According to Hippyhead, philosophy is "the application of disciplined thought to the advancement of human welfare," so that kinda-sorta answers what things are relevant to do and if philosophy pros were to theorize about such things it would kinda-sorta be an indication of irrationality.

For the average man and woman in the street, I could agree that their primary responsibility is to their children. So if they're working around the clock so they can get their kids in to college, and thus don't have the time or energy for such a large topic, ok, I can see the rational basis for that. — Hippyhead

It's rational to work around the clock to fund your children's education, with a gun in your mouth?

I'm genuinely interested to see if anyone here can paraphrase your [Hippyhead] position correctly. — Judaka

Philosophy pros are irrational because they don’t focus enough on existential threats.

The Rolling Stone article also says that Trump claimed for the seventh times over the last several years that he received Michigan’s ‘Man of the Year’ award. Some jokes never get old, I guess.

A stoic would just have "accepted fate" and tried not to fight against it but focused on what they "can control" like being a good slave or being a good secretary, — Gitonga

A stoic slave would indeed have very little control over their life. They would have control of their virtue, however. If a stoic slave were ordered to do something that they considered to be unvirtuous, and there was a price to pay if they didn't perform the unvirtuous act, what they did would show how much of a stoic they were. Is it shameful to be a poor stoic? No, because it's not about social status, it's about attaining eudaimonia. Selfishness doesn't lead to eudaimonia. On the other hand, dying because you refused to follow an order doesn't lead to eudaimonia, either.

Bimble drinks dragonwell green tea, a habit he developed from serving it to his master every day while in training, but that’s another story...

One day while roaming aimlessly through the countryside after his mother threw him out of the house Bimble happened upon an old beggar. It should be noted, by the way, that Bimble’s mother evicted him because he was 15 years old at the time, and back in those days that was considered middle-aged. It simply became too embarrassing. Anyway, this beggar that Bimble met on the road was quite old and looked to be from the Far East. Not wanting to part with any of his money Bimble put his head down as he passed the beggar. "You lost," said the beggar as Bimble tried to pass. "Oh, how would you know?" said Bimble. "I know, you lost. Me show you! You come follow me." Not having anything better to do, Bimble followed the beggar and shortly after became Master Zeo's (part-time beggar) devoted student.

Master Zeo knew of Bimble's grit deficiency and therefore didn't teach him in a conventional manner. In fact, he didn't teach him anything at all and just used Bimble as a servant. After awhile Bimble became frustrated and eventually confronted the master. "Master, I've been doing your bidding for five years like a servant, or no, like a slave, and you haven't taught me anything." "I teach you patience," said the master. "I've been patient!" "No, I show you patient," said Zeo, and then gave Bimble a karate chop that knocked him unconscious.

Things went back to normal for a few years after that incident, then out of the blue Master Zeo asked Bimble, "what you know?" Not quite sure what the master was asking but excited that he finally took an interest, Bimble said "I know lots of stuff. What do you mean?" "What you know!!" Zeo asked again. Thinking about it for a second, Bimble replied "Well, I know how to juggle and I know a little magic." "You combine and become a-okay fighter," replied the master. "How do I do that?," asked Bimble. "You go now," said the master. Not wanting to miss his chance Bimble immediately left. He would have left at the mere hint of a dismissal.

"Thank God I'm rid of that old phony," thought Bimble as he packed his things and left the masters shack. In time, Bimble did combine his juggling and magic and became an okay fighter. He learned a spell that would transfix an opponent and leave them open to attack. He would have to start juggling and then yell "mesmeradi," then he could throw juggling balls at his opponents. He could materialize a new ball with the magical incantation "juggal mea neo spherico." Unfortunately, that spell is kind of a mouthful and hinders rapid-fire. It's also rather irritating for anyone within earshot to hear that repeated over and over again in quick succession.

Now that Bimble was a fighter and ready to make a name for himself he dreamed of quest and glory.

