"What does that even mean?" whenever I read this line I imagine a baby analytic philosopher hitting his little fist against his chair demanding meaning! meaning! but that aside. — Tobias

Sounds like you've had a bad experience. Not sure I have ever met an analytic philosopher.

But I note that you didn't explain the quote and since you used it, I was wondering what you were saying through it about truth and women? Feel free to borrow further from Nietzsche if that helps.

These are elements of your consciousness - of your self organization. — Pop

I think those are just words. Not sure they really connect to anything except as a figure of speech. You could also say, and with no greater meaning, that my tastes are elements of my psychological essence - of my personal identity. What does this contribute?

How does personal taste arise? What is subjectivity a function of? — Pop

No idea. Does anyone really know? Ususally you develop a taste based on what you get to experience and what out of that experience appeals and sometimes someone shows you things they like and you get to like those things too. Some tastes are intuitive and may not have an accessible explanation.

Lots of people have a personal taste that is absent and quite phoney - they think they should like things because that's whatever the in-group they wish to please likes.

I never really understood what this meant. Please explain. — I love Chom-choms

It means life just happens and that's the point, while plans are kind of futile.

So, please answer my question, "What do you live for?" — I love Chom-choms

Not sure what you mean - I live and enjoy the rough and the smooth.

If that life affords some pleasure for others. Think of the great artist whose life is constant suffering for example. — Janus

We don't need to evoke 'great artists' - think of the long suffering parents who work hard in menial jobs getting ill health, postponing all their own pleasures, perhaps dying young so that their children can study and become useful transformative members of a culture - doctors, pharmacists, researchers, teachers, whatever. Pretty common. Self sacrifice has traditionally been seen as worth living for.

At least for me, a life worth living is based on what I want to do in my life and I think that every person has to have something that they desire. If that desire is fulfilled then it is a life worth living and if it isn't then it is not a life worth living. — I love Chom-choms

I understand your point but I'm not in agreement. I take the view life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. The conceit of expecting life to provide what you desire (an archaic word)) is not something I share. It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.

You are trivializing a perfectly understandable point. — schopenhauer1

Actually, you may be trivializing things by turning life into a shallow assessment of 'not worth starting' or 'worth starting' - which from my perspective can't readily be made.

But you're already entering this discussion from foundational perspective of antinatalism, so life not worth starting is underwritten in your worldview. No wonder you accept the points made so readily. I am approaching this thread in good faith and I see it differently. We don't have to agree. That's perfectly fine. I am not unsympathetic to the overarching position, just not via this syllogism.

Same thing.

As for Tom Storm's idea about "worth living".. It would seem that since DB is dealing with the idea of procreation he is really intending to say, "worth starting".. A bad life (one that is subjectively so let's say), was not worth starting for that person. So your critique is just a confusion on this or an intentional ignorance of sorts to derail the major point. — schopenhauer1

No, it's just that we don't all see the world in simplistic 'worth living' or 'not worth living' arbitrary categories, nor do we all see a clear way in which to determine these ideas except by more extreme examples.

This fact, prevents art from being arbitrary. — Pop

That fact is arbitrary. What sensibility you have and what you are drawn to is an arbitrary fate of subjective experience.

by a likewise consciousness. — Pop

It's not consciousness - it's personal taste.

Tomorrow I'm gonna break a few treebranches artistically and if people wanna buy it... — Philofile

It's been done.

t matters a huge deal. When art is undefined it fragments into many things, such as what has happened in post modernism. When it was defined to some extent, during modernism, there was a vague central agreement as to what constituted good art. So art integrated somewhat around this understanding, and the best examples of this understanding, was good art. The owners of this understanding were artists and intellectuals, so progress in art was driven by the people central to it, and there was a largely united world vision of what constitutes good art.

Without this world wide central agreement art has fragmented into fiefdoms of art, where what constitutes good art is the domain of the most powerful, rather then the most knowledgeable, imo. — Pop

I would hate for there to be agreement as to what constitutes good art. Art is simply what people put on display and call art. Whether it is good or not only matters in certain shared contexts and perhaps in the art business where 'good' equals $..

Apart from some academics or cognoscenti, no one will ever much care about systems or classifications of artistic merit - what will endure is personal taste and/or the market which both in their own way determine what is good.

Now it might be that if you subscribe to philosophical idealism you may see art as being the pursuit of goodness, beauty and truth. Then you can potentially posit categories of objective aesthetics which art either embodies or does not. Kind of pointless from where I sit.

I doubt that helps much. — Banno

That did help. I'm trying to navigate these tricky or is that pesky (?) realms of philosophy.

Cheers - TS

That's useful. On a tangent - is it your understanding of phenomenology that the notion of 'what is true' is understood as an intersubjective understanding or belief rather than 'true' in the way we have been exploring here?

Our empiricist and pragmatist friends have been misled by considering only a limited number of examples of the use of fact. — Banno

Yes. Part of the challenge with this word 'fact' is that 'facts' are often conceptualized as a kind of ammunition to be used against those who hold to different 'facts'. There are fact wars. Facts have totemic power. We've come to see facts in specific and perhaps limited terms as you are suggesting. The chess example being a good case.

Why should it matter to anyone what art is? Personally, my hunch is that art is not the object itself but the culture around it.

