Claims made by analytic philosophers aren't any less sweeping or fundamental. That's a common misconception.

So, you seem to be saying that only suffering is intrinsically bad and only pleasure is intrinsically good? — John

Yes.

If so, then why would should we not say that something that inevitably leads to suffering is, at least in that dimension, intrinsically bad, or that something that inevitably leads to pleasure is, at least in that dimension, intrinsically good. — John

Because in that case, it would not be good or bad for its own sake, but only insofar as it led to something else.

How do you justify the claim that something that may lead to an "extrinsic bad" should nonetheless be considered to be intrinsically good? — John

It does not lead to an extrinsic bad, but rather is one. An extrinsic bad is something that is bad, not for its own sake, but because it leads to something intrinsically bad. Or, if you like, it is simply the efficient cause of something bad (not bad in of itself).

Would you not agree that a disposition that reliably leads to satisfaction, happiness and flourishing should be considered intrinsically better than a disposition that consistently leads to dissatisfaction, unhappiness and stultification? — John

It can be extrinsically better, in that it might happen to lead to something good; but it is not intrinsically better, because no disposition is intrinsically better than any other (since there would also be situations in which those very dispositions lead to bad things, rather than good -- that is, they are not good in of themselves at all, but only insofar as they lead to good things).

Being satisfied or content with, or accepting of, your life is a state that relates not merely to the moment but to your overall passions and commitments. You have said that pleasure is the only intrinsic good; but I would contest this. Using you cookie example: sure, eating a cookie may give you momentary pleasure and on the basis of your belief in the intrinsic goodness of that experience you may be led to repeat it very often, which may lead to obesity and the various attendant sufferings that far outweigh the intrinsic goodness of the .momentary pleasure. — John

That only shows that pleasure can be an extrinsic bad, or the efficient cause of a bad. It is nonetheless intrinsically good, i.e. worthwhile for its own sake, even if it might lead to something bad (i.e. pain).

Is it really intrinsically good to abide in a disposition such that your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with life is dependent on momentary pleasures? — John

No dispositions are intrinsically good or bad.

The telling of dreams from the "real world" does not happen by "realism," but rather by our experiences of what is a dream and what is not; the (experienced) relation of our experiences to other experiences. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The point is, by the direct realist's own logic, he cannot tell dreams apart from waking by experience. Hence why the dreaming argument is so annoying to the direct realist: it's not that his enemies invent wild scenarios for him; he brings them upon himself.

Yes, but I believe the direct realist and indirect realist arguments against one another are generally cogent, with the result being that realism itself in perception is not tenable. There are points of the article that I agree with with respect to criticizing indirect realism, but there's just no reason for me to preach to the choir.

I’ll start with Austin’s criticism of the Phenomenal Principle. Your quote is,

If, to take a rather different case, a church were cunningly camouflaged so that it looked like a barn, how could any serious question be raised about what we see when we look at it? We see, of course, a church that now looks like a barn. We do not see an immaterial barn, an immaterial church, or an immaterial anything else.

If we take Austin at his word here, he is wrong, both in the implication that we do not see a barn in any sense, and in the implication that any insistence that we do implies insistence that we therefore must see something immaterial.

It takes a brief detour into linguistics to show that this is so. We know from semantics that there are intensional verbs that create scopally ambiguous sentences. One such famous example, discussed by Quine, is ‘seek.’ Suppose I say, ‘I am seeking a unicorn.’

There are in fact two readings of this sentence, whose truth conditions can be rigorously separated and given different, precise, logical forms. One reading can be paraphrased:

(1) There is an x such that x is a unicorn and I am seeking x.

On this reading, of course, it is not possible to actually search for a unicorn, because there aren’t any, and so the sentence must be false. But there is another reading:

(2) I am seeking the following: an x such that x is a unicorn.

This is perfectly intelligible and perfectly possible. I can search for a unicorn even though unicorns don’t exist (in fact, we often search for things that don’t exist precisely in order to find out whether they exist).

‘See’ is an intensional verb in this same way, which has a scopal ambiguity similar to the de dicto versus de re distinction ((1) is de re; (2) is de dicto). So, if I say, ‘I see a barn,’ this can mean either (3) or (4).

(3) There is an x such that x is a barn and I see x.

Now this reading is clearly false, since there is no barn: only a church that looks like one. But Austin, and philosophers of perception generally, are insensitive to the second reading.

(4) I see (my visual experience is consistent with) the following: there is an x such that x is a barn.

That this reading is possible can be seen from the fact that without, it, the game in which people look at the clouds and ask, ‘what do you see?’ and say, ‘I see a man,’ ‘I see a shoe,’ and so on, would make no sense. In such situations the de re reading is always false: there is never an x such that x is a man and one sees x in the clouds, because there are no men where the players are looking in the sky, only clouds. Yet we can make perfectly true statements such as ‘I see a man,’ pointing at a cloud, on the latter reading. This is not a deviant way of speaking at all. Note that these are structural ambiguities that arise systematically, and are in no way ad hoc, for which semanticists offer accounts.

