It seems as if the concept of "potential" in a person exists merely to comfort an individual without any accomplishments in life. — Lone Wolf
But I never claimed this was an ideal state either (that of knowing that it's not a metaphysical fact that we have to live up to some ideal state). — schopenhauer1
But the assumption is that we are here to perform accomplishments in the first place. That is the conceit, is it not? — schopenhauer1
It has to be one or the other.
Either you are saying something righter than us, therefore we all need to take notice of you. Or you are saying you are just another dude making a random noise and so we don't need to take any notice. — apokrisis
I wouldn't say it is conceited to want to serve others by means of accomplishments. — Lone Wolf
Humans have no ideal potential state to live up to. — schopenhauer1
There is no potential to live up to. It is just repetitious survival and finding hope in entertainments of sorts. There is a notion that humans have potential for this or that experience, technological, or scientific accomplishment. Nope, nope, and nope. Humans have no ideal potential state to live up to. If this idea makes you focus on specific goals, or think about this or that goal because you don't like the thought of the repetitious, vicious absurd nature of bigger picture, that's fine, but realize that's what it is and not a metaphysical fact. If you think it is, I'd like to see proof other than that we survive through certain cognitive means which is the result of linguistic brains, etc.. — schopenhauer1
Human "preferences" and "choices" become hollow if "there is no potential to live up to" — Πετροκότσυφας
Everything boils down to survival, even though you denied this in the other thread where you wrote "Human behavior isn't necessarily specialized for survival". Yet, here, you write "it is just repetitious survival and finding hope in entertainments of sorts." — Πετροκότσυφας
There is no potential to live up to. It is just repetitious survival and finding hope in entertainments of sorts. — schopenhauer1
But I have always claimed though, that our three main goals are survival-related drives, maintenance/comfort-seeking goals (clean the room, put oil in the car, take a shower, etc.), and entertainment-related drives (what to do with sense of boredom and emptiness). — schopenhauer1
If you were truly arguing for an essential meaninglessness to life and however we might choose to live it, then you ought to be simply neutral. However I viewed life - optimist or pessimist - shouldn't make a difference. Nature would be as indifferent to the anti-natalist as it is to everything else (in your view). — apokrisis
You kill your own argument by showing how much you care about it. It matters that you are right. If you convince others, you will have achieved something useful with your efforts. You will have proved yourself the best Pessimist you could have been.
A true Nihilist wouldn't even bother to post. :) — apokrisis
Our actual position is better understood from natural philosophy/systems science which focuses on the way everything is an embodied part of a "living" whole. This would then say we are each a product of our biology and culture. We are not solitary sparks as dualism would have it. Therefore we should expect to find our life purpose in that actual evolutionary history, in all its fantastic complexity and essential openness.
We just aren't designed to feel personally connected to the Cosmos. Even religion - in offering an image of a connection to a larger whole - generally paints a picture of that in social terms. Everyone gathered together in a state of love in the garden of the Big Daddy in the Sky.
So an honest metaphysics would be honest to the right scientific picture of existence. And that is what positive psychology in particular would attempt. We are born to find meaning in our biological and social context. And while that is a fairly specific kind of constraint, it is also not a closed and deterministic one. Part of the realism is that the finding of meaning is an open and creative exercise - a continuing journey of adaptation.
What I am arguing is that you reject the actual complexity and naturalism of life because you accept this simplistic metaphysics of a lonely soul in an empty void. That was the shocking existential picture that Enlightenment science appeared to reveal, so setting off the opposite reaction of a Romanticist revulsion.
But that scientific reductionism and romantic existentialism are only two sides of the same coin - the two views of the one faulty metaphysics.
We know enough now about actual complexity, actual systems metaphysics, to see this framing of the situation as very flawed. And thus any philosophy that tries to found itself on it will be too. — apokrisis
Yep. Instead of talking about life having the purpose of flourishing, you need it to be all about blind and pointless survival. You need it to be the case that once the basics of "existence maintenance" are achieved, everything else can be viewed as a meaningless filling in of the time.
So you wire in your conclusions from the start.
The alternative picture is that humans - once they have sorted the more basic needs outlined by Maslow's hierarchy - then will continue on to self-actualise. That is, they will reflect the natural logic of their evolved situation and seek to flourish even further by being personally creative in some socially valued fashion.
