When someone uses art they are always doing something that falls away from the fundamental telos of art. — Leontiskos

Some of the uses of art I have in mind: mental stimulation. modulating mood. Experiencing intense emotions safely. Education. Passing the time. Having novel experiences.

Which of these is in accord with "the fundamental telos of art", and which is not?

When craftsmen create art for money, when painting was funded by patronage, when novelists and musicians aim to earn a living and even get rich, when entire industries are oriented around the production of art.. telos, or not the telos?

What are the stakes of abiding the telos, or of violating it? Where is the telos, who has defined it? Could it be... you?

You talk about intention as if there were only one of them, and we all agree on it. Art has one intention, to be appreciated for itself. Sex has one intention, pleasure. Why imagine this? It bears no resemblance to reality I can see.

And if hypericin wonders what verb is properly applied to art rather than 'use', then I would recommend 'appreciate' or 'enjoy'. In the case of a painting we might say 'gaze' or 'contemplate'. It would be strange to walk up to someone viewing a painting at a museum and ask if they are done using the piece.) — Leontiskos

Kind of like how food is useful for sustaining life, but we don't use it, we eat it?

Damn it. I buy it now. @unenlightenedhad it worked out before I even typed anything.

This brings up a related question I had thought of before: if it wasn't given in the question, I would have said, no one leaves, end of story. Even after seeing the answer, I had a hard time accepting it.

Given that cases like this exist, how do we even trust our own reasoning? I think the answer is, we can't (except maybe unenlightened!)

yeah that's the one I edited, I won't do that anymore.

I don't think so, but fair enough.

No, at b=2, every blue sees one other blue, and for all they know, that blue does not see a blue.

oh wait...

No, I was right, at b=2, a guru must see a blue, but it is not true that everyone else must also reach that conclusion. But at b=3, not only must everyone know that a guru must see a blue, everyone must arrive at the conclusion that everyone else knows that a guru must see a blue.

At b=3, everyone can make the guaranteed true statement, "everyone must see at least 1 blue"
At b=2 or b=1, this is not a true statement.
So at b=3, but not b=1 or b=2, anyone can say of the guru, "she could truly say, 'I see a blue'", and so anyone could say "if there were a guru, she would say, 'I see a blue'".

t's a counterfactual conditional from which valid deductions can be made thus:

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
But beggars do not ride, but have to walk.
Therefore wishes are not horses. — unenlightened

It's a valid deduction, but we already know from the outset that wishes are not horses, it tells us nothing new. Similarly, the blue would have left if b=1, but we already know b>1, so their not leaving also tells us nothing new.



We agree that if b=1 or b=2, we MUST have the guru's statement to get the ball rolling. But if b>=3, then @Michael's reasoning seems to apply. We may as well just imagine the guru making the statement, which means we may as well just imagine the guru, and this imaginary guru can make the statement about blue or brown, and so everyone would have left long ago. But if this works with b>=3, surely it works with b=1 or b=2. But it does not.

Right? — flannel jesus

I mean yeah, but... but...

Why should the step "If there were one blue, they would leave on the first day" appear in the brains of perfect logicians who already knew before the guru spoke that this was not the case?

If that is not an active possibility, which it is not when blue >2, the failure of anyone to leave on the first night also provides no information.

Whereas if blue = 2, blue = 1 is still an active possibility, so its disconfirmation on the first night provides new information.

What's tripping me up is this:

If only one person has blue eyes, the guru's statement is clearly informative: the person with blue eyes doesn't see any blue eyes.

If only two people have blue eyes, the guru's statemen is clearly informative, since no one leaving rules out the 1st case for each of the two blue eyed people.

But at three people, the Guru may as well not have spoken. Everyone knows that there is at least one blue person, and everyone knows that everyone knows that there is at least one blue person. Once you move beyond two blue people, the scenario shifts, yet you are relying on the one and two blue people cases to reason about it.

Ok, this one is really tricky, and I couldn't figure it out on my own. But it is still not adding up for me, something is off.

From the start, everyone knows there is not just one person with blue eyes, so why are these perfect logicians waiting the first day?

