After spending time here for about three years, and another near ten years at the old PF, I've come to realize that the questions posed here are very personal and intimate to the arguer. That's just the nature of philosophy. It's not the same thing as a Reddit feed or an average e-mail or even a dry academic conversation. The conversations are one way or another, for good or bad, imbued with psychological import and personal meaning. — Posty McPostface

I agree. It has been my conviction for a while now that philosophy is, fundamentally, an individualistic enterprise. I think that philosophy may not be a noun, but rather is more of an adjective to describe how a collection of ideas influences a person in a significant, overarching way. Philosophy, as Nietzsche pointed out, is autobiography. Before "religion" became associated with a determinate social "thing" (something that has happened relatively recently, in fact), philosophy stood as that personal, individual activity. In some ways, the decline of the recognition of the importance of philosophy coincides with the rise of organized religion. Philosophy lost its esteem as the individualistic, spiritual journey and was replaced by dogmatism, group-think, superstition.

When people fling insults and ignore fallacies, it is because they feel threatened on a personal level. The philosophy they have internalized and used to orient themselves in the world is under fire and must be protected. Insults are conjured up by individuals and are aimed at individuals; they have no place in rational argument.

I wanted to say, thank you for being considerate and obeying the principle of charity in this discussion.

In other words, when the skeptic says "it's always possible that one is mistaken", it's not clear what he means by 'possible'. For if I do see (truly) that I have hands, then it is logically impossible for me to bein this very same state and be mistaken. — Fafner

Well, we both presumably agree that what is the case is not the same thing as what could be the case. If I order a cup of coffee with no cream, there is a possibility that this cup of coffee will still have cream. What actually is the case is distinct from what is possibly the case.

To put it another way, then, I think possibility is a way of expressing indeterminacy and a lack of information. This is important in the field of statistics, but in the present case, the evil demon exists as a possibility because we do not have enough information to show that direct perception is actually the case. Possibility, in this situation, is basically identical to hypotheses.

But (2) is false: if I do in fact see that I have hands, it's impossible that Descartes’ evil demon deceives me (about my hands) since (a) and (b) are logically incompatible. Thus, the skeptic cannot assume that (2) is true unless he can prove that I’m in fact being deceived by Descartes’ evil demon (which of course he cannot). And so conclusion (3) doesn't follow. — Fafner

As a retort: but this is false: if an evil demon does in fact deceive you, then it is impossible that you are actually seeing your hands. Thus, the realist cannot assume that (2b) is true, where (2b) is that it is always logically possible that you are actually seeing your hands and are not deceived.

In other words I believe your argument is question-begging. Descartes' evil demon argument is aimed precisely at this epistemological ambiguity - the experience of seeing our hands is compatible with both hypotheses, and thus it cannot be assumed that one hypothesis is right.

I'm with you on this. Somehow I get sucked into arguing without argument and I always leave disappointed and with ruffled feathers. I tend to take personal insults seriously and this, unfortunately, damages my sense of competency. This is more a problem outside this forum, which by comparison is moderate. I like to think the moderators here are dedicated to making this a safe and inclusive environment so that commanding someone to kill themselves, for example (as has happened elsewhere), is strictly impermissible. So far this hasn't happened to me here, so either this place attracts decent people, or the moderators are doing their jobs (or both). :up:

The only complaint I have is that discussion tends to devolve into petty potshots and I-told-you-so's. That is not to say I am completely innocent in this respect.

How do you not fear death? I'm going off of my experiences. From my experiences, death is scary and most people, myself included, run away from it. This makes me and all these other people weak?

Don't let that dissuade you from responding point-for-point! :grin:

No, I just get tired of bullshit pretty quickly.

Thus begins the descent into point-for-point responding. "Noooo, you're wrong!" "Nuh-uh, you're wrong!", ad nauseum. One of these days the ennui is going to kill me, rupture my spleen.

But if that is so, that is a sociocultural fact. We aren't born that way. We have to learn these things as skills. And so we have the possibility of making some collective choices. — apokrisis

No, it's not necessarily sociocultural or constructivist. The fear of death is given, just as the instinct to survive and procreate is innate. I think we can overcome our instinct to procreate. I don't think we can overcome our fear of death. Call this romantic nonsense all you want, the fact is that death makes what you call "romanticism" appropriate, it's what so often facilitates our affirmation of life and our projects. And death is a very bad thing, because it entails the complete and utter annihilation of someone. It is the impossibility of possibility.

