Furthermore because of this, any theoretical belief has to be dogmatic and narcissistic, because the person holds absolute trust in their own sense of reason. They trust themselves, they listen and heed their own voice of reason. They feel entitled to their opinion because it makes sense to them. But nowhere has anyone demonstrated that something making sense to you has any relationship with it being true. What is felt is what compels us to do things, but the experience of understanding could very well be only that, an experience and nothing more, signaling or meaning nothing beyond its immediate existence. "I understand" - but that literally means nothing but that you feel as if you understand. You have associated feeling a certain way with actually understanding and this has no necessary connection. There is no way of knowing at any given point in time whether what you think has any importance whatsoever. — darthbarracuda

I like your ideas here about the unknowable nature of truth. What's even more interesting is despite this state, we are enmeshed in a system which creates for us pragmatic truths. There is the truth that you need to work to survive (well) or with a sense of "dignity" (as far as our society is concerned). There is the truth that you need to buy consumer goods to keep your comfort and survival needs and wants at a proper level. There are ways in which other people's truth, through the diffusion of cultural standards becomes your truth (in a literal-pragmatic way that you are compelled to do it). There is no way you can set rules for society or even influence it with a lot of impact, but you certainly follow the technological, social, and cultural standards that others have provided and set for YOU. However, I know this is a bit different than Truth as you mean it here in terms of metaphysical understanding. Just providing a different take.

I'm interested in your understanding of this as compared to Peirce, especially his aversion to substance ontology:

Whiteheadian actual occasions are also subjects which arise from the synthesis of
material and formal conditions. The basic premise of Whitehead’s philosophy is that all
primary entities in the universe are processes. Everything which persists in space-time is
understood as the result of sequential manifestations of interrelated processes. According
to Whitehead there are four different kinds of actual occasions:
3 Vernunft is Verstand guided by principles. Vernunft also has a moral component. 4 Critique of Pure
“In the actual world we discern four grades of actual occasions, grades which are not to be
sharply distinguished from each other. First, and lowest, there are the actual occasions in socalled
‘empty space’; secondly, there are the actual occasions which are moments in the lifehistories
of enduring non-living objects, such as electrons or other primitive organisms;
thirdly, there are the actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories of enduring
living objects; fourthly, there are the actual occasions which are moments in the life-histories
of enduring objects with conscious knowledge” (1979, 177; italics added).
Actual occasions of the third and fourth grade correspond with Uexküllian subjects
because they have the complexity of biological processes.
For different reasons Whitehead departs from the old metaphysics of substance
(Koutroufinis 2014b). He especially rejects the Cartesian idea of substance as something
that is conceived of as being self-sufficient, since it “exists in such a way that it doesn’t
depend on anything else for its existence.”5 As such it requires no relation to anything
else in order to exist. Whitehead explicitly distances himself from this conception of
substance (1979, 59). The actual entities are subjects, but not in the sense of the classical
metaphysical idea of subjectivity as a feature of a substance. As a processual subject is
not a substance, it cannot relate to its own experiences as a timeless carrier, the essence of
which is independent of its experiences. Therefore, in Whitehead’s metaphysics the
essence of the processual subject cannot be separated from its experiences. He conceives
of the actual occasion––that is, the processual subject––as a totality of experiences that
grows together to form a unity. Thus, each actual occasion is a process in which the
experiences it has with other processual subjects merge together to form an integrated
experience:
“The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience,
complex and interdependent” (1979, 18).
Every process has experience-relations to other already existing processes that occupy
concrete positions in space-time. It is these relations which make up the essence of the
process. These kinds of relations, which are indispensable to the essence of the related
entities, are usually called ‘internal relations.’ Whitehead calls them prehensions.
The material conditions out of which an actual occasion arises are ‘physically
prehended’ data of the immediate past. They constitute the part of the spatial
surroundings of the subject which is prehended by it and thus is relevant to its selfformation.
Only things allowed into a process through its prehensions––meaning,
5 Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, Part I, §51.
10
ultimately, by the process itself––have causal relevance to this process. In other words:
nothing external to an actual entity determines it––not even God, who Whitehead
conceives of as being the most comprehensive process that coordinates all other
processes. The factor which determines what can become a material condition, i.e. an
efficient cause, for a given process is the subjectivity of the process itself. The process is
a “teleological self-creation” (Whitehead 1967, 195), an act that creates its own aim and
purpose. It is teleological, not in the sense of substance of the old metaphysics (which
strives towards the aim determined by its fixed essence), but rather in the sense of a
processual teleology: each actual occasion strives to determine its own essence. Finding
its aim means determining the physical form which the completed process will have as a
spatio-temporal fact. This striving towards finding its own aim is experienced by the
process. The experience develops out of the evaluation of the relevance of prehended
content for the process itself. Therefore, it is the teleology (or final causality) of the
processual subject which decides what part of its physical surroundings can become an
efficient cause, what can be integrated as a causal factor into the process and how this
integration will occur. Each process of concrescence necessarily implies a distinction
between the facts of its physical surroundings which are allowed to be integrated into the
process and those which have been negatively selected. Thus each process of
conscrescence, even the most primitive one, exhibits an essential similarity to living
beings: it is a subject and at the same time, necessarily, defines its Umwelt.
The formal conditions out of which an actual occasion arises are the ‘conceptually
prehended’ universal abstract entities or ‘eternal objects,’ which the emerging process
obtains from the past and also from the eternal or ever lasting process which Whitehead
calls ‘God.’ More complex actual occasions, however, do not only prehend ideal forms.
They synthesize the prehended eternal objects to a new more complex eternal object,
which becomes the so-called subjective aim of the arising process. The mental pole
strives to generate the subjective aim of the new process and thus to determine what the
emerging subject will be.
As the complexity of a Whiteheadian subject (actual occasion) increases, it becomes
less determined by the inherited material and by formal conditions. The generation of
subjective aim is the development of an entity, which Whitehead calls a proposition.
Whiteheadian propositions should not be confused with linguistic propositions. They are
not connections of linguistic subjects with predicates or, in Kant’s language, connections
of individual sensual intuitions with abstract concepts. Whiteheadian ‘propositions’ are
much more basic than linguistic propositions. Therefore subjects or creative agents that
perform Whiteheadian ‘propositions’ do not need to be conscious beings endowed with
the faculty to operate with symbols:

