While that is a fairly common Christian assumption, I think that you have failed to take into consideration that Christianity was kind of the locus of ethical meaning up until around the onset of Modernity. — thewonder

Well aware of that.

without Christianity, humanity failed to create an ethic with which to prevent humanitarian catastrophe. You seem to think that this is evidently false, given the history of Christianity, which I don't think is quite so obvious. — thewonder

Christianity has never stopped human catastrophes that I am aware of and has sometimes lubricated them.

I don't say that Christianity is all bad, I simply say it is not wise to argue for its transcendent virtue when it is so clearly has also justified or supported or been a key ingredient in immoral activities.

Your particular prejudice against Existentialism is just the sort of thing that I'm talking about. — thewonder

Not my prejudice - the people I am referring to. I am sympathetic to existentialism.

Despite that Joseph Goebbels was Catholic and Adolf Hitler was an Anglican Protestant, thereby necessitating some form of Christianity within the Nazi Party, I would imagine that the general attitude towards Ethics within the Gestapo could generally be characterized by what both is and is mistaken for as "Nihilism" by Existentialists. — thewonder

Yep. Obviously you have already corrected the false idea that Hitler was a Prottie. It is very popular to call Nazis godless but Martin Luther's writing on Jews is sometimes said to have helped in the development of Nazi anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism would not have worked as a purely secular prejudice, without a robust tradition of Christian hatred of the Jews for being Christ killers, etc. And, of course, an unofficial Nazi motto was 'Gott Mit Uns (God is with us).

To my understanding, there are debates upon the translation, but the quote effectively says something to that effect regardless. — thewonder

I don't think there are any debates on the translation as such and I think the language is important. Actually there are several quotes in the novel that hint at this formulation of a pretty conventional idea about morality. It's the common person's notion of morality - that we need (typically a Christian) God as the foundation of what is good - or we will just go about killing and harming others. Which of course is patent bullshit but still very popular, especially with Jordan B Peterson and his crowd. What makes "without God anything is permittable" a catchy 'quote' is it sounds like someone took Dostoyevsky to some smart marketing guys and turned him into a slogan. It has, to use that unfortunate expression, 'stickiness'.

I am of the opinion that Sartre was right, man is "condemned to be free", and that a fundamental goal of Existentialism ought to be to figure out how to cope with what he identified as the human condition. Sartre, however, is wildly unpopular within kind of a lot of philosophical circles, usually relating to a set of rather unfortunate details of both his personal and political life, and, so, often find for it to be fairly difficult to even engage in conversations with kind of a lot of other philosophers about this. — thewonder

There was a lot of reaction against Sartre too because he is so synonymous with pretentious, un-discipled Baby Boomers, wearing black turtlenecks, smoking Sobranie cigarettes, whilst pontificating meaninglessly about meaning. Certainly many people I knew in the 1980's-1990's would have laughed anyone out of the room for considering existentialism to be philosophy.

Dostoyevsky is never a propagandist. — BitconnectCarlos

Or if he is, he is a talented and nuanced one. Good propaganda is a lost art.

If God does not exist, everything is permitted.", can be interpreted à la the condemnation to be free that Jean-Paul Sartre later invoked, despite Fyodor Dostovesky's Orthodox Christianity. — thewonder

This quote does not actually appear in the book (Karamazov). An actual quote, close to this is - But what will become of men then?' I asked him, 'without God and immortal life? All things are permitted then, they can do what they like?

The reality is that the quote can be more properly reversed,If there is a God than anything is a permittable. You only have to see what atrocities are done in the name of God historically and today to see that throwing acid into the face of a young girl for daring to learn to read is something that readily suits a fundamentalist who thinks they are doing God's work.

Dostoevsky is not a philosopher - he is a fiction writer who uses ideas in interesting ways. I find his work somewhat laborious but The Gambler is a great study of addiction. D's own problem was chronic gambling which can be more soul destroying than alcohol or other substances.

Yes, I agree with this. I used to really like Heidegger. When I read him now, it does little to me. It doesn't connect nearly as much, though I do still find some value in him. — Manuel

That's very interesting, Manuel. Can you tease this out? What appealed then and what do you think happened to that connection?

I had a "postmodernism" phase many years ago, in which I liked Foucault, Deleuze and Lacan. I now think Lacan and some parts of Deleuze are just awful, unhelpful and can quite literally make you think irrationality about how the world works. But my opinion on Derrida never changed, he just plays with words and tries to sound complex — Manuel

I never bothered.

