People who have lost a loved one will probably dream about that person for a time. They will, quite often, even see or hear that person while they are wide awake, sitting in their usual chair, or doing something they did in life. My partner died about 9 years ago, and I find him still appearing in my thoughts -- particularly when I am half awake. Then I realize with a bit of a start that Bob isn't here anymore. — Bitter Crank

I'm sorry to hear your still (I think) grieving. I've never experienced the death of a loved one although, I do worry a lot about the welfare of my mother, upon which my whole life revolves around. I don't believe I would be able to cope with her loss, and in the back of my mind, I think I would end my life after or near after her death. Sorry to end the post on such a daft note; but, it's true.

Even though there are many different voices, it is all mediated through the same format. Whereas philosophy is therapy, in an important sense. — Wayfarer

I'm on the fence as of recent in regards to treating philosophy as therapy. I do agree with everything Wittgenstein has to say about treating philosophy as therapy; but, I'm not sure about the remission rates or outcome of treating it as such. Great, another idea I want to endlessly post about.

I believe it is even the origin of the term 'therapy', although disability might detract the ability to pursue those kinds of practices. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I am disabled for having undifferentiated schizophrenia or a psychotic disorder. So, there's that aspect of my being. No fun in Posty's world.

Is philosophical pessimism working for you? Is it taking you towards the day when you won't bother posting on this topic any more because you've solved the problem and moved on to greener pastures? — Jake

I've somewhat grown accustomed to my predicament. My life is one of misery at my misfortune for being disabled. The psychodynamics of my situation is only coping with my distress now, which isn't appealing to me.

Just to give a note, that I feel stuck in my ways here, and don't feel an urge to change it. Just so you don't feel frustrated if you see me posting misanthropic rants a week from now.

I can relate to the hermit thing too, though I'd put it somewhat differently. — Jake

How so?

3) Do you spend time in the forest or other nature environments now? Whatever your current relationship with nature is, it would likely be worth your time to focus on enhancing it. This could easily be a thread of it's own, but a good place to start is simply to spend more time in whatever nature is available to you. — Jake

Admittedly, I don't. Perhaps, I should work on that.

So for instance, this could be the first thing on the chopping block. Way less time with Schopenhauer, and way more time with chipmunks. Way less time with pessimism, way more time falling in love with reality. Way less of reading books, way more of watching clouds. Way less abstraction, way more of the real world. — Jake

Well, I just ordered Schopenhauer's Will and Representation and his aphorisms, so I'm afraid that's a negative.

We all need to bond with something, but it doesn't have to be people. If bonding with people isn't working out, we can become expert at bonding with something else. — Jake

I don't know about the bonding part. I do like the aspects of simple living; yet, I'm still unwilling to commit.

maybe, find a new hobby. — Wayfarer

Like what? Philosophy has become a part of my being. It would be like cutting a piece of myself off. You know, I have noticed your distaste for these kinds of topics posted by me and others like @schopenhauer1; but, you do have to understand that philosophical pessimism is also a respectable field of study into human nature. I don't quite get your gripe with it though. Maybe it doesn't conform to how you view philosophy?

So the Stoic can never isolate himself entirely from other people or be entirely indifferent to them, and must do well by them. — Ciceronianus the White

What if other people are the cause of his or her grief? I mean, I find it remarkable that Marcus Aurelius, who must have been exposed to the strangest of men was still fond of people in general. I mean take his first meditations from book two for example:

Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, and the nature of him who does wrong, that it is akin to me, not only of the same blood or seed, but that it participates in the same intelligence and the same portion of the divinity, I can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him, For we are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and to turn away. — Marcus Aurelius-Meditations Book Two

I very much envy his ability to cope with such behavior in a Stoic manner. Not everyone is motivated by the 'good', which Plato elaborated on. It's just not in our power to be able to change them to our ways of thinking.

I'm not saying that he should have become a misanthrope; but, I find my interactions with people trying, and have to resort to solitude on many occasions. However, I very much am a Schopehaureian misanthrope. People tire me easily, and I resort to solitude in my weariness.

I don't quite entirely know how to build a higher tolerance for frustration or lower my anger when presented with ignorance, deceit, or plain idiocy. Is there anything you would recommend doing that would foster a better outlook on these matters?

Freud was big on dreams, of course; he thought they were the royal road into the subconscious mind. But psychoanalysis isn't the dominant strain in psychology, these days. — Bitter Crank

As far as I'm aware psychoanalysis is alive and kicking.