But then once we are talking therapeutics, that is why positive psychology gets it right and pessimism so wrong. If you find yourself out of balance personally, positive psychology offers a prescription to match the problem while pessimism is just an excuse to wallow in a state of learnt helplessness. — apokrisis

Well, I don't want to go down the positive psychology route, I've already made it clear many times how it fails to promote what you think it promotes. It's not magic.

In crisis, turning towards the civilising, and away from the romantic, is the sensible way to go, just for self-preserving reasons. — apokrisis

Yet I have already explained many times how your naturalism fails to address the radical ethics I am arguing for. Naturalism makes sense in-the-world, I won't argue against you on that. It makes sense to find a balance for things. But all of this assumes that we are agents that wish to continue to exist, and see existence as good or worth promoting and continuing. Fundamentally it is within our choice to end the human race. Life is not a given, but the affirmative second-order ethic (such as your naturalism) scoots over this problem and goes straight to living.

To put it succinctly: second order ethics, such as your naturalism, asks how we should live, or when we should procreate. Radical negative ethics asks whether we should live, or if we should procreate. This is a crucial point here. I need you to respond to this point if you are going to respond to me further.

But nihilism/existentialism/pessimism/anti-natalism is just a tradition of romanticist lament. It is trying to tell the whole story based on just its one angle. — apokrisis

No, these things (which you have absurdly grouped together in a broad generalization) recognizes that individuals are free. They are thrown into existence and are beings-towards-death. I'm not talking about the collective here, which you keep smuggling in. I'm talking about a person qua person and the value of this person's life as it is this and only this person's life.

So sure, use the familiar legalistic jargon. Try to persuade by rhetorical device what can't be sustained by logical argument. — apokrisis

??? Manipulation is a standard thou-shalt-not across cultures (even if it's not justly distributed). The principles of non-harm and non-manipulation effectively form the basis of modern ethics and are grounded in the dignity of the human being via their freedom and rationality (to go the Kantian route).

We've already discussed this plenty of times. I don't buy into naturalistic ethics. Human morality, while sometimes in harmony in nature, is also often diametrically opposed to it. Morality stands apart from nature. And this is crucial for a negative ethics to make sense, as you seem to be aware considering your strict opposition to any and all things "romantic" (as you call it).

A naturalistic morality does say society has super-organismic reality. So there is a level of being that transcends each of us as individuals. But also that this is a balancing act - a fair trade. We need that society for there to be the "us" - the self-aware us - that could even care about permissions and manipulations.

So we collectively get to write that script - within ecological limits. Or if we can in fact transcend those limits - in techno-optimism fashion - then we even get to rewrite that ecological script.

It is all to play for really. You just have to understand the game. And pessimism really doesn't. As philosophy, it is quite useless as a tool of human forward-planning. — apokrisis

I think you are fallaciously inferring that since morality and our sense of self are at least partly a result of social conditioning, they must be "unreal" or cannot be taken seriously on their own. I'm no fan of this sort of relativism.

With respect to pessimism being useless ... well duh. That's part of the whole deal. For instance, I'm wondering how much this exchange is actually accomplishing.

I can see that you need to make the negative a foundational truth and the positive a passing delusion. That is what your story hinges on. And I've responded to that how many hundreds of times now? — apokrisis

Hmm? Where did you show my mistake? As far as I can tell, people need before they enjoy. People begin to die before they're even out of the womb.

So yes, it may be the case that modern life is structurally shit. Folk are reared on romantic notions of their existence. Society has become a giant economic machine, out of control of a community level living. We are too self-aware in a particular way - our heads filled with the idea of being the heroes of our own unique sagas. And society has become a consumerist, planet-destroying, rat race. — apokrisis

I agree.

So unless you actually believe in some transcendent/romantic ontology - humans as the chosen beings - then you have to view all this through the lens of naturalism. And nature has its natural structure - one based on a dynamical balancing act. — apokrisis

One argument I have presented before and here now is that humans are out of balance with nature by their very nature. We're too intelligent, too creative, too self-aware. We understand our mortality by age five, and it scares us. I do not think this is a passing phase in human evolution - humans have made extinct some excessively large amount of species in pursuit of banal goals: money, food, sex, shelter. It has been this way since the dawn of civilization and will continue to be this way. Many have analyzed this as a symptom of capitalism, or patriarchy, or religion. The truth is, I think, more banal and more simple than any of that (although those other theories contribute). Living "in tune" with nature just isn't good enough for us. Metaphorically speaking, nature kicked us out and we're on our own.

