political correctness, identity politics, what's good for the market is good for the people, consumerism, globalisation, sexual promiscuity — Agustino

Again, this is way too broad to characterize any single "movement." There are politically correct identitarian leftists who loathe the free market, consumerism, and globalism. There are conservatives who support the free market, consumerism, and globalism while decrying political correctness, ID politics, and sexual promiscuity. And there are doubtless other combinations, given how Western politics engenders political eccentricity and individualism.

So the word is a strawman because some people use it in a way that you don't like? That's why it carries a danger of being a strawman? — Agustino

I'm saying that the word is used by people with a left-leaning bias, which inevitably results in caricatures of the other side when engaging in polemics. Wayfarer mentioned the term cultural Marxism. That's a term used almost exclusively by people with a right-leaning bias. Like the word neoliberal, I've never seen anyone positively identify as a cultural Marxist, which is why, as best I recall, I've never used the word.

but most neoliberals I know are leftists, not rightists. The right neoliberals are less common today than in the past, but the left ones are a lot more common. — Agustino

Name names. Who are the left wing neoliberals? Do they identify as such? Who are the right wing neoliberals? Do they identify as such? Finally, who are the right wingers, besides yourself, who criticize neoliberalism?

Exactly. That's where what we already understand as virtue comes in. — t0m

What are trying to say? Are you trying to defend the claim by an appeal to intuition here?

The word is used almost exclusively by left wing journalists and Marxist economists. As such, it carries with it the danger of being a strawman. In fact, I think it is just this. Your comments don't dissuade me from this impression.

As a definition, that is so vague as to be meaningless. Also, I don't care whether you can identify someone else as a neoliberal. There's plenty of that going on all the time. I care about whether anyone has him or herself identified as a neoliberal. If no one has or does, then it's a term of abuse, pure and simple.

I think "neoliberalism" is a term almost devoid of meaning, as I've never seen anyone positively identify as a neoliberal, and it seems to be used most often as a pejorative term for capitalism or free markets by the left.

For example, no being could know more, or love more, or have more creative power than God. — cincPhil

Why is it "greater" to know, love, and be powerful, than not?

In other words, do you believe morality is objective? — cincPhil

I do. But that doesn't mean I have to accept, or in this case, will understand, the idea of infinitized great-making properties somehow cohering in a single, immaterial being.

I think you're confused and in need of more research, to be honest.

Yeah, very much so.

I have been quite open, for quite a long time now, about my lowered estimation of the value of philosophy. — Sapientia

I kind of agree... — Agustino

Is TGW's ghost haunting you?

I kind of agree, too. 8-)

Time to get creative. I think I'll be happy as long as you don't posit a flying spaghetti monster. — cincPhil

What might you suggest to make "that than which no greater can be conceived" meaningful and coherent?

For God, I might use St. Anselm's concept of a maximal being, "a being than which no greater can be conceived." — cincPhil

Then, if I don't conceive of any such being, your argument doesn't get off the ground. Nothing comes to mind when I hear this definition.

Euthyphro would like a word with you. And I notice you failed to provide definitions. What, or who, is God? What are objective moral values? What is existence?

Not only is this rude but I think it is completely uncalled for. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

As could be argued your posts in this thread are, given its hitherto settled nature.

You are right in that we "are not fragile little creatures" but I can tell you that losing one lady is a HUGE loss when we have less than five ladies regularly on the boards. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Well, I'm not in favor of gender quotas either, so this doesn't concern me.

Has education lost its way or am I just become more Marxist as the years pass by? — Posty McPostface

It's actually funny that the Marxism-friendly professors sit cozily with tenure while not giving a damn about the condition of graduate students, adjuncts, and teaching (except on paper). They're all for revolution, so long as somebody else does the revolutionizing. Meanwhile, they'll continue propping up the very thing they're supposedly against: corporate-bureaucratic models of education that suck obscene amounts of money out of students to pay for their hefty salaries.

No, why?

If hell exists as a place — MysticMonist

This is the faulty premise.

