I am left with the sense that really all that directs us is self interest veiled in appeals to truths like fairness, justice, equality that are ultimately linked to a world view where those things had meaning because God gave them meaning. I can't escape the thought that those concepts make as much sense in the human world as do they with respect to a pack of wolves... — dazed

Yeah, I feel you. But a pack of wolves has a certain cohesion. So maybe we're more complex wolves. We love and hate. We assert status with words. We're never done inventing ourselves or figuring out our place. Everyone cobbles together their own post-religion. Some go to more trouble articulating a philosophy or an anti-philosophy.

Even if everything is 'really' empty, our animal minds mostly distract us for this. If we do remember, then there are some twisted pleasures to be had. The individual is more godlike beneath an empty sky.

I have created my own personal worldview in order to provide structure and framework for making sense of a world that is still under development. No faith required, but a long-range rational view of how the world works is necessary to see the sensible order and positive direction of Evolution. It requires looking at the scientific evidence from a different perspective. It only appeals to rational pragmatic people who look for clues at the scene of the crime : of creating an imperfect world that requires motivation to keep putting one foot in front of the other. :smile: — Gnomon

Your attitude is of course reasonable, but it's also familiar in terms of the emotional comfort it offers. I don't know exactly how far the idea goes back, but justifying evil in terms of a future to come goes back at least to Hegel.

But in contemplating history as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of individuals have been sacrificed, a question necessarily arises: To what principle, to what final purpose, have these monstrous sacrifices been offered?

From here one usually proceeds to the starting point of our investigation: the events which make up this picture of gloomy emotion and thoughtful reflection are only the means for realizing the essential destiny, the absolute and final purpose, or, what amounts to the same thing, the true result of world history. We have all along purposely eschewed that method of reflection which ascends from this scene of particulars to general principles. Besides, it is not in the interest of such sentimental reflections really to rise above these depressing emotions and to solve the mysteries of Providence presented in such contemplations. It is rather their nature to dwell melancholically on the empty and fruitless sublimities of their negative result.
...
A principle, a law is something implicit, which as such, however true in itself, is not completely real (actual). Purposes, principles, and the like, are at first in our thoughts, our inner intention. They are not yet in reality. That which is in itself is a possibility, a faculty. It has not yet emerged out of its implicitness into existence. A second element must be added for it to become reality, namely, activity, actualization. The principle of this is the will, man’s activity in general. It is only through this activity that the concept and its implicit (“being-in-themselves”) determinations can be realized, actualized; for of themselves they have no immediate efficacy.
...
These vast congeries of volitions, interests, and activities constitute the tools and means of the World Spirit for attaining its purpose, bringing it to consciousness, and realizing it. And this purpose is none other than finding itself – coming to itself – and contemplating itself in concrete actuality. But one may indeed question whether those manifestations of vitality on the part of individuals and peoples in which they seek and satisfy their own purposes are, at the same time, the means and tools of a higher and broader purpose of which they know nothing, which they realize unconsciously. This purpose has been questioned, and in every variety of form denied, decried, and denounced as mere dreaming and “philosophy.” On this point, however, I announced my view at the very outset, and asserted our hypothesis – which eventually will appear as the result of our investigation – namely, that Reason governs the world and has consequently governed its history. In relation to this Reason, which is universal and substantial, in and for itself, all else is subordinate, subservient, and the means for its actualization. Moreover, this Reason is immanent in historical existence and reaches its own perfection in and through this existence. — Hegel

I thought I'd share this and see if it resonated with you.

Nice link. Thanks!

No, he wants to kill all the children in the world and he’s trying to build his court case for why he’s not evil and that he’s just an angel of death helping us all find peace in true serial killer fashion. — Mark Dennis

Anti-natalism is indeed a weird thing. It wants to snuff us out. In dark moods I can understand. The source of our suffering is life itself. So if the goal is to make suffering impossible, then the solution is to make life impossible. It's the gentlest genocide imaginable. No one need be hurt. Some philosophers even think of history as the species finally becoming mature enough to let go of existence, the very opposite of 'be fruitful and multiply.' 'Grow up and quit the game forever. '

Von Hartmann is a pessimist, for no other view of life recognizes that evil necessarily belongs to existence and can cease only with existence itself. But he is not an unmitigated pessimist.[8] The individual's happiness is indeed unattainable either here and now or hereafter and in the future, but he does not despair of ultimately releasing the Unconscious from its sufferings. He differs from Schopenhauer in making salvation collective by the negation of the will to live depend on a collective social effort and not on individualistic asceticism. The conception of a redemption of the Unconscious also supplies the ultimate basis of von Hartmann's ethics. We must provisionally affirm life and devote ourselves to social evolution, instead of striving after a happiness which is impossible; in so doing we shall find that morality renders life less unhappy than it would otherwise be. Suicide, and all other forms of selfishness, are highly reprehensible. His realism enables him to maintain the reality of Time, and so of the process of the world's redemption.

The essential feature of the morality built upon the basis of Hartmann's philosophy is the realization that all is one and that, while every attempt to gain happiness is illusory, yet before deliverance is possible, all forms of the illusion must appear and be tried to the utmost. Even he who recognizes the vanity of life best serves the highest aims by giving himself up to the illusion, and living as eagerly as if he thought life good. It is only through the constant attempt to gain happiness that people can learn the desirability of nothingness; and when this knowledge has become universal, or at least general, deliverance will come and the world will cease. No better proof of the rational nature of the universe is needed than that afforded by the different ways in which men have hoped to find happiness and so have been led unconsciously to work for the final goal. The first of these is the hope of good in the present, the confidence in the pleasures of this world, such as was felt by the Greeks. This is followed by the Christian transference of happiness to another and better life, to which in turn succeeds the illusion that looks for happiness in progress, and dreams of a future made worth while by the achievements of science. All alike are empty promises, and known as such in the final stage, which sees all human desires as equally vain and the only good in the peace of Nirvana. — Wiki

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

Imagine this being taught in PHIL 101. It would make for an interesting class discussion.