“The interest in logic, dominating overintellectualized philosophers, has obscured the main
function of propositions in the nature of things. They are not primarily for belief, but for
feeling at the physical level of unconsciousness. They constitute a source for the origination
of feeling which is not tied down to mere datum” (Whitehead 1979, 186).
Whiteheadian propositions are connections of something particular with something
universal. Particular localized facts which are physically prehended become combined
with universal abstract entities (‘eternal objects’). This is Whitehead’s interpretation of
Kant’s dictum “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are
blind.”

Even when I'm talking about the super abstract - like semiosis as a triadic structure - it has cognitive meaning because the talk comes with some matching "felt state". There is some kinesthetic representation I have in mind of things all intertwined and connecting in a now familiar way. Thought is not a bloodless exercise of computation. We live our thoughts fully if we are doing it properly. — apokrisis

Finally, that's all I was trying to get at.

This has been my main point as well with app.

The answer is obvious. — apokrisis

When we take for granted the already existing self, sure it seems so.

Complex brains do complex modelling. When I use my eyes, I create a model of a world from some pattern of illumination falling on my retina. And key to that model is also the "me" that is place in time and space as a "receiver" of that point of view. — apokrisis

What is this "me"? This "illusion"? If you go back to mere description, you have lost the trail.

We can just as reasonably draw a conclusion about a slug having the kind of experience that would follow from not having that level of reality modelling. — apokrisis

There is some modeling going on, no? Everything is modeling right? Perhaps the modeling is nothing like ours, but something is happening. There is something of what it is like to BE a slug, not just to describe the slug.

None of this is rocket science. It is obvious from the type of modelling being done what we might expect that type of modelling to feel like. — apokrisis

That there are more complex modeling-types, doesn't negate the question at hand, that there are also possible gradations of being-types.

But we can still answer questions about how far down some kind of experiencing would go when it comes to organisms and their self~world modelling. — apokrisis

And how far is that?

My disagreement is not necessarily with modeling, though @Janus brings up a good point that I'd like to see your response to. My disagreement in this particular argument is whether the modeling ENTAILS feeling like something from the point of view of the IS of the modeling in-itself. In other words, if the modeling feels like something, who is to say this feels like something doesn't go all the way down? Just like different gradations of modeling- different gradations of feeling (or more appropriately, experiencing).

How could a living, running, intentional model of the world - a model which includes a model of “ourself” - fail to feel like something? — apokrisis

At what point does modeling not feel like something?

Also panpsychism would seem to consist in the claim that everything has a mind, which seems to make little sense.Whitehead's panexperientialism, on the other hand, seems to make much more sense. For Whitehead nature just is what is experienced, not just by humans, but experienced by any and all entities. The electron experiences the binding force of the nucleus, the hillside experiences the erosive power of the wind and rain, that kind of sense of experience. So, I think Whitehead would say that the interpretant is also the experient, at all levels in nature. but this has nothing necessarily to do with "having a mind'. — Janus

I am thinking more in terms of the Whitehead variety of panpsychism (i.e. panexperientialism). I am claiming to apo that the thing in-itself version of pansemiotics is panexperientialism (a variety of panpsychism). Thus, he is stuck on the components and not the event at question itself (i.e. the point of view or the IS of the event itself).

In other words, any semiotic process can be said to have internal states. Otherwise, what is it about animal experiences, that make that process ONLY have internal states (i.e. a point of view).

