All is right. Things are alright. Success shines forth and justifies life. When you are consumed in your passion, it is enough. — matt

Until it doesn't.

My suggestion would actually be to join some volunteer program so you can go out and do something for others/think about others for a change and quit all this unproductive navel-gazing. — NKBJ

Thought experiment- what if everyone existed in order to help everyone else with no focus on the self? That would literally make the point of helping other people absurd. The actual "fulfilled" part of life must be more than the mechanism to become adjusted enough to life to be fulfilled in the first place. In other words, you are helping the other person so they in turn can be fulfilled.
But if this kept going so you just help people so they can help people, etc. it doesn't make sense. You have to look beyond mere cliches for what we are talking here. For the record, I'm not against helping others, I'm just saying that taking this to an absurd level, it makes no sense as a basis in and of itself.

Couldn’t help it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

I disagree to quote Schopenhauer:

]that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence. For if life, in the desire for which our essence and existence consists, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no such thing as boredom: mere existence would fulfill and satisfy us. As things are, we take no pleasure in existence except when we are striving after something - in which case distance and difficulties make our goal look as if it would satisfy us (an illusion which fades when we reach it)- or when engaged ill purely intellectual activity, in which case we are really stepping out of life so as to regard it from outside, like spectators at a play. Even sensual pleasure itself consists in a continual striving and ceases as soon as its goal is reached. Whenever we are not involved in one or other of these things but directed back to existence itself we are overtaken by its worthlessness anti vanity and this is the sensation called boredom.

]

What if going to work was designed to be as enjoyable as eating ice cream? Like, what if the workplace really got those dopamine receptors firing? Then the problem would be getting people to stop working. It'd be like the obesity crisis all over again, except instead of people eating too much... They'd be working too much. But at least it'd be voluntary work. — GreenPhilosophy

The problem is the modern workforce needs precision and detail-oriented tasks that are neither creative or inherently meaningful. A lot of times they have to be done in a timely fashion, and to the customer and manager's satisfaction. You simply have to do it because it is required by the manager/owner. Who would do such things? This of course and the classic examples of sewer guys, clean-up crews, back breaking labor in 100 degree or 20 degree weather. Ya know, the stuff people might not like but have to. That's not going away anytime soon.

That whole article relies on faulty premises. There is a hidden understanding of the author that there is a debt individuals owe humanity. A debt owed from a birth not able to be granted. I don't consider not committing suicide assenting to a contract of owing humanity.. rather callous view if it is even held by anyone. People don't have to carry anything forward, least of all providing a baby. This is using individuals for society's end. Individual humans don't owe a vague "humanity", especially the sacrifice of delivering a new person to its doorstep. Morality goes down to the level of the individual, not abstract concepts such as Truth, Humanity, Posterity, Progress, and other slogans thrown around to justify having more individual humans.

Also not considered by the author is structural suffering altogether. Why bring new people into the world? Well, certainly no person exists before their birth, so it's not for their good. The presumption is a future person will retroactively enjoy life and thus want to have been created. However, life has a number of systemic suffering that is independent of someone's particular contingent experience.

1) Life is aggressively absurd. It is mainly repetitive acts of survival, maintenance, and dealing with our own restlessness. To do to do to do.

2) We are always dealing with our own existence. There is no choice to shut down (except perhaps sleep). There is a constant need to have to choose this or that decision or action. Again, this is related to the above survival and our restless being.

3) We are always in a state of lack. We lack the amusement of this or that, the entertainment of so and so, and the engagement of blah and blah.

4) The individual vs. the given. The individual's needs and wants bumps against the demands of the physical and social world. There is always conflict in this.

One of the main points with all this is prior to an individual's birth, there is no need for that individual to experience anything.

Another point to make about this article. Most antinatalists don't argue for any forced choice. It is like vegetarianism. While some people think it would be ethically not good to eat animals, they are not going to force this view which is too much in the grey zone of ethical consideration. Most morality works like this outside some of the big ones. So to say that antinatalism forces others or interferes in other people's lives, that would be a straw man. It is a point of view people can consider or not consider. That's it.

It’s not just that making a living is hard. It’s that we are forced to deal at all in the first place. There is no way around with dealing with our own existence.

Yes, second that. Thank you . :up:

However... would you consider it theoretically possible to have the earth’s population and civilization’s structure at a point where suffering was greatly diminished from where it generally is now? Such that antinatalism could be perceived as a relative strategy and position, rather than an absolute and inflexible tenet? If so, I would find the position to be more supportable. But that simply might be due to the fact that I consider absolutes to be the realm of the gods, which humans only deal with indirectly, existing as relative beings in a relative world. (More tangled tangents, sorry). — 0 thru 9

I'm not sure how this would be employed. The main theme of philosophical pessimism is that structural suffering does not go away. That might be a defining characteristic of philosophical pessimism vs. let's say a utilitarianism or simple hedonism. But, I guess if it actually did "improve things" in a contingent way, that would be a good outcome.

