Ignoring consciousness for a moment, what is life in energetic terms ?
A little replicating piece of crystalfire. A strange but ultimately futile climb away from the unstoppable heat death, its accidental servant. apokrisis understands the details much much better than me, but I think I grasp the basic idea. Life can exploit (release) potential energy by using stored energy to pay the cost of activation, push the heavy boulder off the hill, install the waterwheel, build a fission plant over the course of many years at great expense. Can we measure the 'intensity' of life in these terms maybe ? — plaque flag

You can't ignore consciousness though when talking about us. A sun is "working" no? A river? A human produces stuff to keep its metabolism going, a whole cultural-social-economic epiphenomenon for this. But all this is external. What is it to be the little worker working? You cannot avoid Zapffe. He seeps into everything human. You can't shear consciousness from the human problems. It is the "dagger in the flesh" as Cioran says.

Pretty funny stuff: a mixture of sense and nonsense, like a terminator trying to pass as a fellow nerd until its target arrives. — plaque flag

Oddly pretty accurate actually. I wanted more jargony and technical. Math equations and statistics, and engineering problems, and farming, and clothes-making, a list of every minutia-mongerin fckn thing we can be thinking of and pouring over and MONGER over. But GPT is too polite to do that. Little bastard.

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What is it to be the little worker working? — schopenhauer1

This is at the very center indeed, and it's strangely somewhat ineffable. Feeling is first but it slips through conceptual nets. So one doesn't judge life conceptually, it seems to me. Concepts play a role, but feeling is deeper in some sense. The world as will feeling and representation concepts.

I can relate to what you say. Nobby Brown compared lifedeath with undeath or immortality. The immortal is neither alive nor dead. It's frozen. While life, in motion, is always also death.

I think this is part of Heidegger's point about our tendency to identify the permanent with the real. Is there is logical reason for this ? Or an irrational motive ?

At the end of Fast Sofa, a character who was uptight for most of the movie has some insight and loses all fear, basically going 'crazy' and dying in a high speed crash.

I connect this to the 'poisoncure' of philosophy, personified as Hamlet, who questions whether leaving early (dying) is really a thing to be avoided. We typically assume the importance of longevity, as if quantity is not at least threatened with absurdity in the context of the vastness of death.

I'm not equating wisdom with recklessness, but I am challenging the assumption that the goal of life is automatically to live as long as possible (and to identity with something that endures forever). Tristram and Isolde, or the fight for Freedom. We love those plots. Risk is a measure of passion. (Dying for love connects us back to Schopenhauer. The species-pole in us, the genitals, know themselves immortal -- and they overpower the deathfearing ego. — plaque flag

I am not familiar with Nobby Brown. It seems humans have long entertained ideas of perpetual life. There is no logical contradiction in the idea, but every way of framing it seems to generate its own host of aporias. And yes life is always also death; my life inevitably comes at the cost of many others, and others will come at the cost of mine. Maybe one day there will be no life at all, since it is based on strategies of cheating entropic and that requires conditions to be just right.

As to the equation of the permanent with the real; perhaps we could say that being is permanent, that universal non-being is impossible. But being is also never static, so no particular being (or so it seems) can be permanent. Our own impermanence bothers us, but that seems to be an ego-driven concern.

I haven't seen Fast Sofa, sounds intriguing. When I was in my late teens and early twenties I was ridiculously reckless, being influenced by the beats, particularly Kerouac and his Neal Cassidy character. I often marvel that I didn't die in a car crash, driving absurdly fast while heavily intoxicated on alcohol, marijuana and LSD as I did.

Surprisingly, I have been so lucky as to never have been involved in an accident where I was at fault in over 50 years of driving. Nowadays I want to live as long as possible, so I live a very healthy and balanced life with little indulgence in drugs or alcohol. When I say I want to live as long as possible the caveat of course is as long as life remains interesting and emotionally and physically bearable.

I have no interest at all in the idea of an afterlife, and since I never had any interest in having children, I have no interest in that avenue of perceived immortality either, so my genitals don't feel immortal: in fact, sadly, they seem to have declined in vigor somewhat (although thankfully so far not too much).

As an aside, lately I've been considering the question as to whether we should care about the survival of humanity as a whole, and I've even thought about starting a thread based on that question. Many of the problems we face today seem to have come about on account of the predominating belief in human exceptionalism.

