To answer to OP, then, I would argue that a unitary existence, if it is at all coherent, would at the very least need to be:

• Self-sufficient (such as a being of pure actuality in Aristotelian metaphysics)
• As simple as is metaphysically possible (which I think is the biggie here: can a simple being have parts, and if it has no parts, how can it do anything?)
• Transcendent
• Metaphysically omnipotent (as everything derives its existence from the One, or is a part of the One)

Oddly enough these match up rather well with traditional conceptions of God, minus the omnibenevolence that is somehow benevolent outside of our petty little human moral schemes, and perhaps omniscience, as would apply to a dormant God, or a intellectually-inert being such as the Will or the Hindu Brahma.

But I think asking what a unitary existence is like might be a category error. Experience might not even be compatible with unitary existence.

Ernest Becker brought to light in his book The Life and Death of Meaning the psychoanalytic observations of young children. In youth, children develop three separate identities: Me, Mine, and I. Me is the social identity, and the first on the scene. Then comes the property identity, then the third personal ownership identity. The overall point made was that humans inherently have a deep reliance on other people for validation, and this explains why family units can be so strong, or why cultural or national identities are so rigid. These social spheres literally become a part of the ego, and in fact were the first aspect of the ego.

My questioning was meant to understand how everything can be said to be a unity. If everything is everything, then this seems to be saying the same as everything is nothing as there is no room for individuation. — schopenhauer1

If I recall correctly it is that the Neo-Platonists believed that complexity cannot be explained by complexity (only simplicity can). Whether this leads to monism is another story but I think it certainly can be used to support a monism.

I brought the idea that there has to be an ever-present organism in his conception as time could not exist before the first organism perceived it, and yet time started with the first organism. — schopenhauer1

By and far Kantian correlationism. Yup.

However, since the Will persists as atemporal, there could not be a time before time, and thus makes this a conundrum, as time- being the "flip-side" of Will also could not start at any prior time before time. — schopenhauer1

I don't see how persistence makes any sense outside of any relationship to time. Maybe the Will is a transcendental space-time worm or something, where it exists at all places and at all times. But if it's outside of time and space, then action cannot occur, and intelligibility doesn't seem to be able to exist, let alone be seen as a metaphysical specificity.

I'm surprised, to be honest, that Schopenhauer's monism is what worries you about his metaphysics. In my opinion, that is minor challenge to his view; if necessary, we could always postulate the existence of some sort of dualism, or a cosmic metaphysical principle (the Will) that would govern the actions of the two (Being and Nothing, for example, or the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu).

The problem with going about this route (in order to maintain the Will component), is the main problem that I see with Schopenhauer's metaphysics: he's trying to explain a rather isolated and unique aspect of the world by reifying the human condition into a cosmic condition. Schopenhauer explicitly argues that we are able to come to know the Will via introspection; his metaphysics is simultaneously pessimistically absurd and yet anthropomorphic.

In reality there is likely a naturalistic explanation for why we are the way we are, without need to appeal to an anthropomorphic "something" outside space and time or poetic hypotheses of cosmic exile, and Darwin already helped dispose of the latter (under a naturalistic framework, of course). I've personally tried to explain this by my own naturalistic metaphysical idea, that of scarcity and fatigue, in which the psychological phenomenon of willing would fit snugly. Humans are a curious yet tragic accident, not so dissimilar to a random bug you find in software, where the strange and un-normal persist only because of conditional circumstances. The naturalistic view looks at the context in which a phenomenon happens and try to understand it holistically, whereas the romantic view looks at an isolated phenomenon and attempts to explain everything else by this one phenomenon.

Schopenhauer's Will becomes not so different from the traditional conception of God, albeit without any explicit benevolence. It's a higher-power force; while theists see God as purely rational and omniscient, Schopenhauer saw the Will as purely irrational and blind; while theists see God as ultimately caring, Schopenhauer saw the Will as ultimately uncaring. They are two sides of the extreme and both involve appeals to a unitary, transcendental force behind reality.

In Schopenhauer's conception, the world is a unitary force (aka Will) that manifests as individuated objects in the phenomenal world of space and time. According to him, we are always striving because there is always a deprivation or lack of something — schopenhauer1

According to Quine, the answer to the fundamental question of ontology, "what exists?", is this: "everything." Everything exists.

