My closest vote would be “no”.

You said:

We don't know anything objectively. We may believe that we do but this is a delusion. Everything we know is subjective. — Truth Seeker

I assume you assumed that it is a mind or at least a human consciousness that would claim to know anything at all.

So 1: There is a mind.

I assume you mean by objectively, knowing something about a world that is independent of the mind, but reflected from the world into the mind accurately. Objective knowledge would be knowledge one mind could know just like other minds could know.

So 2: There is a world independent of the mind.

And 3: There is in fact no accurate connection possible between a mind and the world.

These are three objective facts you’ve posited. Mind, separate world, and no accurate connection.

I, as a subject, know 1 and 2 subjectively - but what I subjectively know is that my mind is in a larger world apart from my mind, so I have knowledge of objective facts.

So I don’t see why we need to assert fact 3 (no accurate connection) when we’ve already asserted accurately that there are minds and there is a world apart from the mind. Objectivity is there before me and I can only participate in it through exploration and discovery, or not.

I answered

Evolution happened naturally, the current array of species on earth evolved — flannel jesus

I’m willing to question evolution, but I am just as willing to assume it. Evolution makes sense and follows from all current evidence. It happened, or better, continues happening now. Darwin was a brave genius.

I don’t know that you had to add “naturally” other than to elaborate that evolution is a moving process of parts changing over time. But if evolution doesn’t happen naturally, it is not evolution. That’s why intelligent design doesn’t make sense. If God directed evolution, evolution would not be what evolution appears to be in the first place.

But I do believe in God. Like evolution, God is happening too.

But I’d rather say answer 4, that evolution never happened, than talk about the God or the evolution posited in options 2 and 3.

I see no need to pit God for or against evolution. The pitting distorts the concepts of both God and evolution, and blurs the distinctions it is trying to integrate in the pitting. I can cross the street by myself, and over time, we living bodies evolve all by ourselves. No need to seek God’s place in these simple motions.

The analogy works on two levels then. That certain acts seem almost universally morally offensive would seem to point to tastes grounded in human nature. These tastes aren't uncaused, there is a reason for them. That reason seems to be tied to the human good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Hey Count.

I totally agree with that. It’s why I went with the OP analogy to get into objectivity versus relativity in ethics.

All too often in modern philosophy there is a tendency to think that if a relationship is dynamic and difficult to formalize it simply cannot exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Modern philosophy puts everything on a spectrum (in this case, the good and bad spectrum) without any honest attempt to define the the two ends of the spectrum (in fact an earnest attempt to tear down and ignore the binary spectrum creators for sake of multiple gradations in the middle only. So yes, totally agree. We only have the middle with this and that absolute drawing out the spectrum.

The differences exist in a dynamic range of contexts, but that doesn't mean there are no differences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Amen to that. Sums up my approach to metaphysics, ethics and everything that follows. Preserves all the tendency to reify the spectrums, (dynamic ranges), while preserving room for knowledge and truth (differences I know exist).

In no way was I starting with self-interest. My view of ethics starts with multiple selves living in proximity at the outset, sort of sifting out ethics together. The interest that gives birth to ethics can’t be based on any one of those selves alone. The outset includes relationship among the multiple selves. The outset includes some regard for all selves at once, otherwise we aren’t doing ethics, only observing natural instinctual behavior.

Picture bumper cars - that’s the herd of selves (be they self-interested individuals or self-sacrificers, or disinterested). Ethical questions arise where cars bump. Ethics has them all able to drive with a goal of resolving the bumping, in one general direction, found by agreeing where we all will recognize the walls and how to drive within them. And it only works when all are in agreement that it is better not to bump into things.

To give this some application: murder is wrong, means: after running around with the other sheep watching this one kill that one, and this one die and that one live on, and after living myself so I can judge this myself, I propose a rule that murder is wrong, that each of us equally enjoys life more than death, and each of us has no individual right to take another one’s life. And I propose that this rule is not for the sake of my life, but instead for the sake of all of our lives, and therefore each one of us must agree this is good law if this law is to work at all. We individually recognize the authority of the law by our own free consent, but in so doing, we create its objective, universal application, equally distributed to myself as well as all others.

So Five Guys versus McD’s is like yes or no to abortion, euthanasia, maybe lying, maybe stealing, maybe bullying, etc. - the more debatable, culturally transient ethical situations.

AND, rancid food is like raping children, torture and murder of the weak and innocent - just the most heinous things one could think of.

If that is correct you are saying that certain ethics are objective, like rancid food is always just bad.

Hence the quotation marks around the title I suppose.

I believe that there are ethical lines carved in stone for we conscience-bearing creatures to find and choose to cross or not. We make up our own rules, yes, but we don’t only make them up from our own heads in a box - we make them together as a group, sharing lines between me and you, and you, and that one, and that other one..

If you existed alone on a desert island there would be no need for ethics - every decision would be to determine the burger or the other burger ethically (unless you believed your life was not your own and God was with you and interested in your life and the choices as well).

