We either defeat them completely or we'll all be in the Hand Maiden's Tale. — Landru Guide Us

Possible complication: couldn't you damage your side's credibility by talking that way? There is a fine line, after all, between "impassioned" and "raving."

Maybe all of those theories are true or false, depending on the person and the period in that person's life. Or maybe you were implying exactly that. :-O

I see what you're saying. There certainly is a melodramatic teen-angst sort of feel to the idea of Weltschmerz. Romanticism has that problem a lot. Additionally, there's a temptation to use the idea of Weltschmerz as a cover for a "too-hip-for-this-room" attitude, except it's too-hip-for-this-world.

On the other hand, I think there's something legitimate to it as well. Nothing will ever satisfy me, not because there isn't enough stuff, but just because I, as a human, am not the kind of creature that can get to a comfortable place and just stay there. I'll get bored, or the comfortable situation will change.

What I really don't like is when people say, "Oh, you just haven't had enough EXPERIENCES in this wide wonderful world!" People use the term "experience" as a sort of rhetorical foot in the door here, but the fact is that every experience whatsoever goes like this: you feel something, and then it goes away. On the downside, this makes the pleasant experiences seem less worthwhile; on the upside, it makes the bad experiences seem less awful. But overall, that observation seems to push you away from an attitude of "Go get what you need in order to be happy" and more toward "Try not to want stuff so much."

I think that Weltschmerz can be productive, as long as it's a transitional phase. The problem is that you can get caught there because it (sometimes) inflates your ego. I have a lot of Weltschmerz myself, and I find that it only really goes away when I concentrate on "being simple."

The first verse of Ecclesiastes and the First Noble Truth. Life is suffering, dissatisfaction, craving, desire, what have you.

I have dealt with plenty of Weltschmerz. Not sure what the cure is, but meditating seems to help, in my case anyway. Makes it easier to say "no" to stuff.

'It' [American society] is represented by the Houses of Congress. — Wayfarer

This is your problematic assumption right here.

American society is not represented by the Houses of Congress. A very small, elite portion of American society is represented by the Houses of Congress. So it follows that a very small, elite portion of American society thinks that murder is okay, not because of 'freedom' but for the sake of the almighty dollar.

If I can't come up with arguments in favor of absurdism except for "GOD IS DEAD ∴ NO MEANING checkmate" or "look at all the suffering, it must be for no reason!", then it's ironically absurd to hold such a position. I feel like the absurd is taken for granted to be true, as an axiom, without actually proving it. — darthbarracuda

Well, we can insist that transcendental meaning has been handed to us on a silver platter. We can also throw a bitch fit because it hasn't. I think that an existentialist could use a false dichotomy here and insist that we have to do the latter because the former is false. I don't think that's true, though.

I know you weren't. I was. O:)

I believe you. O:)

What don't you understand?

And what does pessimism recommend they do about it?

I think the Master Argument does not establish idealism; what it does establish is that the realist is committed to talking about things he can't conceive of — The Great Whatever

Person 1: "There is stuff you can't conceive of, but I can."
Person 2: "Well, then, there's stuff I can't conceive of, but you can."
Person 1: "Wrong! You're trying to talk about stuff you can't conceive of. It's only right when I say it."

This seems like a reductio to me... Unless you think it's impossible for one person to be able to conceive of something another one can't. But then we're back to this argument:

I am male. Therefore, if we don't make a distinction between conception simpliciter and conception ex hypothesi, then I can't conceive of something that isn't being imagined by a male. Thus, I am entitled to reject the idea of objects that are not conceived of by males.

I can see how Stoicism could be used to ensure people are content even if their empire is abusing them. — schopenhauer1

I can see how pessimism could be used to convince people that it's no use trying to even be content, because everything sucks anyway. Potential for abuse != necessity of abuse.

So, first, I'm not saying there is no such distinction. I am denying that it is the distinction in which the realist is interested. The realist is interested in objects independent of experience simpliciter, not independent of experience within certain hypothetical scenarios, while dependent on experience in order to be conceived of in those hypothetical scenarios. — The Great Whatever

This realist is interested in the idea that this stuff would all be here even if we weren't. The argument against this seems to be that we cannot conceive of anything without that thing being conceived of by us; therefore, we can't make sense of the idea of an unconceived object. But this is a non-sequitur: in order to conceive of an unconceived object, the object need only be unconceived within the conception.

Second, even if that were what the realist is talking about, your conclusion does not follow from your premise, since you are not the only one who can conceive things. And so there is no inference from what you can conceive to what can be conceived. — The Great Whatever

I didn't say anything about what can be conceived, only about what is conceived. As a realist, I am happy to entertain the idea that everything can be conceived or perceived or whatever word you want to use for the idea that a mind can make sense of something. That's just saying that everything is intelligible. Mind-independence just means that the universe would happily chug along even if we weren't here, and that is perfectly compatible with the idea that such a universe would still be intelligible to the next race of sentient creatures that evolved to perceive it. By analogy: the fact that a sphere is visible does not mean that someone is currently looking at it, and its visibility does not make it "vision dependent."