From the start, everyone knows there is not just two people with blue eyes, so why are these perfect logicians waiting the second day?

...

Similarly, we have sex because it feels good. We can find a purpose, like reproduction, but that's not why we do it. We do it because it attracts us, it feels good, and we want it. We have sex because we want to rather than for some purpose. — Moliere

"We have sex because it feels good. We do art because we like it." In what sense is this supposed to be philosophy?

We have sex for all sorts of reasons beyond "feeling good", such as, to strengthen bonding with a partner, to affirm a claim upon a partner, for social status, to explore sexual identity, because it is socially normative to do so. But most crucially, you speak of the drive to reproduce as if it somehow stood outside of the way sex feels good, and the way we feel impelled to have sex? When in truth, these are two facets of the exact same phenomenon? How can you understand our feelings without the reproductive drive, and how can you understand how the reproductive drive is effectuated without our feelings?

That is "useless sex", sex divorced from all meaning, purpose, context, and understanding, so that it "just feels good".

I think Oscar Wilde's use of useless might be better than yours, which seems too expansive to be ... useful. — Jamal

Better? It's tricky. I think the quote works because it is clear while deviating from normal usage. In most contexts "useless" connotes no utility at all, not just no instrumental utility.

What if it were not Oscar Wilde, but a 19th century schoolmarm, or a Trump appointee, saying "art is useless". Or, a friend says "that movie was useless". The meaning would be pretty clear: art, the movie, has no value. Plenty of things are 'useless' in this sense, it is not so broad a meaning as to be useless.

But I think no one here believes that, that is not why I am objecting. Instead I'm arguing against the idea that art somehow stands on its own, intrinsically meritorious, disconnected from human need and purpose. The very fact that so many are driven to devote their whole lives to art's creation, and the fact that we are seemingly driven to saturate our environment with art, speaks instead to its deep connection to human purpose, instead of an inexplicable obsession with useless things. Even if we are not always explicitly conscious of what that purpose is. It is our job as philosophers to make the implicit explicit, only then can we actually understand what we are investigating.

I'd rather say that it's dour to insist that what serves needs must be "useful" — Moliere

Not dour, just proper English. It doesn't seem to make sense that something can both meet needs and be useless.

You seem to use "use" in a way that excludes aesthetic use. This seems unhelpful to me, neither humans nor any other animal behave in ways that are useless, that don't meet needs or serve any purpose. If from the start you presume the behavior is useless it will be impossible to understand. How can you understand a useless, meaningless behavior?

I'm all for the wider artworld -- games, novels, music, whatever -- I just don't think it's valuable due to its use, or would rather shy away from the uses of art towards the reasons we're attracted to it. — Moliere

If we are clear that the use of art includes , for instance, making us feel certain ways, then the use and attraction of art are inseparable. That we are so strongly attracted to art is powerful evidence that art is useful, that it meets needs and serves a purpose.

And I question that pre-moderns would typically wonder about ‘the meaning of it all’, as existence in those times was very much circumscribed by custom and your place in the social hierarchy (not that this was necessarily a good thing.) — Wayfarer

What do you think of this quote?

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity... What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? — Ecclesiastes 1:2-3

I didn’t say nor imply that there isn’t a hierarchy of meanings. At the most basic level the organism’s purpose, and the overall aim at which all of its constituent parts are engaged with, is persisting, staying alive. This drive animates (literally) all living creatures. — Wayfarer

You didn't say there was no hierarchy. But you neglected to mention it, though it is crucial to the topic. See my example of the poop machine.

People today are well aware of biological purpose, including their own. I once saw a tee-shirt that read "Born. Work. Fuck. Die." As if to say,

"Yes, my life has a certain purpose. I spend much of my time meeting biological purposes: working to sustain myself, and reproducing, or at least trying to do so. And yet, what is the meaning of all that? If these purposes are not themselves grounded in a higher purpose, they collapse into purposelessness."

Even though the world is suffused with biological purpose, this does not answer the charge that life as a whole is without purpose.