Philosophy has put us all in mental boxes, unable to prove even the presence, let alone truth, of some sort of objective mind-independent reality.

But practically speaking, we live in herds and interact with other decision makers, and there are limited burgers, and we all agree that society, with its trading and divisions of labor, is beneficial.

Ethics assumes other people, other creatures exist with us in our heads as we are in their heads. We don’t get to decide whether to kill another person is right or wrong without another person to kill, and a third person who might agree or not with the killing or not, with whom we have to live with and who has to live with us after we’ve killed or not.

So the line that creates rancid food, the “always bad” objective morality that is out in the world, doesn’t form until the world of ethics forms which is the human, personal herd.

We have to assume an objective, mind independent group of herding animals called “other persons with other minds” exists in order to construct some form of ethical line, like “stealing money is OK but stealing a child’s life through murder is NOT OK,” and we have to interact with the other herd members to bump into these lines and seek enforcement of these lines by saying “no, stop it” or “yes, do it.”

Ethics has to have an objective world we live in together for ethics to exist in the first place.

The self is a curious thing. It cannot be a thing because if it were it would be becoming a thing, and so not yet a thing; but yet it is me myself that is wondering about this “thing” called self.

Curious. How can myself not be a thing as I think these things to myself?

Before we might identify such a curious thing, that must be and must become, don’t we need to know if there can be any thing at all to know, if we can know anything? If we can’t know, how could we know what a self is?

Descartes’ cogito purports to prove the self exists. But it does no such proof. As to existence, it takes the existence of thinking as its premise, and as “I am thinking” already means or includes “I am” it does not prove existence but assumes it.

Instead Descartes really proved that there is one thing we can know. He proved there was knowledge of separately existing things. He proved if I know that I exist, I know the truth, because by knowing that I exist, I am knowing that I am knowing. His proof is better said “I exist; therefore I can know.”

So he proved knowledge works because while I am in the act of knowing I exist, I am in the act of knowing something I can’t deny, so it is true knowledge.

Now, what do I know of this “I”, this “self”, this knowing being, beyond the fact that it exists? Nothing! Or at most very little. Descartes thought he could prove it was immaterial substance, like “soul”. But we still have the same problems identifying something fixed and permanent that might be knowable. I still am becoming. The “I” in “I am becoming” is still undone in every changing instant. He can make very few claims about what the “I” actually is (even though something is knowing something exists), let alone call it “soul” and think he has said anything at all that we know about it.

When it comes to the question of what is a self, the most we can say to maybe start to construct an answer is that “something is knowing that something exists.”

Knowing the self is a curious thing.

They are not really right — Chet Hawkins

That’s a meaningless statement if you can’t know anything.

Why did you say “really”? What’s real?

delusion in ALL cases — Chet Hawkins

That sounds like certainty speak.

As soon as we believe there is no knowledge, we contradict this belief by speaking.

I don’t think you can explain it. By definition, explanations are illusions.

It would also be funny if the self was real, and we ourselves didn’t know it. Like looking for your sunglasses while they are on your head.

The whole Truth is… — ENOAH

According everything else you are saying, no it’s not.

Are we right?

The way they are distinct for us is not necessarily how they really are, if they are. — ENOAH

The way a bowl of shit is distinct for us or a bowl of food? When I concoct a fictional “shit” can I use that to signify a distinct bowl of delicious food?

“……really are….”

You’re telling stories again..

I need to be more careful with my language. I have already addressed the "paradox" of my speaking of truth, or even speaking at all. — ENOAH

I have to say. This is consistent.

You shouldn’t admit the consistency because it would lean towards being something, but I’ll admit it for you, since I think I can see a small part of you yourself.

If words are weak attempts at signifying only, and by signifying, divorced from any truth they might wish to signify, then there is no point in speaking.

The paradox of speaking at all. I love that. That is the issue. I don’t agree that you have to side with becoming over being when standing at this paradox.

When standing at a paradox, both opposites must be real and can’t be real, so what side is there to choose, but both together?

I hate to say it but according to your view, there is no point to speaking at all.

Did I say “say it”?

Pun despairingly intended. In fact, wait a second, I can’t say it, because words always say “….emptiness…” in every breath and sound.

But alas I said it anyway, because the way I see it, we have both actually spoken, conveyed meaning here, not only because of my mind constructing it, but also because of the words here on screen, because of Enoah’s words, distinct from my words, and because of Enoah’s mind constructing it.

Lot’s of different essences in the stew of being becoming being becoming.

You might be missing out. And missing out on your actual self. I don’t have to say it. You keep saying “truth” to make your point about no truth, because as you “know”, there is no knowing.

And I should be tired myself.

Have a good evening.

But not present. Not there. And same for the self and all of human Mind and History. — ENOAH

Ok, so no distinction whatsoever between Abe Lincoln and Mary Poppins and “me” and “you.”
I’ll go with it for now.


About distinctions existing independently of the mind:

I don't know. No one knows. For all I know something related to "difference" is an actual and real constituent of Nature and Reality. — ENOAH

My response is simply a question, where did you come up with the distinction between “for all I know” and “real constituent of reality”?