As I began to develop my own personal Agnostic worldview, I tried to avoid any religious terminology. But eventually I realized that the Ultimate Source of ubiquitous Information is equivalent in most respects to the ancient concept of an abstract world-sustaining creator God (e.g. Brahman). — Gnomon

Indeed. Your theory (to the degree that I know it) reminds of other philosophers'.

So I view Enformationism as a 21st century update of outdated philosophical theories of Materialism and Spiritualism. Information is the essence of both Matter and Mind. Unfortunately, few people have read my thesis, so they don't fully grasp what I mean by Enformation or by "G*D". — Gnomon

I understand the desire to transcend that dichotomy. In some ways it reminds me of German philosophers who wanted to bring God down to this world. The species is Christ, and history is the unfolding/incarnation of God. That's the gist as I understand it.

if reality is ascribed to the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures, is this equivalent to the admission that this unity must actually have been once manifested, as it never had been, and never more will be, in one individual? This is indeed not the mode in which Idea realizes itself; it is not wont to lavish all its fulness on one exemplar, and be niggardly towards all others † —to express itself perfectly in that one individual, and imperfectly in all the rest: it rather loves to distribute its riches among a multiplicity of exemplars which reciprocally complete each other—-in the alternate appearance and suppression of a series of individuals. And is this no true realization of the idea? is not the idea of the unity of the divine and human natures a real one in a far higher sense, when I regard the whole race of mankind as its realization, than when I single out one man as such a realization? is not an incarnation of God from eternity, a truer one than an incarnation limited to a particular point of time.

This is the key to the whole of Christology, that, as subject of the predicate which the church assigns to Christ, we place, instead of an individual, an idea; but an idea which has an existence in reality, not in the mind only, like that of Kant. In an individual, a God-man, the properties and functions which the church ascribes to Christ contradict themselves; in the idea of the race, they perfectly agree. Humanity is the union of the two natures—God become man, the infinite manifesting itself in the finite, and the finite spirit remembering its infinitude; it is the child of the visible Mother and the invisible Father, Nature and Spirit; it is the worker of miracles, in so far as in the course of human history the spirit more and more completely subjugates nature, both within and around man, until it lies before him as the inert matter on which he exercises his active power;‡ it is the sinless existence, for the course of its development is a blameless one, pollution cleaves to the individual only, and does not touch the race or its history. It is Humanity that dies, rises, and ascends to heaven, for from the negation of its phenomenal life there ever proceeds a higher spiritual life; from the suppression of its mortality as a personal, national, and terrestrial spirit, arises its union with the infinite spirit of the heavens. By faith in this Christ, especially in his death and resurrection, man is justified before God; that is, by the kindling within him of the idea of Humanity, the individual man participates in the divinely human life of the species. — Strauss

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/strauss/conclusion.html

The vision blends Christianity with technological progress. It's optimistic. It doesn't address the mortality of the species (God himself is mortal). Humanism is arguably the best thing we have. Is it good enough? Smaller notions of the group allow for a human enemy, and we tend to love our human enemies as the glue that binds us to our friends. We need an alien attack. If we win, we might be in the mood for the New New Jerusalem.

Pre-scientific thinkers were not idiots; they were just working with incomplete information about how the world works. — Gnomon

I agree.

Unfortunately, few people have read my thesis, so they don't fully grasp what I mean by Enformation or by "G*D". — Gnomon

Well you have lots of competition. While generating a new vocabulary has its advantages, you thereby lose out on the ability to connect your work to other philosophers. And then philosophers just love being skeptical. Personally I respect the creativity. I've written philosophy too, even a kind of system, when I trusted more in the possibility of a system. These days I think that 'my' thoughts have all tended to be out there already. I only tie fragments together and try to choose words appropriate to the moment. Despite having this view now, I think it's crucial that I strove and strive to break new ground.

But the new answers are not found in conventional Science or Religion. The Enformationism thesis asks those age-old queries, and proposes theoretical answers. But Atheists dismiss them as "gap fillers" or "empty set", because they have an outdated understanding of Physics and Metaphysics. — Gnomon

Some atheists are quite exposed to philosopher's gods and even like or embrace them. 'Atheist' is just too vague to express much more than a critical attitude. As far as 'gap filler' goes, I think even you spoke of God as an axiom or place in a structure.

Interestingly, the modern understanding of Information/Energy is similar to the archaic notion of Spirit : invisible, intangible, causal agency. — Gnomon

Have you looked into Douglas_Hofstadter? He writes some fascinating stuff about causality and the nature of cognition.

Hofstadter's thesis about consciousness, first expressed in Gödel, Escher, Bach (GEB) but also present in several of his later books, is that it is an emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain. In GEB he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent "colony" of neurons. In particular, Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an "I" comes from the abstract pattern he terms a "strange loop", which is an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena as audio and video feedback, and which Hofstadter has defined as "a level-crossing feedback loop". The prototypical example of this abstract notion is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter's 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the idea that each human "I" is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to precisely one brain. — Wiki

Even if the progressive mom likely isn't religious at all, she has a religious fervour to fight evil and save her boys from being lured into the Satanic cult of the alt-right. — ssu

Indeed. Religion (or something like it) hasn't gone anywhere. We're a haunted species.