Bimble is the son of a Swedish midwife and an only child. He never knew his father. Whenever Bimble asked his mother about him she would only say that he died many years ago. She never said how or exactly when he died. When pressed about it she would become flustered and abruptly remove herself saying “I just remembered...” and trail off in muted mumbling. She did this countless times over the years. Who is she trying to fool? Bimble would ask himself. Clearly she was hiding something, but what?

The other mystery, which everyone who encountered Bimble would ponder, and that could potentially be related to his father, was the extraordinary size of his hands. They were enormous, but at the same time extremely nimble. Even though they were the size of dinner plates he could thread a needle as adeptly as the most experienced and skilled seamstress.

Growing up, the one thing that defined Bimble, besides his gargantuan hands, was his complete lack of grit. Whatever he put his mind to, no matter how insignificant or crushingly important, he would become instantly discouraged at the slightest setback and drop whatever he was trying to accomplish. As a result of this he never got very good at anything. He had a wide range of interests though, from juggling to magic. Well, actually he just had those two interests. As for magic, he dropped out of wizardry school after one of his professors caught him using an invisibility spell in the girl's shower room. Apparently the spell wasn’t strong enough to cover his huge hands entirely.

His mother gave him a juggling kit (three balls and an instruction booklet) for Christmas one year. He vowed to himself that he would master the art by the year's end to prove his grit. He gave up before the end of January of course, but he could juggle by that point.

A late bloomer in most respects, romance was no exception. Bimble’s first sexual encounter was with an English art student that he met at a village barn dance. Though considerably older and possessing a brash egocentric personality she was nevertheless attractive and a willing partner in both dance and sex, though she was oddly controlling in the latter. A sign of past sexual abuse, Bimble thought. The roll-in-the-hay (behind the barn and literally in the hey) was understandably awkward being his first time. Other things that robbed from the pleasure of it was all the mead they’d drank that night and the fact that nighter of them liked the other.

Character development to be continued...

No doubt many do, with warmth and perhaps some boisterous rodomontade.

... if existence is building blocks from what came before, and nothing comes after, and all we've accomplished is what lesser beings have done, than how can we feel special? — TiredThinker

I don't see how a finite or everlasting existence differs in this respect. A static afterlife would be dead and meaningless, as I see it.

praxis: "Does a morning of studying a gray seascape make the afternoon more beautiful?"
Never tried that, and i prefer studying a tropical seascape, it changes the landscape around me. Unfortunatly, to dry is not so good for the grass... But if i would persist, my garden would become a beach. — Koen

I prefer tropical seascapes as well but I'm stuck with semi-arid for the time being. Tropical seascapes can be gray, by the way, on a cloudy day, like in May.

Good luck with your beach.

A milestone that a woman of color was chosen for such a high position. That’s all good.

could the sensation of fear which you feel in your body when you are afraid be a mental representation when given to an object of the imagination? Or are mental representations just images and sounds? When one imagines oneself being afraid without being in an actual fearful situation, would the replica be complete without that body sensation? — Daniel

Not sure what you mean by "when given to an object of the imagination." The 'sensation of fear' is inextricably tied to the body and therefore is not entirely a mental representation. So, the 'replica' could only be incomplete if the mind were severed from the body, and since minds don't exist without bodies to support them, I guess the answer is no.

I would hesitantly take nostalgia one step further and say that, not only is it sense data memory -> emotional response, but there's one further arrow, which is -> meaning. Nostalgic experiences feel like they get at the root. It may be a total illusion, and maybe that feeling is just a more complex emotion working unconsciously. — Noble Dust

Good point, nostalgias link to our personal narrative would make it more core and meaningful, I would think.

Right, emotions respond (hopefully adaptively) to experience or situations. A brain in a vat could be feed sense data (raw experience) which could include social constructs.

If there is no afterlife can we assume life had no meaning? — TiredThinker

If there’s no life after the afterlife can we assume the afterlife has no meaning? If there’s no life after the afterafterlife can we assume the afterafterlife has no meaning? If there’s no life after... I think that I’ve made a point.

The sense data of the ocean, a turntable, or an ice cream shop may contribute to the feeling of nostalgia, which may be better described as a socially constructed emotion concept than a mental representation. Mental representation like the smell of the ocean are independent of emotion concepts and any sort of social consensus.