I imagine you will give an answer.. Then we have to ask what IS this internal state that is only animal internal states? Causation again is not the ontology of the internal states. It is merely a description. That isn't what we are asking though.

You are then going to characterize it an illegitimate question to ask, in which case you are missing the whole point of the metaphysics of the problem. Just because it is a (practically) unanswerable question, doesn't mean its illegitimate.

Not seeing your slippery slope to panpsychism. Only seeing that you don’t get pansemiosis. — apokrisis

No, I don't see how you get blood from a stone. Causation is not the whole of metaphysics. Ontology of being. The umwelt has a point of view, I presume. There is something of what it's like to be an umwelt. The dynamic process ITSELF AS IT HAPPENS.

Okay, let's say: Possibility, brute reaction and habitual regularity. There IS something going on betwxit the three and that IS is consciousness. This is a slippery slope to panpsychism. If you take the IS out, there is nothing except mere description. I'm sorry.. it's not moaning, its just what it IS. My umwelt IS the dynamic complexity of this semiotics playing out.

In a curious way, I think your dualism is convincing you that any such talk of the self - as just the emergent fact of a continually adapting neurocognitive point of view - must be talk of some “thing-in-itself self”. Beyond the play of habitual signification - the realm of the phenomenal - there must be the noumenal self. The soul, the spirit, the will. The force behind the scenes that gives selfhood a sturdy dualistic reality. — apokrisis

It doesn't have to be selfhood. This is comprised indeed of complex interactionism- perhaps of the triadic variety you extol. It is the brute actuality, the "secondness" in Peircean terms, that seems glossed over here. That is perhaps the nexus here with the experience that you seem to have a blindspot of. What is the isness of being? If you say it is X description (i.e. Peircean triadic semiotics), that is the same as saying what is green and then going into optics, wavelengths, etc. It is a description, but it is not metaphysics. Its all description of the empirical parts, and not getting at the phenomena itself as it is in-itself.

You can’t be content with a theory of mind that is merely one of semiotic emergence, no matter how hierarchically complex the tale. — apokrisis

Well, yeah, its not getting at the phenomena of what the internalness other than a description of its parts.

A triadic paradigm has the extra dimension to see that hierarchical complexity in a holistic fashion. It can see emergence because it can see development - the change from the vague to the crisp. — apokrisis

I think you cannot see the problem outside of its parts. There is still a leftover- what the phenomena is in itself. There is something that is internal going on. I'm looking for green and you are giving the components without the feeling. What is even more of a blindspot of your philosophy is that your own philosophy leads to panpsychism.

The separation of the observer from the whatever by the semiotic formation of an umwelt. — apokrisis

It is precisely this that we are trying to explain, thus saying an event is composed of these other events doing stuff, isn't the full story.

someconfiguration of habitual signs. — apokrisis

Why is there somethingness related with habitual signs? Why not just habitual signs PERIOD.

Try thinking about all this triadically rather than dyadically. It may then click into place. — apokrisis

There's always a Dues Ex Machina, it seems. That is why it is not clicking with me, as you are explaining it. There is "secondness". What is this aspect of the triad, for example?

The signs sums up what matters to us about our relation with it. So beyond that begins all we don’t need to care about. It becomes the possible differences not making a difference. — apokrisis

What is this "our" and "it"?

As to the difference between being and Being, you yourself make it sound pretty semiotic - the difference between a sign and the thing-in-itself. — apokrisis

What is this "thing-in-itself" without simply referencing the mapped signs that describe it (i.e. not having circularity)? In other words, what is the thing-in-itself as it is in-itself?

In my mystical and esoteric moments I am drawn to the idea that what we call the world is a temporary dream in an endless sleep; that consciousness is an insomnia in a population of dreamers, or a momentary divorce from the unconscious deep. The idealist/panpsychist undertones are clear. — darthbarracuda

As I was saying to the previous post, there is an anthropic tendency when thinking of the problem of being (why anything?). I am not necessarily against this thinking, but it can definitely lead to "the world is illusion" ideas. Again, that's not necessarily bad, just a characterization. Schopenhauer's Will, for example is primary- all else are manifestations of the roiling, seething, striving, "force" or principle. It is beyond space/time (we cannot fathom this of course) and thus bootstraps itself into having no start, no end, no cause, no finality. The illusion arises from the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and from there the individuation process of processes and/or objects occurring in space and time. However, I never got how the "illusion" exists alongside the primary reality (Will). If there is illusion, it seems intractable. In other words, the illusion IS something, even if not what we think it is. Thus we can never get to just a unitary reality, but always binary.

The question is really the root thought of all religion and mysticism, as well as philosophy. — gurugeorge

And the basis of much anthropomorphic thinking- the anthropic principle itself even. Berekely's subjective idealism also comes to mind, at least as far as the anthropic tendency goes.

Not sure if this link would help. He's using a lot of information theory and thermodynamics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature

Are you familiar with Terrence Deacon's theory of language evolution?

