There's also that fabulous 1990's movie, The Game, Michael Douglas, in which the protagonist is caught up by an EST-type organisation. — Quixodian
I also think there are probably many, likely a good majority, of people who have no interest in thinking about these kinds of questions, so we are really only talking about people who are, at least in some sense, philosophically minded. — Janus
But I do think there is indeed a blind spot in some thinkers. It's a macho thing. Toughminded oriented I'm-a-truth-computer thing. — plaque flag
But Schopenhauer's style of philosophy is far more compatible with these kinds of ideas than is stodgy realism. — Quixodian
But I do think there is indeed a blind spot in some thinkers. — plaque flag
I must admit, I do not get how Will-Proper (Will unaffected by the PSR), is somehow the "real" reality if it is all double-aspect all the way down. — schopenhauer1
It's not that they elaborate an explicitly materialist worldview, but that their 'ordinary language' philosophy abjures metaphysics, and leaves the realist attitude untouched. — Quixodian
The realist attitude is the only possible attitude in the context of the common world we all obviously share. The naive move is to extrapolate this attitude as an absolute. — Janus
Elementary particles, moments in time, genes, the brain – all these things are assumed to be fundamentally real. By contrast, experience, awareness and consciousness are taken to be secondary. — Quixodian
Right. So when I make this point, which to me is a crucial point, please don't keep saying 'oh yeah, so what. Everyone knows that.' It's kind of annoying. :angry: — Quixodian
Most of the issues I refer to are the consequences of the attempt to apply the methods of science to the problems of philosophy. — Quixodian
We are all Will because it is everywhere and Will is beyond us because it is nowhere. Only an infinite method can grasp Will, so only no method can. The finite cognition can never understand the infinite. Science assumes will must be in a brain because science is a finite method. With regard to Schopenhauer's idea of Will's atemporality, I quote Heraclitus, "In the case of the circle's circumference, the beginning and end are common." Fire apply depicts the Will, and while Heraclitus thought the fire was also Logos, Schopenhauer was seeking to reject the PSR as ontologically basic. For him we can approximate what the Will is like by comparing different manifestations of will. Perhaps he thought Will randomly or whatever chose a rational world. So his grounded reason finds it has no ground. Nirvana? — Gregory
My guess is that "objectification" is an eternal process that is foundational to Will, not contingent upon it. — schopenhauer1
That doesn't follow. Indeed, it's not even grammatical.We are all Will because it is everywhere and Will is beyond us because it is nowhere. — Gregory
And yet here you are, with a presumably finite method, telling us about will. The contradiction ought be obvious.Only an infinite method can grasp Will — Gregory
And yet we have mathematics that set out various infinities in detail.The finite cognition can never understand the infinite. — Gregory
Well, no. It's dreadful. But we are not supposed to say so? Perhaps we should let folk post bad thinking, but let's not congratulate them for it.Right, again, cool stuff... — schopenhauer1
I find it funny that there's discussion about materialism in relation to Schopenhauer, for the very thing I quoted is quite relevant, — Manuel
For Schopenhauer Subjectivity includes Reason, Understanding and Will.
Will is the inner drive of which the forces of physics (attraction, repulsion, etc) are an outer manifestation.
Reason is the capacity to form abstract concepts. Schopenhauer is consistent with the larger tradition in saying that this is the prerogative of h. sapiens. (He implicitly recognises evolution although obviously not natural selection as that was published 40 years after his major work.)
Understanding automatically provides a spatio-temporal conceptual framework for our experience which is pre-rational (from Kant’s Transcendental Idealism)
Will is the primal drive that manifests as feelings, all of which are ultimately reducible to pleasure and pain in relation to willed objects, often subliminally. — Quixodian
I find it funny that there's discussion about materialism in relation to Schopenhauer, — Manuel
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 (i.e. electromagnetism), 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 (i.e. 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. — Schopenhauer
But they wouldn't find this reasoning convincing because, they don't believe that in having consciousness, we know anything about it. — Manuel
With what we know now, matter is not nearly as vulgar as we once thought. Nevertheless, we can't say it's dead exactly (that's a human category, after all - it's in biology too, but it's a bit unclear it seems to me), but we can't say it's alive either. It just is. Maybe it is a blind striving of some kind, a sort of impetus or tendency to just go on, and perhaps, complexify itself, to some degree. — Manuel
But it seems some of the old problems remain, in slightly different terminology. Thankfully, it's not a very popular current, because of its obvious problems, not unlike panpsychism, which also has its issues and followers. — Manuel
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. — Schopenhauer
No, I don't think so. Schopenhauer retained the essentials of transcendental idealism in respect of the second-last paragraph. The other points are very much his own. — Quixodian
Whence PSR if all is Will? Whence objects, and their more Platonic Forms? That is to say how can the Will be "doing" anything (like objectification) if Will is atemporal?
My guess is that "objectification" is an eternal process that is foundational to Will, not contingent upon it. If Schop is to maintain a double-aspect, Will and Representation are never primary and secondary but always one and the same thing. But it begs the question, why is there a PSR, a mind, and individuation and all its manifestations? Why is this an aspect of Will? Why is Will not just undifferentiated Will and that's it? Any answer belies some sort of theological implication and Schop certainly said he didn't believe in a telos of the Will. — schopenhauer1
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