To ignore the foundations in order to praise the steeple. And by the way (as a comment on your point), there have been numerous instances of animals displaying the behavioral symptoms of depression, not surprisingly in captivity. Weight gain or loss, reduced activity, solitary tendencies, etc. No one can get into their mind of course but the behavior is analogous to that of humans, in this case at least. And that we “can’t get into their mind” is significant too. We just do not know for certain what their mental and spiritual experience is really like. — 0 thru 9

But the steeple is where existential awareness lies. This is why I think the depression example doesn't work here. Animals may get depressed in a way- but its context-dependent. They don't know they are depressed. There is no self-awareness. That's why I say humans are the only ones who can get existentially depressed.

Yeah, sometimes in disagreement with Benatar. I think he has some good points regarding pessimism, but others I think he relies too heavily on hedonistic calculating which is not the pessimism I am ascribing to. I'm more Schopenhaurean in the systemic view rather than a utilitarian view.

@Baden @darthbarracuda (to keep everyone looped in)
Interesting post.. Here's some thoughts.

On a literal, physical, practical level perhaps the earth could benefit from anti-natalism. Just based on current circumstances and environmental conditions, it seems the earth is close to its so-called carrying capacity. Even if the earth could potentially handle say 10 billion people, current human civilization could not deal with it in any satisfactory way. The human cities, especially the largest ones, are both a marvel and a catastrophe, simultaneously. Better planning could remedy some of the pain and overcrowding, but that is easier said than done. Even without relying absolutely on the arguments of peak oil and climate change, there are major environmental and population issues arriving that are unprecedented. So some people putting the brakes on reproduction, or at least giving it skepticism and doubt, is a positive thing. — 0 thru 9

Although I see the points made about reducing humans in order to "let the planet breathe" so-to-say, and I am nominally in agreement with this, this is more a hypothetical imperative. The ethic of saving the planet, doesn't really make sense without its human impact, and thus these are strategies to continue the human project through putting constraints on population. This to me is secondary or at least derivative of the primary goal of antinatalism which I think is to prevent all structural and contingent suffering for a future person.

The second level has been referred to in this thread perhaps indirectly. It’s what I was getting at in my post about the Buddha’s notion of suffering and its possible cure. The idea and reality of karma, action and reaction, causes and effects. Ripples flowing out endlessly from each action, even from each thought. Thought and intention have a power as great as action often times. The Eastern concepts of extinction and avoiding re-birth and going beyond karma grasp this. To over-generalize perhaps, the Western way often is that “more is better” and “anything is better than nothing”. Not just products and money, but people, words, ideas, experiences, time, space, more of anything imaginable. Just to have a model of counterbalance to that Yang, that “unlimited growth”, is helpful. — 0 thru 9

No this is actually more directly related to this thread. Schopenhauer's philosophy of suffering closely parallels that of Buddhism which has been widely noted, even by Schopenhauer himself in his own writings. Schopenhauer thought there was a principle of Will which is the reality at the flipped side of our appearances based in time/space/causality and the PSR in general. Anyways, Schop thought the best course of action was to "quiet the Will" by becoming an ascetic and compassionate acts. Schop thought that at the root of things is emptiness. Behind all pursuits there is nothing to be had. He thought we could "feel" this with our experience of profound boredom. Thus, boredom is not just an epiphenomenon of humans having emotions, but telling us something about existence itself qua existence. We always have to be goal-oriented to try to get away from this negative aspect of restless boredom. This is part of the structural suffering found in his and other philosophical pessimist philosophers.

Our paradox is this. Humans are animals. Humans are not animals. Both statements are facts. Both statements best be appreciated for the potential knowledge and action come from understanding them. — 0 thru 9

Well interesting you bring up this double-aspect. It would be nice and dandy to wrap it up and say we are just animals with a different degree of consciousness. However, that does not appear to be the case. We are animals with a wholly "Other" kind of self-awareness then even animals as intelligent as chimps and dolphins. Despite claims otherwise (and this is getting down a whole different tangent if we let it go too far requiring yet another thread on animal intelligence..) other animals do not have the comprehensive linguistic-conceptual framework that allows for almost complete cultural (conceptual/linguistic) abilities to survive. This in turn has given us other abilities, including among much else, our ability to know our existential situation in the first place. Other animals are at home in their existence, following instinctual drives or context-dependent learning. Their self-awareness is little to none. There are no "existentially depressed" animals. A bird makes its nest, finds mates, etc. based on largely pre-programmed drives with some limited context-dependent flexible learning also thrown in.

