Some animals eat plants, some animals eat other animals. There is nothing superior or inferior about either group, and choosing to be a plant eating animal isn't more moral than being a meat eating animal. — Bitter Crank

So says an animal who has survived by eating other animals. What might the prey think, though?

so what is Hume's point? — Agustino

Hume's point seems to be that talk of cosmic harmony and theistic benevolence only comforts those who aren't suffering. As such, theodicies fail to provide anything useful for those in great pain. The implication seems to be that those who continue to assert the goodness of the whole, despite its implausibility from the perspective of those most acquainted with evil, must not truly understand what suffering or moral injustice is like.

Basically it seems as though Hume, being Hume, is pointing out philosophers' bullshit, and accusing them of not working with the real world. Rather akin to Voltaire's parody of Leibniz. Having suffered greatly puts things into a perspective that has not been entertained by those who wish to assert the overall goodness of the whole. It might be like a politician telling a Vietnam war veteran that the war was worth it. Bullshit.

Philosophy is thinking that puts the thinker into question. It is not merely an intellectual endeavor but an ethical one as well - a person must be responsible for holding true and justified beliefs. It is not acceptable to be a bumbling fool, believing only what other people tell you to without thinking about it yourself.

As far as "methodology" is concerned, when thinking philosophically, one seems to tend to "jump" to conclusions, and then go back and see if this leap was justified. Something in the pre-theoretical reality "breaks", and you make a connection, a brief moment of clarity. It is a rational "what if...?" I think it's an ethical duty for us to continue to ask these hypotheticals and question what seems to be indubitable.

If the act does not harm or affect anyone, and no one knows that it has been committed, and will never find out, how harmful can it be? If it isn't harmful, can it be immoral? — Bitter Crank

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to bear witness, does is make a sound? Does it even fall at all?

Often a contributing aspect of an act's morality is precisely whether or not another person(s) is aware of the act. Being aware of the act makes it available for legal prosecution. But I don't think the legal system exhausts the scope of morality.

On Suicide - A Discourse on Voluntary Death by Jean Amery.

Have been intrigued by Amery for a while now. He writes gently and without an air of pomposity, which I thoroughly appreciate. From the introduction:

"The essays of On Suicide explore the subject in a rambling, frankly subjective, and openly hesitant effort to provide illumination, their aim being "not to make a bold description of the act," as Amery writes, "but rather to strive for a gentle and cautious approach to it."

[...]

Amery's style of argument has been described by Lothar Baier as a "doubting generosity" that seeks to avoid the attitude of one who is convinced he must be right.

[...]

These characteristics [of Mann and Bernhard] mark Amery's style and method: the 'gentle posture,' the language of doubt and skepticism without relativism, the inclusion of emotion in thinking, the urge to pursue problems outside of their social existence, and the attempt to be as honest as possible."

We are social creatures and so the potential has to be socially constructed. It has to come from us collectively and pragmatically. — apokrisis

I agree that it's not just from ourselves by ourselves and that potential is constructed socially. Even the proud hermit is only proud and only a hermit in relation to the rest of the so-called rabble. Even our selves, as Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and now cognitive science shows, find its origins in the social setting, a reflection off of other apparent selves.

What I mean to say is that in certain circumstances - as Heidegger has shown - a person themselves is struck by the fact that they are an individual and have the freedom to choose within the horizon of our mortality. Angst comes with the understanding of the "Nothing", where there is no significance and no given purpose - and Heidegger advises that we pull-ourselves-up-from-our-bootstraps, so to speak, take charge of our lives, and live authentically as purpose-driven choosers within a society of other purpose-driven choosers.

The application of one's will to one's world is, fundamentally and originatively, a trauma. The angst comes when dasein "forgets" (obscures) mortality and the Nothing but is then suddenly and violently confronted with it unaware. Each subsequent act of "authenticity" comes from a feeling of revulsion to the Nothing. This is clearly and convincingly stated in the work of the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, who argued that human culture is rooted in the fear of death. Culture, as Becker argues, is a "cult of heroism" in which demigod protagonists defeat death. The fear of death is also a primary motivator for procreation, as offspring are the best alternative to actual immortality.