It sounds like we have had quite similar love experiences in our youth. And yes, being hopelessly in love with a woman who was hopelessly in love with me was such a wonderful experience in my early twenties. But she had to leave Australia to pursue a career in music, and although she didn't want to go without me, I didn't see what I would do in London, and in any case her rich mother was not going to pay for me to live there, and I had no money of my own, being the bum I was back then. I had to talk her into going, against my own wishes, because I didn't want to be the one to hold her back. I suffered immensely for a couple years, but I still would not do anything different if I had that time over again.

Let's try this in a different key. Imagine two single mothers trading their children, because in both cases they expect a better fit. Does this not offend us ? But is there no cold-bloodedly ethical/rational case to be made for a switch in some situations ? — plaque flag

I guess we'd say they'd be going against their instincts; and we don't like to think that motherhood should ever be a "cold-bloodedly ethical/ rational" relation.

Schop is saying that philosophy's task is purely critical - in the Kantian sense of making us aware of the limitations of discursive reason. It 'drops you at the border', so to speak. — Wayfarer

I can see the case for thinking of philosophy in that Kantian way. It makes metaphysics in the traditional sense discursively impossible or incoherent, but it makes way for faith, or stimulated imagination driven emotion, and that can indeed be transformative, even if it cannot deliver any propositions that we can rationally argue for. Hence the Critique of Practical Reason.

I find Schopenhauer's claim that we can know the in itself introspectively as will to be nothing more than an article of faith, but then if that idea could be a possible inspiration to spiritual transformation, who cares if it is discursively justifiable?

I think Schopenhauer is an unstable fusion. I never could take his metaphysics as a whole seriously. — plaque flag

I'm all in on the representation aspect. Still not sure about the will aspect. Here's one of the passages I often cite which basically demolishes philosophical materialism in a single bound. It's a bit long, but what the heck, electrons are free:

Of all systems of philosophy which start from the object, the most consistent, and that which may be carried furthest, is simple materialism. It regards matter, and with it time and space, as existing absolutely, and ignores the relation to the subject in which alone all this really exists.

It then lays hold of the law of causality as a guiding principle or clue, regarding it as a self-existent order (or arrangement) of things, veritas aeterna, and so fails to take account of the understanding, in which and for which alone causality is. It seeks the primary and most simple state of matter, and then tries to develop all the others from it; ascending from mere mechanism, to chemistry, to polarity, to the vegetable and to the animal kingdom. And if we suppose this to have been done, the last link in the chain would be animal sensibility—that is, knowledge—which would consequently now appear as a mere modification or state of matter produced by causality.

Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear ideas, when we reached its highest point we would suddenly be seized with a fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As if waking from a dream, we would all at once become aware that its final result—knowledge, which it reached so laboriously, was presupposed as the indispensable condition of its very starting-point, mere matter; and when we imagined that we thought matter, we really thought only the subject that perceives matter; the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it. Thus the tremendous petitio principii (=circular reasoning) reveals itself unexpectedly; for suddenly the last link is seen to be the starting-point, the chain a circle, and the materialist is like Baron Münchausen who, when swimming in water on horseback, drew the horse into the air with his legs, and himself also by his cue.

The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective, and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given—that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away.

Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained.

To the assertion that thought is a modification of matter we may always, with equal right, oppose the contrary assertion that all matter is merely the modification of the knowing subject, as its idea. Yet the aim and ideal of all natural science is at bottom a consistent materialism. The recognition here of the obvious impossibility of such a system establishes another truth which will appear in the course of our exposition, the truth that all science properly so called, by which I understand systematic knowledge under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason, can never reach its final goal, nor give a complete and adequate explanation: for it is not concerned with the inmost nature of the world, it cannot get beyond the idea; indeed, it really teaches nothing more than the relation of one idea to another.

Bolds added.

I had to talk her into going, against my own wishes, because I didn't want to be the one to hold her back. I suffered immensely for a couple years, but I still would not do anything different if I had that time over again. — Janus

Ah that must have been tough. An act of love indeed.