You are pointing at objective distinctions to make your point. Your point happens to be that there may not be distinctions. But you distinguished whatever the hell people do for “an actual” and “reality”. Oh, and you said “constituent.” A constituent implies multiple parts, multiple distinct parts.

You are contradicting your point by speaking about it.

I just say, give in to the essence. It’s just as there as the existence.

humans and other intelligent animals use drives, memory, conditioning, etc. to "distinguish" shit from food. But "difference," the necessity of a this and that, a not this but that, a this and a not this; these are functional within the churning out of experience in Narrative form. — ENOAH

Why would you assert that. You can distinguish shit from food. You need to. That is because there are real distinctions. But you can distinguish shit from food with ideas just as well. Because ideas reflect distinctions too. “Self” isn’t the same fiction as “shit” or “dragon” - distinction is real regardless of minds. Minds can use them to construct functioning ideas. Otherwise we can’t speak.

Maybe you are saying we are not really speaking. Maybe you have no idea what I am saying.

Forgive the analogy, but the tree which made the paper is real. The paper is an artifact. The reality of the tree still exists in the paper, and it's not going anywhere. But the "paper" idea is special to our Fictional world. Now all the more so for the plot of the novel written on the paper. — ENOAH

Analogies are great. But to show the illusion forming out of a tree through artifact, that doesn’t work, because the tree formed out of dirt and air and sun that were taken and consumed, just like the paper was taken from the tree being consumed. There are no distinctions you can make between artifacts and natural processes. “Artifact” is serving as a gift from god for you to make your fiction of a novel on paper. What’s an artifact? And why would an artifact cause there to be line between illusion and the “real” tree?

Now you'll say, we naturally developed the tools to go further than a Chimp. And I say yes, and those tools and everything they construct is a Fictional — ENOAH

I see why you’d think I would say that, but honestly, I am not giving any status to ideas whatsoever. Chimps make poop. Birds make eggs. People make ideas. Volcanoes make lava. Chimps make sacrifices. Birds fly. People make poop.

I am simply saying each of these are distinct and real. Including the ideas. The fact that ideas come only from humans is like guano comes only from bats - that doesn’t matter to me here. Just the fact that ideas exists in the real world. No status or hierarchy. No reification. Just here we are with our ideas bouncing off of each other, one of us trying to not see them, the other trying to see how not to see them.

I am insisting on relegating becoming to emptiness, and designating being alone as the domain of truth. ... (?) — ENOAH

I can’t touch this one. Not sure what you mean here. Being is the domain of truth. Becoming is the domain of fiction/illusion then? I don’t see how you could ever speak of “truth” - wouldn’t that be a fiction? But then wouldn’t it be relegated to emptiness, in which case it is not being? But now being is the domain of truth and of empty illusion.
I don’t see why you would introduce “truth” here.

ideas exist, evident inter alia in their functional effect, but they are fleeting empty structures of signifiers. Not Real "in and of themselves(?)" — ENOAH

I just don’t see, at all, why an empty structure would have any functional effect. At least not a repeatable one, but here we go again…

You said both that “ideas exist” and that they have a “functional effect” but then you say they are “empty”. Makes no sense to me. You have used “empty structures” to signify something of “ideas” and this has brought the effect in me the question, why the hell are you saying that, especially when this is just your idea.

You are contradicting yourself by speaking at all. Or there is something real of ideas. Either one. Can’t be both.

This is maybe the first time I’ve seen a paradox I don’t know if I like.
Becoming spoken as being is not being and so not spoken, but then I just said it…makes no sense.

I’m trying to talk about signification, with the launching pad of the signifier “self”.

Images and poetry can signify so I’m not sure of what I’m saying about signification is much different than how poetry can function.

If we are saying that “self” signifies nothing, that self is an illusion, we’ve got ourselves cornered into the issue of whether anything can be signified, or what is signification.

I hope you enjoy the volleying.

I say speaking is construction, becoming. It travels lightly through Time and vanishes instantly. Where is it "there"? When is it ever being? — ENOAH

I agree speaking is constructing, and I agree it travels lightly and vanishes.

I agree. I see these in my experience too.

But something is constructed, and then that same construction vanishes. I see these in addition to the above.

“Where is it there? Where is it ever being?” It is there in the flesh of the words being themselves now constructed by our bodies for physical travel and in we who use those words to affect the physical world (as in bring myself physical apples without moving my physical feet through lightly traveled ideas or essences). They only work when real distinctions are made, are constructed.

Because--and I sincerely hope this isn't depressing--difference, distinction, and your admirable desperation to square things off against it, are also "illusions" based only in the evolved mechanism "difference", necessary for speech to flourish, a this and a that. The Self illusion is a branch of that in the evolution of Mind: a Me and a You. — ENOAH

Are you saying there are no real distinctions? There were no real distinctions before we humans invented “difference”?

Because if you distinguish anything, ever, drawing a line between any two things, then on either side of that line you must have two different essences, or at least on either side of the line there is one essential difference.

