Russia-Ukraine live: Russian jet downs US drone over Black Sea

So abolitionists should have just shut their yapper up because, they are too confident? — schopenhauer1

It is laughable that you compare your moral whining to real, actual, legitimate human rights.

You give pessimism a bad name.

Well unless I speak of the living, I cannot speak at all. For as you know, people do not exist have no moral rights - they don't exist!

Therefore, I am not "subtly changing" anything. All people, including newly born people, have a due of pain and joy - what % and how to quantify this, is quite impossible.

The only thing I actually have a problem with - besides the repetition of the subject matter - is that you think your judgment is fantastically superior to the vast majority of everybody. That's quite an extraordinary stance to take.

If there is one thing studying or being interested in philosophy should do to people, is to make them realize the greatest, most brilliant people in history were wrong in most of the things they believed, not only intellectually, but morally too.

That means that you, me and everybody else are likely to be wrong on many - if not most - things. Don't be that confident.

Then you go on to give the standard reply that pain is an obvious evil and that no one deserves it, yet people aren't owed pleasure, etc., etc.

I doubt that real life can be reduced to such axiomatic schemes. The point, which has been stressed ad nauseum, is that most people do not view life in terms of pain alone. You can say these people are deluding themselves or something along those lines. Yet the fact remains that most people don't buy this argument, no matter how much you stress the forced aspect.

I have sympathy for your view - I do think that there is too much pain and destruction and misery and depression, partly (only partly) for these reasons I don't have children. The difference being that I also recognize that there are good things in life, things which make it worth living, even if there is pain - all these things are imposed on us by life.

The mere fact of being able to listen (and appreciate!) music, watch a beautiful sunset, fall in love, be able to experience the universe is a privilege known to only one species in the universe.

And yes, there is pain and suffering too, but it shall pass, as shall we.

But this doesn't enter into your calculus - or if does, it is not given the proper attention such topics deserve, as evidenced by the fact that you return to people not forcing others to have creatures who can have such privileges (or curse in your case.)

So I don't buy your argument. What else is there to say? Are you going to impose on me more arguments?

Nah - it's called a "red herring" and a ad hom merely because the topic does not what to be discussed - it is actually relevant. Why? Because if people did not feel this way, the argument given would not arise.

I have read several of your posts on the topic, you don't need to keep putting "imposition" and "forced" in bold - I get that point very well. But it's simply not convincing.

You see that this goes back to the argument of "inexistent being" being harmed. You've discussed this several times, probably too much. But a lot of this hinges precisely on that.

We know the formulaic response - because repetitious.

Two options: either be somewhat smirk and say, I don't care about potential suffering so long as you also count potential happiness, which makes me very immoral in your eyes or I can say that I think your views of suffering are quite distorted to the extent that it actually clouds other everything else life can provide.

I wouldn't be so superior sounding when passing such judgements.

Finally, also an issue that surely has come up - that people who have AN views tend to be depressed in some manner. This is claimed to be irrelevant to the central AN argument.

But if AN didn't have this kind of depression, I seriously doubt it would've ever arisen.

And I say all this while having some AN sympathies actually. But beating a bull to death, then stabbing its corpse, dousing it on fire, throwing a nuclear bomb on it and shooting it off to the sun, isn't really productive. There is no word that goes beyond "overkill" that I know of - but I don't see what success you've had.

Something has gone wrong here.

And I have replied.

Again, 8 months is kind of a long time for a discussion that was meant for a different poster and a different context in mind.

There are no new arguments to be given for or against AN. It boils down to you thinking life sucks and me thinking it does not.

Ok. Fine.

Many reasons surely.

Incidentally, the post you replied to is 8 months old. I have no interest in discussing anti-natalism, maybe others will. I find it quite tedious and boring.

If you want to discuss Mainländer's metaphysics and epistemology, then we can do that, as that's quite fascinating.

It's hard to generalize when speaking of so many people. I do not doubt that many of them suffer. But they don't solely suffer, there are other things in life too, like joy and love and laughter.

The point is that most people (not all) prefer to go on living, till' it's time to go - as everyone eventually will.

I'm sorry - I was not aware I was having a particular issue with the elusive now. Just the same issues most other philosophers have pointed out - so unless you have some very unique perspective on the issue, don't assume I'm having much problems.

You seem to be enlightened somehow, which is good for you, I suppose. But unless you can state concisely how your position renders you better prepared to discuss this issue - of which I'm quite generally very skeptical, with good reason - then I feel I won't be able to follow such sage views.