I'm still with mine, though the first decade was one long Bukowski novel. We were too young really but glued together by an irrational passion. When I think of Schopenhauer, I think of the overpowering mating instinct 'forcing' most of us to make babies before we really know what life is. The 'old man' has been released from duty. The young have been 'programmed' not to take him seriously, and to worry only about their glamorous and fuckable peers. I'm sure I'm exaggerating, but the peer focus makes sense in the long term.

I am not familiar with Nobby Brown. — Janus

Also know as Norman O. Brown. One of those radical 60s thinkers. An almost mystical use of psychoanalysis by a humanities scholar.

Our own impermanence bothers us, but that seems to be an ego-driven concern. — Janus

To me it makes sense that we'd evolve an (irrational) fear of death. Schopenhauer filtered through Darwin is a strong dark brew. But I like it as a map for hacking the system (condoms are a great example of this, like steeling cheese from the trap.)

Many of the problems we face today seem to have come about on account of the predominating belief in human exceptionalism. — Janus

To me it's even to be expected. Darwin etc. We do of course have logical and sexual and property norms, but this is all to make human groups stronger. It's basically for us to crank out more copies of ourselves. The evolutionary algorithm could not see ahead to the exponential technological age, gave us no tools for controlling it. 'Only a god can save us' indeed, but I don't think any of them have the time just now.

all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away.

I like to put this in terms of people trying to take the scientific image as somehow behind lifeworld in which it exists as a mere part. An electron only has meaning within an entire system of culture.

But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time.

Here though Schopenhauer is guilty of an error in the opposite direction. He paradoxically makes the brain, a familiar object in the familiar space of the lifeworld, the cause of the presentation of space and time. This is a version of making the sense organs the product of the sense organs.

As I see it, both errors try to do justice to 'half' of the truth. The world exists for individual nervous systems which are embedded in that world. The world cannot be reduced to a 'dream' and the 'dream' cannot be reduced to some dead meaningless simple stuff.

Anyway, one of the ways in which we probably strongly agree is that it doesn't not make sense to claim that logical-semantic norms are somehow unreal, for those logical-semantic norms are necessary in the very making and support of such a claim.

One can, in my view, tell a story of emergence of spirit (a special kind of nature) from the rest of nature.

for it is not concerned with the inmost nature of the world, it cannot get beyond the idea; indeed, it really teaches nothing more than the relation of one idea to another.

Note how science is trapped 'outside' with mere relations of ideas, while intuition will have intimate access to the thing-in-itself, that ocean of Will.

Here though Schopenhauer is guilty of an error in the opposite direction. He paradoxically makes the brain, a familiar object in the familiar space of the lifeworld, the cause of the presentation of space and time. — plaque flag

How can that be an error? Isn't it amply confirmed by neuro- and cognitive science? What do you think the fantastic hominid forebrain does with all that power - more neural connections than stars in the sky - other than generate worlds?

Schop has a unity: Will.
Schop tries to explain a plurality: Forms

There is never really a good explanation of how Will is objectified into Forms, or why. It just "does", which is kind of assuming the consequent.

If one was to put a teleological bent on it, perhaps it is the Will "needing" its playground, but then this is akin to some sort of theism.

Thus it becomes a sort of "immediate" flipside of Will. But if Forms are not "formed" but exist contemporaneously with Will, then Will was never a unity. It's hard to pin down. Not to mention, what then is "prior" to what outside the PSR? That's not even a thing so "processes" like "Objectification" can't occur. So it MUST be always there in the equation. But why the Forms and not just Will. Why the bifurcation of subject to object in the first place? Then it is just duality, not unity.

You can formulate some of your own theism to fill it in, but then you are speaking for Schop and not answering as Schop perhaps.

How can that be an error? — Wayfarer

The idea that the brain imposes the forms of time and space is absurd, for the brain is understood in terms of time and space from the beginning.

It does not make sense to say that the brain is its own product, as if it's the dream of itself.

Isn't it amply confirmed by neuro- and cognitive science? — Wayfarer

I'd wager that most scientists would reject the ideality of space and time (they idea that they aren't real but somehow products of a nervous system which is situated where after all ?)

On the other hand, who would deny that a living brain is necessary for an individual's experience of the world ?

It does not make sense to say that the brain is its own product, as if it's the dream of itself. — plaque flag

It's the direct realist idea that the brain is just a mirror "catching" reality (such as the objectivity of time and space) and reflecting it back.

