:up: :grin:

More generally, this whole line seems related to modern philosophy's obsession with what I would want to call infallibility. "But how do we know that we are correct?" "But how do we know that a description is truly definite, or that a name truly designates uniquely?" The simple answer is that we don't. At least not with the certainty and precision that modern philosophy seeks. — Leontiskos

@Banno

Agreed, which is why people who care about this stuff naturally gravitate to later Wittgenstein. Because then it's just about language games and use within context of a community and forms of life.

I think the project was failed to begin with. I think it's an anthropological question regarding language. Logic is a system devised within language, and not how it is naturally used. Thus, when using it to define language, it is a category error, and it's not even worth doing because it never was meant to fit in the first place. Logic is another type of language, not the basis of language.

So I do think deontology is more fitting than consequentialist theories for an ethical foundation. However, I think deontology itself has to be qualified for this to be true.

If you follow a command- even an ethical one, you have to do it for a reason. Well, how do you know if that reason is "good" or not? Generally that more meta-ethical question has to do with issues dealing with universal principles. These universal principles, in turn, have to do with something more though. Simply being universal doesn't confer morality to it. Rather, it's something deeper. It has to do with some sort of shared aspect of being we share. That shared aspect is our being living animals. Hence words like "dignity" is often used as to the content of this aspect of living animals (some might only focus on the humanity rather than animal aspect but works the same). But it's not enough to point out the "what" (dignity) that is common among us, but also there must be some emotional aspect, and that is where "compassion" comes into it. Thus, the meta-ethical root of ethical action and sensibility is the emotional component of compassion. Compassion applied to ethics, is not violating the content (dignity) of others. Violating this dignity would be things like not respecting autonomy of others, not respecting the suffering of others, etc. So that is how I think deontology is rooted. It can't simply be duty for duty's sake.

Russell was puzzling over how sentences such as "The King of France is bald" are to be understood. "The King of France" doesn't refer to anything; so how are we to make sense of the sentence? Is it false, or is it nonsense? Russell made sense of them with some rather clever logic. — Banno

But that is what I am questioning. I don't think this was puzzling to begin with. There exists a non-existent class (present King of France) for which no referent or predicate can even exist. This proposition is neither true nor false because of the non-existence of the class not the referent. Just recognize that there are classes of things that do not exist as a state of affairs. You'd have to be an extreme logical atomist to believe that classes don't exist, only individuals.

A brief way of saying this: A class of people can't exist, therefore an individual and their predicates in that class does not (and cannot) exist. Use universal and existential quantifiers if you want.

One view is that a definite description sets out the essence of the individual involved. The individual just is that which satisfies the definite description. But if we do not need definite descriptions in order for proper names to work, then we do not need such essences, either. — Banno

Yes, which I thought it appropriate to bring up ideas of Kripke's modal approach, as that is exactly what his theory is arguing against. He didn't like Russell's idea of a definite description as the basis for how names work. The main reason was the notion of contingency (opposite of necessity). That is to say, there could be some possible worlds where that definite description simply doesn't hold true. However, what would work across all possible worlds is that there was an event where that name picked out that person across all possible worlds.

My main point though against that, was not an aside or anything, but a legitimate questioning of this move. That is to say, if the definite description doesn't hold because it can't make it past "the test" of all possible worlds, why should the laws of causality (presumably the foundation for the original dubbing event of the named person), hold true either?

I decided to go back to Donnellan because it seemed to me that his, earlier, approach might cover both modal cases and Fine's use of definitions. — Banno

So I find a lot of these debates about reference come about because of oddly sticking to this idea of language pointing out individual entities. It is seen in Russell's On Denoting (there exists a unique x such that x is...). It seems to be in early Wittgenstein. I don't get why this emphasis on having to pick out a unique set of properties in an individual and it not just being a class (like it seems Donnellan allows for in attributive notions of reference). Can it just be that this is just debates on wrong initial premises causing confusion? Is there good reason Russell made this move to care for picking out individuals in the world? Is there reason to keep correcting this if that assumption is not even a good basis for names to begin with?

