because we must make do. Making do is after the fact of birth, not before.

4 You seem to think "life is good right now, ergo life is good", but this may be short-sighted.
Entailed in this position seems to be the idea of: "Why tempt fate by questioning life's value for the future generation?" You don't want life to make you pessimistic again, so don't tempt fate. It is a very human trait to not want to tempt fate. It has relics of tribal superstitions. The "gods" of positive experience need their sacrifice so they can keep sending positive experiences. The sacrifices they want is the constant reassuring that things are all right all the time. We don't want to make them angry and therefore vengeful.

Not quite that simple, no. The philosophical stance one takes is a combination of the cultural resources the culture makes available, one's personality, and one's personal experiences. A neolithic hunter-gatherer band member would have had language, a religious view point of some sort, close human companions, folkways, and the possibility of a more or less pleasant life. — Bitter Crank

While I agree with you that temperament might lead someone to philosophical pessimistic conclusions more readily than someone with a more optimistic temperament, the conclusions of philosophical pessimism are not necessarily dependent on individual personalities.

1) There will always be unwanted pains in the world- from minor discomforts to major catastrophes whether that be other people, unwanted situations, natural disasters, accidents, disease, and the like.

2) The world is the reality that it is- learning conforming to conform and being stoic/unaffected by it (despite this being a by-and-large impossible thing to do), does not take away the fact that it was not ideal in the first place.

2a) Other-imposed constraints- The world imposes on us the needs of survival and unwanted pain in a certain environmental and cultural constraints.

2b) Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasure. Being that we can never have true satiation, we are always in flux and never quite getting at anything in particular. It is a world to be endured. We may find ourselves projects to concentrate on and have that "flow" feeling, but once one is out of such a mode that might capture one's thoughts thoroughly, one sees it is just going from project to project or chasing the "flow" so as to not think about the situation at large.

These "truths" are independent of one's general temperament. Though it is an aesthetic of sorts, I cannot see how it is a matter of perspective as really the core of the matter of the human condition. It is not even a matter of people denying these claims. Rather, it is a matter of putting 2 + 2 together to see the larger pattern going on.

The counterarguments that one can just think their way out of the situation seem to not work. One cannot choose to turn off their needs and wants- they are a part of their situation. One cannot choose to get rid of unwanted pains. The absurdity of the instrumental, discussed by many philosophers is just part of the situation.

An interesting book you might enjoy, if you can find a copy: Keep the River On Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum, 1969. (Check out on line used book stores like Alibis or ABE.com.) Schneebaum (now deceased) traveled into the jungles of Peru in search of a particular tribe, the Arakmbut, who were presumed to be uncontacted. He found them, and stayed with them for a long time -- accepted. They turned out to be cannibals, and the book includes discussions of flesh eating.

There is no lesson in it about Schopenhauer or Hegel, but he does describe exactly the kind of experience you propose. In time there was more contact, the tribe caught numerous diseases to which they had not been previously exposed, and their quality of life took a nose dive. — Bitter Crank

That does seem interesting. That might be some good reading. A more contemporary one I've heard was pretty good is Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday which I believe is about tribes in New Guinea.

"Improvements" in the quality of life -- electricity, indoor toilets, better food, less disease... seem to be paired with a decline in the quality of life -- assembly lines, piece work, ruthless exploitation, low pay... The better things get, the worse they are. What Marx described for 19th century Europe and England occurs all over again in SE Asia. The interpersonal, family, community, religious structures that bind life and meaning together are ripped to shreds by factory life. Farm life was hard, factory life is worse.

Modern industrial life, conducted on its terms, drives people crazy. — Bitter Crank

So is your answer that philosophical pessimism is simply culture? Let us say there is a spectrum of truth, but with it comes certain painful understandings. In a traditional society, perhaps one feels more in tune with nature, the tribe, and a certain pattern of lifestyle but one does not have insights into the things that civilization can bring. Let us say that one insight is philosophical pessimism. It makes me wonder if there have ever been philosophical pessimists in a tribal society ever. They don't have to be Westernized ones, but perhaps their own version. Someone who just sees life as an instrumentality that goes nowhere. I mean, supposedly, human nature is human nature. Philosophical pessimism goes back at least as far back as the first Wisdom literature. Can it go back further than that, pre-agricultural society? What I don't want to do is fall in the trap of the "noble savage". It is easy to do, and I think agricultural based societies have been romanticizing traditional societies since the beginning of agriculture. Stories like the Garden of Eden and the like always propose a more idyllic time before large civilizations.