What Schop1 here seems to be getting at here, in my opinion, is that same angst, that same Nothing. The "world" we live in is filled with different significations for tool-using, jouissance, and other pre-theoretical modes. But without dasein (for now, us), there is no signification. A tool no longer has a purpose and loses its tool identity. Not just nuts and bolts but in the big scheme of things. This lack of purpose lies in the background of our purpose-driven lives. Levinas alludes to something similar with the il y a - the "there is" - sometimes felt clearly while outside at night, the understanding that "there is" without any discernible thing seeming to be. A probing, content-less awareness. As of now, to describe it I would say it's something like feeling left-out of something. Like your friends had a great time and didn't invite you. The feeling of dread that you are not important and have been forgotten. Or perhaps even mocked.

Coincidentally, just after posting I came across a picture that reveals the il y a to me:


If we are to act, we must act as if we have the strength of gods - we must be gods, or rather, we must be possessed by gods and their beauty. We own the world, we manipulate and enjoy it. And when we can't own the world, when we can't enjoy it and when the world actually seems to be manipulating us, we look beyond the world for help. Prayer is supplication.

Schop1's thread might be interpreted as a prayer of sorts. A theological plea to be remembered and cared for and not left alone to fend for themselves. Of course, Schop1 doesn't believe in God as far as I am aware, and isn't insomuch praying but demanding we - secular society, progress, science, the new gods - offer a new eschatology, a new teleology. And one that is not only personally satisfying but also morally appropriate, so it must also be a secular theodicy.

You are still speaking as if it can only - Romantically - come from within each of us in a personal and individual fashion. But this is about us as social creatures and what that means in terms of flourishing. — apokrisis

The denial that we have individuality is, in my opinion, a way of obscuring mortality and our freedom. It's inauthentic and doesn't solve the problem as much as it simply dismisses it.

Respectfully, the idea of "human potential" is so tainted with economic ideology that there's hardly any way of conceiving of what human potential might actually be independent of it.

It seems to me that there is such a thing as a "waste of potential" - a person, or a group of people, might be able to do something we consider great, but for some reason or another fail to. At any rate this potential seems to inherently depend on contingent circumstances, including a person or a group of people thinking there is some worth to what they are doing, i.e. their world has significance. Which is not to say it's all pointless. If you've ever been part of a group with a common goal, the world has immense significance. Being part of the crew for a theatrical production is a good example, since Camus has already been mentioned in this thread. But it seems to me that the potential is contingent upon the person choosing a project or goal.

So it seems to me that the question is not that human potential is a spook or whatever, but that there isn't any transcendent, ultimate potential to be fulfilled when a person chooses a project that gives them potential. It is as if the potential comes from nowhere but our own will, a deus ex nihilo.

Actually, the way you approach this seems to be a rather modern way of looking at things: God must be a "thing", existing in the "real world", which typically is the physical world of space-time. God is quantitatively different from everything else in that he exists as a limitless and eternal being - but still as a being within Being. God may be infinite in time and space, but he still is within time and space. God is of the same qualitative order as the rest of the world.

A different take on God, whether that be an ancient, Scholastic or post-modern view (if we are limiting ourselves to Western philosophy) would say that God exists but not as something that can be referred to using exact and precise propositions. God is transcendent upon Being, the ground for existence that can only be analogically described as being "outside" of existence. From this perspective, God can hardly be described in any "scientific" sort of way, as if God were qualitatively similar to concrete objects.

This is partly an explanation and justification for the "mystery" surrounding divinity. If God cannot be described using precise propositional language, but rather can only be grasped negatively and analogically (or through revelation), then there will always be a gap between human reason and God. (This may help bolster religion's status but simultaneously throws into doubt the legitimacy of dogmatic, organized religion - if the divine is mysterious, and revelation personal, what could be right about proselytizing?)

Please explain how I am committing the fallacy of begging the question? I fail to see it. — NKBJ

When you say:

But since I presuppose one reality, one universe, I'll stick to all things that are in existence are "natural" in the sense that they obey the laws of nature. — NKBJ

The (serious) arguments for supernatural "entities" call this into question. Of course anything and everything is natural if you already assume everything that exists must obey the "laws of nature" (whatever those actually are).