Maybe you can explain this to me, but if the world is one (as Schopenhauer argued for, a monism), how can something be lacking? Where are these "other pieces" coming from? Are they just being rearranged endlessly as the Will changes form or whatever?

This would seem to lead to the idea that the end-goal, or "telos" if you will, of the Will (if there is one) is that of perpetual motionlessness, or changelessness. Nothing is altered, the pieces all fit together and the puzzle is complete. In more scientific terms, this means the inevitable evaporation of usable energy, i.e. the entropic heat death of the universe.

I'm actually taking a digital circuit logic course right now, so this is kind of up my alley a bit. Hopefully philosophizing about all this won't affect my grades X-)

Nothing is 'equal to' or 'identical to itself', 'in-itself'. These notions are heuristics that are imposed upon nature for the sake of communicative ease. — StreetlightX

I'm not so sure about this. Certainly there can be analog and digital measurements, but ultimately what exists at the present is what I believe apokrisis calls "crispness" - the vague becomes the discrete, or the digital. Digital corresponds to certainty, analog to uncertainty or vagueness.

The properties that leech on their objects would be identical to themselves. To be 4.15678 g just is to be 4.15678 g. The fact that the object we are weighing measures at 4.15678 g means it has a discrete amount of mass associated with it. There is a fundamental reason why an object is a certain way - say, 4.15678 g. It's not arbitrary; there are discrete properties of objects.

Furthermore, analog systems inherently have digital parts anyway, they just aren't computational. Additionally, the way I understand it, analog systems are not so much a separate kind of thing than they are a less discrete digitalization. Instead of binary 0's and 1's, you have a much larger range of outputs - but just like in an analog clock, these outputs are restricted. An analog clock can only represent certain intervals. The more we narrow down our constraints, the less able we are to maneuver: there are many different kinds of stars, but there are only two biological and fertile sexes. There are a gazillion species of animals, but there are only three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon.

Isn't the difference between an analog and a digital system a digitalization anyway? Either/or you are analog or digital...

Is a heuristic identical-to-itself?

The implicit understanding of Buddhism is that the Buddha 'sees things as they truly are', meaning, generally, that he understands the psychological and affective causes of suffering, which arise from craving and identification with sense pleasures. — Wayfarer

He understood the cause of stress, which although is indeed suffering, does not cover all bases. Buddhism can help with anxiety, stress, disappointment, fear, etc. But it hardly helps with any other kind of discomfort.

Then you'll have people who are there basically by accident and along for the ride, who will never feel comfortable there, and that all things considered the society itself would be more comfortable without. It's the former people's problem, not the latter's, how the society is supposed to continue, because the latter have no stake in it and can't be expected to cultivate something that is hostile or alien to them, or that they have no interest in maintaining. — The Great Whatever

Unless we're misanthropes, we would get involved in social affairs (for ethical reasons) if we cared about the people who were part of society. We need not care about the culture for us to care about the people subjugated within the culture.

From my perspective, it's that we're a part of society whether we like it or not. Nobody asked us if we wanted to be born, nobody asked us if we wanted to be a part of the world, and yet here we are. Furthermore, we also have a certain amount of compassion mixed with rationality that leads to a compelling sense of obligation towards others.

So when someone says it's "not their problem", this, to me, comes across as ignoring what other people are feeling. Not caring. At what point does someone else's problem become your problem?

I'm not sure what society needs, and I haven't given it too much thought because I don't think it's my problem — The Great Whatever

Do you accept that this is the bystander effect?

I don't know. Thinking that the point is to be happy doesn't mean expecting or demanding to always be happy. It's just the attitude that suffering is toll one pays. Also, why seek for a sense of security? I'd call this an aspect of happiness, feeling safe. So even the desire to believe that life is about the pursuit of happiness looks itself like the pursuit of happiness. I'd even conjecture that we tend to tolerate painful "truths" only as tools for the restoration of peace. Homoestasis, return to the creative play. That seems to be the game. — Hoo

The point I was getting at is that the human psyche's stability during episodes of trauma is primarily held together by hope. Hope for a better future, hope for a happy future. People will delude themselves their entire lives, believing that if they just run a mile a day, or go Paleo, or convert to such-and-such religion, or meditate three times a day, or get organized with their ergonomic crap, that then they will finally be happy. It's never quite accomplished, though.