Right. As soon as an African mother has a pot to piss in, she starts reading Schopenhauer, wondering why she bothers to have children, and doesn't just get it over with by using her machete to chop off her own head. — Bitter Crank

Oh c'mon Bitter Crank, you should love Schopenhauer- he practically invented the genre of Bitter Crank (or at least perfected it!). But to address what you said there, you do raise a good point (see I'm at least being charitable).

If philosophical pessimism (or any abstract position that requires certain prior body of knowledge) is some sort of truth, can it be universally intuited or is it dependent on culture?

If I were to be accepted in a previously uncontacted tribal society and got to know their language and they were willing to accept me as someone they can converse with casually, and I brought up ideas of Philosophical Pessimism, would they "get" the very notion of choosing to not exist to spare the next generation, and the idea that life is flux and often unsatisfactory or would it be not even understood (shades of Sapir-Whorf.. but let's try to avoid that argument if we can).. Would they find an analogy in their own culture (oh yes, this reminds me of the myth of the laughing jackal...)? Would they actually get it without analogy? (Oh shit, now that I look at it, every day I am always hungry, I secretly am bored of all this damn dancing, and hunting just seems tedious, these fellow humans are very difficult to deal with, I'm tired of the constant warfare with the neighboring tribe)..

Or, is it a Hegelian thing? With a culture that has science, technology, comes ennui, and the nuances of living a post-scientific revolution lifestyle? Perhaps the more technology and science the more ennui and pessimism becomes unfolded in our dialectic as we start "realizing" things that were simply not apparent prior?

I don't know that there would be a distinct point x. I guess it's something of a sorites paradox. What's a heap? What's 'representation'? When do creatures see? Is it when they first develop photoreceptive cells? — csalisbury

Yes I agree. We cannot even say "develop photoreceptive cells" as we'd have to qualify when "develop" happens and what that is even like before "develop". There is always that odd jump to before consciousness to consciousness that does not add up.

Is that any more of a problem than how little single-cell organisms evolve into complex ones? — csalisbury

Yeah, I thought of the same response after I wrote that. We just have to posit that subjectivity is a brute aspect of matter/energy in pansychism. At least you are not getting something from nothing here since it was there from the beginning.

I rather like the blending of Schopenhauer and panpsychism because it makes more sense. The Will is the flip side of matter/energy. You would still have to account for time and space being in the picture though. At what point is the demarcation between pre-representational and post-representational objects/organisms and when does this demarcation take place? If we say "point x" then that point x has to be accounted for as to why it's different than the point right before x.

Well, I'm down to help with the third option. Regarding the first option, I don't think an endorsement from me is going to affect TGW all that much tho tbh. — csalisbury

Well, we can say the double aspect of Will and representation goes all the way down. Will is never without representation, which are both atemporal.. How to get passed the ever present organism then? I guess, one can bite the bullet and go the panpsychist route- even forces have a "what it's like to be" aspect, which has the oddity of giving non-organisms experiential qualities. Schopenhauer seemed to endorse this ideas. However, I still don't see it as really solving the problem, because you still have the combination problem of how little experiential qualities bring about full blown representational creating organisms.

Well, I've already spoken my part about the illusion question, recently, and a while back. But I'm still not sure what you're looking for. For TGW to admit there are limitations to Schopenhauer? For an answer, in-and-of Schopenhauer, which would resolve these supposed limitations? For different clues and avenues to follow, outside of Schop? — csalisbury

All of the above.

Yeah, what I don't get is the idea of atemporal change, how the will changes, and evolves, into this or that, before representation, eventually coming to representation, as a kind of refined way to will more efficiently. This idea is certainly present in Schopenhauer and it doesn't make that much sense to me. I don't understand how change (& change in a certain direction!) occurs without time. — csalisbury

Yeah, that was basically my question, especially how Will changes and evolves into this or that before representation. Do you think his illusion response answers the question or do you think my objections to that response makes sense?

