Reality, existing biological traits and acts of classification, is not as the practitioners of the naturalistic fallacy (i.e. you) think and would have us believe. For something to be classified in some way don't necessarily mean anything about it. All it means is, for the moment, that particular people place it under a certain category. Whatever the concurrent nature of the object in question, it isn't described in the category. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The problem is that you are attempting to drive a wedge between classification and everything else that just doesn't work out. You say,

All it [classification] means is, for the moment, that particular people place it under a certain category.

Which is only true if classification is entirely unrelated and hermetically sealed-off from the rest of reality.

You can't have your cake and eat it: either there are causal relations between acts of classification and everything else in the world, as well as logical relations between classifications themselves and other parts of human discourse, or classification exists in its own universe, unless you want to create an entirely new causal realm (heaven, perhaps?).

Trying to describe what someone MUST be merely through a category (e.g. this person must be male since they have a penis, this person must have penis because they are male) is both an error (humans are a contingent state of existence: our existence is never logically necessary) and ignores doing the relevant work (i.e. actually examining the world to check what traits someone has or how they are classified). It doesn't cut it. It is anti-scientific. Instead of observing the world and describing what it is, it involves prescribing what someone must be no matter what is happening in the world — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, uh, it's a good thing I never said anything about any of that. Who are you arguing with?

A side note: you seem to misunderstand how logical necessity works. It is logically necessary that x+5=7 IFF x = 2. Even if x's specific value is contingent, x+5=7 is still necessary in some sense if x=2, because 5+2=7 is necessary. You treat necessity as some kind of gigantic fixed block world; relations between things can be necessary.

Okay, I give up. If you're going to take it as axiomatic that language or "classification" or whatever exists in a magical never-never land estranged from everything else, then I can't help you. I'll just classify you as "wrong" and be on my way.

What is the motivation to "do something"? — schopenhauer1

Having the energy. :)

I'm not trolling. It just seems as if pessimism is really convenient for people who want to do nothing, even if that's not always the motivation.

Are pessimists just lazy? Laying hold of things takes effort, but it's more fun than wallowing.

I think that "find a way to adapt to it" is a healthier outlook than "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"

Spurious appeals to radical contingency and "quantum mechanics did it" don't stop the world from making sense. They also don't force reality to bend to social consensus.

Trying maintain reality while making everything humans say arbitrary is a losing proposition.

In a sense, yes. And that is the problem with the accusation of ignoring reality. Classification is not any sort of object we are describing. There is no “reality” we are meeting when placing someone in a category. We are performing an indexical association, not describing a state of the world. The placement of someone in a category, even the “normal” categories, is not a description of any object we observe or can pick-up. There is no standard of “reality” to meet. To ask the question: “Is are classification accurate to reality?” does not make any sense. It isn’t doing this sort of descriptive work at any point. At this level, there is never any reality to our classifications, including the "normal" ones, and there never will be. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So, ah, at what point do social classifications become independent of reality? And how do we do this magic trick where we create a world that is completely separate from real things?

Unfortunately though, this is not what you mean. What you mean is that feelings, classifications, social standing and perception have no place in accounting our social reality, despite the fact they constitute our social existence. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So is our "social existence" (as opposed to the physical kind?) hermetically sealed off from the rest of reality, or is social consensus all that exists? Because if that's the case, you and I can enthusiastically agree that gravity isn't real, and then have a flying contest off the roof of the nearest bell tower. I'll go last.

So there is no "madness" at stake here, no ignoring what the world is in favour of some personal fantasy world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You're not ignoring reality in favor of a personal fantasy world. You're ignoring reality in favor of a social fantasy world.

I would hurt not only your feelings, but through the actions of others, through what the thought of you for claiming you are classified as "Pneumenon" rather than "Judith Butler," your social standing, perception of you mental facilities and affect what other think you are capable of. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Feelings, classifications, social standing, and perception. No reality, though.

When it comes to the questions of the ethics of categorisation, this understanding is critical. Not because creating any category is necessary any good, but rather because it enables someone to understand what the use of a category is, allowing them to avoid the naturalistic fallacy that any person must belong to any category because of some other trait they possess. — TheWillowOfDarkness

All cinnamon buns are giraffes. If you answer in the negative, it will hurt my feelings.

You are being silly. If you don't like a philosophical position, then it's acceptable to argue against it.