Names can just refer, sans description. — Banno

Sounds like Kripke. As long as the laws of causality and identity remain in play across all possible worlds, then the name that was dubbed for an individual will be "rigidly designated" for that individual across all possible worlds.

Of course, why the laws of causality or identity would have to obtain across all possible worlds would then have to be justified as well for that to be the source of how the individual is necessarily tied to that name (or if it is changed or mistaken, the name as it historically developed for that person).

It is not one more justification of a theoretical solution to the truth of our blindness to and possible refusal of the other. — Antony Nickles

Schopenhauer would argue the compassionate impulse of empathy is the foundation of ethics, in fact. If anything, understanding the language games (of humans and maybe other animals) is the application of this goal. A pat on the belly, a helping hand, a sympathetic ear, a feeding of seeds.

I imagine that is so, too, but how do you know it is true? — Janus

Inference. Why not believe everyone’s a zombie then? I’m not sure the implication but if it’s that humans only have access to mental events, I’d turn that question right around but without the “imagine that is so, too”.

Yes, that’s what I was getting at in my last post.

But, until homo sapiens eventually became Self-Conscious, there was no "what it's likeness" as postulated by Nagel. "Likeness" is the ability to make analogies & metaphors to represent experienced reality in abstract concepts. — Gnomon

You speak of secondary consciousness. Primary consciousness is also "what it's likeness", but it is not conceptual or self-aware to the kind or degree of humans. There is something of what it's like for a dog to sniff a scent, or hear a command, and what's it like for a bat to send and receive echo locations, etc. A "what it's like" is to have an experience of the world. You don't have to know you are having an experience.

When an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event or physical entity — Gnomon

Cool stuff, but I think it goes too far. Enthusiasm for the subject doesn't pull the rabbit out of the hat, unfortunately. That is to say abstraction already needs the observer. Abstraction isn't the observer. If it is, then that has to be explained, and like "illusion" or "integration", it all becomes hidden dualisms of begging the question.

I'm starting to think the best way to get the most out of Wittgenstein is to approach a set of philosophical problems with the approach used in the Tractatus and then the approach used in the PI. I think only using the aphorisms and some of the examples in his work just treads over the same ground and doesn't really bring the significance of Wittgenstein's approach onto philosophy.

So for example. One problem in philosophy is whether time, space, causality, are external or in the mind. Kant said it was the mind's conditions that allow for these things (transcendental) and thus not external. Cool, so Kant had a theory that tried to explain things..

So how would early and later Wittgenstein deal with this problem? Or if he wouldn't, how would he go about critiquing Kant? These are the kind of things that reveal the cache value of Wittgenstein's work.

My view isn't so much about falsifying qualia but about whether our concepts of qualia and their irreducibility can plausibly arise through information processing. — Apustimelogist

Yeah and how about that theory? How does it "arise"? "What" is it that is "arisen"?

If that is the case then it strongly suggests to me that dualism is an illusion because it would entail epiphenomenalism which is absurd. — Apustimelogist

That's only one form of dualism and even that is not entailed in physicalism. Physicalism doesn't have room for mental events other than hidden dualism (has been my premise for a while).

suggests to me that dualism is an illusion because it would entail epiphenomenalism which is absurd. On the other hand it suggests one might be able to defend the identity between brain processes and qualia even if one cannot be reduced to the other. This would allow a physicalist to defend the notion that everything is physical, or more specifically that nothing extra is needed to describe reality. — Apustimelogist

I think that isn't much of an argument other than we don't know. That is again, only one form of dualism, and it's one that's prone to physicalist accounts because it starts with the physical causing mental.

Emergence does have to be explained here. How is it that emergent properties exist prior to the viewer, and all that. It's bald assertion to just say that "and it emerges", it's about as explanatory as saying, "it's an illusion".

