Not claiming we can get an "ought" from an "is". — ToothyMaw

Indeed. We can leave that task to Sam Harris. :razz:

Fair points. I guess some thinkers might locate morality within some kind of evolutionary framework. Obviously this can be problematic and still requires interpretation.

Since all of these people are imaginary, they cannot be either really separate or really identical. — Herg

At last one of those in that list was a real man. :wink:

Doubting the existence of moral facts, as well as unicorns, is of course reasonable, but to rule them out (the moral facts) is not, imo. — ToothyMaw

I'm not a philosopher but this seems reasonable. I'm interested to understand (in theory) how would a moral fact ever be identified? Would it need to have a transcendent source?

You advocated for relativism, even if you said that you would argue your ethics are superior, which makes no sense. — ToothyMaw

Really? Perhaps it's no different to having a view on the merits of a novel. There is no 'correct' assessment of any book, but some assessments are better argued, are more illuminating and make more sense. All humans can do is try things and argue their merits. There's no foundational guarantee for anything I am aware of unless you happen to be some kind of fundamentalist or Platonist.

If we take a goal we can all or mostly agree upon - say the flourishing of conscious creatures - we can make assessments about morality - what we ought or ought not to do. I would argue this is superior to consulting gods, say.

Santa is a person that ascribes a jolly old man over at the North Pole. He is known by two names, both "Santa Claus" and "St. Nicholas". — Shawn

No. This is where it gets complicated. Can you demonstrate that Santa Clause is identical with those others? I would suggest to you that Santa Clause, St Nick, Kris Kringle and Father Christmas are four separate figures who work together over Christmas. Their stories appear to be different and don't match up.

This is not true in my experience. Whatever their politics, religion, philosophy, or other characteristic, humans always have more in common than in opposition. — T Clark

:100:

It would also help if you used paragraphs for readability.

Call it faith, pragmatism, foundationalism or whatever, but at a basic level you've got to just accept certain things as givens. — Hanover

I hear you. Brute facts.

I would agree with the observation that ultimately, with enough questioning of fundamental beliefs and given assumptions, that soliipsism, meaninglessness, and moral relativism eventually follow. — Hanover

AKA - atheism leads to nihilism?

Poetically speaking, all roads out of Athens lead to solipsism. All roads out of Jerusalem, to meaning. — Hanover

Them's fighting words. :wink:

It seems this way to me intuitively.

a book I've both seen and read. — Hanover

Did it have a good cover?

What do you make of the criticism that if words are metaphors we risk slipping into solipsism?

This is a fascinating and seemingly endless debate. If you had to summarise where the others are going wrong in their conception of ineffable what is it?

I am very tempted with the notion that words are metaphors and I know you have already stated this leads to solipsism. Are we all in the thrall of Kantian metaphysics?

I don't think use of marijuana is ipso facto hedonistic, if by this you mean sensually self-indulgent. I think a lot of people use to it to help make the daily grind of life more bearable and return to the task of supporting themselves and their family.

:up:

Does any of that help at all? — Ludwig V

Interesting perspective. I'm not sure I am any closer to believing that will is the key ingredient in people's success. The fact that some people can set or achieve goals is down to lots of factors. When we are successful, we like to think it's because we have innate capacity or determination. Luck plays a role too.

The basics of motivation are values and reason, which together make up a practical syllogism. That seems quite clear — Ludwig V

I'm believe that people often don't know what they want or what they are doing. Even those who appear to set goals and achieve success. I worked with a man who was a wealthy and successful lawyer. All the plans he ever made he achieved - from landing the right university, to getting a gig in the right law firm; the obligatory luxury cars and home. But at 47, he was consumed by despair and found himself to be a failure. Turns out what he really wanted to do was be an artist. He was propelled into law by family expectations and the system of privilege he grew up in. I suspect many people live similar lives of superficial success which are based on confusion and a lack of insight into their own values and needs.

How do you feel about certainty then? Do people have different capacities for certainty? — Pantagruel

Not sure how these are connected. It seems to me that certainty is often the product of ignorance (e.g., Dunning–Kruger) or confidence, education, gender, anti-social behaviour, upbringing, etc.