Why the anti-natalist focus on not having children? Any of us who are parents will agree that it is a choice that should be carefully considered. But it also has the potential to be hugely rewarding and affirming. — apokrisis

Yes, parenting can be rewarding for people. The emotional bond between a parent and a child can be great. There are lots of perks with parenting, especially when the rest of society encourages you to procreate.

Yet the antinatalist argument is that, despite this relationship, procreation is still an act of supreme manipulation. Someone is brought into existence without permission. Parents want a child - so they have one. They do not think about the interests of the child right now, they're already strategically planning years in advance. Sooner or later we'll have designer babies, and people will be able to literally design what their baby looks like. Does this not seem like self-indulgence to you? Yes, children need adults to take care of them - but what makes people think they are qualified to fill this role? Doesn't that seem a little egocentric and presumptuous?

Many people are good parents, but those who procreated evidently never asked themselves whether being a (biological) parent tout court is good. The fact of the matter is that, so far as I am aware, there is not a single reason to procreate that isn't selfish. I'm not saying having a child can't be a beautiful thing for someone. But from the perspective of an ethical-minded person, procreation is unnecessary and 1.) a violation of autonomy, 2.) a disregard for someone's well-being, and 3.) technically murder. A truly good parent who loves their children before they have them (and not after-the-fact), does not have them, in my view.

Life is a mixed bag because that is how nature works. That is my argument. But go on ignoring it by claiming I'm simply the mirror opposite of you - an optimist, a pollyanna, or whatever other glib counter helps to keep your own game going a little longer. — apokrisis

Okay. As I told Baden, with respect to anything else, a "mixed bag" would not be acceptable. You would want something better. You'd tell the manager of the restaurant to please send out a better meal thank-you-very-muchly, this one's over-cooked. It's edible, sure, but it tastes like crap. The manager comes back with a bottle of meat sauce instead. Is that acceptable? Would you return to this restaurant?

But when it comes to "life", suddenly a mixed bag is a-okay. Why? Do you buy into the "romantic" notions of life as some great story, an incredible journey of development, a beautiful tale? No, of course you don't, this is nonsense. Life is brutal, short and bad for many creatures and it's been this way since day one. Humans fare little better in the big scheme of things. We're given a short lifespan that can barely accommodate a single great project. A common theme in science fiction is how the lifespans of other alien species dwarf our own, making shorter-lived species like us envious of longer-lived species and deeply saddened by their own short lives. It's unfair, and not in a minor way. We don't know any other alien species so we can't make this comparison in real life, but that doesn't mean we can't imagine our lives being longer. We settle for the mediocre, the "mixed bag" as you said. We don't agree with it so much as we internalize it, adjust and make the best of an unideal situation. At every moment of time, our bodies are working to keep us alive. Sooner or later the machinery breaks down, can't be repaired, and we die.

The crucial part of my argument that I do not think you responded to was the necessity of negative value and the contingency of positive value. Positive value exists insofar as it is a reaction to the negative value that is already there and will always be there. Life is terminal struggle, that's what it is. You're given a burden (mortality) and must find a way to carve out a small part of the world just for yourself so you can postpone death for as long as possible. Life may be comfortable now, but a single toothache, migraine, or kidney stone throws it into a wreck. My argument, like I said before, is that humans are too self-aware and too decadent. What you imagine: a Rousseau-esque return back to nature's harmony, is a pipe dream. My argument is that humans (but life in general as well) is seriously fucked up from any modern ethical perspective and should not continue because of this.

The banality of reality sucks. There's no redeeming aesthetic. We're cogs in the machine of entropy, and if we dip out nothing will be lost.

...and then it becomes worth living. So, why insist that an overall enjoyable life is not worth living (or do you really see that as impossible?) Why cling to the mantra. Problematize the negatives, sure, but drop the evaluation. — Baden

Well, the point of bringing up pessimism is mostly to get people to recognize the negative structure of life, with the "ultimate" end being abstention from procreation and a milder disposition to living and interacting with others. The goal is perpetual peace.

The Fellowship of the Ring is the best of the trilogy.

The pessimist mantra may indeed be that life is not worth living, but that does not mean certain moments of life at such-and-such time and place aren't worth living. Life as a temporal continuity of being is not worth it. Life in certain instances may be entirely worth it, though. And this is a structural pessimistic way of looking at things: life, taken as a whole, is not worth living, but this is not incompatible with there being positive elements within life. Once you're given life, it's hard to get rid of it so you might as well enjoy it as much as you can, while you can.