I don't think I would say 'without concepts' though; I think philosophy is inseparable from - and perhaps defined by - conceptual activity (hence Adono: 'Philosophy has no choice but to operate with concepts...'). What is at stake is how concepts are employed: what kind of use they are put to. What is being inveighed against (as per the Geuss quote) are prepared categories and pregiven positions, not 'categories' and 'positions' tout court.

It is a mistake, I think, to invoke a radical disjunction between some beatific intellectual intuition - as though one were to occupy the position of a all-seeing God in direct, unmediated contact with 'the things themselves' - and that of a rigid systematizing in which everything fits into pre-given boxes. The point is rather - to quote Adorno again - whom everyone seems to be ignoring! - to "assure ... the non-conceptual in the concept": to let our concepts respond to the singularities of 'each thing', to capture each thing in it's distinctiveness.

There's a biblical trope in which God counts all the stars and gives a name to each one: each treated as the singular luminescence it is. One wants to do the same with concepts. — StreetlightX

Have you ever read any Whitehead? I think @apokrisis would blow a gasket that I even recommended him. But, he seemed to develop a philosophy of direct experience, or at least developed a vocabulary to talk about such things meaningfully. Would this be the direction you would are going down?

From Whitehead quoted in SEP: An object is an ingredient in the character of some event. In fact the character of an event is nothing but the objects which are ingredient in it and the ways in which those objects make their ingression into the event. Thus the theory of objects is the theory of the comparison of events. Events are only comparable because they body forth permanences. We are comparing objects in events whenever we can say, ‘There it is again.’ Objects are the elements in nature which can ‘be again.’ (1920, 143-4)[/quote]

fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism.’ Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived. (1925, 22)

The basic units of becoming for Whitehead are “actual occasions.” Actual occasions are “drops of experience,” and relate to the world into which they are emerging by “feeling” that relatedness and translating it into the occasion’s concrete reality. When first encountered, this mode of expression is likely to seem peculiar if not downright outrageous. One thing to note here is that Whitehead is not talking about any sort of high-level cognition. When he speaks of “feeling” he means an immediacy of concrete relatedness that is vastly different from any sort of “knowing,” yet which exists on a relational spectrum where cognitive modes can emerge from sufficiently complex collections of occasions that interrelate within a systematic whole. Also, feeling is a far more basic form of relatedness than can be represented by formal algebraic or geometrical schemata. These latter are intrinsically abstract, and to take them as basic would be to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. But feeling is not abstract. Rather, it is the first and most concrete manifestation of an occasion’s relational engagement with reality.

This focus on concrete modes of relatedness is essential because an actual occasion is itself a coming into being of the concrete. The nature of this “concrescence,” using Whitehead’s term, is a matter of the occasion’s creatively internalizing its relatedness to the rest of the world by feeling that world, and in turn uniquely expressing its concreteness through its extensive connectedness with that world. Thus an electron in a field of forces “feels” the electrical charges acting upon it, and translates this “experience” into its own electronic modes of concreteness. Only later do we schematize these relations with the abstract algebraic and geometrical forms of physical science. For the electron, the interaction is irreducibly concrete.

Actual occasions are fundamentally atomic in character, which leads to the next interpretive difficulty. In his previous works, events were essentially extended and continuous. And when Whitehead speaks of an “event” in PR without any other qualifying adjectives, he still means the extensive variety found in his earlier works (PR 73). But PR deals with a different set of problems from that previous triad, and it cannot take such continuity for granted. For one thing, Whitehead treats Zeno's Paradoxes very seriously and argues that one cannot resolve these paradoxes if one starts from the assumption of continuity, because it is then impossible to make sense of anything coming immediately before or immediately after anything else. Between any two points of a continuum such as the real number line there are an infinite number of other points, thus rendering the concept of the “next” point meaningless. But it is precisely this concept of the “next occasion” that Whitehead requires to render intelligible the relational structures of his metaphysics. If there are infinitely many occasions between any two occasions, even ones that are nominally “close” together, then it becomes impossible to say how it is that later occasions feel their predecessors – there is an unbounded infinity of other occasions intervening in such influences, and changing it in what are now undeterminable ways. Therefore, Whitehead argued, continuity is not something which is “given;” rather it is something which is achieved. Each occasion makes itself continuous with its past in the manner in which it feels that past and creatively incorporates the past into its own concrescence, its coming into being.

Thus, Whitehead argues against the “continuity of becoming” and in favor of the “becoming of continuity” (PR 68 – 9). Occasions become atomically, but once they have become they incorporate themselves into the continuity of the universe by feeling the concreteness of what has come before and making that concreteness a part of the occasion’s own internal makeup. The continuity of space and durations in Whitehead’s earlier triad does not conflict with his metaphysical atomism, because those earlier works were dealing with physical nature in which continuity has already come into being, while PR is dealing with relational structures that are logically and metaphysically prior to nature. — IEP

There've been few philosophers who have so vehemently rejected the idea of the 'thing-in-itself' as much Nietzsche, so no, it's definitely not. Nietzsche's point is that this kind of 'seeing' can, even if only fleetingly, take place. For Geuss, Nietzsche's entire philosophy is, if nothing else, an attempt - not always realised - to attain just that point of view upon things. The context in which the quote from the OP is taken is a discussion of critiques of Nietzsche which complain that Nietzsche is not systematic enough. Here is how it begins: — StreetlightX

Okay, I was more commenting on your OP as a whole (with your particular comments) not just Nietzsche.