And yet the more absurd the belief, the more ferociously people will commit, you see it everywhere. — Pantagruel

Indeed. I think fear may be a central factor. People embrace certainty as it assists them to feel safe and act in a world which seems dangerous. It provides them with an identity, with predictability and compass points by which to navigate life. Hence the seductive nature of fundamentalisms.

Plenty of respected thinkers don't believe we have free will. I have no commitments either way, since I am not qualified to make that call. But even Sam Harris (who many people dislike and does not believe we have freewill) argues that the illusion of freewill is present to almost all of us. But my modest comments on will do not rest on 'freewill or not' questions.

My example was just one potential explanation. My main point is that when we use the term will, it's more like an umbrella term to describe a range of processes. Some people clearly fetishise will (libertarians, for instance) and we are not even certain that humans have free will.

In my experience, when people make dramatic changes in their lives, to call it an act of will is like ascribing a single, magical power as a substitute for understanding a range of contributing factors. What's the difference between the person who can make change and the person who can't? Willpower? That's a kind of a libertarian secular/religious view, right? I would argue it is more likely that the person who makes the change has other factors going on - reason/s to be motivated, a sense of hope, a connection to others, an obsession even. I've known many people with serious alcohol misuse who swapped that addiction for another addiction and never really addressed their problems. They became addicted to AA meetings, to sex, exercise, collecting. Sobriety wasn't an act of will, more of a sublimation. People are complex and messy and the 'will' account seems somewhat reductive and poetic.

But I'm happy to be wrong. If someone can identify what will is and how it works...

Indeed. And do you not think that is the ultimate act of will? — Pantagruel

Rather than will, what it often takes is the realisation of something you were not aware of. For instance, understanding that being sexually abused was not your fault can create a huge shift and remarkable change may follow from there.

Have you heard of Joseph Sirgy? — Pantagruel

No. I'm not a big theory guy.

I feel I am well-qualified to evaluate the nature of will. — Pantagruel

It's clear that the idea of will is very important to you.

I am not saying people don't appear to set and achieve goals, sometimes with the zeal of an addiction. I'm not saying that people can't be determined. I am just not convinced 'will' holds up to being fetishised or understood as a transcendent, transformative virtue.

Cool. It's fine that we disagree. I'l watch this with some interest. :pray:

It's existence isn't something that I doubt or want to debate. — Pantagruel

So perhaps you are not open to thoughts, only agreement. Ok.

More in figuring out its role in relation to doing versus not doing, persistence in solving problems and learning, self-control, etc. — Pantagruel

My point is that what you are calling will might well be a conflation of complex psychological processes. Worth considering.

I have spent three decades working with people who have chronic substance misuse issues and suicidal ideation. One of my roles is trying to identify people's 'will to live' (as you might put it). The concept of 'will' can be seen to map onto these issues - for instance, the lack of will to stop using substances and the loss of the will to live. In almost every case I have seen it is actually not will that is the issue. It ususally involves complex factors including interplay of trauma, loss, grief, identity. In other words, to make big changes and different choices, people don't need more will power, they need to reimagine who they are.

But I'll fuck off now. I enjoyed your OP.

Effort. I've spent a lifetime doing difficult things. My personal experience, will is real. — Pantagruel

I'm not denying that people try things. But what is 'will' in this? What you describe may be a multifactorial psychological process rather than this poetic account of 'will'.

So what is will and can you articulate its elements in dot points?

Thoughts? — Pantagruel

Not sure what 'will' might be and I doubt it is rational. It sounds more like a literary, poetic term for a range of other factors in people's behaviour. People have a psychology and personality that propels them along and can even get in the way and sometimes kill them (lifestyle, suicide, etc). I tend to hold that people generally do not know what they want and often chaotically pursue things they think will provide happiness. This process is often kickstarted and instilled in them by parents and culture rather than their own creative volition. Do you see will as something belonging to idealism? As I understand it, Schopenhauer's will (one of the most famous accounts) is probably better understood as an energy which is blind and striving.

I've seen about 25 of them. Many I don't remember well and some I didn't care for. But a few of my favourites are there.

Nice.

:up: :pray:

I think he may have lacked irony...

:cool: :up:

I see. In what format would you choose to exist then? As an entity of pure mind/mentality and thought with no time, matter etc to sculpt your ideas in thr physical? — Benj96

I have no view on that. Only on creation.