So, in correcting myself, after I find out that the purported barn is actually a church, there are actually two things I can say, depending which of the two readings is intended. On the one hand, I can say, ‘I was wrong. I didn’t see a barn at all; I actually saw a church.’ But on the other hand, I can say, ‘I saw a barn, but there turned out to be no such thing — just a church.’ Both these responses are perfectly intelligible, and we actually know the structural reasons why they are. Now Austin, and most philosophers, not only do not give the second reading its fair due, but also seem to exclude its very existence. This is unfortunate, and I think it has to do with metaphysical presuppositions, and an insensitivity to linguistic analysis (unfortunately, quite common in ‘ordinary language philosophers’).

This is crucial for the sense datum dispute. To say that one saw a shrinking object is not to commit oneself to saying ‘there is an object such that it was shrinking and I saw it.’ In eagerly trying to reject the latter interpretation, one wrongly rejects the more crucial point made by the indirect realist, which is that ‘I see a shrinking table’ is perfectly intelligible whether or not there actually is a table that is actually shrinking. So on the de dicto reading, one can in fact say, on one reading, ‘I saw something shrinking.’ You just have to make clear which meaning is intended — one way it is true, the other way false. The direct realist is wrong that there is no sense in which it is true.

What this means is that although the indirect realist may have a tendency to hypostatize the shrinking table, i.e. to treat it on a de re reading as if there really were a thing that was shrinking, this misstep nevertheless leaves the importance of their philosophical point untouched, which is that even linguistically, we are sensitive to the notion of a visual medium through which things are seen, and we can characterize that medium as distinct from the objects that medium purportedly reveals to us. Direct realists are wrong to the extent that they deny or downplay this (the ‘one step removed’ that you talk about). The visual medium, the experiential field, is something to be spoken abut in its own right, and it has properties that vary independent of the object. We cannot just skip over it and pretend the objects are ‘just there’ for us with no more to do. That is not a viable philosophical position, and if a direct realist is forced to claim it is, so much the worse for his position.

This, then, is the kernel of truth in indirect realism that the direct realist is insensitive to and wrong about. You phrase the debate in terms of direct versus indirect realism, and in so doing imply that other alternatives, in particular idealism and skepticism, are not worth considering; but leaning toward the skeptical view myself, I’m in a somewhat privileged position to speak about the faults of both types of realism without the bias that attends trying to defend one’s own favored position. Indirect realists correctly claim that perception is mediated in a far less trivial way than the direct realist is willing to grant; direct realists correctly claim that there is no sense in which there is a two-step perceptual process that takes one from one immediate object to another mediate one.

Next I’ll take the Heidegger quote.

We never...originally and really perceive a throng of sensations, e.g., tones and noises, in the appearance of things...; rather, we hear the storm whistling in the chimney, we hear the three-engine aeroplane, we hear the Mercedes in immediate distinction from the Volkswagen. Much closer to us than any sensations are the things themselves. We hear the door slam in the house, and never hear acoustic sensations or mere sounds.

If we take Heidegger at his word, what he says is false. ‘We never…?’ We certainly do. We are met with visual impressions all the time that we aren’t sure what to make of, and so we do not first see them as determinate objects with specific significances, but a mess that we’re not quite sure what to do with (‘What the hell am I looking at?’). One problem here is that philosophers (and this goes for your paper as well, though interestingly not Heidegger’s quote which unusually focuses on sound) are overly accustomed to speaking primarily of visual perception, which is unfair to the full range of our experiences: visual perceptions are unique in that they, far more than those in other sensory modalities, seem (in my opinion, give the illusion) that they simply grasp objects the way they are without any further ado. Of course, even in vision, this is not only not always true, but is in fact never true (see below on this).

But the case is far easier to see with sensory modalities classically considered more ‘subjective,’ such as smell. We so much more rarely smell things and immediately know what sort of specific thing that we are smelling that, if philosophers focused on cases of smell rather than vision, I think none of them would be tempted to say the sorts of wrong things that Heidegger does on this subject. Of course I may encounter an aroma as the smell of jasmine or the sell of chocolate chip cookies; but there are so many manifold smells that confront me just as weird, unidentifiable sensations, ones that I’m not sure how to interpret and will likely never smell again. These confront me not as the smell of particular objects, but rather as olfactory impressions upon me: ones that are painful or pleasant, imbue me with certain sensory affections, and so on, but that I cannot pin down. And when I do, this process can take, not milliseconds as in the case of veridical vision, but often whole seconds, even minutes or hours. These sorts of cases destroy the illusion that I simply ‘smell things as they are;’ there is a laborious process of piecing together, or projecting, what I smell. Here the direct realist is wrong, and the indirect realist correct.