Turning to "entertainment" to fill a psychic void is obviously the wrong thing to do - the unnatural thing.
Yes, we do have the problem that the modern consumer society has encouraged that kind of "fulfilment". But then we can't critique modern society if we simply believe it is essentially right about the human condition. — apokrisis
But to the degree that we "misinterpreted" you, we did so, I think, because there's nothing in the OP to suggest you were merely criticizing a secular version of scholastic essentialism. On the contrary, all in it point to a commonsensical understanding of words like "potential", "goal" etc. — Πετροκότσυφας
But, it seems to me that, the idea of human potential that is usually thrown around is the latter, not the former. Sure, many people, when questioned about the reasons of why they procreate, will come up with a whole bunch of rationalizations (some of which will resemble the essentialism that you're talking about) in order to conceal the more down to earth reasons which, more or less, amount to "I don't know, that's what we do, it's an impulse". Weather this impulse is biological, culturally constructed or something else, doesn't matter much in this context. The fact that many people resort to these rationalizations, does not mean that, in the unfolding of day to day life, it was some version of scholastic essentialism they had in mind when they were engaging in certain actions. And in most of the myriad other instances, besides procreation, where people talk about human potential, it's in the latter way that they do it. The tangible way of being able to do something with a reason and without a scholastic model, of what it means to be human, in mind. — Πετροκότσυφας
But it makes no sense to say that, when you subject everything to survival. Which is what you do, it seems to me. The last sentence of the OP is telling. Plus, I'm not sure if I get your tripartite system. What's the difference between "survival" and "maintenance" or between "goals" and "drives"? What does it mean to do something as a course of being human? Is there anything that we do that falls outside this tripartite system? — Πετροκότσυφας
but we aren't indifferent to life as living itself requires axiological assessments, — schopenhauer1
Though the metaphysical claim might be true.... — schopenhauer1
Indeed it is important to me, but no one has to live up to being a perfect pessimist ideal. — schopenhauer1
It sounds like you are saying either that "we must contribute to the system which created us" or "the system will provide the tools for living a happy life", then I think you are being naively dismissive of the situation. — schopenhauer1
You are so ready to frame my thoughts with your own construction of Enlightenment "isolating of humans from cosmos/god" and Romanticism's "rebellion of the individualistic human hero"... — schopenhauer1
Unless you really fully try to internalize the idea of "vicious absurdity" and the awareness of this, then it will be lost. — schopenhauer1
What is this flourishing you speak of? It sounds a bit... Romantic! — schopenhauer1
We are trapped with our own survival, trapped with our own maintenance, trapped with our own pursuing of X, Y, or Z avenues to what we think to be happiness. By framing it as "opportunities", the fact that it could never not be the case, was glossed over. — schopenhauer1
So it seems to me that the question is not that human potential is a spook or whatever, but that there isn't any transcendent, ultimate potential to be fulfilled when a person chooses a project that gives them potential. It is as if the potential comes from nowhere but our own will, a deus ex nihilo. — darthbarracuda
Respectfully, the idea of "human potential" is so tainted with economic ideology that there's hardly any way of conceiving of what human potential might actually be independent of it. — darthbarracuda
It is as if the potential comes from nowhere but our own will, a deus ex nihilo. — darthbarracuda
We are social creatures and so the potential has to be socially constructed. It has to come from us collectively and pragmatically. — apokrisis
You are still speaking as if it can only - Romantically - come from within each of us in a personal and individual fashion. But this is about us as social creatures and what that means in terms of flourishing. — apokrisis
The denial that we have individuality is, in my opinion, a way of obscuring mortality and our freedom. It's inauthentic and doesn't solve the problem as much as it simply dismisses it. — darthbarracuda
So when I use the term "potential" here, I mean that we do not need to be born in the first place in order to have a particular X experience, or contribute to technological, or scientific accomplishment. — schopenhauer1
You are using potential here in a completely different way than what I am referring to in the OP (the secularized Medieval notion that we are manifesting some essence of what it is to be human by contributing to scientific/technological pursuits or having X experience). — schopenhauer1
We are social creatures and so the potential has to be socially constructed. It has to come from us collectively and pragmatically. — apokrisis
There's potential within both groups and individuals, although that's often potential to different things — BlueBanana
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