I think Lynch would agree with you. :P — Noble Dust

Yep, but so much ado about nothing :P

I'm with you! — Noble Dust

Like this?

and it's truer to real life; our lives aren't the equivalent of a 2 hour Hollywood blockbuster; all the plot points of our lives don't get tied up nicely. — Noble Dust

I think the tying up of plot points is largely subjective, something that we have to do, it's not done for us. Nobody is going to tell you why you had the experiences you did - it's up to you to tie them together.

But then, as I already anticipated, whence free will? — Thorongil

It's only the later Christians who introduced the radical conception of freedom which doesn't disagree with the Greek conception that sin is ignorance, but adds that the will can willfully blind the intellect and maintain a state of ignorance, even when knowledge is offered and available. — Agustino

Free will is always involved because there are multiple desires within the soul, and if they are not kept in their right hierarchy, and say, the desire for sex is allowed to dominate other desires, then some of those desires will be frustrated. The goal is to bring one's soul in harmony with itself, and this requires an exercise of one's freedom of will.

Note that I am also a determinist, but determinism isn't incompatible with free will. Determinism isn't fatalism.

Ought implies can, so if you say that one ought to pursue one's telos, then it's possible for one not to. — Thorongil

Yes, out of ignorance (whether willful ignorance or not).

If you say that one ought to pursue one's telos because doing so is good, one can ask: why do that? — Thorongil

Yes, but you can always ask why do what is good? Why do what makes you happy? And so on so forth - there's no end to that line of questioning.

Story of my life. I remember working my job and was like :( why am I doing this. — Nils Loc

That has sometimes happened to me too - I think it's a very modern way to feel. Somehow in this modern world one cannot really find their place in the scheme of things :s .

Explain. — Thorongil

Just that happiness and directedness are not separate from fulfilment of one's telos.

The bolded part is a non-sequitur. It doesn't imply that, for you admit that one can choose not to pursue it. — Thorongil

It would depend. Some ancient Aristotelian would say that since sin is ignorance, you cannot really choose to not pursue it. Even when you're sinning, you are pursuing the good (however blindly). It's only the later Christians who introduced the radical conception of freedom which doesn't disagree with the Greek conception that sin is ignorance, but adds that the will can willfully blind the intellect and maintain a state of ignorance, even when knowledge is offered and available.

To explain why one ought to pursue it requires a reason other than the telos itself. — Thorongil

No, such a reason cannot exist, nor is it needed.

Using Adler, one reason to pursue one's telos might be that it makes one happy (in the Aristotelian sense) — Thorongil

Happiness is nothing but achieving one's telos though. So the pursuit of one's telos just is the pursuit of happiness.

True happiness results in fulfilling the teloi of one's nature.
It is good to pursue true happiness.
Therefore, it is good to pursue the teloi of one's nature. — Thorongil

This is a tautology because of the relationship between happiness, telos, and good. Good and happiness are defined as a function of one's telos. So invoking happiness is nothing but a sophism since it doesn't add anything else - it's just another category which says the same thing as what was already said before.

The below is also absurd:

The good is the achievement of one's telos.
It is good to pursue the good.
Therefore it is good to pursue one's telos.

Sorry, Wos, couldn't find a kiss smiley there and the love heart seemed a bit too much... — Baden

Wos is getting a lot of affection today from all sides >:O

He's got a trident, a snake, and a little man in his fro. I'd say he's up to the task. — Thorongil

Yes, but no lemons. Can't handle demons without lemons ;)

Are you coming on to me? — Wosret

No, no, I have no fascination with my rivals >:)

Pfft, I don't race to the bottom, trying to be the biggest victim, I'm a lion. — Wosret

Can you handle many demons at once? X-) >:)

Oh, I'm not talking about me, I'm, I'm talking about how I think someone that doesn't always win feels. — Wosret

Oh. I see now. X-)

Not so much any individual comment, one then feels outnumbered, and also being that they are the ones with all of the substantial powas, things feel totally imbalanced. — Wosret

Yes, but when you're outnumbered you have to fight the demons all alone - don't you have practice handling all of us in the Shout Box? :P

You were all ill-tempered and bitter. — Thorongil

Yes, Mitch sometimes tries to impersonate Bitter Crank, but sadly not very successfully.

