I don't think the person who has major unfulfilled desires is happy. I consider happiness to be contentedness and a lack of general suffering. A dictator who wants more power instead of "only being happy" is not happy to begin with. They aren't content with their current situation. Whereas a person who legitimately has no desire for these kinds of things is far better off than the person who is still under the influence of desire.

Because a person who is content with what they have and does not desire certain things is far better off and happier than a person who is stuck in rat race of desire.

Even if it isn't, (s)he isn't interested in pursuing any other goal. So what options does (s)he have? (S)he may be perfectly conscious that (s)he is not capable to fulfil his/her goal, and yet still pursue it, because the pursuit of his/her desire is the only thing of value (s)he has. — Agustino

Then it is the case that the person should re-evaluate their picture on life and temper some of these desires.

People want to be fulfilled. They want to have something they can look back on and say "huzzah!" about. I don't see how self-actualization is in any way incompatible with the basic tenets of compassion of understanding in Buddhism like the video I posted talked about.

Furthermore, it is perfectly conceivable that someone like Heathcliff is ignorant of his condition. A simple analogy will show this: a dictator may want, above anything else, to be in power and authority. But is this goal realistic and how much is he going to suffer (alongside other people) in his quest for a goal? Is this dictator ignorant of his capabilities and the repercussions it will have for him and the rest of the world?

Your criticism is basically what Nietzsche criticized Buddhism, and Schopenhauer for that matter, of: being nihilistic. He criticized them for rejecting the world and living passively. Which is a bad interpretation of either philosophy.

People want to be happy living a certain kind of life, they don't simply want to be happy. — Agustino

It is my sincere belief that this misguided desire to live a certain way is one of the fundamental reasons why the world is the way it is (that is, broken and unfortunate).

I don't have a problem with other people pursuing goals. I have goals too. If these goals cause them to suffer unnecessarily but they find meaning behind this suffering and would rather be accomplishing these goals then living passively, that's fine. I do that and so does everyone else. But as soon as these goals begin to harm other people is when it is not okay.

Interesting video I found that touches on the hierarchy of needs and also general happiness. Might be worth a watch.

I think I'd rather they remain private. — Sapientia

Pretty much me as well.

I've had drinking problems ever since I first started drinking alcohol as a teenager: binge drinking and drink-related anxiety in certain situations, — Sapientia

I worry that I'll slip off the edge and become an alcoholic or drug addict to deal with my anxiety. Not a pretty picture.

I feel you when it comes to the obsessions. I can be a fun person to hang out with, but as soon as I get an obsession I tend to lose a lot of my vitality and zone out.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this whole "anxiety" thing. It is very irrational, circular, and debilitating. I'm in the middle of an obsessive compulsion that is quite bad. Pretty much all you can do in a situation like this is hold on for dear life and hope it ends relatively soon. I suppose the storm over the ocean can't last forever, but damn is it particularly vicious this round.

An emotional argument stems from emotions, not logic.

it is to make an emotive argument, that doesn't suffer from logical inconsistencies, that might be persuasive. — Reformed Nihilist

I'm not sure if that's possible.

In which case, so what? So what if the commonly-accepted form of god is showing him as benevolent? That doesn't change the fact that this god would be malignant!

If everyone in North Korea thinks that Kim Jong Un is a benevolent god, and then it is shown that, oops, turns out he's a jerk, does that mean Kim Jong Un doesn't exist?

Welcome to the forum, Reformed Nihilist!

I'd say that as much as these so-called "New Atheists" claim to be logical and rational, they are merely using emotional heuristics. Now I turns out that under further analysis I found that I agree with the general term "atheism", although I'm not some retarded "gnostic" atheist as so many teenage rebels like to proclaim. It would seem, then, that the "New Atheists" are right but for the wrong reasons, at least in my opinion because I think atheism is correct (but I don't know it is correct).