It's the direct realist idea that the brain is just a mirror "catching" reality (such as the objectivity of time and space) and reflecting it back. — schopenhauer1

I'd personally describe my preferred version of direct realism in terms of the grasp of a lifeworld that cannot be broken into subject and object except as a useful abstraction (fiction). Schopenhauer looks to me like an indirect realist who thinks the Will appears as everyday stuff through the lens of the nervous system. But our intuition and music lets us peak around the rest of our cognition at the essence of reality, blind striving.

Hegel, in one famous passage, defined idealism as holism. It's not that reality is a dream. The stuff that is ideal (mere fancy!) is all the machinery of the non-holistic metaphysicians who insist on denying the aspect of reality they don't like. No finite thing has genuine being. In other words, anything disconnected from everything else is at most a useful fiction, maybe just confusion and vanity.

For instance, the reductive consciousness-denying materialist wants to get rid of slimy embarrassing humanities stuff, and the life-is-my-dream crowd wants to get rid of the constraints of an encompassing world and the status of all that difficult math stuff. A one-sided personality tells a one-sided story of reality. [ I think we are all actually lopsided, all 'finite,' but I like the goal of 'infinity' and completeness.]

. Schopenhauer looks to me like an indirect realist who thinks the Will appears as everyday stuff through the lens of the nervous system. But our intuition and music lets us peak around the rest of our cognition at the essence of reality, blind striving. — plaque flag

Even more, he's a fullblown Idealist. Indirect Realists think there is "something" material external to mind but it's perceived in some constructed way that makes it not directly perceiving the thing itself. Schopenhauer would say something like the Mind is constructing reality itself and there is nothing external to it. The Mind itself being a manifestation of Will. And as I said, how this happens is where Schop kind of has a hierarchy of the real REAL (Will) and the Objectified Will (Forms), and then Conditioned Will/Forms (PSR).

Not to be contrary, but I think a more typical interpretation is like this:

Hence, the title of Schopenhauer’s major work, The World as Will and Representation, aptly summarizes his metaphysical system. The world is the world of representation, as a spatio-temporal universal of individuated objects, a world constituted by our own cognitive apparatus. At the same time, the inner being of this world, what is outside of our cognitive apparatus or what Kant calls the thing-in-itself, is the will; the original force manifested in every representation.

https://iep.utm.edu/schopenh/#SH2a

That gels with my memory of his bold claim to do what Kant said could not be done.

But why the Forms and not just Will. Why the bifurcation of subject to object in the first place? Then it is just duality, not unity. — schopenhauer1

:up:

I think we know the real answer. Ordinary life gives us competing human beings, but one can learn to see through the 'illusion' of personality, which connects us to Hegel and Feuerbach and other thinkers of essential sociality of reason (there is no private language/logic, etc.)

That gels with my memory of his bold claim to do what Kant said could not be done. — plaque flag

It's hard to classify him, but these are the things that make it hard to really get at. I think he is saying that it is all illusions of mind, and that there is nothing like an outside world "there" in any way. And that these minds are manifestations of Will. But the minds are so thoroughly representational of the physical that you can almost say they mine as well be without really disrupting the philosophy.

The more I think about it, the weirder and less plausible it seems. Nevertheless, he offers enough to great fragments to deserve his status.

I like to use 'gnostic' as a metaphor for a person with a vision of the fundamental amorality of the world (as if the product of a clumsy or apathetic demiurge). The world is not run by the wisest and kindest, not administered by dutiful guardian angels. But there a rebel/underdog god or principle that one can fall back on. Muted post horn, countercultural esoteric spiritual comforts, etc. Schopenhauer seems to fit into this group. He does not preach world conquest. His 'escapism' (as an earnest communist might call it) is akin to that of certain stoics or skeptics who focus on their own private interpretation of the world and the training of their heart toward serene detachment.

Also know as Norman O. Brown. One of those radical 60s thinkers. An almost mystical use of psychoanalysis by a humanities scholar. — plaque flag

Oh, right, I have a couple of his books, which I've only dipped into. It was the "Nobby" which threw me.