But it is the totalizing nature of this bad- the very essence of being qua being that we need to look at straight on and not hand-wave as "depressed". — schopenhauer1

Yes, good addition. Pain is not intra-worldly. Pain is Being. To exist as Dasein means to suffer through the terminality of Being, the condemnation to die before you're even out of the womb. The key I think is to see pleasure and positive value as reactive to this fundamental negative ontology.

What those in opposition to pessimism here need to understand is that we are not trying to eliminate pleasure, or downplay its existence. We're trying to get an accurate picture of what pleasure is without changing it. Ideally, understanding structural pessimism entails understanding how the existence of pleasure does not defeat pessimism, but rather instead the nature of pleasure itself helps contribute to the pessimistic point.

It's a matter of probability and you can measure that empirically by interviewing people about their quality of life. Extrapolate for your child's circumstances with regard to the average conditions of similar contexts and so on. The majority of people in developed countries at least report being happy. Here's some data: — Baden

This is an example of what someone like Cabrera, and myself, call "second-order ethics". Probability? Estimation? Determining what is right and what is wrong based on contingent, empirical situations? To a "negative ethicist", this puts the cart before the horse. This is politicized, intra-worldly ethics that is catered to the interests of particular people who exist and not to everyone, including those who do not yet exist.

Estimating the value of a person's life before creating them is a supreme act of total manipulation. The other person has no say in the matter, whatsoever. Intra-wordly, empirical reasons are used to justify something that is ontological. For the negative ethicist, taking chances and estimating probabilities only makes sense in terms of the intra-wordly, where we have to make compromises and are forced into difficult situations. In terms of something as unnecessary as procreation, though, this sort of reasoning is entirely inappropriate. This ontological distinction is crucial to understand, in my opinion, if you are to understand what the structural pessimist is saying.

If you agree with what seems a truism that it's better to feel good than to feel bad then it's better to have a positive attitude towards something (all other things being equal) than a negative one. The only case where a negative attitude trumps a positive one is in the case of prudence where it's necessary to prepare oneself for a likely negative event. I don't see philosophical pessimism as having that practical value for the most part. I'd only concede that it may be cathartic for certain personality types. Do you think it does have a practical value and/or do you deny it's better to feel good (about things) than to feel bad (about things) all else being equal? — Baden

I generally don't see any logical connection between pessimism and specific mental states. Sure, in the real world, certain personality types are drawn to certain ways of thinking. That doesn't disprove them, it only makes debating an uphill effort. Pessimism isn't about "feeling" bad about life. How the negative structure of life affects you is an entirely different question than whether or not life has a negative structure. The structural pessimistic point, then, is that the value of life is at least in some sense independent of an individual's evaluation of their life. This is similar to psychiatry, which sees the actual state of a person as at least somewhat different than what the patient believes their state to be (a helpful distinction when dealing with things like schizophrenia, where the person believes their delusions are real - similarly, the pessimist has in their repetoire a plenitude of psychological studies attesting to humanity's capability for self-deception).

One of the things I'm interested in is whether or not a "positive" or "affirmative" perspective on life is compatible with a pessimistic view of the world. I think it can be, at least in some forms. That pessimism is consistently misinterpreted as a view prescribing we all be depressed and mopey and suicidal is something I'm getting more and more annoyed with. I don't think it's the pessimismi that people are so bent out of shape about, it's the consequences of accepting pessimism that make people freak out like apo.

My response was more focused on apo specifically, but to answer your query:

Put it another way, it's valid to generalize outwards from your own experience with regard to structural/systemic elements of life that are obviously shared, such as pain, boredom etc. But it's not valid to generalize outwards with regard to your attitude to these structural elements, and your attitude is an intrinsic part of the equation with regard to what effect these elements have on you, and therefore your overall quality of life. — Baden

How do you feel about this being used as an argument for antinatalism? That you find life "good" does not mean your children will find life "good", and it's not valid to generalize outward with regard to your personal attitude to these structural elements in life and assume your perspective is more valid than theirs.

I think you would disagree with this. I think you would say that your position is not only yours but also more or less "objective". I recognize that personal bias and all that can influence evaluations like these. I'm not willing to submit that this makes these evaluations entirely subjective. That's what "attitude" here means, the evaluation of a state of affairs as good or bad and subsequently adopting an appropriate orientation to the world.

What doesn't make sense to the pessimist is why someone would have a positive attitude to the world and life in general. It doesn't make sense for life to be filled with suffering, boredom, decay, etc etc and yet think life is good. Separating the two just seems to me to be an ad hoc violation of common sense. You wouldn't separate them for any ordinary intra-worldly event that had the same characteristics (say, a bad party with no food, terrible people and poor entertainment), but for some reason this separation is pulled out in defense of life. Why? Why does life get this preferential treatment?