@darthbarracuda was onto something. We are not like the rest of the universe. You can conflate humans as just another part of the whole (i.e. the naturalism of apo), but it's actually not. We are self-aware.. not only primary consciousness but secondary. We are not just DNA living out its mechanisms. We are not just animals living off mostly instinctual drives with some clever learning here and there. We have self-awareness through the processes of our brain capacities. This makes us not as balanced as we think. The possibilities of imagination are seemingly endless, but so is the understanding of our situation as living embodied beings that could have been otherwise, that endures such and such, and can understand (at least in whatever degree we can) what the situation is.

Therefore no love, no joy, no freedom, no imagination, no insight, no wonder, no poetry, no art, no philosophy...no pessimist philosophy (hang on, maybe it's not all bad... ;) ) So, anti-natalism is just giving up. That's all. Folding. Dying. Losing. With a romantic semi-theological edge dressed up in philosophical garb. — Baden

Ha, no phil pess? No life to complain about? :gasp: . But there would be no one to be deprived of these things either. Experiences are not something that need to be had through the vessel of a new individual. Nothingness never needed nothing.. Just because we think of some boring black hole, doesn't negate this fact that a universe without experience is simply that and is nothing sad/depressing or the like in and of itself (which we both know is a truism). It's simply the outcome of no one around to have to deal with anything (nothing wrong with that.. at least no one is being thrown into the dealing with). It's also literally unthinkable (in the literal sense).. other than retroactive projection (like thinking of death). What is it that we think more individuals need to be added to the project of Humanity Inc.?

Having said all that, I am not against (as I think I stated before) examining systemic structural negatives in life (in so far as they can be considered so) as a philosophical endeavor. And I see nothing wrong with someone deciding not to have children because of their anti-natalist beliefs. But again, it's based on a particular interpretation. And there's no common ground to leverage with the other side once both are aware of the potential negatives. — Baden

This is with many philosophical grey zones. However, anti-natalism will lead to no start of the state of affairs where suffering takes place for a new individual. What to do about us who are already existing though? Not much to change structural suffering. And contingent harms will keep on going.. and we will keep on coping with them, and we will keep on retroactively making it "alright because it was a learning experience, or it made us better people, or at least it wasn't as bad as that kid in Africa or the person with the brain tumor, or at least you got to have something, or just pull yourself by the bootstraps and run that treadmill in 'this' proscribed way, etc because you needed to be born to learn this particular proscribed way" (vicious circle?).. Ignore, repress, anchor, etc. But don't worry! We have media to try to give us stories of inspiration and hope of people who dared to think the unthinkable and that could be YOU too!!! :shade: .

Edit: And what what does "Losing" really even mean in this regard? What race? And how does that matter? Are individual humans here to prop up some metaphysical game it is having with the universe? By being born, perhaps we have already lost.. we have fallen from the Garden. The Temptation to Exist, the Fall into Exile, the Trouble with Being Born, The Fall into Time (and other such Cioran sounding book titles).

@Baden @darth@apokrisis
I see this "dealing with" problem one that cannot be easily dismissed. Why do we want new people to experience the "dealing with" of life? I can't think of a good response other than the namesake of this thread, "Good Experiences". I've had other threads on "human potential" being a crock. There's another potential answer that falls flat in light of the viciously absurd, repetitious nature of life. More survival, maintenance, boredom-fleeing, contingent suffering. I see nothing wrong in not creating a state of affairs where a new person deals with life, and then is retroactively supposed to cope with it. In fact, it is not just not wrong, but the best course of action (which is in this case, to simply not act).

So, while I'm somewhat sympathetic to mitigating pollyannaish notions among prospective parents, the sweeping judgment of life not being worth living seems to sweep too much under its own philosophical carpet to stand stably on. — Baden

@darthbarracuda @apokrisis

So you bring up the idea that you think a positive attitude of the individual can justify birth for that person. The new person was still made to deal with the world. The attitude is always after-the-fact as a coping mechanism. Usually these attitudes are things that have to be learnt and developed over time. Besides the fact that many people don't have good coping mechanisms, why make people go through this game of developing defenses and coping mechanisms and learning experiences to begin with? Sometimes they are a product of inherent personal traits, but even this would have to be strengthened by repeated reinforcement. So yes, can some people have more positive attitudes? Sure. But there is no other choice in the game. Life is still forcing their hand. They cannot not do something, and when they do something it will inevitably be them vs. the given, them vs. the absurd, etc. etc. And since we are now in contingent-world, you never know what situations will eventually break that positive attitude or lower its defenses. Wrong decisions, disasters, disease (inherited or acquired), accidents, other people's actions, etc. etc.