The attitude is telling. It is one reason why politics comes to be so divisive and why we talk about politics becoming tribal. You see, it's not that political ideology that you oppose simply doesn't just work, is counterproductive and make things worse, it is are truly evil. — ssu

I agree. There's also the issue of tone. Often political arguments get so nasty that persuasion is no longer the point. Instead each side is just performing for those overhearing, for those already in their tribe.

I don't want to pretend to be entirely above this. I understand its appeal. We like fights. We like violent movies. And it's easy to feel that the whole thing is a spectacle. Do people want change? Or do I/they need the enemy to structure their sense of self?

Fair enough.

But I think of stoicism, for instance, as a quasi-religion.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. — Epictetus

This aims at a perfectly self-controlled consciousness. This ideal man is like God, self-sufficing and above the world. The stoic is a god-man, a Jesus from Vulcan.

If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies. — Epictetus

Don't cry for mortal things. Be like God, cold and controlled. Life is a test of nerve, a stage for cold virtue.

I like stoicism, btw. But there's a place in for the dark question: Why should the proud godman bother with this stage for virtue? His only attachment is to detachment. The self-mortification is implicitly suicidal even.

He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a happy life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. — Epicurus

Epicurus helps. Let's just be happy, healthy animals. We just need to get rid of the God virus and the illusion (theological hangover) that something is lacking.

I don't think it's that simple. Something in the human wants to transgress/transcend the given. 'Nihilism' is maybe just an awkward expression of a sense that 'something is missing.' Epicurus and humanism is about as good as it gets, but reason is historical and corrosive. Most thinking people are humanists and yet they don't agree, aren't forming one big inclusive community. We still have sects.

In then agrarian Finland such racist terms describing the poor people you did find in the 19th Century, a similar time when the term white trash was started to be used in the US. Then we had terms like loinen, parasite in English, which referred to poor people that didn't own a home and basically lived in the sheds of their employer. Yet in the 20th Century these terms weren't used or tolerated anymore. And 'human garbage' would sound really bad. It doesn't simply fit to a society with social cohesion. It does fit to a society with deep class divides.

Just as 180Proof points out, of course povetry is attached to this. Class is something that many Americans don't get as they confuse class with caste, and think about a caste system when talking about a class system. And of course, since the term is so loved by the socialists, Americans just turn away from using it. — ssu

Indeed. I agree. The class issue hits us where we live. Even the talk of race and gender (which obviously has its value) gets tangled up in class-indicating manners. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are associated with poverty, especially with 'white trash' but also with blue-collar work. In our two party country, it all gets tangled up into something like mommy versus daddy.

Consider this article:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/22/us/california-mother-warning-white-supremacists-soh/index.html

To me the mother/son dynamic is fascinating here. The story assumes that its readers need a little glossary, at those who live in a bubble. It condescends. One of the words to watch for is 'SJW.' How clueless/insulated are these mothers supposed to be? Even liberal movie reviews are using 'snowflake.' The mean lingo is changing hands as each side tries to mock the other in its own terms.

She responded to criticism that she was trying to "brainwash" her children.
"All parents are trying to bend their kids' minds. Whether it's getting them to wash their hands when they normally wouldn't or getting them to think about social issues in a way that's going to help society get better," she said.
She's found a positive way to engage her sons.
"The kids and I are conspirators together," she said. — Mom

She's right of course that parents are expected to shape their children. But there's something strange about mommy conspiring with her sons. She implies that modern religion is mostly political conspiracy theories, or at least that her boys are attracted to conspiracy theory (scapegoating). But that's what this article does, a sort of Satanic Panic. Class doesn't come up, just gender and race. Masculinity is associated with the threat of racism throughout.

This doesn't make me cry. It's even funny. Did AI write it? It's so weird. Did I dream it? I'm trying to point out how masculinity is tangled up with the race issue and make sense of some of Trump's support.

I thought you'd like it. I've been reading The Black Circle lately (Jeff Love). It's about Kojeve, which means it's about Dostoevsky too. The underground man is still fresh as a daisy. He's like ur-material out of which all the other beautiful and terrible maniacs emerge.

Yes. Evolving programs, as opposed to calculated programs, are heuristic in that they explore random paths (mutations) and judge their fitness against the programmer's criteria. In my thesis, the Great Programmer set-up the initial conditions and natural laws that determine which options are selected for the next generation. The "unfit" paths are ruthlessly abandoned to extinction. Which could apply to humans if we prove to be unfit for future generations. In that case, we may be replaced by robots. :smile: — Gnomon

Does your theory include an explicit fitness function? Or it more like Darwin generalized?

The problem with informal knowledge is that it has no objective justification. Therefore, its status as knowledge is necessarily uncertain. — alcontali

You seem to imply that certainty requires justification. I don't think so. To even begin to justify is to assume that there is a community out there, a world out there. One has to already speak a language. Such certainties can't be justified, since we need them in order to justify.

I am not entirely sure I follow you, since the Kantian claim I am making - namely, that it is default wrong to do something that impacts another in some significant way without their prior consent - is normative. — Bartricks

But we make all kinds of exceptions to that norm. Parents control children 'for their own good.' The insane can be held against their will, etc. So your argument makes sense given you assumptions. But the Kantian norm itself is not binding. It's just one attempt among others to crystallize a vague moral intuition.

That is, it is not a claim about how we actually behave, but a claim about how we ought to behave. And although you are right and it may well not persuade many people, that's neither here nor there since what's true is not equivalent to what persuades people. — Bartricks

I agree that truth != what persuades.

