I think I know what you mean with the first kind, although it doesn't happen often. It may be that a priori this type of pleasure has as much possibility as pain, but that empirically life is just not good enough for it to be around often. Maybe a human with all of its material and psychological needs constantly met by external sources would see it as a regular thing. In that case the claims about pleasure and pain would be weaker, but would still work as practical empirical generalizations.

As for the second kind, I'm not sure if I know what it is. It might be something like the sublime. I have felt something that is majestic like that, or cold and austere somehow, but it didn't seem to be merely 'pleasant' but rather something that transcended that. I don't have a name for it, and the sublime is not quite it. But usually this feeling, whatever it is, comes at times when I've somehow grasped or 'seen through' something in a deeply intuitive way. The problem is these seeings are usually associated with the nature of suffering etc. It strikes me more as a salvific element that points beyond the world rather than something that occurs as part of life within it.

What I still hold on to though is the fact that the world can be improved without being fully good. There's no need for a good outcome to act in the right way. Getting a C+ on a test is better than an F. — darthbarracuda

OK, that's what I thought. I'm saying that while logically possible, humans are not very smart, and aren't capable of thinking of very many things, or processing chains of cause and effect complex enough to alleviate suffering in any non-trivial and consistent way. In short, while there are a million infallible paths to unending suffering, there's not even one I'm aware of that people have come up with which leads to its alleviation reliably. So my contention is just that people don't have the skills to improve the world in that way - they're too stupid.

But I hesitate to simply call pleasure merely an absence of pain, or merely a state of lesser-suffering. — darthbarracuda

Agreed. Maybe I should be more specific - pleasure is something like the motion away from pain, or relief from it, not a state. The state of no suffering at all would be being dead.

Isn't pessimism 'worse' than nihilism, in its valuation of the world? It seems that the pessimist is yet more extreme than the nihilist in the extent to which he voids the relevance of such observations.

Unless your view is that some sort of activity can lessen the poor quality of the world, despite its being in some way fundamentally or irreparably bad. I'm not quite sure of that, largely because I believe that humans are animals that aren't smart enough to figure out how to make things better. But it's a logical possibility.

For me, anyway, I experience happiness as a reprieve from a greater suffering, generally accompanied by an anxiety that the suffering will soon ramp up again.

And this seems to be a common way of thinking about the matter throughout history, e.g. in the Indian parable of the man drowning in a river and feeling pleasure at coming up for air before getting pushed back in. It may not be right, but it's one of the broad options out there, and the one that seems right to me.

Nice, I agree! Most of these pessimists aestheticize their own views and are in some sense ffete and looking for escape through giving up. You can't lose if you don't play.

But I think a thoroughgoing pessimism voids the effects of any prescription – it doesn't matter what you do, and not in a meta-prescriptive sense that you 'ought not' to do anything, either. So what we have is an observation about these men, not a criticism of them. If pessimism has truth to it, these observations cease to be interesting.

I'm not so sure. The notion of experience that isn't suffering seems to be an abstraction of some sort. It could be that other people just have radically different life experiences than me, but then, I wouldn't know how to evaluate that. All experiences I have seem to be some sort of suffering.

Actually the bishop at one point said something like this, that secondary qualities are (pleasures and) pains. But the importance of pleasure, again, has a dubious status, whereas the importance of pain is obvious.

I'm sympathetic to the idea. Definitely there's something to the pain-pleasure asymmetry, with the hypothesis that the latter is merely negative much more tempting than the hypothesis that the former is. If neither is negative relative to the other, then at the very least pain is far more powerful, persistent, common, and motivating than pleasure is. And I agree that all experience is suffering of a sort, and that all a human being 'does' as far as it knows is suffer. So at least 'for us' all there is is suffering, and life is just a bunch of suffering.

DO NOT argue with realists about idealism. Just don't do it. They LITERALLY are incapable of comprehending.

"Vulgarity?" Isn't that a little petit-bourgeois? Xa xa xa...

But if you must know, when it comes to meta-ethics I'm an anti-realist, combining emotivism, prescriptivism, nihilism, and relativism. — Michael

lawl, thuper thurprised

The argument against casual sex is one of taste in the end. You could live like a dumb smelly animal, but why would you want to rather than uniting sensual pleasure with duty and love? I know, I know, nothing has to do with anything else, etc. etc.

Even pre-marital hand-holding (which is very sexy!) should be taken very seriously, only done between committed couples. I wish I had someone to hold hands with...boo hoo! :'(

I don't know about never, but having a wife and going at it in the missionary position with the lights off and holding hands once a week sounds alright.

