attempts to say what cannot be said — Sam26

This phrase seems to have two possible interpretations: attempts to say things about what kinds of things are not able to be said, vs attempts to say things which attempts are doomed to fail because the things one is attempting to say cannot be said. I think here you mean the latter, but it’s interesting that the possible interpretations of this phrase mirror the differences between senseless and nonsense.

I think I would say that non-descriptive sentences still have a sense, but not in the sense of “sense” that W means.

It seems to me that much of what W says, or at least the gist of it, is correct when limited specifically to descriptive propositions, words being used to indicate something about how the world is; but, as you rightly point out, words can also be used to do a lot more than that, they can mean things other than “the world is such-and-such way”. Talk about what words mean, like this message or the Tractacus itself, falls outside that limited scope of describing the world, but still clearly has nother kind of meaning.

@Sam26 Do you think W sees himself as doing a sort of reductio ad absurdum? Putting forth a bunch of “propositions” and elucidating their consequences until the original propositions are shown meaningful by themselves?

Actually Zeno's paradoxes prove that the "continuum" is a faulty idea. — Metaphysician Undercover

Zeno’s paradoxes only prove that calculus hadn’t been invented yet.

Philosophy/metaphysics shouldn't, cannot have any propositions at all, language is solely used for the natural sciences. Using language to say something philosophical or metaphysical is an abuse of language, you understand — Pussycat

When you "demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions", you presumably do so using language. That does not seem to be a use of language for natural science, though. Is it therefore an abuse of language to show someone they are abusing language?

I've never heard someone say Gnostic Christians are the good christians. — christian2017

Certainly the Gnostic Christians themselves say that, otherwise they wouldn't stay Gnostic Christians.

Everyone thinks they are of the correct opinion and those who disagree are wrong, otherwise they would change their opinion to the one they think is correct.

Atheism is not a religion.

Religion is not just any moral system or any philosophical system. It’s any epistemic institution that appeals to faith.

Yeah that link is just wrong.

Got any recommendations?

Ethics is the study of what is moral in the same way that physics is the study of what is real.

There is no substantive difference between the subject matter of “morality” and “ethics”. Morality is the subject matter of ethics; ethics is the field that studies morality.

Attempts to say some normative things are “ethical” not “moral” or vice versa are all misguided.

Thanks. Provided the extended unemployment benefits actually come through, I can basically treat the time from now through the end of July as an extended "summer staycation" financially, and barely lose anything. Hopefully by then things will be back to normal, and my job will re-materialize. The boss definitely wants me back, so much that he's letting me hang on to my work computer (I telecommute anyway).

Red sunsets are caused by Rayleigh scattering, which is also why the daytime sky (not near a sunset) is blue.

If Rayleigh scattering were responsible for the apparent redshift of stars then empty space would be tinted blue like the daytime sky with all of that scattered blue light.

Thanks.

Location in a fourth dimension.

Questions like "how many souls do you have" and "what is the relationship between your objective mind and your subjective mind" would thwart his scheme however. Religious questions like that many of us feel are not meaningless — Gregory

Or would his scheme not instead thwart those questions, and show that they are meaningless, your feelings be damned?

I look forward to more of this thread.

lost my job completely today because financial aid for my employer didn’t materialize in time.

Hedonism (philosophy): the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life. — Wayfarer

Yes, that says that pleasure is what constitutes good — so on that account looking out for everyone’s interests (aiming to do good for them) means making their lives pleasant. Hedonism doesn’t mean only looking out for your own interests, your own pleasure.

It’s about what constitutes and interest (pleasure, on a hedonist account), not about whose interests matter (just oneself, on an egotist account).

you’re a moral relativist — Wayfarer

Not at all.

moral realism — Wayfarer

Is not synonymous with moral objectivism.

The sage sees thus, because the sage is impartial - indifferent to his/her own interests, but fully cognisant of the interests of others. Kind of disinterestedly compassionate. — Wayfarer

That’s exactly what I’m advocating.

Hedonism is just about what constitutes an interest, not whose interests matter.

Hedonism is not synonymous with egotism.

Also...

Given the interpretation of objectivity which we so far agree upon, all subjective beings can thereby be further concluded via this mode of thought to inescapably be subjects to objectivity as ultimate authority — javra

In my book I actually subtitle the essays on Mind and Will as being about "...the Subjects of Reality" and "...the Subjects of Morality", inasmuch as the mind is the facet of a person that experiences reality, is subject to it, has to decipher what it is, what is real, what is true; and likewise the will is the facet of a person that experiences morality, or is subject to it, in that the will has to decipher what morality, is, what is moral, what is good, i.e. what ought to be, what a person ought to do, i.e. to make a choice. (I take the connection between free will and moral responsibility very seriously, going so far as equating free will with the efficacy of moral reason: your will is what you think is the best thing to do, and your will is free when thinking something is the best thing for you to do causes you to do it).