Yeah, I think I see where you're coming from. I just don't where to go from there, while hewing to Schopenhauer. — csalisbury

I think @The Great Whatever thinks I am badly missing the point though. Do you think that is the case? If so, where? If not, where might he be missing the point?

I don't know, maybe we need a third party. @csalisbury, do you think what I'm saying make sense?

Look, I really don't want to continue this. I refer you to my previous comments on illusion. Illusion is not some kind of 'second substance' or something like that. — The Great Whatever

And I acknowledge that, and thus the Will/Illusion dichotomy is ever present.

Okay, I really don't want to continue this conversation anymore. I'm sorry, I just don't think it will be profitable, given that you're still on this and nothing that I say seems to help clarify what you want or mean. — The Great Whatever

It's not that it doesn't clarify, it just doesn't answer it. You keep changing the terms and thinking you are going to get a different result. Will/Illusion.. Will/Misconception.. there is always a dichotomy and not a unity. "No No No" you say.. "misconception is some sort of meta meta, where the Will fools itself that it is itself".. And of course the fact that there is this "fooling itself" in the first place is the very thing to be explained. Will/Will-fooling-itself is still pretty much the same dichotomy of will and representation.

No, I'm saying your objection doesn't make sense, because you're presenting two thing alongside one another as if they're contradictory when there's no clear sense in which they are.

Imagine if I said, 'there can't be trees -- all is plants.' — The Great Whatever

Well they are contradictory. You are presupposing that there is the misconception in the first place. How can a misconception exist alongside unity? In order to have misconception, you need to have something outside of itself. Well, that is why I say that an interpretation can be that the misconception is simply the other aspect of Will, which means, there is Will and representation as flip sides of each other, not one arising from the other. However, this still doesn't make sense, because then you have that pesky ever present first organism.

Perhaps @csalisbury is right, Will just swerves into representation :).

This makes no sense, friend. — The Great Whatever

That's what I'm saying!

But that's simple. The misconception comes from thinking of time as if it were transcendentally real, rather than ideal, and so making category errors. — The Great Whatever

There cannot be misconception. All is Will.

An illusion is just the mistaken conception that there is some new thing. — The Great Whatever

You keep trying to move the goal post but getting at the same problem. Then instead of illusion, you have to account for the "mistaken conception" when there is just Will. You can explain to me it is a result of will fighting itself and still not get anywhere.

All of a sudden you have wrought some sort of ontology of Will that seems more simple escoteric rhetoric. Two Wills don't make a right, they make a "mistaken conception"? I don't think so.

Okay, sure. What can happen, though, is that the will in objectifying itself presents representation itself as arising in time, — The Great Whatever

Ah, see I told you, you were going to "school" me on illusion :)! This all just seems like getting something from nothing. Your use of the word "arising" as if at point A is will at point B is the world of representation seems a category error as it makes no sense that there is arising in an atemporal unity. Your use of the word illusion as a way to be the final word, when the idea of illusion itself makes no sense when there is just unity. If all is one, there cannot be room for One and Illusion, it is just a meta-version of subject/object, the exact thing you say does not exist. One/Illusion is just a replacement for subject/object and you simply have the same problem with different terms.

As for how I would characterize objectification, it would be: the will without presentation has a kind of unity to it, which isn't the singularity we find in presentation (of being 'numbered' one). This unity is pretty abstract and hard to understand, not well fleshed out in the text. But this unity is one of striving and competition with itself. In other words, the will is internally strife-indicing, fights with itself, injures itself, inures itself on its own terms (which we experience as pain). — The Great Whatever

All this I agree he pretty much lays out and is not my disagreement.

Representation then arises as a way of doing this, by more effectively managing its own struggles, and creating codes, signs, and pathways for trying to satisfy the will by committing these injuries and winning these internal competitions. — The Great Whatever

THIS is where we disagree. Representation "arising" just does not make sense. Whether it is Schopenhauer or your interpretation of it, makes little difference to my argument in this case. Schopenhauer cannot have it both ways where Representation "arises", or "emerges" and have an atemporal Will or a non-temporal Will (or whatever way is best to describe this unity). The "arising" must be accounted for itself.