There is no "fianl" or complete solution to the problem of suffering. — Janus

You deny the Buddha? You know better than the Buddha?

The suffering inflicted on humans and animals by humans would be eliminated or at least diminished within the bounds of practical possibility if we could all embrace and act on the "morally vacant view" that 180 Proof set before us.

No, his proposal is not viable because it does not aim to uproot the cause of suffering. It only attempts to address some of the symptoms.

Which is a view that can be held without negative consequences only by a Buddhist monk.
— baker

Says who? — Wayfarer

The whole project of the complete cessation of suffering as worked out by Early Buddhism is actionable only for people who can live in sufficient renunciation (which is, for all practical intents and purposes, reserved for monks).

It is often said that (Early) Buddhism has no metaphysics. Indeed, we can say that the Buddha was not interested in a doctrine of how _all_ things really are. But he was only interested in how things really are as they pertain to complete cessation of suffering (the analogy with the handful of leaves).

Hence the view that "you never see outside of the mind-created world within which all the objects of perception exist" is part of the project of the complete cessation of suffering (Sabba Sutta), but isn't intended as some disinterested, objective, metaphysical claim about "how things really are" (the way philosophers and psychologists tend to try to look at the matter).

It's not "a morally vacant view": the problem is that people do not embrace the view and act on it. — Janus

Really? The final solution to the problem of suffering is widely known and readily available, it's just that people "do not embrace it and act on it"?

try to understand what they're about. — tim wood

They are about your right to despise others and to kill them for not complying with your ideas about how they should be.

As far as "seeing the actual notice of termination, the actual wording": no, I haven't. I don't work for these companies. But it's been reported pretty widely that some employees (though fairly few) have been terminated for not complying with vaccination policy. — Xtrix

As long as vaccination is not actually legally mandatory, suspending or firing someone for not being vaccinated is illegal.

The actual wording of the termination is important. If it said something like "failure to comply with vaccination law" in a jurisdiction where covid vaccination is not legally mandatory, then it can be challenged in court.

But if the wording was something like "failure to comply with the demands of the employer", then it cannot be challenged (or hardly).

IOW, the actual reason for why a person was terminated needn't be the one specified on the termination document. Every day, people get fired for being fat, for getting a tattoo, for being of the wrong religion (all of which would be illegal), but the termination document doesn't list those as reasons, but something more general.

Here, and wherever some one/thing suffers. — 180 Proof

Morality is objective because all suffering persons depend on one another to keep the implicit (eusocial) promise both to not harm one another and to help reduce each other's suffering whenever possible (Spinoza). — 180 Proof

Which is a morally vacant view as it does not address the cause of suffering and does not uproot the cause of suffering.

I'd say simply that we are ontological realists by default because it is intuitively obvious the stair we just tripped on is actually there independent of us. Only through (too) much thought will we question that.

As to why morality isn't the same, I'd say because we don't trip over good and evil and we realize we create all sorts of social norms. If the morally real is out there, where is it? — Hanover

It seems to me that to most people, good and bad are as plainly obvious as tables and chairs. People typically don't lose sleep over right and wrong, good and bad, but are as certain of them as they are of the chair they're sitting on.

Yes, we (even the most implacable idealist) have no choice but to behave as though the real world is real.

If we want to live. What we believe however is separate, isn't it? — Tom Storm

How schizoid can one handle to be?

People are being suspended or fired from their jobs for not being vaccinated. As long as vaccination is not actually legally mandatory, suspending or firing someone for not being vaccinated is illegal.
— baker

This is completely wrong. Ask United Airlines, who did exactly that. — Xtrix

What is wrong?

Did you see the actual notice of termination, the actual wording?

And the data show that the risks are incredibly low, and that vaccines are safe. How else are we to talk to those who continue to refuse? — Xtrix

As if they are human beings who are not convinced by mere gambles.

It simply means that I regularly think about death and dying — Tom Storm

What exactly do you mean by "death" and "dying"?

Diseases, ways that people get killed, what will happen with your belongings when you're gone, ...?

I'm often mindful of my mortality. — Tom Storm

What does that look like? Can you elaborate?

And you still have nothing to offer to those damaged by the vaccines and their close ones.

All you can offer is the standard rhethoric of risk, luck, and large populations. This is shallow.

What I'm saying is that you never see outside of the mind-created world within which all the objects of perception exist. — Wayfarer

Which is a view that can be held without negative consequences only by a Buddhist monk.

