Yes, yes. If one's goal is a beautiful, joyful life, then everything is lit up by this goal. One can see various fundamental "poses" from the outside. Knowledge is secondary, unless one has committed to this narrowing down of the notion of beauty. I love the objective, if you'll call math objective, but as I writer I want to carve an image of the heroic, beautiful mind --just as I've pursued this image as a reader.
It's hard to write about in black and white with the proper irony. It may come across like some 'duty' to beauty, but really it's the abolition of duties that aren't personal, authentic. (We have no duty to be authentic. It's its own reward. It feels good.) If you love your wife, you're going to risk your serenity a little, for instance, to help her with a malfunction in her serenity, but probably by trying to talk her back up to the mountain-top where you both belong (creative play, smooth function, absorption in freely chosen projects). And maybe you get a wisdom tooth removed, but you try to lose as little "morale" as possible. "The spirit is a stomach." Sometimes you just can't avoid indigestion, but the idea/ideal is a cast-iron stomach for experience, that can usually turn the bad to good and the good to great. There's no question left about whether one should be happy in such an "evil" world. The accusation of that in the world that can't plausibly be fixed is viewed as an inferior form of digestion, an unstable pose. Though of course I'm always really just speaking from this strange little life and hoping for the pleasure of someone else "getting it" in the same particular but only optional way.That's such a big goal though! I'm wary of beauty with a capital B. Or at least seeking it explicitly, keeping it in mind. When the vicissitudes of life are working in your favor then, I agree, everything is doubly lit up. But when things are going bad, that badness has one hell of a foil. "If beauty really did exist there, it meant that my own existence was a thing estranged from beauty." — csalisbury
I relate. Pragmatism (and Kojeve) turned my Blakean Romanticism (I was an "experimental" musician with a dead-end day job) in a more worldly direction. I began to want to "spiritualize" the mundane by shaping a life where my job was my passion. I did play Icarus in my 20s. Angst (and boredom) is maybe in the divorce of the ideal from the mundane. We sew them together, so that everyday life really is more of an adventure.At least for the moment, I'm trying to be content with living by a modest set of malleable maxims (which are kinda meta-maxims, less about doing the right thing every time, but littles rules that let me recognize - and so bypass - certain habitual tendencies, in order to confront things I've been avoiding.) But it could just be that, for now, I need to focus on more mundane, life-structural things. (You've quoted Blake a few times. Problem might be that I've been too eager to soar without worrying about whether I actually wings.) — csalisbury
From what TGW wrote of the Cyrenaic view of the good, it would seem perfectly consistent for my good to be your bad. — Marchesk
If it causes me pleasure to torture you, and all goods are subjective and only definable by each individual, — Marchesk
then there is nothing wrong for me to torture you, as far as I'm concerned. — Marchesk
YES! Indeed, great spot. This is very close to what I have been saying about Descartes' evil demon hypothesis (and other global skepticism matters) for a long time. The very meaning our words have are conditioned by the context, and what such hypothetical situations do, is that they remove the context in which the words used to phrase the question have meaning, and then proceed to ask anyways - thus even their question, in truth, become meaningless.I believe that the experience machine thought experience is subject to a kind of logical fallacy that is common in many thought experiments. The problem is something like this: we want to construct a thought experiment which, by stipulation, involves a situation in which we can't distinguish between two things (being hooked up to a machine and real life). But also by stipulation, the thought experiment itself asks us to distinguish these two things. So it is that the experiment only remains coherent so long as we slide from one to the other in our reasoning.
The reason being hooked up to a machine horrifies some people is because there is a detectable difference between the two (which is why movies like the Matrix, in which Neo comes to find out about this situation, are coherent to us). But then, the experiment falls through because this detectable difference will allow us to coherently prefer being outside the machine rather than in, whether on hedonistic grounds or not.
If on the other hand we take the thought experiment seriously in claiming that we cannot tell the difference even in principle between these two situations, then we lose our ability to coherently imagine the situation that the thought experiment asks us to, and so we cannot claim that such an imagined situation would be bad, because we cannot imagine it ex hypothesi. — The Great Whatever
I believe that the experience machine thought experience is subject to a kind of logical fallacy that is common in many thought experiments. The problem is something like this: we want to construct a thought experiment which, by stipulation, involves a situation in which we can't distinguish between two things (being hooked up to a machine and real life). But also by stipulation, the thought experiment itself asks us to distinguish these two things. So it is that the experiment only remains coherent so long as we slide from one to the other in our reasoning. — The Great Whatever
But ultimately they found out no? So that defeats the whole point you're trying to makeBut I can make perfect sense out of an episode of Star Trek where the crew ends up stuck inside a Holodeck program that goes wrong, where the program makes it look they exited the holodeck back to the ship, but are actually still inside the program, since the Holodeck is capable of fully fooling the senses.
I believe this was the plot of at least one episode. — Marchesk
Secondly, we learn from a very young age that instant gratification in all things tends to lead to very bad results. I could empty my bank account right now, max out my credit cards, and have a rip roaring time today. But I know that I will be regretting and paying for that decision for weeks to come. So I employ some modicum of self-control. — Marchesk
Does this actually make sense though, to defer current pleasure for future ones? — dukkha
So to hold off on reaching one's goal (intrinsic 'goodness'), so that you can reach the exact same goal 4 days from now is nonsensical. You could have just not waited and reached the very same goal. — dukkha
Also, you will never actually get to the future anyway as you never leave the present. — dukkha
The only time you can possibly experience pleasure is right now. — dukkha
But ultimately they found out no? So that defeats the whole point you're trying to make — Agustino
All I am arguing is that if for the sake of argument we grant that such a simulation, indistinguishable from real life were possible, then we would be able to choose whether to partake or not; and that the choices we make could arguably depend on our preferred model of ethics. — John
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.