I'd be happy to have believers on the mod team, but they are few and far between. — jamalrob

Not according to this poll.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1403/poll-religious-adherence-on-this-forum/p1

19/52 (37%) religious, with 13 of those Christian.

I actually think you should be a moderator :D - that's that attitude that moderators should have.

Can I ask a question in good faith? — Noble Dust

No, I only let you ask me questions in bad faith. Hope that's okay with you.

Is this sort of surrealism-made-real philosophically nihilistic? The ending to this new season, for instance, was sickening; I literally felt sick after watching it and had trouble sleeping that night. Not because of any horror element, but because of the element of the unknowable; the meaninglessness that seemed to permeate the finale. — Noble Dust

Yes, I would say it is nihilistic from the clips and the way you describe it (I haven't watched the show). It tries to portray things as meaningless and not tied together - as senseless. But that's just one way to experience life. Some people experience life as inherently meaningful, and weave stories around their experiences such that they make sense.

For example, giving a hypothetical example - someone has a boyfriend/girlfriend who they want to marry, and for reasons outside of their control they are unable to - like say Romeo and Juliet. One person would view the situation and the rest of their lives as senseless and meaningless. The other will look at it in terms of what they've learned from the other person, and will experience it as deeply meaningful, and connected with whatever future events requires them to use that knowledge. They may even believe they will be able to be together with that person after death.

There isn't just one way to relate to reality.

lemons — Baden

I see that you have now conceded the accusation I leveled against you and are now performing a rear guard maneuver to soften its impact. It's too late, though, for I've already completed my victory lap. — Thorongil

>:O >:O Your reddit username isn't about lemons for nothing no?

No.

But it's only an instrumental good, not a moral good. — Thorongil

No, they are defined as moral. You're now confusing morality as it pertains to virtue ethics, with Kantian concepts of morality.

So why should I pursue it? — Thorongil

The question is simply answered by the telos itself. You should pursue it because it is the telos of your being. If it is the telos of your being, it means that this is what your being is directed towards, which implies pursuing it. Now if you answer "so what?", then no other answer is possible - in other words, you would have got to the point where no reason can even be provided. If X being your telos isn't sufficient reason to pursue it, what could, in principle, be that sufficient reason?

So what is holding you back from proposing a normative ethic? — Thorongil

Depends on what you mean by normative. I don't think of ethics as "imperative" - that's why there exists freedom of will. But on the other hand, there is an objective morality out there.

Feser and MacIntyre's arguments confuse the notion of good as a theoretical notion with the notion of good as a directive. Here's the way their basic arguments are supposed to work:

Every act that fulfills human human nature is good.
X is an act that fulfills human nature.
Therefore, X is (so far forth) good.

The problem is that the term good in the premise has the theoretical meaning "what contributes to the fullness of being that is due a thing," or something along those lines. However, for the argument to establish a normative conclusion, the term must have, not its theoretical sense, but its practical sense, namely, "something fulfilling that is to be done or pursued" (and the term will have a practical meaning through its being part of a practical proposition). For if the meaning of the conclusion were merely "X contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being," then we would need to add a proposition to reach the properly practical or normative proposition: one would need the properly practical proposition "that which contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being is to be done or pursued."

This point can be illustrated more clearly by looking at the type of syllogism that is supposed to prove that an action should not be done:

Whatever impedes the fulfillment of one's nature is bad.
Y impedes the fulfillment of one's nature.
Therefore, Y is bad.

Again, this is a valid syllogism, but only if the term bad in the conclusion is taken in a theoretical sense rather than a practical sense.

His accusation seems to be one of equivocation on the word "good", and in the end it's nothing but another attempt to reintroduce Hume's fact / value dichotomy. I'm happy however to grant the first sense of the good both times - I don't see why we need the second.

The point of virtue ethics isn't to form this sort of categorical imperative that you must do what is good. Rather it is, in the end, a free choice, which has to be willed. And beyond that, the good is, of course, the telos of the will itself.