I think that these criticisms, in the form in which they are given here, are completely misguided. They suggest that Nietzsche was trying desperately to be Hegel but unfortunately failing, when in part the point of his work was that he was trying desperately not to be Hegel (or any similar systematic philosopher) but to engage intellectually with each situation as it came, without reducing it to a prepared category or a pregiven position in a discursive network." (Geuss, Changing the Subject). The quote in the OP follows directly after this. — StreetlightX

I get it, he looked at things piecemeal and without need to systemize. However, once you start saying things like "seeing things precisely as they are" and couple this "without concepts" you are getting into a metaphysics of reality "as it is" (hmm, sounds similar to "things-in-themselves" perhaps without other more specific Kantian conceptualizations though). It may be a more fragmatory version (rather than a unitary) though. I think the critiques are that Nietzsche never takes a step beyond the hinting. All hinting and no speculating perhaps. However, I am not a Nietzsche expert, so I am fine with someone proving me wrong.

Isn't this just "thing-in-itself"?

I won't create a new topic, but wanted to include some posters: @darthbarracuda @Baden @Michael Ossipoff @NKBJ @matt @Posty McPostface @Bitter Crank @Vinson @csalisbury

An interesting phenomenon related to this idea of absurdity is that though life itself is absurd, we still feel the power of commitments and responsibility. That's concerning as though life has this absurd non-justifiying aspect, responsibility and commitments add salt to the wound as we are preserving the very superstructure unnecessarily through these mechanisms. We have responsibilities to work and family for example. Sometimes this extends to friends, government, and other social obligations. Of course nothing is technically an obligation or commitment, but through common sense understanding of living in a society, it becomes a de facto truism. Thus, the absurdity is further mocked by our attachments to obligations which just reinforces the absurdity. This is not a consolation, as one cannot be free once the absurdity is recognized, but must trudge on the same anyways. This goes back to when I saidthere are no "good faith" moves to move to. Freely knowing one's entrapment doesn't negate the entrapment and the entailment of one's own being.

The "structural suffering" is doctrinal suffering. It's your conceptual suffering about your conceptual doctrinal notion of life. Is it the same as that "Existential angst" that we hear about? I suppose that a person can make himself miserable if he tries. But you wouldn't do it if you didn't like it. You've adopted it as a philosophy of life, right? — Michael Ossipoff

Well, sorry but there is structural suffering, whether you call it "doctrinal" or not. There are things built into the system that are of a negative quality. This can be distilled by observation and rationalization- something we humans possess. That you don't see or understand it is fine, it still controls your life nonetheless. The abstraction into principles doesn't cause the suffering, it simply explains it (without trying to explain it away or justify it). This actually falls into exactly what I've mentioned earlier about people who cannot understand it. I'll give you two quotes that fit your perplexity:

The problem of absurdity might be too translucent for many people to grasp; perhaps you may have to "feel" it. The absurdity of living every day is enough, for me, to not start life anew. There is no justification for life, yet we live it nonetheless. It isn't just that we live it in "bad faith" in Sartrean fashion- taking on roles without freely doing so, but it is the fact that there are no "good faith" moves to move to. Freely knowing one's entrapment doesn't negate the entrapment and the entailment of one's own being. If you've ever shit in the woods and had to dig your own hole, that might be the closest thing I can think of in regards to life's absurdity par excellence. — schopenhauer1

On another note, I think that there are two main views when it comes to pessimism. The positive psychology view (the common one) is that pessimism is in the software- it is simply bad programming or a bug (in other words, it is simply bad habits/attitudes/lifestyle). The structural pessimists will say that it is in the very programming of life- it is in the the binary code itself.

The structural suffering can be found in:
1) The individual's wants/desires vs. the realities of the social/physical world.
2) The need for more need and wants (deprivation at almost all times)
3) The absurdity of the repetitiveness of survival, maintenance, and entertainment
4) Encountering of contingent harm (though it comes in various quantities and kinds that are probabilistic) — schopenhauer1

Also, the "honing" game that I speak of in the OP is troubling, as I stated. The fact is that there is a deficit in the first place. There is this overcoming that "needs" to take place, and is inescapable. There is the bearing of one's own being. There is the deprivation from the beginning, the individual's ego vs. the reality. This is deemed "good" simply because people don't want to face what is going on- that indeed it is of a negative quality. We are always at a deficit. That is the structural part. In a contingent way, some people will have the fortune or ability to play the game better than others. So we have the structural suffering of a deficit in the first place, and a contingent suffering of those with circumstantial differences in how to overcome them. Even the fact that some people need better honing techniques and help than others is troubling in itself.