Supernatural, transcendent things are not bound by these "laws" precisely because they are transcendent. You seem to be getting stuck with the idea that supernatural things are still immanent in the "physical", "natural" world. They're not, at least not the serious ones. Serious attempts at demonstrating the existence of a supernatural being (such as God) basically always aim to show that God is transcendent upon the immanent material reality. Or at least is not bound by the so-called "laws of nature".

Everything that exists is natural. — NKBJ

But that's just question-begging. The whole point of supernatural hypotheses is to explain something about the world that seemingly cannot be explained through a naturalistic theory.

Typically the more serious and respectable philosophical theories about the supernatural are not about ghosts, unicorns, or any childhood fantasy but rather something totally and wholly other-than-Being. Something above-and-beyond the normal, physical, "natural" state of affairs. A transcendence beyond the immanent reality we live in.

The point of of this thought experiment is to determine whether or not positive and negative feelings such as pain and pleasure are essential in our conception of morality. — Purple Pond

According to (my understanding of) Kant, no: morality is the manifestation of a categorical imperative that is intellectually grasped by the rational faculties of human beings, and is grounded on their innate "dignity". An act cannot be morally "pure" (according to [...] Kant) unless it is done entirely out of a sense of duty (a slightly different view, that an act cannot be moral tout court unless it is done purely out of a sense of duty, is often misattributed to Kant).

Of course, if some beings lacked the capacity to "feel", the content of morality would be different with respect to these beings. This is perhaps one avenue for explaining why God (if "he" exists), "allows" gratuitous suffering. If God is not a "being", nor an agent that can feel as we do, then it may be inappropriate to expect him and human morality to coincide perfectly.

I'm not personally fully invested in Kantian ethics. Instead I think ethics (a system of prescriptive imperatives) derives from the ethical (the asymmetrical encounter between the self and the transcendent Other). This ethical encounters, as Levinas envisions it, is fundamentally a dramatic nausea of shame and responsibility. So while beings who do not feel may have ethics, they would not have the ethical, which is where the real essence of morality lies. Or so I think.

Recently finished:

A Short History of Atheism by Gavin Hyman (very good, recommended).

Ethical Intuitionism by Michael Huemer

The Birth and Death of Meaning by Ernest Becker (re-read).

Currently reading:

The Body in Pain - The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry

Dune by Frank Herbert (re-read).

God Without Being by Jean-Luc Marion

Anxious to begin reading:

The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump

Emmanuel Levinas - The Genealogy of Ethics by John Llewelyn

The Winds of Winter by George R. R. Martin (come on, man, finish the book!)

Just because we can't put in words the "essence" of a male or female doesn't mean there aren't specific characteristics that the constitute them. — Purple Pond

But the fact that we find it difficult to express the essence of many things, sex and gender included, can also mean that there are not specific, essential features of these things. Rather they may be labels applied to sets whose elements have a family resemblance that is not necessarily transitive to each other.

Because of this, these labels are inherently vague. There will always be ambiguities and exceptions to the general "rule of thumb" - as you said, there are some women who cannot give birth. There are also men who lack a penis. What is the defining feature? Is it the biological organs? Is it the behavior? Is it the genetic chromosomes? Is it the appearance?

I think it is important to also remember that many of these labels are historical. What defines "womanhood" comes from the previous usage of the word. Sometimes these labels are very useful - for instance, I think the labels "male" and "female" are useful in medicine, psychology and sociology. The ethical question seems to be whether the inevitable marginalization of the ambiguity and exception is justified by the utility of these labels. I'm not sure what the answer is, if there is a satisfactory answer. Sometimes I think this issue will never be resolved because there is no way to resolve it. Hence why people who choose to support one side of the issue tend to shout a lot.

Again, pain on the Platonic account would be a privation of some good thing, like health. Pain is the lack of a good that otherwise would exist. — Thorongil

Yeah, the privation theory, also prevalent in Scholastic doctrines of good and evil. With respect to that, then:

I do not understand how we are to identify being with goodness with Being, yet acknowledge the existence of evil. If goodness is lacking somewhere, what is there?

I also do not understand what Being actually amounts to. I am sure you know this much about Heidegger to see that the notion of Being is ambiguous, vague, and difficult to communicate.

