What is hope? "A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen." To hope is irrational if what one expects to happen is impossible. But are all things impossible? If they are, then your observation follows trivially, which means your claim depends on demonstrating that everything one might hope for is impossible.

I'm not entirely convinced of that. Schopenhauer is invariably referenced in these discussions, but he would maintain that salvation is possible, and I agree with him. He may have been confused or mistaken about the mechanism and precise character of salvation, but that it is possible he demonstrates to my satisfaction. If salvation is possible, then it is rational to hope for. Thus, a hopeless world is not one your namesake and inspiration proposes, at the very least. If you have moved beyond him in this regard, it is apparently in the direction of nihilism.

See here, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell

I don't see any damnation there. By "damning," I mean, "being sent to hell." And by "hell," I mean, "eternal separation from God." Adam and Eve are clearly not damned.

They aren't.

Alternatively, from the mortal sin angle, no, he never deceived himself. He always knew and knows what the good is and why he should will it. God wouldn't damn a being who is deceived. So if Satan is damned, then he isn't deceived about the good.

Right, but it is first self-deception that is willed (can we say with full knowledge? clearly full knowledge ends once self-deception is willed), and only THEN does sin and rebellion enter into play. — Agustino

He possessed knowledge of the good and what would happen if he freely choose not to will it anymore. No longer willing the good is the act of will in this case, which then results in his being deceived. But he knew he would be thus deceived prior to said act of will.

Wait, why can't Satan deceive himself? :s — Agustino

He can. I'm saying he must have done so with full knowledge.

I would say that this denial requires the willful blinding of oneself to the truth. You cannot both know the truth clearly with full-knowledge and yet rebel. To rebel, you must repress a part of yourself, which is exactly why evil is self-destructive. — Agustino

According to this, it would be impossible for any being to commit mortal sin, which requires not only willing evil, but doing so with full knowledge.

With Satan there's a chain of deception that stops with him. I am compromised in my ability to choose the good due to Adam. Adam was compromised in his ability to choose the good due to Satan. But Satan wasn't comprised by anyone. There is no ur-Satan that deceived Satan. So he must have known fully what he was doing and the consequences of his action, but still chose to rebel anyway. God has to allow a being he creates to do this if he allows him free will.

Just like we cannot but pursue our telos according to me. — Agustino

I disagree. I think it can be deliberately denied with full knowledge.

he states that to ask the existential question "why is there something?" is a fatuous exercise — Jake Tarragon

Which reveals him as a philistine.

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. — Agustino

Not if you recall the premise I added, which is that everyone desires happiness. To me, free will requires that we need not desire the good. From a Christian perspective, we might say that Adam was deceived and so led into ignorance of the good by Satan. But who deceived Satan? No one. Satan deliberately turned away from desiring the good (which is God), with full knowledge. And yet he still desired happiness, believing he could obtain it by himself. So here's the difference between us:

Agustino: we all desire the good, but can be ignorant about what it is.
Me: we all desire happiness, but can be ignorant about what it is.

Your position means that there is no reason to pursue one's telos. All you can say is that we have one. My proposed solution would be that one ought to pursue one's telos because it makes one happy. The question "why do what makes you happy?" is subverted by the premise that we cannot but desire happiness.

Funny guy.

In your answer, I am assuming "harm" is a synonym for "suffering".
Physical suffering and metaphysical suffering. — jancanc

Not quite. I used the word "harm" to describe something being done to the will, not the state the will is in. Suffering follows harm.

So essentially you are saying that, in compassion, I don't feel your physical suffering, yet I do feel your metaphysical suffering? — jancanc

Yes.

The will is one identical will or essence, yet this is not to say that all human beings are metaphysically identical. — jancanc

Actually, I think it is to say this. Human beings are phenomenally distinct but metaphysically identical.

Technically, I think what he means is we "share the suffering of the one identical will even though we are empirically distinct". That doesn't me I feel another's suffering 100% as they do (as their suffering).... but the will explains why my i feel any suffering at all at the sight of your suffering, and perhaps also explains why my suffering is similar to yours.... I think that's what he means. — jancanc

Yes, I agree.

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. — Agustino

Alright, that's an answer. But then, as I already anticipated, whence free will?

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. — Agustino

So you're equating goodness with happiness. Again, this seems to ignore part of what I'm concerned about. Ought implies can, so if you say that one ought to pursue one's telos, then it's possible for one not to. If you say that one ought to pursue one's telos because one has to anyway, then the word "ought" is meaningless. If you say that one ought to pursue one's telos because doing so is good, one can ask: why do that? This is to ask why it is in my interest to be good. The answer I proposed was that it is in one's interest to be good because being good will make one happy, and we all desire happiness. Now that you have equated goodness with happiness, you simply beg the question all over again.