I think a lot of the talk about realism and anti-realism gets stuck on this, but unhelpfully so. There's little point in getting hung up on that problem because it cannot be surmounted. The solution is to accept that state of affairs and move on. We're talking about the way things seem to us to be.
/.../
So the issue really is in what things seem to have an external cause and why they seem that way. — Isaac

A person's socio-economic efforts would be thwarted if a person would consistently believe that one can never see outside of the mind-created world within which all the objects of perception exist.

In order to succeed in the world, or at the very least, in order to get by in the world, one has to believe "there is a real world out there" and "there is only one true, accurate, correct way to perceive this world".

I see many art works as actually dealing with philosophical problems, but the artists themselves and their audience often don't see it that way.
— baker

If the artists and audience don't see it, maybe it comes from you. That's not a criticism. The experience of art includes how it fits in with the rest of our experience. — T Clark

One can also think of cooking as a matter of physics and chemistry.
Explicit knowledge of physics and chemistry are not needed in order to cook.

The metalevel knowledge is not always necessary, but it is possible.

The seeds of tyranny live in all of us, but nowhere does it flourish quite like in the minds of arrogant intellectuals. — Tzeentch

Make that: wannabe intellectuals.

So what's the answer? Winston Churchill remarked on acknowledging the need to "bash one's opponent on the snout." I am not advocating snout-bashing. But when do the gloves come off? When has civility run its course? — tim wood

If one has to ask such things, one never had any civility to begin with, and always fought bare knuckled anyway.

How ultimately does right prevail over wrong, reason exhausted, if not by snout-bashing, whether metaphorical or literal?

Might makes right, hm? Might makes right.

As a gentleman of fortune myself, I prefer kicking them in their private parts. — Olivier5

Thus proving that might makes right.

an admonition never to hurt, never to cause pain, and always to act "correctly." — tim wood

The first gentlemanly, expending their treasure of time and energy being more-or-less educators, thoughtful in presentation and argument, reasonable, sometimes even conciliatory. — tim wood

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology

I sure do and when I get in a car. — Tom Storm

Really?? So then what -- do you get anxious? If you do, what do you tell yourself to calm down and compose yourself?

I'm obviously using luck in the conversational sense.

This is a philosophy forum. More precision is fully warranted.

Life is risk

I don't believe that.
I don't believe that life is a gamble in any way.

and you may be dead by morning...

Of course. But this still doesn't make it a gamble. There is cause and effect. Given that some causes are currently not known, some phenomena might indeed seem random, without causes and conditions. But this seeming doesn't make them so.

An example - a friend died of lung cancer at 40. She didn't smoke. My grandfather smoked 2 packets a day for 70 years and never got sick. He died in his sleep at 96. Human experience in a nutshell. This is why I use words like luck or incoherent. Feel free to suggest an improved nomenclature, but you can't avoid the point.

The point being?

You don't have to reflect on risk when you get vaccinated either. — Janus

Then why are those who want people to get vaccinated feeding us that line???

Why are high government officials, epidemiologists, public advertisements, and so on telling us that the risk of something going wrong is low, and that therefore, we should get vaccinated?

No, I am not. There are such risks with other vaccines and with all or most medications. Everyone is required to accept some risk in order to participate in work and life. What about the risks on construction and mining sites? What about the risks to health from the air-conditioning systems in high rise buildings? Or the risk of fire in such buildings? Or vehicle exhausts in the cities? The risks of air flight and indeed the risks of driving and traveling on public transport? There is always going to be some small percentage of unlucky people. But exactly the same is true of the natural world. We and the other animals we share this planet with are potentially subject to natural disasters. In fact we are by far the greatest risk to the other animals, unfortunately.

What justification do we have for demanding that life is absolutely risk free? On the other hand it doesn't seem unreasonable to require people to do everything they can to minimize risk if there is most likely to be little personal cost involved in doing so. I took the vaccine and I felt like shit for about 24 hours, but I'm not complaining. Most people I have spoken to didn't suffer even that, but just had a mildly sore arm for a day or two. — Janus

You are gravely missing the point. It's conveninent to harp on people's risk aversion because that's a simple truism.

But the actual issue isn't risk aversion. It's a simplistic, zombified outlook on life that promises people a good life, but sooner or later lets them down, and then blames them, or, at most, shrugs its shoulders.

Also, see my comments about luck in my reply to Mr. Storm.

And in certain democratic states which hold the protecting the right of the individual to be the primary concern of government, it is relevant. — Merkwurdichliebe

I'm sorry, but I have to laugh.
Sure, there are democratic states which hold the protecting the rights of _some_ individuals to be the primary concern of government.