But anyway, here is my absolutely killer argument. :grin:

Pessimists are selective and strategic in their attack on life. What they cannot attack, they criticise optimists for over-valuing. Or they attempt to psychoanalyze optimists as being "elated" or "deluded", because the existence of the optimist is incompatible with their negative narrative and must be "explained away" via some evanescent category. If optimism did not hold at least some element of truth, it would have been demolished from the get-go. Optimism would be definitively shown to be incorrect, not simply asserted to be incorrect. — apokrisis

You missed the point of my exposition by a full mile and a half. I'm tired of not being taken seriously, having my entire argumentative essay reduced to a single paragraph and then straw-manned, and then mocked for putting forward my honest thoughts on the matter. It's clear to me that you especially do not take this seriously and would rather screw around than provide any formal response.

When taking the general approach, what i consider to be a god in general refers to the set of axioms a person holds to be true enough to act upon. Since all people have a set of axioms they act upon, everyone has a god they serve. Of course this set can change over time by adopting new axioms, or letting go of old axioms. So in that regard, I don't believe atheists exist, the ones that call themselve atheist merely refuse to call their belief in their set of axioms a god. — Tomseltje

Interesting, I like this sentiment. The fervor that people can have defending their views can only be described as fanatical and zealous. Calling people's axioms "gods" is analogical, I think, and not appropriate as a literal interpretation, though.

It seems darthbarracuda is more interested in the existence of a more specific god. I'm not sure where he got the 'creator of the cosmos' part from. Since I don't think this was a main concern of people living over 2000 years ago.
In my opinion genisis 1 isn't referring to the the cosmos when it states "in the beginning". I prefer to read it like "in the beginning of human conciousness" rather than 'In the beginning of the cosmos". It makes alot more sense to me that way. — Tomseltje

The Abrahamic god is the one in the back of the minds of philosophers of religion. But I want to focus on the philosophical God, and not a particular god of a pastoral community that commands his followers to cut their penises and sacrifice their children. Philosophical theism, subtracting personality and involvement with the world, is deism. Clockwork theism, the capstone that unifies and grounds the onto-theological reality.

Glad others enjoy good music! :grin: :grimace:

One of my favorite songs:



"Funeral planet, dead black asteroid
Mausoleum, this world is a tomb
Human zombies, staring blank faces
No reason to live, dead in the womb
Death shroud existence, slave for a pittance
Condemned to die before I could breathe
Millions are screaming, the dead are still living
This Earth has died yet no one has seen

Funeralopolis!

I don't care, this world means nothing
Life has no meaning, my feelings are numb
Faceless masses filed like gravestones
Sacrificed for the glory of one!
Funerary cities, flesh press factories
Corporate maggots feed on the carrion
Funeralopolis, grey morgue apocalypse
Black clouds form to block out the sun"

Dramatic, sure, but accurate.

You have built yourself a rationale. It may have some kind of truth for you. You may just be very unlucky and stuck in a basically depressed state. But philosophically, you need to deal with the fact that your story lacks the kind of naturalism that understands life to be a mixed bag. And that is generally all right. — apokrisis

A mixed bag? Generally all right? Which one is it?

The question the structural pessimist asks if the value of being as such. Not the value of living now that we are here, or what could be done to make such an existence valuable. We want to know whether simply being is good or not. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle raises a similar question when he asks what the very function of being-a-man is and not specific functions a person can later assume (carpenter, philosopher, soldier, etc). This is the structural way of looking at things, an example of the ontological distinction. There is a being, and then there is the being's Being. In this case, we want to know what the value of this Being is, i.e. what the value is of a person's existence qua their very existence, and not in terms of what society they live in and what roles they play in this.

Optimists are selective and strategic in their defense of life. What they cannot defend, they blame pessimists for over-reacting to. Or they attempt to psychoanalyze pessimists as being "depressed" or "schizoid", because the existence of the pessimist is incompatible with the affirmative narrative and must be "explained away" via some evanescent category. If pessimism did not hold at least some element of truth, it would have been demolished from the get-go. Pessimism would be definitively shown to be incorrect, not simply asserted to be incorrect. Yet a look at history shows a pattern of thinking that correlates to the structural pessimist's point - life is, at its core, bad. I'm even willing to say you cannot truly understand the religious mind, or understand the essence of religion unless you at least accept that there is some truth to the proposition that life is suffering. Nor can you understand human relationships, which so often are based on sharing a burden. I do not doubt you understand either, which makes me believe you are not recognizing that you do, i.e. you have a cognitive bias (re: Pollyanna principle of rose-tinted glasses)