You can’t experience this from that without something essentially this and so not essentially that, and something essentially that and so not essentially this.

So if there are real distinctions, why assume our constructed ideas drawing out such distinctions are ONLY illusion?

But I say you just believe the idea came from somewhere. That exactly is the illusion. It came from your mind! Yes the idea exists. But it is not Real. — ENOAH

“Yes the idea exists.” Agree.
“But it is not real.” Disagree.

I don’t place priority on where something came from. Chemicals came from atoms, proteins from chemicals, plants and animals from proteins, feathers from lightweight flying animals, roars from lions, and ideas from human beings. As you say, “the idea exists” just like the protein and the roar.

Why say something is not real just because it is only traded in among humans? No human trades in breathing water, but that doesn’t mean breathing water isn’t real. There is the shark. No bird trades in words and ideas, but again, there is the human - these many things move together in the becoming.

in your minds development, Apple, 4, store, go, son, buy, me, etc. we're input, and over time processed, reprocessed, used to construct, reconstruct, and so on, thousands of times. — ENOAH

As many instances of essence as there are the undoing of essence in becoming.

So when you crave apples, that real feeling — ENOAH

I am beginning to wonder if we should have defined “real” as distinct from “exist”.

But I’ll continue assuming the “real” to you is a mind independent thing, and “exists” applies to those real things, plus our ideas in mind such as “self” and “illusion” are costing in a mind.

The “apple” or “self” in my mind, I call an idea.
You call these illusion. But some thing exists here, so I don’t see the need to call it illusion.

Could this be because you think ideas must refer to a real thing in the world or else these ideas are mere illusions, and since no idea can BE the thing it purports to refer to, all idea-ing is illusion making?

I see the apple-essence-idea transfer-to-son process worked in the real world of bodies only. Fleeting idea apple, wherever and however it came from, became real apple in hand. The mental part that has no body, the idea, need not be called illusion just because it is only something for a mind and from a mind, because it functioned through my son’s mind. My idea. In my head. Set loose in my son. Came back to me as an actual, real apple. So my “idea” apple, like the real apple in hand, is not an illusion.

that we are built that way — ENOAH

This is precisely my point. We are built to build essences shared in words. So words and essences are built into reality like a burrow or the moon or an apple, they are just built by only us and are useful to only us. But they have flesh, skin in the same game as the rest of the becoming.

The Self, is becoming, The Body is being. — ENOAH

This seems to be the heart (the essence?) of what you are saying, or the bumper sticker version of a longer explanation.

I still think we are standing next to each other looking at the same thing, but I would say the opposite about it. I would say the self is held fast and fixed, like something being, but it is held fast by the body that is becoming. The body is in constant flux, becoming older, growing thinner or fatter, like all bodies, becoming. But as we human bodies can spit out ideas, these ideas only function when they lock down real distinctions into words to quickly package them in sentences for others to employ in a conversation about the real or in a trip to the store. Our words insert temporary permanence where we see temporary distinctions in the world. The insertion is real. When it functions as through my son, it is demonstrably real.

That which you call a squirrel is real, so are you and your senses. But yes, while those ideas,(that it is a squirrel, that it is "real", that you sense it,) exist, they are not Real, not thing in itself; they are outside Fictions superimposed as if from above upon the thing in itself. They are representations — ENOAH

If you want to call ideas superimposed and not a thing, but from above the thing, you’ve already isolated the idea as distinct, as different. Once it is distinct, it is! It is made. It is real. So you should be arguing not that ideas exist as illusions, but that ideas don’t exist at all.

Yes the idea exists. But it is not Real. It was a fleeting manifestation of a construction out of Signifiers, pointers at the moon, not the moon. — ENOAH

You are drawing a distinction between the moon, and the word “moon”.

I’m saying you don’t get the moon in the first place for you to construct “moon” without essence becoming.

There is no priority. Any distinction anywhere, at any time, in the sky between the moon the sky, in your post between “idea exists” and “it is not real” - any distinction carries the essence of the things trying to be distinguished.

This means if there were no distinctions, we could not speak or have ideas, AND we could not see the moon. It doesn’t mean if all is becoming, as the moon decays, there are no distinctions.

I think the issue is that ideas don’t seem to have matter, so there is an ability to think of them as not real. I don’t know the full mechanics of idea-ing, but then I don’t know the full mechanics of gravity holding the moon round. So I just treat the phenomena be it of “matter” or otherwise.

Seems like I experience changing becoming.

Seems like changing becoming is only there for experience in distinctions I see changing and becoming. These distinctions are as present in the becoming as the becoming changes distinct things.

There is no priority between essence and becoming. To become is to come from some thing and then become some thing else. To be a thing is to be a thing that passes away and is not a thing.

Thing and becoming.

In every sentence you will write.