If I understand this correctly, it's that Deleuze is concerned with the "canonization" of philosophers, and the subsequent assimilation of thought. Thus thought is constrained by the thought-idols of the past.

If this is true, I have to agree. In fact this kind of reasoning has been running through my mind a lot recently; although I get a lot of influence and inspiration from the philosophers of the past, I also feel the need to distinguish myself and have my own philosophy. I don't want to just be a philosopher-fanboy, an acolyte of one single person's ideas. Aristotle didn't have the Truth, nor did Aquinas, nor Descartes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc. They all had interpretative answers to an identified problem.

Thus I try to take a more hermeneutic approach, synthesizing the thought of many thinkers before into my own thought. I think the best method of doing this is by identifying the questions/problems that each thinker struggled with: for even if their answers are insufficient or incorrect, they at least identified an issue that must be dealt with. The answers change, the questions remain (unless you're Wittgenstein). If you limit yourself to the answers (the "story") without identifying the question structure, you essentially end up with an extremely narrow and blind view of reality, believing in an interpretation without understanding what the interpretation is of.

I guess you could call me a scavenger of some sorts. Systems inevitably get updated or replaced - philosophical systems are no different from the OS on your laptop. I like to take a look back at the previous versions, see how the current versions build upon them, and mod the hell out of my rig for my own preferences while adding my own personal touch.

Most of our actions are related to overcoming a certain amount of deprivation. Not all deprivation is bad, however, only the deprivation that makes us a slave to our desires. Which, coincidentally, happens to be quite a lot, but there do exist deprivational actions that are "worth it" - these are usually the actions that we have fun doing or feel a sense of moral duty to accomplish. These are the actions that don't feel like a chore to do, the actions that we straight up enjoy partaking in, the actions that we are glad we are doing and which constitute a flourishing mentality.

Speaking of accomplishment, that is exactly what Heidegger thought was the essence of action. To do is to accomplish (by means of tool-usage).

Coming from a psychological perspective, most people at most times of their lives are not critically aware of how fear and death constitute an integral part of action. Anxiety, a form of fear, is what motivates us to do many of our actions - if you do not eat, you will die, if you do not drink, you will die, if you do not get a job, you will die, if you do not pray to God, you will go the Hell, etc.

So I think people like to believe that happiness is the purpose of life. But I think this is a pipe dream that nevertheless hoodwinks people into a false sense of security.

"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity." - George Bernard Shaw

Maybe it's not the philosopher's ideal/perfect knowledge, but it's knowledge that we do in fact act on. — Hoo

Indeed Plato thought that our necessary prior knowledge was not justified true belief but merely true belief - pragmatic belief.

As a consequentialist, I have generally two options to pick within consequentialist ethics - act and rule consequentialism. These are further refined by sub-options. In my case, I am a partial rule consequentialism, or "rule breaking" consequentialism. Rules are put into place as a heuristic for decision making. Those actions that typically result in the best-possible outcome (maximizing happiness, minimizing suffering) on the global scale are made into rules, however, being rules, they are also made to be broken. When a situation presents itself that would make following the rules result in a less-than-optimal outcome, then the rules ought to be broken. They were more akin to suggestions than anything more.

This means that, for example, murdering a person may be an acceptable form of action, such as in self-defense, or in a political assassination. In my view, to see the act itself as immoral (and not the consequences) is to forget why the act was originally seen to be immoral (because of a history of repetitive consequences) and to misplace the focus of ethics, which should be on sentient welfare.

Partial rule consequentialism also tends to reject notions of intention, consent, and instrumentalization as "special" rules of some sort, since doing so would once again forget the bigger picture, the consequences at stake. Instrumentalization, in particular, is what I think to be a disguised way of holding that suffering holds priority over pleasure. So although I reject notions of utility monsters, I can and will still hold that negative utility monsters are perfectly acceptable, which results with the conclusion that the instrumentalization of someone who is not as bad off as the person that this act is meant to help is acceptable, assuming there aren't better options available.

We are conscious but do not have a robust sense of self. It is only with the sudden experience of something extremely unexpected and strange that a phenomenal self model is thrust into the picture, and we lucid dream.