I'm going to try to write an OP that will go into some of this in more detail; we've already hijacked Moliere's thread for too long! — J

:up:

Questions of the meaning of life long predate the scientific revolution, so it is suspect to make it somehow responsible for a fundamental human question such as this.

What your essay seems to miss is the notion of hierarchy in purpose. Of course, biological life is full of purpose, at every scale. But at every point where purpose is found, one can ask what purpose does that serve?

Take for instance the poop machine.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/05/poo-machine-by-wim-delvoye.html?m=1

At every stage of the poop machine, one can ask what its purpose is, and receive a perfectly reasonable answer. But at the final stage which produces poop, when you ask, "and what is the purpose of that?", you find only silence. The end result, and therefore the entire machine, is ultimately purposeless.

The same can be asked of life itself. Despite all the purpose we can identify in all the facets of life, one can still ask, what is the purpose of all of it? And here too, one may encounter silence. With or without science.

Simply, farmers spend their time away from urban areas. Urban areas are where cultures mix, new ideas circulate, where you are constantly exposed to different peoples, different lifestyles, different faiths. By necessarily to live in an urban area you must have a reasonable tolerance of change.

Moreover, urban landscapes are always changing. Cities can change dramatically in a single generation. Whereas farms change much more slowly.

Cities require a tolerance of difference and change. Not only do they change their inhabitants, but there is a self selection effect. Those that do not tolerate cities avoid them.

Since farms are inhabited by self selected conservatives, they will be culturally conservative. This is a further reinforcement, as cultural conservatives prefer to be around others like them.

All this adds up to a striking effect in the US: step outside any US city, even in a blue state, and you are assaulted by Trump flags, Trump signs, enormous pickup trucks sporting 4 trump flags, etc.

But as always, we can find interesting exceptions. Satie claimed that his "furnishing music" was strictly pragmatic -- it was meant to add to the decor (great quote from him on Wikpedia: "Furnishing music completes one's property"). This sounds like he wanted it understood as non-art, but no one agrees! — J

I don't see this as an exception at all. Decor serves no pragmatic function, it is perfectly possible to live in an abode with no decor at all. Decor serves only to modulate the emotional state of the inhabitant; this is thoroughly, unproblematically art.

Frankly, Im ready to abandon all this talk of "artworld" entirely, and institutional theories of art. It seems oriented around the question of "what is fine art" rather than "what is art". Perhaps this was the interesting question in Danto's day, but today, to me at least, it seems far too elitist. What separates "fine art" from everyday art frankly doesn't seem as philosophically interesting as what separates art as a whole from non art.

I disagree with premise 1 -- I think people spend money on all manner of useless things. Tarot readings? Cigarettes? Kellogs Frosted flakes? — Moliere

It seems a very dour usage to call everything unpragmatic "useless". All these things may be unpragmatic, but they all serve needs.

By "art industry" I was mainly referring to the entertainment industry, which is exclusively in the business of producing art (I'm assuming we are past "mass art isn't art"). It seems odd to say that a multi trillion dollar global industry consists in creating useless things. Games are useless? Novels are useless? Music is useless?

I'm hesitant to justify art by its purposes. If anything I think it's entirely useless, and that's sort of the point. — Moliere

People do not generally spend useful money on useless things. Yet, the art industry (inclusive of Pop art) is booming, as always. Art is full of purpose: to stimulate thinking, expand perspectives, gain insight, to entertain, to feel, to beautify spaces, to occupy idle time.

The difference is that it has no pragmatic purpose. Take a piece of purported art, and subtract away the pragmatic purpose: what remains, if anything, is the art.

In general tools modulate the world while art modulates the viewer.

Suppose this "provisional offering" of silence/ambient sound as art had been roundly rejected. And suppose Fountain was laughed out of the gallery.... can art really be a private language, something that only the maker can speak? — J

At this point, the question is difficult to ask. Duchamp showed that anything can be visual art, Cage that anything can be audible art. Therefore, art is not something intrinsic to the object, but rather how the object is put to use.

I have a large collection of music I wrote but never did anything with. Is it still art, if no one else ever hears it? I think so; despite being unheard, there is an artworld it readily plugs into, were it heard. It would unproblematically be accepted as art (good art is another matter).