Me too. I too use analogies as "a finger pointing at the moon," not at all purported to be the moon itself. — ENOAH

Analogies are like the clay of a vase, and words are its particular tall vase shape.

things can be constructed out of Matter, but as constructed "things" besides the matter they are made out of--to which their form is irrelevant; like a snowdrift wouldn't "think" itself anything apart from snow--they are empty of Reality, Being, what some want to call essence or substance. They are becoming, never present, never (contra Dasein) there. — ENOAH

I can tell you are in the same place as me. This is a deep corner of the cave where only the slightest hint of light is all you need to make a point.

But what I see here retains the presence of essence, as much and as often as it does becoming. I see both becoming and things becoming the same and only find illusion where one or the other is missing or overly reified.

We always need both to speak at all. Speaking is real, so no the becoming and essence is real.

They are becoming, incessantly and only and necessarily being constructed, not Real Being, like a beavers dam apart from the trees and grasses, fictional. — ENOAH

I see clearly that it doesn’t matter what the following words from your quote actually mean, because at the same time, they are present in every sentence we speak. You said “They” and you said “constructed” and you even said “not real being.”

These are assertions of essence, not becoming. If all essence was not real, how is it we never say even “becoming” without fixing a distinct essence that makes becoming different from “not real being”? We need a distinction to hold in order to reflect the becoming of it. Essences become so they change; but I’ve already taken “essences” and “they” just as for granted as I’ve taken the “becoming” and “change” for granted in this sentence.

though Fictional, they serve a function. In fact all of our joy and suffering is constructed out of or, at the very least, sifted through the emptiness. It exists, alright. But it is not Real. — ENOAH

See this is why I think we are in the exact same place looking in the exact same direction. You say “emptiness” and balance “suffering” against “joy”.
And you say “It exists alright.” I would say these things about becoming.

We all are talking about the idea of “self” just like the idea of “joy” and some of us are saying how because these are constructed mental things they are not thing (real being) and are illusion.

This is a broader view - not just “self” but all mental fabrications.

But I don’t see as much difference between what you call the illusion of self or “joy” all sifted through emptiness, as what I call just an idea. The idea part is where the essence is found. But the idea now exists just like wherever it came from exists.

Let me use an analogy. A squirrel finds a hole in a tree and builds a burrow. A tulip stem reaches through springtime up from the dirt and builds a first flower. A man finds wood and builds a house. The man also sees the squirrel and sees his house and builds the idea “dwelling place”. This is an idea. Like the burrow, and the flower, “dwelling place” is just what the man produces, and once produced it exists and is as real as the burrow, or the house or the flower.

though Fictional, they serve a function. — ENOAH

The only way an idea would serve a function, a use, is by being in the real world. The only use, the only being of an idea is as it exists between two people (or as it exists to oneself in reflection).

Another analogy. I say to my son, “go get me four apples at the store.” “Four apples” is as illusory as the “self” as I think you see human idea-ing, but nevertheless “four apples” can serve a function. My son goes to the store and while he is there my idea of “four apples” as it is in my head is nowhere near the store - it can remain only in my head and an illusion to the world. But then my son gives my idea “four apples” meaning while my son is at the store. He sees the essence of “four” and the essence of “apples” in his head and picks out 4 apples and buys them. When he returns and gives me what was just an idea in my head, I see that my illusion (in your vernacular), or my idea (in my more neutral vernacular) has been passed through my son, to the store and back into my hands. “Four apples” an essence, works, serves a function, not only because of the becoming of apples to my hand (the real world), but now, through my son, because of the becoming of ideas such as “four” and “apples” in my son’s head (now back in my hand and the same real world).

We can’t see becoming unless we simultaneously see essences, or beings, that come to be, that become.

Applying this to the idea of “self” and you can take out my son and do it all in your own head, for your self, to your self. It doesn’t mean it isn’t real, it just means that through our minds we produce words pointing to ideas like plants produce flowers and squirrels produce burrows. These are all things in the becoming of things.

This conversation works because of becoming AND because of the becoming of things. We need both to have either. The becoming of an idea is just the becoming of a thing that only other minds can sense, can use. The squirrel might recognize the flower just as the man might recognize the burrow, but when it comes to ideas, which like the burrow and the flower is the production of some thing, unlike the other things, ideas exist only in minds, to oneself, or to each other, so though the squirrel might see my house or the flower produced, it will never see the “dwelling place” or other ideas like “real being” or “illusion”. Just because the squirrel can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t really exist.

None of that need be essentially illusion. We can just see ideas for how they are - human tools, but real as they are useful. We can have ideas that are illusions. Just like we can be hallucinating a squirrel. But while we have an idea, be it of real being or of nothing real, the idea itself still exists - the function of thinking is itself still real. And this is an essential quality to all thinking. This makes it difficult to talk about the idea of “self”. But the idea is not rendered indistinguishable from all else. It has essential differences that keep it distinct. “Four apples” is not “tulip flower” is not “joy” and they remain distinct to the extent they can be distinguished from “illusion”.

because it is functional--our joy and our suffering (empty signifiers coding unnamable feelings, really)--we have adapted this powerful real feeling which is triggered by the code, and which the Signifier world knows as "attachment," to the Signifier world, the beaver's dam! The Fiction. That's the "illusion" — ENOAH

“Signifier world” must be fixed and posited for you to say “attachment” and then join these two by an act of signifying, of becoming. You have to keep positing worlds to draw any distinctions between illusory worlds and real worlds.