That the present exists is undeniable? It's problematic - as is the general nature of temporality. We cannot pin the right-nowness of the present, it goes simultaneously from the almost immediate future to the barely forgotten past, that exact moment of NOW is very elusive.

I believe that something like William James concept of a "specious present" is quite sensible. We likely think about the present in something like 3 to 5 second chunks.

As to the more remote future, it has not yet come to be, so it cannot exist in any meaningful sense of the phrase. It remains, somewhat abstractly, a possibility to be realized.

Hah! Yeah - that's one of the reasons I have been hesitant to read him, he's quite difficult to read. There's plenty of good philosophy that is written - if not clearly, then at least much better. But there are exceptions like Aristotle and Kant.

Thankfully not too many. But yeah, he's worth it, probably secondary sources can help with vocab and orientation.

I did not know about this quote. I have to read up on Aristotle, a bit embarrassed to admit I know very, very little of his thought.

Thanks for sharing.

One could make a case that being and experience require each other. For if we lacked the latter, we could not recognize the former. Sure, you can say that things existed before we arose, but we can only speak about them in our terms and our way of understanding. If we remove this, then, it is really difficult to speak about anything, naturally.

Something existent absent anything to confirm its existence is very problematic. We tend to say existence just is. We can say that after the fact.

I agree with such statements with qualifications. For if we never arose, we could not say that planets or rocks existed, for these, as planets and rocks, depend on our concepts. Another creature might bundle together different properties under the concept of existence.

I mean, you are right, "intelligence" could be used metaphorically - but then it's unclear as to what this means. We can describe physics in terms of intelligence too, but then we are being misleading.

And to be fair, several advances in AI are quite useful.

All this worry about AI when we have much, much more serious problems with regular human I, makes me think such worries are very much misaligned.

Also, not much is known about human intelligence, so to speak of the intelligence of something that isn't even biological should make one quite skeptical. Something in our thinking about these issues has gone wrong.

Exactly - his philosophy can be polarizing. It is interesting, but his previous works, before Process and Reality, specifically, The Concept of Nature, is better, or to be more accurate, I preferred.

I mean one can point to Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke and so many others that do excellent work in both these fields, which, incidentally, cannot be done independent of the other, it's basically impossible.

You can emphasize one or the other or try to do both equally. But there is no pure metaphysics nor pure epistemology, so they are wedded in a sense.

:up:

Not that they call it this, Lewis calls it conceptual analysis of the given in experience, whereas Tallis calls his approach "epistogony", literally generation of knowledge, but also "making knowledge visible", which is a kind of analysis of the given.

But both are basically analyzing everyday experience in a manner in which I think "epistemic metaphysics" is accurate.

In any case, the relevant books are C.I. Lewis' Mind and The World Order and Raymond Tallis' The Knowing Animal.

There are important economic factors here, no doubt as you showed in the article you shared. And indeed, there may well be other economic factors which the US has an eye on in the near future - or after the war.

The case of the Nordstream bombing is an illustration of such interests. Nevertheless, states also want power for the sake of wielding it. Now the issue is Russia, but the real concern for the US is China. But there is also plenty of business that could be done with China without recourse to provocations in Taiwan and sanctions on Chinese technology.

Why deny an immediate source of income? They don't want China to be as powerful as it is. Likewise with Cuba and Iran, sanctions on those countries are hurting what would otherwise be a business bonanza. But Cuba and Iran disobeyed the US, that is not liked. So, the profits can be set aside, while we teach them a lesson in obedience.

So yes, economy is important, but so is raw power.



Sure, I never meant to imply it was a secret. Makes some strategic sense too, in so far as Russia does not obey the US in several matters.

How far this attitude should be taken, i.e. what price should be paid in terms of lives for this expressed goal, is not clear.

I think we've had enough murder and war. Plainly, the powers at be do not.

A speck that views the universe as we do, is quite a mighty one, it seems to me.

How can one expect otherwise? It's not pretty - in fact, it's likely of the highest criminal tier imaginable, to profit from war. There is an argument to be made that weapons manufacturing should be left to the state and this way one leaves out most profit incentives.

These companies have a role to play in wanting this war to be longer - the more bullets and missiles are used, the more they sell. How much can we attribute exclusively to this industry is an open question. I suspect that the Pentagon's stated aim, "to severely weaken Russia.", is the bigger culprit.