Specifically, I had read the following about Neoplatonism not long before I saw your comment:

The general idea is that Soul, qua outer activity of Consciousness, looks back at its cause in order to understand itself so as to truly be what it is. Gazing thus at the forms and ideas eternally present in Consciousness, it becomes “informed” by them and carries forward, by some manner of benevolent necessity, images of the eternal forms into the lower realm of Being. Giving birth to the entire universe and the biosphere on earth in this way, one could say that the sum total of the corporeal, sensible world rests in Soul, not the other way round, that soul resides in the bodies it animates.

According to Neoplatonic theory, then, the world as we know and experience it in its formal and structural characteristics is the outer effect of the activity and life of Consciousness, an activity that was thought to be mediated “from above” by another, intermediate metaphysical entity, Soul. The precise ontological status of Soul as another hypostasis in its own right remains somewhat underdetermined, for in a manner of speaking Soul is the very process of expressing the intelligible world in the derivative form of sensible natural living beings and the lives they live.

From here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoplatonism/#SouNat . This section also directly bears on another discussion I recently had with @schopenhauer1 on evolution and the Platonic Ideas.

As envisioned by Lao Tzu et. al., It is we humans who bring the universe into being out of non-being. In my view, that makes the universe half human. — T Clark

This idea accords with Neoplatonism and Schopenhauer's philosophy as well.

Then you already have my answer. I used them interchangeably.

I had used those words interchangeably. But sure, if you posit a distinction between them, as you're apparently doing here, then the answer is no.

I don't understand the question.

Benefiting how? Becoming more virtuous? If so, then I agree, but that's different from what I was saying. The pursuit of virtue for oneself is not the same as egotism or narcissism.

You must love yourself — Agustino

Yes, but I somehow doubt that this means what I just said, to wit, "committed to satisfying the desires of one's ego."

In your own words, what does loving oneself entail?

Quick comment, I think compassion is more relevant than renunciation in the final analysis. — Agustino

More relevant to what? Compassion is obviously great, but I think it presupposes some degree of asceticism. One can hardly begin to identify oneself in others so long as one remains committed to satisfying the desires of one's ego. I must empty myself of self in order to allow the other to enter into me.

If all is contingent, then there could have been a counterfactual situation where the "Ideas" could have went a different way. — schopenhauer1

But the Ideas are not contingent! If by "all" you mean "all particular appearances," then I agree that their existence is contingent, but that doesn't entail the non-existence of Ideas.

There was no set outside of time/space that was a blueprint or template- it came about through contingent scenarios that played out based on circumstances, survival fitness, environmental changes, and happenstance. If anyone of those factors changed, then it could have been different, thus negating some sort of other-worldly Ideas as something atemporal. — schopenhauer1

This isn't really an argument, though. Again, the disappearance of certain particulars in time says nothing about the existence of the Idea of those particulars, other than that it ceased to be instantiated.

If you want to say that we have the ability to idealize particular patterns into universals, that is a cognitive feature we do that definitely does not lead straight to "see there are Ideas that we are perceiving as Plato said!" — schopenhauer1

My views on this topic are certainly not the most settled, so they could change. For example, the problem of universals still exists in philosophy, despite the advent of evolution, because it tends to be concerned with abstract concepts and numbers, not biological species. Interestingly, Schopenhauer is a nominalist with respect to abstract concepts (e.g. truth, goodness, beauty, etc), but a realist when it comes to biological species. In other words, for him, there are no Ideas of the former, but there are of the latter. However, it could be that the reverse is true. I still don't know how I would conceive of biological species without Ideas, but it's certainly possible. Or it could be that there are Ideas of both abstract concepts and biological species. I seem to recall passages where Schopenhauer seems to speak of beauty as an Idea.

I might add to my last statement above a consideration on Schopenhauer's oft-repeated line about how the world "ought not to be." This is a curious statement, for it directly challenges the notion that the will is an "aimless" striving that exhausts objective reality. Rather, such a phrase suggests that the world, and therefore the will, must have an end beyond itself and that the will does not exhaust the real.