In the end, if all we are doing and saying is trading in illusions, we never say anything, we never communicate, we never connect with another mind, two minds joined by an idea, like two squirrels burrowing in the same tree.

The idea that because our ideas as mere copies of the world, constructions superimposed by minding “things”, just like my sense impression of the squirrel is never the squirrel-in-itself I still sense something real that I call a “squirrel; none of this makes those ideas and impressions not exist, not real, not something in-itself too.

We need essences in the becoming to have becoming of essences. (But this can lead to the facade where only the fixed idea is real). Just like we need becoming of essences to call essence illusion and have only the facade of becoming as real.

If you can't tell the difference, what difference does it make? — Patterner

Cuts both ways, for and against becoming (no essence) only, or essence (illusion /no becoming) only. If it functions, like a squirrel burrowing, like a conversation exchanging essences in minds, then call it real being or illusion, what difference is that to the fact of the conversation? I see this as a demonstration or experience of both becoming and fixed essences. At every turn, in every sentence we speak or experience we have or in every becoming moment.

A virtual reality headset is the same thing as eyes and ears. Sense perception builds a world for us just the same. That’s why we need ideas and essences to connect minds through this world.

In an odd way, it is easier to see the whole “real world” as an illusion before seeing the self that perceives this world as an illusion.

Read this from above:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/897122

Do I sound like I see what you mean by “self is an illusion”?

I appreciate that.

Let me know if, though I’m using my own words, if it sounds like someone who follows what are saying.

I see a mirage of a tree.
The mirage exists,
but the “tree” is not real (because it’s a mirage).

That tracks how I’m using “exists” and “not real” the way I saw you use them here:

the self does not exist, as in, it is like a mirage. Rather, that, as to its nature being real, it is not. — ENOAH

You don’t really talk about what DOES exist, but it clarifies what does NOT exist, and they may be enough here.

Just to be careful, to restate what you quoted above with a “tree” thrown in for a “self,” I said roughly:

“You see a mirage of a tree.
The mirage exists because you are seeing it,
but the “tree” is not real because it’s a mirage of a tree, not a real tree.”

There’s a nuanced distinction between “exists” and “real” we’re both employing to make either quoted statement. We could pause on that distinction and it would probably even help clarify this, but I’ll keep going instead, and see if I can apply all this more directly to a “self.”

But one more second before we get to “self” as illusion, a mirage is like a projection, where what exists only behind your eyes in your head, is projected out into the world in front of your eyes as if it was a real tree and some water, but is not. That’s a mirage, like an illusion. I haven’t really defined anything yet, but shown enough likenesses between “projection” and “mirage” and “illusion” to keep going.

So the “self” is like the tree when seeing a mirage of a “tree”.

The self is like the tree when seeing a mirage of a tree.

As in: when you experience your “self” you really are experiencing a kind of “self” creation, where the creating is more an activity, and the “self” thereby created as an object, is not real, not the same way the creating, the act, in this this case simply experiencing, is real..

How far did I get here? Does this track with the “self” being an illusion, a constellation of functions, producing it”self” in the producing act?

If you want to assess the contents of the book — Truth Seeker

I was hoping to asses the content of your thoughts on the book, or really your thoughts on the subject of the true nature of the self.

I am convinced by the contents of the book — Truth Seeker

Don’t you mean you are not convinced? I mean how can something convince “you” an illusion? What is there to convince?

You said “I am convinced”. And you are convinced the “self” referred to as “I” is an illusion. So no you are not. “You” can’t be.

Right? No book needed. Totally get it now. There is no conversation here. (And despite the question “right?” notice no use of the illusory “I” - trying to be consistent with what remains once the illusions are stripped away.)

Well that settles it.

Illusion means seeming as opposed to being. “Self seems…” is better than “self is…” because self is not and only seems to be.

Right? Do I have it?

Still says nothing about the self, only defines illusion.

I guess you just want me to read the book.

Really was hoping to dialogue.

Frankly, isn’t it an illusion to think the self is an illusion? You should just stop thinking and talking about all of this no matter what your answer to that question. But then, what did you expect to accomplish by this OP?

Let me try one more time to dialogue.

Let’s say I posit a pink unicorn. I just say “pink unicorn is the the thing that hops, kicks, jumps, that perceives, that knows, that posits things like itself to itself, and that speaks about all of this to other pink unicorns.” Then someone comes along and says “pink unicorns are an illusion, they don’t exist.”

So I then say, “okay, let’s banish the concept of pink unicorn. But I still need to explain all the kicking and positing of known experiences, etc. So from now on, since there is no pink unicorn, I will never use the term again, since I want to continue to have dialogue about these observations but without any illusion in it.”

We should be able to take illusions and illusory references out of any discussion among we truth seekers.

Why do you yourself keep saying “I” and “we” and “you” and “itself” and “self” if these are illusory and if you are trying to explain what is not an illusion but what is real?