Dreams are interesting to brain science because the brain is busy doing something during REM sleep. What is it doing? We don't know for sure. It might be consolidating content. It might be rummaging around in the attic. Perhaps the brain just doesn't have an 'off' switch. I don't know. — Bitter Crank

Well, yes, the brain is constantly working. There's no off switch due to the nature of the mind. Maybe if you get sh*tface drunk then it would be possible to turn your brain off for a while.

There is nothing wrong with interrogating ones dreams, of course. It strikes me as a parlor game of sorts--not a total waste of time, but it is the conscious thinking about dreams, not so much the dreams themselves, that would make it useful. — Bitter Crank

Why does it strike you as that? I mean, dreams are something of significance to someone going through grief or sadness. It just strikes me as odd that we don't really pay more attention to dream content. I suppose it has something to do with their strangeness. But, the fact that you remembered after all these years about those two dreams gives me the impression that those dreams were significant to you.

Dream on, and interpret if you wish. Have you read "the Interpretation of dreams" by S. Freud? — Bitter Crank

No, I haven't. Is it any good?

Yeah and it's all shit. — StreetlightX

Yeah, I get that. But, the liberals need some affirmation from science to prod on forward with pragmatic solutions to societies problems rather than fixating on the individual, a la conservatives. Hence, the OP. It would truly be a blessing if science could prove determinism under this view.

Only Americans think free will has any bearing on social policy issues. Most of the rest of the world who know better than the swallow the mud-pill of American individualism don't need to wrangle over arcane metaphysical debates to understand how to govern properly. — StreetlightX

But, it's appealing to other countries too. Other countries have adopted an almost xenophobic anthropo-cultural version of individualism. Liberalism has found its roots in many other countries around the world, not only in America.

And any policy maker who cites 'free will' as a reason for doing so - and not good ol' sociological fact - ought to be hounded out of office for metaphysical idiocy. — StreetlightX

They aren't few in the great States. Reagan was one, libertarians another, the zealots that they appeal to are of a very staunch attitude of enshrining our "free will" into law. It's all about freedom for those folks. Freedom in their warped conception though.

Then the court has no free will either, and nothing will be other than it is determined to be. — unenlightened

Then, addressing society we live in that shapes behaviors and actions instead of the individual becomes the focus, no?

So it ain't gonna happen. — unenlightened

Says who? Heh, had to say that.

Anyway, I personally don't believe in free will. This is just a recent realization of mine. If it can be demonstrated in court that a person had no free will according to science, then what?

I do have to ask. Do you live your life in accordance with your philosophy of life? How do you cope with so much pessimism and inherent angst that you seem to profess on these forums? Just asking out of curiosity, as I am deeply influenced by Schopenhauer myself, given that he was my first introduction to the art of philosophy. I have embedded some of his maxims into my own way of life. Such as the desire for solitude and contemplation. I find most of his philosophy derived from a particularly narcissistic conception of himself; but, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I just try and distance myself from such fantasies that I am special or my solitude will contribute to my welfare, as it seemingly does.

Yet, after all the angst and strife and coping is over with, I still feel some urge to be happy and content with my meager life. How about you?

Just keeping it real.

Yeah, I'm interested in what others think, given that we fleshed out all the nuances and details of your argument. I'm somewhat at a loss for words given that your logic is airtight and hermetically sealed. In the majority of cases, hermetically sealed arguments are of the religious and metaphysical type. Yours might differ.

Isn't this a case of a systematically inchoate question?

Yes, I agree. I think there are some similarities as you suggested; but, looking deeper they are superficial. Just as a passing thought of mine.

It's a really liberating yet dangerous philosophy — khaled

Well said. In some sense, I feel that philosophy need trip sitters to quell the angst derived from many of it's professed beliefs.

Defending a pivot is futile and so I'm trying to find a premise from which we can begin to reason that is not a pivot (that is completely undoubtable and must be accepted by everyone) — khaled

Well, yes, we can pivot away; but, you can't doubt the fact that you're doubting, can you?

Maybe this is what you mean by nihilism being self-defeating? — khaled

Yes, I think so. Though, I haven't gone through the logic of it all, it seems to me that nihilism is self-defeating because it presupposes no real alternative to its own logic. It's hermetically sealed and cannot be doubted further.

I have a strange affinity towards solipsism, in that it cannot be logically refuted, yet it's nonsensical. Does that make better sense? Nihilism in my mind falls into the same category.