In order to resolve this contradiction, there are two options available to the follower of Schopenhauer. One option is to reject the statements that imply the will has an end. This negates the possibility of salvation and so tends to impel one toward atheistic materialism, nihilism, and negative utilitarianism (and thus anti-natalism). The other option is to reject his statements that the will does not have an end. This tends to impel one toward religion, Platonism, asceticism, and virtue ethics. I can admit that both are valid reactions to Schopenhauer, but as you noted, I lean toward the latter.

is the essence of genetic or phenotypic change also in the Ideas? — schopenhauer1

No.

When does one idea leave another begin? These seem arbitrary at best. — schopenhauer1

The Ideas don't begin or end. Their instantiated particulars do.

I don't really see how, or why it's even necessary to postulate in the first place. Species and animals are contingent. There are patterns in nature, but why would there need to be universal patterns of each species? The animal is accidental all the way down. There is no necessity or determinism to it. — schopenhauer1

I could turn this around and say that I don't really see how an animal is "accidental all the way down" or why there would be a need to posit that. Presumably, the animal is determined by the accidents, so bringing up determinism doesn't seem relevant either. Anyway, there are several ways to answer your question. One way is to say that the Ideas are Kant's things-in-themselves, as Schopenhauer originally maintained prior to writing the WWP. Another is to follow Schopenhauer in identifying them as the grades of the will's objectification. Another is, again with Schopenhauer, to say that they are directly perceived in aesthetic experience. I don't know about you, but I've had experiences in contemplating both art and nature that seem to correspond to what he describes as the contemplation of the Platonic Idea. Finally, one could say with Plato that they are the eternal patterns of individual things. You have acknowledged that patterns exist in nature, but deny that any such patterns are to be found in members of the same species. I see no reason for such a demarcation.

I respect your Idealism and understand your stance, especially if it is going to align with Schopenhauer. If you were going to be an Idealist, at least it's based on Schopenharean metaphysics, which has the essential theme that I've come to call the "aesthetic vision" of willing. Though, I know you may take it a step further to a more theological/spiritual level. Though, we can debate metaphysics to our hearts content and I am more or less game. — schopenhauer1

A most courteous comment and abridgment of my leanings.

As for my take on metaphysics, I really am not much of an Idealist in the strictest sense. I can entertain the notion of a subjective nature to reality, especially as a possible answer to philosophy of mind, but that still doesn't sit well with me. Rather, what I do see is a certain striving principle throughout reality, and especially the animal. This striving does seem to be a principle, but it is hard for me to substantiate in words what this could mean. It is certainly something to me that is immanent in nature- something akin to the principle of entropy. This principle does not "mean" much until evolutionary forces contingently happen to bring about self-reflective creatures such as ourselves. We can understand the restless nature of reality in our own very existence, the instrumentality of being. There is no satisfaction at the end of any goal. There is swinging from goal to goal with a measure of hope. — schopenhauer1

All of this is conducive to my thinking, save the absence of a certain perspective that places such a world in the category of appearance, not genuine reality.

There are two views, it seems, in Kant interpretation on the question of the status of the thing-in-itself. One sees the thing-in-itself as a positively existing metaphysical entity, about which we have no knowledge. Another sees the thing-in-itself, not as pointing to some metaphysical entity, but as a limiting concept, or a term used to refer to the boundary of our knowledge of the world. Kant may distinguish between a limit and a boundary, but I don't know what bearing it might have in determining what the thing-in-itself is.

These two views are related to whether one views Kant as a one-world or a two-world theorist.

The Platonic Forms, or Platonism more broadly, is not falsified by biology. The notion of an essence is not meant as a physical explanation of a species, as the theory of evolution is, but rather a metaphysical one. You're committing a category mistake by rejecting the Forms for not explaining what they were never meant to.

For example, Schopenhauer speaks of species going "extinct" in his works. He uses that exact term. And, of course, he proposed the Platonic Ideas. The reason species extinction and the Ideas are compatible is found in the nature of the Idea, which exists outside of time, space, and causality, and so exists irrespective of whether it happens to be instantiated in physical particulars at a particular moment in time. The Idea of a mammoth exists, even though there are presently no particular mammoths physically manifesting that Idea. And what physically appears as speciation, or the change from one species to another, is metaphysically the change in accidents of a particular species, which can eventually lead to the disappearance of one Idea's manifestations in time and the emergence of another's in its place.