In the case of vision, as I’ve implied above, the situation is actually the same: we never simply see things right away as ‘what they are’ without further ado. There is again a laborious process of interpretation, but one that we are so well attuned to that in many cases it takes only milliseconds, and we are not consciously aware of it happening. We can actually measure how long this takes with modern physiological techniques, and in the lab we can purposely mess up the interpretive process that projects some object out of sensory impressions. If Heidegger were right, there would be no such process to mess up in the first place, since we first see the object, and only then do we abstract to sensation. And yet even outside the lab, our attempts at inferring from some sensation to some projected object go wrong, not only with outright hallucinations, but also e.g. when looking at surfaces when we can’t tell whether they’re flat or cornered (or for that matter, in seeing rainbows — there is a sense in which a rainbow is an object that we see, and a sense in which it is not, and it arises due to a curiosity in our visual mechanisms). It should also be noted that our modern laboratory equipment was not the advent of this realization: Schopenhauer said as much before modern psychology was a real discipline, and he had many examples of such ‘messing up’ of the visual interpretive process that you could perform for yourself purposely on a child’s allowance. The ‘remove’ that the indirect realist speaks of is very real, and you can see it for yourself in the process of its happening and its breaking down. Not only that, but ontogenetically we must learn how to see, and so the direct realist needlessly privileges adult humans with fully functioning visual capacities that have had years of practice at what they do, they who have forgotten how hard it was to unscramble the ‘blooming, buzzing confusion.’ It is almost as if someone literate thought that in seeing words, we just ‘see their meaning for what it is’ as a perceptual matter, and denied that there was really any process involved in constructing their meaning (note that for the literate person, seeing the meaning of a word, too, requires no conscious effort). Visual perception is much like reading. There is in this sense very much an ‘inference,’ though of course it is not always, not even usually, a conscious one or one of ratiocination.

In other words, when you say this:

If I think about my own perceptual experiences, it is obvious that I am immediately aware of the true sizes and shapes of objects (unless I have "snapped out" of normal perception).

You are speaking falsely. And your comment about only awareness being relevant does not salvage you, since this can be brought easily to awareness by messing up the inferential process, or even in the case of smells that take minutes or hours to recognize.

Now, as to your comments on the duck-rabbit:

This is the duck-rabbit, made famous by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Notice that we switch between exclusive ways of seeing it, now as a duck, and now as a rabbit. This is termed multistable perception, and it does not fit very well with the notion that we infer a duck or a rabbit from neutral stimuli. It is not because we analyze the picture, checking off its properties against a mental database, that we see it as a duck or as a rabbit. Rather, we immediately see it as a whole, excluding other ways of seeing it at any instant. In doing so we directly see what is significant or what has meaning, and exclude the rest. Perceiving as this or that is built right in to perception. This is a clue to a big problem with The Argument, namely its underlying assumption of a structure of perceptual experience with (a) a static, passive and purely sensory gathering of stimuli, combined with (b) rational deliberation on the representations that result from these sensations. The task of bringing out the problems with this view, and supplying a better picture of perception, will have to wait for a future article. I think we can at least say that twentieth century psychology and philosophy have given us good reason to think about perception differently.

This passage is to me bewildering, because I think that the duck-rabbit shows exactly the opposite of what you want it to show. In the case of the duck-rabbit, we’re faced with a situation in which it makes no sense to say that you just see the picture immediately as it is, because there is no such way that it is (if by this we mean among the alternatives between a duck and a rabbit). In fact, in switching from one to the other, you can see the inferential process in action. All that’s relevant to the switch is that process — the picture hasn’t changed relevantly. Yet if, as the direct realist claims, what we see are simply things, this would be impossible. Second, I think you are wrong to say that we exclude other ways of seeing it: it is possible in working visually around the duck-rabbit image to hold it in limbo between its duck and rabbit gestalts, and the visual sensation in that case becomes very odd, and not at all in keeping with how the direct realist claims visual experience should look or function generally. The comment about the indirect realist making perception too passive is also odd: it is usually in my experience the indirect realist who emphasizes the activity of perception, and the direct realist who wants to minimize one’s role in perceiving in order to maximize the role of the object: we simply see things as they are, and thus there is little role for perception other than to just open us up to that way. For the indirect realist, the task of perception is far more laborious: given a stew of impressions upon the senses, one has to cobble together the object, not just receive it as is. And in doing so, one of course can cobble together either a rabbit or a duck, and then switch at will between the two processes, changing the perception without changing any ‘object.’ How is that possible, if perception ‘immediately’ just sees what is there?

Now the kicker is, everything is a duckrabbit. So I also think this is in error:

I do not think so, because such cases cannot be taken as the paradigm of perception.

They are the paradigm. The duck-rabbit in one sense exists at the periphery; but in another sense it does so precisely because it shows you in a visceral way what is always going on. That we have perceptual mechanisms that tend to immediately prefer one interpretation does not in any way mean that there is no interpretation, via precisely the medium that the indirect realist speaks of.

Finally, I want to talk about hallucination. This is important because while I believe that many of the direct realist claims above are empirically wrong, coming from false claims about linguistics or how perception works, this is where I think that the position generally shows itself to be internally incoherent, that is, not tenable even according to its own claims.

The clue to unravelling this argument is the phrase "object of awareness" in the conclusion. Where does Robinson get it from? Well, he is explicit in taking the second premise to imply mental images or sense-data in both hallucination and perception. To bring out the mistake here it will be useful to look once again at the distinction I have already made between two ways of using the word "see". Here I am going to make use of Audre Jean Brokes' terms and label these uses as (1) perceptual visual experience, and (2) ostensible perceptual experience. (1) is seeing external things, and (2) is "seeing" mental images. Incidentally, I use scare quotes for the second usage because in a discussion about perception, seeing external things naturally ought to be the privileged usage, of which the second is derivative.