But what about your case? Something for which there is no artworld to accept it? Here, the creator relates to it as art, no one else does. Is it art? I think there is nothing more to say than

The creator relates to it as art, no one else does.

Whether that counts as art, to you, is just definitional. The reality remains the same either way.

We could imagine more and more cases like this, using the "house" example, the closer we get to a comparison that's "in the 'house' neighborhood" -- for instance, "This hovel made of detritus isn't a house in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it a house, then it's a terrible house." — J

I think this is a clarifying example. You can imagine a series, from a typical house, to houses in worsening states of disrepair, to a heap of rubble. Starting from the typical house, you get houses, bad houses, worse houses, and finally non-houses. I think this is why bad art and non-art are confused: with functional objects, such series are typical. As a functional object deviates from its proper form, it gets worse and worse, because form is essential to its function, and so the functionality declines along with the deviation. Deviate enough, and it stops being functional completely, and is instead just trash.

From this perspective, it is natural to call Duchamp's Fountain non-art. It has deviated so far from the form of art, that it has lost all "art function": it isn't pretty or enjoyable to look at. It required no technical skill, anyone could have done that. It doesn't depict anything beyond what it literally is.

We are accustomed to thinking that certain types objects *are* these types of objects by virtue of the function they fulfill. But we agree that this is a mistake, when it comes to art. Any functional requirement we can come up with will turn out not to work, and we could fill a hundred pages of this thread that way. Art is not a function of an object, it is a context around an object. There is no function art must fulfill, since art is not functional, but aesthetic. It is a way of apprehending an object, not as useful, but as the subject of contemplation. Therefore literally anything is a candidate for being art.

Yet, that alone is too broad. Even though nothing is excluded from being art, merely being a potential object of contemplation doesn't make art. Everything is a potential object of contemplation. And so I still maintain, art is an object specifically created to be an object of contemplation, where "creation" can include reframing an existing piece of non-art as art. And so, there was never a point where Duchamp's Fountain failed to be art: in the bathroom, it functioned, an may never have been given a moment's consideration. Moved into the museum, it did nothing, and received no end of contemplation.

I'm not convinced that something becomes art based on the creator's intention. I want to say that art is a communal practice that is vetted by a community, whether high or low. If that is right then "gatekeeping" is not bad, and is probably not even avoidable. — Leontiskos

I wouldn't say gatekeeping is "bad", and art is certainly a communal practice. But I don't think community vetting can ever be a reliable arbiter of what is and isn't art.

Take Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. To my knowledge, not only was this soundly rejected by the critical establishment, but its performance even resulted in a riot. Yet now it is treated as a masterpiece. If community vetting is the standard, then it wasn't art then, and is art now, which doesn't seem right at all. And it does not leave room for the community to be wrong.

I think "art" is akin to "artifact" and "tool". An artifact is distinguished from an ordinary object by the fact it was created with intention by humans. A tool is distinguished from an ordinary artifact by the fact it was created with the intention to facilitate physical manipulation. Art is distinguished from an ordinary artifact by the fact it was created with the intention to be used aesthetically. None of these distinctions rest on some ethereal ontological essence latent in the object. Rather, they rest on the history of the object.

I could go either way on this. And of course the criticism comes in different flavors and strengths. I'm not sure whether we should call such criticism an aesthetic judgment, or a judgment about what is art. Maybe it's got two prongs: "This crap isn't art in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it art, then it's terrible art." No one is offering the stop sign as an art object (usually!), but the critic is upset about the whole concept of "offering" something as art. It's this crazy pretense (from their point of view) that they object to. — J

I could go either way too, but the more I think about it the more I am convincing myself.

"Not art" and "bad art" are constantly confused. Both the hoi polloi and elite do this, about modern and pop art. Even though a fellow schlub calling Jackson Pollock not-art, or a beret-wearing hipster calling Kinkade not-art, might feel to them like a judgement about what art is, it can in fact be an aesthetic judgement. Since the distinction is not clear in most people's minds, they can be expected to substitute one for the other. Moreover, they likely don't even have a clear idea on what art is. So, we are under no obligation to take these declarations seriously.