To me it makes sense that we'd evolve an (irrational) fear of death. Schopenhauer filtered through Darwin is a strong dark brew. But I like it as a map for hacking the system (condoms are a great example of this, like steeling cheese from the trap.) — plaque flag

Right, there is nothing rational about the radically unknown. There is also the fact that death, or rather dying, is associated with loss of faculties and capacities, pain and indignity, and loss of everything familiar, so maybe the fear is not entirely irrational.

To me it's even to be expected. Darwin etc. — plaque flag

Christianity? and Abrahamic religions in general? Capitalism? Marxism? I don't know, maybe they are symtpoms of something inevitable. We keep cheating extinction just because we can, because unlike the other animals we can come up with strategies, plan ahead.

Oh, right, I have a couple of his books, which I've only dipped into. It was the "Nobby" which threw me — Janus

I just always thought it was a cool nickname. He liked to walk up mountains and talk philosophy with friends. I always thought that sounded like my kind of life. I'd call his stuff speculative psychoanalysis though t's all metaphors underneath categories like 'psychoanalysis' or 'theology' and so on. (I risk overstatement, but you know what I mean.)

There is also the fact that death, or rather dying, is associated with loss of faculties and capacities, pain and indignity, and loss of everything familiar, so maybe the fear is not entirely irrational. — Janus

If we filtered out all of that pain and humiliation, I'd wager that many would still feel from death. But yeah the association of death is aging and accidents and violence isn't the best marketing for it.

We keep cheating extinction just because we can, because unlike the other animals we can come up with strategies, plan ahead. — Janus

Right. And there's seemingly also a competition of cultures (memetic evolution.) Any tribe that isn't good at breeding and fighting loses resources that are good at such things. The winning tribe may be 'bad' by our standards (such as if Germany won WWII because they got the bomb first, as in Phillip K. Dick's alternate world.) (On that note, the idiotic antisemites ran off some of the talent that could have helped them win the war, suggesting an advantage of open, tolerant societies.)

If one was to put a teleological bent on it, perhaps it is the Will "needing" its playground, but then this is akin to some sort of theism. — schopenhauer1

You can see Schopenhauer struggling mightily to avoid the necessity for God. He says at one point that if God has symbolic meaning, then that's OK. I have the sneaking suspicion that the God he is at pains to reject is actually one very like Jupiter. It's a very odd blend of peity and atheism in Schopenhauer - one of his main inspirations, after all, was Jacob Boehme, a Christian mystic.

I need to read more on his doctrine of ideas.

The idea that the brain imposes the forms of time and space is absurd, for the brain is understood in terms of time and space from the beginning. — plaque flag

Schopenhauer is echoing Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic - his analysis of time and space as 'primary intuitions'. The way that I interpret that is that time is inextricably connected to measurement and to the perception of duration. In other words, there is no absolute time or space, existing independently of any observer - the observer furnishes the perspective which makes time a meaningful concept. But the observer is herself always unobserved. There's the rub.

I'd wager that most scientists would reject the ideality of space and time (they idea that they aren't real but somehow products of a nervous system which is situated where after all ?) — plaque flag

Au contraire, there’s a distinct kind of neuroscientific idealism visible in modern discourse. What we perceive as objective reality is indeed the workings of mind. Here’s an article that came up in my news feed recently, You Don’t See Objective Reality Objectively. There are many other articles and TED talks circulating about this insight.

When you assert that ‘the brain is situated in time and space’, you’re tacitly assuming a viewpoint from outside your own perception of the world. You’re speaking from the ‘God’s eye view’ which presumes that the world you perceive is real independently of your mind. That is what Bryan Magee in his book on Schopenhauer describes as 'the assumptions of the inborn realism which arise from the original disposition of the intellect.' He goes on:

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them. This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.

(There is actually a convergence between Kant and Buddhism which has been subject of considerable literature, not least T R V Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism.)

In other words, there is no absolute time or space, existing independently of any observer - the observer furnishes the perspective which makes time a meaningful concept. — Wayfarer

But where and when is this observer ? Kant is justly famous, but this is one of his clunkers. It just doesn't make sense.

Au contraire, there’s a distinct kind of neuroscientific idealism visible in modern discourse. — Wayfarer

I've looked into Hoffman. He seems to make the classic sophomoric mistake of self-cancelling relativism. I've addressed specific claims of his in other threads on TPF. Note that I grant that what a person sees is function of both their individual nervous system and of the world. In short, we see the same world differently, from/through different nervous systems.