I don't see the problem. It seems to me that under your characterization, physicalism would be falsified if there existed any concepts that were not physical: e.g. organisms, economies, mountains. They are all just labels that describe our empirical observations at different scales nd levels of abstraction. I can think of an observer the same way, I just mean more or less something that can respond differently to different inputs. That seems to be the kind of minimal characterization of information processing. — Apustimelogist

Well we are having a philosophical discussion, so paying attention to these distinctions matter in the dialectic and debates at hand.

So you said:

It seems to me that under your characterization, physicalism would be falsified if there existed any concepts that were not physical: e.g. organisms, economies, mountains. They are all just labels that describe our empirical observations at different scales nd levels of abstraction. — Apustimelogist

Well, you are doing it again. "Concepts" is a loaded word there and you are going to start going down a rabbit-hold of a different debate regarding how concepts represent the world. It's advised to be careful with language here...

Rather, the issue at hand is how it is that mental phenomena are physical events. It's not an issue of what mental event is associated with a physical event (the easy problems), but the hard problem, why it is that some physical events have this mental quality to them, other than just asserting that they do. It would even have to explain hidden dualisms such as "illusion that's why!" because the illusion now has to be explained.

I can think of an observer the same way, I just mean more or less something that can respond differently to different inputs. That seems to be the kind of minimal characterization of information processing. — Apustimelogist

Ok that is a little more precise. Right, information processes.. But this doesn't really solve the problem I mentioned earlier in the last post about mixing behavior/process and mental (what it's like aspects).

Thus information can process with no "what it's likeness" to it. It is just behavior all the way down. And wherever there is "what it's likeness" happening, "what" then is that as opposed to the other behavior that was going on? Then you are back to a dualism of some sort of mental space that pops out of physical space which is basically the question all over again.

What do you mean? — Apustimelogist

I mean what I said ha.

But if you are asking me to explain more.. You said, "...physical processes that enable an observer to make distinctions".

Physical processes are supposed to explain the observer. The way you said it there, the observer is already in the equation, and so was not explained.

But if we follow Kripke on essentialism and nature having the properties it does for intrinsic reasons, then it seems like a universe where observers aren't physically possible is also a universe where observers aren't metaphysically possible. This would have implications for the metaphysics of a multiverse, where most universes cannot support observers, or the Fine Tuning Problem. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So one possible problem with Kripke's "essentialism" is that it relies on a causal chain of events to "rigidly designate" an entity. That is to say, all possible worlds would have to have the same or a similar law of causality as ours. However, that isn't necessarily true. Some possible worlds could have different laws of causality perhaps. And if that is the case, that sort of necessity of the object with its name might not hold true as it is proposed in that theory. Kripke's "essentialism" seems to be based on its causality of the how it was named, not its substance.

So I guess, in a Kripkean assumption, all possible worlds at least have to have causality to even exist. But I am not sure if that helps answer this question of something like the status of "unknown unknowns".

Again, I think this all goes back to the question of the properties of something without an observer. Even if we were to say like Hilary Putnam, that names of natural kinds have their roots in some sort of difference in substance, like anything else, the distinction between substances could be questioned without an observer.

I don't think there is anything problematic in entertaining both the mental and physical as concepts that we have constructed due to the nature of our brains. — Apustimelogist

The problem isn't entertaining both but replacing one with the other without explanation. You said:
"embodied in the physical processes that enable an observer to make distinctions"

That is placing the observer in the equation without explanation, as supposedly in physicalism, the explanation is somehow physical regarding the "observer". That is begging the question.

Information is another abstraction and any notion of information depends on the ability for an observer or detector to make distinctions; information is therefore not really a thing but is something that manifests in the interaction between a stimulus and observer / detector. What this means is that any notion of information would be at least implicitly embodied in the physical processes that enable an observer to make distinctions (e.g. so that I can recognize a photo or a neuron can selectively respond to different inputs): the information is physical, just not in any way independent of an observer. — Apustimelogist

I think you are making the hidden dualism mistake here. Check the OP of this thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14569/hidden-dualism/p1

Specifically this:

I find it interesting how many materialist/physicalist accounts of the mind assume the very thing they are explaining. This is often called a "hidden dualism" and amongst other things, I take this to mean that the dualism is "hidden" from the arguer.

