For instance, many depressed people have perfectionist tendencies — Bitter Crank

This is an interesting observation. Do depressed people have a low self esteem due to prior experience?

Is there an internal desire for perfection or is it something assimilated from society with pressures on us to socialise well and achieve things or due to experiences of constant criticism?

It seems easy to create unhealthy trends in society. It seems like societies with an artificial but fairly fixed hierarchy with distinct roles might be healthier than excessive competition and judgement. For instance with a monarchy you know you can't compete with them so you can have them as a kind of constant paternalistic figurehead. I can't comment greatly on tribal societies but they seem to have more natural hierarchies with defined social roles to settle into.

Existential Psychotherapy is a philosophical based form of therapy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_therapy

Because there is not much concrete knowledge about the nature of mind so there is room for exploration, self exploration, reading from thinkers of all eras on mental states and so on.

Medication has worked for me in the past but isn't working at the moment. I wouldn't replace medicine with philosophy but I think medicine in psychiatry is probably based on a largely physical reduction of mind to brain.

With conditions like schizophrenia,paranoia and psychosis these seem not appropriate for philosophical meditation however psychoanalysts have claimed success using Freudian style analysis for exploring someone one's inner world, at least one analyst I heard claimed he cured a patient.

Can't think of any easy solutions though.

I have just read the following article that seems okay.

"Our environment can either open up or constrict possibilities for spiritual and intellectual growth."

http://philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/Philosophy%20And%20Depression.htm

I haven't found philosophy helpful for my depression but it can help to analyse issues in general.
Some analysis may offer coping mechanisms but also may cause more anxiety.

It is hard for me to decide what the nature and limitations of reality are and there are competing positions on worldviews or metaphysics.

This thread has got me thinking that maybe feeling unable to cope with life is a problem created by society more than I originally thought.

It seems very easy to make life hard for other people. For example there could be no provision for disabled people so they couldn't leave the house or shop or work etc with no ramps, adapted taxi's modified shop entrances and so on.

The problem is it is hard to try and make society work better for you and people oppose because they are either coping and complacent or apathetic or simply prejudice.

If I was enjoying my life style that certainly wouldn't lead me to the assumption that society was good enough for everyone or even most people.

In philosophical terms you could describe it as unexamined norms.

so it is just as much the rest of society's fault for not creating an environment in which all different types of people can thrive. — Pseudonym

I have sympathy with that viewpoint thanks.

With the dynamics of society it is not clear that the good flourishes, that we have the correct priorities and so on.

I think power dynamics are very interesting and obviously disputed. Allowing different people to flourish can mean relinquishing power and ones owns interests or values.

Thanks for the responses so far.

Part of this feeling stems from an incident on Sunday where I went to a casual philosophy meetup to talk about taboo's.

I was taken aside at the end and accused of dominating the conversation. During being told off by a facilitator I said "Don't bother.. I won't come again."

I am waiting (for ages) for an assessment for Asperger's and I feel that I'm never going to be able to socialise easily with people and not upset people. I think I can in some situations but I think my personality is to assertive and opinionated and I can find it hard to stop talking.

It is definitely not a one sided problem. I was subject to a lot of abuse as a child and I found that people with Asperger's often suffer chronic bullying and that so called neurotypical people can cause the biggest challenges. I haven't been diagnosed yet but Asperger's can cause problems like anxiety and alienation and may cause a higher suicide risk.

These kind of cognitive issue and thinks like personality traits and personality disorders are things that might partially define "not coping with life".

No one can cope alone. — unenlightened

I don't think that inability to cope with life is seen as a real problem that needs intervention.

When I refer to an inability to cope with life I suppose I am talking about a general feeling that life is hard and unrewarding and that you are not achieving what you want or would rather be elsewhere.
It is almost a metaphysical foundational issue.

Helping someone survive cancer or move house or find a partner are problems that are well defined so specific advice can be targeted and these issues don't seem to have wider connotations.
But not coping with life can be seen as pessimism and nihilism and/or a criticism of society and life that causes people to get defensive or critical rather than supportive.

In a way I think self help books are the kind of "support" offered for not coping with life and this is because they are not required to be rigorous and scientific so they don't need to worry about the overall quality, ethics or philosophical validity of their advice.

I think a so called "existential crisis" is not coping with life, but this is not, as far as I am aware viewed as a problem society or medicine has any responsibility for. But if you are rich enough you may be able to afford an Existential Psychotherapist.

The origin of that individual problem is surely societal, though of course there could be hereditary weakness that would make someone less able to survive the bad societal environment. — Michael Ossipoff

I am not sure what causes someone to be unable to cope. What concerns me though as how we treat this condition, whether we intervene, complain and ostracise etc and how it effects our life philosophy.