To reiterate, the Ideas are not identical with what biology means by species. If they were, then your criticism would follow and follow trivially. But such a criticism would also fundamentally redefine the Ideas into something they never were, namely, changeable entities existing in time. Biological species can change in time without this entailing the non-existence of Platonic Ideas.

Another thing to consider: evolutionary biology is certainly to be provisionally accepted as the best current explanation for how life evolved over time on Earth. But I myself would be hesitant to enshrine it as unfalsifiable or as revealing the complete truth about life. In one tradition of the philosophy of science, unfalsifiability is basically synonymous with being unscientific. So what may be lurking behind your frustration with Schopenhauer's incorporation of the Platonic Ideas is a latent realism with respect to science, which comes out of positivism. Now you may acknowledge this and have reasons for adopting such a position, but I merely wish to point out that I have a different perspective, one that is anti-positivist and anti-realist with respect to scientific claims (which isn't to say that I'm a social constructivist or epistemological relativist, mind you).

Well, I think there is an inherent contradiction in the ascetic where can somehow achieve Enlightenment (or perhaps die of suicide due to complete starvation and denial of bodily maintenance?). What then is this state of Enlightenment, if all is Will? Hence he does leave the crack for something more than Will, which naturally backs him away from a strong definition of Will as simply striving, as there then must be this other thing going on where one can not be striving. — schopenhauer1

Yes, as I may have said in a PM, I think his doctrine of the denial of the will provides indirect proof of there being something other than the will.

That though can simply be a lack of Will, an absence of Will which is what is going on.. Something close to metaphysical nothingness. — schopenhauer1

I don't know that I follow this. This ground of the will seems to have some kind of agency, given its function in Schopenhauer's soteriology. It's not inert or nothing (although it may appear as the latter from a certain perspective).

I personally think the Platonism is shoehorned into Schop's metaphysics. It was a way to make his aesthetics work- like an inverted Plato (art is shadows of thew world now is the world is shadows of the artist's genius vision). I also think that Schop did not have a chance to incorporate Darwin's natural selection into his metaphysics. This may have changed things actually as Schop did try to incorporate some of the latest theories that were going on at his time. Schop died in 1860, Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859- little time, if any to digest the work and its implications. He had Lamarkian evolution to work with, but it was so prone to criticism, that I can see him not really using it too much in his epistemology or metaphysics. — schopenhauer1

I disagree. In Schopenhauer's early manuscripts prior to writing the WWP, he takes Plato's Forms to be the Kantian things-in-themselves (plural, as Kant spoke of them) and/or the essences of phenomena, not the will. If you think about what Schopenhauer says of the Ideas in the WWP, you can see why he thought this, for he says of them that they are outside of time, space, and causality, retaining only the form of being-an-object-for-a-subject. This lines up almost exactly with how Kant conceives of things-in-themselves, whereas the will is shackled by two forms of knowledge (one more than the Ideas), time and being-an-object-for-a-subject. If the shedding of these "veils" (time, space, causality, etc) gets us closer to the thing-in-itself, to ultimate reality, then the Ideas get us closer to it than the will. So the reverse of what you suggest is true: if anything, he shoehorned the will as thing-in-itself into his burgeoning philosophy, despite his strong Platonic leanings. I tend to think he may have been onto something with his original idea and that he bit off more than he could chew in switching to the will. The will may still be an inner aspect of all things - that much I think he has conclusively proven - but the essences of things cannot fully be explained by it. This is where Plato comes in.

Great video by the way.

If it is will that is thing-in-itself — schopenhauer1

As Agustino pointed out, he is ambiguous on this claim. The most sensible reading in my mind is that he maintains two different notions under the heading "thing-in-itself," one legitimate and the other not. The first notion, which is the one I accept, is that the will is the inner aspect of all phenomena. This is his great philosophical discovery, and the proof he gives for it in the second book of the WWP is pretty well conclusive, as far as I'm concerned. The second notion, which I reject, is that the will is identical to Kant's notion of the thing-in-itself. For Kant, the thing-in-itself is in principle unknowable. To the extent Schopenhauer accepts this definition, which it seems he does, then the will is not and cannot be the thing-in-itself.