When we dream we typically have a duller sense of pleasure and pain. In fact there are cases in which fully-conscious people experience extreme pain but do not find it to be a bad thing.

I tend to find what little I read of analytic metaphysics more or less incomprehensible to me. I don't say this as a value judgement on my part, I just literally and plainly mean that I don't understand 'what's going on' when I read alot of that work. I imagine that it's a similar feeling to what happens when the uninitiated read some of some of Heidegger or Derrida for the first time. The conceptual anchor points are missing, and the significance of the results are lost on me. — StreetlightX

Ever since the legendary epic smack-down between Quine and Carnap, in which Quine objectively won and thus rescued metaphysics by placing it on the same level of meaningful-ness as the natural sciences, realist metaphysicians have taken to rehabilitating the Aristotelian being qua being metaphysics as first philosophy.

The above story is a silly oversimplification that is actually more incorrect than correct, but it continues to be used as a justification for this kind of metaphysics. Additionally, the realists are those who are most active in metaphysics and are thus the most vocal, and yet they are also the minority, as Chalmers argues that there is a silent majority looking on skeptically as the realists have their fun.

In other words, I don't confuse my personal disappointment with insight into questions of (in)significance. — The Great Whatever

Perfect.

Yes, and in general the preoccupation with social progress and exploration for the sake of exploration.

Perhaps there is a golden mean by which compassion is mitigated by enough self-interested acts so that it can be sustained. — schopenhauer1

Correct, which is why I was primarily interested in those who are worse-off. We have to balance the input with the output. If tending to them does not hurt you as much as they are hurting, then it seems as though we really have no excuse not to help them. The point is to maximize your utility, and every one of us can do better even if we won't. Certainly other alternatives, such as becoming a monk, nun, or other kind of ascetic only makes sure that you are doing alright, but nobody else is helped.

Also, more importantly, you may be making a non-issue into an issue. You are countering the claim that people are not as moral as they claim to be or think they are. I would argue that not many people go around saying or thinking they are super compassionate necessarily. I think some people do compassionate acts every once in a while, or what "classically" looks like compassionate acts in our society, but I doubt many people go around claiming how super-compassionate they are. Even Schopenhauer who claimed that morality is based on compassionate sentiment, I doubt would claim that he himself was compassionate. Did you have quotes from him claiming otherwise? If I recall, he seemed to think it was rare for people to live with that much compassion. I'll try to find a quote or something if needed. — schopenhauer1

People probably do believe that they could be better, but overall they believe that they are a good person. How they are living their lives, the choices they make (that inevitably reflect self-interest) is not put into question. Many people would not see the harm in not donating your savings post-mortem, or of eating meat, or of any number of things.

Levinas wrote about the "persecution of ethics", and I think this is exactly what I'm talking about in this case. People in general do indeed feel compelled to do something when they think about the suffering of others, but not out of positive compassion but because they know it would be better if they did something. They come to recognize this and learn to push it out of their immediate conscious.

Just how many people could be saved if you didn't buy that new flatscreen television? Just how many animals could have been helped if you didn't spend all your time playing Call of Duty (irony intended)?

So when I say that morality stems from compassion, I mean that the recognition of suffering as an important thing is due to compassion. But the subsequent acts to remove or prevent this suffering need not be motivated solely by compassion. It can be a logical counterfactual proposition - if we view suffering as bad, then removing suffering is good. What is good is what we ought to do. Therefore, we ought to remove suffering, even if we don't want to remove suffering (which is what Schopenhauer had in mind and what you refer to as positive compassion).

And the rub here is that most of us, including myself, recognize that suffering is bad, and yet don't want to get off our asses and do something about it for our entire life. So you get a tugging feeling in your gut, which you inevitably repress by distracting yourself with things you like to do. The moral person need not enjoy being moral - but the virtuous person does.

In regards to your edit, I agree that people should be more educated as to what life entails exactly. Which is why I advocate political and social involvement while alive - it also gives you a purpose to live.