The assumption that everyone is equipped to cope with life (like a fish equipped to swim) is going to effect social policy.

It could be that people who benefit from society say that it is moral and functional, but they are only saying this because it favours them, but then that kind of society is hard to change.

No one chooses mental illness. What would be the aim? — CasKev

The allegations are things like malingering and attention seeking.

Maybe being truthful is a good in one's self?

At least it something I definitely value in myself.

Self discovery?

Even Hitler justified his actions as doing the right thing, for what he believed to be true, and decent. — charleton

Hitler may have seen goodness as a weakness.

I am not sure doing the right thing equals being good because people can say "I have to do this horrible thing because it will benefit us in the long run."

Well the first question to ask would be: do you believe in objective morality? — JustSomeGuy

I would consider myself a moral nihilist.
I can't say that I can guarantee that any behaviour is moral or what that might mean.

I am interested in how other people identify moral attributes though.

What is Good? — JustSomeGuy

That is the question.

I thought if people had moral concepts maybe they could identify them in themselves.

I am not sure what is good. Or whether I am being good. Or whether other people are. I don't know if morality is being enacted in society

I have done things that might make me considered a bad person..but then so have most people I know.

I'm trying to get at what alternatives there are to science that lead us to truth as well as science has. — Harry Hindu

Unfortunately you have unjustifiable claimed reason and logic equal science. Reason and logic maybe applied in the sciences but that does not make them scientific. They are also not clearly physical but conceptual.

Once again we are not focusing on things that science hasn't explained. It is not clear that science can explain mental states ( partly because of their private subjective nature) or morality or political claims etc.

It is dishonest in my opinion to ask me for an alternative paradigm because I can legitimately question a claim without needing to produce a counter claim.

This tactic can be used by theist as well where they say if you can't explain X then that supports their claim.

Science isn't only about being empirical — Harry Hindu

I don't see how you could do science without objects of the senses and I don't see what the point of science would be with no objects to explain.

I don't see how reason and logic lead to science especially when there are no objects concerned.

At the same time I see no reason why logic would lead to the entities science finds.

What is logical about a gene or atom (and its quantum properties) ? And what is logical about unexplained entities like consciousness?

Genuine science says nothing about God — Michael Ossipoff

I agree with this to an extent. Science does not appear to be asking the question of whether gods exist or not.
This relates to what I have been saying about how finding more and more white swans compounded the belief black swans were implausible. It was a mistaken interpretation of evidence.

Some theists see complex cell structures and intricate chemical reactions as evidence of a god.

Before I heard of blacks swans I never imagined they existed and was surprised to find out about them. It is hard to imagine how you might discover something new like this through reasoning through your current knowledge.

Science-Worship isn't science. It's pseudoscience. — Michael Ossipoff

I think a pseudo science can get an air of credibility by frequently citing the successes of science per se.

It seems that a dubious scientific idea or weak claim is more easily masked when it is permitted under the aegis of respectable scientific speculation.

Examples might be Multiverse, string theory, personality science, Evolutionary psychology and others.

Again, what would evidence of god look like? Stop avoiding the questions. — Harry Hindu

I have already answered this. I said things like sentience, intelligence, creation and design as found in humans are possible indirect evidence for the god hypothesis.

I have also been saying gods are being ruled out based on a limited paradigm of the physical sciences which are not appropriate means for finding evidence of meaning, design and sentience etc.

I am agnostic because I don't think you can disprove God's existence and as I have said a few times now I think the best evidence against God would be a causally complete picture of everything in reality.
The problem is that it is easy to give the impression that the natural sciences have triumphed and that there are no explanatory or conceptual gaps. But things like consciousness causality, first cause, infinite regress, cognitive features like qualia, semantics and metal representation in general form substantial explanatory gaps.

I am not interested in defending the existence of gods but rather attacking the default atheist materialism assumption.

What would another explanatory framework look like if reason and logic aren't the only one's to get at the truth? — Harry Hindu

I don't know how we have gone from discussing science to the topic of reason and logic. Reason and logic do not rely on an external object. Science intends on explaining the nature of existing empirical phenomena.

You claimed

Science doesn't impose extra assumptions on the evidence. — Harry Hindu

I am not sure if you have changed your mind on this but anyhow reasons and logic are extra assumptions on top of evidence.
The assumption that entities respond to logic and reason is a metaphysical position that science doesn't have to make. If science does make metaphysical assumptions then these can be philosophically challenged. You seem to be diluting and expanding the meaning of science which is a common tactic so that people can claim things are part of science and give science credit for them when that assumption is questionable.

