To lay out in its clearest terms: — schopenhauer1

Ad hoc assumptions which raise more questions than they answer – not clear at all.

This will ever be my debate with Nietzscheans on this forum. I'm sorry but Schopenhauer cannot be surpassed by Nietzsche's contrarian view.

Whatever. I'm not a "Nietzschean" (though I share affinities with his anti-idealist naturalism) and in my previous post I raise objections to (your) "pessimism" referring instead to Camus, Zapffe, Epicurus, Epictetus & Spinoza without invoking "Nietzsche". Try addressing my actual argument, schop1, instead of copping-out by shadowboxing with a strawman. :wink:

... almost each and every moment you deliberate and decide. The reasons you chose, whatever they are ...

... are mostly not conscious decisions / choices according to (e.g.) Buddha ... Socrates, Pyrrho ... Spinoza, Hume, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Peirce, Wittgenstein ... and corroborated by (e.g.) cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics, embodied cognitivism & CBT. :roll:

This OP is about Aristotle's Eudemian and Nichomachean Ethics; not his Metaphysics, Politics, or Physics. — Bob Ross

And yet you begin with his metaphysical terms "purpose" "telos" "final causes" & "essence". :roll:

A map is something used to know territories themselves, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. Maps are used to facilitate taking paths through a simplified abstraction derived from specific types of aspects of a (factual/formal/fictional) territory.

The idea of "essence" might be explained quite differently from how Aristotle goes about it ...

Yet the OP concerns only Aristotle's notion of "essence".

We are the only species that bears a responsibility that no other animal must endure, that of justifying why we must do/endure anything. We are self-aware creatures, that know that we can do something counterfactual. — schopenhauer1

"Responsibility" to whom?

"Justifying" other than that "we must"?

Is being "self aware" also sub-personal (i.e. pre-self regulatory processes constitutive of "self") or just a superficial confabulation (i.e. token-reflexive, user-illusion)?

It is a form of "ignoring" of the problem. — schopenhauer1

No, Camus (like Zapffe et al) recognizes 'existence' is a pseudo-problem only for idealists (or antirealists, subjectivists ... supernaturalists), that is, for those who adopt an egocentric stance of 'ontological transcendence' (pace Spinoza) that is inexorably frustrated by the ineluctable and immanent resistance-to-ego of existence (i.e. anicca, anatta ... dao ... swirling-swerving atoms recombing in void, etc). There is no "problem" that's "ignored", especially by lucid absurdists, who neither absurdly 'idealize non-ideal' existence (re: hope) nor absurdly 'nihilate non-negative' existence (re: despair), insofar as we strive – suffer – to create manifold spaces by and within which to thrive aesthetically and ethically between absurd extremes. :death: :flower:

... we are the species that needs the delusions ...

... such as "the delusion" that our "species needs delusions", etc?

What are your "meta"-cognitive beliefs about pessimism, and what it may mean to a person? — Shawn

As schopenhauer1 suggests, the existential stance of "pessimism" is also a "delusion" for coping with, imo, a (mostly) maladaptive habit of neurotic overthinking – anxiously fearing for (pace Epicurus/Epictetus ... Spinoza) – our species-specific defects-dysfunctions aka "suffering". :fire:

It's the age-old problematic: ignorance. — 180 Proof

... the life of the ignorant, who do not understand or perceive the suffering of the world. — Shawn

A point of clarity: in this context, by "ignorance" I mean to ignore for whatever reason (e.g. naivete, sociopathy-narcissism, acculturation, ideology, remoteness-deniability, callousness-ptsd, magical thinking-otherworldliness, masochistic bias, etc).

... morality is more deeply rooted in emotional affectivity than in rational deliberation. — Tom Storm

:up: :up:

I'd like to ask, in correspondence with the OP, whether only through experience can one come to learn, or even know, such basic moral facts? — Shawn

Yes, through tacit experience (via childhood, socialization, pedagogy, trauma, etc) but explicitly by reflecting on experiences.

The way the world seems to be working is that there's some kind of serious deficiency in this regard of being informed of moral facts or truths.

It's the age-old problematic: ignorance.

Context matter. (Edited) Maybe 'right in/action' is clearer ...

I can only answer this way: ethics is, as I understand it, the study of (i.e. reflective inquiry into) the extent to which exercises of moral concern (via judgments and conduct which prevent or reduce (net) harm / injustice) cause a moral agent to flourish – to reinforce adaptive habits (i.e. virtues right in/action) which restrain maladaptive habits (i.e. vices re: wrong in/action). An observational axiom of ethics: suffering – species-specific defects which make individual species-members vulnerable to dysfunction (i.e. fear of harm / injustice) – is the most basic moral fact and thereby knowing how to decrease or increase the likelihood and severity of such defect-dysfunction is thereby the most practical moral truth.