And also, since we are in contingent world- it is a researched phenomena that in order to survive we need to repress or overestimate future (bad) experiences in order to keep going (Pollyannaism). We also tend to teach each other coping mechanisms like "comparison"... You have bad experiences now, but at least you aren't that starving kid in Africa, am I right? There is also the mechanism of adaptation.. Well, we really rather have had this outcome, but we settle for lesser circumstances, sometimes abysmally less.

But again, going back to the point of dealing with (so important in my opinion). Everything from insomnia to making a living to the very restlessness at the heart of our existence has to be contended with once born. I do not see the rightness of giving this challenge to a human, even with a possibly more inherent good attitude towards negative situations. There is no X reason why anyone needs to go through the dealing with or game of life.

The consequence of antinatalism is (no children) is no new person who deals, who suffers. The consequence of not following antiantalism is someone who for however many years does have to deal, does have to suffer. That is just what the facts of the matter are.

As Darth explained:

Once you're given life, it's hard to get rid of it so you might as well enjoy it as much as you can, while you can. — darthbarracuda

There are an inventory of goods but they are not as purely (that is to say "positively" good) as it would first appear. They are fleeting, distributed unequally, etc. So yes there are things that would make life better than they otherwise could have been. I don't focus on suicide or cessation of life as much as the start of life where other factors do not come into play. From this purely abstract angle, we can truly evaluate life in itself. Should life be started anew for a future person? For the structural reasons I explained, no.

So I see you are splitting apart the structures identified with the psychological orientation to the structures. In other words, applying this to the antinatalist argument, you are claiming, despite the agreed upon negative structures, "The child may have a positive psychological orientation to life, and thus is worth creating". Again, due to the negative nature running in the background, it is not worth starting. However, once we are already alive- it is a consolation to achieve some of the inventory of goods previously listed. Perhaps, one can go beyond this self-interest to pursue acts that try to dampen the will- compassionate ones, or ascetic practice.. I have my doubts on whether this is metaphysically doing anything, but certainly, it may have psychological effects. Either way, it is a coping strategy.. Most importantly, all these strategies for happiness/contentment are there because of the structural ways in which we are always at a disequlibrium from the start (ergo don't create this disequlibrium to begin with).

I did not really say that, I was trying to converse with Caldwell using his language.. and then qualified it that this needs more nuance and explanation than that kind of exclamation. This is strawmanning me and then trying to derive a rebuttal from it.

Thus I said:

Sure, it can be a summary, but then this has to be explained. As I've said, most people will just counter this with "I have good experiences, thus schop1 is wrong". The subtleties are what need to be conveyed. Dealing with, forced hand. Individual vs. the given, absurd circularity, etc. Most people focus on contingent pain. Metaphysical pessimists see the structural aspects.

@apokrisis@darthbarracuda

I edited my post above.

What @darthbarracuda said. But to add..there is no "off" button. Sleep is the closest we get. Entailed in being is the constant dealing with of our being. This is our willing natures dealing with the contingencies of the world. As Schop used to say- this is basically negative in nature. It is always about what is lacking at that moment. So yes, there is a dichotomy of sorts that drives actions- but it is largely of a negative nature (i.e. something always lacking).

All willing springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering. Fulfillment brings this to an end; yet for one wish that is fulfilled there remain at least ten that are denied. Further, desiring lasts a long time, demands and requests go on to infinity, fulfillment is short and meted out sparingly. But even the final satisfaction itself is only apparent; the wish fulfilled at once makes way for a new one; the former is a known delusion, the latter a delusion not as yet known. No attained object of willing can give a satisfaction that lasts and no longer declines; but it is always like the alms thrown to a beggar, which reprieves him today so that his misery may be prolonged till tomorrow. Therefore, so long as our consciousness is filled by our will [which is as long as we are will-filled living beings], so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with its constant hopes and fears, so long as we are the subject of willing, we never obtain lasting happiness or peace. Essentially, it is all the same whether we pursue or flee, fear harm or aspire to enjoyment; care for the constantly demanding will, no matter in what form, continually fills and moves consciousness; but without peace and calm, true well-being is absolutely impossible. (Die Welt, vol I, p 196) — Schopenhauer

Now, regarding the contingency of the world- we are the mired world of contingent circumstances. The world impinges on our personality/ego/character and we react according to our own heuristics/fears/judgements, working to bring ourselves to some level of comfort only to find ourselves needing more (see quote above). Much of the time we our equilibrium is thrown off- "Ugh, the neighbor brought a stench in.. better get rid of it, making me feel uneasy in my own home..".. "Shit, I'm going to be late for work.. which if I do often will get me fired which may lead to financial troubles later on or relying on others in burdensome ways".. "Oh, my car won't start.. I could not have a car and thus throw other consequences off in my life..or find something to fix".. But that's just the maintenance part (and maybe partly survival in stratified post-industrial economies).. But this works the same with our excess "free time" (boredom-fillers).. "I'm kind of lonely reading for 4 hours and then riding my bike for another 2 hours.. I wonder where I can get some new friends.."