Does a morning of studying a gray seascape make the afternoon more beautiful?

Mucho plaudits, that word’s a keeper. I’ll have to concoct a repast this evening that is conducive to the production of tittynopes just so that I can spring it on my unsuspecting dinner companions. Corn on the cob perhaps. There’s always a kernel or two left with those.

I’m in the middle of an entertaining tome about an entitled Mr. Vertigo. At least I assume that’s the case, it’s full of twists and turns and it’s hard to predict what will happen next. Many the tawdry diphthongs, I will add.

Heart accounting is both impossible, because you can’t twist an abacus into the shape of a heart, and incredibly easy because the heart cannot lie. Its beats are like the notes to a song, some skip short and others diphthong long.

Mr. Vertigo by Paul Auster

A Handbook for New Stoics by Massimo Pigliucci

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

There’s no accounting for esurient hearts.

You can thank @TheMadFool who was using it to argue that the mind isn’t physical, somehow.

When I'm flying in a dream, for instance, I know that it's me flying.
— praxis

Really? You remember your dreams. That seems to contradict the well known fact that to remember dreams one has to be woken up in the middle of it. — TheMadFool

I woke up last night in the middle of a dream. I was chitchating with an attractive woman while waiting for an impromptu salsa dance competition to start. At one point in the conversation she called me a creep because of something that I said. It was unjustified, I felt, though I don’t remember what I said, and upsetting. It seems pretty clear from that that I had a sense of self while dreaming, as well as an ego to bruise.

what's the defining characteristic of mind?

Not sure.

The fact that in REM sleep we're not conscious of ourselves, like we are when awake, means that the defining characteristic of mind, self-awareness, is missing in it. Ergo, this ability to recognize our own existence can't be a brain-activity phenomenon. — TheMadFool

For one thing, self-awareness isn't missing in REM sleep. When I'm flying in a dream, for instance, I know that it's me flying. The same neurons for self-awareness are firing awake or dreaming. Also, I don't believe that self-awareness is the defining characteristic of a mind.

Pareidolia

I'm mainly concerned about the brain activity being the same between awake and REM sleep states. If the mind is the brain, we should be conscious on both occasions but we're not. — TheMadFool

I thought your concern was the matter of the mind being physical or not. I don't see the connection to dream sleep and being awake.

Have you heard of lucid dreaming?

To show that the mind is not physical, all you have to do is show how it can be independent of the physical. That will be difficult to show. It would be like showing that you can have a conversation with someone in a vacuum, and neither of you can read lips. Sound wave patterns are weightless but require the medium of air to carry them.

I think all you need to do is show how a mind can exist independently of anything physical.

Maybe he’ll sign an executive order disallowing talking about death as a proportion of population.

I said in an earlier post that the simplest definition of "to flourish" I could find in online dictionaries is "to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way."

It is hard to argue that what America is currently experiencing can in any way be described as "flourishing". Growth has taken a historic step backwards and as to health... — Thomas Quine

Steven Pinker makes a pretty convincing argument in Enlightenment Now. In any case, your definition is still foggy and how wise is it to aim for an unclear target?

Flourishing could mean that basic needs are met, including healthcare and education, and be measured by indicators like sustainability, relative level of happiness, having a sense of meaning, etc., none of which depend on economic growth.

Certainly Amazon is flourishing, but even if we take standard measures of business success, such as GDP or average corporate profits, the U.S. has taken a massive hit, like all countries but on many measures by far the worst of any developed country. This is in part because of a pervasive fetishization of individual liberty which makes containing the pandemic that much harder. — Thomas Quine

Strange that you equate GDP growth with flourishing. Climate change, the mass extinction of species, and other environmental degradations aren't usually considered conducive to human flourishing. Your own dictionary definition of flourishing includes, "..., especially as the result of a particularly favorable environment." Also, there are currently cultures that don't fetich individual liberty as we do, such as China and India, that are currently experiencing GDP growth that's lifting millions out of extreme poverty. But like other developed economies the growth will eventually decline. The point being that there's no apparent reason to conclude that the rugged individualism of the West has anything to do with economic decline.