A boogeyman lurking in the shadows and ready to pounce, against whom ordinary people have to prepare to defend themselves is part and parcel of American culture as baseball.

Starting from the burglar breaking into your house that one has to shoot or otherwise your family will be killed, it's one of those things that creates xenophobia and the fear against minorities, which then turns into present day racism. A tiny minority harbour ideas of racial supremacy, the fear of criminals or lunatic gunmen is far more typical. The 'alt-right' shooter is a just one version of this, which shows how universal the phenomenon is in America. Few crackpots capture the imagination of a huge country. — ssu

I agree with all of this. I'd just add the theme of class. Americans are afraid of poor people. And we hate poor people, who are often just a little poorer than we are. Or no poorer but just with the wrong manners. One can still say 'white trash' without losing one's job.

Someone will always end up playing the anti-exemplar. I don't think elitism can be escaped. That would be like a community without norms or ideals. We'll always have harsh words for whatever unsettles or disgust us. Someone will be the creep, the trash.

The gun issue is complex. It's not only about defending one's home from an actual threat. It's also about the masculine ideal. There's something so naked and lamb-like about a disarmed worker who lives among armed cops and armed criminals. 'Don't tread on me.'
That's a deep part of our psyche.

Here's the source. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm

I don't claim to follow all of Debord, but some quotes really speak to me.

The world isn't perfect. It's never going to be perfect except for a couple of hours on a Tuesday afternoon in March of 2356 C.E. when nobody will even notice because they're all so busy griping. — frank

Nice.

Then--this is all what you say--new economic relations will be established, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical exactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the twinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be provided. Then the "Palace of Crystal" will be built. Then ... In fact, those will be halcyon days. Of course there is no guaranteeing (this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully dull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be calculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be extraordinarily rational. Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then. Man is stupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all stupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like him in all creation. I, for instance, would not be in the least surprised if all of a sudden, A PROPOS of nothing, in the midst of general prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a reactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his arms akimbo, say to us all: "I say, gentleman, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!" That again would not matter, but what is annoying is that he would be sure to find followers--such is the nature of man. — Dostoevsky

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/600/600-h/600-h.htm

I'm still trying to understand where this reaction to the idea of color-blindness really comes from. On the surface it is merely the idea that we should not judge others by their skin color (à la Dr. King), but it is made to seem like an insidious plot meant to subvert its own founding moral premise; a slithering ouroboros.

Is it that ignoring race is in and of itself harmful or racist? Presumably, because systemic factors continue to discriminate? (and if so, are those factors not the result of conscious or unconscious bias present in those holding positions of power? (e.g: judges, the wealthy, politicians, doctors, educators, police, etc..)) Is the attack on color-blindness ultimately a preemptive defense of "positive discrimination" as a kind of reparative justice? — VagabondSpectre

I think you see the complexity of the situation. Is the goal at least color-blindness? Or rather color not being all that interesting? And yet we are supposed to get there by talking about color.

As a white man, I primarily threat track other white men. They are the ones I watch to see if they are going get angry, to bully or hurt others. A lifetime spent around white boys/men taught me that. The most damaged among us become white nationalists or mass shooters. — link

https://medium.com/@remakingmanhood/why-i-primarily-threat-track-other-white-men-6437cd1c8830

It's as if we just can't help ourselves. Is our white man threat-tracking himself? It sounds like he's been bullied. Or was he doing the bullying? Or did he stand and watch? And even someone getting angry is something he feels the need to police. As you might guess, the post is also about toxic masculinity. Our godless times have new original sins to play with.

To me the 'liberals' are basically right (systemic racism, etc.). But some of them have just switched to a new kind of magical thinking. The 'alt-right' boogeyman, lurking in the shadows, is ready to pounce. I think most people are racist. But most of us consciously reject it as irrational and do our best not to be jerks. We're interested in difference when it's not threatening.

Maybe it's the quest for an impossible purity that results in a projection of the boogeyman. Even noticing that things have changed (that posts like the one I've quoted have become common) is suspect. So the left is right, but the loons aren't helping things.

As in Evolutionary Programming the system is "designed" to "unfold inevitably". Since the intention occurs before the exercise begins, it is not obvious from within the experiment. — Gnomon

Are you talking about genetic algorithms? Those are awesome. But we provide the fitness function. I can imagine watching a population without knowing the fitness function and trying to deduce it. Perhaps that's what you have in mind. Fascinating theme.

Mathematical Universe Hypothesis : "Tegmark's MUH is: Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. That is, the physical universe is not merely described by mathematics, but is mathematics" — Gnomon

But let's think about this. To me it says something like: if we lift the curtain of appearance, we'll find math. A smile is mathematics. Even the idea that the physical universe is mathematics... is somehow itself 'really' mathematics. But if everything is math, then nothing is math. This is the fate of all monisms?

I don't see how it can float without the husk/kernel metaphor. It's something like the end of The Matrix. But why call the husk illusion?

Modern epistemology simply says that there must always exist a computable procedure to verify the justification of formal knowledge. Otherwise, it is not formal knowledge. — alcontali

What I take from modern philosophy is that most knowledge and the most important kinds of knowledge are not only not formal but not explicit at all. Formal knowledge is charming. It's a little star that twinkles in the darkness. 2 + 2 = 4.

In its modern understanding, epistemology amounts to computability: — alcontali

That sounds fishy to me. We're flesh and blood with history, not Turing machines. I know philosophers have fantasized about perfect languages which would allow for god machines with which we could crank out truth after truth after truth....But that strikes me not only as impossible but also undesirable.