It's all dealing with.. The churning will confronts the fateful contingencies. There are some inventory of positive "goods" (i.e. relationships, learning, aesthetic/physical pleasure, flow states, achievement) but often its fleeting, not-achieved in equal distribution (based on many contingent factors), and does not negate the underlying negative basis of existence. Darth has it here:

The good is optional, the bad is required. — darthbarracuda

But it is the totalizing nature of this bad- the very essence of being qua being that we need to look at straight on and not hand-wave as "depressed".

Is an entailment just an unavoidable consequence? — T Clark

That's it.

Even statistics depends on bounded action. Randomness can have macro properties like a mean or a variance because there is some kind of global constraint bounding a system of independent variables. You get a temperature or a pressure only when your gas is confined in a flask. And any workable notion of randomness or probability depends on a duality of free local action coupled to definite boundary constraints. Otherwise there just wouldn't be any "statistics" - any macro properties to speak of. — apokrisis

Ugh, is it in fact true, that I actually agree with apokrisis? Yes this sounds right in the context of this topic.

So our very notion of the arbitrary or the contingent only makes metaphysical sense in the context of its "other" - the necessity, the regulation, to be found in some set of bounding constraints. You can't even have the one without the other. Hence there is the Platonic structure to be discovered as the necessary spine of existence. That can't not be the case ... if you do in fact believe in the matching "other" of the accidental or contingent. Each secures the reality of the other in complementary fashion. Hence why SX's orientation, as expressed in the OP, is so off-base from the start. — apokrisis

I agree with you here up until you said "existence". Your idea about constraints and symmetry-breaking works great in the cases of math and physics. This idea is perfectly ammenable to these topics. This is where your talk of constraints and symmetry-breaking shine and hold the most weight. However, you seem to make the illegal move to apply it to any and every subject in a totalizing fashion.. Besides killing any other angles of inquiry (which would be taking advantage of the open-endedness of philosophy I was talking about) you are quick to dismiss all else to constrain your framework, thus limiting possibilities of other frameworks. But more important than this, you apply such methods/language-games to problems such as the Mind-Body problem. This is where your theory is in deep water and breaks down. Where math is all modeling, you try to overmine the modeling language-game (constraints/symmetry breaking, etc.) to experience itself, and then when people accuse you of never penetrating beyond the models- you defensively go back to the Romantic vs. Enlightenment rhetoric to hand-wave the rebuttal. Your argument becomes a circularity back unto the modeling.

Now, I agree with you very much about your ideas as they relate to math. I have no problem with that move. Its the totalizing of its application to all areas that this becomes questionable.

@darthbarracuda@Baden

I'd like to explore the idea of entailment darth has brought up. Systemic suffering in many ways is about entailment- what is determined by being born as the human animal. Darth brought up death, which is a classic case, but there are more. The metaphysical pessimist tries to mine experience for these systemic entailments. Some of what I have been talking about falls into these entailments:

• The entailment of dealing. That is to say, there is not a time when we are not making a move in the framework of our socially-derived goals (in the broad categories of survival, maintenance, and boredom-fleeing)
• The entailment of restless desires
• The entailment of absurdity of circularity.
• The entailment of dealing with contingent circumstances.
• The entailment of the individual dealing with the given.

Excellent post. Great examples that elucidated the main point here:

The philosophical pessimistic perspective is that life, stripped of any contingencies (where and when you were born, what opportunities you have, personal traits, etc) is at-its-core negative. Positive things are wholly intra-worldly and arise as a reaction to the structural negativity of life. — darthbarracuda

I will have to gather my thoughts, but I will try to add to this and respond to @Baden as well.

Again, I think you're massively underplaying the way in which, once a philosophical problematic is set out - a concept developed, a problem articulated - the moves are just as constrained as they are in math. — StreetlightX

Ok, so we are essentially accusing each other of the opposite thing- you think I am making philosophy too broad and overlooking its constraints, and I think you are making math too broad and under-emphasizing its constraints (and the outcomes there of).

This may go back to something you said in the OP about the fundamental metaphysics/epistemology of math- is it invented or discovered? I haven't thought about it much, but whether numbers themselves are invented or discovered, the logic/processes/patterns involving them seem to have a "discovered" aspect to them. The limited rules dictates next moves more than it is simply synthesized by the "limitless" inspiration of the mathematician. In other words, if this game was run again, roughly the same models and demonstrations would be constructed. It would not be perfectly the same, line by line (there is some contingent variation in symbolic communication), but on the whole, the concepts behind these mathematical proofs would shake out. Perhaps in a particular framework, philosophy can work similarly, but other camps would negate this process. So initial creativity is there for both, but beyond that, the way it works out (the discovered-like process of math/ consensus vs. the more synthetic-like aspect of philosophical moves). But now we are getting into the epistemic differences between the two.