Then again, these things are quite entangled together and prove difficult to tease apart. In any case, expected but disgusting nonetheless.

Depends on one's interest. Interesting to note nobody chose "metaphysics", which can't be right on a forum of this size. I think the example of Whitehead might be too polarizing, often it's hard to figure out what the heck he's saying, though there are some who interpret him in an interesting manner.

For my own interests, mostly the "manifest image" of everyday life, I think there's a lot of interesting ground that could be covered by an epistemological oriented metaphysics, as exemplified by C.I. Lewis and more recently by Raymond Tallis.

But there's just so much value to most of these approaches and subjects.

Just saw this, but have to say excellent post. Clear and interesting.

Would be nice to have decent mathematical skills to delve into this topic with more detail, but, I suppose basic arithmetic already offers plenty of food for thought.

Good question, I suppose I'd currently say I'm a "skeptical realist". There are many flavors of skepticism, from Pyrrhonian to "mitigated skepticism", found in Gassendi or Hume.

I just am not certain what part is completely external and what isn't. Quite hard to tease apart.

It may now be a cliche, and these, we are told, should be avoided. Nonetheless, I think they apply to those of us who resonate with them. Although the quote mentions literature specifically, I think it can apply to philosophy as well:

"Fiction's job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." - David Foster Wallace

I think this applies to my fascination with the dark side of human nature - from a psychological perspective, and also to my obsession with the idea that there are things in themselves - an aspect of reality, which we know that we cannot know. At least it is for me.

I suspect both have a tenuous connection with (im)possibility. How could a human being possibly do something as abhorrent as that? And, How can it at all possible the world as it is, differs radically from the way it appears?

Both are frustrations at lack of understanding, and yet both show a fascination with the way people think about others and the world. A good philosopher or a good novel with a philosophical idea, will comfort me in the darkness, I suppose.

And I could be doing shit psychoanalysis. Does my social status and my environment contribute to how I think? To a large extent sure. But since I cannot live two lives in separate environments, I cannot say...

In any case, thanks for opening this thread and allowing me to type out loud, with no real point in mind...

The fact that we are self-aware is nothing but an illusion, which is a good thing, because this means we don’t die entirely as long as this universe exists.

I can also argue that the source of my experience arises from the movement of my index finger. Doesn't mean it's true, much less that such statements should be taken seriously.

The only way to say that we don't really or truly die until the universe end is to argue that, in some technical sense, completely foreign to our understanding of the word, "consciousness" persists either in pieces of matter, or in some combination of "Universe-stuff".

One can freely decide what terminology one wants to use, but then go on to mistake the technical definition with our understanding of the word. In short, this looks to me as playing with words.

Damn man, I actually find it quite intuitive! :rofl: Maybe because I agree with what he's saying. Probably Art Hobson's Tales of the Quantum may merit a look, it's fantastic, tough, but I like how Hobson thinks, takes QM as is, no Many Worlds, no fancy stuff - just interpreting the data and what is means.

Might have helped here, am not sure.



It is excellent, so far, I am liking it more than Satantango, then again, Satantango's brilliance came out in the last 6 pages or so. We'll see, but amazing so far.

On Physics and Philosophy by Bernard D'Espagnat

New Essays on Human Understanding by GW Leibniz

Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai

Forget it, the gig is up - too many superb sources being called ideologues or whatever. And what, they think the New York Times or whatever establishment media (who never see a war they don't salivate for) are more trustworthy?

Not worth it, it isn't serious.

As we have advanced in our knowledge of the world, our vocabularies change to reflect that change. Thus, what was once considered the soul, can now be called consciousness, though the concept soul was rather broader and obscure too, I haven't seen a clear definition from the classics I am currently studying - Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, etc.

The self is different and now refers to a subset of phenomena that fall under the scope of experience. What it is, or is not, is quite difficult. But it is useful - even in law.

This of course, does not mean that these words can't be used in another way, such as saying that "this music moved my soul", or saying "that was a spiritual journey".

But if we want to advance in understanding consciousness, we want to avoid as much ambiguity as is reasonable. And we can surely take ideas from people who belied in the soul or spirit and apply it in a modern setting. So they can be useful to some people, no doubt.

Not to mention the creation of small circle of cliques of similar minded people who go around saying the same thing to each other in different settings...

It becomes narrow and repetitive quite soon. One finds interesting views in many places.

Fair enough.