I want to add an observation of mine. I see American Transcendentalism as very close in nature to the Cynic and Stoic ethos.

Thoughts?

All this makes me want to take a community college class in mathematics, heh. I think I will.

But, you do get the significance of viewing things this way, don't you? I mean, if mental abstractions are a feature of the world and not only the mind, then it's almost a spiritual revelation of sorts.

Your second sentence contradicts the first; because the precise import of Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution in philosophy’ is that things conform to thoughts, not thoughts to things. — Wayfarer

That can be interpreted as just a proof by inversion, I think.

Anyway, to try and drive the point a bit further - one of my [many] scrap-book quotes is from Einstein, who said, in dialogue with Hindu mystical poet, Tagore, that ‘I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. — Wayfarer

I believe this was answered by Kant in his Prolegomena. We can have synthetic a priori judgments made and in this view, intelligible objects are a feature of the world, not our way of thinking or us or language games or forms of life as @apokrisis suggests.

The former seems like a common sense philosophical position, the latter sounds more like depression than a philosophical position, I think. — bloodninja

I'm quite interested in trying to delineate the difference between philosophical pessimism and depression as a feature of that philosophical position. It would seem contradictory to state that one is a philosophical pessimist and yet happy, cheerful, and productive. It just seems too much like a cognitive dissonance of sorts.

Nihilistic relativism IS the conclusion here unless you're willing to accept arbitrary premises in which case you're still a nihilisitic relativist because you are practising P3. — khaled

Well, I'm glad we're on the same page then. I just don't agree with P4 either due to there being things such as synthetic a priori judgments or brute facts to borrow from the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The world seems to operate on firmly based laws that dictate how it is going to behave. My gripe with nihilism is that it is self-defeating.

That's what the argument intends to show — khaled

Well, I'm glad that it's a matter of preference; but, I hope this doesn't lead us down the road of nihilistic relativism.

The context example is great. I now don't know whether or not I should do what's morally right or what's contextually right. And I can't know by referring to either — khaled

You can know based on differing logics that would dictate what to do. Ultimately it's a matter of preference when picking what logic to use, there really isn't one definitive logic that can be used or meta-logic. Well, that's not entirely true given that something in all possible worlds can be found to be the most utilitarian preference. But, that's kinda off topic, so I digress.

Yeah, no shit. The founder of stoicism was Zeno of Citium, a student of Crates of Thebes. Crates of Thebes is one of the big names in cynicism. . — Ying

Yeah, I mean I follow an online Facebook page of Stoicism and all I hear is about professing indifference. It ain't that simple with Stoicism and I'm tired of the caricaturization of Stoicism in that regard.

Have at this thread if you care to take 5 minutes to read it.

You renamed "different premises" to "different logics". — khaled

Yes, but their truth value isn't the same across the scope of logic. As an example: contextually, there be an action that is morally wrong but contextually right?

how so? — khaled

By utilizing different logics you can refute a premise.

The only way to disprove this argument is to do what P3 is saying which is to use different premises to determine the truth value of this argument's premises. — khaled

Yeah, P3 is fallacious.

So we resolve the Platonic dilemma not by deciding in favour of universals, generalities or abstracta being either "creations of the mind" or "facts of the world", but by establishing a systematically larger point of view that can achieve the level of pragmatic understanding we seek. The "world with us in it" becomes the world as a well-informed scientist or natural philosopher sees it - if that happens to be what you agree is the proper step up in viewpoint. — apokrisis

Well, yes. We can submit to a collectivism of solipsistic manners of language games; but, intelligible objects persist after we are gone into some void of spirituality.

Modally speaking, intelligible objects are tantamount to saying that they exist independently of particular. They form the substance of the world in a neo-Platonic fashion.

That's a phenomenal breakdown of the issue. Yet, it still stands that 'abstractions of the mind' can be conferred with 'intelligible objects'. My noesis is increasing as I go along reading this.

Apparently. — Bitter Crank

:halo:

Hell no, they are not glimpses into one's soul. — Bitter Crank

How is it that psychology is all big about dreams? Isn't that indicative of their importance in our lives? I don't know, but, I think dreams can be profound in giving significance to the all-important "I".

Have you ever had a dream without the "I" component present?

Perhaps my brain produces too much DMT. I don't know.

This is interesting: http://thescienceexplorer.com/brain-and-body/psychedelic-drug-may-be-released-our-brains-we-die