Finally, I remain unconvinced that something such as extreme agony is "merely" a privation of being. In fact I would more inclined to say that agony is an excess of being. We cannot escape it, it keeps us locked in consciousness, trapped and overwhelmed. The privation theory seems to me to downplay the significance, the positive existence, of unconditional evils like torturous pain.

But doesn't that shift the "evil" to whatever it is that makes escape impossible. So it is not the pain as such. It is the torturer - and the degree to which you would assign moral agency to that entity. — apokrisis

Sure, and I've mentioned before elsewhere that sometimes the word "evil" is used only as a description of a person's character or actions, and sometimes as something broader that includes things we otherwise would call "bad". That the torturer is evil depends on the fact that they inflict something on the victim that is bad for them - unimaginable pain.

Can we do something about Holocausts and antelope being hunted for sport? Of course. So is the evil an irredeemable aspect of existence itself? You are not showing that. — apokrisis

No, we can't do anything about the Holocaust (because it already happened), and there's probably no way of eliminating poaching and hunting either. Even if we did, there would still be all the times in the past where animals were murdered for fun by humans.

This is what I'm complaining about. You don't seem prepared to make a proper argument. You talk about the effect as if it has no cause - no reasons. You attempt to close down a proper discussion by calling the pain itself an irredeemable evil. And then from that faulty premise, you will draw the familiar anti-natalist truths. — apokrisis

There are many cases in which people go through some horribly traumatic experience and live to tell the tale. Perhaps they've changed and grown, became more mature and compassionate. But they still insist that they would never go through such an experience again. There are some experiences of physical (or emotional, "mental" etc) pain that are just so awful that nothing can redeem them in the eyes of the person themselves. They survived to tell the tale, but wish they never had to go through the experience in the first place.

As I said before I'm focusing mostly on torturous physical pain because I felt it was the most obvious candidate for an "irredeemable" bad / evil. But there's others as well, which I've mentioned: being wrongly accused, one's property being stolen and not returned, being deprived of deserved recognition, being ridiculed without a chance to defend oneself, etc. All of these go down in time and are part of the bedrock of history. There are all these loose ends, unfinished projects, un-redeemed evils. The "healthy" way of approaching this is to habitually look to the future for salvation - each day is a new journey towards salvation as we hope tomorrow will somehow be different than today (and redeem all that has gone wrong in the past - I suspect this contributes to the decision of many to have children). Psychologically "healthy" people must have the capacity to forget what has happened, otherwise the future would have no charm.

Prima facie? Sure, but I'm not willing to go as far as to say that they are unredeemable. How could one possibly know that? — Thorongil

The point of it being prima facie is that it initially appears to be unredeemable. The epistemological approach I take to a lot of philosophical things is that unless we have a good reason not to, we should take things at face value (phenomenal conservatism). I also mentioned that the prima facie recognition that torturous physical pain is, in fact, irredeemable, is an essential contribution to the motivation we have to prevent or eliminate it. If we honestly did believe God, say, would "make everything right", we might have far less motivation to do anything about torturous pain because the deity would redeem it in the end.

Good in what sense? I'm sure you're aware of the long Platonic tradition that equates being with goodness, so that inasmuch as something merely exists, it is good. — Thorongil

I was under the impression that the Platonic notion of the good was that it transcends Being, that what exists are mere imitations, or copies, of the perfect Forms. The transcendence of the Good is also a common notion in phenomenology, viz. Levinas' excendance, or escape from Being.

If we equate Being with Goodness then, in my opinion, we're taking on a picture of Goodness that is something other than a moral Goodness. How am I do understand the existence of torturous pain as a "good" thing, when by all accounts it seems to me to be a purely bad thing?

Sure, I don't blame the lion for eating the gazelle, it's only in its programming and it would starve if it didn't. I'm disapproving of "Life" as a general category of being. Life operates in a way that, if it were a human, you probably wouldn't have a problem with calling it barbaric.

What goes on in the animal kingdom isn't barbaric -- it is life. — Bitter Crank

Why can't life itself be barbaric?

I agree that not all pain and "suffering" is bad. You climb a mountain and endure the struggle to get to the vista, you grind in university for that little piece of paper, etc etc.