Instead of a mixed bag, though, I would say a more accurate picture is that you cannot have any good without the bad. The good is optional, the bad is required. You already recognize this when you say life is "generally" good - i.e. despite the fact of all the evils, life is still "worth it". But, I will maintain, when considering the life of a person, as a person, the one thing you can be absolutely sure of is that they will die. There are other things you can be sure about as well (beyond reasonable doubt):

• That the person will die (already mentioned)
• That the person will need before they enjoy
• That the person will have to wait more than anything else
• That the person must learn through mistakes
• That the person will feel pain, and at least sometimes extreme pain (consider a child breaking their arm, pulling their baby teeth, falling off their bike and smacking their head, getting dumped by someone; traumatic and intense for the child, a spectacle for the adults who treat the child as a child and thus ignore them)
• That the person will be raised by people they did not choose to be raised by
• That the person will make others suffer, even if it is unintentional
• That the person will have to defend their existence if they wish to continue to live (related to previous)
• That the person will make serious mistakes that jeopardize their ideal dreams and thus must "settle" with the below-expectation, the sub-par, the mediocre. Nobody excells in everything, nobody achieves their greatest dreams in entirety.
• That the person must have their limits violated in order to know their limits
• That the person will experience the death of their parents and/or loved ones
• That the person will be assimilated into a politicized structure that perversely attempts to "fairly" distribute violence in accordance with strategic goals of particular people
• That the person will feel despair at points in their life, and contemplate suicide/their own mortality, thus every person is a potential suicide (Cioran: life is a state of non-suicide)
• That the person is a "puppet" that lacks free will and a substantial ego that is immortal (an existential horror)

Death is death. I'm going to die just like 90 billion people and trillions of other organisms have before. I don't have any beliefs in an afterlife, so I'm pretty sure I'll just cease to exist, I'm 66 and Clarks don't generally live past 75. So, it's coming pretty soon. I can feel it coming closer. After many years of ignoring it, I can't really do that anymore. So? No big deal. That's how it works. It's not as if it's not fair or something. I don't really want to die. I'm having a pretty good time.

What' your point? Why would that change anything? — T Clark

It's great you are having a good time and continue to find enjoyment in living. You, like most everyone else, do not want to die. That's what so tragic - whatever life gives us that dazzles our minds, it eventually takes away. Everything is impermanent, flux, and thus ultimately nothing. We come from nothing and go back to nothing, and nothing happens and nothing changes. Man cannot live, he cannot think, Sub specie aeternitatis. He must limit his mind - the healthy mind is one that is not aware of its incoming doom, and thus not crippled by despair.

It's funny. Getting weaker. Healing more slowly. Not being able to do things you used to be able to is really interesting. You learn important things about yourself. If you've spent your life ignoring your body, as I have, you're forced to become more self-aware. It is so satisfying to have been around long enough that when something happens you don't get all excited like other people do because you've seen it twice before. It's like you can see into the future. You know how things play out. It's fun. — T Clark

Yes, I imagine that is one of the pleasures of aging - a better sense of perspective. There is nothing new under the sun. The cycle continues: birth, suffering, death. It's sad, but the fact that it's unnecessary makes it absurd.

The Platonistic idea is that universals, or eidos (ideas) are the "most real" things that are. All material, concrete phenomena are but mere shadows, caricatures of the ideal Forms. This is a thoroughly idealistic metaphysical theory.

A more pragmatic and realist theory comes from Aristotle, and later Aquinas, with the theory of concrete universals and the doctrine of substantial being. Substances now belong to natural kinds. Universals exist, but only insofar as they are instantiated.

I now cannot fathom how something like nominalism makes sense, or why we might be motivated to adopt such a stringent denial of abstracta. I also suspect nominalism played a hand in the development of the mind-body dualism, and later (eliminative) materialism. Under nominalism, abstract entities are but "thoughts" that have no correlate to anything. They exist in the mind, and only in the mind.

Yet patterns, regularity, multiple realizability, repetition ... these are the basis of reality, I think. But difference, change, randomness, these are also the basis of reality, I think. Similarity cannot exist without difference, since similarity still implies a mis-match, or lack of identity. But difference cannot exist without similarity, either: the fact that we can compare two+ things means there is something about the two+ things that make them capable of being analyzed in this way.