Well, he believed in that too - just not objects outside of any set of ideas.

Eh, to get all hipster about it, I've been saying this since before that line began running on the liberal rags. I've argued these same points with liberals, especially when they thought Trump's loss was a foregone conclusion, and also prior to Trump as a phenomena (the base has been growing and building before they had a Trump, and liberals were especially reticent then to discuss the parallels to fascism particularly because they thought it made them look silly and out of touch due to the overuse of 'fascist' as an insult). Trump is just a manifestation of a base which has been growing, plus, as I noted before, a poor candidate and campaign from his opposition. — Moliere

Again, the Dems have called every Republican candidate fascist, at least it was commonly applied to Romney and Bush during both of his elections. So I don't think your testimony is trustworthy here, since your claim about the Dems not wanting to use the insult is false.

Berkeley's idealism implies that bearers of ideas are also ideas. — mosesquine

No it doesn't; you don't know what you're talking about.

Whether Berkeley's God hypothesis is plausible or not isn't tied to the plausibility of his arguments against matter. He believes he's showed the case independently that there's no such thing. So it's not like it's a choice between one or the other.

Also, he didn't deny there were external objects, in the sense of sensible objects in space outside of the body – he just thought they were bundles of ideas.

Leibniz --

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/leibniz1714b.pdf

And I've never known a politician who wasn't behaving in very human fashion.

lmao

Maybe you're just autistic? :S

When Trump says "Make America Great Again", he is appealing to white culture. That's why white nationalists were in support of Trump. It's not just convenient, it's who is being mobilized as his base, and the reasons why it is a mobilizing phrase. And the who is white people, at least by the demographic data. It is reactionary because it taps into the founding father's myth which is told and retold in the propaganda machine that even predated Trump. But he managed to fuse these two impulses into one slogan -- America is a white nation, and we can make it the way it was. — Moliere

Maybe. I would just add that I disagree with the Democrats in thinking white people are Satan, etc. and think that throwing a tantrum when they stand up for themselves is probably not a good idea, until you've destroyed their demographics, which they will have done in a couple generations. At which point white people may form just another minority voting block and be subsumed into broader liberal identity politics.

I'd like to reiterate, though, that Trump stands out as a proto-fascist on his own. The Democrats are fucked in so many ways, and I have no problem saying so. I've never had a problem saying so. But my thoughts on Trump are not fueled by my thoughts on the Democrats -- by saying Trump is a proto-fascist I am not, in turn, saying the Democrats are good. — Moliere

I just want to highlight that these things aren't separate, in that the narrative that Trump is a fascist is inseparable from the Democrats, because it is they who drafted that narrative, and so the narrative makes little sense except with respect to Democrat propaganda. Whether you believe that propaganda is another story. The point is that chances are you literally have these thoughts in your head because a Democrat said them and you heard them, even if you don't subjectively experience it that way.

For what it's worth, the Democrats call every Republican candidate a fascist. This is why it's so important to contextualize.

I think the notion that people do not have true selves is the result of being so mired in cynicism that the very notion of being ingenuous no longer makes sense to you.

Nonetheless it all falls apart when we see people's masks break. In any case, politicians do not behave like human beings.

It's not a contradiction unless one can set the contradiction out as a deduction in a formal logical language. — andrewk

Eh? This isn't true. There's contradiction in natural language. You might have a way to formalize it, but the contradiction exists without the formalization.

Yeah, Berkeley's great. When reading him versus his critics, I get the impression he's smarter than them. Now impressions are just impressions, but the argument some to nil in the end, so what else is there?

As for Aristotle defeating modernity, idk. Aristotle always seemed like a weird amateur polymath to me. I had to read him a lot in college, but nothing he ever said really struck me or made me think that hard. I never looked forward to reading him.

The fascist, on the other hand, feels in his heart what must be done and that the Leader is the human manifestation of the state guiding us all to greatness. — Moliere

In what way is it fair to have this description of Trump, but not of Obama? Did Obama not have a cult of personality surrounding him at his election? Was he not a charismatic up-and-comer billed as an outsider (against Hillary Clinton, no less!)? Did he not base his campaign using the word of an emotion, 'hope?'