According to the article he particularly has in mind metaphysics in analytic philosophy, much of which is, he says, "willfully cut off from any serious issues". — jamalrob

"Philosophy in some quarters has become self-indulgent, clever play in a vacuum that’s not dealing of problems of any intrinsic interest." — Dennett

Seems to me that the average person would say the same thing about philosophy in general. Who the hell cares whether or not God exist, so long as I get to go to heaven?! Who cares whether a world exists beyond our perceptions, let's go have ice cream! Who cares what the nitty-bitty details of ethics are, the important thing is to not be a dick! Who cares about the epistemology of belief, I already know what I believe! "Who cares?!" is the response I get from most people when I tell them the specifics of my interest in philosophy. They really couldn't give less of a shit.

The point is that the average non-philosophy-inclined person, just like Dennett, has an agenda, in which certain topics are more important than others thanks to a prioritization due to the agenda. To the average person, perhaps instead of philosophy, it's politics, or professional sports, or manufacturing the next salvation of humanity, or droning on video games all day, or whatever happens to fill the vacuum of boredom in your life.

Personally, I don't really care whether or not we find yet another exoplanet, or yet another species of irrelevant fish somewhere in the depths of the oceans, or who wins the Superbowl, or whether or not Trump or Clinton gets elected, or if Costco is having a sale on their nachos. They aren't relevant to me.

So in order for Dennett's claim, that much of philosophy is self-indulgent and irrelevant, to make sense, he needs to support the background view which prioritizes other self-indulgent and irrelevant disciplines and pursuits, and show why they are not self-indulgent and irrelevant and why they should be taken as of practically universal importance.

I suspect Dennett thinks much of analytic metaphysics to be like his analogy to chmess - chess but with slightly different rules as to make an entirely new game and entirely different strategies. If this is the case (which I don't think it is), what still is happening is that these professional philosophers are enjoying what they are doing. And, in fact, they are indeed discussing a portion of the world, even if this portion is not as relevant or catches the eye of Dennett.

What I think ought to change is the longevity of these pursuits. For as smart and capable as these professional philosophers are, many of them continue to focus on issues that are, in some sense, beneath them. Let the amateurs and aspiring philosophers work on these fun (legitimate) puzzles and focus on bigger, nobler and radical theories - otherwise it's like a PhD computer scientist working on a Raspberry Pi.

These analytical metaphysical questions: persistence, identity, object-hood, property theories, etc are likely never going to be solved in the way they are currently attempted to be, which is why I think they are better off being studied by undergrads and aspiring professionals as ways of honing their skills and preparing them for the bigger problems.

I think the reason this is not happening, and why professional philosophers continue to discuss these perennial and yet more amateur questions, is that it's easy. For as much as ontology and metaphysics in general has exploded after Quine (regardless of whether or not it is justified), current analytic metaphysics is rather sterile and shallow. There are much, much deeper questions to be tackled that don't require the abandonment of metaphysics entirely. Compare what is usually discussed in analytic metaphysics today with what was discussed in the past or is elsewhere, and you will see just how limited the scope of analytic metaphysics really is.

Additionally, in their attempt to be be independent of the natural sciences, analytic metaphysicians end up isolating themselves from any real contact with the natural sciences. In my opinion, analytic metaphysicians have done this not (just) because they believe metaphysics is indeed a separate branch of inquiry (the a priori study of the possible, pace E.J. Lowe), but because they are scared of what might happen if they put their theories to the test against the sophistication of those of natural science and what the public will think of their discipline. It's what Harman said - philosophy today has a severe inferiority complex. They are scared of questioning the social hegemony of science - something Meillassoux pointed out when he argued that the austere correlationist can and should inform the cosmologist and geologist that what they are studying, the ancestral, never actually happened. (Meillassoux does not actually support this view, though, as he is a realist).

Metaphysical theories rise and fall with the evidence just as natural scientific theories do, and I do believe that many of these analytic metaphysical theories can withstand the so-called threat of scientism and the hegemony of modern physics (but many will not and are only kept alive by this isolation) - however, this will require a bootstrapping relationship between the two, and more importantly will require metaphysicians to step up their game and tackle the bigger questions, the questions that contemporary philosophers of science are trying to do right now and could be helped by those with more sophisticated metaphysical background. Specifically, they should focus more on issues of grounding, perception, mathematical (anti-)realism, speculative cosmology and especially causality and the nature of Being itself (i.e. what does "physical" actually mean?) - many of these pop-scientists could learn a thing or two from what these metaphysicians have to say. Additionally, the divide between analytic and continental philosophy, although claimed to have been dissolved, continues to exist and you get a severe lack of communication between the two when much could be gained if there was.