Then there is the absurd idea of repetition. Not repetition of actions, but the fact that we are surviving, maintaining, entertaining is a hard concept to wrap around as to the structural negativity here. Again, I used the analogy to digging a hole to shit in it. To enlarge this, we are supporting a superstructure that has no reason for itself, and that provides a big problem. The happiness game does not do away with this fact.

that make possible an orientation within which life as recognizably human, as having value, can subsist. — Baden

So are there unstated assumptions here that themselves can be questioned?

You spend too much time worrying about it, instead of just doing things that you like. Alright, you like bemoaning life, but you're deceiving yourself if you convince yourself that that's all that you like.

And even "simply enduring and coping" isn't without likeable aspects. — Michael Ossipoff

This doesn't address the structural suffering. I'm sorry but it doesn't. I do appreciate your sincerity and passion.

"Part of the royal art where the true gold is made" is how Jung described the "coping mechanism" of Sublimation — matt

Yes, there are also similarities in Zapffe and Schopenhauer's view of art.

I'm glad I can help! Though, I'm not trying to sour your view on humanity- individual people can do that on their own :). But, if it is consoling to hear something you might suspect, that might be a good thing though.

On another note, I think that there are two main views when it comes to pessimism. The positive psychology view (the common one) is that pessimism is in the software- it is simply bad programming or a bug (in other words, it is simply bad habits/attitudes/lifestyle). The structural pessimists will say that it is in the very programming of life- it is in the the binary code itself.

The structural suffering can be found in:
1) The individual's wants/desires vs. the realities of the social/physical world.
2) The need for more need and wants (deprivation at almost all times)
3) The absurdity of the repetitiveness of survival, maintenance, and entertainment
4) Encountering of contingent harm (though it comes in various quantities and kinds that are probabilistic)

Most of the strivers I know don't seem to be suffering much from the struggle, 'der Kampf'. — Bitter Crank

The problem of absurdity might be too translucent for many people to grasp; perhaps you may have to "feel" it. The absurdity of living every day is enough, for me, to not start life anew. There is no justification for life, yet we live it nonetheless. It isn't just that we live it in "bad faith" in Sartrean fashion- taking on roles without freely doing so, but it is the fact that there are no "good faith" moves to move to. Freely knowing one's entrapment doesn't negate the entrapment and the entailment of one's own being. If you've ever shit in the woods and had to dig your own hole, that might be the closest thing I can think of in regards to life's absurdity par excellence.

You live in a time of "positive psychology" wherein healthy=happy, wherein negative=sick. The positivity of the times is shallow. People are expected to get with the program and cheer up, or at least, shut up about their darker views. — Bitter Crank

Absolutely, this is the trend I see as well.

If life is absurd (unreasonable, illogical, preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous, farcical, idiotic, stupid, foolish, insane, unreasonable, irrational, illogical, nonsensical, pointless, senseless...--but no joke) then there must be many angles from which to attack the bourgeois delusions about a purposeful universe, meaningful life, potential for happiness, and so on, not to mention other worldly schemes that make this world a processing mill for the hereafter. — Bitter Crank

I will think about this some more.

Suicide? If being alive involves being embodied within this locus of perpetual needs, wants, desires and pains, why not just bring this endless striving to a halt? But, if your consciousness ceases, it's not like you could determine whether or not you're better off than before. Any sort of solution to the 'structural negativity' of your conscious experience can only be found within that experience. But, we agree that the negativity is structural - there is no solution. A headache isn't solved by guillotine (although the blade is always for when the pain gets intolerable). — Inyenzi

Yes I generally agree with this. Suicide is often about the ideation, but can never be experienced.

So, what to do? It then becomes a question not of how to solve the structure of life, but of how to cope with it. And I think it comes back to the standard advice you denigrate in the opening post - get a hobby, find some love, try to laugh, get yourself absorbed into the world, look forward to things, structure your time - find whatever works for you (it seems like what works for you is spending your time writing and debating with others about the structural negativity of human existence :wink: ). — Inyenzi

Indeed I do. I agree, this is essentially the common sense advice. However, the point was that it is always a lack, of a something that is not there to be reached. Something missing. This touches on the structural negativity you acknowledged.

Personally, I really try not to dwell on it, as it leads to some pretty dark places. Is eating a meal made all the better knowing it doesn't solve your predicament as being a human with perpetual caloric needs/hunger? I think a meal is made better eaten in laughter/conversation among people you care about. — Inyenzi

Sure, the same friends that you were lacking to begin with, and may cause contingent frustrations later on, just to be made up with, etc. But of course this may be a small (and some people say trivial aspect), but it really imbues any most familiar situation or unfamiliar.