Pinker argues that Enlightenment values lead to flourishing. I imagine that you would agree with that. This centers on values, however, and how can anyone be the judge of cultural values, much less force our own onto others?

If our goal is human flourishing, we must defend individual liberty, but not past the point where it threatens human flourishing. — Thomas Quine

How do you define human flourishing? Sorry if I’ve missed it, the topic is long. In the materialistic sense it could be said that Americans, for example, are flourishing, so things are good the way they are.

Interesting, thanks!

I understand Pigliucci's presentation of the dichotomy of control to be similar to Eastern philosophy in that what we have no control of will ultimately be unsatisfying (life is suffering), and since we have complete (not sure about that) control of developing our virtue it's bound to be satisfying, and it's in accord with our nature, being social and having the capacity of reason.

Absentee mail-in voting good, universal mail-in voting bad, supposedly because absentee follows a stricter process, but it doesn't.

In the absence of an explanation for the significance of a belief in a deity, I will assume that it has to do with spirituality/transcendence. I can fully appreciate that if that's the case. Pigliucci's stoicism isn't a problem for me in that regard because I had practice (realizing Buddhist emptiness, to put it plainly) before becoming interested in stoicism.

The capitalistic appropriation of traditional beliefs and practices is apparently a common theme. Buddhists lament mindfulness being used to increase work efficiency, for example. I recently read How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan, and in it he mentions the practice of silicon valley creatives micro-dosing psychedelics to increase their creativity. Shamans have traditionally used psychedelics for spiritual purposes. Micro-dosing is too weak for that purpose.

I don’t [think] Trump will win, so it’s probably too little too late. — NOS4A2

After witnessing the last three and a half years I have to say that I don’t share your faith in humanity.

You might want to read Lawrence Becker's A New Stoicism as well as Pigliucci for modern, godless (as it were) Stoicism. For me, the traditional Stoic view of God is appealing, as I can easily think of the universe/nature as something to be revered. — Ciceronianus the White

I've only read Pigliucci so am curious how God fits into a Divine Stoicism. If I remember correctly, Pigliucci claims that it can coexist with just about any metaphysics, but that's coexisting and not being integral.

Apparently Trump isn't doing well with suburban housewives so we'll probably be seeing more of this sort of thing. Fuck the poor!

It’ll be interesting to see what happens if Biden wins, if he’ll try to make inroads with the opposition party or if it will be all Tea Party gone wild.

I can't see the point of bringing genes into it. All we need to flourish is a healthy state of mind and body. That is taken away from many, even most, of us by modern life, beginning with the advent of agriculture and private ownership. We only require discipline to reacquire what would naturally be ours, but for the dire state of the environment, overcrowded cities and pervasive neurosis and addictive behavior of most of those of us who are "prosperous" in the modern world. — Janus

I bring genes into it in order to help understand the foundation of all morality. I don’t believe that it’s human flourishing because if it were then why aren’t we all flourishing? We’ve been around for thousands of years. There are signs of progress but there are also signs that we may be on the brink of self-destruction. Could it still be said that the foundation of morality is human flourishing if we all end up buried under the ashes of a nuclear winter? That or a similar fate is a possibility, and we are moral.

You say that “we only require discipline to reacquire what would naturally be ours“ but is that true? Would a hunter-gatherer society have the knowledge and discipline to flourish if an abundance of alcohol or high fructose corn syrup were made plentiful to them? Doubtful. We have a natural craving for sweetness, for example, that in the wrong circumstances will tend to lead away from flourishing.

We have a variety of moral intuitions that I assume have developed for particular circumstances, just as we have a variety tastes that fulfill various bodily needs. Perhaps our moral intuitions fulfill various specific social needs, like avoiding rejection or discouraging freeloading, and in the wrong circumstances can be counterproductive to flourishing.

Religious followers are not free to develop the ethical code being offered. If they do then they’ll no longer be considered part of the tradition. Developing virtue, as stoics do, leads to independence. This is why religions focus on following rules and not developing virtue, and why it doesn’t matter much if the rules are broken. Followers need to be kept dependent.