I thought it was in this thread, but I can't find the post to respond to now, so I'll just reply at the end here.

Someone said that if life was intrinsically worth living, then we would be satisfied with just existing. From experience, I know that that is sometimes the case, but it occurs to me it's also easy to illustrate that it could be the case, for those who have never experienced it first hand.

Imagine someone has an unlimited slow drip of some drug that gave them a constant nice little high, maybe an opiate of some kind, such that, in the absence of all other stimuli, just sitting or laying around somewhere, they just feel this slightly warm happy feeling and are just content doing nothing, happy just to lay there and feel good from the drug. They will eventually get hungry, and the hunger pains will eventually overpower the pleasure of the drug, and drive them to go get some food, but once their appetite is sated they'll go back to just having that nice slightly warm happy feeling and being content doing whatever. Likewise, all their other bodily needs. Meanwhile, other activities can still bring them even more pleasure, so they have motive to go and do other pleasurable things when they can. But so long as their basic needs are met, they don't need constant new stimulation, because they've always got this constant little bit of pleasure feeding into them from this little drug drip.

All such drugs mimic substances that the body produces naturally; that's why we have receptors that react to them the way that our brains do. Your body is capable of producing "drugs" from inside itself that can put you in exactly such a state, where merely existing is enjoyable in and of itself, not in some catatonic drugged-out way but in a way that you're happy just continuing to be alive and don't need for unlimited entertainment or something. Some people's bodies produce more of these "drugs", others produce less of them, and both genetics and life experiences can affect how much the body makes.

I think most children are born in a state where just existing is inherently enjoyable, though of course there are pains that can overpower that, and other pleasures that can be had beyond that. I remember being that way when I was young, and I think I probably somehow managed to stay that way much later into life than many other people, and also had plentiful experiences of that taken up to 11, the so-called "mystical" or "religious" experiences of meaningful wonder and bliss about nothing in particular. Life experiences, the pains and pleasures thereof, had largely beaten that out of me, and I think do the same for most other people, seemingly much faster for many others than for me.

So if a child can be raised in a way that will spare them that roller-coaster of a life that leaves them without the joy of just existing -- that ontophilia -- that they were born with, then it will have been worth bringing them into the world. They will probably still die eventually, but they'll probably look back and say it was worth it. It may be very hard to spare anyone such a roller coaster of pains and pleasures and preserve that ontophilia, maybe even as hard as keeping them alive forever, but "very hard" doesn't mean "impossible". It is therefore an individual, case-by-case calculation about whether any particular life is more probably worth bringing into the world than not. It may still be the case that in many, many cases it reasonable is not worth it -- I don't have kids for precisely the reason that I don't think I can give them a life worth living -- but you can't make a blanket proclamation that it is always better not to exist than to exist.

You touched upon notions of an objective right and wrong - at least as possibilities to consider. To me, this too would then be a perfectly impartial, here metaphysical, reality. — javra

I think I agree with the gist of your overall post, but I'd quibble with this little bit. Morality doesn't have to be "a reality" of any sort; what is real and what is moral can be completely unrelated questions. For something to be objectively moral doesn't require that reality (objective or otherwise) be any particular way; there don't have to be "queer" moral facts of some strange metaphysical nature.

All it takes for there to be an objective morality are for there to be things that are good from an impartial, unbiased perspective. To figure out what is objectively moral, take whatever methods you use to figure out what is subjectively moral, and compensate for the bias. Just like we judge objective reality with our (necessarily subjective) empirical experiences (what "looks true"), cancelling out the bias of our subjectivity by abstracting our interpretations of those experiences from the experiences themselves, accounting equally for everyone's experiences, and then devising new interpretations of those mutual, common experiences, so too we can judge objective morality by starting with our (necessarily subjective) hedonic experiences what ("feels good"), and then cancelling out the bias of that subjectivity in exactly the same way, abstracting our interpretations of those experiences from the experiences themselves, accounting equally for everyone's experiences, and then devising new interpretations of those mutual, common experiences.

objectively (here understood as "impartially" rather than "physically") — javra

To my ear “objective” always means “impartial”, and what makes physical stuff objectively real is precisely that it can be impartially determined to exist, vis our common (and therefore unbiased) experiences.

People who take “objective” to mean “physical” just introduce unnecessary confusion and baggage to discussions about the objectivity of things other than reality (like morality, for example).