What do you think about coping with the 'negative structure' of human existence with a sort of ironic (?) mirth/comedy/sense of humor? — Inyenzi

Yes, that would be Sisyphus laughing as he roles the rock up the hill. That would be Cioran's aphorisms of dark humor. I'm not against it, I just don't think it justifies it nor is it really maintained in the face of some real problems. It doesn't absolve the problems, but as you said, it helps cope, if at all.

i guess what i want to say is: i accept your tragic view - but I'd add: Oedipus cut out his eyes. If he talked about how tragic it was to be oedipus instead - the tragic element would be lost.

and theres sequels, right? there wouldnt be sequels if oedipus was cioran. it would be peverse. "the tragedy of being born oedipus." — csalisbury

But that is a play/art and this is philosophy. So we are getting right at it straight on. Sure, we can make poems and stories about tragedy using all the allegory, alliteration, allusion, and all the rest, but that is what makes art different than mere philosophy. Here we are using the avenue of propositions, observations, evaluations, logic, dialectic, discovering ideas of first principles, etc. etc. I don't see why being so blatant makes that bad. I will agree it might be less interesting, but I never claimed to be doing art (though perhaps your world view is that everything is art).

I’m not sure if that’s aimed at my posts. I’m most interested in human existence qua existence- so I’m line with certain existential elements which will inevitably touch upon phenomenogy and the anthropic point of view whether that brings in elements of evolution, biology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology. Also related and most poignent is the human’s experiences as they relate to suffering. Is existence structurally negative for the human? Again, there will be many phenomenological angles to explore that issue and mine certain ideas that can be intuited from this kind of rationalizing about the human condition. One can perhaps dig deeper than the ologies and try to mine what is at the heart of human nature and existence in general. Schopenhauer for example totalizedba Will at the root of all contingencies and manifestations. He identified a general lack in the human condition. There was structurally a negative aspect before contingent harms factored in, or perhaps form a basis for many contingent harms.

There's another way to put this: What if everyone here agreed with you? — csalisbury

Good question. It's not necessarily the outcome of of antinatalism. There is no way that all human suffering will be prevented by mass voluntary non-procreation. However, I don't look at it from a big pie perspective, but simply see it that even one less person is born, it's one whole life that didn't have to go through the unnecessary, harmful, gauntlet. Antinatalism (considering the value of being born) more than suicide even, is a platform to evaluate the nature of what it means to exist as the human animal.

However, the bigger issue that antinatalism connects with philosophical pessimism is through the aesthetic understanding of (for a lack of a better term) "the nature of things" as humans in the world. It is a sort of therapy, a consoling. We see each other as fellow-sufferers. To quote Dylan (Bob):

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me

Most importantly, if we agree on what is the case, we can talk within the same context about what to do. However, if you are still talking in terms of "Humans need to be born to do X" as if it is necessary. If you are still talking as if there is no structural suffering, then we cannot even have a dialogue. In a way I am trying to get to some points of agreement, taking any angle I can to get us there. The knee-jerk reaction of many in the community is to fight that view and thus instead of moving forward, perhaps developing ideas further, it is just a constant defense, which though I participate in for the sake of presenting the view clearly, I do not always want to be in this mode of defensive dialectic.

@darthbarracuda

To be fair, I brought up the teen/kid thing as a way we can both take that option off the table and move forward. At first you were conveying that that wasn't the thrust of your argument, then you doubled down that it was, and now you are back to saying that it wasn't the thrust of your argument. For the sake of charity I'm going to take your original and third response that indeed you were trying to say something more than "schopenhauer1's philosophy is simply teen angst" etc. and that you were trying to convey, as you put it, "a full-throated counter-response".

So what of the fact that we are always at a deprivation- that we are always having to hone in? I said on another thread a counter to your counter (most important parts in bold): It seems that at heart, humans are a bit sado-masochistic. We justify struggle because it gives some sort of meaning. To quote Nietzsche on this sentiment:

To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities — I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not — that one endures.

Thus, when justifying why we continue the "Human Project" despite obviously experiencing struggles and the sub-par tediousness of repetitive acts in daily routines/work, we often cite that it is the initial deficit in our attitude/habits/skills that is necessary for us to learn to grow new attitudes/habits/skills. Thus it is rightful for humans to be born to experience deficits so that they can learn and grow. The goal is perhaps to either:

a) settle into life's repetitive routines punctuated by moments of "true" delight and then retroactively call this settling "happiness" (because, happiness is supposed to be a sense of fulfillment or some such). This is in some way a compensation or transactional outlook.

b) attain some maximum level of achievement from all the growth learned through the deficit-overcoming (no pain, no gain). This is in some way a "life is a process" outlook.