But generally, it has been my experience that one's "constitutionally given" rights are things that one has to fight for and defend, with one's own money and power. And that if one doesn't have those, then it is one's own fault is other people don't respect one's constitutionally given rights.

You know, what eventually moved me to get vaccinated (even though medically for me, this was not a good time) was that I reached the point where I finally lost faith in the system.

That's an interesting point. If someone died as a result of being forced by the state to take the vaccine, should his/her family be entitled to retaliate? — Apollodorus

In the case of mandatory vaccines, yes.

In Slovenia, a 20-year old woman died this week after complications from a vaccine. The minister of health hastened to point out that since the government merely recommended vaccination but didn't mandate it, this means that the state isn't liable.

It's so underhanded it's sickening. On the one hand, the government is using threats and being downright vicious in getting people to get vaccinated. But when something goes wrong, the government plays coy.

So I say I want to do something to your porch, and you're non-responsive. Not very clever or alert on your part. Or maybe you're clever enough to avoid an argument you cannot win. — tim wood

Because might makes right.

I wonder how useful this observation is. Isn't understanding and managing the odds how life is negotiated for the most part? — Tom Storm

Not at all. It is doubtful that even professional statisticians think of their life choices in terms of odds.

All of life is a risk. Simple daily activities like crossing a road or eating seafood can kill you if you have bad luck.

Do you ever reflect on risk before crossing the road or eating seafood? I'm pretty sure you don't.

If you're the one with the bad luck, you can be understandably dismayed but isn't this the price of being a fragile corporeal creature in an incoherent and dangerous world?

Was it really "bad luck"?

To believe in luck, good or bad, is to believe that things in this universe don't happen in accordance with laws, regularities, but that the world is chaotic and that such are also our minds and activities. This has pernicious ramifications for one's outlook on life and for the way one acts.

If the world is really incoherent and dangerous as you say, then there is no reason to believe that anything (whether vaccines or levers) can make any difference. Except maybe magic.

We have science, and we believe in science, precisely to avoid relying on luck.

This reminds of the claims made about Trump voters. I think it’s mostly true that we should be polite to one another, but to make blatantly bad choices for yourself, your family, the community, the environment, etc., simply because you’ve been made to feel stupid, or condescended to, or feel dismissed, or perceived to be looked down upon— that’s as irrational as the person is who’s doing the condescension.

So I say to the “vaccine-hesitant” crowd the same as to “on the fence” voters: grow thicker skin, ignore those who are rude, and find someone to educate you or answer your questions and concerns who’s more friendly, polite, and compassionate.

You probably won’t find much of that online. But there are plenty of credible web sites that do explain these things. That’s where I get my information. It’s very easy. If you’re looking to be educated on a philosophy forum, I think that’s a mistake. — Xtrix

This isn't merely about how people interact online. Listening to you and other vocal pro-vaccers here at the forum is like listening to some of the high politicians in the country where I live, and in some other EU countries as well. The same cynical attitude, the same threats, the same simplificationism, the same not listening, the same diversions.

It's so pervasive, so consistent that it cannot be written off as incidental or irrelevant: rather, everything indicates that it is part of their message.

since having a vaccination is hardly much of an inconvenience. — Janus

Indeed, the people who ended up with strokes or dead from the vaccine experienced hardly much of an inconvenience.


Perhaps you don't see it, but you yourself are using the language of liberals and rightwingers.

143 strokes out of 10 million shots for the Pfizer vaccine, last I checked. Which is much better than the strokes caused by COVID infection — and still extremely rare any way you slice it. — Xtrix

Part of the problem is insisting on looking at the matter from the perspective of large numbers, large populations, and then expecting that individual people will be convinced and soothed by this.

If you are the one who gets the stroke after the vaccine, it does not matter to you if so many millions didn't get one. It's still you who is now paralyzed.

As someone who’s taking the vaccine already, what exactly are you driving at here? — Xtrix

That the enthusiasm of the vocal pro-vaccers is unfounded.
That the hatred and contempt that the vocal pro-vaccers show for everyone who doesn't share their enthusiasm is unjustified.

That the lowering of the standards of communication as is evident in the vaccination debate is unacceptable and dangerous.

But why have so many Republicans refused to take their shots?
/.../
— Krugman, NY TIMES

Nails it. So much for principle. — Xtrix

The response of right wingers surely depends on whether they live in a country where they have the majority or not.

I live in a country with a right wing government who is vocally for vaccination; the right wingers here are overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination. (So are the centrists and leftists, although less violently so.)