Instead of removing/rejecting metaphysics, metaphysics needs to be improved and established as an important and relevant discipline to anyone who has an interest in understanding how the world works.

So, it perhaps is just a problem of having an ideal that is never met, like a perfect circle. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. Our abilities (or lack thereof) do not dictate morality.

One feeling is being driven by some sort of negative (driving away) nagging feeling that, in a way, is a selfish need to not have that feeling anymore, the other comes out of a positive sense (driving towards) of wanting to see suffering alleviated for that other person. — schopenhauer1

However, if you used another basis that is not compassion, you may perhaps have a point. — schopenhauer1

The guilt comes from the fact that someone is ignoring a compelling experience. To not feel guilt when recognizing the plight of others requires one to place greater emphasis on oneself than other people, or to believe that one is more important than others.

This means that I am taking compassion and running with it - I am probing the limits of what compassion leads to, even if this is not actually possible. If we were more compassionate individuals, then we would help more people. Since we are not helping very many people, and instead attending to our own desires, it stands that we are not as compassionate as we think we are, and since morality stems from compassion, this means we are not as moral as we think we are.

So for me at least, it doesn't matter whether or not feeling guilty for not helping others is genuinely compassion-based in the positive or negative sense, for what matters here is that we can recognize the link between compassion and morality and see how we are deficient in both (which presumably leads to guilt, misanthropy, or perhaps self-improvement).

Rather, donating to organizations or being on the board of organizations that can help in a FAR GREATER capacity might be the best way. Or perhaps something even more impersonal and less-compassionate looking. It might even be the case that simply being a consumer in a capitalist economy turns out to be the greatest benefit as the taxes go into research and activities that do indeed help far more people in far more effective ways. — schopenhauer1

Indeed, I advocate donating all your savings post-mortem, and while alive, physically interacting with those in need as well as getting involved in politics and society in general. Maximizing your utility.

Not helping others at every moment of the day, and being egoistic, does not mean that one is enthralled with life. This is similar to the "if you think life is suffering, why don't you just kill yourself?" argument. Just because one does not commit suicide does not show that, indeed one must really think life is great. Rather, just like suicide, it is in most people's nature to be self-interested. Most people care enough to about their own lives to not be burned out emotionally and physically with other people's problems at all times. I accept this fact. — schopenhauer1

Right, but again, if we take compassion-based ethics to its logical end, then the conscientious support of an affirmative system cannot be acceptable, regardless of how we actually are psychologically and in general.

The overall point being made here is that you cannot be "comfortable" and also concerned with the well-being of others.

How is it that matter and space itself exist when the absence of anything could have more than easily sufficed? — Albert Keirkenhaur

How do you know the absence of anything could have been sufficient? It's certainly conceivable that the various things in the world are contingent, but it's not straightforward to say that this makes them actually metaphysically contingent, or that the simpler methods of existing are not necessary.

Personally I think that the only necessary constraint is the complete lack of necessary constraints, i.e. radical contingency, and an evolution of systems-within-constraints allows the emergence of stability.

I think it is impossible to act at all times out of compassion. You cannot will yourself to be compassionate. You may follow some abstract formula, or act out of some self-imposed duty, but that is not compassion. — schopenhauer1

This is also why I think it was in Schopenhauer's (and others') (literal) best-interest to identify as a misanthrope, because this allows him and others to squeeze around their responsibilities in pursuit of a self-centered ascetic life. This would allow him to be selective in his compassion - and fuck everyone else, they don't deserve to be helped. Thus Schopenhauer's antinatalism was not only compassion based but also aesthetically-based: don't create any more monsters. Humans suck.

So if you are a person who actually does hate humanity and other sentient organisms, then compassion becomes something of a black sheep. If that is you (or anyone else reading this), there's nothing more I can really say, other than that I think you have your values misplaced.

So yes, I agree that compassion cannot be sustained on the level I was talking about earlier (where every moment of our lives is dedicated to helping others), but that is a personal failure. Like I said before, how far away does someone have to be for them to be insignificant? If we were perfectly compassionate individuals, then we would recognize that distance doesn't have any importance here. If we hold a negative view of existence, then we are being disingenuous by continuing to live - and thus support - the affirmative lifestyle. Without trying to be cliche, we have a choice: to be active or passive, a 1 or a 0.