Also note, "This crap isn't art in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it art, then it's terrible art." doesn't work in other contexts. "This apple isn't a house in the first place, but if you really insist on asking me to call it a house, then it's a terrible house." No, it's just not a house.

"Pretense" is exactly right. Part of the problem is the offending piece is masquerading not just as art, but prestige art, exalted in museums and expensive galleries as the best of the best. But that is just an aesthetic judgement: "this art does not deserve this praise", not "this is not art". In a different context, for instance, your kid starts experimenting with drawing abstract shapes and patterns, you might instead leap to its defense as art. Also note that "pretentious" is used either on people, or on art. Hammers are never pretentious.

Is it still art if no one sees it that way (except the creator)? Should we say, "intentionally attempts to create art"? — J

I think so. It is still an object created for aesthetic, not practical, use. Moreover, as a creator you always have a special relation to your creation, your enjoyment of it as not just art, but your art. (Or, disgust with it!)

Also, the verb "create" is very fraught in this circumstance. If we agree that the status of something as an artwork is not dependent on its physical nature, then "creating" an artwork can mean simply a consensus that declares the object to be so. Putting a frame around it, in other words. Are you OK with that construal of "create"? — J

I think so. For instance, some one finds a strikingly beautiful feather. They frame it, and hang it on the wall. Here, the "creation" consists in literally framing the natural object as art. I would say this is as much art as anything else. This is consistent with art not as some innate ontological status some objects have, but as a social context around some objects.

Is it the way that the creator interacts with the object, or the way that the aesthete/viewer interacts with the object? — Leontiskos

Good question. Right now I am inclined to say that art is intentionally created as art by a creator. When the viewer misunderstands art as non-art, or non-art as art, that is a misfire.

You might therefore say that anything that is found in an art museum is, eo ipso, art. But this seems to overlook the fact that someone decided what is allowed in the art museum and what is not allowed in the art museum. — Leontiskos

Why overlook? Museums, galleries, and critics function as gatekeepers of high art, and so yes, someone is doing the gatekeeping. But high art is hardly inclusive of all art. To experience an object in a museum creates a powerful pull in the viewer towards experiencing it as art. But that is just one of many ways of experiencing art.

Seriously, one individual cannot "put something in a museum." It takes some kind of collective agreement, some "we," in order to do the baptizing. — J

Of course by "put in a museum" my meaning included all the gatekeeping. But to most of us, it is not a "we" but a "they", the art elite, who do the baptizing.

It's a bit more comfortable to agree that "what the artworld calls art is art" if we're not also being asked to agree that it's good art. The artworld can be wrong about that, on this theory. — J

I wonder if you are understanding the "artworld" as the high or elite art world. I think the idea is that there are multiple artworlds, only partially overlapping. For instance, high art, graffiti art, country music, black metal music, harry potter fan fiction, philosophical essays. Each gatekeep with notions of what belongs and what does not, and what is elevated and what is not. Of course, with any of these, we are always free to disagree with what is canonized as good art.

So, is a local coffee shop with an interest in painting, part of the artworld? I don't have a strong opinion either way. Is there a clear line between "bad art" and "so meretricious it isn't even art but rather commercialism"? I doubt it. — J

Not "the artworld", but certainly "a artworld", maybe many. To say something is "so meretricious it isn't even art but rather commercialism" is just a way of condemning it as bad art.

They want to say, "This isn't art at all. You're either the victim of a con job, or you're trying to con me." — J

Fair. But they are still evaluating it as art, and finding it lacking in some way. That is an artistic judgement. They would never think to do this of a stop sign, for instance.

There's where I'm slightly inclined to think it's not art — Moliere

I think it is still art.

There are two independent axes that are easily conflated:

good art <---> bad art
art <---> non-art

"Art" is a way of interacting with an object, that is distinct from how we interact with other things. Once we interact with something as art, part of that interaction is appraisal, where we place it on the "good art" / "bad art" spectrum. But to do so is to already consider it fully as art.