Edit: Granted, there are some conventions (like certain statistical constants, etc.) but this is recognized as such in the name of pragmatic reasoning.. which this field is especially amenable to. I know apo mentioned using 360 degrees being contingent, but again, the "discovered" aspect I refer to are the concepts behind them.

I'd actually like to thank you for taking the time to construct this post.

Note here that the creative element, the innovatory aspect occurs before a single line of the proof is formulated. — StreetlightX

I get it- the creativity before any formal proof is written. But I am trying to say that the creativity is still dictated by the limited scope and content of math itself contra philosophy where the game is much wider. The constraints are as limited as you want to make it in philosophy.. The constraints are very tangible in math and dictate certain outcomes and legitimate moves which are even possible within its confined scope. This constraint in creativity, in a way, creates a confined area that I am claiming is more deterministic (the outcome shall reveal itself). The creativity is not nearly as boundless as other subjects, thus the creativity is more dictated by the game at hand. The proof after this constrained creativity, is just more constraint- this time on what a legitimate explanation (in the community) can be- another difference but at a more concrete level.

can really only see three reasons why anyone would want to post ideas on a general philosophy forum. Either they carry such inductive weight that they are virtually impossible to deny and so are useful out of the box (... is that a flying pig?), or they're promising but unfinished and could benefit from critique within the framework of the problem they address (in which case, if you don't clearly specify that you're going to get nowhere), or they're ready for others to 'try on' to see how they work, like taking the car for a test drive.

With obviously varying degrees of skill, that's all people here are trying to do, test-drive the ideas presented, within their framework, the fact that their feedback isn't then going to be in terms of the problem the post set out to solve is not a flaw, its inevitable. If an idea is going to be of any use to anyone (surely the only reason for posting it) then it's going to solve a problem they have, which is going to take quite a bit of collaborative translation. — Pseudonym

Hey great post.. One of the best arguments on this forum for the principle of charity and collaboration in general. That should be in a guideline or something :up: .

you're talking about something else. That's what I keep tying to tell you. — StreetlightX

Well, maybe I am then if you say so..It's your thread, and I am just trying to add what I thought was something overlooked. Where you see math as not being dictated by the internal mathematics itself, I do see this, through the constraints of what math is trying to investigate. Where you see a sort of contingency in picking certain ways of looking at math, I see a sort of determinism albeit one that is manifested through consensus in the mathematics community.

No, as to what counts as more useful. That one needs a lever to move a weight does not make the lever 'true'. That's just bad grammar. — StreetlightX

But the model that models the lever's action through proof each time is not. Two models are used.. eventually in math, one might have a consensus as the more accurate model.

You said:

And they did. They gave up (2) - the idea that all numbers were expressible as ratios. In doing so, they expanded and changed the definition of number. Now, numbers included both rational and irrational numbers, where they didn't before. Moreover, they no longer were measures of length (Note that this was not an easy choice for the Greeks to make. Legend has it that Pythagoras - or his followers - sentenced the student who discovered the irrationals to death by drowning: such was the heresy of a non-rational number).

So what's the moral of this story? Well, for B&C, the important point to note is that nothing in the math itself forced this choice, rather than the other. Rather, the choice was made on the basis of 'extra-mathematical' considerations: giving up (2) would allow us to take measurements of things like the diagonal of right-angled triangle ( = √2 = 1.4142... etc). Here is how they put it: "The choice between criteria, whatever its motivation, does not answer uniquely to intra-mathematical considerations; mathematics itself, we might say, allows either choice, while eventually accepting the choice that is made." And as they go on to detail, the history of math is full of these decision points, imposed by the math, but not decidable by it. — StreetlightX

The choice as not arbitrary.. giving up 2 essentially forced their hand on this if they were to move forward with answering questions of non-fractional numbers. Eventually a consensus forms as to what counts as more accurate.

Edit: And indeed it has everything to do with this.. it is just something you are overlooking- the pragmatics of consensus in math vs. philosophy and the dictates of mathematical reasoning in forcing a decision to the one that seems to fit the models/demonstration.

No, wrong. Explained already. — StreetlightX

Not really. You discussed things like the difference between category and set theory, but in mathematics, it is possible that there will be a consensus that one is more accurate than the other. In philosophy not so much.