Maybe, although I seem to disagree with them as much as agree when it comes to politics. On many issues I'm often much more inclined to agree with, say, Hanover or Thorongil than with, say, Sapientia or Street. So if you class me as being on the Left along with them, you're obscuring some deep differences. — jamalrob

There are differences of course, but your views all bear a certain family resemblance to each other on many issues (for example religion).

I'd like to see more diversity in the mod team. Conservatives are welcome. — jamalrob

You could always get someone like Mariner, or Thorongil on the mod team then.

Ranting alt-right maniacs, maybe less so. — jamalrob

I haven't met any of those on this site yet.

Library of Babel — Nils Loc

It's very short. I remember reading it, and being like :s 'why have I just read this?'

I guess you could have a look at this thread too for choices:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1729/your-favourite-philosophical-books/p1

But is it not a fact that all moderators (with the exception of Hanover) are left-leaning (or leftists) and all moderators (including Hanover) are atheists? There seems to me to be some valid ways to lump all moderators together. In certain ways, you share a lot of similarities with each other in terms of worldview.

It's just 2 days old >:O How could it receive attention so quickly. I haven't even noticed it till now. I'll look at it.

So the feeling of horror isn't the feeling of watching someone be brutally murdered ala Hollywood; the feeling of horror is simply the feeling of not knowing what the fuck is happening; philosophically, it's analogous to the feeling of existential dread. — Noble Dust

I still don't follow - maybe you should start a thread on the feeling of horror >:O

Because the issue is what you're describing above sounds like existential confusion, which can be horrifying but by itself it isn't the essence of all horror. It can be the cherry on top of the cake so to say, but it can't be the essence. Surely what is horrifying is the certainty that something bad will happen, whereas the existential confusion that you speak about can create a sort of paranoia that something bad is happening since you can't make heads or tails anymore, and hence you can no longer use reason to protect yourself from what is now perceived to be inevitably bad.

Have you seen Twin Peaks? — Noble Dust

No! >:O - is that bad?

I think this is disputable. Many animals display intimacy, such as penguins and the higher primates. Animals are not simply reproductive robots. — Thorongil

Yes, it may be possible that intimacy is possible for some animals too. I don't have much beef with that, I said human-only because it's just most evident in humans. Animals, even the higher primates you mention, are not capable of the same extensive range and nuance of emotions as humans are.

The primary element in horror as a genre is the unknown. Not gore, terror, disgusting things...manipulate that element of the unknown, and horror becomes a totally different experience. And philosophically, the unknown has a nearly boundless energy all it's own, hence the potency of the unknown in art. — Noble Dust

I don't really see your point.

I'd say the primary element in horror is the terrible unknown. You don't know what it is, but you do know, with certainty, that it will be horrifying and terrible - and that makes it even more horrifying and terrible. So it's definitely not just the unknown simpliciter - because the unknown could be pleasant as much as it could be painful.

Anything I should read about this view of sin in the meantime? — MysticMonist

Well, it's pretty much the standard view of sin in Christianity - namely that human sin in Heaven affected ALL of Creation which is now corrupt. It's also quite standard in certain forms of Neoplatonic Gnosticism where this world is seen as created by an evil demiurge, and hence also being evil itself. So you should check out those sources of thought. St. Augustune, Valentinius, Plotinus come to mind.

What few horror shows I saw as I child (we weren't allowed, usually) gave me phobias about the dark. — Bitter Crank

Yep, after having seen a horror movie I always became more paranoid >:O - I never understood how people could watch such things.

I do avoid gruesome films with senseless violence and poor moral messages. There are quite a few films that I saw and enjoyed in my prime movie-going years that I positively can not stand to watch now. I think "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a great movie, but the last time I saw it, it left me angry and agitated. I walked out of Bonnie and Clyde the last time I tried to watch it again. Just too much gratuitous blood, death, etc.

I don't like horror and monster movies, either -- not because they are immoral, but because I find them upsetting. I'm a sucker for all the tricks of the people-frightening trade. I read On the Road by Cormac McCarthy -- it starts at bleak and it goes down hill from there. It was OK as a book. I decided to watch the movie too and found it unbearable. I didn't want vivid images of the desolation of On the Road floating around my memory, so I quit after about 5 minutes.