But these are all golden dreams. Oh, tell me, who was it first announced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all know that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests, consequently, so to say, through necessity, he would begin doing good? Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child! Why, in the first place, when in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has acted only from his own interest? What is to be done with the millions of facts that bear witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully understanding their real interests, have left them in the background and have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger, compelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were, simply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully, struck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the darkness. — Dostoevsky

There are no doubt exceptional circumstances, such as where a great harm will come to the person unless the act is performed or where the person in quesiton positively deserves to be treated in this way. But that's why I said 'standardly'. We might say that an act is 'default' wrong/bad if it has the above qualities, though not necessarily wrong. As such we can reasonably assume an act that has the above qualities is wrong until or unless we are provided with reason to think that the act in question is an exceptional case.

The act of procreation has this feature. It seems undeniable that in procreating one significantly affects another person, for one thereby commits someone else to living an entire life. And it also seems undeniable that the person who is affected in this way has not consented to it.

So, it would seem that on these Kantian grounds - Kantian because it is something about the nature of the act, namely the fact the act is one that has not been consented to - we have reaosn to believe that procreation is wrong. — Bartricks

I think it's a reasonable point to make, if one assumes what you call Kantian grounds. These grounds assume something like a utopia of free and equal adults. And that's strange, because it's the sort of utopia one would probably enjoy living in.

In our world, we're used to decisions be made by/for others. Parents punish children. Generals send soldiers into harm's way. We have people in cages for selling plants (with THC in them.)

So your point is logical given your assumptions, but I don't think people are swayed that way. There's an overall attitude about life being bad or good, parenthood being respectable or not.

I personally don't have kids. I was/am afraid of the expense, worry, and responsibly. So I am not 'pro-breeding' in my response.

So the question boils down to whether there is Content for the Concept. — Gnomon

I agree.

In my view, there is no concrete humanoid person out there playing the role of God. No "teapot circling Mars". Instead, since the real material world ultimately consists of immaterial Information (e.g. mathematics), G*D is not just out-there in eternity-infinity, but in every particle of space-time. — Gnomon

Right. That's how I've understood you. 'God' is something like the form or logic of matter. I don't object to this as superstitious. Maybe I find the choice of 'G*D' as a name for it sub-optimal. Maybe I think it doesn't really answer the question. (Is there a question?)

I've read quite a few of your posts, btw. I like seeing sincere meta-physicians around.

This is indeed the abstract philosopher's God. But, as a hypothesis, it explains a lot about "entanglement" and the ubiquitous role of Information in the world. As a popular religion, it would be impractical, since it doesn't "scratch an itch" that most people of the world have always had : someone to give us unconditional love and to defend us from evil. Instead, it merely puts the ointment of theory on "itches" that philosophers have always had : ultimate "why" questions. — Gnomon

Exactly. So we agree. We naturally secrete theory to make sense of things, so I really can't complain. Personally I think that theorizing leads us to an aporia or blank spot. The ground 'must' remain obscure. The metalanguage cannot be formalized. At the same time, we still have our grand theories. As I see it, they give us better mousetraps, spiritual-social comfort, and/or some blend of these things.

When people complain of 'woo,' I think it's a distaste for spiritual-social comfort being associated with better-mousetrap thinking. To me it's more complicated than that. While I am somewhat allergic to 'woo,' I'm also less than dazzled by the religion of prediction and control. 'Fitter, happier, more productive.' To what end? A life without 'magical thinking'? But that image itself gleams as a goal with no rational justification.

I'm glad things are looking up. I've walked through Hell a time or two or three or...and yet am strangely fairly happy when I don't get sucked into that vortex. Highs and lows, and it all gets stranger with age. Anyway, I think it's cool that you had the guts to spill it all out. That's the real stuff. That's when philosophy is more than a clever game of concepts.

I salute you, fellow mortal.

Nevertheless, pre-Christian philosophers managed to come to conclusions regarding good and bad, true and false, the purpose of life, etc. most of which were borrowed by Christians. They were not Christian, they were not theists, nor were they nihilists.

Perhaps we're all victims of a kind of post Christian syndrome.

In any case, if history is any guide we need not be theists or nihilists, one or the other. Maybe we only think that is the case because of centuries of Christian indoctrination. — Ciceronianus the White

The very start of my philosophy is to reject basically religion (fideism and transcendentalism), and then immediately also reject nihilism (and the cynicism that can't help but lead to it), and then I spend the remaining 80% of the time just going over the vast swathes of what still remains as a possibility besides those equal and opposite anti-philosophies. — Pfhorrest

Of course this is a wise and sensible position. I get it. And what else can you tell a person wrestling with a spiritual crisis but some version of 'get over it.'

Still, once something like God or gods or mysteries are abandoned and some kind of religion of reason is embraced, the world becomes different. Reason is corrosive, progressive, unstable. Any fixed philosophical system that tells us our place in the world is (in some sense) another 'theology' that conquers disorientation and alienation. (Of course we like a certain amount of alienation. Outside is inside is outside, etc.)

The super sapiens example was only to illustrate that we don't have the capability, however, theoretically the evolution of intellect can go on indefinitely and still never reach a nirvana of cognition. — staticphoton

We agree. I guess I was just trying to explain what I find fascinating about so-called explanations. A super-sapien would build better mousetraps. But as long as they are still human-like (an amplification of our own nature), I think they'd wrestle with philosophy. The less like us they are, the less we can really imagine them. The superior alien is like a god or an angel, which is to say essentially human for the human imagination. It's just that our imaginations can push beyond the usual mortal limits.