When you assert that ‘the brain is situated in time and space’, you’re tacitly assuming a viewpoint from outside your own perception of the world. — Wayfarer

No. I'm using ordinary language to state a truism. What has anyone ever known about brains apart from their 'involvement' in time and space ?

You’re speaking from the ‘God’s eye view’ which presumes that the world you perceive is real independently of your mind. — Wayfarer

But here you are talking to me, apparently assuming that I exist outside your mind, presumably informing me about our world, a world that transcends both of us --one that I'm somehow capable of being wrong about despite it being just my dream. It sure looks like a performative contradiction, another variety of self-cancelling subjectivism.

That is what Bryan Magee in his book on Schopenhauer describes as 'the assumptions of the inborn realism which arise from the original disposition of the intellect.' — Wayfarer

Sure, but you share that quote with me as if I'm a bumpkin who's never so much as heard of Descartes. I was myself much more of subjectivist philosophically until I came around to seeing the logical absurdities in the position.

It's not hard to find them.

Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts

Bingo. He's already talking about the world and other minds, informing us about that reality that only bumpkins are supposed to still believe in.

I like Magee, love his show, but he should have known better. It's almost like watching a series of mathematicians divide by 0 and not notice it.

I'd say forget sources and quotes for a moment and consider the logic. The flaw is right there.

But where and when is this observer ? Kant is justly famous, but this is one of his clunkers. It just doesn't make sense. — plaque flag

In the very first sentence, you're wanting to objectify the observer, locate the observer in time and space. There is no such thing, in an objective sense. And there's a reason that the transcendental aesthetic is at the very start of the critique, because the remainder rests on it. If it is a 'clunker' then the whole project fails.

I'm not suggesting a 'subjectivist' view - the subject in question is not your mind or mine, but the mind, of which yours and mine are instances.

But here you are talking to me, apparently assuming that I exist outside your mind — plaque flag

I'm not addressing you as an object, but as a subject like myself.

To me, this is the central point of philosophy - a mind-independent world is assumed for the purposes of naturalism, but then taken as a metaphysical truth, which it isn't.

In the very first sentence, you're wanting to objectify the observer, locate the observer in time and space. — Wayfarer

Well, yes, else observer metaphor is being stretched here into mystified meaninglessness. It sounds to me like Berkeley now, a theism merely asserted.

And there's a reason that the transcendental aesthetic is at the very start of the critique, because the remainder rests on it. If it is a 'clunker' then the whole project fails. — Wayfarer

Well of course his project fails if success is supposed to have been the achievement of a complete and perfect metaphysics. He said some wacky things. Doesn't mean he isn't great in the same way Schopenhauer is great --flawed but massively creative and insightful.

Every philosopher fails. But the pieces are picked up and a new arrangement is tried.

I'm not addressing you as an object, but as a subject like myself. — Wayfarer

The point is we are both encompassed in a world that exceeds each of us as individuals. Something can be the case even if you or I incorrectly claim otherwise. To deny this is to imply it. One need not talk of 'matter' or anything in particular to acknowledge the truth of a claim whose negation is an absurdity.
'There is no world' is a claim about the world.

I like to walk up mountains and talk philosophy with friends too.

If we filtered out all of that pain and humiliation, I'd wager that many would still feel from death. But yeah the association of death is aging and accidents and violence isn't the best marketing for it. — plaque flag

I agree, I'd say that, primordially, it's fear of the unknown and the incomprehensibility of the possibility of non-existence.

:up: Just watched the series The Man in the High Castle (haven't read the book). I thought it was pretty good.

Just watched the series The Man in the High Castle (haven't read the book). I thought it was pretty good. — Janus

I also thought it was pretty good. I especially liked the performance of Rufus Sewell.

Every philosopher fails. But the pieces are picked up and a new arrangement is tried. — plaque flag

I think it's more likely that it is the understanding that is fragmentary.

I think it's more likely that it is the understanding that is fragmentary. — Wayfarer

If we are just rudely blurting out opinions, then I think you aren't very good at distinguishing flowery rhetoric and a host of noobdazzling fallacies from an actual argument.