But I made sure to label the pain I am concerned with as "torturous" pain. Irredeemable pain, the likes of which are not beneficial in any way and cannot be said to be for a greater purpose. I find it impossible to not see something like, say, the Holocaust, or an antelope being hunted for sport, as anything but evil.

One positive conclusion would be to focus more on preventing this kind of stuff from happening. But really I think on the personal level it comes down to what psychological "type" you are, which influences your ability to push certain things out of your awareness. I think if most people were aware of how much torturous suffering there has been, is and will be and the prima facie impossibility of theodicy, the consequences would be quite drastic.

I'm reminded of Cioran's quote from On the Heights of Despair: "Bring every man to the agony of life's last moments by whip, fire, or injections, and through terrible torture he will undergo the great purification afforded by a vision of death. Then free him and let him run in a fright until he falls exhausted. I warrant you that the effect is incomparably greater than any obtained through normal means. If I could, I would drive the entire world to agony to achieve a radical purification of life; I would set a fire burning insidiously at the roots of life, not to destroy them but to give them a new and different sap, a new heat. The fire I would set to the world would not bring ruin but cosmic transfiguration. In this way life would adjust to higher temperatures and would cease to be an environment propitious to mediocrity. And maybe in this dream, death too would cease to be immanent in life."

We need not subjugate people to the horror of torturous pain but merely make them acutely aware of its existence elsewhere to alter the perspectives people have on life and the world in general. I think a lot of people already have these perspectives but keep them in check.

It looks like you are saying that the goods of life are only had at the expense of the possibility of something very bad. Is that the main idea? I know that sounds simplistic, but that's all I can get when I put the main points together. But maybe I am not getting the idea of conditional goods and absolute bads here. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, that's the "basic" idea. Though I would say we tend to recognize that goods at the expense of evils are not acceptable in the future, but tend to ignore evils that have already occurred and which provide the historical bedrock on which the present rests. Nietzsche's eternal return must entail a profound disrespect to those who suffered without reason - I often wonder if he would have said the same thing had he lived in post-World War II Europe.

The length of my OP probably could have been shortened or simplified, but I find it difficult to express in words how barbaric, childish and empty bourgeoisie entertainment seems when the reality of extreme suffering is understood. This is what I found to be a solace in Scarry's thesis about the "unmaking" of the world. Recognizing that extreme suffering exists - and I mean really recognizing it and not simply paying lip-service - makes almost everything else seem like a self-absorbed charade, especially theodicies. It's really very simple, and because of that it's "overwhelmingly underwhelming". The value of the world is stripped away as the reality of pain pushes everything else aside.

Almost always is pain represented by that which it is not. Pain is without intentionality so when it is communicated with words (and not shrieks, howls and moans), part of the essence of pain is lost and replaced with something that ultimately makes it seem less bad. It becomes "aestheticized", or transformed into a symbol of power, or forgotten about shortly after thanks to our brains' selective memory.

Yes! I'm glad there is someone familiar with Collingwood!

So far I have to agree, and I'm only through the introduction. Scarry has a powerful talent for writing. I'm excited for this one.

Will do!

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry.

That it is futile to try to arrive at any purely objective reality.

Agnosticism on steroids, kind of.

I have also heard it this way: postmodern theory, unlike what its critics would have you believe, is not epistemological relativism. It is, rather, a sociological recognition of the totalizing, repressive nature of modernist/Enlightenment principles and their implementation. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yeah, I agree. I think it's wrong to accuse postmodernism of rejecting analytic truth. That there is no truth cannot be analytically true on pain of logical contradiction. The postmodern view is rather, as you said, the recognition that we will never attain any substantial level of understanding and that attempting to will result in destruction.

But when I struggle to find strong rebukes from the majority, I fear for our intellectual lives. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Partly because the majority do not fear a minority (they merely want them to shut up), and because they also recognize the truth of what the minority may speak of (which the obviously then want them to shut up about).

I can't speak for other people, but I can say that I gravitate to speakers/writers who are humble and who show that they recognize and respect views opposed to their own. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Of course, I would say it speaks volumes about a person's character of whom they choose to discuss things with. But it's probably a lot to do with feelings of acceptance, and calm, quiet discussion does not seem to cause revolution by itself.