Was/is democracy a conspiracy? I can imagine fundamentalist Muslims and Chinese leaders arguing it is. — Athena

I have certainly heard this expressed by fundamentalist Muslims. Democracy is how the evil West spreads its 'poisonous ideas' of equality for women and secularism.

:100:

Not to mention the ongoing conspiracy of Christianity in its sexual abuse of children - committed by clergy and covered up by clergy at the highest levels for generations. Like Marxism, Christianity has pretended to care for the weak and suffering, but energetically commits atrocities on the very group it proports to protect.

Do you think maybe the fast paced working life of living in a society/ collective may be propagated by the entertainment industry for this reason? — Benj96

The economic system and how business is conducted is probably more responsible for that.

Media may be a placating us or distracting us. Who knows? — Benj96

Well, it is the legitimate function of an entertainment industry to do this. That's why people seek out entertainment. It's a consolation.

We don’t have the time to explore things in depth because of all these swirling obligations and responsibilities. So we let media do it for us. — Benj96

Does media do it for us? Maybe a little with documentaries and such but I would think that many people aren't interested in exploring ideas in depth. Certainly not philosophy. That's not a criticism of them exactly just a fact that not all people have the same personality types or are primed by education and culture to even think this is a thing. Add to this full time work, family obligations and being tired... who then even thinks reading Heidegger, say, is a good idea?

Being curious is just one step. It's commonly said that intelligent people are curious. But are all curious people intelligent? No. Having a mind that can acquire wisdom through curiosity is another thing entirely. You can read the classic books, travel the world, learn a bunch of skills and still be a terribly dull human being. It may also be better to acquire serious knowledge about one or two things than be, as they used to say, a jack off of all trades...

One of the reasons that religion is meaningful is that man needs something above himself to base his morality on. With this foundation, he rationalizes every damn thing and ends up committing great atrocities in the name of his intellectual depravity. — synthesis

That is certainly a commonly held view. I am not so sure it works. One of the problems with religion is that it doesn't offer a moral foundation. What it does offer is many conflicting ideas which are interpreted chaotically or cherry picked by religious followers for subjective reasons and often in atrocious ways.

Which is why on issues like abortion, the role of women, capital punishment, euthanasia, homosexuality, drug use - believers contradict each other, all thinking they have God's view on the issues covered. Christianity can lead to the KKK or to Martin Luther King. With religious morality what you have is subjectivity - people making choices about right and wrong, based on personal preferences and interests. God scarcely comes into it.

This probably helps to explain why so many atrocities are committed by believers. Just look at the countless child abuse cases world wide, committed, perpetuated and covered up by every level of religious belief and church groups.

That may be what Plantinga is saying too though, I'm not sure, but I just want to say I think you can have both evolutionary theory and independent criteria of truth and falsity. — csalisbury

I agree. I've been vaguely interested in self-refuting arguments and the evolutionary argument against naturalism is a nice one. My favorite is probably the logical positivist's verification principle which can't be demonstrated using its own principle. The way out of this is of course to say it that the principle isn't an axiom, it is merely a recommendation.

I do find that there is something compelling in Donald Hoffman's notion regarding our senses developing/evolving to manage our environment but not ascertain things as they really are. I am no philosopher, but I have wondered about this since I was a child.

My response to this is probably shallow but I agree with you about the overuse and misplaced use of evolution/Darwinism. I also include neuroscience in this as every second person now seems to crib pop nonsense about behavior based on some random magazine understanding of neuroscience. The savannah and neuroplasticity have a lot to answer for.

Quick and dirty aside: theologian and philosopher Alvin Plantinga makes the point that we can't rely on the truth of our beliefs and human knowledge in an evolutionary worldview since it is all simply acquired for survival value in a largely random environment. Truth is not a criterion of value in our naturalistically derived knowledge and belief systems.

So instead of knowledge we may be better off using "understanding" or some other term. — Manuel

I see what you mean but I suspect all terms will become worn out. Soon we will need to parse what counts as understanding. Then we might choose the word familiarity and ditto. An endless regression.

Fallibillism (originally CS Pierce) may be the best approach. Absolute certainty is not possible - no belief has absolute justification. (Some hold a special category of justification for apriorism) We may apportion our belief according to what we can be reasonably confident based on best available models and evidence. Which is why I choose a thermometer, not a random lone person out the window. If, however there were a crowd outside and they all wore cold weather clothing, I might be more likely to go this path.

But also something that came from literary theory doesn't seem to be the next phase of communism, as some say it is. — ssu

That's for sure.

Yep, that's the point.