This "common sense" wisdom of deficits being good due to its leading to growth (or at least compensated by happy moments later on), like many things justifying life's inherent "goodness" for the human animal, is simply circular reasoning in the light of the counterfactual of never being born. Why put someone in a deficit (or to put a positive spin on it, "learning opportunities") to overcome in the first place? This question proves it is a retroactive coping mechanism to justify the inherent negative nature of the human experience.It can never be justified why putting someone in a position that they need to experience deficits or struggles is necessary for that person in the first place (i.e. prior to birth), ergo giving someone the "privilege" and "opportunity" to overcome deficits makes no sense.

The bigger underlying philosophical claim here is that suffering and harm cannot be subsumed in retroactive "carpet-sweeping". Struggle is negative, being at a deficit is negative. Growth may be positive, but at the behest of an underlying negative. Mushrooms may be edible and tasty, but they still come from shit. Actually, even this seems off. In the light of the counterfactual of never being born, the achievement of anything and experiencing "growth" has no underlying benefit in and of itself, but merely as a necessary means to get by once born.

You can also do the same thing with mastery and a craft. You live, and are cared for (or not),but there's a moment (adolescence) where you're called upon to do more. There's a higher pleasure, which is something more than pleasure, in heeding this call. — csalisbury

Besides being a bit romantic-y for my taste, this seems just a wee bit condescending (any time adolescent is thrown around we are really trying to cast aspersions of regressive infantile behavior on the interlocutor- which to those in agreement with the stone-thrower is quite appropriate "humph humph post haste banish the thumb-sucker from a place in the big people's table!", puffs the smoke from the adult pipe and wax on about the higher callings of the true adult/sage etc. etc.).

Now let's do the same trick to your texts:

There's a sublime pleasure in talking [about the absurdity at the bottom of human endeavors], mutually, to people who have met this challenge [of looking straight on at what is going on regarding the deprivations and structural suffering]. It [knowing the structural suffering] wouldn't exist without that challenge [of staring at the void and not flinching]. That's [just] how it is. — csalisbury

So can we talk without the hidden condescension?

I don't see anything new here that you haven't covered before. What's new? — Baden

Perhaps similar theme, but hitting it at different acute angles.

Of course this doesn't touch on why one should even have to do anything to even feel just ok. — csalisbury

THIS is at the heart of what I was getting at in the other thread- the "always-having-to-balance" in the first place. As seen here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/3556/why-youre-not-doing-it-right-is-revealing/p1

That is how, phenomenologically, it is. First, there is deprivation of the good, presence of the bad. Then come our management efforts, the shifting-of-the-burden. The question is whether or not any future positive experiences gives sense to this negative structure. Does it make sense to give a burden to someone who does not have it, for future great pleasures they do not have the desire to experience? — darthbarracuda

Yes, you hit the mark yet again. This is the heart of what I'm trying to say right here. The deprivation that is above and before the good- the structural aspect.

It seems to me that we are always-already immersed in suffering, and positive experiences typically are always "just up ahead". The grass is always greener on the other side. Of course, there is also the possibility that what we call "good" are shadows, or caricatures, of Goodness. It may be that I simply have not been given the opportunity to behold this ultimate good. Unfortunately, I see very little reason to believe this good is an actuality. It would have to be divine and I don't see why we should believe the divine exists. The way we approach existence, as creatures of a greater power, is by putting our trust in God and waiting for the final revelation that will make it all "make sense". It is a call for mercy - why do you do this to me, God? Why have you created me? — darthbarracuda

Yep, a non-spiritual term would simply be Hope. The always somewhere-next-beyond..

Existence is furthermore absurd given the vast majority of people who never exist and to whom we do not shed a tear for. Existence is not "better than" not-existing, we do not pity the non-existent. This is because pity would be inappropriate: pity makes sense in the intra-worldly setting, where people already exist and have aims and are always-already suffering. Life is a drama, and it may be worth playing your part and trying to make a good production. But is it worth starting the drama? — darthbarracuda

Yes.

Now something I have thought about before is whether it is a contradiction to say it is never better to exist but once you exist it is now better to continue to exist. The desire to exist is a desire which cannot be frustrated. If you exist, it is satisfied. If you cease to exist, you cease to have the desire to exist and thus it cannot be frustrated. All reasons-for-existing come from existence within. Therefore there cannot be reasons to have reasons to exist. A reason to exist comes from existence, but it is existence that we are asking about so these reasons for existing must also be put into question. — darthbarracuda

Good point. Existence only matters to the existing.

Not really. The point is that if one has to endure or cope with a situation, then that's not a personal problem. — Posty McPostface

Yes! The honing process itself, the not already having but always striving is insightful in itself as to perhaps a lightpost into the nature of things. Sure, we live in an anthropic world where everything seems to be attuned or become-to-be from our consciousness, but perhaps it is just we are scrounging here for a balance from a depth of restless, weary, absurdly repetitious, lacking. By "absurdly repetitious" we don't mean that we are "literally" doing the same thing over and over- it is one step removed from the actual acts themselves. It is as if we know we must conjure the moves to occupy us before we make them. But this conjuring is old hat..