Consciousness in the strict sense, or consciousness properly speaking, and consciousness of the infinite cannot be separated from each other; a limited consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness is essentially infinite and all-encompassing. The consciousness of the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of consciousness. To put it in other words, in its consciousness of infinity, the conscious being is conscious of the infinity of its own being.
...
Every limitation of reason, or of human nature in general, rests on a delusion, an error. To be sure, the human individual can, even must, feel and know himself to be limited – and this is what distinguishes him from the animal – but he can become conscious of his limits, his finiteness, only because he can make the perfection and infinity of his species the object either of his feeling, conscience, or thought. — Feuerbach

I'm not presenting this as gospel but as an interesting thought that I relate to your theme. The super-sapien is an object for 'infinite' human consciousness --and that object is in that sense an image of that consciousness freed from limits it experiences as contingent. We just happen to have this cognitive structure, and yet we can strangely vaguely imagine a better cognitive structure --which must it seems in some sense already be ours for us to imagine it.

I have noticed a tendency among colleagues (engineers and scientists) to firmly believe that human reason can conquer all, or put in another form, only that which can be grasped by human reason can exist. One in particular who I respect greatly has even stated it. — staticphoton

I really like your theme.

I think we agree that human reason cannot conquer all, but I think I know what your colleague might have meant by 'only that which can be grasped by human reason can exist.' I'd tweak that and say that anything intelligible for us is (tautologically) graspable by reason. In other words, we can't specify the unintelligible except by a vague negation as some X which we aren't grasping.

So in some sense the unintelligible or unreasonable doesn't exist for us. That said, it seems clear to me that our thinking is mostly fuzzy and analogue (math being the exception.) So reality-for-us fades out gradually as we can make less and less sense of it.

On the other hand, scenario #2 leaves room for futher evolution of cognitive powers, the sapiens being of a far future will look at our mental capacity just like we compare ours to that of a Rhesus monkey. This future being would be better equipped to grasp the workings of the universe, and yet again, it might still not be enough. — staticphoton

Good point. But what does it mean to explain something? It seems connected to a sense of familiarity and mastery. You give someone an 'explanation' when they calm down and get back to work. They could dig further into it, but they aren't motivated to do so. Call it 'God' or 'laws of physics.' Though we could specify these loaded concepts forever, they are often enough to tuck us in.

This connection is not "obvious" to me. — alcontali

I agree. That quote doesn't feel right. For one thing, I can predict whatever I want,without some mathematical proof. And then math = axiomatic is itself a commitment. If there are true statements about natural numbers that have no proofs (and there are), then the whole proof game is put in a new light.

Explanations would require a language/system that is coherent and watertight, which can be used universally to communicate a concept or idea without becoming distorted by personal interpretation. Mathematics is our best present attempt to do so in the field of physics, and although progress has been made, there are many aspects of existence that cannot be formulated by mathematics. So I go with #2. — staticphoton

FWIW, I go with #2 also. But I go with #2 because I have old-fashioned actual beliefs about human cognition. For instance, I think if we really suffer the 'nature' of language that it becomes pretty obvious that we know not how we do. Obviously we can build better mousetraps. We can experience a sense of progressive sophistication. But the old rationalistic fantasy is dead for me anyway. I don't think we can get the mathematics of Being that some philosophers have craved.

Whatever road you choose to walk, realize the truth is only in your mind. — staticphoton

I like your post in general, but maybe it falls into its own trap. 'The truth is only in your mind' is in some sense not virtuously humble at all but just one more 'super theory' put forward as a truth that is not only in your mind or my mind.

..and what will become of me when I no longer have it in me to pretend that I do not genuinely despise people. I don't know if I care anymore. — CornwallCletus

I do empathize with the dark passion here. The time is out of joint. Something in our despised human nature craves something beyond this nature. I associate this kind of bitter alienation with the artistic temperament. I just saw Joker and the riot scenes are exhilarating. Maybe some part of all of us would like to see this candy-coated wasteland go up in flames. But I also think that humans (some more than others) are haunted by a tantalizing impossible object. This or that project or person or object looks from a distance to maybe finally be it, the real thing, the plenitude of being.

Children are in this very moment distorting public opinion, re-writing history, and carelessly tampering with morality. They scream made up issues from the top of their lungs, without any thought process other than trying to fit in with the group, and regurgitate whatever catchy chant they are presented with. — CornwallCletus

These 'kids' (who can amusingly forget that they'll also get old) do have their leaders --the ones who 'carelessly tampering with morality.' Their leaders are challenging authorities.

Afraid to think for themselves. Afraid to challenge real authority. Afraid to be individuals. They're buying straight into whatever pushed agenda they are being served. — CornwallCletus

This is a universal 'sin.' We're all subject to peer pressure. A genuine challenge costs something. To really go against the grain will likely mean poverty. It might mean prison or death. Maybe that's why we have a two-party mentality. Both tribes allow their members to feel like crusaders and revolutionaries, at the same time providing a nice bubble.

When someone points out an uncomfortable but indisputable reality they scream conspiracy theory, or unconsciously yell a random (according to the degenerate norm) derogatory -ism. — CornwallCletus

But there are all kinds of conspiracy theories. This is an age of suspicion. As I see it, we're all dreamers who don't want our dreams interrupted. We face unpleasant realities when we are forced to (and also when those 'unpleasant' realities allow for more sophisticated pleasures.) Maybe you (like me) are addicted to the dark pleasure of unveiling Medusa. Is it comedy or tragedy? There's a festival of cruelty here. 'He who despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.'