I will agree this far about Trump: he has a certain something to his personality that other candidates don't. They, for lack of a better term, look weak compared to him. Not on certain policies, but just like weak people, or maybe sub-people, in that a politician doing their job can never really be a person. It's difficult to put into words. Trump creates an uncanny valley alongside other politicians who we realize are behaving quasi-humanly when they speak, whereas Trump as a celebrity out of politics seems inured to this and only has one register of speech he can't turn off. This might be what gives him the illusion of 'heart' in his speeches that even an Obama can't have, since an Obama still has to be a faux-folksy smiler, whereas Trump once in a while genuinely laughs, and sometimes in derision. Trump bullshits about facts, but Obama is a deeper bullshitter, a bullshitter about himself, he himself is entirely false as a constructed quasi-human being that faces the public, and when his masks slips, the impression I get is one of barely veiled disdain for the general public, whereas Trump's 'true self' seems to revolve around living large and doing whatever he wants and being the big man.

But, at least among the policies proposed, and in the environment we are in, the similarities are striking. — Moliere

What are they?

There's also the social conditions which are similar to the Weimar Republic, too -- just prior to the fascists winning power there was a fairly progressive administration in charge, and people were suffering economically and there was seemingly no end in sight. What the fascists did was tap into this economic despair, just as Trump did (and he did it better than Hillary), and really did offer some genuine basic benefits to the right kinds of people. They offered pensions, minimum wage, workplace safety, etc. They appealed to the laboring class. Trump also appeals to the laboring class, in his own particular way. I don't buy the White Working Class myth peddled by the liberal rags, mostly because the data doesn't support it. If anything the reason Trump won is because the Democratic candidate wasn't inspiring enough to her base to turn it out enough. — Moliere

I agree with this. The Democrats project weakness in every way. Their party is weak, their candidate is weak, their moral fiber is weak, their voter base is weak. That's why they lost. Their only conviction seems to be that history itself is on their side and will carry them along to its end.

But I also know many working class families who voted for Trump on the basis that he was not a political insider, and Hillary Clinton was. So he was seen more "underdog", and therefore appeals to the identity of working class families by that token. Further, Trump did at least appeal to jobs -- he didn't offer a plan, but he had a scapegoat and said that we are going to get people to work. So he has this sort of bread-and-butter appeal to working class and middle-class persons, which combined with right wing populism is exactly what brought the fascists to power in the past. Whereas the Democrats who have been in power for the past 8 years haven't delivered the goods (not as measured by econometric data, but in terms of feeling secure and having a job that gets you stuff), so why believe a Democratic insider when she says she's going to help the middle class? Especially when she quibbled a popular and concrete policy for working class people, the minimum wage? — Moliere

So are we against populist leaders on grounds that they're proto-fascist? Is populism fascist? Is appealing to the working class fascist? I'm trying to wrap my head around this. My general impression is that the tables have turned somewhat due to a real resentment that white Democrats have for the working class, except insofar as the working class in non-white (in which case their lack of whiteness 'balances out' their unfortunate lack of education).

"Make America Great Again" was the perfect proto-fascist slogan in that it harks back to a mythological past which people feel has been lost. — Moliere

I'm just going to go ahead and say I don't believe this at all, and believing it shows a profound lack of memory or knowledge of how political slogans are used. Just take a look through political slogans used by past U.S. presidential candidates, or politicians at other levels. We know, for example, that Bill Clinton used the very phrase 'make America great agin' when he campaigned in the early 90's; whether or not this statement is 'reactionary' or ;racist' or whatever has nothing to do with reality, but when it;s convenient to label your opponent as racist or reactionary. There's no memory or consistency in any of this, just propaganda.

Further there has been an outright increase in racial tensions concurrent with the Trump campaign. — Moliere

Racial tensions are deep; presidential campaigns reflect them rather than creating them. I don't believe the story that left alone we'd all be buddy buddy and it's just mean old fearmongers saying mean old things that make people hate each other. The Democratic party has a lot at stake that revolves around, in its own way, hating white people. Different racial blocks want different things, and you simply cannot please all of them coherently. I think it's utterly naive not to recognize this, and utterly naive to think white people, when pushed to a point, will not start to protect their own interests, which historically they have refrained from doing (never forming a coherent voting 'block'). This may happen in the future as effectively the Republicans become the white, and the Democrats the anti-white, parties.

A question on this front, then, because I'm curious: My impression is that the American media and many American politicians are deliberately trying to foster conflict with Russia that is out of step with the attitudes of the American public, who by and large do not hate Russia and have no desire to be in conflict with it. My questions are:

1) Do you agree that there has been a sudden increase in supposed tensions with Russia,
2) Do you believe that these tensions are largely manufactured by politicians and the media, and do not reflect the values of the public,
3) Do you agree that the Democrats are doing more to exacerbate this situation than the Republicans?