Often times this looks like a sleight of hand between process/behavior and mental events.
Example: The neuron fires (process/behavioral). The neurons fire (process/behavioral). The networks form (process/behavioral). The sensory tissues/organs are acted upon (process/behavioral). A line or shape is processed in a visual cortex (mental). An object is perceived (mental). An object is recognized (mental). A long-term potentiation (process/behavioral). A memory is accessed (process/behavioral). "Fires together, wires together" (process/behavioral), associating one thing with another (mental).
As you see with these examples, these often are interchanged all the time, leading to a belief one is talking purely behavioral, when in fact it is a mix of process/behavioral and mental. This muddling of the two is where the hidden dualism comes into play. It is this constant category error that trips people up into not understanding any "hard problem". It leads to blind scientism, and a constant not "getting" the problems that arise from philosophy of mind. — schopenhauer1

Even if there is no observer and space and time are infinite? (If you want an observer, we could stipulate that both objects are observers.) — Ludwig V

So I just don't get why this is a philosophical problem outside any problem where there is no observer...

So let's take something like an ameoba... It splits into two and has the same genetic material. In fact all properties look to be the same in every way other than they are bounded entities in different locations in space and time.

All the things that make it relevantly different in its identity would be in question presumably:

1) The two differ in their causal split from the single amoeba parent.
2) The differ in space and time

Those things seem to be observer dependent. As with all other properties.

Like the more general problem of no observer, you can say that space and time is external and not in a mind, and thus the two independent entities obtain. Or you can say that nothing obtains and we cannot know what is out there in some sort of subjective idealism.

Either way, what does this particular problem reveal that other objects don't?

The Principle of Indiscernability doesn't look at that. It looks at the question of: "is it worth giving any consideration to propositions whose truth values will in principle will always seem coidentical." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Please provide more examples. I see the glass ball universe one.. So that is two glass balls that are positioned in a way that you can't tell that there are two of them, even though there in fact are if you had some sort of god-like view? Or rather, since we don't have a god-like view, then we can never tell if there are two.

But that doesn't seem the problem either. I guess you can say if something is made of the same material, and they are exactly the same in every way, they would be separate by what counts as the boundaries of that particular entity. Of course all of this is predicated on a universe with space/time/causality, etc. So I don't see how this problem is much different than the general "universe without an observer problem" regarding properties in general.

Clearly, in a universe with an observer, two things identical in every way can be distinguished by the boundaries of the two things and their positions in space and time.

Perhaps it can be attributed to what I'll call "naive materialism". That is to say, if you were to never consider the hard problem, and you go about your everyday thinking about the world as a "modern" scientifically-minded person, you just assume various scientifically informed processes are the metaphysical basis of various phenomena. Thus, consciousness is clearly neuronal and other biological processes, without considering how it is that these processes are "what it's like" experiential qualities.

For some people, it's not even grasping the hard problem because they are so used to the easy-problem framework of how problems are supposed to be solved.

It's as if when writing up blueprints for a house, you forgot the house is 3-dimensional.

The simplest solution is that the separation between "what it's like" and information processing doesn't really exist - there is no duality. — Apustimelogist

Then indeed this is just another name for a form of panpsychism. If that is the case, then this poster was right:

The question then becomes: what does physicalism explain that other ontologies cannot and how does it differentiate itself from objective idealism aside from a bald posit that nature is essentially "physical?" Objective idealism can be as naturalistic as physicalism, so that cannot be the relevant dividing line. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Didn't Kant try to answer this kind of thing by proposing the noumena?

The Principle of Indiscernability is this: if for some entity X, X is, in principle, always and forever indiscernible (for all observers) from Y, then we can assume X=Y. We can assume that X = Y because in all possible cases X will always appear to be equal to Y.

This move doesn't seem like a big one, but I have noticed that it is far less popular in metaphysics, mostly because of what it says about the reality of the "external world" if there are no observers of that world.