I am also interested in this:

you are not the only one who can conceive things. And so there is no inference from what you can conceive to what can be conceived. — The Great Whatever

First, why should I accept the premise? I can't conceive of a person of whom I am not currently conceiving, so why should I assume that other people are conceiving things without me? After all, I can't conceive of it. Unless you're asking me to accept things I can't conceive of, in which case the master argument fails anyway.

What do you mean by, 'conceived ex hypothesi?' Do you mean that, when we imagine an object no one is experiencing, that object is actually experienced, but not experienced ex hypothesi? Is this what the realist is interested in? — The Great Whatever

Of course. For example, I am male. Therefore, if we don't make a distinction between conception simpliciter and conception ex hypothesi, then I can't conceive of something that isn't being imagined by a male. Thus, I am entitled to reject the idea of objects that are not conceived of by males.

But you can't conceive of an object no one is conceiving of. — The Great Whatever

Do you think that being conceived is the same as being conceived ex hypothesi?

Can a painter ever paint someone alone?

Baleeted.

I am always baffled by the hostility I see toward Stoicism from some people. "Self control is fascist" seems to be the implicit (but never directly stated) premise.

You still haven't said anything about how the existence of your computer is analagous or similar to the supposed existence of abstracta. — John

They both involve existence. You said,

I have no idea what it means to say 'abstractions exist' — John

If you know what an abstraction is, and you know what the word "exist" means, then you understand the phrase "abstractions exist." I really hope you're just prevaricating, because the only other reasons not to understand that phrase are not understanding one of the two words in it or not understanding how to connect a noun to a verb. Is English a second language for you?

EDIT: just read your post in response to Wayfarer. I see the problem: you don't understand "exist." If "exist" means that you can see and feel it, then I guess neutrinos don't exist. Neither do time and space, 'cause you don't see either of those.

Of course, I'm nitpicking here, but I see all of your points. People who become tenure-track professors imagine that they have some special merit that allowed them to do so. And they do have a special merit - the same one as people who win the lottery.

What we need is to begin building a system supported on an entirely volunteer basis. If this sounds impossible, I humbly ask that you consider the case of open-source software. Ubuntu Linux is a highly efficient and user-friendly OS built for free by people who simply had the time on their hands and the will to do so. Ditto for every other piece of open source software. If they can do it, why can't we?

(being a professor as opposed to being a menial laborer of some kind is always going to be more amenable to contemplative persons) — Thorongil

You might be surprised. Right now I work at a factory, doing the same thing over and over. When your work is so menial that it requires literally no attention, you get to space out and think about anything you want. Perhaps that's why Socrates chose to be a stonemason. ;)

Not sure if "commune" would be the preferred model. I'd prefer "collective" -- since I think anarchist spaces are healthier and more prone to longer lives. [since they do recognize individual needs in addition to collective needs] — Moliere

I wasn't talking about Marxism, just communal living. Really my thinking was something along the lines of "secular monastery." It's fashionable to talk shit about asceticism (given our culture's permissiveness fetish), but I think that a community that looks down on wanton self-indulgence would be a good place for philosophy.

I read it and it said precisely nothing about what it means for an abstraction to exist; and you haven't augmented your paucity of explanation since. If you can't be bothered explaining yourself then fine; I'm happy to end this here. — John

I gave you an example. That's when you point to an instance of something so your interlocutor can tell what you're talking about. Superman does not exist. My computer does.

Also, "augmenting my paucity" is nonsensical. You want to say, "correct the paucity of explanation in your post," but that's just a convoluted way of saying "explain yourself." Philosophy is about writing clearly, not impressing people with obfuscated six-dollar words that don't need to be used. Or should I say, "The preponderance of sesquipedalian verbiage in your discourse renders your bloviations risible and nugatory?"

Then how can an abstraction be "more like your computer"? — John

Try reading the post.

I dunno. I guess it depends on why you think the internet is generally less serious. Maybe it's anonymity?

At any rate, I think that humanities departments are, by and large, on their way out. There will always be a philosophy department at Yale for the children of CEOs who want to study it, but non-elite universities as we know them will go the way of the thylacine. With the rising percentage of adjunct faculty, the steady encroachment of corporate models, bureaucratic parasitism, and so forth, I foresee universities become job-training daycares for middle-class kids within the next three decades or so, with maybe a few elite institutions remaining as they are. Maybe we need to look into building philosopher communes or something. Meh. Not sure where to go from here.