I don't know how else to explain that I'm concerned with concepts and not proofs. This is the third time now, and you keep talking about something else. — StreetlightX

I guess I am caught up in moving from one concept within the field over another. How one moves from rationals only to irrational, from Newtonian to non-Euclidean, choosing between category or set theory, etc. The fact in math how some concepts can overtake (as more accurate) than previous versions, and this can be agreed upon by the math community. This doesn't happen in philosophy. Perhaps, this leads to a more abstract notion as well that in math, there is a sort of determinism because of the constraints that dictates the possible next moves. So I guess the concept overtaking/consensus is more to do with the pragmatics of the math concept formation, and the concept of the constraints dictating the possibilities is more epistemological.

I mean, yeah a little, especially since I keep circling back to 'philosophy' as my object of analysis, rather than anything else in particular. And I admit that that's out of a sense of comfort and ease, soothed also by the fact that the individuation of philosophical concepts is no different to the individuation of anything else in the world. — StreetlightX

Except what is demonstrable in the philosophy world cannot be considered valid simply by proof as in the math world, which has the luxury of consensus as to types of proofs. Philosophy only has this within their camps, if at all. It is a moving target. Thus, in math the answers are more dictated by its antecedent theorems, and a more limited number of ways to frame a question, unlike philosophy. Perhaps we can debate the nature of proofs and their relationship to logic, and logic's relationship to philosophical arguments.

Sure, it can be a summary, but then this has to be explained. As I've said, most people will just counter this with "I have good experiences, thus schop1 is wrong". The subtleties are what need to be conveyed. Dealing with, forced hand. Individual vs. the given, absurd circularity, etc. Most people focus on contingent pain. Metaphysical pessimists see the structural aspects.

I think I already sort of answered this type of thinking (i.e. my burden is bigger than your burden, etc.) here:
Comparison: we judge our lives by comparing them to those of others, ignoring the negatives which affect everyone to focus on specific differences. And due to our optimism bias, we mostly compare ourselves to those worse off, to overestimate the value of our own well-being.
— David Benatar Wikipedia article

Comparing to those who have it worse doesn't negate the absolute suffering that occurs. Also, he stated in an interview:
For example, the most intense pleasures are short-lived but pain is much more enduring. The worst pains are also worse than the best pleasures are good. Injury is swift but recovery is slow.
— Benatar

This kind of focus on purely utilitarian score-keeping as to contingent pain is not my largest justification for pessimism/antinatalist stance, but it does seem to be apt regarding the horrific real-life story you presented.

Edit: The point is, our hands are forced. Survive, maintain, restless boredom flee... hitting all the contingent speed bumps along the way.

You, I guess, are defective in your own particular way. That's fine, I'm probably defective in mine. The fact that your way is so arrogant, self-indulgent, and annoying just makes it easier not to take your positions seriously. — T Clark

I just don't assume existing is "good" because I exist. That can be considered unreflective, fearful (of looking too much into the matter), and reactive.

So I am guessing you are presenting this as an argument. If that's what this is, then it isn't much different than people using good experiences to justify the burden. It is just another variation. Rather, you are saying, "If you don't have torturous, brutal, unlivable contingent (circumstantial) suffering", it is not justified to find a burden in systemic suffering of the nature of having an always "forced hand". Though I disagree with Benatar on some of his reasonings, he does have a pretty good grasp of how people justify (what I call "contingent") suffering. He discusses the psychological mechanism of "comparison" and says:

Comparison: we judge our lives by comparing them to those of others, ignoring the negatives which affect everyone to focus on specific differences. And due to our optimism bias, we mostly compare ourselves to those worse off, to overestimate the value of our own well-being. — David Benatar Wikipedia article

Comparing to those who have it worse doesn't negate the absolute suffering that occurs. Also, he stated in an interview:

For example, the most intense pleasures are short-lived but pain is much more enduring. The worst pains are also worse than the best pleasures are good. Injury is swift but recovery is slow. — Benatar

This kind of focus on purely utilitarian score-keeping as to contingent pain is not my largest justification for pessimism/antinatalist stance, but it does seem to be apt regarding the horrific real-life story you presented.

I think that analogy encapsulates what I'm trying to say better than anything else, ha.

I am just going to be refuted like the Dr. Johnson who misunderstood Berkely's claim of subjective idealism by kicking a stone and saying "I refute him thus!". That is to say, people will say, "Look, I have a good experience and I refute you thus!".