I think 'yes' to all of these, which made me shit my pants in fear of the Democrats this election. My impression is almost that there is a contingent in the party that, for some reason, badly wants to start a war. I don't get that impression from Trump; I get the impression of blustery machismo, not of a disturbing attempt at rigging up a war. Maybe blustery machismo can start wars, but the Dems are far scarier to me right now.

But he didn't express a belief that Islam is somehow the enemy we need to defeat to ensure freedom will be granted to our posterity. That seems to be the story I get from the Republican party. Will they go through with it? I don't know. But I'd rather the people in power weren't saying these things to begin with. — Moliere

I think this resonates with a lot of people because the extent to which westerners are expected to actively suck Muslim dick right now is unprecedented and confusing. I don't think Islam is an enemy, but I think in high places there are artificial pushes to romanticize Islam as an underdog (staffed by brown, i.e. virtuous, people), when it's nothing of the sort, but across the world is an oppressive force with untold political and religious power, and that any country that accommodates it too readily is in danger of becoming theocratized. For all the whining about Christians in the U.S., they just don't have the pull Muslims do worldwide. Christian attempts at theocracy are impotent; Muslim ones are real. This is especially confusing in that those pushing this tend to be those most against the policies Islamic states actually implement. And I think a lot of people would genuinely and rationally fear for their lives in a majority Muslim state.

Policies which result from said philosophy include war — Moliere

This one is interesting in particular because the narrative during the election was that the dems, not the repubs, were hotter on war (w/Russia). Do you think we are or will be on the verge of war with Trump's election? Would said war have been avoided if Clinton had been elected?

Fascism is a political system which seeks to build a great nation. — Moliere

Hmm.

It's also an irrational political philosophy — Moliere

Do politicians generally in your experience have rational political philosophies?

but the sentiments which brought Trump to power are quite similar to what brought, say, Mussolini to power or Hitler to power so the comparison isn't just a rhetorical move in a game of painting the enemy in the worst light. — Moliere

What are the similarities? I agree there is resentment, but then, this seems like an easy rhetorical move, to be a garbage political party, and then when people rightly resent you, to cry fascism. It can't fail.

Is fascism being used here as a term of political philosophy, or is it being used as a pejorative? If the former, what political positions are implied by the term, and if the latter, what is the pejorative – that the candidate is authoritarian, or that you don't like him?

Was George W. Bush a proto-fascist? If not, then why did people accuse him of being one when he came to office? Were those accusations hyperbolic and/or deluded? If not, what makes them different this time?

Isn't the disagreement = treason narrative currently being pushed by the Dems?

I guess to mcdoodle, I don't know.

Do you know what the word 'fascist' means? How are you so basic laaammmo

I've never really understood the problem of the liar paradox, even after reading a little about it. Think of checking for truth like running a program, and a program can loop infinitely without output. Same with self-referential paradoxes.

During my early youth, the narrative was that 'reality has a liberal bias.' And I recall vividly that as I child, given the household I was raised in, I actually believed this. And I think maybe the people peddling it were serious, which is scarier than a child being duped.

What you have to understand is that political positions warp one's entire mirror-house reality around them. They don't exist as pieces of that reality.

The more you study a subject, the less important any individual figure seems. There aren't great philosophers, and thinking there are just means you haven't read enough. *shrug*

Oh, and where did you arrive at a correlation between education and critical reasoning skills? Maybe there's a correlation between formal education and liberal indoctrination. I certainly noticed that screamingly obvious fact while being schooled. — Hanover

Yeah, not to understand that education is a way of tracking political position, not as a matter of the two correlating, but in the sense that they are the very same thing, is incredibly naive. In America, to be educated is to be liberalized.

No. What makes the difference? The attitude one has in front of whatever the world is. — Agustino

I doubt the attitude makes as much difference as people think. I agree it's possible to have a bad attitude and ruin even the best living conditions (though even this is not that powerful, and can't make things as bad as being starving). But it's not possible for a good attitude to remedy bad conditions. Feelings and attitude aren't magic.

Also, the ability to have a good or bad attitude is just another living condition, and is also not magic, so it doesn't really help.

People are depressed because the conditions they live in are intolerable. You need to fix the conditions, not the person. Self-help is garbage, we're animals affected by our environment. The stigma surrounding depression and its medicalization is because people don't want to think about their surroundings being bad, so depression must be some mysterious thing that just whacks up the chemicals in your head for no reason, and requires an equally senseless treatment of drugs to right those chemicals.

Chomsky has a coherent philosophy of language as outlined in Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, and sees himself as directly descended from the continental rationalist tradition.

I don't think he has a lot of philosophical sophistication, and is not a major phil. language figure, but I think including him is fair (I just wouldn't vote for him).