Now, I am not saying that it is wrong necessary to live in a world where every motivation would be to help others, with as much ability as possible at all times, but it would leave no room for other things, and thus the value of other things that are not ethics-related or compassion-related. This kind of world, for many, would be a world not worth living in. — schopenhauer1

The problem that I see with this is that, especially coming from a pessimist such as yourself, the world is already not worth living in, so these losses of other apparently valuable things are not really that bad, since they are just distractions. This is why I had previously said having a negative outlook but continuing to live affirmatively (i.e. "leeching" off of the affirmative community) is logically contradictory. The philosophical outlook and the subsequent lifestyle are not entirely compatible.

To say it another way, if the government adopted the philosophy of someone like, say, Schopenhauer, as domestic and foreign policy, as well as what I see to be the logical extension of it (as described above), we would not live in the same kind of society. It would be radically changed unlike anything we would have seen before. The aesthetics that Schopenhauer advocated for calming the Will would not longer be supported anywhere, as they would be seen as wasteful spending habits.

So I think it's sort of contradictory to hold such a bleak view of existence and yet be opposed to the deconstruction of society to benefit those in need. For what reason would you be against this that wouldn't undermine your own existentialism?

Guilt is indeed a motivator for action.

If everyone took good care of those closest to them for a start, including themselves, then I think there would be far less suffering in the world. — John

True. So the governments of countries with impoverished citizens are of most suspect - but the countries around it that allow this to continue are also suspect.

So even if someone else really ought to be doing something about it, you are still able to do something. And my claim is that if you actually come to terms with your own efficacy, you will realize just how much utility you are keeping for yourself.

In any case, if you were to go out and dedicate yourself selflessly and diligently to helping others, you would be far more likely to convince people that that is the best way than you are by trying to reason with them about it, or make them feel guilty. — John

I have and am trying.

I do think that most people, when confront with a case where someone was suffering terribly and they felt competent to do something about it; would do something about it. But that they provided help would not necessarily (and I think in most cases would not) be on account of them following any moral rule, but simply because they felt moved to do something about the person's suffering. — John

Then why is this not applied to the homeless African child, or the slave labor of China, or the constant mutilation of animals in the wild? Do you have to have someone breathing down your neck for it to make you want to help them?

From this it would then seem to follow that the typical person is a good moral agent; in which case, what's the problem? — John

What I meant here was that we are not taking ethics far enough. We limit our concept of obligation for our own comfort and security.

I would like to hear from other people as well. I'm not trying to be a jerk when I say this, but how do you live with yourself while knowing there are people who are suffering and will continue to suffer if you do not help them? Or while knowing that there are many ways you could educate people to stop them from inflicting harm upon other sentients, whether that be environmentalism, veganism, anti-space exploration-ism, procreative ethic discussions, etc?

Do you think you are a moral person just because you are "decent" or "adequate"?

Giving a bit of food or alms would send the wrong signals. — OglopTo

Or you do both.

hoping that the wielders of these nukes would be, again, you guessed it, acting in good faith. — OglopTo

I was more referring to the advocation of a nuclear winter to destroy the ecosystems.

May be true in an ideal world where everyone is sort of like enlightened or semi-enlightened. But unfortunately, we don't have this so I feel that actions, no matter how inconsequential, will perpetuate this 'unenlightened' unexamined sort of worldly thinking. Still, the context of this is the helping-street-children example I described earlier. It's either you go big or go home in helping them. — OglopTo

Not helping them would betray a form of misanthropy. Back in the days of the classical pessimists, then, misanthropy could be compatible with asceticism. Today, not so much, because we have ways of ending the apparent plague of humanity (nukes, for example).

This is also why I said we had to be politically active, so that we would help these street children and also make them grow up in a society which looked down upon perpetrating suffering.

This is an important point: we don't know how our actions are going to affect others, like a butterfly effect. But whereas there is merely a hypothetical possibility that someone is harmed because of what you did to try to help someone, there is an actuality that someone is harmed because you did nothing.