Game rules.

i) Life+Pleasure=Happyi) Life+Pleasure=Happy
ii) Life−Pleasure=Sadii) Life−Pleasure=Sad
iii) 2Life=Happy+Sad (Equation i+Equation ii)iii) 2Life=Happy+Sad (Equation i+Equation ii)
iv) Life=12Happy+12Sad (From equation iii) — TheMadFool

Have you ever noticed how sad so many happy people are?

First, a fact is a true statement by definition. There are no facts that are not true. SO your preoccupation is ill-formed.

Second, the word "determine" is misplaced, since what you are asking, presumably, is when one ought believe; and that's not determinate. You can believe whatever you like. That doesn't make it true. That is, you are asking a normative question but looking for an epistemological answer.

Third, it would be very odd if there were a rule that set out when a statement s true in every case.

This thread is so long because you and a few others havn't understood the answer. — Banno

Excellent. Thank you. I'm not good at this stuff.

But Nietzsche was on point: "what if truth was a woman". — Tobias

Hmmm - what does that even mean? Aphorisms are amusing but are they anything more than glib provocations?

So what something is, is what it is used for or how it is used? — tim wood

Don't know.

My preoccupation is how do we determine a fact is a true statement?

It still seems to be about correspondence, but I take the point that correspondence is probably the wrong noun. It's a relationship or an equivalence.

There's a couple of uses for the word.

A fact is a statement that is true.

It is also the state of affairs set out by a true statement. — Banno

This. :wink:

Fourteen pages in. What is a fact? Anyone? — tim wood

Funny - I was going to ask the same question. We've had some strong hints here. I can imagine some arguing that a fact is an intersubjective agreement on a matter.

or even recognize their rationality as a just one of a potentially infinite range of worldviews, each of which aims at the same moral end , but via an often profoundly different construal of empirical circumstance. — Joshs

Can you say a little more about this point? Are you saying people aim at the same moral end?

Also, how do you locate this continuum of rationality in the context of intersubjectivity and the potential shared interests of society/groups?

I am not philosopher and have not privileged this subject in my life. I'm not sure that I am looking for anything in particular. Probably to gain a sense of what I may have missed. I like ideas. Some ideas/models/narratives are helpful, some not so much. I guess I'm looking to broaden my range of useful conceptual models. That said, I am not a theorist and have a low boredom threshold for abstruse or needlessly bad, academic jargon. That's just a personal preference.

Problem? — Srap Tasmaner

Well, yes, probably my clarity - I was talking about every tree leaf in my home state - this is an area of 141327.149 square miles.

We're not even able to locate every tree, let alone leaf.

Solution?

Show me how.

But is it inaccessible in principle, or only as a practical matter? — Srap Tasmaner

It's physically impossible.

Once you start thinking about it, the possible examples of facts which we have no hope of confirming or denying seems almost endless. — Janus

This has always struck me. How many leaves are there on the trees in my state right now? There is an exact figure but we cannot access this.

What work does "I know" do? — Ennui Elucidator

My guess is that it expresses a person's emotional need to underscore their certainty and has rhetorical use.

Got ya. Yes, it surprises me how frequently people come on here with proposed 'answers' or looking for answers when their questions are muddled, assumption ridden, incomplete or tautological.

A good life is worth living; conversely, a bad life is not worth living. — darthbarracuda

Yeah... I can't get past premise one. What's a good life? What's a bad life? Also I'm not trying to be a dick but what does 'worth living' mean? Do you mean by this that if you have a bad life you may as well die (suicide, I presume)? I don't think it is possible to determine what a life worth living actually means except in the extreme. Some might think it would be superb to live as Mick Jagger, for instance. I'd rather be dead. :gasp:

Time is money. Is this not correct? And both are no object. Only those who treat them as such are in said predicament. — Outlander

Is that a fact?

Ik hep niks to klagen - COVID is een probleem voor ons allemaal. :death:

Het is hier half elf - lunch in een uurtje. Let's talk English or we might get in trouble. I suspect you may be on borrowed time. :wink:

No, I'm not! Oops... — BrotherB

Hoe gaat het? Tijd niet gezien. Alles goed?

Laguercina has just joined, and at this rate will be leaving us soon. — Banno

He's banned.

A tip to remember names and dates? Apart from writing down notes and re-reading them and writing essays, no. Some people are blessed with exceptional memories. I used to draw timelines and diagrams to remember things.

What's the best way to learn philosophy?: — DesperateBeing

I often wondered about this. I imagine there are various approaches and they don't all work for everyone. Sometimes it can help to start with themes in philosophy and see what philosophers have made of these issues across centuries (eg, god; morality; truth). Or you can read a general introduction to the history of philosophy and use this as a springboard to explore what interests you.

In my end twenties the gods are back. — Laguercina

Well, as they say, progress is not inevitable... :wink:

That is a key question. I have met many Christians (progressives, obviously) who believe Jesus to have been a mortal caught up in Roman deific marketing. For them, Jesus is an ethical teacher and Christianity a cultural legacy of social justice (with some shocking crimes attached). Their idea of God is an ineffable deity along the lines of Tillich's ground of being. I don't know how they make this work or why they would bother but it seems harmless next to the Southern Baptist.

I got the reference. Do I take this as a compliment or an insult?