What makes them difficult for me to even begin to swallow without immediate nausea and indigestion, never mind accept, is their "us" vs. "them" posture. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Mhm, that's one of my pet peeves. It's very single-minded.

Depends on how it is interpreted. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

How else can it be interpreted? Either the proposition that there are no truths is true, in which case it refutes itself, or it's false, in which case there are some propositions that are true.

I don't recall any direct interaction with a radical feminist. Only indirect interaction, such as reading a blog.

My experience has been that when discussing gender issues with those who have feminist attitudes my words get distorted by very volatile people who do not listen to what I am trying to say or make any effort to empathize with me and my concerns.

You can't get to truth/reality if people are not going to let your inquiry develop.

It is about being able to fully function intellectually. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

A vocal minority does not represent the whole movement. I typically have a low respect for bloggers, because in my experience they're typically just interested in shouting and making grandiose claims about themselves. The most obnoxious are the ones who "report the news", so-and-so said this, here's why they're wrong, so-and-so said that, here's why I'm right etc. I've learned to ignore these people because they're not worth my time.

But then they do not respect other people's right to speak their mind. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I think a lot of this comes from a kind of "revenge" - for millennia women have been silenced, and now it's time to reverse this and silence the oppressors. Certainly there are some dogmatic people who do not let others speak but I will say it again that this is not the majority of feminists. When people say they hate "feminists", they hate the small, vocal minority, the "feminazis" or whatever, and not the actual feminists, whom I think most people would actually agree with if they took the time to listen.

This thread is not about feminism--I only brought it up as what made me conscious of what we might be looking at--but if we are going to talk about it let's remember that feminists regularly disrespect men's rights activists even though "MRAs" are simply voicing their concerns, venting their frustrations, etc. They regularly, as I understand it, do whatever they can to silence men's rights activists--pressuring places into not hosting men's rights events; removing "Men's Rights Are Human Rights" signs; etc.

Calling pro-choice people "baby killers" is bad enough. Then we get feminists calling men's rights activists "misogynists", among other things. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

The problem with the men's rights movement in respect to feminism is that it goes against the fundamental theory in second-wave feminism (radical feminism). MRAs are like liberal feminists, they are striving for "gender equality" through correcting social institutions relatively little. Liberal feminism and MRAs are going to agree that "feminism" is about "equality" of men and women, so that men and women's issues are important for feminism.

Radical feminism is about women's issues. No respectable radical feminist is going to deny that men have their own issues that they struggle with - what they will deny is that these issues ought to be mixed with women's issues. From a radical feminist perspective, pointing out men's issues when radfems point out women's is an attempt to downplay the severity of the woman's predicament. It's like telling the feminist to "suck it up" because men also have problems of their own. This is anti-progress and obscures the reality of the situation.

The fact is that many MRAs are misogynists. They point out the issues men deal with to make it seem like women are selfish, greedy, bitchy and should shut up and go back to the kitchen. Of course, it's veiled a lot of the time. But you'll notice that a lot of the time, MRAs are explicitly reacting to radical feminist theory. It's not really "about" men's issues - it's about obscuring women's issues.

I can empathize.

But making life difficult for those who honestly seek the truth is counterproductive. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

What if the truth is simply hard to accept? Is it not a possibility that "extreme" points of view may actually be true? Like I said before, having a tough skin is necessary if you are to trudge through the political arena. You have to be able to entertain notions without accepting them.

If people feel like they have been forced into silence and are not being heard they make their voices heard through, oh, voting Donald Trump into the most powerful position in the world and catching the polling industry, the experts, and the punditry completely off guard, the narrative goes. Sounds about right to me. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yeah, well I mean I personally think political efficacy is largely superstitious. I don't think "the people" en masse are to be blamed for Donald Trump being elected.

God Without Being by Jean-Luc Marion.

Everything, no matter if it is an idea, a worldview, a theory, a concept, a discipline, a tradition, etc. is understood to be just one of many possible ways of knowing and understanding.

I do not think that I just described a postmodern view. A postmodern view is more like "There are no truths. There are only truth claims". — WISDOMfromPO-MO

On the other hand, can this claim escape itself? Can the assertion that there are no truths but only truth claims, itself claim to be more than simply a truth claim?