I have been told that it's chemical, or perhaps seasonal. In reality it is nothing but reasonable. To be anything other than miserable in this shit stain of a world is to me a sign of severe cognitive dysfunction. — CornwallCletus

The first shall be last and the last shall be first. Healthy is sick. Sick is healthy. Thus spoke Pure Reason. Even if there's some truth in what you say (and I think there is), such a perverse reversal of common sense should maybe give you pause.

Aren't you implying after all that human cognition was designed for misery? Usually pain is a kind of warning signal. I do think it sucks to age. Nature doesn't need us once our groins dry up. I'm not there yet, but I'm on the way. It's not all bad. Years of living, thinking, reading...they all add up. Death becomes a bittersweet prospect ('learning how to die.') The soul is a bag full of wounds, aphorisms, immense embodied/tacit skills. It wants to crumple up this draft and start again. Abased to be exalted, penetrated by 'God'/reality in the sense of recognizing itself as nothing but repetition with variation.

I have to admit, I have myself been an absolute piece of shit at times in my younger years. I like to think that I have grown up now. However, I was never a coward. — CornwallCletus

I relate. But the avoidance of being a coward often means being an asshole. I look back and think I should have been more cowardly, more careful. I was chasing 'it' over boundary stones. And now I remain afraid of my rashness and desire to challenge, disagree, swerve. I joke to myself that I am mad in my sanity. Some people are itchier than others. I envy the RAF fighters of WWII. Their situation was clear. They used their bodies and minds to face death in the sky. In your anger I hear the old 'divine violence' and the siren call of Dionysus. We want an impossible something beyond better mousetraps. But we also like the comfortable mousetraps. Peace offers the dream of war.

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death. — Yeats

People blame the economy as if it is some kind of omnipotent force from another dimension. People blame traditions as if they are so deeply rooted that change is impossible. People blame culture as if culture overrides individual responsibility and justifies acting like a piece of shit. People blame politicians as if we did not put them there and continuously legitimize them year after year, and as if the politicians themselves are not people. It's all people. Everything is either created by- or is a subsequent product of people.

I blame people, a group of which I am a part of... sadly. 

...and what will become of me when I no longer have it in me to pretend that I do not genuinely despise people. I don't know if I care anymore. — CornwallCletus

I agree that people blame, blame, blame. You do put your finger on the puppet master or source, human nature, but maybe you are ignoring that you are also a human expressing outrage at human nature. So human nature is tangled up and opposed to itself.

I'm not saying 'cheer up, Charlie.' I'm saying (to joke a little) that you aren't being negative enough. You grant that 'I am part of it' but hardly emphasize that your position needs all the idiots and sinners. Virtue and intelligence are relative.

I don't think we are in disagreement. — iolo

Nice. Thanks for the reply.

Marx helps: we know who is lying to us. and why, and we know we won't have a cat's chance in hell of making sensible evaluations till we get the leeches off our backs, which gives one a sensible purpose. — iolo

I like Marx, but I also personally think that we are largely the leeches on our own backs. Capitalism is a beautiful, seductive monster. Today's art is great. Check out the screens. In all of this mess, the machine is feeding us profound pictures. It's basically condensed experience, hyper-reality. I just watched Succession (two seasons). So much money and talent was concentrated in making that artifact. And we can read Marx because our noisy oligarchy isn't afraid of the 'truth.'

Under the shimmering diversions of the spectacle, banalization dominates modern society the world over and at every point where the developed consumption of commodities has seemingly multiplied the roles and objects to choose from. The remains of religion and of the family (the principal relic of the heritage of class power) and the moral repression they assure, merge whenever the enjoyment of this world is affirmed–this world being nothing other than repressive pseudo-enjoyment.

The smug acceptance of what exists can also merge with purely spectacular rebellion; this reflects the simple fact that dissatisfaction itself became a commodity as soon as economic abundance could extend production to the processing of such raw materials. — Debord

I'm not accusing you of pseudo-rebellion. I'm accusing myself of enjoying a 'virtuous' dissatisfaction. Those who experience the banality intensely might prefer that the less sensitive proles end up with the dirty work. The tyrant outside is a reflection of the tyrant inside.

I've been wondering about this concept central to masculinity. In my mind, there's nothing more central and grounding for a man to feel prideful. — Wallows

It's a great theme. Pride is something like the enjoyment of (a sense of ) status.

In its more 'innocent' form, it's maybe conforming to the norm, being good enough. 'I am a brave solider, a good doctor, a compassionate friend, a responsible citizen.'

In its more exciting (sometimes toxic) form, it's the cult of the genius. To succeed as an artist is to be a one-of-a-kind item, an alpha in the Brave New World. And then there's the more practical sense of wielding political or economic power (Logan Roy).

Who would you rather be, Kurt Cobain (despite his end?) or some rich VP of SomeCorp? Or to make it more interesting, the choice is between being a posthumously discovered great artist who lives mostly without recognition or again some rich person who lives in luxury but is otherwise not glamorous.

I'm trying to emphasize a distinction between 'quality' and pure material power, or the 'spiritual' versus the blandly economic. The question is related to whether it's better to live a low-stress life in a simple cabin with lots of books but no one to command or a high stress life with lots of money and menials. In other words, what is noble? (I realize I left out many other fascinating options, like activism for instance.)

For Atheists, "god" refers to an empty set. But for Theists, "God" refers to a meaningful, but abstract concept, with associated feelings. For example, "United States" is not a concrete thing, but an abstraction that invokes positive feelings for some, and negative feelings for others. — Gnomon

Hi. Perhaps you are oversimplifying atheism here. I'm an 'atheist,' but I also think God is a concept of central importance. I'd say that an atheist thinks of God as 'only' a concept. A theist might instead separate their concept of God from God itself.