So as it stands, I think universals absolutely must exist (although I have not committed to either Platonism or Aristotelianism, or something else). With respect to things like "facts", "states of affairs", "propositions", the nominalist may have something to offer. But in general, it does seem as though abstract entities are the "ideal", while concrete entities are the "real". Form-matter...Aristotle?

Damn, this thread got resurrected. I'll get around to responding.

Evolutionary Biology (Third Edition), by Douglas J. Futuyma. Got it cheap and used, good deal.

Thanks for the recommendation, .

I don't "assume" existing is good, I experience it as good. The fact that you don't says something about you, not about existence. You don't find life enjoyable or satisfying, therefore there must be something wrong with life rather than there being something wrong with you. — T Clark

This is a straw man of philosophical pessimism, I think. (Philosophical) pessimism does not claim someone cannot feel good at such-and-such time and place. Schop1, myself and others have consistently focused on the structural features of life that are negative. Nowhere have we argued that existence is bad because we don't like it at such-and-such time and place. What we have argued for is the idea that the "negative" components of existence are in some way more fundamental than the "positive" components of existence.

To re-orient the discussion, then, in order to illuminate this nuance: how do you feel about death? A philosophical pessimistic understanding of death is that it is immanent to life. You will find this idea widespread, that death is written in the contract of life, that life just simply is death. Often people will say death is an evil, but it's not here yet so it's not worth worrying about; or they will say that death, despite being an evil, somehow gives life "meaning". Generally, death is seen as "outside" of life, a "threat" to life, something that "happens" on a particular date and a particular place. But this is superficial - life entails death, life is the process of dying, life is the perpetual decline of health.

Nobody is going to deny that health is good. Yet life is the decline of health. Sooner or later you lose it, no matter how hard you try to hold on to it. Life kills us all, and oftentimes painfully. This is an example of the structural negativity of life. Other examples include our moral impediment, the onerous burden of need and desire, the transitory nature of pleasure, etc. The philosophical pessimistic perspective is that life, stripped of any contingencies (where and when you were born, what opportunities you have, personal traits, etc) is at-its-core negative. Positive things are wholly intra-worldly and arise as a reaction to the structural negativity of life. An analogy: life is an over-cooked piece of meat, and you only slather on so much sauce because you need to mask the poor quality of your meal. Pleasure, positive experiences, these are all additions to life that are contingent and impermanent.

^ changed my life, Toto is love :heart:

That's a good analogy, haha! :cool:

I see life as a continual shifting of the weight from one "arm" to another. Positive experiences happen when this weight is temporarily lifted - for instance, when Sisyphus reaches the top of the mountain, and the boulder slips and falls back down and he is temporarily relieved of its burden. In these brief moments, we catch a glimpse of something beyond our own existence. We wonder what it's "all about". We feel sad, but also can feel a sense of companionship when we look around and see everyone else pushing their own boulders, straining under the weight. Each time up the mountain, the boulder gets a little bit bigger and a little more difficult to bear. Ethics consists in sharing the weight of someone else's boulder, shifting your own burden around to make room for theirs.

Occasionally, someone is crushed by their boulder; they are thrown off the face of the mountain and vanish, never to be seen again. This happens to everyone, eventually. Sooner or later we slip up and the boulder comes crashing down, and that's the end of that. Recognizing the banality and absurdity of our condition makes positive experiences that much more precious. It's ironic, I think: declaring life to be good makes its pleasures that much more ordinary.

If both of you are reasonable and tolerant, you will go your separate ways and not think too poorly of the other person. Different premises entail different conclusions. I'm free to choose which premises I find most appropriate, and so are you, and there's nothing I can do to change your mind unless you agree to play by the rules of discourse that I agree to play by. All of our beliefs stem from an inner feeling of conviction that some particular thing is the way it seems to be, and the way things seem to be can vary wildly between people.

One thing that might prove helpful to remember is that people generally don't know why they do things. They contrive reasons after the fact, but fundamentally it is the passions that run the show. This explains why Nietzsche saw philosophy as auto-biography, for the passions determine the presuppositions which determine the conclusions. It's perspectivism - philosophy emerges from a person as a flower does from its stem. It's very much so a growth - almost like an organ - and sometimes it grows cancerous and it has to be cut off.

Is one side of the argument right or neither? Can both be equally rational and informed? — Andrew4Handel

I think it has less to do with who is right and who is wrong and more to do with who has the better rhetorical skills, who intimidates more, who has the capacity to change minds with symbols, who can dazzle the mind, etc. Pure, unadulterated truth is nowhere to be found.