Then you don't know philosophy. Philosophy tends to especially question our deepest held solutions. — Harry Hindu

I don't see any evidence that philosophy disputes the majority of factual type claims made by science. If it does criticise aspects of an established theory it will be attacking conceptual ideas or what may be considered unwarranted assumptions.
But the issues that I have been discussing as attached to the God hypothesis are not areas in which philosophy is competing with science But some philosophers are claiming the ground for science prematurely or for the physicalist/materialist metaphysics.

I think science definitely imposes assumptions on evidence because that is unavoidable. We would not need science if the evidence spoke for it self.

This is all based on a complete misunderstanding of what science is and does. Science doesn't impose extra assumptions on the evidence. — Harry Hindu

I am not making a commitment about the method of science I am attacking the notion that it is the only explanatory framework and that problems will all eventually be solved.I don't agree with your characterisation of science. It may attempt to explain things but it doesn't have to be committed to simplicity or causal closure.

Philosophy is not asking questions about things that have already been solved. Again you seem to be basing your paradigm around the successes of science which is like only focusing on white swans to draw conclusions about black swans.
I feel you are just ignoring or misrepresenting a lot of what I said. I have been explicit that the problems which may invoke gods are explanatory gaps and unsolved problems.

I think something like consciousness should be explained in its own terms and not explained in a way to preserve physicalist or scientific claims. I am attacking people who assuming the nature that an explanation will take before a solution is in sight.

I am not advocating any god based explanations but atheism has gone beyond mere disbelief in gods to favouring fairly rigid metaphysical paradigms.

According to your own "black swan argument" there could still be a tooth fairy even though you know the parent took the tooth. — Harry Hindu

I was responding to a different argument by you and arguing that alternative causal explanations would count as evidence against gods.
Every time you discovered a parent had taken a tooth from under a pillow that would be evidence that a tooth fairy was not involved there.

However white swans were not evidence against black swans but they were taken to be..... It was a misinterpretation of evidence. It is actually easier to find evidence against a notion of God (ironically?). I think philosophers who invoke science against God are using a smoke screen as if everything counts as evidence for their perspective but without an explicit argument so that it is more liking using white swans as counter evidence..

Gods could become causally unnecessary but still exist. The disputed claim is whether they are really causally dispensable. By causally here I am referring to the deist conception of gods which translates more as a cause, an intelligence, a motive, a reason, law giver and so on.

Personally I don'think the scientific paradigm is adequate to answer every question. It is this rather than the god issue, I am attacking. I also want a world that is more based on uncertainty rather than dogmatism and where uncertainty is acknowledged.

I think this kind of claim is confusing and psychologically manipulative and also could dilute the notion of violence.

Trying to censor what people say because you find their words hurtful prevents proper arguments. Anyone can claim some words upset them and were hence an act of violence.

Personally I don't need society to reinforce my gender identity or sexuality. I think it is impractical to police society so that people feel endorsed by everyone.

Ironically xoai pham says in another article that she is gender nonconformist. So I don't see how you can transgender someone without a transparent gender identity.

It seems like victims politics for me because for example when people opposed gay marriage I don't think that meant they endorsed violence against gays and it was possible to argue for gay marriage and against your opponents without allegations of supporting violence.

If something is truly non-existent, then the only evidence we could possible have for it's non-existence would be the absence of evidence for it's existence. — Harry Hindu

You could decide something was non existent because it was totally dispensable, or illogical.
You could for example say that a square circle couldn't exist or you could say a law of nature ruled out flying pigs etc. You don't need to believe in a tooth fairy for instance when you know it was a parent that took the tooth.

I think the point at which you could say there was no need for a god, was when everything was causally explained including things like semantics and mental representation and laws of nature etc.

I think explanatory gaps do allow for positing new entities. I just think that some hidden assumptions in philosophers works are insufficiently justified.

I think the notion of a creator god is non trivial and not simply a superstition. Causal explanations and other explanations are radically effected by the presence or absence of creator deity.

For example you would need to invoke an intelligent creator to explain a computer or car. Evolution is an attempt to explain numerous species without invoking intelligent intervention.

Things like morality and meaning in language and purpose were easier to explain when you invoked a creator who imbued words/symbols with meaning or who gave moral laws or who created things with an innate purpose.

I left a strict religious cult at 17 and from then on I have been a nihilist unable to recreate meaning or coherence to my life. My first question on leaving was "where do morals come from?" because I had had to obey many obscure restrictive moral rules and also "how did reality get here?"