However, it being your creation, how might you feel about the bad things that have transpired? Would you feel culpable or would you feel just knowing that you can change it or start over at a moments notice? — Benj96

I were a god I would not make a creation in the first place.

In essence, what sort of god would you define yourself as? — Benj96

Not sure. But since nature is so cruel and so poorly designed, I'd probably try to fix it and remove the diseases and design flaws and weaknesses and predatory behaviours which abound in this current wonky, barbaric 'creation'.

And then there is Socratic irony, but no one here would know how to use that. — Banno

I don't know anything about it, can you define it for me?

I've no idea what sarcasm is. — Banno

I think it's when you apply irony with a sledge hammer.

The people I am referring to were unaware that their practices were in direct contrast to their values. In other words, sincere and unintentional ironists from my perspective.

:rofl:

It's only ironic when the outcome is opposite to the intention because of the intention. — Vera Mont

I often found it ironic how those I knew in Buddhist, mediation circles would talk about shedding attachments and getting closer to enlightenment whilst simultaneously bonking each other stupid, investing in real estate and buying luxury cars.

In Christian circles this used to be called hypocrisy and I wonder if hypocrisy, when viewed from a particular perspective, is just irony as praxis.

Not to mention Barnaby and Sir Les' contribution to dick cheese...

But that doesn't cause me any doubts about my language. I guess I don't see the irony in this. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. — T Clark

I don't fully understand it but I think irony in philosophy might be the gap between our metaphysical system building and reality. All our systems being constructed from language and never quite making direct contact with the world. But this all sounds like postmodernism.

Apocryphal has Bill Bryson suggesting that 40% of Americans do understand irony. — Banno

Interesting. That comports to my personal experience of the Americans I know. :wink: Is it the other 60% who are susceptible to Donald Trump and don't realize he is an ironist and performance artist, a little like our own Sir Les Patterson?

Isn't her song famously about irony, without any examples of irony? Ironic... I don't know the song, just that observation.

I was taught (falsely perhaps) that in America the only people to understand irony and use it well in humour and art are the Jews. There is definitely a cultural aspect to its use. Irony is one of my favourite things.

Irony does feature in philosophy - from Socrates' ironic stance of 'knowing nothing' to Kierkegaard; On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, Rorty; Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.

Rorty developed his own word, 'ironism'. Wiki has this on it:

Rorty cited three conditions that constitute the ironist perspective and these show how the notion undercuts the rationality of conservative, reactionary, and totalitarian positions by maintaining the contingency of all beliefs.[1] These conditions are:

- She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered;

- She realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts;

- Insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.

— Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p.73

In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Rorty argues that Proust, Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, Derrida, and Nabokov, among others, all exemplify ironism to different extents. It is also said that ironism and liberalism are compatible, particularly if such liberalism has been altered by pragmatic reductionism.

But I'll say materialism is "winning" in my mind at the moment. And mostly for ethical reasons, rather than the usual debates. But I know materialists have done bad things, too, so.... ever and forever thinking back and forth. — Moliere

Wow. That sounds interesting, but perhaps this is not the thread for such a provocative statement.

OK, fair enough: I guess it depends on what is meant by "doing epoché". If it means simply not focusing on the metaphysical question concerning the independent reality of phenomena, I don't see how that could be so difficult. As I said I think scientists for the most part, ignore that question: "Shut up and calculate"; in any case the question certainly doesn't seem to be a necessary part of scientific practice.

If it were taken to mean something like a radical alteration of consciousness, as, for example, satori is understood to be in Zen Buddhism, where the independent reality of phenomena might be said to be no longer unreflectively presupposed, then that might be more of a challenge, and you would need to try for yourself. — Janus

I hear you and it is a fascinating matter - to me anyway. I have heard it argued that epoché is like some accounts of meditation or prayer. Do you think this is fair for some forms of epoché? You seem to be suggesting this in the second para above. I've often thought of meditation as an attempt to encounter the ineffable.

I'd say bad things are done by ideologues, and there are plenty of those on both sides. — Janus

Aren't there 'fine people' on both sides? (sorry)

Also bear in mind that the epoché and the transcendental reduction are not the same thing. — Janus

Good point.