I don't think children should see movies like Bonnie and Clyde or The Godfather. The story lines are too adult, too intense, and the depictions are too vivid. But then, I wouldn't take a child to watch an Ingmar Bergman film either -- like The Seventh Seal or Wild Strawberries. Children would find them terminally boring, at best. Casablanca would be OK for children to see -- at worst they wouldn't appreciate it.

Mad Men, Breaking Bad -- both very good shows, I thought; just not children's movies. — Bitter Crank

That is interesting. I am much the same, I also avoid movies containing extreme violence, horror movies, and the like. Even "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was quite painful to watch. Lately, I actually pretty much avoid all movies :s - I just don't find them enjoyable anymore. When I was a teenager and 20 or so I loved going to the cinema with friends, nowadays, it would be so boring to go, and I wouldn't feel much better for having gone afterwards.

One of the last great movies I've watched (long ago) and liked was this one:


The most hilarious part was at the end, when grandmother meets her own highschool rival and they say the following to each other:


But yes, there is no doubt that watching things and even fantasizing changes your brain. We know for a scientific fact that watching someone do something and doing the same thing yourself in real life fires the same parts of the brain. Essentially, in both cases, in the moment, the brain has the same experience. So obviously if - say - someone has a rape fantasy and plays it in their mind, it affects their brain the same way as a real rape would in the moment. And if a real rape is harmful to your own psyche, then so is the fantasy of rape. Obviously, though, the fantasy does not cause harm to anyone else though, so there is a difference in terms of one being morally more serious than the other.

Isn't the telos of everything (object and person) primarily to exist? — MysticMonist

Yes, the telos of the whole Creation is God, and as such all Creation attempts to draw closer to God, however unknowingly.

Do squirrels serve a telos to also be food for foxes and for methods of distributions of acorns? — MysticMonist

No, since it's not the necessary end of their existence on any level of analysis.

Does God design nuts and squirrels and foxes together on purpose or are they related only by chance? — MysticMonist

Who's food for whom is probably an accidental feature that emerged along with sin. But obviously, this would be going beyond the virtue ethics of Aristotle.

Wouldn't part of the telos of human sexuality be not just intimacy between partners but as a shadow/manifestation/mode of Divine love and our ecstatic union with God? — MysticMonist

Well - as I said, ultimately the telos of the whole Creation is God. The First Cause is also the end towards which all things are oriented.

However, this all depends on the level of analysis. When we talk about the telos of sex exclusively, we consider it within its immediate and more restricted context - hence intimacy and reproduction are seen to be the purposes. They are the direct purposes of sex - as opposed to indirect purposes which are those purposes that are fulfilled by the purposes of sex themselves.

Obviously, intimacy and reproduction themselves have other purposes, they are not ends in themselves. We are intimate, as you say, as a symbolic representation of our individual and collective union with God. So that is the telos of intimacy. And as we advance through things, at the most general level, the telos of everything put together is seen to be God. God is thus seen as being that which holds everything together.

It is a very good question!

How do we determine this, though? What is this process? — darthbarracuda

I have already answered that. You have to look at the activity or thing in its full context and how it fits in with everything else. You will detect both essential features and accidental ones when you do that. I've illustrated how that is done with regards to non-human sexuality.

Does a pattern imply an essential feature, though? — darthbarracuda

Not necessarily. They could also be accidental features. That's why you have to conceive of the activity in its context and determine if the feature is accidental in that context or essential. With regards to sexuality for non-human animals, it is clear that something like pleasure is accidental (just a means) and something like reproduction essential (the end). Nature could do without the one, but not without the other.

How do we come to know the telos of something like sex? — darthbarracuda

The same way we know the telos of any other thing/activity - by looking for the end towards which it is directed. In the case of sex, one such end is clearly reproduction, since it can only occur through sexual intercourse. Clearly, we see that sex is necessary in the economy of nature in order to allow for reproduction. If all pleasure was somehow eliminated from sex, it would still be necessary in order to permit for reproduction.