This move to the distinction between genuine and ostensible visual experience is one that eventually the direct realist always seems forced to make in response to the uncomfortable fact that hallucinations happen. Now, this puts the direct realist in a really foul position. The reason is that, the direct realist must simultaneously claim that (1) hallucination can, at least at some points, be phenomenologically indistinguishable from veridical perception (as you happily concede, and though some deny this, I like you don’t take that denial seriously in lieu of serious argument); (2) that therefore there can be phenomenologically indistinguishable states that still differ as to whether or not they are states of perception. What this means is that, if we add a few plausible assumptions, the direct realist cannot, in principle, and according to his own claims, tell the difference between ostensible and genuine perception, ever. The reason is of course that there is no way to tell such a difference if the only distinguishing evidence one can have between the two is phenomenological, and ex hypothesi the direct realist is forced to admit that no such evidence can possibly exist. It follows that the direct realist not only never knows when he is perceiving anything, but cannot know; it is impossible. That is to say, no evidence that one could possibly have for perception is such that it distinguishes between veridical perception and a long, coherent, constructed dream. This spells a problem for the direct realist in two ways: (1) how does he know so much about perception, that he can give us a whole theory about it, when he has never experienced one case of it that he can in principle tell it apart from cases that are not perception? (2) What on Earth is even the relevance of his metaphysical thesis about the objectivity and perceiver-independence of objects, if all perceptual experience is equally coherent and behaves experientially the same way whether that status obtains or not?

Now, there are many answers to these worries, but I have never heard one that comes close to being adequate.

Thank you for writing this article and taking the time to read my criticisms.

Thank you for this. I'll read it and comment later this weekend.

I've been thinking about meta-philosophy a lot lately, in connection with Socratic philosophy, which is well-disposed toward the medical metaphor.

In particular, I'm persuaded of the Cyrenaic thesis that all that we can have knowledge of are the experiential motions of our bodies, the pathe. Now if this is true, it naturally raises the question: what of the philosophical theses that expound this very epistemological doctrine? If taken seriously, wouldn't they entail that among the things that we don't, or cannot know, are those very doctrines that state what we can and cannot know? One response to this dilemma might be to say that there is in fact another kind of knowing. The other, more interesting one, for me anyway, is to bite the bullet and say that yes, one espouses philosophical theses without simultaneously reflexively claiming to know those very theses.

What's more, the reason that one knows what one does has nothing to do with whether or not that person has studied the school of philosophy in question; that is to say, the Cyrenaic commitment effectively comes to asserting that you will not, and cannot, properly learn anything by becoming a Cyrenaic: it offers no new capacities for knowledge. The point, then, of philosophy, is not to acquire knowledge, or to know new things. What then is the point? The pseudo-legendary founder Atristippus of Cyrene says it best:

He was asked by some one in what way his son would be the better for being educated. He replied, "If nothing more than this, at all events, when in the theatre he will not sit down like a stone upon stone."

He was asked once in what educated men are superior to uneducated men; and answered, "Just as broken horses are superior to those that are unbroken."

There is even a sort of ironical anti-philosophical strain in Cyrenaic philosophy, which asserts that as only ethics is important, the art of logic or dialectic, which is the very medium in which philosophy is couched, is useless.

Meleager, in the second book of his Treatise on Opinions, and Clitomachus in the first book of his Essay on Sects says, that they thought natural philosophy and dialectics useless, for that the man who had learnt to understand the question of good and evil could speak with propriety, and was free from superstition, and escaped the fear of death, without either.

Others say the 'logic' has 'utility:'

They left out all investigation of the subjects of natural philosophy, because of the evident impossibility of comprehending them; but they applied themselves to the study of logic, because of its utility.

Whether these are actually differing opinions or not, their sprit can be reconciled in the observation that, true to the heart of the Socratic tradition, dialectic or logic is itself an ironical exercise, useful insofar as it internally criticizes the very claims it makes or that other people make, though it cannot in the end offer any positively known theses.

So knowledge is not the point of philosophy, but living well.

Over on the other site in the unmoderated section, you started a thread raising the question of how antinatalists can go about convincing the world to stop procreating. When I reply to posters I'm familiar with, I do so in context of what I recall them posting about previously. But perhaps I misunderstood your intention in those antinatalist threads. — Marchesk

I saw it as more of a, 'what would an antinatalist even do?' I share the opinion that there is no reasonable expectation that antinatalism will ever be successful.

Because you're defending two controversial positions here. One is that pleasure is the only true good. Most ethical systems disagree. But more controversially, you argue the pessimistic view that life isn't worth living, and anyone who claims otherwise is mistaken. Most people are going to disagree. — Marchesk

Hedonism is one of the oldest, most persistent, and best-founded ethical positions that I'm aware of. I certainly don't think it's any more controversial than any other major option. Of course, it has the virtue of being right, but that is not always the deciding factor in adopting moral/ethical opinions.

As for pessimism, I don't know. I think if you get people alone and drunk, a lot more admit to it. Of course you can't say it in the daylight, just like you can't say plenty of things.