The question, as I see it, and as Agustino has posed, is whether Schopenhauer's system is a complete metaphysic. If we take the fundamental metaphysical question to be "why is there anything at all?" then neither Kant nor Schopenhauer have adequately answered it. Kant doesn't so much try and fail to answer it as he rejects the question altogether as unanswerable, anticipating the later positivists who would regard it as meaningless. This is once again because the only candidate in his system that could constitute an answer is the thing-in-itself, which unknowable in principle. I should say the only legitimate candidate, for it is true that he recommends believing in God. But his made up faculty of "practical reason" doesn't save this belief from being purely fideistic.

Schopenhauer implies that he has provided an answer to it but in the end appears to admit that it eludes his grasp. The will, if it is not Kant's thing-in-itself, is not the "groundless ground" of phenomena. It is merely a ground. The aforementioned question, in light of Schopenhauer's philosophy is, "why is there will at all?" or "what grounds the will?" One could fall back to the Kantian and/or positivist position and rule out the question as unanswerable given our cognitive limitations or as meaningless. Schopenhauer himself seems to have done the former, once he more fully recognized that there is something other than the will. Or one could reassess the reasons Kant and Schopenhauer give for believing we have said limitations. I myself vaguely drift in the latter direction and toward Platonism as the solution. Schopenhauer himself, of course, incorporates many Platonic elements into his system already, which I think might provide the key to completing his system Platonistically, as it were.

This means that Schopenhauer is the first to read desire as the cause of representation, rather than representation as the cause of desire, as in the realist view. So idealism simply is this inverted relationship between the two. — Agustino

I'm not sure I would use these terms. The view that desire is the ground of representation would be an ontological claim. If he posited mind as the ground of representation, then he would be an ontological idealist. Instead, his epistemology is idealistic, while his ontology is voluntaristic (and not complete, as you would add and I would agree).

In a certain sense, even Schopenhauer's philosophy is not a neutral monism - but rather it doesn't have a complete metaphysics. For the Will and Representation aren't really separated - Representation IS the Will, but Will isn't everything, there is something outside of it, but those who are still full of Will cannot see it. So Schopenhauer is actually post-metaphysics, in that he establishes the limits of philosophy without ever arriving at metaphysics. The Will is mot à mot the in-itself, the active principle, of the representation. — Agustino

Yes, I would agree with this, as you might have anticipated. His metaphysics are in a sense deliberately incomplete, since he basically claims in his later writings that his system takes one as far as philosophy can go. The end of philosophy is the beginning of religion and mysticism. And yet, I think philosophy may well extend beyond the limits he set for it. From his perspective, he saw the end of philosophy's horizon, but that may not have been its actual end. Perhaps, standing on his shoulders, I might be able to see a little farther, if not that is not too arrogant an aspiration.

Jein?

Lao Tsu WROTE something. He hoped to get his thoughts out poetically. If he didn't write it he TOLD someone.. he had a goal- hope of his words meaning something to someone. If he didn't you would not be quoting from him. It is inescapable. — schopenhauer1

Actually, if one believes the traditional account (Laozi may not have existed), then he was forced to write down his philosophy, otherwise the gatekeeper wouldn't have let him leave the city and create his hermitage in Western China.

I think it depends on one's perspective. If one is predisposed to the melancholic viewpoint, as it were, then it can seem like many if not most major philosophers are cheerful optimists.

The point was the expectation is a driving force that prevents despair, even from seeing the very human condition of instrumentality. — schopenhauer1

But insofar as you admit the possibility of salvation, then you admit the possibility of being extricated from the "human condition of instrumentality." That the instrumentality of which you and Schopenhauer and others speak forms part of the human condition is indisputable, but salvation's possibility means that this condition need not be permanent.

There needs to be an N/A option for the questions after the first one, otherwise one can't truthfully complete the poll and see the results. I screwed up in this regard when making polls, too, so you're not the first.