As for your argument, it seems to me that you are basically arguing for putting up the middle finger to god. If god exists and has an eternal plan for the universe, that would be extremely nightmarish. But the fact of the matter is that if we are to take Pascal's Wager (which is problematic by itself) to be true, then it would only make sense to worship this god. It surely is easy to rebel against this totalitarian god but that's not going to do much for you when you are suffering eternal torture in hell; it is a rhetoric device meant to appeal to the emotional thinking of most people. Giving god the middle finger, deserved or not, is hip, rebellious, and "bad-boy"-esque.

Not to mention that this does not actually argue against the existence of god, it just shows that this god would be a dick. Just because this god would be malignant doesn't mean this god wouldn't exist. (although I'm under the impression that no gods exist).

In some ways the computer-brain analogy may be extended to incoherency.

But it's worth noting that the parallelism of many modern day computers is commonly seen to be that of the brain. Parallel computers can compute things that a serial computer would struggle to do so.

Got a source for that? I don't doubt you but I'd like to have an actual citation.

Is it? I don't have any sources on this and given the background of Aristippus it seems like he would be referencing the human condition more than political identity.

Gotcha, my mistake.

I think you're a little confused on the Realism vs Anti-Realism debate.

A Realist believes that it is possible, even if it is difficult, to obtain true depictions of reality.

The Anti-Realist argues that we are hidden behind a veil, which at the very least is held up by the apparent transcendentalism of reality, i.e. if it is impossible to access reality, then it is impossible to verify that what we have constructed is true.

it seems fatuous to claim citizenship in the whole world. — Bitter Crank

I think the "citizen of the world" tends to be existentially motivated than specifically politically motivated.

Some "citizens of the world" I have met seem more like parasites viewing the whole world as a potential host. — Bitter Crank

I suppose this might be true of some. But I think a "citizen of the world" might say that they hold no allegiance to any political entity. They might reject the idea of having a government that you arbitrarily swear loyalty to, usually only because you were born under their jurisdiction.

Perhaps cosmopolitanism in this context is not the appropriate term, rather, it should be global anarchism.

We see ourselves much more as "one world" than we once did. Or maybe like an ocean liner without life boats: Different classes on board, but if the ship goes down, all go down with it. — Bitter Crank

Hence why I think the first step to a cosmopolitan society would be to recognize our existential similarities. We are all human. We are affected by more or less the same things, like you said about global warming and pollution. We all experience pleasure and pain. We all exist in a short time period on a rock in space. After establishing an existential brotherhood, humanity as a family can begin to put away their differences and work together.

Its inversion was espoused by Aristippus of Cyrene: I am an alien everywhere. — The Great Whatever

We're talking political identity, not existential identity.

Sure. Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all humans (and presumably animals as well) belong to a single global community, with shared values, morals, etc. Having such a community seems to me to be a great way to stop international conflict.

But how realistic is this idea? Is it even possible to have a worldwide community? What are the obstacles in the way of a cosmopolitan society? Is a cosmopolitan society even preferable?

I think individuals that have caused paradigm shifts would fall under the category of "genius". People like Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Curie, Darwin, Hubble, etc. in regards to science would be geniuses. Tesla, Morse, Gutenberg, Ford, etc would be inventor geniuses. Marx would be a political philosophy genius even if you don't agree with his ideas. Perhaps even religious/spiritual thinkers like Jesus, Mohammad, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, etc might be considered genius, or at least very wise to followers.

Lists of geniuses seem to be all male. Why is that? — Bitter Crank

In my eyes, males have quite a tendency to be more serious and focused than females. Males are generally the ones that are not content to stick with the norm, leading to paradigm shifts and great discoveries or products.

That is not to say that we should automatically judge females as being inept, as there certainly are genius females. It may be the case that females haven't had the resources or education to achieve what males have, and it would be unfair to judge them before they have shown all their cards.