Of course there is suffering, that is part of the nature of conscious life. But I disagree that there is necessarily an overwhelming amount of suffering, though. It certainly is not worth it to take the chance and have a child, but if you are already here then you have the chance of having some really cool experiences. Yes, tomorrow I could get in a car accident and have a pole rammed through my abdomen, impaling me. But tomorrow is also supposed to be a clear night sky, at least where I live. And I rather like looking at the stars. — darthbarracuda

I like how your example of a positive thing is pathetic compared to how utterly terrible the negative one is. Even in your own constructed examples, you can't win. Who in their right mind would be thrilled by those chances? Oh, boy, looking at the stars!

Consuming a cookie will give you a temporary relief from that specific tanha. This is not happiness. I would go as far as to say that eating this cookie is a form of learnt self-torture. Happiness occurs when tanha is extinguished, when you are perfectly okay with your current situation. — darthbarracuda

It seems to me that any philosophical position that must claim that eating a cookie is torture has gone wrong somewhere.

In a way you are right, but reason that is misleading is that it might cause someone to think, say, because moderation leads to the pleasure that attends self-restraint and avoids the pain of overindulgence and hangovers, that therefore moderation itself is good, which leads to the confusion that moderation itself is somehow intrinsically worthwhile. Of course, it isn't; there are possible situations in which moderation is extrinsically bad, and leads to painful consequences.

If you stick to the very situation, some action may actually be not divorceable from the pleasure. But then I would just say in that one case, the two are identical; there is no pleasure apart from the pleasant thing or action. But that doesn't mean the action itself, as a species, is intrinsically worthwhile, whereas pleasure is.

This very point is often my visceral reaction to the idea that being in a constant state of happiness is desireable, because if loved ones suffered or died, it would be inappropriate, and distasteful to feel anything but misery, that's what empathy and sympathy is, to understand what someone has went through, and feel the appropriate emotional response to it. I'm not one to engage in such self-protection that I'd sever empathic ties in order to not feel too bad about anything. — Wosret

The worry is that it is unappreciative of a person, or shows a lack of empathy for them, if one isn't pained by their death. That is understandable. However, I think it's wrong on that basis then to suggest that the only way one could show such qualities is by being miserable. Certainly a much better world would be one in which we empathized with, and showed appreciation for, our loved ones when they died by celebrating them and feeling happy for the life they lived, rather than miserable. In other words, you are confused; you think that because you feel miserable when someone dies, this is the only way you ever ought to feel, or else you re somehow betraying them. I should be much happier not only for others' death, but also for my own, if I knew it would be met with joy and celebration of the dead person's life (and the claim is, this is how it actually goes in some cultures -- what you think is a visceral, natural reaction may in fact be a cultural contingency).

Yes. Realizing you are suffering is the first step to mindful living. The next step is to locate the source of suffering. I think you might be surprised at just how much suffering is self-caused and not out of our control. — darthbarracuda

I think a lot of it is, but there's just so much suffering in life that even removing that leaves you with too much to be acceptable, and of course still vulnerable to contingencies of suffering beyond your control.

What I meant by pleasure is any strictly sensual experiences. Like eating a cookie. A cookie will not bring you happiness, only temporary relief from the burden of desire. — darthbarracuda

Certainly eating a cookie can make you happy -- true, only for a little bit, but why is a little bit not better than not at all?

Without trying to be vague, eudaimonia is a different kind of pleasure. — darthbarracuda

So, it is pleasure, then?

Consider what life on average must be like in order for the humor in this video to be intelligible.

Something can be worthwhile extrinsically, as an efficient cause of a good. It's not hard to see why ethics would relate interestingly to pleasure in this way.

Of course, if you were a Kantian ethicist for example, I'd say there's a very real sense in what you do/theorize about is completely unimportant. Nothing hinges on it, except perhaps negatively insofar as your mistaken opinions cause you to harm people.

It's an interesting question. I would say that the only thing worthwhile in itself is pleasure. But insofar as one's goal is to live well, ethics always becomes a demand. Without ethics, there is a sense in which things continue to matter, of course, but it will cease to matter 'what you do,' because you'll just do whatever, indifferent to whether it's worthwhile or not. And if it doesn't matter what you do, well then, that's another sense in which 'nothing matters,' because if you have no capacity to do anything that will change anything in a worthwhile way, then all discussions about anything might as well not be had.

I don't think properly speaking ethics can be important 'to someone,' as if it were a personal choice. Rather ethics already is important regardless of your opinion on the matter, since it concerns adjudication of things that matter by their own lights, again regardless of your opinion.

I don't have any particular goal here except to discuss philosophy, which I assume is what everyone's goal here is. The only odd question is why I'm the only one that has to justify myself (worth thinking about why that is).

Do you not think that knowing what the truth is, is a desirable thing, TGW, regardless of how it makes you feel? — Wosret

This is the opening question of the Philebus. Is what is good, knowing true propositions, as Socrates maintains? Well, suppose I know how many hairs are on my head. That's the truth, right? Is that truth desirable? On most days anyway, not really.

So your question must be at least, what sorts of truth are desirable?

Is the question, why is ethics important?

What you can do is to accept the pain that is present, limit your desires and strivings, and focus on fulfilling lasting goals and achievements. — darthbarracuda

How does one 'accept' pain? Clearly that must mean something else besides feeling it, because then there would be no distinction to make, since for there to be pain is simply to feel it already (you cannot 'fail to feel' pain; the extent to which it's not felt is simply the extent to which there is none).