It is common for people (art snobs especially) to say "that is not art!" of "bad art". But that is confusing art with quality and prestige. And that is, I think, what leads to the whole confusion of "what is and isn't art", because that judgement implies a rarefied, mystic quality that art possesses, non-art lacks, and only the refined critic can pick out.

I was thinking of someone printing out "Times New Roman" in Times New Roman and 8.5"x11" paper, putting it up in art museum and claiming "that's art!" — Moliere

I would say that would absolutely be art. As soon as you put it in a museum, it becomes an object to be appreciated, contemplated, and reacted to, rather than used. Even if the reaction is "This is bad because it doesn't look like anything, and my 3 year old could print it", that is a reaction to art, not to a utilitarian object. To escape this, you would have to react with something like "Why is that there? Is someone testing their printer?", but that is just a misunderstanding of its context.

In truth, the actual reaction would probably be a rolling of the eyes, because that kind of gesture has been done before, and would be seen as trite and cliche. But again, those reactions, "trite" and "cliche", are exclusively reactions to art.

I might put doubt on a printed paper using Times New Roman saying "This is Art", but painting letters is part of art at this point. — Moliere

Yes, I agree that painted letters might not be considered an art at all but rather a writing technique. Nonetheless, I read about Japanese Shodō, and most of the people who do it are regarded as artists, but the 'Shodō' itself is not considered an art, paradoxically. :sweat: — javi2541997

Even Times New Roman, I would consider art, but art that has crystallized into use. The creation of Times New Roman involved innumerable choices, building off the templates of previous fonts. If you look at TNR compared to a list of random fonts (I see this for instance when I choose a font in paint.net), TNR looks quite "normal" compared to many of the others, but that is just a choice collectively made: TNR is in the spectrum of "neutral" fonts, for us, in this time. It is just like accent: "accent" is just a deviation from the dominant accent, but there is nothing privileged in the dominant accent, outside its dominance. It is just another way of speaking. Seen from 300 years ago, TNR would look quite eccentric, and hence, "artistic".

I don't buy this idea that paintings, and art in general, can be equated with narrative. Narrative rather seems like one form painting, and art, can take.

Representational painting may aim at specific narrative. More often, it is the viewer filling in narrative gaps themselves. A painting may not aim at narrative at all, it may capture the feel of a place, a time, or a mood. It may symbolize something other than what is literally depicted. With more abstract paintings, like the example you gave the idea of narrative seems pretty hopeless.

What if, art is just a human created object that is meant to be enjoyed and/or pondered, rather than merely used? So, games would be art, and this seems pretty natural to me: games, like other art, start not from a creative void, but from existing genres, which the creator then varies to their liking. Food, to the extent it is meant to do more than nourish, is art. I'm even willing to admit sex toys as art. If so, paintings are just one of many culturally defined genres or categories of art.

Duchamp showed that what is art ultimately rests on cultural context. If you take a prosaic item and place it into an art-context, it becomes art. This is not just some abstract theory, everyone directly experiences it. The urinal transforms from a thing you piss into, into something about which you ask questions like, "but what did he mean?", or say things like "that's brilliant!" or "that's ridiculous!"

I don't think that's true. — Janus

This is not true either — Janus

Fair points, honestly that post was half-baked.

What is a painting, as opposed to a drawing? — Moliere

I think a painting is a type of drawing. The medium, paint, is the most obvious and least interesting distinction.

Paintings are always aesthetically oriented, while drawings might be doodles, diagrams, even words ( which are so specialized and so woven into the fabric of life that those drawings get their own category). A painting is art by definition, a drawing may or may not be.

Paintings are prestige, high art. Drawings, far less commonly so. Kings commission paintings, not drawings. We build temples (aka museums) to honor and worship paintings, not "drawings". If the painting on your wall is not museum worthy, it is because it is "low art", not high; but, it's still on the spectrum, whereas a mere drawing may not be on it at all.

is there a category which painting and drawing shar — Moliere

Drawings are 2d and represent something other than the literal markings themselves. Paintings are a certain kind of drawing.