For human beings, there seems to be another end which is simultaneous to reproduction - and that is intimacy. But that isn't so for animals - just for human beings. That's why human beings attempt to make love, and not just have sex and reproduce. Even the promiscuous, however blindly, are searching for this intimacy, even if they're not aware of it.

Do we simply look at nature and "recognize" function? How does this work? — darthbarracuda

You look at the context in which the action happens and understand how it fits in - how it connects with everything else.

I suggest that I am given moderator position for 10mins to make a necessary amendment to the amended poll.

It would read as follows:

"HANOVER IS WAS GREAT. LET'S MAKE HANOVER GREAT AGAIN!"

Like this? — TimeLine

:-} You should provide a context for that comment. But yes, most women and men for that matter aren't very intelligent, so you cannot discuss much about philosophy, science, religion, etc. with them. But the fact that they're dumb isn't the problem, it's being dumb mixed with arrogance, pettiness and pride that makes it problematic, since such people are usually highly opinionated, and frequently resort to violence of some kind or another, or otherwise attempts to manipulate others when things don't go their way. I've had friends (both men and women) who weren't very smart, but they didn't pretend to be either - like when the conversation would get to religion, philosophy and the like they'd just humbly say I don't know what to say, since they haven't thought much about those things. There's nothing wrong with that, that attitude is actually quite admirable. That's why I like spending time on a philosophy forum, since men and women here are more intelligent than the average - even though unfortunately they're not usually also humbler.

That's why I always tend to be very loyal and very close to my friends, who have good characters (most importantly) and are usually smarter than the average (by smarter I don't mean higher IQ necessarily, but rather they think about their life, etc. more than the average).

I don't know anything about your post that was deleted, but I remember Thanatos' and I didn't think it warranted that they should be deleted. You said something in your OP (about Mongrel or TimeLine?) that Thanatos felt was deserving of commenting. You can't demand that he not address it, as you did. — Michael

I remember being told when I was warned that I must follow the requirements of the OP - especially if the OP clarifies. I clearly did that in my own OP, and yet Thanatos did not relent.

Things were "extreme" in your view. Not in others', for example, Erik's. — Baden

When you say something like this it sometimes makes me wonder if we're using the same forum - like if you watched his interactions with John, Thorongil, Buxtebuddha, myself, Mongrel, etc. - how is it even possible to think that wasn't extreme behaviour I don't know. But I'll leave it at that, since we obviously disagree.

Actually, sorry, I may have been confusing Thanatos with John Harris. — Michael

Thanatos is John Harris :-} - you don't know that?

Most significantly, I found him to be extremely magnanimous in his ability to not take disagreements so personally, and to not let testy exchanges that he may have had with other posters affect his judgments of their arguments on threads of a different topic — Erik

>:O >:O >:O - that's the exact contrary of my experience with him.

whose intent was more playful than malicious. — Erik

Yeah, that's probably true.

But we were too lenient? And that is because we are atheistic and left-leaning. — Baden

No, you were too lenient in the sense that you let him misbehave as he wanted to for far too long. Not letting him misbehave = deleting his posts, warning him, etc. If you did do that, then there were certainly no visible effects. Of course, in the end, you had to ban him, as what he was doing was utterly ridiculous. The fact that you ultimately banned him doesn't mean you weren't biased though - you seem to think that because you banned him, that clearly shows you weren't biased. When things are that extreme, you're given little alternative, whether you like the poster and his/her views or not.

So, you are both saying you didn't want him banned but you wanted him banned sooner. Therefore we are biased against right wingers. Can you begin to see how irrational your complaint is? — Baden

I complained about the leniency that was shown to him, and that it shows bias because his views were in agreement with the moderators, who wouldn't have treated someone with opposing views in the same way. Really, this wouldn't be such a problem if the moderator team wasn't heavily leaning towards the left and atheism by default.

Once upon a time, I was warned for simply posting a comment like "naval gazing" in an OP, which caused the poster to remove the thread. There was a big firestorm over that. And yet in this Thanatos case, I was the OP of that thread, and asked Thanatos to follow the OP, warned him 6 times or more that he should follow the OP, etc. - so why is it that action is taken against someone like me on the right almost immediately, and yet someone on the left like Thanatos doesn't even get those posts deleted?