All this means is that we must be reasonable in our assessment of a situation, and realize that us helping someone in all likelihood probably will not come back to haunt us. Any bad things other people will do they likely will have done regardless of whether or not we help them. People need help and our fear of what they might do afterwards only insults them.

Ideally this principle should apply to not just yourself but to other people as well, thus such a fear would be unwarranted in a purely ideal situation where everyone is actually ethical or at least tries to be.

But while I arguably can't help but care about my suffering, why should I "have to" care about yours? So phrased this way, you already presume empathy as a brute fact of your moral economy? — apokrisis

Absolutely. Empathy and compassion are the primary sources of morality. Any attempt to ground morality primarily by different means, I think, gets the whole thing backwards. Ethics is supposed to be about welfare.

But what then of those who are wired differently and lack such empathy. Is is moral that they should ignore such a situation, or exploit the situation in some non-empathetic fashion? If not, then on what grounds are you now arguing that they should fake some kind of neurotypical feelings of care? — apokrisis

I think those who are unable to feel compassion/empathy are incapable of grasping the important aspects of morality.

So to justify a morality based on neurotypicality is not as self-justifying as you want to claim. A consequence of such a rigid position is clearly eugenics - let's weed the unempathetic out. — apokrisis

On the contrary I think neurotypicality results in what we see as morality, and those who are atypical are thus not within the realm of morality. In which case, this post can be directed towards those who do indeed experience compassion and empathy and thus can be considered moral agents.

Because empathy is commonplace in neurodevelopment, empathy is morally right. — apokrisis

Just to make my point clear - I don't think there is an objective morality. But for those who are involved in ethical discussion, as well as the average population, what they see as morality is sourced from compassion and empathy. If they are to act moral within this framework, then my post is directed towards them. If you are considering acting upon a compassion-based ethics, then my post is important.

So it is quite wrong - psychologically - to frame this in terms of people being lazy and selfish (as if these were the biologically natural traits). Instead, what is natural - what we have evolved for - is to live in a close and simple tribal relation. And it is modern society that allows and encourages a strong polarisation of personality types. — apokrisis

What is also seemingly nature is our ability to ignore the background static of everyone else outside of our tribe who is suffering.

And this complete individual self-abnegation is not a naturalistic answer. It is not going to be neurotypically average response - one that feels right given the way most people feel. — apokrisis

This is an important point: I don't think we are able to live moral lives. We are disqualified. Given that our morality here is sourced from compassion and empathy, we have to fundamentally ignore the extreme possible extent of our compassion and empathy in order to live "averagely" or "naturally". But there's nothing ethical about that, because this ignores compassion and empathy.

What difference does intention make here, aside from legal considerations? Standing idly by while recognizing the existence of suffering can still be said to be an act of moral negligence - indeed sometimes this is even criminal negligence.

The problem I see here is that you have not actually said why, it is wrong not to help others. — John

Well, I see little to no distinction between doing and allowing harm. What matters is that harm is happening, and you are complicit in it if you are not at least trying to help. You are an unused variable, a bystander-without-cause.

Also, I think you might find interest in at least some of what the analytics have to say, particularly Koslicki, Loux, Lowe and Tahko (hard-core hylomorphist neo-Aristotelians).

What I don't understand is why this view hasn't been brought to the table more often, if it is indeed worthy of discussion.

Yep. Most of those I would be in deep disagreement with. But now because they represent the reductionist and dualistic tendency rather than the romantically confused.

That is why I am a Pragmatist. As I said, reductionism tries to make metaphysics too simple by arriving at a dichotomy and then sailing on past it in pursuit of monism. The result is then a conscious or unwitting dualism - because the other pole of being still exists despite attempts to deny it. — apokrisis

Why is this reductionism a bad thing, what is this dichotomy, and what kind of monism do you suppose they are attempting to find?

Not with any great energy. I'm quite happy to admit that from a systems science standpoint, it is quite clear that the three guys to focus on are Anaximander, Aristotle and Peirce. Others like Kant and Hegel are important, but the ground slopes away sharply in terms of what actually matters to my interests. — apokrisis

Heidegger is extremely important, yo. He owes so much to Aristotle and yet also diverges from him fundamentally. Outside of philosophy he is also very influential in cognitive science programs, particularly those focusing on attention and perception.

But causality itself is not something that can be affected by cause and affect. It's a metaphysical term.