Second, I really think that part of a good academic community is living and working in physical proximity. Being an academic, to me, means being dedicated to seriously trying to understand a topic as a lifestyle. I don't think the internet, now anyway, is at all amenable to that level of dedication and seriousness, and there is the problem of physical distance as well. — The Great Whatever

I think that there are enough people who come home from work every day and immediately get on the computer for such things to begin popping up, given enough time, at least when we're looking at it from the "dedication" angle. If some guy works at a boring job, then spends all his leisure time contributing to an online philosophy community, then we might have something good going on, provided that nobody minds the "internet socializing loser" stigma.

As to working in physical proximity - that's an intriguing point. Why is physical proximity necessary? It didn't stop Kant from replying to Hume, for example. Then again, I notice that you often take the ancient Greek stuff as a model. Are you doing that here? And if so, what's your motive?

jests aside, you have mentioned supposed hypocrisy, aloofness, and elitism and I am genuinely curious why you believe that to be so. — Phil

1) The humanities have a very strong current of ostensibly egalitarian sentiment.
2) There is a great deal of elitism in academia.

I don't think either of those are controversial.

But then it bears asking, if such a community is something we could have, why don't we have it?

Universities are old institutions. They were built painfully and slowly. It shouldn't be expected that other fora for the same caliber of discussion could just pop up overnight for no reason. — The Great Whatever

I don't think that we can build an online version of the Stoa from scratch in a decade. But if we take Brassier's lead, then we won't even start, now, will we?

I feel though in part, you greatly dislike the humanities. And that is a topic I find far more interesting — Phil

I'm flattered.

Your computer is not an abstraction. — John

I did not say or imply that it was.

I've had philosophical conversations with people over the internet that were just as good as the ones I've had in academia. As to having consistently good conversations, that's another story - academia is better for that. That is to say, you may not find an online community with consistently good philosophical conversation going on, but any sufficiently large philosophical community will probably have a few people capable of such a conversation.

That being said, Brassier's idea that the internet is "not an appropriate medium" would seem to suggest that an online community that produces good philosophy is something we can't have, which I find implausible.

Superman doesn't exist. My computer does exist. If abstractions exist, they are more like my computer in that regard than like Superman.

My objection to the idea of " a huge universe of abstracta" existing is that we have no idea what it means. For me it is really no better than gibberish. — John

If you understand "abstraction," then you understand "big group of abstractions." That's all there is to it. Not sure what's so baffling about it. :-|

No, certainly not, but the bar for those outside of the academy and its rules are set higher, partly because the work created is so poor. — Phil

But Brassier said,

I don’t believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate;

He's not saying that internet philosophy must be held to a higher standard. He's saying that you literally cannot do philosophy outside of academia. Which is hogwash.

And I'm sure he bloviates about "structural inequality" day and night, being a humanities academic...

Would it be incorrect to understand universals as "POTENTIALS OF EVERYTHING THAT IS POSSIBLE"? — darthbarracuda

Ah, yes! I call this one the "profligacy argument." It's the nominalist argument that basically says, "Well, then there would have to be abstract entities correlating to all kinds of things!"

My response to this is as follows: so what? The only force that this argument really has is that the idea of a huge universe of abstracta offends the nominalist's sense of decorum (Quine's "desert landscapes"). I can only shrug at this. If a huge universe of abstracta exists, then so much the worse for the nominalist's sense of decorum.

It seems to me that a lot of discussion about abstraction gets caught up in semantic irrelevancies, where we draw weird distinctions between "real" and "being" and "existing" and "happening" and whatnot.

If you look at the history of philosophy, attempts at nominalism or anti-realism or whatever form a sea of shipwrecked theses that never went anywhere. But realism about abstracta has the same problem. See, realism's problem is epistemic, inasmuch as realists have never been able to provide a convincing story about how our particular, concrete minds manage to get ahold of abstracta.

All of the pseudo-scientific arguments to this point fail. Replacing "mind" with "brain" does fuck-all for this debate. Just replace the mentalistic terms with brain-y terms and you end up with the same arguments. Unless you're one of those jackasses who has to engage in "more-rational-than-thou because I know sciencey words" posturing, this will do nothing.

I don't see much in the third man argument, mostly because there's no reason to accept self-predication. Why would "redness" itself be red? Why the fuck would you even assume that an abstraction can have a color, or a size, or whatever? Self-predication is just such a weird premise that I don't see any sense in it.

No verbal Judo here. More like verbal baseball bat to the cranium. :-O

In all seriousness, it never ceases to amaze me that academics in the humanities - the people who never get tired of prating about "equality" - are such elitist asswipes.

Generally speaking, is the quality of internet philosophy low? Yeah. But to say that it's impossible for anyone to do any serious philosophy on the internet just reeks of unwarranted self-importance by academics. What, do lecture halls contain special vibrations that make you better at philosophy or something?