Can you just refer to “it” instead of referring to “yourself”? That might weed out the illusion of this “self” but somehow communicate the account of all this seeming.

The impossibility of discussing this without reference to “I” or “you” or even just “itself” should give us pause to keep looking and not think we’ve said enough by saying what an illusion is.

Do you understand it? Honestly I’m wondering if you are asking me to read it so I can explain to you how a “product” and “a constellation” is not an “it” but is instead “an illusion”?

I am assuming you posted this to talk about what you understand about it.

Rather than a single entity, the self is really a constellation of mechanisms and experiences that create the illusion of the internal you.

We only emerge as a product — Quoting the description of the book

“…is really a constellation…”
“…emerge as a product…”

These contradict the statement:

the illusion of the internal you. — Quoting the description of the book

Instead of “I” and “we”, the pronoun is still “it” so something “is really” according to the author who says “the self is really a constellation”, and so where is the illusion? How is reference to an illusion not a contradiction with reference to a constellation or a product?

You ask me for evidence of reincarnation etc. You are the one who in the OP said resurrection and reincarnation, and immortal. Not me. Did you read what I wrote? I’ve been saying those are essentially useless to what is otherwise a good question.

Being me feels like being a self — Truth Seeker

What does the term “feels like being a self” mean? Can you describe the “illusion” a bit better?

I posit that you have some idea of what a soul is already on your head; some idea of immortal; some idea of reincarnation or movement of souls…
And these illusions are getting in the way of considering “what is the true nature of the self”.

Describe how some thing can feel like this “being me” and then “being a self” and how being me can “feel”. And why do you keep using “me” anyway?

If the “self” is not, we should be able to form sentences about “what is true nature”, without using the term “self”.

Why would you yourself need to to use the term “me” and “I” so much?

I am asking - I honestly have no idea myself, but there “I” go again.

If solipsism is accurate, the self is all there is and everything else is generated by the self. I don't think solipsism is accurate even though we can't actually test the idea. — Truth Seeker

Instead of from the solipsistic point of view, why not look for this “self” from the opposite point of view? Instead of looking for your own “self”, you can look for it as you would any other object of science, by looking at the world out there.

Forget any notion of your self or immortal spirits rising after death. Forget these private fantasies and forget all hopes in a “self” discoverable alone in your mind. Turn this mind to experience as it comes.

I read Trurthseeker’s posts and I see something particular to you. I see a unique personality. I read Enoah’s, or Unenlightened’s, and I see differences in voice, in tone, in content of focus.

Those are real, measurable differences. Those differences are not illusions. We can start the question “what is the nature of self” where the differences have so much more contour and form to measure against and balance.

What is the nature of the thing that makes Truthseeker posts never the same as Fire Ologist posts, which are different again from Count posts? How can only illusion link a post to one of us and not interchangeably to any of us?

There must be something behind certain differences between us. How else would we see difference?

The thing in itself of the “self” need not leave us stranded in solipsism, when the question is about the reality of the individual mind who posts here on this forum. We have each other as testament to the fact that we each must have ourselves.

The self feels like an entity to what, or to whom?

Even if it were a process, that process would be something, and therefore not be an illusion.

I think we all say “self” and we then think of some sort of immaterial “soul” substance, leading to words like “immortal” and “reincarnation” which lead to “heaven” or “God”. It is easy for us to throw out God and heaven as illusion, and the soul.

But what is doing the work in all of this judgment between entity and process or reality and illusion?

Answer: an individuated thing. An entity, as aptly identified by the word “self” as any of “we” who would use the word “us”.

Another interesting post.

And citing Augustine from way back there in history shows this great question we still ask has been there for humans to ask maybe since there were humans.

And I totally agree that self is not just tied up in the brain, but the activity of knowing and willing. Positing a self is willing a known being.

What is the true nature of the self? — Truth Seeker

Always a great question.

I would have voted for 4 but you added “…and unknowable.

Most of us believe that we… — Quoting the description of the book

To posit “most of us” there must be a quantity of distinct things first, and a judgment about “most” of them. The things here posited are “us”.

So the author is including himself as part of “us” but I assume distinguishing himself from at least some of the others by sub-dividing “us” into “most”.

So if he is talking about quantity (most) he needs individuals to comprise that quantity.

So he needs a group of separate individual things in this “us” or “we” he is talking about.

The true nature of “self” has something to do with being an individuated thing, as in a brain for instance, but also something to do with words and knowing. By learning, the self is born.

I have no scientific idea about “immortality” “resurrection” or “reincarnation”.

I don’t think we need to know that there is a “soul” a separate Cartesian substance from matter, to have this good discussion.

But why is it that because we posit a self (just as the any author who says “most of us” must) this self is an illusion?

Just because we posit a self, for it to be there, is it not there, deposited, like anything else might be?

If everything was an illusion, we wouldn’t know it. We have to know something to later learn it is an illusion. Once we see the illusion, we don’t know that thing - that thing never was in the first place - but now we know not to call it a “thing” but instead should call it an “illusion”.