Sorry you are going through depression, mate! I've been there. It sucks.

In order to have a philosophical perspective on depression, you first need a philosophical perspective on emotion. What are they? My take: emotions are how the unconscious brain communicates with the conscious brain. What is the unconscious brain? Just the vast majority of the brain whose workings we are unaware of, including everything that is instinctual. The conscious brain ultimately decides what to do, taking all inputs into consideration, including all emotional inputs from the unconscious brain.

Usually, what the emotions "mean" is clear by context. Snake, danger! She's hot, I like her. That guy creeps me out. I'm so worried about my kid's future. But, not always. Why? The unconscious brain is not linguistic, it cannot communicate concepts, only feelings. Words, concepts, ideas, that is all conscious stuff. And so, sometimes you are left perplexed about where emotions come from. If this was not the case, therapy would not be a profession.

Compare depression with some of the other negative emotions:

Frustration: This is useless, I'm pissed! (escalate or abandon inefficacious action)
Boredom: I want to do something else! (abandoning fruitless activity/inactivity)
Anger: I've been wronged, I need to do something! (restoring social equilibrium)
Anxiety: I'm so worried, I need to do something! (avoiding future negative events)
Fear: Run! (reacting urgently to a present danger)
Hopelessness: There's nothing more I can do (abandoning futile goal)
Grief: It's gone, I'm so sad. (reconciling with permanent loss)
Depression: I'm... miserable... (???)

The first 5 emotions urge you to take action of some kind. Hopelessness urges the abandonment of futile action. While grief and depression don't seem to demand action at all. One has to ask then, what purpose do these emotions even serve?

Grief, I believe, is about mental and emotional readjustment, about reframing one's goals and one's self of self after suffering an irreversible loss. One cries, one ruminates on mistakes made, on the bleakness and emptiness without the lost someone or something. Then, somehow the psychic wound begins to heal, and we move on.

But with depression, all seems futile, and the emotion itself useless. The depressed can ruminate all day, spend entire days in bed, filled with vague fears and doubts and psychic pain, and they get absolutely nowhere. The emotion seems totally maladaptive, even lethal in the most severe cases.

My theory: depression is a pathological state, composed of some admixture of grief, hopelessness, and anxiety. These emotions, once meaningful, are unresolved, and have become divorced from their original context, so that the patient no longer knows where they come from. Or, if they think they know, they are wrong, more often than not. (If they aren't wrong, then perhaps they aren't truly depressed, but experiencing one of the healthy, contextualized emotions). Negative emotions, instead of stimulating action or healthy readjustment (impossible, since the depressed don't know why they are there), stimulate negative thoughts, which in turn stimulate more negative emotions. It is the worst kind of vicious circle.

I'm going on... does this make any kind of sense?

I cannot see how this would be 'moral' in any sense other than taking 'moral' to mean 'other-regarding' and simply widening it out without any actual analysis. — AmadeusD

It is not merely other-regarding. There are multiple ideas here:
* The purpose of our moral intuitions is to facilitate cooperation.
* The moral intuitions consist in concepts around fairness and justice.
* These concepts are largely consistent across time and cultures.
* Differences in moral regimes primarily consist in differences as to whom these concepts are applied, and to whom they are not. Who is the in-group, who is out?
* What is commonly regarded as "moral progress" consists in a widening of the in-group circle

The above seems a subjective, hypericin-centered goal. That's fine, and that's how morality works on my view but I don't think this gets us anywhere near a reason to strive toward that goal, or any other tbf. — AmadeusD

Personally I'm interested in describing what morality is, how it works. Not in providing purported reasons for some individual to be moral. Yet, I am inclined to strive to treat every moral agent with fairness and justice. As an animal endowed with moral instincts, I am predisposed to do so. As a reasoning animal, I conclude that many of the delimitations defining in-groups are culturally bound, and largely arbitrary.

'Progress' is such a stupid term for moral workings. — AmadeusD

Tell that to a woman or to a descendent of a slave.

Well, how about that.