A further question is, do the central ideas of philosophy like ethics, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, etc. unite, like the fossil bones, into a coherent whole, like the ancient animal the bones belong to? — TheMadFool

I think definitely yes. All actions is driven by comparing what is with what ought to be. All of philosophy can be structured as questions about what is, and what ought to be, what is real, and what is moral; and then about what it means to be real or to be moral (philosophy of language, metaethics), what criteria we use to assess whether something deserves such a label (ontology, parts of normative ethics), what methods we use to apply those criteria (epistemology, more normative ethics), what faculties we need to enact those methods (philosophy of mind and will), who is to exercise those faculties (philosophies of education and governance), and why any of it matters.

Questions about what our questions even mean, investigating questions about language; what criteria we use to judge the merits of a proposed answer, investigating questions about being and purpose, the objects of reality and morality respectively; what methods we use to apply those criteria, investigating questions about knowledge and justice; what faculties we need to enact those methods, investigating questions about the mind and the will; who is to exercise those faculties, investigating questions about academics and politics; and why any of it matters at all.

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One thing I don’t get about antinatalism is how the same arguments for it aren’t also arguments for suicide, or even arguments for mass euthanasia. If life is suffering and nothing can fundamentally be done to improve that, and nothing else is worth putting up with it, then best to end all life as quickly and painlessly as possible, no? If not that conclusion, then something in the arguments leading to it must be wrong.

So, the stipulation is all encompassing? How does that work? — Shawn

I don’t know what you mean exactly here, but all I’m saying is that yes, pessimism (like optimism) is grounded in a mood, and my “ontophobia” (and “ontophilia”) is just a name I give to such a mood. Neither optimism nor pessimism (nor ontophilia or ontophobia) is objectively “true” or “false”.

But I think they (and the moods behind them) can be more or less useful (and more or less enjoyable) than each other, and that optimism (at least in a narrow sense, opposite the broad sense of pessimism under discussion) is a more useful attitude to approach things from (and the ontophilia behind it a more enjoyable mood to be in).

"Ontophobia" is just the name I give to the mood underlying philosophical pessimism.

My ontophilia and ontophobia are just names for the very moods you’re talking about.

Yes.

In no way or manner does it imply that these are womanly qualities. — Merkwurdichliebe

Using slang for a woman’s body part to mean “coward“ very much implies that cowardice is a womanly quality.

I am being paid for every hour worked. The problem is that they want me to do more work per time, by getting that same work done in less time. The amount of work done isn't quantifiable as an amount of time spent nominally on the job; it's not like I'm standing at a register ringing up whoever is or isn't coming through during the hours that I'm standing there and so long as I'm standing there and actively ringing people up during the prescribed hours it's fine. There's a pile of work that comes to my desk across the course of the day, and has to be finished by the end of the day. I have long already had serious struggles to do the work as fast as it comes in so that it can all be done by the time I have to leave; I used to work overtime if there was more left to do but then I was told not to work overtime, so I started sending the excess work to someone else to take over and then I was told not to do that, so I just have to work faster.

After years of things increasing in pace to 300% what it was when I started, I finally insisted he hire someone else to split the load with a year ago; actually I didn't even insist on that, I asked for a half-time assistant, but he instead hired someone with skills we don't need and lacking the skills I needed in an assistant and gave her half my workload and some of my decision-making powers, which scared me at the time, but has since come to be an okay status quo, better than the fucking meltdowns of spending all fucking day rushing faster than humanly possibly to keep up I had been doing for years before.

Now "because of coronavirus-related slowdowns" we all had our hours cut in half, which means I come in halfway through the day to a half day's worth of work already backlogged and then rush faster than humanly possible to try to make progress on that faster than more work is being added to the fucking pile so I can have it all fucking done at the end of the fucking day.

I've always been paid hourly, but it's not like there's a second shift after mine or something who picks up where I leave off, so if I don't keep up with the work I'll just start each day off with a bigger and bigger backlog and be rushing even more the next day to try to catch up.

Has anyone else heard of or experienced businesses cutting hours supposedly because of slowdown due to coronavirus but then piling tons and tons of work on their employees in those reduced hours?

I am getting kinda pissed the fuck off at my employer who as I've previously mentioned cut all of our hours in half about three weeks ago "because things are really slow due to the coronavirus" but I keep all the fucking statistics for my department and I have the numbers to show that I am still getting exactly the same amount of work piled on me and just expected to get it done in half the fucking time for half the fucking pay and I'm really starting to lose my shit.