The question then is, should we posit the potential existence of things that, in principle, we can never observe or rationally deduce? — Count Timothy von Icarus

What I don't get is, how does the principle of indiscernability create any more of a problem than other entities for the debate about a world without an observer?

It's a larger debate about if properties exist outside an observer, no?

Instead, it is of an epistemic nature in the context of information processing in the brain/mind; she has physical and mental concepts which are constructed in a certain way, but these are concepts created effectively through statistical machine learning in her brain to understand what she perceives; they don't necessarily reflect the actual intrinsic nature of the world. She cannot perceive the intrinsic nature of the world that is independent of the particular structure of her senses or the brain/mind she that receives information from it. — Apustimelogist

This just restates the problem that is supposed to be revealed. And let's not dwell on Mary, I just mean the implications of any of these thought experiments. That is to say, it's not about the information processing, but why it is that the information processing is accompanied by "what it's like" qualities. That is to say, a zombie is basically behaving internally (neuronally) and externally (outward movements) just like a normal human, except there is no visuals, hearing, etc.

You can come back and say, that this makes no sense in some causal way that mental causes physical, or what not, but that is the point. What is it that there is mental causing or associating with anything physical?

One can't hide behind words like "integration" or "illusion" or any such thing because that always belies another thing that must be explained for what that is. In other words, one doesn't want to commit a homunculus fallacy of explaining away the problem by simply shifting it to another phenomenon that is subject to the same question (of "what" is the mental event X and why is it accompanying or how is it one and the same as the associated physical events?).

depends on a brain able to generate it. — hypericin

It is the “it” that is the hard problem. Generates is also problematic.

I read an article about Hegel, the author stated that "synthetic a prior knowledge regards the formal cognitive structures which allow for experience." is this really right??
My reading of Kant....I never thought that "synthetic a priori knowledge" “makes experience possible,” but basically gives us (makes possible) a lot of human knowledge (mathematical, geometrical, and metaphysical judgments, etc.). — KantDane21

I think you are confusing judgements and understanding in Kant. Kant used synthetic a priori judgements to prove that the understanding (categories of) along with their content (sense data of the things themselves combined with intuitions of space and time) create our possibility of making synthetic a priori judgements.

(Edited to make it clear judgements are derived from transcendental understanding and intuition and not some a priori knowledge outside of this).

He made an attempt to stop illegal immigration along the southern border. — jgill

And failed. You can't tackle that one without the other side...Mexico.

He met with tyrants to try to reduce tensions. — jgill

So did Neville Chamberlain. Flirting with tyrants and appealing to their narcissism, is the opposite of leading from principle and is anti-American, unless America is supposed to like fascist and authoritarian tendencies as official policy.

Yes, a fair depiction. I noticed that academic and theologian David Bentley Hart, in a conversation with Peter O'Leary, calls this a modern reworking/revival of Gnostic mythos. — Tom Storm

I don't think we even have to go as far as QAnon and all that. Rather, it might be your average Republican who basically sees the Dems as just libs. If given the alternative of "Coke Classic" Republicans (I don't know.. there's really not many but someone who isn't Trump in the Republican primary we'll say", they'll take the bombastic cult of personality. You don't have to look to the loons for lunacy. It's the otherwise well-tempered folks that would vote for him that is the riddle to be solved.

That is to say, party-ism truly "trumps" ideas of fairness. Democracies must be set up with respect for the game above all else. But here's the even more intriguing part of this mess. It's not just that Trump is flouting the rules of the game. It is the willingness of those who support the cult of personality to the point where, they don' even recognize it as flouting the rules. They will say, "he didn't really do anything wrong", or even worse, equivocate and say, "he is doing no worse than X, Y, Z politician". And thus, this political gaslighting is the new narrative.

Even in Watergate, both parties could see Nixon was wrong once the tapes were revealed. Not everyone, but a large portion could see the emperor had no clothes.

Can the majority of Republican support for Trump at this point be considered a cult? The case is strong.