Perhaps pessimists are just lying to themselves? Secretly they're all happy and bursting with joy, and just refusing to admit it.

Well, that explains the huge number of upper-middle-class kids at liberal arts colleges who think that "You're not oppressed" is a refutation of an argument...

You have never met someone who had something bad happen to them, and was helped in their situation by being told to get over it?

Another thing that helps is real trouble. If you're busy being internally maudlin about someone breaking up with you two years ago, a few minutes of genuine headache can cure those ills immediately.

I'm not sure why you think I have assumptions about adults. You said,

This seems to work on problems that perhaps little children have (losing a game, not getting a toy). It would be inappropriate in almost all adult circumstances. — schopenhauer1

Evidently, you have some assumptions about adults, given your reference to "adult circumstances." You were the one that brought up adulthood, not me.

You might be surprised at how childish we adults can be.

Operative word in my second sentence: "might."

If you dig down to what you mean by 'self-infliction' of these pains, you will find you don't know what you're talking about. — The Great Whatever

Well, yeah, if you're gonna deny free will, then there's no reason to think of anything as being self-inflicted. On the other hand, a "pull-yourself-together-you-sonofabitch" speech might cause a person to stop inflicting such pain on themselves.

(come to think of it, could free will be a useful delusion? I mean, believing that there's no free will might give me a means to rationalize away the fact that I'm wallowing, thus allowing me to wallow even more, even if I'm right)

I don't see any reason to believe this. Sounds like New Age crap. — The Great Whatever

You sure, man? I mean, you've never met someone who wallows in their own bullshit to the point of hurting themselves far beyond the original stimulus? I'm not saying that this applies to all psychological pain, but some of it, surely.

You know, you have a DUTY to fight for [social cause that I find important]. If you don't do that, then you're complicit in OPPRESSION. I totally don't sound like George W. Bush with this "for us or against us" rhetoric.

As for Judith Butler, she looks precisely like a gender theorist should look. It was explained to me recently what a non-binary is. There, now I've used "non-binary" in a sentence. Living the dream of pertinence in the year 2015. — Ciceronianus the White

Hey, now. The under-representation of women in philosophy means that you have to take Judith Butler seriously. Accusing me of a non-sequitur here makes you sexist.

And again, I think both Schopenhauer and I mean to speak more about genius in that phrase then the common folk. That's why you can easily have women who are scientists, engineers, philosophers, etc, but you find it really really difficult to have women who are geniuses in these fields. — Agustino

Well, Dickinson's three little stanzas get a better reaction out of me than Heidegger's endless rambling about Being-Toward-Death, despite being about very similar subjects. Of course, poetry isn't philosophy (or is it?).

Aaah, who am I kidding? I'm secretly a white supremacist Nazi KKK Grand Imperial Wizard Patriarch Racist King of Oppression, and I HATE ALL FEMALE PHILOSOPHERS.

But I don't think it was a mere accident that you went straight for a comment about her appearance. — StreetlightX

I was feeling ornery.

I am open to the idea that bullshit artists can reform. Not my job to give them a second chance, though.

Don't you mean "Your trans-phenomenological intersubjective consensus-reality-impacting physical re-structuring of your standpoint has been critically absorbed by your surrogate linguistic community."?

If that's what you mean, then wouldn't your comment about logical positivism hanging on nothing apply to pretty much every philosophical position? Of course, I suppose that may have been your point... :-O

I don't think a nuanced understanding of logical positivism is self-refuting. It does in a sense hang upon nothing, though, and so can only be justified by a certain cultural attitude. — The Great Whatever

It does seem arbitrary, doesn't it? Sort of an immature air about it.

I actually have no idea what she looks like. But her philosophy is so vapid that I can't think of anything else to say about her. "Epicene" and "Crypt Keeper" were shots in the dark - I just kind of assume she looks like an old prune. Like Bertrand Russel, but less class.

I'd get a lot of insults thrown at me about my appearance, too, if I looked like the Crypt Keeper.

because it often takes the form of the 'real deal' pain, not stupid self-help 'oh I'm unsatisfied with my life' bullshit. — The Great Whatever

The latter is evidence that, if there's not enough pain in a person's life, that person will typically invent some.

Would you say this about a man? — StreetlightX

Given Butler's epicene appearance, "Fuck Judith Butler and everyone who looks like her" would seem to include a lot of men in the first place.