My claim is that all those moves which in math are universally considered to be invalid, are based in ontological principles. The principles of addition and subtraction, just like the principle of non-contradiction, is based in ontology. So consensus on these mathematical principles requires consensus on ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

In math, the assumptions of certain ontologies (the constraints) are more likely to be agreed upon. But it is not only that, it is the fact that the subject matter is limited to specific things (numbers, relations..) which makes it more constrained from the start. Ontologies that don't take into account what numbers, relations, geometric principles do, don't get counted anyways.

one is the scope of the content of the agreement (narrow or broad), and the other is the scope of the formal aspect (the number of individual human beings engaged in the agreement). So your designation of "a higher amount of constraints' is really quite vague because it doesn't directly take into account either of these parameters. Saying that there is a high number of constraints in place doesn't say anything about the number of people engaged in each of these constraints, nor does it say anything about the scope of application of each of these constraints. For example, whether 100 instances of 20 people agreeing to some specific constraint constitutes a "higher degree of consensus" than a million people agreeing to some broad principle is highly doubtful. You cannot judge "degree of consensus" by "amount of constraints". — Metaphysician Undercover

I can't speak to the formal constraints, I can say that the content would have to be based on the quantifiable information I mentioned (relations, numeracy, geometric principles, measurement, statistics, etc.).

This extends to all forms of measurement, consensus on the unit of measure is required. This is exposed by Wittgenstein when he claims that a metre stick is both a metre, and not a metre. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but I think there is more consensus in math based on the more limited scope of math.

Philosophy is less constrained than mathematics, as you say, but the constraints of mathematics are really derived from philosophical constraints. So when the philosophers produce consensus on ontological principles, mathematical constraints are derived from this. The overriding constraint, "what is valid", is a philosophical principle, not a mathematical principle. So there cannot be any consensus on particular mathematical principles without consensus on "what is valid". — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree, but because of the tendency for what is valid for what is mathematical principles, and how one can demonstrate (via proofs, via empirical evidence, etc.) then what can be demonstrated and what can be provided weight from consensus is more easily had. I cannot simply say in philosophy, "Clearly, by using one of these proofs which we all agree is a way to ensure the direction to validity in solving philosophical problems.." Nope.. maybe some camps would except this, but certainly not a universal agreement of what counts as demonstrable.

But philosophical constraints exist. And if they are not produced, or created by philosophy, where do they come from? You cannot accurately say that philosophy is unconstrained, then look at something like the law of non-contradiction, and dismiss this as non-evidential of constraint. Furthermore, what you do not seem to apprehend, is that these philosophical constraints are what bear upon the world of mathematics, as the foundation for mathematical constraints. — Metaphysician Undercover

Using your content and formal definitions of constraints- the content of philosophy simply goes beyond logical analysis (just one field of philosophy, following its own scope, assumptions, etc.). The formal definitions of constraints are also much less constrained. There are relatively fewer number of ways to show validity in math than in philosophy which can decide to straight-jacket (or not straight-jacket) its validity in any number of traditions, but they are much more varied. Validity itself can be called into question.. It is a much more fluid, constantly moving, open-ended chess game where the rules can constantly change while playing the game.

I'm simplifying a little of course, but these commitments - exactly alike the commitments made in the determination of mathematical concepts - force upon a philosophy the kinds of contours it takes; To 'learn Hume' or to 'learn Plato' is not to learn simply what they said, but also why they said it, as well as the ways in which the distinctions they draw commit them - 'constrain them' - to saying certain things and not others. This is why there are - or rather can be - 'schools' of philosophy - as you said, 'Wittgensteinians', 'Platonists', etc; this would not be possible if not for that fact that philosophy sets it's boundaries - its distinctions, its categorizations - out in incredibly precise ways. As I said, to be a Wittgenstienian (for example) is not to 'say what Wittgenstein did'; it's to accept a manner in which problems are posed, problems which may be other than those even conceived of by Wittgenstein himself. — StreetlightX

Then you didn't see when I said:

However, a metaphysical argument might be framed as a problem of "being", a problems of propositions/linguistics, problems of a priori synthetic knowledge, problems of empirical data gathering, etc. etc. It is framed too broadly for even a consensus on what a valid answer looks like (unless you fall within a camp with another philosopher who shares that point of view, but that doesn't negate that philosophy itself is much broader outside this compartmentalization). — schopenhauer1

The point isn't that philosophy cannot be consistent and rigorous within its own framework, but rather that there are a plethora of ways to try to answer a question that come from radically different angles. Math is constrained by its very nature of describing quantifiable information (relations, measurement, numbers, etc. etc.). Thus the number of valid moves in math is much more constrained. Intra-mathematical methods can be contested (whether they are good), but limited because of the constrained nature of working with relations, quantities, and numbers rather than dealing with the foundations of reality and knowing itself. So there are different approaches, but they can only make so many valid moves in that world of constraints. This makes for a different kind of validity (mostly a more easily demonstrable one and consensus building one).

In philosophy, because of the open space of its canvas (so to say), even if an argument is rigorous and consistent, the fact that there are so many moves one can make to frame a problem (in other words, so many camps one can fall under) it really cannot be as analogous in its creativity as you are saying.