Let me say though, not nearly to the extent of the US Republican Party, but all parties seem to have blind spots for their party. The problem in general is party-ism when it comes to corruption and abuse. However, nothing seems to be as clearly this as the Trumpism of a majority of Republicans. People may have a blindspot for their particular corrupt candidate (Clinton, Biden, whatever), but nowhere near the blind following down the rabbit-hole as Trumpers and adjacent fans.

The problem becomes equivocation of levels of corruption. Trumpers have learned to be gaslighters. There is nothing that Trump is doing worse than any other politician they say. If Obama flouted the kind of norms that Trump did (even wearing a non-traditional suit color) he was or would be tarred and feathered. Trump can get away with all of it.

In this sense I would say that life is violence, not only that violence that makes you suffer, but also the violence of good experiences that irresistibly force you, at least to a high degree, to forget your suffering. — Angelo Cannata

:clap:

There’s a difference between hedonic pain and pleasure versus the deeper dissatisfaction that Eastern philosophies and Schopenhauer often discuss.

I’m not surprised in a culture of instrumentalism, that this would be the case.

I think Schop’s “egoism” is an apt term that has less of a judgmental connotation. It’s not malice. It’s not compassionate acts of altruism. It’s our everyday transactional or goal-seeking for self mode.

Good place to start @Angelo Cannata

He’s a great writer. Very clear.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Basis_of_Morality/Part_I

What is the problem with admitting that we are unable to judge, unable to judge the heart of people, unable to define "good” and “evil”, unable to talk at all about selfishness? — Angelo Cannata

I don’t think Schop believed he had access to peoples inner character but I believe he had examples that I could find for you.

Maybe that's it, what's missing in the definition is that "holy" aspect of morality, of what's good and bad. If there is some kind of higher judgement that we don't have access to, we could question the nature of humans to see if it tends more towards the good or towards the bad, given the "clues" we have available.

So maybe there is a religious/spiritual connotation to this simple term used in everyday life, even for people who are atheist, since I believe, they could also understand the question "Are humans selfish?".

And maybe this is why I don't naturally understand it, I don't have a high sense of "morality", but would rather weight the potential positive and negative consequences.

What do you think? — Skalidris

It could be, I can't speak for you about yourself :smile:.

I guess I can add though that indeed, I think a theme lately with my posts is the utilitarian/instrumental nature of people's general attitudes.

Survival itself necessitates a kind of selfishness. We must "get things done" and this means perhaps, having to be callous, mean, time-sensitive, and uncaring. We measure things in terms of hedonic calculus more-or-less, and cost/benefit.

I think Schopenhauer was immensely insightful in that the real cause of the problem is our very nature as willing beings. The religious sentiment is to focus on this and not the externals of economic output and having to be somewhere to get things done. That is in fact the problem.

Survival itself is just a manifestation of the willing nature of existence, perhaps.

Even the opposite can happen: people who are sincerely emotionally connected to other people, but at the end they don’t do anything, they just forget, they are distracted. Isn’t this a kind of practical selfishness, even if it is unintentional? — Angelo Cannata

I think Schopenhauer would directly disagree with this sentiment of selfishness. He thought it was completely a matter of character-inward stance towards people/the world and not outcome.

This quote should help. Think of egoism as the human's "selfish" tendency. This might give some clarity to the kind of distinctions you are looking for. But be warned. Schop's "compassion" is really a manifestation of his metaphysics. That is to say, with it, comes the notion that only when we reject our willful nature (that would lead to egoism and malice) are we to find ethical behavior. And even then, according to Schop, there are only a few people with the saintly character to truly act compassionately, as it is near impossible for many others to really act out of pure charity without some benefit to themselves. He believed in more of a "saintly" kind of compassion, that is reserved for truly rare individuals. At least, that is how I read Schop and his analysis of "character" as Platonically derived. That being said, his distinctions can be useful when asking about humans and selfishness.