Actual war isn't the same as the media coverage of the war. — ssu

I am not saying it is. I don't think you are able to or want to understand the point and you were way off to begin with. I think this is fruitless and not really what this thread is about. Shall we move on?

Is it possible to be fascinated by everything? Is it possible to sustain a lifestyle of total curiosity? — Benj96

I doubt it and I personally would not want to be fascinated by everything. Life is too short. and my guiding principle is quality not quantity. I think being open to new things and being broadly curious may be good, but few people have the time or the financial independence to take all things to the max. I, for instance, would not spend any time on pop music, sport, video games, stamp collecting, Dresden figures - to list just a few random subjects which repel me. I have known two or three people who are consumed by curiosity and they tended to neglect family and work obligations.

You are too concrete. He was making the fair point that above and beyond anything it was a huge media event, with the sanitised gloss of a video game. People at home watched it like it was a TV show.

I just wish to prevent the thread becoming derailed by people's personal disagreements, by asking people about the role which reading has within their pursuit of philosophy. — Jack Cummins

Good call. I think it might be interesting to differentiate between kinds of reading. In most cases reading philosophy is not effortless or breezy, like reading a brochure. Unless one is a genius, I imagine the reading process is punctuated by pausing and reflection and re-reading and cross referencing and pondering. Especially if it is a complex work in an intricate prose style.

I have noticed over the years that where people claim to have read key works, when you ask specific questions about an aspect of the text, they often seem not to remember this part. Have they not read closely enough? Should they have accompanied the reading with greater analysis? I guess this is why at university key works are taught, not just read.

To know a text well, it could take months, years, a lifetime of study and yet people (I'm thinking of a couple of friends here) often plough through philosophy texts like they are easy conquests.

I like to read about 5 books a week, — Jack Cummins

Goodness. Do you find you have really absorbed and understood this many books in one week? What is your memory of them some time later?

Schizophrenia ?
Why can't apathy exist even when experiencing delusions ? — Amity

Yep - I have worked in the area of mental health and addictions for 30 years. Apathy/anhedonia and social withdrawal are classic negative symptoms associated with the condition. Among the classic positive symptoms are auditory hallucinations, movement disorders, disorganised behaviour.

There are a multiplicity of reasons for apathy to take hold of someone - too many choices; not enough choices; trauma; substance misuse; chronic physical illness; mental ill health; excessive rumination; decadence; hopelessness. It can often be an understandable response to experience.

I imagine also we sometimes use the word apathy to describe someone who doesn't share our enthusiasms.

I mean that seriously, if not entirely literally. I find it moving to read about the differences those authors made in people's lives. I recognize the value, it's just not my way. — T Clark

That is intriguing. I have heard people say this occasionally about fiction writers (never philosophy) but I always assumed it was hyperbole. I've enjoyed writers and books but nothing I've read has ever made a difference to my overall happiness (as far as I can tell). I think I got any consolation I ever needed from classical music.

Ethics/morality is more or less the study of what you should do. So, when saying “why should I be moral?”, surely that is no different to saying: Why should I do what I should do. — Georgios Bakalis

Morality is a lot of things and is approached from many difference angles. Generally a more helpful formulation for me would be: morality is the intuition that one ought to do that which is right and ought not do that which is wrong. Then comes the interesting bit - the choices you will make.

That's the thing: It dissipated; over Gitmo, Black Sites, etc. And that's what the left usually does: They turn on their own once in power. Because, of course, "they" could always do it better. — James Riley

I thought Obama was celebrated mainly by the cultural left who didn't really pay much attention to politics and economics and just enjoyed 'their guy' winning the competition. My memory is pretty early on Obama was depicted as an arch-neoliberal Citybank president, largely beholden to Wall Street. Cornel West certainly described him as a conservative front man, working to protect the existing privileges of the market system. His failures to do anything substantive about the crimes which led to the 2008 financial collapse was a scandal.

Not at all. Discussing it in this context is part of my effort to find closure to my involvement with it. (In a Buddhist setting, there is such immense pressure to approve of and agree with the doctrine that it paralyzes one's critical thinking abilities.) — baker

Interesting.

I agree. So, should we read anyway? — Don Wade

Big question. I am no authority on this. I find it hard to read these days - I get bored easily and I am too old for hard work. Plus I am not really looking for anything.

I have an old fashioned view that younger people should try to get in a good survey of what's out there (including early fiction) just to expose themselves to ideas they might not encounter in ordinary life. I've never seen wide reading do harm. But I have met many a dull monomaniac who has only read in the area of their worldview -spirituality/politics/science/psychology.