It's kind of the only label I identify with comfortably, but I do recognize that McGinn is not for everybody - he can be too opinionated and this can sometimes say things which are doubtful. But being a Mysterian myself, I can't help but like him.



I can certainly understand that, if there is such an "intrinsic character", but it plays no role in the development of the field, then this is not something of concern for a Mathematician. This applies to physics too, I think.

If you have in mind ethics, political philosophy and the like, there is a lot of interesting material. But as to the sciences and math, there is no neat distinction between philosophy of any field in science and the science itself. We call it philosophical when the question sounds deep.

Other problems: the self, free will, monism, knowledge and the like, don't look promising, because we've been debating them for thousands of years. Branches of science developed out of philosophy, but a set of important questions (to a good deal of the founder of these fields) have been left behind.

Could be a clue of questions which we don't have the intellectual capacity to solve.

I wonder what you would make of this blog entry by Colin McGinn. It's quite short. Does he have a point, or is it not even wrong?

https://www.colinmcginn.net/what-is-mathematics-about/

The idea is to go beyond what is often said to be the beginning of a philosophical journey or adventure, which is that philosophy begins in wonder.

I think it goes beyond that, all the way to utter astonishment, at existence, and life and the universe and objects and perception and unity and diversity and knowledge and so on and on.

Of course, the association one has with any particular word may render any definition bland or trivial. Jeff Bezos having billions may be astonishing to some, and in a way it is. But not in a good way.

That's not how I experience astonishment, nor do I expect others to have the same experience as I do.

I like Tallis' response best.

"In the beginning was astonishment."

Actually, Locke was one of the first philosophers (one of them, not the first one) to speak about consciousness, and he does so, several times in the essay, with quite interesting results.

As for the rest of your argument, this is terminological. The whole idea of the "hard problem" was introduced by David Chalmers, a philosopher, not a scientist. Yet scientists seem to find the idea useful, so they borrowed it. That's perfectly fine and healthy.

That quote I gave from Locke barely needs modification, it pretty much considers the hard problem, and says we can't understand how this is possible (how matter could think), but if nature ("God"), chooses so, then so be it, we must concede to matter the property of thought (consciousness), but it remains inconceivable to us.

Sometimes I take a left
When everything is right
And I can see the road
When I turn out the light
I sleep under the stars
And then it starts to rain
Take cover in a bar
And run into a friend (x4)
Till the sun comes out again

Fell asleep in LA
Woke up in Bangkok
Gave my soul to a babe
In a pawn shop
Oh my ee oh my home

Could be anywhere
And any road, any road
Any road will take me there
Any road, any road, any road

Oh my ee oh my home
And any road, any road
Any road will take me there

I may have roamed these streets
A hundred times before
And when I finally meet you
I'll roam a hundred more
And maybe we'll go north
And maybe we'll go south
Just to keep on rolling, rolling, rolling
Is what it's all about

Fell asleep in LA
Woke up in Bangkok
Gave my soul to a babe
In a pawn shop
Oh my ee oh my home
Could be anywhere
And any road, any road
Any road will take me there
Any road, any road, any road

Oh my ee oh my home
And any road, any road
Any road will take me there

Oh the last thing I remember
Before she broke my heart
We were riding in a rickshaw
Down Sunset Boulevard
And I asked her where we're going
She said, "baby don't you care
Any road, any road will take you there"

Fell asleep in LA
Woke up in Bangkok
Gave my soul to a babe
In a pawn shop
Oh my ee oh my home
Could be anywhere
And any road, any road
Any road will take me there

Yes, I remember seeing Nebrija. :cheer:

No worries, it's actually not important.

I suppose that I should also mention that this so called "hard problem" was already well-known to John Locke, and I think his answers or musings, if you prefer to call them that, are quite on point:

"We have the ideas of matter and thinking, but possibly shall never be able to know whether any mere material being thinks or no; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of our own ideas, without revelation, to discover whether Omnipotency has not given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and think, or else joined and fixed to matter, so disposed, a thinking immaterial substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive that GOD can, if he pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another substance with a faculty of thinking; since we know not wherein thinking consists, nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give that power...

Whether Matter may not be made by God to think is more than man can know. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal thinking Being, or Omnipotent Spirit, should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought..."

Today we would of course change "God" for "nature", and the argument still stands remarkably well.

I didn't end up staying in academia, but technically I am one. Afraid I can't answer most of your questions, with perhaps the exception of some aspects of philosophy of science.