But I cannot give a concrete description, or claim that "G*D" is real and empirical. Instead, my "G*D" is a gap-filler in the same sense that scientists use "Dark Matter" and "Multiverse". — Gnomon

Fair enough, but this looks like a philosopher's 'God.' It's a piece of sculpture. It scratches an itch that most people don't have.

In the philosophical context, it ignores some of the modern ideas about just how entangled we are in the world --so entangled that most of our knowledge cannot be made explicit. And the knowledge that can be made explicit has a dark foundation. Whatever castles we build (however sharp their towers) rise from the mist.

'I think therefore I am.' But what is it to even be able to say this? What is it to know a language?

Is this assertion true? How can it be known to be true? Is this assertion false? How can it be known to be false? — ZzzoneiroCosm

It's a suggestive quote, and I think it's better to develop it in this or that direction than worry about true/false.

It reminds me of this one:

The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life brought into the definition of all human realization the obvious degradation of being into having. The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing, from which all actual “having” must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function. — Debord

To me this is a transition from being to having. But today having is to some degree more about appearing to have than actually having. It's 'better' to look rich, smart, virtuous than to actually be such. The real things are still important, and many of us pride ourselves on seeing through hype. But this seeing-through is itself one more thing to be projected, one more selfie. Clearly it doesn't only give us pain. We pay for the privilege to pose and peep (at least for the hardware.) The software is driven by ads, though it's hard to draw the line now between ads and whichever products the famous are seen with.

This is the principle of commodity fetishism, the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things,” which reaches its absolute fulfillment in the spectacle, where the tangible world is replaced by a selection of images which exist above it, and which simultaneously impose themselves as the tangible par excellence. — Debord

I think I see what @dazed is getting at. When God is dead, one is left with a plurality of causes. There are so many claims on the contemporary conscience, all appealing to historically evolving notion of reason and decency. And then the species itself is mortal. In the long run, it's all got to go. Maybe it's the heat death. Maybe it's an asteroid.

It's healthy and respectable to get engrossed and not be too evil. But that's about it. The escape from time and chance is given up. Or it's negotiated so that one tries to be on the right side of History without looking too far ahead. To me it looks like transformations of a hardwired fantasy. What is it to be intellectual and sophisticated? To be above confusion and superstition? It's a variation of the divine as far as I can tell. But the healthy-respectable version lacks divine violence, which gives it a certain shallowness.

Earlier in the thread there was talk about religion being largely sub-conceptual. It's what we do, perhaps, more than it is what we say about what we do. The 'religious' person who gets and spends and obeys like the 'non-religious' person is not that interesting. It's make-up for Facebook, a little flag. But IMV this also applies to 'non-religious' and maybe even 'anti-religious' politics.

My point isn't that anti-religion is good or bad. And I do see the usefulness of the word 'religion.' But I also see the usefulness in understanding 'religion' metaphorically. The quote below does not express my own position in general, but it's a good description of 'culture' as 'religion.'

The spiritual individual, the people, insofar as it is organized in itself, an organic whole, is what we call the State. This designation is ambiguous in that by “state” and “constitutional law” one usually means the simple political aspect, as distinct from religion, science, and art. But when we speak of the manifestation of the spiritual we understand the term “state” in a more comprehensive sense, similar to the term Reich (empire, realm). For us, then, a people is primarily a .spiritual individual. We do not emphasize the external aspects but concentrate on what has been called the spirit of a people. We mean its consciousness of itself, of its own truth, its own essence, the spiritual powers which live and rule in it. The universal which manifests itself in the State and is known in it – the form under which everything that is, is subsumed – is that which constitutes the culture of a nation. The definite content which receives this universal form and is contained in the concrete actuality of the state is the spirit of the people. The actual state is animated by this spirit in all its particular affairs, wars, institutions, etc.

This spiritual content is something definite, firm, solid, completely exempt from caprice, the particularities, the whims of individuality, of chance. That which is subject to the latter is not the nature of the people: it is like the dust playing over a city or a field, which does not essentially transform it. This spiritual content then constitutes the essence of the individual as well as that of the people. It is the holy bond that ties the men, the spirits together. It is one life in all, a grand object, a great purpose and content on which depend all individual happiness and all private decisions. The state does not exist for the citizens; on the contrary, one could say that the state is the end and they are its means. But the means-end relation is not fitting here. For the state is not the abstract confronting the citizens; they are parts of it, like members of an organic body, where no member is end and none is means. It is the realization of Freedom, of the absolute, final purpose, and exists for its own sake. All the value man has, all spiritual reality, he has only through the state. For his spiritual reality is the knowing presence to him of his own essence, of rationality, of its objective, immediate actuality present in and for him. Only thus is he truly a consciousness, only thus does he partake in morality, in the legal and moral life of the state. For the True is the unity of the universal and particular will. And the universal in the state is in its laws, its universal and rational provisions. The state is the divine Idea as it exists on earth. — Hegel

What is the separation of church and state but the implementation of a state 'religion' ? I'm not objecting to this apparent privatization of spirituality. I'm just pointing out that it's something like individualism or freedom as the state religion. In fact it's more like oligarchy, but with lots of great TV.

The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life brought into the definition of all human realization the obvious degradation of being into having. The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing, from which all actual “having” must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function. — Debord

This is the lesson of the Theatetus, to start with a definition is to be mislead by that definition. — Metaphysician Undercover

Starting with a definition might also assume some questionable project of making the 'ground' explicit. A big system of words is supposed to be its own foundation.