From a political perspective, whether someone is vocally in favor of vaccination or not seems to be related to whether they or the political party they support is in a position of power, and has less to do with where on the political spectrum said party is.

But people generally do have an overwhelming and insurmountable fear and distrust of being abused and taken advantage of. They're just not always able to put it into exact words.
— baker

Sure, but I don't see how it would be reasonable to claim that anyone is being abused and taken advantage of in the current covid situation. — Janus

People are being suspended or fired from their jobs for not being vaccinated. As long as vaccination is not actually legally mandatory, suspending or firing someone for not being vaccinated is illegal.

I don't agree that any decisions should be made without considering others, without considering the community as a whole, because we all are dependent on the state in so many ways. Or if you prefer a less impersonal framing, we are all dependent on the community, and I think we owe it our allegiance to the utmost degree we can manage, especially in times of crisis, because those times are the times solidarity is most needed. — Janus

Indeed, in those times, solidarity is needed the most. But it is unreasonable to expect people to practice solidarity after beating into them for decades the doctrine of rugged individualism.

Solidarity isn't just about what a person "feels in their heart", but it has to be embedded into the whole structure of society, for a long time.

We disagree right here. The public health advice being acted on now does not contravene the "largely settled" "laws about issues of public health". — Janus

It does, precisely because in the current situation, some (many?) governments are not acting in accordance with laws. (Or else, existing laws have been found to be unconstitutional.)

Dragging all unvaccinated off to a facility and inoculating them at gunpoint is a rather extraordinary measure beyond the above, one that you might expect would lead to violence (if the behavior we've seen from deniers thus far is an indication), might lead to secret cults hiding, who knows what. — jorndoe

The government has the power and the authority to subdue any and all opposition. That's why it is the government.

If the government believes that it has the truth about covid, then it can use any means necessary in order to enforce the acceptance of said truth, up to and including lethal force.

If the government believes that the covid crisis is so grave that it warrants mandatory covid vaccination, then it should pass the legislation needed for such, including restitution for those damaged by the covid vaccine (as is standard practice for mandatory vaccinations). If the government cannot of will not do this, then it should declare a state of emergency and enforce martial law.

One case presented out of 5 billion doses is a freak case, yes. 5,000 cases would be freak cases, in that sense. — Xtrix

They are not simply rare freak cases. There are many more of them. It's that once a negative side effect of a vaccine is officially added to the list of the vaccine's negative side effects, they stop counting individual instances of it.

Why do you think they make a point of publishing on the news that such and such has been added to the official list of the vaccine's negative side effects?!

How is this a socially acceptable debate? — Outlander

Interesting question!

Yes, it's driven by the polemicism of social media I think. — Isaac

What makes it worse is that most of the interaction takes place in a text medium, black on white, so there is no danger of mishearing or misremembering something.

The text is there for one to carefully read it and reference it.

Try it yourself: recover for a moment your inner three-year-old and allow yourself to be bumped into by the music and tumbled and tickled by it in delight. In an adult of course, we might call that "engagement." A good chance you will be engaged by it, even drawn into it. (It is preceded by a prelude/toccata, more adult, but lyrical and imo the more substantial, here:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bmX5ZoX9Po
If you try these, do you not feel the draw of them? — tim wood

Brother Wood, I already know you hold a weak supposal of my worth. What would you expect of me? That in weak plebeian fashion I defend myself, work hard to earn your recognition and your mercy?

Even if the 'art world' accepted the idea that art is consciousness, what difference would it make in practice? They already mostly accept that art is the personality of the artist. — Tom Storm

Not as far as I know. High art, art proper, has always been about suprapersonal truths, ie. universal truths.

Tying an art work specifically to its author is characteristic of popular art or low art, or a populistic (plebeian) approach to art.

In art proper, one doesn't express oneself, one expresses a higher truth.

Right, the state of merely being conscious. — praxis

I'm glad we agree. Consciousness is a little more accurate, imo. As it relates to a state of mind. It is a state of mind that is expressed in art, or anywhere. — Pop

I think Pop means conscious in the sense of "conscious of X".

It's not a commonly used formulation, but a very basic one, so much so that it seems redundant; so mundane that it can easily be overlooked.

Even if the 'art world' accepted the idea that art is consciousness, what difference would it make in practice? They already mostly accept that art is the personality of the artist. — Tom Storm

Art is consciousness of beauty.
Art is consciousness of truth.

Doesn't the art world at least implicitly operate with such notions?