Have you read the Metaphysics yet?
–Count Timothy von Icarus

I haven’t, but I will. — Bob Ross

For f*ck's sake ... :roll:

No. Maybe. Yes, but whatever we use "to speak of the territory" (including "essences") is not the territory itself.

:up:

I don't see anything wrong with the concept of an essence or final causes (telos): do you? — Bob Ross

Yes, in this context "telos" is fallaciously anthropomorphic (à la animism). Aristotle mistook – literalized / fetishized / reified – his causal mappings for the territory and called them "essences".

18July24

Trump isn’t going to win. — NOS4A2

Yeah, buddy! JD Vance is the *misogynistic gift* that will keep on giving. More of the Ultra-MAGA Hillbilly speaking in public, please. :clap:

Roevember is coming! :victory: :mask:

:eyes:

FWIW, my intepretive sketch from a 2022 thread Perspective on Karma ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/730691

So are we. :mask:

I feel like a asshole. — bert1

No doubt.

I concede. — bert1

My questions were for @Pantagruel to clarify his specific statement which he cannot because it's gibberish. And your response, bert, isn't "paradoxical", just more semantic jugglery.

I asked clear, direct, relevant questions here and yet you reply with an opaque non sequitur. Apparently, it's reasonable to assume (again), you don't even know what you're talking about. Okay, never mind.

We have billions of people that look into the sky and see that the Sun travels around the Earth. The Sun rises in the East, and sets in the West. No one is saying we don't have that unified and confirmed subjective experience. But is our interpretation of that subjective experience true? No. It turns out that the Earth actually orbits the sun. But from our limited perspectives, and can feel like its the other way around. — Philosophim

:up: :up:

Anecdotal, magical thinking dogmas abound (despite alleged philosophy graduate.studies). Geocentric flat earthers, after all, are violently allergic to counter-evidence / sound counter-arguments.

Consciousness, in its essence, is imminently trans-individual. — Pantagruel

If so, then what makes "consciousness" mine? If it's not mine, then why should "consciousness" matter to me? If, however, "consciousness" is mine, then what does "trans-individual" mean and why should it matter to me?

:ok: :rofl:

@Sam26 :eyes:

If you do not provide any evidence that these subjective interpretations of reality have been confirmed as objective realities in controlled settings, then your argument has failed as an assertion. It is a hypothesis [idle speculation], no more, and cannot stand against other the contrary hypothesis that has been confirmed as of this day: "Consciousness does not survive death". — Philosophim

:100: :up:

???

Argue with your strawmen all you like, Wayf, but you trivialize yourself by disingenuously misquoting me and spewing ad hominems. Disregarding my clarification is also a tell. :roll:

Nonsense: "existence" is not a voluntary agent (re: category error).

My Zapffean-Camusian (quasi-Ligottian) response to the OP on p.1:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/914646

:lol: That "exactly" says nothing about "sees the universe as it truly is".

I'm a big fan of Ligotti ... but what's your point in mentioning him?

That's exactly what you said. — Wayfarer

Really? Cite a quote.

naturalistic metaphysics' proposes: that we see the universe as it truly is

Wrong. It "proposes" a synoptic view of "the universe" without supernatural entities or forces (i.e. woo woo :sparkle:) that is consistent with the Mediocrity & Uniformity Principles (i.e. not anthropocentric).

... outside and beyond the human conception of it ... — Wayfarer

Silly ad hominems & strawmen. I/we have not claimed or implied anything "outside and beyond" anything, sir.

Humans are irrelevant. The Cosmos would be the same with or without us. — apokrisis

:100: A fact that terrifies 'anthropocentric antirealists' (e.g. @Gnomon @Wayfarer) to the point of despair or woo-woo denials.

In effect, imo, Aristotle's teleology is occult, or based on arbitrary post hoc definitions (i.e. final causes aka "essences") which render conclusions inferred from them (e.g. "good" is being/action consistent with final causes) invalid. Unless I've misunderstood the OP, your "problem", therefore, is pseudo, Bob.

16July24

re: MAGA Freak Show (American idiocracy)

:lol:

Doubts about Biden’s nomination only came into view this year. — Wayfarer

My doubts about Biden from spring 2023 ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781755

Agreed. I don't advocate assassinating any current/former elected politician or candidate for office. I never have. Even though SCOTUS recently granted "immunity from criminal prosecution" to POTUS for "killing a political rival".

No "fantasizing", just talking about what the orange shit "deserves" as you said.