I see that Peter Singer is maybe even the founding figure in the animal rights movement. Someone actually translating philosophy into social change is rare indeed, impressive. Sadly, animals remain firmly in the out group of the overwhelmingly predominant animal species. At best pets gets in group treatment.

Perhaps the logical endpoint of moral progression is when not only all humans, not only all sentient animals, but future generations of humans and animals, are all accorded in group status. I'm afraid we are not going to make it there.

To me, what is “actually moral” is closer to the subset of descriptively moral behaviors (cooperation strategies) that” do not exploit outgroups as they increase cooperation in ingroups” — Mark S

Or, what about a cooperation that does away with the notion of out-groups entirely?

I've long had the idea of morality as cooperation strategy without knowing it has had any scientific validation. To me, the core of morally as cooperation has remained more or less fixed over time and space, what changes is who is in the in-group, and who remains in the outgroup. Our halting and uncertain moral progress over the centuries, if we really have had it, has consisted in an expansion of the in-group concept. When we regress, the in-group contacts, with typically tragic consequences.

If it was lawless there’d probably be no life and no one to ask these questions… — kindred

If there are many universes, some lawless and others not, this answers the question. Structure like ours can only arise in a lawful universe, lawlessness might look like a soup of random micro events.

I don't feel free. Do you feel free?

Here are some things I have done, currently do or will do even though I don't want to do them:

1. Breathe
2. Eat
3. Drink
4. Sleep
5. Dream
7. Pee
8. Poo
9. Fart
10. Burp
11. Sneeze
12. Cough
13. Age
14. Get ill
15. Get injured
16. Sweat
17. Cry
18. Suffer
19. Snore
20. Think
21. Feel
22. Choose
23. Be conceived
24. Be born
25. Remember some events
26. Forget some events
27. Die — Truth Seeker

I think this is a misunderstanding of freedom. Freedom does not mean freedom from the constraints of existence. That is death.

Think of it like a game of chess. You are not free to move pawns backwards. You are not free to move bishops sideways. The only way to do these things is to not play the game. And importantly, you are not free to win every game. But within the constraints of the game, you are afforded the freedom to choose any move you wish, so many choices that even the most powerful computer cannot explore them all.

Sometimes I feel free. Even when I do, I am still profoundly constrained by the environment, and by myself. Nonetheless, life affords a vast scope of choices. This can be agonizing, and wonderful.

Great topic. This is something that plagues me as well. In fact our stories are not dissimilar, I too took psychiatric medications that have caused me a lifetime of regret. I too wonder what life could have been had i not made this terrible choice.

Sartre said that man is condemned to be free. We, me you and others with these thoughts, feel this condemnation in this way. Life can seem a nightmare welter of decisions. Every moment a decision, both ones we make directly, and the many more we make passively, by omission.

There is a kind of horror to it. Our minds seem woefully inadequate to the task of computing the myriad of factors that are necessary to decide peven relatively trivial things. For instance, you mentioned choosing where to live. A good choice grants relative happiness, thriving, tranquility. Whereas a bad choice can cause discomfort, unease, unhappiness, a relative failure to grow and thrive. A weighty choice, never made with adequate information, nor with a mind capable of accurately extrapolating this information into the future.

And that is mundane and inconsequential. Consider how magnified the decisions of whether to marry, with whom, whether to have kids are. And these are still routine decisions on the scale of individual lives, which most of us must make. All these are lifetime inflection points. On one side lies one life, on the other, another life. One might indeed be vastly better, happier, more fulfilling. But which?

Welcome to the human condition.

While freedom is a curse, it is also life's greatest blessing, and I say this with total sincerity. Llfe truly wouldn't be living without freedom.

Much more to be said, but what do you think of that so far?

So sorry to hear this! Terrible news. I appreciated her grounded, wise posts and excellent fiction, and her generous constructive criticism to other writers. She will certainly be missed here.

[TPF Essay] Dante and the Deflation of Reason - @Count Timothy von Icarus
[TPF Essay] What Does It Mean to Be Human? - @Vera Mont
[TPF Essay] The importance of the Philosophical Essay within philosophy - @Jack Cummins