On the Basis of Morality asks the question: What can motivate individuals to overcome their egoistic tendencies? Surely not adherence to theistic commandments or the categorical imperative. Morality does not originate in human rationality, which is merely instrumental, concerned with the means towards some end which one already has in mind. For Schopenhauer, all moral actions can be expressed by the Latin phrase Neminem laede, imo omnes quantum potes, juva (“Injure no one; on the contrary, help everyone as much as you can”). Empirical investigation, he argues, shows that there are only three fundamental incentives that motivate human actions:

a) Egoism: the desire for one’s own well-being.
b) Malice: the desire for another’s woe.
c) Compassion: the desire for another’s well-being.

“Man’s three fundamental ethical incentives, egoism, malice, and compassion,” according to Schopenhauer, “are present in everyone in different and incredibly unequal proportions. In accordance with them, motives will operate on man and actions will ensue.” (On the Basis of Morality, p.29.)

One can see the Platonic influence in this threefold categorization. It is interesting that he does not discuss a fourth possibility, malice toward one’s own self – the topic of suicide was one that he was particularly sensitive about, as his own father had died mysteriously, and was rumored to have ended his own life – a rumor which his son always vehemently denied. Schopenhauer held that people will be stirred to actions by the motives to which they are primarily susceptible. For instance, should you wish to induce an egoist to perform an act of loving-kindness, you must dupe him into believing the act will somehow benefit himself. But unlike the egoist, who tends to make a great distinction between himself and all other humans – and indeed all other living things – and who lives by the maxim pereat mundus, dum ego salvus sim (“may the world perish, provided I am safe”), a person of compassionate character makes no such sharp distinction. Instead, he sees himself as fundamentally a part of and involved with the suffering world. — Schopenhauer's Compassionate Morality- Philosophy Now

Cool stuff, but anytime I see "Buddhist economics" I laugh a little. As I said above, the problem isn't economic at its root.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/834233

And that is really Buddhist economics.

I mostly agree with this. I’d add an obvious point: production can be done smarter. It doesn’t have to be in the hands of a small group of people motivated almost exclusively by profit. — Mikie

That's part of it. However, it's a much deeper kind of pessimism about production I am talking about. Look at this, as I type on a keyboard with a bright screen, made in engineering labs and then off to (mostly) Asian production facilities to be shipped over to the distributors along with the tens of thousands of other parts I use daily. I don't focus on it until it's broke (I won't invoke Heidegger's "broken tool" here.. that bastard). But it's used to push information around. The information is instrumental too. So is survival. So is entertainment.

It's not the economy, it's Schopenhauer's Will.

If you think it through, Global warming is a crisis of too much free energy, rather than not enough, so the problem is the usual one of tidying up and organising - global housework - rather than a shortage of power. — unenlightened

Perhaps it is the case that there is something flawed in the hubbub of human production in general.

You say that there is more than wanting. The whole problem stems from "wants". The whole of human production and consumption is predicated on this base instinct. It isn't solely for some detached edification. Engineering doesn't come out of a vacuum. It comes out of demand. Sure, you can have your tinkerer that just likes to tinker. But the big projects are only had by way of large investments. That takes want. Want. Want. Want.

Perhaps climate change is just a manifestation of the notion that production itself is not necessarily a positive thing. It keeps us alive, but it's instrumental in nature. We are always dissatisfied and our need for production and consumption, and work and justification of work are manifestations of this.

Quietude, negation, non-production is reviled. But perhaps it is the inverse and it is production that is evil. It is lauded as that which sustains. But perhaps that is exactly the problem. Sustaining is perhaps no good.

Why do I picture some people here as if they are Bertrand Russells with pipes sitting in their cushy armchairs cluching pearls on a philosophy forum?

Ironically, for this grandfatherly image of him, he was more radical than most today I would gather, and on this forum. I'd love to discuss quietude and non-production with the idler. He wouldn't clutch at pearls.

Different ideas people. Different ideas than the unassailable ones.

Buddy, does everything have to come back to this one issue? Makes you sound a bit like a one-trick pony. I say this in a friendly way. — Mikie

In a way…YES!!!

The problem is that we use energy not for free and we make waste. You want people not to be burdened with this, at least be a situational antinatalist.