I agree! But, doesn't that create a "bias" to what you already believe? Does that bias keep one from having an open-mind? So, which is more important - an open mind, or bias-conformation? — Don Wade

Yes, it does create a lop-sided education. The effects this has on the reader will vary. I'm not sure may people aspire towards an open mind. I also suspect that often the mind is partially closed before the reading even begins. But I am a pessimist.

I used to ponder this a lot. In my view much of this depends on your memory and ability to process information and to recall what you read and use it. I have read many, many books I can't remember now. Sometimes the book is forgotten within a few months. So I say it is better to read deeply and carefully and reread then to turn book reading into a kind of frantic and promiscuous pursuit, without ever really getting to know the ideas properly. I think in many cases people read to confirm and build upon what they already think.

( I write here about Buddhism to test my own understanding of it, not because I'd be an advocate.) — baker

Just out of interest, do you identify as a Buddhist?

There's a lot of antinatalist stuff here already exploring why it is morally wrong to have children. Why not check that stuff out? It's a thing.

No. "Scientific" justification. The thermometer is not telling you what presumably you want to know. — tim wood

Fair enough. I should have been more precise. A scientific instrument telling you the temperature. That's all I ever go by. But I live in a warm part of the world.

How dare you!

Definitive proof that the holly-roller, huckster Christian ethos of fuckin' over thy neighbour and feeling smug, has no place in our body politic.

quote="Banno;d10876"]The Centre for National Resilience.[/quote] It's a marvellously Orwellian title.

So my question is: what makes Tom's justification method to be superior to Sam's justification method? Or in other words, why Tom is more justified to believe "it is called outside" then Sam? — Curious Layman

The thermometer is a scientific justification; looking out the window for clues is an inference. Note, the passerby dressed outside might have a mental illness that has them overdressed for the day.

Looking outside to see what to wear is fraught anyway. I know down to a certain temperature I don't need an overcoat or warm hat, but others do. I would rather make the decision based on a scientific measurement than inference/induction. I then had to adjust in my head. At 50 degrees I would wear a hat, above that I wouldn't.

The question of knowledge is curious. What if the thermometer was broken and stuck on a temperature that just happened to be the actual temperature outside? (Gettier problem) It would still be a justified belief, but it would no longer be knowledge.

I don't think it is a mystery. I think most of the confusion comes from a lack of imagination. People can't help but think that consciousness is something special and that we need to identify special sources for it. — T Clark

It sometimes seem to me that trying to parse the idea of consciousness is like trying to understand what Spinoza meant by God.

Interesting topic. I've noticed that people make changes when their life becomes so unbearable or painful that a new one is (often desperately) sought. Then, where they take this, depends on their resources and influences - who they meet, what they read, etc. It might be anything from a death cult to Spinoza...

I think it's pretty common to reject the ideas of one's upbringing (especially if these are experienced as limiting) and embrace a different direction (often a kind of reactive opposite) in teenage years and early twenties. I'm not sure how often philosophy comes into this or how often philosophy makes a real impact. I do know that many 25 year-old males I have met have had their Nietzsche phase...

I'm curious what Anand-Haqq thinks.

I did say why ... friend ... — Anand-Haqq

You didn't say why at all; you just listed a few vague claims that without substance.

The question is ... Are your consciousness sufficiently open to receive the new ... and put aside ... the old? — Anand-Haqq

Are yours?

You still haven't provided the source for the Nietzsche quote.

:cheer:

Lots of people make these kinds of claims about Nietzsche (Freud, for instance), as they do about any number of writers. But what is his actual contribution? It's very easy to say things like 'tremendous insight' or that he is 'tremendously important' the issue is why?

Nietzsche had philosophies about Life ... but he had not Life. One who have Life, cannot have philosophies about Life ... cannot have any projection towards Life ... Life is existencial ... and ... your so-called projections are always utilitarian ... pseudo-creations ... nothing more ... — Anand-Haqq

What does that mean? 'he had not Life' - can you explain what your intent was here?

I've been reading bits of Nietzsche - seems to me he was a lonely, angry man.

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed". — Anand-Haqq

Did Nietzsche actually write this? It sounds like a 1970's piece of folk wisdom my aunt would have up on her fridge? Can you identify where this comes from in Nietzsche?

I see why you may want to clarify these terms. I'm not sure how useful it's going to be — Manuel

I've rarely known a time when clarifying a term wasn't useful to someone. People often take consciousness for granted - might be useful to kick it around for a bit.

Defining the hard problem of consciousness is interesting because it remains a key matter in discussions of physicalism, god and mysticism.