But mostly I think the average female attitude is that of satisfaction with the current standards, as in, why fix what isn't broken (even if it is)? Females do tend to be more emotional and superficial than males. This might be evolutionary; tending to the family and cultivating a strong family bond would be priority, whereas males would need to be able to recognize and adjust to changes more (hunting, for example). Also, males tend to be more aggressive and ambitious, whereas for females these traits that tend to lead to deep thinking and discovery just aren't important.

What is better: 10 very smart, very creative, very productive people or 10 geniuses? — Bitter Crank

Is there a difference?

Do you think there is anything wrong with acting purely in one's self-interest?

Huemer's thought experiment comes to mind. Say you are an egoist and are walking down the street to work, and you are slightly late. You also have an disintegrator gun with you. You encounter a homeless man. The egoist would be morally obligated to disintegrate the homeless man for being in his way and slowing him down.

This is obviously an argument ad absurdum. But it appeals to a sense of morality that is incompatible with egoism. It doesn't actually prove egoism to be false. An egoist could just easily say that it would be the moral thing to do to disintegrate the homeless man. They might live in a society that is okay with this, and so there would be no repercussions. And still we would find this to be immoral. But why?, and is this "holding us back" so to speak?

But why are a and b thought of as red while c is not?

a and b are similar but different to c. What makes this so? The redness of a and b, they are similar to each other.

That's not to say that the realist interpretation of similarity (universals) is necessarily correct. You could be a nominalist trope theorist and think that the Taj Mahal has a unique color, unique meaning numerically independent from any other trope, even an identical-looking trope. It seems to me that we can avoid the question of what makes these tropes similar by appealing to evolution and realizing that attributes exist in a spectrum, just as colors exist in a rainbow, and that it would be significantly beneficial to the survival of the species for an organism to be able to see similarities between objects.

Remember, it's not that you stink...it's that everyone else stinks. Don't conform. Don't assimilate.

Did anyone get any cool things for the holidays? This year was especially nice for me, I received four books on philosophy and a book on world mythology. The introductory philosophy books are one on the mind, another on cognitive science, a third on epistemology, and the fourth was The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger. I think I'll be reading quite a lot in the future. :)

Because then there would be no more suffering. — The Great Whatever

I agree with Agustino. I classic Buddhist response to why a monk doesn't kill themselves (to get rid of suffering) would be that it also means there is no more happiness, joy, pleasure, etc. It would be a shame to throw all that potential away.

They already had everything they wanted so they didn't invent or do much of anything. — The Great Whatever

Feynman was a real ladies man, and yet was one of the most important physicists of our time.

I don't think there is much of a problem with universals if we accept a version of 'conceptualism': — invizzy

From the IEP:

"As tidy as this seems, it too suffers from problems. To see this, we need to realize that concepts can be misapplied in some cases, such as when we say of a cat that it is a dog. And misapplied concepts explain nothing deep about generality. Conceptualism's appeal to concept application must concern only correct concept application. As such, it is fair to ask, “What makes it the case that the concept red is rightly applied to both a and b, but not of some third individual, c?” To treat this fact as brute and inexplicable is to revert to problematic Predicate Nominalism. So it seems the Conceptualist must say that the concept red applies to a and b, but not c, because a and b share a common feature, a feature c lacks. Otherwise, the application of red is unconstrained by the individuals to which it applies. But simply noting that a and b resemble each other isn't going to help, because that just is the fact we originally sought to explain, put differently. The Conceptualist might now say that a and b share a property. But if this isn't to amount to a restatement of the original datum, it must now be interpreted as the claim that some entity is in both a and b. That, of course, turns our supposed Conceptualist strategy back into Realism.

Critics say Conceptualism solves no problems on its own. In trying to ground our right to predicate the concept red of a and b, we are driven back to facts about a and b themselves and that leaves Conceptualism as an unstable position. It teeters back and forth between Realism, on the one hand, and Nominalism, on the other."