Care to comment on my actual argument about universals? — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, here we go:

So in the relevant sense, names do not exist. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Our name for something is our action. It exists. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Um...

Anyway, let's say that I say "Bob" twice. In what sense were both actions "the same?"

I'm sorry, but if you want to be butthurt about Judith Butler, can you do so in a PM or something? I'm trying to have a conversation here.

Argh, this is a very frustratingly confusing topic. I think the best way of explaining what I'm getting caught up with the most is that, perhaps, the Realist is correct because properties are like the "life" of an object. I think actually a better question instead of asking what makes things similar is what makes things different. The nominalist would answer that what differs is the material structure of the particular, like the atomic structure, or the string/quantum foam/etc structure. But this begs to question as to why these different structures give rise to different properties. — darthbarracuda

Whichever question is better, there's nothing to stop me from asking, "What makes them the same?" And so I will: why are two tropes similar? If A and B are resembling tropes, but C is not a resembling trope to either, then why is that?

And what's a structure? Because if two objects can have the "same" structure, then you're appealing to universals again. Ditto for the "brain-interpretation" counter, which seems to be positively full of holes. Is the brain doing the same interpretation over and over? And even if red is "just" an experience, is it the same experience over and over?

That's the problem with the nominalist response that appeals to "brains" or "minds" in order to try and get away from realism. All such responses operate on an implicit dualism that assumes that, if something is "in the mind," then it's safely cordoned off from the rest of the world. If abstractions can exist in my mind, but not in the rest of the world, then you need a good reason why they can only live in my mind. I don't think that minds are particularly unique "metaphysical ecosystems," if you get my drift.

Same for "names." Let's say that every name is an action rather than a universal. So what? The question then arises: if I say "Bob" twice, then in what sense did I say the same thing twice?

That's the central problem: if nominalism were true, then I'd expect my experience of things to be a completely chaotic flux of absolute randomness with no identifiable patterns whatsoever, because as soon as identifiable patterns crop up, universals have already snuck back in. But experience is not a chaotic flux of absolute randomness.

Nominalists aren't stupid. They've come up with countless clever answers to how things are the way they are without universals. But all of those clever answers seem to be susceptible to different forms of the same problem. Perhaps the problem is universal. ;)

Your penultimate paragraph, by the way, beautifully summarizes the motive behind nominalism:

Additionally, I fail to understand how we can come to understand such things as "abstract" objects. To be perfectly honest they simply come across as spooky, superstitious ghosts. — darthbarracuda

The main counter to this is that, if abstractions are spooky, superstitious ghosts, then the nominalist is just as haunted as the realist; every time the nominalist banishes a ghost out the front door, another one slips in the back.

Moreover, what isn't a spooky, superstitious ghost? In recent times, you see, we have learned that the ordinary, solid matter that we see around us is made up, at the smallest scales, of really weird stuff that isn't anything like our commonsense notion of matter. And yet, the nominalist wants to appeal to that commonsense notion in order to get rid of universals.

I'll address the third man argument, as well as your last paragraph, later, because they're both almost worthy of threads in themselves.

I've tried really hard to be a nominalist for a long time. What I've found is that, if you're too quick to reach for Occam's Razor, you slit your own throat.

Off the top of my head, I don't have a general argument for metaphysical realism. I rather make the observation that, if you look at any attempt to flesh out nominalism, you find that the nominalist ends up appealing to some abstraction or another. To me, this seems futile, because as soon as you exorcise one abstract "phantom," you end up inviting another into your system.

For example, a short dialog, between a nominalist named N and a realist name R:

N: Universals are merely names that we have for particular things. There is no entity that can be instantiated over and over again.
R: Are names real?
N: Yes, but they exist only in our minds.
R: Whose mind: yours or mine?
N: Both.
R: So a name can be realized, or instantiated, or however you want to put it,in multiple minds?
N: Yes.
R: So how are names different from universals?
N: Well, it just means that we react in the same way when we see two objects, so both objects fall into the same category.
R: So what's similar about our reaction in both cases? Are there not, then, "reaction universals?"
N: Perhaps they're just similar reactions.
R: What makes them similar?
N: There are aspects of each reaction that are the same.
R: Are the aspects universals, then?

That's the problem, really. I think that the reason for there being so many different kinds of nominalism is that nominalists tie themselves up in knots trying to reduce the non-concrete to the concrete without invoking the non-concrete, and failing, and then trying something else. If the problem keeps resurfacing like that, then you should probably take that as a hint that your approach isn't working.

Of course, realism has its own problems. But they seem more like "interesting questions" than things that undermine realism itself.

It's okay. I'm so smart and magnanimous that any time someone insults me I immediately intuit the psychological shortcoming that caused them to do so and forgive it — The Great Whatever

I can't tell if you're making fun of yourself or everyone else. :/