If there is anything that is obvious, it is that the existence of god is not obvious. — Harry Hindu

The existence of atoms is not obvious either, they were postulated thousands of years ago by Democritus but proof of the them was given thousands of years later.

The black swan is famous because it was used as a metaphor for impossibility. It shows that however unlikely something seems at the time it may not be impossible.

I think it is problematic to build a world view based on certainty of Gods non existence because there is no way to validate this assumption. I also think basing a world view on Gods existence is flawed, but building a world view on acknowledging a lack of knowledge seems unproblematic.

My issue is that if someones worldview is based on a strong atheism they should make that transparent. it maybe that we can't have discussions because we are never starting from shared premises.

If someone doesn't believe in gods and if someone only believes the physical exists I want to know how they reached that conclusion. I don't want to have another bog standard dichotomous debate about tired stereotypical positions.

I am an antinatalist and I find discussions about life's problems and morality are flawed or presumptious if you don't scrutinise the issues/ethics surrounding the creation of new life.

Another topic is nationality, Countries and borders. I find the notion of land ownership dubious and I feel trying to resolve conflicts is dubious if you can't justify the underlying assumptions required for the claims made in a debate

You can't be agnostic. — T Clark

Take the issue of God. I genuinely don't know whether a god exists or not. I don't have a desire for gods to exist and I don't have desire for gods not to exist. I don't think arguments, desires or beliefs have any bearing on whether something exists or not.

I just don't reality is unambiguous enough to form a valid world view/metaphysics.

We are using the same words to mean different things. I like the way I'm using them. You probably like the way you are. There's nowhere for this to go. — T Clark

What I was saying about the gun debate is that peoples positions are fairly transparent. If someone defended gun ownership you would not be surprised if the owned some guns.

But in philosophy people should be rigorously examining arguments and evidence. A purely philosophical debate about gun control would be undermined if someone turned out to have a hidden cache of weapons (or had lost someone to gun violence and not revealed this.)

I am gay so if I am debating homosexuality I am happy to make that transparent and cite personal experience. So that people could challenge me on potential biases.

If I was religious (which I'm not) I would be really interested in the counter arguments to my position.

Of course discussions about the nature of mind are influenced by people's metaphysical commitments. — T Clark

I don't have any metaphysical commitments I am agnostic on a lot of things admitting insufficient knowledge to draw broad conclusions.

The truth is nobody knows enough about the Universe and beyond to make concrete conclusions about metaphysical things. Until then, everybody is free to make preconceived beliefs about these topics. — Starthrower

Yes but I don't feel people acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge.

For example I think freewill debates cannot be resolved until we have an explanation of consciousness which is the primary thing contributing to the notion of volition.

I would call this jumping to conclusions. I read the synopsis quite differently. It sounds interesting and explorative in nature, inquiring into the similarities and differences of cultures which might lead to interesting new observations. As I said, we all have our own experiences (biases) and beliefs and philosophy leads one to recognize their own as well as others. — Rich

I will listen to it and get back to you.

But I think that the roles of gods in morality should always be considered because that is one of the biggest sources of moral influence. It gives the impression he is going to pick and choose fairly arbitrarily from moral ideas he likes from sources he respects based on his leanings.

To me morality does not need to be incorporated into naturalism but defended in its own terms. I don't think religious or secular moralities stand up to scrutiny personally, so I don't think the debate should be in terms of a dichotomy between theism and atheism. The failure of religious morality does not in my opinion add any support to the success of a secular morality.

This is what I read that triggered me to make the opening post. It is an introduction to a podcast.

"He defends a perspective on human morality that he describes as an “oughtology” based in naturalism, gleaned from comparing Western, Chinese, and Indian moral traditions. Flanagan, a professor of philosophy at Duke University, considers how diverse moral traditions converge on some features basic to moral psychology, such as compassion, yet differ in other ways, such as whether anger is a justified and beneficial moral emotion or whether it should be extirpated. He also examines different views of the self, including the Buddhist view in which there is no self."

http://newbooksnetwork.com/owen-flanagan-the-geography-of-morals-varieties-of-moral-possibility-oxford-up-2017/

I felt exasperated reading that because it seems like prevarication and someone trying to support a quite rigid metaphysical position with superficial fusion of suggestively similar ideologies.

I am going to listen to the podcast now but I avoided it before after reading the blurb.

I think moral nihilism is the default position that evidence needs to be brought against in moral studies as opposed to assuming there is a morality to be had and sewing something flimsy together.

Based on the standard you seem to be applying, I can't think of any opinion that would be considered rational rather than biased. It seems as if you're saying that taking any position on a question exposes your prejudices. I think that's a misuse of the word. Having an opinion is not a bias. — T Clark

I do think reaching a position involves biases that is why it is important to examine all the evidence without bias and to resort to strict logical analysis.