In accepting pain, do I think, 'alright, I'm in pain?' But how does that help?

As I said earlier: I reject the idea that pleasure is synonymous with happiness. Happiness, for me, is synonymous with contentedness and eudaimonia, and although pleasure often does accompany happiness, it is itself completely a completely separate feeling that cannot cause happiness by itself. Empty pleasure is suffering in itself, merely a distraction from the discontent. — darthbarracuda

So one can be happy without feeling any pleasure whatsoever? What sort of feeling is happiness, then? If it is not a feeling, why is it worth pursuing, since it seems that feelings are all that can possibly matter to us? And since if a feeling is good in its own right, it seems just to be pleasure, in what sense can we say happiness is worthwhile insofar as it is not pleasant or identical with pleasure?

What is worthwhile is worthwhile in its own right, not for the sake of anything else (if it is for the sake of something else, then we simply say that other thing is worthwhile, with the former simply being an efficient cause of it). So if happiness is worthwhile, it must demonstrate its own worth in such a way that the idea of it being regarded as not worthwhile doesn't make sense. But I do not know of anything that does this, other than pleasure. In fact, that seems to be what 'pleasure' means, in a sense.

I think it's important. Generally my interests have drifted away from epistemology and toward ethics, especially pessimism. Other philosophical issues seem not that important by comparison.

I can't psychologize everyone as to why they do everything. Presumably if they're sane there's some pleasure of accomplishment attending it. But I don't see any contradiction with my position to say either that (1) the efficient causes of pleasure may themselves be painful, or that (2) one may take a separate kind of pleasure in a certain kind of pain (as a masochist might). That doesn't change what's at stake.

If there's no pleasure to doing such things at all, then I would agree there's nothing "good" about doing them. That doesn't mean people won't do them, of course -- it's not like people gravitate toward living great lives or anything. For the most part they're miserable, and some of that misery is generally self-inflicted.

But like I said above, the existence of pain and happiness are not mutually exclusive. I agree that pain is inevitable. But there is a certain amount of control someone has over the amount they receive and how much the pain affects them. — darthbarracuda

What control do you have over how much pain affects you? You mean, you can will it to be less painful? If you mean something else, then what?

What is happiness, if not pleasure? And if it is something distinct from pleasure, what makes it worthwhile? Pleasure is intrinsically worthwhile, i.e. good by its own standards.

Pleasure and pain are indicators of general well-being. The value placed upon these feelings, and others, such as meaning, eudaimonia, happiness, etc, is up to the person themselves to determine. For example, I think there are different types of pleasures, one that simply stimulates the nerve endings, and one that is actually meaningful. The former leaves the person in a state of emptiness after it goes away, while the latter is something that simply complements the feeling of happiness. But perhaps you are right in that this belongs in a different thread. — darthbarracuda

But it's not up to me to determine. Pain feels bad no matter what my opinion is. That's why it's pain. If it were up to me, pain would never bother me because I'd just choose not to let it bother me. But I obviously can do no such thing, which is why pain is something dangerous at all in the first place.

Pre-Socratic philosophy explored the ideas of free will long before Christianity. In fact (correct me if I am wrong here), Christianity's "free will" ideas came from the influence of the Mediterranean region. — darthbarracuda

You may be right, but I don't know what pre-Socratic philosophy you would be talking about here.

But the fact of the matter is, we are, at the bare minimum, trapped within an illusion of having free will. There's no escaping it. Every action we do feels like we have actively had a role in it. This kind of fictionalism, in my opinion, is compatible with the existential heroism you speak of. — darthbarracuda

Existentialists do not talk about delusions of freedom as liberating. Certainly Sartre would not, anyway.

I reject the idea that pleasure is synonymous with happiness. Happiness, for me, is synonymous with contentedness and eudaimonia, and although pleasure often does accompany happiness, it is itself completely a completely separate feeling that cannot cause happiness by itself. Empty pleasure is suffering in itself, merely a distraction from the discontent.

If you can learn to prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and expect the mediocre, then you can live your life in such a way that minimizes disappointments and suffering, and even take some enjoyment out of life. — darthbarracuda

Maybe we can't get into this here, but I don't see a reason for the distinction. It seems to me that pain and pleasure are bad and good on their own terms, whether you think so or not, and that nothing else fulfills these criteria. So insofar as there's a notion of eudaimonia, joy, happiness, or contentment that is not about pleasure, it either doesn't make sense or isn't worth pursuing if it does.

Why does it not make sense? Is this related to determinism/fatalism? — darthbarracuda

It is certainly related to the hypostatization of the mind as a substance with an active faculty of willing, as in Descartes' philosophy, which is probably related to the Christian notion of the soul. It's a historical question. The more important thing is just that I don't think this notion of an existentialist heroic free will is at all true to life. That's all.

What I meant by theoretical was that it is not guaranteed to eliminate all suffering, otherwise that would be the nirvana fallacy. It is perfectly conceivable, however, to minimize the amount of suffering one experiences. — darthbarracuda

I'm not sure what that would mean, unless it means being dead. I don't know what being alive entails, if not suffering in the broad sense (feeling pleasure and pain), and I don't know I can imagine a life that is somehow only pleasant. To experience seems to bring with it the possibility of disappointment and suffering.