More generally, what good can be said about Hegel? — Ansiktsburk

Not much, at least according to Schopenhauer:

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I think the mark of an intellectual is to be well-acquainted with your own ignorance, and to always be striving to deepen one's understanding. A "true" intellectual cares little about their reputation as an intellectual, and views inquiry as open-ended, anarchistic and collaboratory. The solitary thinker is as impotent as they are arrogant.

The Departed: 7/10, going off my memory of when I watched it. An exciting thriller with an interesting twist at the end. The soundtrack is very enjoyable to listen to on its own.

Philosophizing, we can now say, is extra-ordinary questioning about the extra-ordinary.

[...]

In Greek, "away over something", "over beyond," is meta. Philosophical questioning about beings as such is meta-ta-phusika; it questions on beyond beings, it is metaphysics. — Martin Heidegger

-Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics

"9-11, I'd like to report an incident."

"What is it?"

"Someone on the internet made a broad, general assertion and failed to justify their metaphysical assumptions!"

:brow:

So, philosophy is "highly individualistic" except in cases when you decide someone is "purify it"? Promoting deep immersion into subjectivity then rejecting forms you disagree with is a contradiction. — Jeremiah

You might as well have said that promoting individualism entails precluding rational argumentation. Trying to "purify" philosophy by filtering out anything that does not pass an idiosyncratic criterion is counter-productive to the individualistic ethic I am advocating.

Just because I advocate individualism doesn't mean I can't criticize individual perspectives that threaten this individualism. My view is that philosophy just is individualistic in virtue of its essence, including philosophies that attempt to impose a systematic order upon it. In fact, I am not "advocating" for individualism in philosophy so much as I believe I am pointing out the reality of philosophical discussion. Theory and abstractions aside, philosophy is an individualistic enterprise, whether we like it or not. One cannot isolate a philosophical question by itself; the particular always brings along the universal. Philosophy is so diverse and so complicated that it is virtually impossible to impose any form of order or system that will not provoke or silence others.

I think, then, that it is true to say that philosophy never was, is or will be one single determinant thing. It means different things to different people with different values who live in different places at different times, speaking different languages and having different experiences. I believe this is true, and that this entails a perspectival interpretation of philosophy. It is a mild form of relativism/agnosticism that some may label as (methodologically) pessimistic: disagreement is inherent, opinions will continue to clash and there is no feasible way of overcoming this epistemological nausea. The Dream of Reason is a sham and got a lot of people killed. Of course, we still argue for things with passion and conviction, but it's naive to think there is any significant efficacy to this. That's how philosophy works - it doesn't.

Stop the meta-narratives, stop the totalizing schemata, stop the imperialism of rationalism. All you are doing is silencing voices that are trying to be heard.

Actual philosophy? No True Scotsman? A primitive descent into tribalism?

Philosophy is philosophy! Stop trying to purify it!

Well, your reply came across as disagreement, and I felt it characterized my position unfaithfully. I said philosophy is highly individualistic and inherently puts the questioner in question, and because of this individuality, attempts to systematize philosophy will fail. We don't know what good philosophy looks like, other than that is contains elements that are commonly found in other species of things we consider good as well. In fact we don't even have a common consensus as to what philosophy is. How can we agree on what good philosophy is when we can't even agree what philosophy tout court is?

None of this means we should accredit the same respect to charlatans as we do scientists, or forgo the use of precision and coherency. All I am saying is that asking what good philosophy is, is akin to Socrates demanding the essence of justice or virtue. We can obviously point to particular instances of good philosophy. But "good philosophy" in the abstract is an impossible concept to flesh out. It might even be malformed.

Philosophy is philosophy. It's up to the individual to determine whether it's any good. I don't think I am "giving up" so much as I am recognizing the impossibility of systematizing something as diverse as philosophy. I'm being historical. One person's good philosophy is another person's shit philosophy. I am espousing a mild form of relativism, or rather, agnosticism. If we agree on something, great. If we disagree on something and can't resolve our disagreement, then we go our own ways and stick to our perspectives. That is what has happened and what will continue to happen. That's how philosophy works.

Oh, man, you got me cornered. Don't shoot! :yikes:

Like I said, there isn't a single model for this. Bad philosophy is obviously going to include anything that is factually incorrect, clearly logically invalid or poorly presented without the proper theoretical virtues like the principle of charity.

We are never going to arrive at a satisfactory definition of what good philosophy is, because philosophy is highly individualistic. We can't even agree on what "philosophy" is - you might even disagree that it's individualistic, although it would kinda prove my point.