I am a little confused as to the difference between nominalism and conceptualism. — Marchesk

So, Marchesk, conceptualism is an unstable position between nominalism and realism, although it claims to be nominalism.

Excellent. I can't be the only one who is sick of seeing these petty pissing contests.

There already isn't any joy. That was all made up by poets who couldn't get laid. — The Great Whatever

Edgy.

We really ought to make another thread if you three can't play nice.

I thought I might never see the day in which we agree on something.

Sarcasm aside, I'm with you on your aesthetic appreciation of brutalism. I enjoy it as well. It's different, mysterious and yet plain. Industrial but not toxic.

Reminds of the architecture you would see in a Soviet-era Russia.

Anyone here want to fess up to being fully self-actualized? — Bitter Crank

*Grudgingly raises hand*

Found a very interesting article, about twenty pages in total, regarding the metaphilosophical question of what even is a philosophical question. Can philosophy be carried out? Are open-questions unanswerable? What is the nature of a philosophical question? What is scientism today?

http://www.philosophyofinformation.net/publications/pdf/wiapq.pdf

Good schtuff.

I find it interesting that if Maslow is partially right that humans have roughly the same kinds of generalized needs, that the needs being met are not evenly distributed. Even if governments or economies can provide for a modicum of the two foundational needs, the upper three tiers on the pyramid (simply following the basic diagram model) can never really be guaranteed. But that is where people can go many ways with it: — schopenhauer1

Popper argued that a government should operate under the negative utilitarian approach, that is, an anti-frustrationist, prioritarian method. Smart later argued that if this was adopted worldwide, this would lead to the extermination of all life. But realize that this was only meant to apply to the government's modus operandi, not the rest of life.

What authorizes this claim other than your own personal psychology? Whence the argument? Perhaps you want to argue that people ought to feel world-weary or whatever have you, but then the idea that feelings and affections can be motivated at a purely intellectual, rather than lived level is, well, naive to say least. 'You should feel like how I'm telling you, dammit!'. — StreetlightX

I most definitely have a problem with people assuming their idiosyncratic feelings are universals. Just because someone is depressed does not mean everyone is depressed.

However, I have to object that my characterization is not merely an incarnation of my own personal psychology applied to the rest of the world. Rather, it is actually what I observe to be not only my own personal feelings but also the feelings of everyone else. I'm not assuming everyone experiences the same negative feelings I do, I know people experience these same feelings. It is not difficult to see this in public. Stress, heavy eyes, perpetual melancholic behavior, the occasional impulse of anger and violence. A happy person is a delicate person. Happiness, true contentment, is short and sweet, usually obtained by a mixture of satisfied desires and willful ignorance. Our society runs off of unbelievable and unattainable ideals, powered by endless desires. It is, to be tart, a useless rat race, and oftentimes a malignant one at that.

It is the realization that this is what life is which leads to Weltschmerz. I'm not claiming that everyone experiences Weltschmerz, though. Weltschmerz is a meta-emotion, a reaction to the observation of all the other emotions we experience. So it is not surprising that not everyone experiences Weltschmerz because not everyone has taken the time to objectively look at life in all its colors, pretty and ugly alike.

wat

Maybe a different approach might help: Do we invent technology, or do we discover technology, or both? Meaning, of course we invent technology (it wouldn't exist without our creativity), but in the process, don't we discover technology as well? Don't we discover what the universe is capable of hosting?

Derek Parfit's "Why anything? Why this?"

Part 1: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n02/derek-parfit/why-anything-why-this

Part 2: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v20/n03/derek-parfit/why-anything-why-this

If the above is realized (and there are other important technologies of course), then it's easy to imagine that the world could become a very different place. But who knows to what extent that ends suffering. There are dystopian scenarios. One can only imagine what a 22nd century warfare would look like. — Marchesk

That's very true, technology could be used in a poor way. In fact, given our history, it seems like nothing will change. All the philosophy in the world is not going to stop an idiot from launching a nuke.