I would like some clarification on this. — darthbarracuda

In the Sartrean sense, anyway -- there's even a direct lineage from Sartre's notion of the will back to Descartes' in the Meditations, who in turn relates this explicitly to the will of God. The idea that the will is free from external influence and acts as a sort of force doesn't make much sense out of the context of that tradition.

The trick is to figure out how to deal with pain. I said it before and I'll say it again: For the most part, pain is inevitable, but suffering is theoretically optional. — darthbarracuda

Theoretically optional? As opposed to actually optional, I suppose...

The existentialists felt that the truly free man makes a conscious choice to not commit suicide every day he wakes up. And if a man is not making a conscious choice, then he is not authentic, but of bad faith. I honestly do believe that most people on Earth do not really understand why they keep living, they just mindlessly go through the actions, rocking back and forth between suffering and boredom without even realizing it. This is why Socrates was correct. To analyze one's life and to continue to live regardless has the chance of procuring a truly meaningful existence. To be extremely familiar with the sense of one's mortality is authentic and pure. — darthbarracuda

Existentialism is a holdover from Christian ideas of the will. Those aren't tenable in the face of everyday life, imo.

What I'm talking about is that I enjoy life, in the same way that some people enjoy reading or playing sport or listening to music, and so on. It's an emotional disposition that people find themselves in. Not everybody is chronically depressed, like you. The problem is that you're treating your emotional disposition as reflective of the objective worth of other people's lives. It just doesn't work that way. — Michael

While there's nothing I can say to you here to disprove this claim, it's rather empty. Of course if you said something like this about say, being beaten up, it would sound stupid. What I am saying is that this sounds just about as stupid to me (I'm exaggerating a little, but you see the point I'm making). Watching how people actually behave, instead of listening to what they say, is illuminating here.

I don't know. Is it relevant? There may be objective truth conditions for "X finds life worth living" and "Y finds life not worth living". How does that help your case? — Michael

If this were what we were talking about, you would need to spell out what those conditions are in order to know whether they hold, and so for your claim to be worthwhile.

What else would make it good or bad, as far as living one's own life is concerned? Are you arguing that there is an objective criteria for judging how life is experienced, such that those who disagree with antinatalists, at least regarding their own lives, are wrong? — Marchesk

I'll answer your question with another question. If there is no criterion as to how good or bad your life is, apart from your opinion on the matter, then why do people have any problems at all? Why don't they just not get bothered by anything, by thinking that they're doing alright, by changing their perspective? Is it that they can do this, but just don't (don't know how, maybe)? Whence problems?

It's not that thinking life good makes it good but that some people find that life is good, just as it's not that thinking liquorice tasty makes it tasty but that some people find that liquorice is tasty. It's not somehow up for decision but at the same time it's not something for which there are objective truth conditions. — Michael

And what is it that you are talking about when you say that people 'find that life is good?' With 'tasty,' it's not too hard to see what you're talking about: to find something tasty is to experience a pleasant gustatory sensation when exposed to it. What is the analogue for life? Surely, it's something like: being alive, or being exposed to life, is somehow similarly -- what, pleasant? But clearly that's not going to work well for you, since life is extremely unpleasant in the main. So what are you talking about?

I should also point out that even if you think there are no 'objective truth conditions' for such statements (which is a complicated issue), surely statements like 'X finds Y good/tasty/etc.' have objective truth conditions. So, what are they?

It's a question of whether a person feels that the bad outweighs whatever good they get out of being alive. You seem to be arguing that people can't actually feel that way, or honestly come to such a conclusion. That they're delusional and lying to themselves. — Marchesk

You have to be careful about what you mean by 'feel' here. By that do you mean, for example, offer a nominal opinion about their life when asked? If that is what you mean, then that's not a great diagnostic, given that people can and do say all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the facts of the matter. Again, much of it is aphoristic and comes form a pre-determined cultural stock about what one is supposed to say about one's life. Surely when I ask a stranger 'how are you?' on the street and they respond, 'fine,' I don't really think that means they're fine, for example. They could be in any mood whatsoever given that response.

If on the other hand, you mean 'feel' in a stricter sense, as in the pains and experience that they live through moment to moment (and clearly this is what we're interested in, not the former), then the question suddenly becomes more difficult for you, first because that's harder to determine, and second it's not clear at all that people tend to enjoy life in any reasonable capacity in this sense. Again, the day to day grind is basically suffering, and only when we abstract and think about life in some detached sense does it suddenly become worthy of approval.

And how is life, actually? Antinatalists think it's shitty. Okay, but what about people who don't? My point is that a judgement is being made either way. — Marchesk

But does that mean that one is not wrong? Of course not. You can make judgments, or have opinions, about whatever you please -- but they're just that, opinions. You seem to be implying something further, like the fact that people have different opinions on this subject somehow means that one is no better than the other, or that it is up to each person in each case to decide which is true for their own case. But how would that work? Does thinking life is good make it good? Again, that would be quite convenient for all of us, wouldn't it?