However, I don't think he really means that in compassion we actually feel another's suffering inside another persons body. — jancanc

We might distinguish between two types of harm that I think he proposes. One is physical or bodily harm and the other is metaphysical harm. The former is a manifestation of the latter, and metaphysical harm refers to the will being forcibly denied. I may not be able to feel the same bodily harm that the other person is experiencing, but I can experience the same metaphysical harm they are experiencing, and this on account of the fact that his will and mine are at bottom one and the same will. In being compassionate, I understand that the will being frustrated in this particular individual in the will being frustrated in toto.

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

Explain.

If it is the telos of your being, it means that this is what your being is directed towards, which implies pursuing it. — Agustino

The bolded part is a non-sequitur. It doesn't imply that, for you admit that one can choose not to pursue it. To explain why one ought to pursue it requires a reason other than the telos itself. So you are right to ask the following question, because you do need another reason:

If X being your telos isn't sufficient reason to pursue it, what could, in principle, be that sufficient reason? — Agustino

You tell me! I can only guess based on what I've gleaned of your position. Using Adler, one reason to pursue one's telos might be that it makes one happy (in the Aristotelian sense). So you'd have a syllogism that looks like (I think):

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.

Not when he admitted its double meaning, which means it could have been read as an ad hominem.

Good. Thank you.

I didn't intend to call you a crappy person. — Michael

Oh, you didn't? Alright, Michael, I'll take your word for it. I can also apologize to you if any of my posts seemed to attack you as a person, as opposed to the posts you wrote.

But your admission only reinforces the point I made earlier in this thread:

I've seen certain posts deleted or censured for apparently being "offensive" and yet many of the mods themselves, depending on one's perspective, post highly offensive dreck.

So can the mods now acknowledge this please?

I understood the double entendre. That's why I said it. It was a joke, said in response to your claim that the moderators in that discussion were purple prose-laden, hyperbolic, and ill-tempered. — Michael

Right, so you did intend to call me a crappy person. Notice that you have attacked the man, and I have merely attempted to characterize certain posts.

Can you handle many demons at once? X-) — Agustino

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

They weren't bitter sarcasm. They were facetious. Much like my joke about bitter lemons. — Michael

I didn't take it that way. Your remark was to call me a lame and crappy person, much as one would describe a car with the aforementioned word. If you had something more innocuous in mind, then you failed to understand the double entendre of your remark.

I would hazard a guess as to assume all of them were. Which, again, undermines your generalization about the mod-team (as already mentioned, given that at best it covers 3 of the 7). — Michael

You were all ill-tempered and bitter. In my view. In addition to that, some were also prone to hyperbole. Others still were trying very hard to artfully craft their disdain.

I haven't. None of my comments were purple-prosed, hyperbolic, or ill-tempered. Neither was andrewk's. jamalrob and Hanover didn't post. — Michael

But they were bitterly sarcastic. Some of those adjectives were meant to apply to SLX's ornate contributions, which should have been obvious.

So Michael's joke about lemons was bitter sarcasm but this isn't? — Baden

So you acknowledge the initiating party. That's the crucial admission, in my mind, for as I said in that thread:

By the way, I knew it wasn't an attempted insult. The bitter sarcasm and hyperbolic reactions in this thread have always been accompanied by an implicit wink and a nudge. You know that I know that you know that you don't really think I'm crazy. The idea is to make me respond in kind so as to entertain you. I've tried to stick to my position and the argument at hand, however, and not fall for the bait. This is why I say with complete sincerity that you haven't refuted anything I've said. I know what it looks like when someone knows they have me dead to rights. This thread is mostly shitposting and moral preening on the part of you and your mod buddies.

Perhaps I didn't fully succeed. I'm happy to admit that I was quite agitated myself that I was being deluged with such infantile nonsense.

I believe there were more such comments, but regardless, 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.

as a case in point, as he has claimed, it could include almost any joke or negative comment aimed at him, so it may actually include some of yours. — Baden

That was a case in point about the bitter sarcasm.

The fact is that some posts by some of us in the discussion fit some of your negative description as did some of your own posts — Baden

Ah, the "I know you are but what am I?" grade-school response. Well, at least you admit the former. You can accuse me of whatever you like, but this thread is about the mods, not Thorongil.

Those three adjectives don't have to apply to every mod. "Ill-tempered" suits your "contributions" well enough. "But I wasn't ill-tempered," you will say. Well, I can't enter into your subjectivity to determine that, so I'm only giving you my impression. You seemed quite frustrated and agitated that people like me were, in your mind, standing athwart the perfectly diaphanous position to take on the issue, which is to severely restrict and/or ban all guns. One of the most common expressions for frustration and agitation is sarcasm, which you did clearly display in your terse, biting little comments.

Animals, even the higher primates you mention, are not capable of the same extensive range and nuance of emotions as humans are. — Agustino

Yes, that's better said I think.