Anyway, after spending the past two hours browsing the Web and reading about radical feminism I am beginning to think that there is a significant number, if not a majority, of people whose minds are made up about reality, are closed to anything more than a tweak here or there in that reality, and are solely in the business of making everything conform to that reality.

It is settled: in all of history (and probably pre-history) men have been oppressors and women have been the oppressed. This is the ultimate reality. Any inquiry--development of new technology, scientific exploration of the cosmos, further researching and writing history, etc--must be done according to that reality. Any failure to go along with this understanding and service to it is complicity to evil, continued suffering, etc.

And people think that religions are controlling and dominating?! — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Now I don't want to read into you too much, but the words "radical feminism" followed by a short rant and a comparison between the former and organized, dogmatic religion makes it seem like you had a rough encounter with some of the "vocal" radical feminists when you found that what you thought was innocent or a-moral turns out to make a lot of women very angry.

Fundamentally I think there is something deeply true about much of what radical feminists say, in the same way I think of the words of many socialists and anarchists. Historically, up to and including the present, women have been oppressed by men in many ways. Women as a class continue to struggle against the patriarchy. For many radfems, the issue is from biology, where women most often get the short end of the stick.

But I'll probably never be able to "identify" as a radfem, socialist, or anarchist. I don't have that right background nor the appropriate character to really understand the issues at a personal level (although this could change in the future, of course). I can't get "heated" about this, as I haven't ever been raped, I haven't ever lived in a slum, and I've never been totally fucked over by the state. I can support those who have and try to help then as I can, but I can't truly understand in the way that would be required to be dedicated to a cause. What that means is that I often have to tell myself to let people scream, vent, and mock, even if I don't agree with them (or even if I do). They have experiences I don't. They deserve the right to speak their mind. For many, ideology is all they have. Bread fills the stomach but ideology might fill the soul.

Maybe it has been extremely naive of me, but 99% of the time when I read or hear ideas I take them with the writer/speaker saying "I respect views opposed to my views, although I disagree with them. I am open to hearing alternative views. I know I could be wrong. If I am proven wrong, more power to me".

Apparently with some very influential and determined people in the world it is, rather, "This is the way things were in the past. This is the way things are. This is the way things are going to be. Period. Either accept that or get out of my way." — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Another thing I've noticed is that when people try to silence the noise of a dissatisfied group, it's usually because they don't like what they have to say. One way of doing this is by claiming you have the truth in an even louder voice and killing anyone who disagrees. Another way is to get rid of truth, which effectively pulls the rug right out under the opposition.

I'm in general agreement with you that modern society should be tolerant, and forget the notion of transcendental, absolute "Truth", with a capital-T, rah-rah-rah, alongside the usual fantasy moral duality between Righteous and Evil. But you have to see how this sounds to someone who has certain experiences that are more true and wrong than anything else in the world. To them, it is the truth-denier who is the enemy. The truth-denier is suppressing them. The truth-denier is privileged to be able to deny truth! How can they not see it? The truth-denier is preventing real progress, and we're getting impatient!

Hence why I'm increasingly attracted to the idea of a free and open society, where allegiance to some truth claims does not require everyone else's allegiance. One philosopher that I highly recommend on this topic is Paul Feyerabend, especially his judgment on the place of science in society.

In my opinion, we all need to have a bit more tough skin if we're going to open up and understand each other.

In Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay, “What is Enlightenment,” he wrote that it is man’s “emergence from his self-incurred immaturity” through the “public use of reason at every point.” Only through free inquiry and disputation, according to Kant, could humans flee the darkness of ignorant conformity to the light of true knowledge and wisdom. Recently, several prominent intellectuals have argued that this vision, the vision of the Enlightenment, needs a vigorous defense from increasingly dangerous Counter-Enlightenment forces, including an apathetic public, a hostile academy, and a censorious intelligentsia that is too quick to replace rational dispute with accusations of moral treachery. Steven Pinker’s newly released Enlightenment Now represents perhaps the culmination of this movement: It is an unapologetic embrace of Enlightenment values and a persuasive rebuttal to those who assail them. Unsurprisingly, it has already attracted lavish praise (from Bill Gates!) and provoked furious debate.

Steven Pinker as a culmination of Immanuel Kant??!? WTF???