Yes, there is that. It was more of a snarky remark that antinatalism seems to be coming from comfortable people living in the developed world than people who suffer more than having to wait at a traffic light, or being bored because nothing is on the tube worth watching. — Marchesk

I do not think that being bored at a traffic light or having nothing to watch on television exhaust the problems people have in the developed world, and the received opinion that basically nothing happens to anyone in the developed world (that people living there have no 'genuine' problems, or perhaps even no 'genuine' life experiences) is troubling in its own right. That said, it's not surprising that anti-natalism comes from a position of development, since that's also where philosophy as a specialized practice comes from.

I don't understand the sense in which you think it's somehow 'up' to a person to decide whether certain problems make life worth living or not. What do they do, just snap their fingers and make things, even though they're bad...not bad? There seems to be this idea that on the one hand, there's how your life actually is, and then there's some impenetrable magic lens, and on the other side of that there's you, and you can swap out that magic lens to make things different. But that's just nonsense, if you think about it for any amount of time.

As for the 'developed world,' well, first of all I disagree (hedonic treadmill), and second, the developed world depends on the 'developing' world in unsavory ways, and there is an implicit approval of what happens 'way over there,' if you see what I mean.

And how do people experience their own lives? Or is that a matter of 'interpretation,' too? Certainly it would be helpful to me if I could 'reinterpret' all my problems, and if, unlike whether a plane flies, they weren't real!

This feels like you're projecting your own pessimistic view of life on others. Maybe most of us find it worth living, most of the time. — Marchesk

Alright? But what we don't have anything to do with tends not to bother us, and from my experience the way people react to antinatalism is not the way they react to conspiracy theories about lizards ruling the earth.

But what makes the negative thoughts more true than the positive ones? It's just a different interpretation of life. — Marchesk

It's always been interesting to me how when it's a matter of finding food or getting a plane to fly, one's 'interpretation' doesn't seem to matter much. But suddenly when it's a matter of much more importance, it becomes omnipotent. Why is that? It's a good thing we have our 'interpretations' to save us from life's misery, huh. We'd be in a real bind if that trick didn't work.

An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, on which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic - George Boole

We weren't talking about such a situation though. My point is why discovering the inevitability of suffering in life is upsetting for those who understand it to be joyful. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't think anyone takes seriously the idea that life is not full of suffering. What may be more disturbing to people is, having realized this, coming to understand that they approve of life in spite of this, and therefore approve of other people's suffering, as well as forcing that suffering on further generations, perhaps in perpetuity. In other words, their ideals are internally inconsistent, which causes a Socratic pain: they nominally 'don't want people to suffer,' but deep down there is a very real sense in which they do want that.

These dumb aphorisms sometimes work as a distraction from suffering, but that's really all they are. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Ha. I doubt they even work on that level. They're just dumb phrases. It's like Ba da ba ba ba, I'm lovin' it. Nobody 'loves' McDonalds. That's just something they say in the commercials. Likewise with the aphorisms about suffering.

What is upsetting is, rather, the destruction of the idea that life can be without a horrible cost. It is depressing to find out the idea you had, that life is wonderful, to a point that it is always a joyful experience worth seeking, is wrong. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't think any adult actually thinks that, though. Usually their nominal opinions are instead summed up with dumb aphorisms about how life is 'good and bad,' and you take both of them in stride, or about how suffering makes you appreciate the good, etc. Of course none of that is true, it's just what you say. You sort of revert to thinking in terms of Hallmark cards because that's all you've got -- you recapitulate whatever the culture's told you, there's no real filter through actual life experience there.

The tragicomedy is a good angle for a while, but it wears off. Eventually, it's just more like a beating. Gratuitous, in poor taste, needs to stop.

It's cute, too bad, like most aphorisms, it's bullshit. Suffering is not optional, and I think we all know that.

Well, I certainly don't think life is of no consequence to anyone. It's really, really fucking bad, and extraordinarily and gratuitously painful; that's clearly a consequence, something that matters.

There may be a tension in realizing that what they love is violence and suffering and ultimately making other people and themselves suffer in perpetuity, and it's hard to overcome the cognitive dissonance and say, 'yes, I love violence, and I want everyone to suffer forever,' which is essentially what one is saying if you give the old 'seal of approval' to life. Yeah, I guess I buy that.

Reading about medical conditions is actually interesting in that regard -- how pointlessly painful it is just to exist, even bracketing any external threats. And if you listen to people day in and day out talk about life, it's mostly complaints -- day to day, there's just obvious suffering, but not much if any joy. It's only when you ask them whether they love life 'in the abstract,' where it means nothing, that suddenly they get misty-eted about it and so on.

Interesting that antinatalist philosophy made your guys depressed. I would think it would come as a sort of relief, or hope (no matter how false that hope might be), that there is a way to end suffering, that we don't have to live. That realization is liberating, even if ultimately unrealistic.

I don't think it's so unusual. My anecdotal experience is that people are a lot sadder generally than they say they are when you ask them, say in a setting like this. Really they're even sort of pathetic. So there's no reason to be sorry; it's a question of whether life is worth living (my own opinion of course is no).

I'm dysthymic. It doesn't affect me in any specific way and I don't do anything in particular about it, because it's so nebulous that it's in that area where it's really impossible to distinguish from a personality trait. My default state is one of mild depression, I generally don't enjoy things in a 'healthy' way, and am comfortable with ~12 hours of sleep when I can get it. Overall I have no particular love of life and cannot remember ever 'wanting' positively to live.