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. — Agustino

But it's only an instrumental good, not a moral good. So why should I pursue it? Again, all we're left with is descriptive claims about teloi, not whether we should pursue them.

Maybe you don't wish to prescribe any oughts at all, and so don't wish to propose any normative ethic. That's fine, and is agreeable to me, given that Schopenhauer doesn't really propose a normative ethic either. But the reason he doesn't is because of his determinism, and yet you have referenced your belief in free will in this thread. So what is holding you back from proposing a normative ethic? The only answer I can see is that you don't know how to solve Hume's guillotine.

I wish you wouldn't lump us all together like that. The mod team did not act as one in that discussion, and we don't all share the same views or manners. For instance I don't share the views espoused in the posts you refer to, although I can be a little ill-tempered at times. — jamalrob

Sure. Fair enough. A generalized statement still admits of exceptions, and you are one of them, for you never commented in that thread, so please accept my apologies if you felt unjustly slighted by my comment. Still, the fact remains that there were several mods in that thread who saw fit to post in such a way as I describe.

I think you're right that it's not left vs right. Some on the far Left are as supportive of the right to bear arms as American conservatives and libertarians, and not only in America. — jamalrob

This is correct. I have known two college professors who are left wing in their politics but who enthusiastically collect guns. That being said, it is generally the left that wants to severely restrict them and/or ban them in the US.

I don't have access to the paper, but from the abstract, the conclusion seems to establish not merely God's existence but a rather strong version of divine illuminationism. What do you mean by suggesting that God is the explanation for thought? Is he responsible for the thoughts I'm having right now? Is he implanting the thoughts that I think? That doesn't sound like God but something else, perhaps something more sinister, owing to the damage such an idea does to man's freedom. On the other hand, maybe you mean that God is the ground of there being thought at all, not that he creates the individual thoughts we think. If so, then I think the abstract's wording is a bit misleading.

I've skimmed through the thread and have a couple comments.

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 — Agustino

This descriptive claim stops just short of a prescription, but I take it you think the former entails the latter. If so, then I have a critique of this sort of natural law theory, or rather, I would present you with Robert P. George's critique of this theory (who is himself a Catholic natural lawyer):

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.

How would you respond to this?

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. — Agustino

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

No, in fact, I haven't. Not only have I not deleted a post like the above from anyone including you, I haven't moderated you at all in as long as I can remember. In any case, we can settle it now. We have a record of all changes including edits and deletions, so let me know roughly what the content of the post was and roughly when it was deleted and I'll check the record. And that can be done any time by the way if any member really feels a post was unfairly deleted. — Baden

This is about the mods in general. You're welcome to peruse my history, but I don't keep a running list of deletions, so I can't point you to anything, although I did make a thread calling out jamal, I believe, for deleting something I wrote about postmodernism. And I've made numerous comments in the past directed to mods asking why certain posts were deleted. I think Sapientia might recall some of those interactions.

Nazi sympathizer — Baden

Still gullible!

The problem is that you've deleted posts, including my own posts, that have been similarly innocuous and yet patronizing little snipes like Michael's post above are paid no mind. Naturally, you agree with the sentiment, so why moderate them? But if an Emptyheady engages in sarcasm of a similar nature, you gullibly take the bait, interpret him literally, and permaban him. Ergo, inconsistency, as I said.

Specifically, why is it that moral codes are different depending on where you are? — Matthew Gould

One answer would be: constant conjunction, to borrow a phrase from Hume, of confused and false ideas reinforced by one's family, culture, religion, etc.

If there really is a universal moral code then why is it that it is different depending on where you are? — Matthew Gould

It wouldn't be. If it's universal, then it doesn't change. What's different would be other behavioral systems that claim to be prescribing what is moral but are in fact not.

Also, where does Morality come from? — Matthew Gould

This question is too vague. Are you asking what grounds moral behavior? I would answer that it is compassion.

Case in point.

The mods in general are anything but bitter. — Baden

That's a laugh. The purple prose-laden, hyperbolic, and ill-tempered responses by the mod team toward anyone who supported the right to own firearms in the recent gun control thread alone puts the lie to this suggestion.

According to your perspective, but of course, you are infallible? — TimeLine

No, and that's my point. No one is, including the mods.

I put "too strict" but I would have put "inconsistent" if that were an option. Emptyheady was banned on bogus charges. TGW was banned on far too trivial charges. I've seen way too many innocuous, sarcastic posts deleted, and yet most of the mods do nothing but post bitter sarcasm. I've seen certain posts deleted or censured for apparently being "offensive" and yet many of the mods themselves, depending on one's perspective, post highly offensive dreck.

Idealism, in short, will have it that everything is mind — jorndoe

That seems to be only one type of idealism, ontological idealism, as Paul Guyer notes here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/