You think a genius of his stature couldn't manipulate a woman to sleep with him?

In my experience, really smart guys can have a lot of trouble with women. This is not always the case, but very often is.

And it's not mere disdain in Schopenhauer's writing. If he really was that superior to the masses, why did he devote so much time to excoriating them? There is a definite slant to his writing that speaks of bitterness and disappointment. I'm not saying that he wasn't a genius. I'm saying that, if his isolation was truly a result of his genius, then why didn't he just ignore the stupid masses? He was rich, after all. It's not as if he couldn't isolate himself if he wanted to.

Incidentally, Einstein chased quite a few ladies - and frequently, they allowed him to catch them.

Interesting, especially because this would seem to imply that the difference between language and reality is "merely" linguistic. Does this instance of self-reference do anything interesting? I have some ideas, but if you have anything to say, I'd like to hear it first.

"Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" by Philippa Foot
(Nope. Looked at some summaries and skimmed the actual paper. Not very exciting. Looks like typical Pragmatist sleight-of-hand)

"Merely Cultural" by Judith Butler
(Nope. Fuck Judith Butler and everyone who looks like her.)

"The Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiotics" by H. H. Pattee
(Nope. Too trendy, and seems to have "Hofstadter Disease.")

"Concepts and Objects" by Ray Brassier
(Yes! This is some good stuff. Accessible to people from different schools, fundamental, relatively short, and focused on big-picture issues. Gets my vote.)

"How to Define Consciousness: And how Not to Define Consciousness" by Max Velmans
(Nope. Good observations that are well articulated, but too narrow to be fecund enough for discussion.)

"Freedom and Resentment" by Peter Strawson
(Fascinating, but I think the Brassier paper beats it.)

A text can attempt to sell itself as "just a description," but there is such a thing as describing things in a way that carries subtle value judgments. A kind of semantic passive-aggression. But that's a tangential point.

My real question is this: how does your conclusion follow from your observations at the beginning? Are you just observing that language is derived from a more general set of behaviors? I'd grant that, but I'm not sure how this eliminates problems in philosophy of language; I could observe that the practice of mathematics is derivative of symbol manipulation, and then make some argument about how symbol manipulation is derivative of pre-rational behavior. None of this would inform me as to whether or not Platonism is true, however.

(Apologies if the foregoing is a bit cranky-sounding. I've been in a rotten mood lately and may be engaging in some semantic passive-aggression of my own.)

I am not sure about the difference between "following a rule" and "using language in a peculiar way." It's like saying, "Adult language isn't more specific than baby talk, baby talk is more general than adult language!" Um...

Also, the quoted passages in the OP seem to beat a dead horse of "Language is about restrictions and rules and smothers the free play of the child's naive mind!" Well, okay, but what are we supposed to do with that?

That being said, one seems to learn the particular sorts of nonverbal communication that normally come with spoken language before one learns the actual words. This toddler can't quite talk yet, but she has no problem carrying on an argument with her father:

There is an element of machismo in the writings of some prominent pessimists. Read Schopenhauer's Councils and Maxims and the Wisdom of Life. Can he go for more than a page without ranting about how dense everyone else is, with the obvious implication that he's smarter than everyone else?

I can't prove a link here. But there does seem to be a definite correlation between curmudgeonly thinking and bitter superiority.

I was being inflammatory.

In all seriousness, Stoicism works for me, at least, because its ideal state (that of the sage) is more or less impossible, which is good for me, because then I have something to strive for at all times. Additionally, I like Stoicism because it's anti-hedonistic. This is possibly because I'm rather anhedonic most of the time, but also because hedonistic philosophies just look like a recipe for slavishness and misery to me. I also like Buddhism a lot, if that tells you anything.

I suppose that Stoicism may be a form of negative hedonism, but in all honesty, I think that "negative hedonism" is a misnomer. It should be called anti-hedonism.

The emphasis on controlling the emotions is important for me because I'm a grotesquely intense person, so I gravitate toward philosophies whose message can be interpreted as "reign it in ya fuckin' lunatic." I'm also really self-indulgent when left to my own devices, and it can lead to problems, so keeping a mindset of moderation is probably a good prescription for my ills.

I don't consider Stoicism to be good for everyone (is there such a thing as a life philosophy that works for everybody?), but when I read the Stoic texts, they just... resonate somehow.

It helps to think of Stoicism as existentialism, but for grownups.