My point wasn’t so much that Trump can be manipulated into taking initiative about anything, and you’re absolutely right that he would throw a fit if he caught a whiff of that happening. My point is just that Trump occasionally supporting left-wing ideas isn’t that surprising because he has no ideology or principles at all, so in a different context where he had thought running as a Democrat stood better chances and the Democrats surrounding him were all far left and the far left rhetoric played well with crowds at rallies, the same Trump could have easily gone along with that and been the most left-wing president ever. Not because he’s a good little socialist at heart or anything, but because he isn’t really anything at heart.

Reminds me of a time in 2017 when Trump met with some congress people about gun control and the Democrats present asked if he might possibly consider endorsing some legislation that could create a process by which courts could rule as a term of sentencing for certain crimes that those convicted were not permitted to possess certain firearms, and Trump suggested instead taking all the guns away from everyone first and then figuring out who deserves to get them back afterwards, at which point all the other Republicans present freaked out.

Trump has no consistent principles at all and basically only does what he thinks will make people like him, so sometimes he proposes some obviously good ideas that many people would clearly like, without regard for how they fit into his party’s ideology, only to later be reigned in by his handlers. That also means he supports plenty of bad ideas that are not so obviously bad to enough people who like him; if demonizing some Other plays well to a crowd, which it often does, he’s happy to roll with that too. But during the election he promised universal health care in at least one interview. I have little doubt that if the right people in the right positions had the right relationships with Trump, he could easily be talked into supporting what learned people would call a far-left platform across the board, and he would think it was his own brilliant idea that everyone else was too stupid to think of.

@ZhouBoTong or anyone else else have any input here? I thought at least some of this would be new to somebody given how obscure Whitehead is...

I guess I'm saying that those 'obvious good reasons' are not explicit reasons. You seem to suggest that arguments have been made, and they need only be remembered. I'm suggesting that we are trained into a culture like animals, and that conscious deliberation is the tip of an iceberg. This is the old idea that we are creatures of our time, and that our most dominant ideas are assumptions we don't even notice. They are the water the fish swim in, invisible to the well-adjusted fish. — jjAmEs

This seems to mix up is an ought some. As a description of the way people actually behave, that sounds accurate to me. As a prescription for the correct way we should behave, I have objections. We do foreclose avenues of discourse irrationally, but we shouldn't; conversely, we should foreclose some avenues of discourse for good reasons, but nevertheless we irrationally don't.

I like that. But 'why is there a here here' is not empty in some simple way. What does it all mean? That's a vague request IMV for something like an orienting myth or metaphor. For some, the world is created as a test. Many secular thinkers rely on a notion of progress. There is a here here so that we have a world to improve for our grandchildren. Or perhaps the world is a stage on which we learn to let it all go. We learn how to die on a road to transcendence. — jjAmEs

Those various answers suggest to me that the question you're talking about presumes that "here" was created with conscious intent (that we're trying to discern), which it appears not to have been. If you ask "Why did x happen?" and the answer is "x didn't happen", that's a pretty empty answer to a pretty empty question.

If instead the question were "what good is there to 'here being here'?", and it is genuinely possible (as I think it is) for things to be good for things, then you can answer that question -- you're basically asking the most general "what is good?" question in a roundabout way -- though that's not really what I would consider a properly philosophical question (how to answer it is), but I recognize that normative ethics is still considered a part of philosophy today, even though I think it should be spun off just like "natural philosophy" was.

It's not a choice between rebelling against the system or accepting it how it is. I'm not saying everything is fine and to accept it how it is, and I'm definitely not saying that people who are unhappy are at fault for that. I'm saying, and I think this is best phrased in the first person, that when I am in a certain state of mind, nothing seems worth living for and all problems seem absolutely intolerable for existing at all in the first place, while in another state of mind, the same little things that seemed worthless next to those problems seem like gems of joy I'd never want to lose, and the same problems seem like interesting challenges to tackle. That's not a difference between states of the world, it's a difference between states of my mind; and having quite recently vacillated between them quite frequently and for quite a long time, I can say that from the pessimistic state of mind the memory of the recent optimistic state of mind seems like a half-forgotten solution to all those intolerable insurmountable problems that I just can't quite remember what it was, and from the optimistic state of mind, the recent pessimistic state seems like a spate of wholly unproductive irrationality. In other words, from both states of mind, the optimistic one seems superior, so long as I can recall that the same states of the world looked differently between them. It's only when I was in the pessimistic state of mind anew, feeling like something about the world had prompted it, that it seemed like trying to feel good again was irrationally ignoring those problems. From the optimistic state of mind, it's clear that the intractable problems were always illusory, and the remaining problems are in principle tractable, and something we need to get to working on.