I am not saying no one should have biases but that they shouldn't hide them and should also justify them.

As a Person living in the UK I have no vested interested in the American gun debates so it is hard for me to have a bias there because the outcome also doesn't impact me.

The difference is the only evidence for God's existence are the words of human beings that have an emotional stake in their belief being true. Why don't we give equal weight to the positive claims of the existence of Thor, unicorns and Elvis being alive? — Harry Hindu

There was no evidence of black swans in Europe but absence of evidence didn't mean evidence of absence. I am not talking about giving equal wait to basic claims but to arguments.Arguments for gods like fine-tuning and first cause do not apply to unicorns etc.

The equivalent evidence arguments would be a paw print in the snow which is indirect evidence. Indirect evidence creates a weaker commitment in my opinion but some atheists seem only to be looking for direct immediate evidence of gods when there are other forms of evidence.

I have not ruled out unicorns but nothing important hinges on their existence. I find the ambiguity of evidence and a lack of knowledge unsettling personality I feel that positions of certainty may be defence mechanisms.

A position, a belief, is not a bias. A gun rights activist is not rationalizing a bias, she is defending a position — T Clark

I feel that gun activists are rationalising a bias.

I don't think you could come to a position in a gun debate in the context of the United States culture simply on reason alone. If someone owns several guns which they have easy access to that does not seem to put them in a very objective position.

I am sure we all have to rationalise our biases. A bias may simply be personal experience but then you have to defend the applicability of generalising from personal experience.

But what would the black swans look like in the case of God? — Marchesk

I didn't say that there was a black swan equivalent of gods but I was using that example of how the evidence in that case was misleading and favoured confirmation bias.
Also although the Black swan comment was attached to the gods comment I didn't intend it only to refer to that.This is hard for me to articulate as I would like to. However I'll try.

Because white swans existed that suggests that black swans (or green swans) are not a metaphysical impossibility. But every new white swan that appeared increased peoples certainty that being white was the hallmark of being a swan. It would have been hard for people to imagine any other type of swan because of over familiarity with one model.

In terms of evidence of gods. I think evidence of creation/creativity in human culture and volition, sentience and intelligence raise the possibility of an intelligent sentient volitional creator. If you only look for certain types of evidence or concept is it is going to rule our the possibility of gods. In short I don't think the evidence is transparent. (It is like looking for evidence of meaning in physics as opposed to a novel)

But overall I don't think it is healthy to approach an investigation attempting to only support, defend and prove your own preference. I am a kind of natural devils advocates who seems naturally contrary & not prone to revel in agreement.

If something cannot be translated, expressed, or alluded to, if it can't be put into words, sounds or symbols then I doubt its existence. — Cavacava

Why?

It has taken unusual geniuses to try and explain some phenomena. We are not all Einsteins.

If some Phenomenon are hard to describe for Einstein then that suggest it is quite possible there are phenomena beyond description. I don't think something starts to exist for certain only once it has been adequately described.

Same with 2+2...line up the apples and ask someone who never studied math, but who loves eating apples a lot...try to short change them. — Cavacava

There are cultures apparently that have languages with only words like "one" and "many" and random number references. There have been different mathematical systems based on how numbers are conceptualised. I don't see how that is mind independent. understanding the external world can require a mind. I imagine Einstein spent lots of time solely caught up in thought. He famously enjoyed thought experiments.

My brothers illness is the unremitting form of Multiple sclerosis that just gradually gives you less and less muscle control.

When I first started looking after him it was I suppose because I could imagine what it might be like for him spending a lot of time lying in bed with little company. He did have carers and visitors but I used to visit and he was alone so eventually I moved into a house with him. At that stage he could still eat and move his arms to operate his wheelchair. That was about 13 years ago.
Then about seven years ago he could no longer eat independently and had to have a tube inserted directly in his stomach. That did depress me a bit because I couldn't imagine never tasting food again or drinks. Then he kept on getting pneumonia and had to have a permanent tracheotomy. He now has to be moved by other people and has been washed by others for most of illness. So he is a situation I couldn't begin to imagine.

I think we can share quite a lot about our internal states but I think we need to respect the validity of peoples personal accounts where as some trends are to try and objectify everything. But I spoke to when one of his doctors once about the phenomenological method of analysis which she wasn't aware of. But she said doctors rely significantly on self reports from patients.

Maybe there are some phenomenological states associated with say kidney disease that are commonly reported experiences then you can ask a new patient "Did you have this .. burning sensation there?" or "did you have this feeling".