No more than an infant being potentially an adult or a 16 year old kid being a potential adult

So by that logic you are arguing for infanticide and overall genocide of anyone under 18. — LostThomist

But now you've shifted the goalposts from "personhood" to "adulthood".

The fact that he is such an extremely popular public intellectual in the US tends to contract your view of him as "jejune" and "uninteresting", Darth ? — Dachshund

The fact that he is a popular public intellectual in the United States already qualifies him as a suspect jejune, in my opinion. Popularity in a (failing) country that elected Donald Trump isn't a good standard.

Pinker is one of those intellectuals who feel it necessary to provide an opinion on everything outside his main area of work, which, as a result, are usually jejune, uninteresting, or just plain wrong. — Maw

:up:

Steven Pinker — Dachshund

...pass :vomit:

Fertilization may be a necessary condition for personhood, but it is not a sufficient condition. It's is potential, but not actual. An important, and necessary distinction. Your claim is essentially that a gamete, or a collection of cells, is isomorphic to a conscious, thinking, feeling, and viable being is ludicrous. Otherwise, there is little difference between a collection of cells that potentially form a human life, and a collection of cells that potentially form the life of, say, another mammal. — Maw

I think an Aristotelian natural law objection to this would be that as soon as an egg is fertilized, or perhaps even before then (such as when the sperm is travelling through the woman's vaginal tunnel), the person exists in the same way an apple tree exists in the form of a seed. Unless the telos of the apple tree seed is frustrated, the seed will nurture into a fully developed tree. The same with a fertilized egg, or a pre-CNS fetus. An abortion, then, prevents the fetus from developing into a mature human and fulfilling its telos.

With the marginalization of teleology in modern metaphysics, what we define to be a person ends up being, from a natural law perspective, a qualitative distinction rather than a substantial distinction. But from a modern perspective, I'd say the natural law theory ends up being an arbitrary distinction between intentional and accidental action - does the human come into being when the sperm penetrates the egg, or when the man ejaculates, or when one or both partners decide to have a baby? And from a modern sensibility - what does it truly matter if a telos is frustrated? Really, what's the big deal?

What does "activism in antinatalism" look like in practice? Do you just not get laid? — Maw

I'd imagine a lot of it has things in common with activism about any other social issue. Although certainly I think there's something "more" to the antinatalist point than any other moral problem, since all moral problems would seem to depend on there being people who are born.

That being said from my own experiences it's that people who are concerned about "activism" about antinatalism are not actually very serious and/or decent in what they do and who they are. As soon as someone tries selling antinatalist windshield stickers, I'm out :vomit:

From Nietzsche's On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense:

"In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of "world history" — yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and
flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that it floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts. It is strange that this should be the effect of the intellect, for after all it was given only as an aid to the most unfortunate, most delicate, most evanescent beings in order to hold them for a minute in existence, from which otherwise, without this gift, they would have every reason to flee as quickly as Lessing's son. That haughtiness which goes with knowledge and feeling, which shrouds the eyes and senses of man in a blinding fog, therefore deceives him about the value of existence by carrying in itself the most flattering evaluation of knowledge itself. Its most universal effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have something of the same character.

[...]

What, indeed, does man know of himself! Can he even once perceive himself completely, laid out as if in
an illuminated glass case? Does not nature keep much the most from him, even about his body, to spellbind and confine him in a proud, deceptive consciousness, far from the coils of the intestines, the quick current of the blood stream, and the involved tremors of the fibers? She threw away the key; and woe to the calamitous curiosity which might peer just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and look down, and sense that man rests upon the merciless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, in the indifference of his ignorance — hanging in dreams, as it were, upon the back of a tiger. In view of this, whence in all the world comes the urge for truth?"

This is one of my favorite philosophical pieces. It's profound.

What is a Philosopher? — René Descartes

They tend to be really pretentious assholes with over-inflated egos and an inferiority complex.

Things are pretty bad, but they could also be a whole lot worse. This makes me believe there is no God, or that he's incompetent / uncaring. If there was an patently evil God I would expect things to be even worse than they are.

Certain smaller religious sects have the dualistic belief that there are two Gods, one good, one evil, and that the latter created the material world and the road to salvation is to escape this and form a union with the transcendent, good God.