Point at something Trump did that makes him deserve to be assassinated. — Tzeentch

Nothing. He desires to die very slowly in excrutiating agony while fully aware of Sleepy Dark Brandon's 2nd inauguration, then mercifully expire a world-class loser on 21January25. That's what The Clown & his cult of worshipful idiots deserve.

Are actions in general (such as buying, walking, flying etc.) considered universals? — SEP lineolata

If I understand your question correctly, I suppose so sub specie aeternitatis (or from a 4-d pov) ...

Here are brief articles which summarize my understanding of 'philosophy as therapy' beginning with the Socratic method in (early) Plato's Dialogues, followed later by the Pyrrhonian epoché (re: undecidable statements (e.g. metaphysics, theology, ethics)) ... and reimagined explicitly via Wittgenstein's clarification of latent nonsense inherent in meta-discourses (early) and then more broadly as descriptions of conceptual confusions as symptoms of philosophers' misuses of everyday language (late)):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy)

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

My point is, Amity, that 'rigorous conceptual clarification' (i.e. dialectics / therapy) is only a means and not the end (which is, imo, 'eudaimonic praxis') of Stoicism; thus, the Stoic philosopher reminds us, in part, of (Plato's early) Socrates. No doubt others will take issue with this sketchy interpretation; hopefully, however, the above is informative enough to point you in a fruitful direction.

NB: I do not consider myself a 'philosophical quietist / therapist' (even though I agree with Witty that philosophy is not theoretical (i.e. doesn't explain matters of fact) – that, for me, it's only reflectively hermeneutic-pragmatic (Epicurus ... Spinoza ... Hume ... Peirce-Dewey ...)).

Even Fox Noise ... :sweat:

I ain't worried about the MAGA Circus (or "Project 2025") ... just the next assassination attempt. :zip:

:mask: :up:

:up: :up:

What criteria do you use when judging someone's justification for a policy or a course of action? — Vera Mont

A two-step criterion: (1) performative self- consistency, if an action/policy is not, then the relevant, problematic inconsistency should be exposed and possibly reformed; (2) efficacious harm-prevention/reduction, if an action/policy is not, then It should be opposed and/or replaced with an evidently more efficacious alternative.

Is it different from the criteria you apply to justifications for an isolated act?

I don't know what you mean in this context by "isolated act".

When justifying your own actions or statements, according to what factors do you formulate your argument?

I rely heavily on (to the best of my ability) non-fallacious, defeasible, sound reasoning.

On what grounds do you decide whether a justification is appropriate and valid?

Whenever a moral agent acts/doesn't act (re: harm) or a public/private institution enacts policies which affect the public (re: injustice) I think are grounds for requiring justification.

15July24

(Day 15 of the American Monarchy)

Roevember 2024:

POTUS Biden & VP Harris
(plutocratic neoliberals) :zip:

versus

The Criminal Clown DJT & MAGA-bitch J.D. Vance
(autocratic neofascists) :down:

You exist. This is self-evident to you. — Treatid

How do you know this if it is only "subjective"?

However, you cannot prove your existence to me beyond all possible doubt ...

Firstly, "proof" only pertains to logic and mathematics, not matters of fact.

Secondly, "beyond all possible doubt" is neither a necessary condition nor sufficient condition for any claim to have a(n objective) truth-value.

Thirdly, whether or not you/we believe "beyond all possible doubt" any X exists is neither a necessary condition nor sufficient condition that that X exists.

Lastly, given that you/we/I lack compelling, reasonable grounds to doubt any X exists, believing that that X exists is reasonable until such grounds for doubt are evident. Thus, Descartes' "Cogito" fails due to the unwarranted premise of "doubting everything that can be doubted" since, though merely "possible", there are no grounds ever to do so. (Read Wittgenstein's On Certainty.)

So - "your existence is self evident" is subjectively true. Your existence is evident to you.

Again, how do you know my so-called "self-evident ... subjective truth"?

[ ... ] isn't an objective truth. This applies to every concept you can imagine. It is impossible to objectively prove anything. 

e.g. Such as this merely "subjective" statement. :roll:

Like the logician Lewis Caroll's "Alice", Treatid, you've fallen down the ancient sophist Gorgias' self-refuting rabbit hole to "Jabberwocky"-land.

I love eating meat (in smaller portions and less frequently than I used to decades ago). Neither periods of being a vegetarian nor a vegan had been nutritious enough or made me anything but miserable. I'm still waiting for vat-grown meat to become a sustainable, economically feasible and appetizing alternative to industrial livestock meat production. Until then, I remain an 'immoral' (guilt-free) carnivore.

(2021)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/582423