BUT I’ve still posited an “it” just the same, in order to refer to the thing that we now call an illusion.

Before we call the self an illusion, we would need to clarify whatever are we pointing at that is only an illusion. But in order to get to wherever we are pointing at, we must walk a path, speak some words, move on solid ground. We must say something like “do you see that thing over there or do you see nothing or do you see something that you call a self but don’t realize such a name is an illusion?” There are so many things we must know first before we could answer this question.

Everything can’t be an illusion or there would be no way to distinguish an illusion.

So maybe the self is what is known in between all of the illusion; the self is knowing itself.

Maybe knowing is the illusion.

Maybe you never read this.

If the self was known to be an illusory construct, to whom (or to what) would that construct be known?

If I posited a pink unicorn and you showed me it was an illusion, we could take it completely out of the conversation, throw to the flames with all of the other illusions, return to reality, and just look at the flames. I challenge you to take the self out of conversation and say anything at all about the flames. The author said “we” and “us” in his first sentence quoted. The self is a needed pivot to make words move so unless words are an illusion, or they are self moving (then we wouldn’t have this conversation), a self must be in the same picture. The self would still be there, the one talking with words of the known such as “flames”.

the tautology that someone who does not believe in sin is not able to knowingly sin? — Leontiskos

That is the logic of it. Or more clearly, if you don’t know the will of god, and sin is going against the will of god, then you cannot knowingly go against the will of god or sin.

So we all have to vote “yes” if we are to be rational about it.

God has never revealed his will to me. As a consequence, I am unable to knowingly violate his will. I am unable to knowingly sin. — Art48

Well as Christ hung on a tree dying, looking down on the men who crucified him there, he said “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.” So it seems like he would agree with you.

The OP asked for arguments for and against Vegetarianism. This thread spiraled quickly into killing for food. I’m in favor of all kinds of eating. The ethics is not embedded in the act of killing animals for food as far as I can see. Eating a vegetable can be immoral.

Anything we people do can involve a moral decision. Even writing a post might intentionally, with malice of forethought, just waste precious time.

Going outside and sitting on the porch, when you just said you wouldn’t leave the house until the dishes were done, can be immoral.

If sitting outside can be immoral, killing anything can very easily be immoral!! Maybe always! And as a person, killing an animal with our reasons and intention behind it, maybe sacrificing it for nothing! It’s EVIL now!

But all of that aside, meaning, all of US aside and our morality, before we judge the morality, we can simply see that animals kill and eat other animals.

That simply is, the very subject that already exists for our moral question. We spawn in the same pond of animals as all of our ancestors spawned to be food for the next…

That is the starting point. At least those are the moving parts to start hurling “should” and “right” and “stupid” at one another.

Are you arguing that, like other animals, we are too stupid to make moral decisions? — Down The Rabbit Hole

You say: we, like “other animals …are too stupid”

It doesn’t sound like you like animals. Or people.

I don’t think you need to insult the animals as if the important likeness between them and us was intelligence, and saying “like other animals, we are too stupid...”

Unnecessarily negative posturing.

But I get it. It may be directed at me. I can be stupid.

But you said “we are too stupid…” so I’m thinking you don’t really think you are too stupid, so we’re in the clear on that aspect of the convo.

But killing to eat. Truly a big and real question, we all must grapple with.

And killing to eat as an entry into the murkier question of what’s right and wrong, morality.

So the question is, “Are you arguing that…we are too stupid to make moral decisions?”

It’s a good question. My answer, No.

I think it is perfectly good for people to farm, hunt, kill and eat animals. As a natural kind, if you will.

The moral decision at times can be to kill the animal, and eat it.

Easy to put yourself in a situation, not even a purely survival situation, but what is best involves hunting and killing.

At other times, killing an animal can be an immoral decision. When not for food. When supporting terrible conditions for gross profits.

Perhaps in some places in some times, killing any animal is immoral. Maybe that time is soon.

But I would never judge anyone for just eating meat. Much more would I need to know before I would say they were doing something immoral, like sitting on the porch.

We are animals too.
— Fire Ologist

Yes. So we can use that as an excuse for acting like other animals. And when we choose to act as if we owned all the other animals, we claim superiority. — Vera Mont

I feel like I'm being corrected here, sarcastically scolded, like you might claim my position inferior to your superior one.

You say "excuse for acting like other animals" implying that we are not animals, but creatures that can act like animals. Are we animals or not?

You say people must "claim" superiority, implying that we are not really any different than the animals. But many animals torture, kill and eat their meals. So a lack of superiority puts us on par and as justified as the lion when we get hungry, kill and eat.

Are you saying it can be perfectly justifiable for a person to eat meat?

Heidegger’s famous line that the nothing nothings means that truth happens in the nothing, which is another name for transcendence. Happening, the in-between, event, occurring, transit, difference, becoming are prior to identity. — Joshs

Truth happens in the nothing. I do think truth is solely in the mind, so happening in non-material. Truth is truth of some thing in the something. Heidegger contains hidden gems.

But Heidegger and Sartre both said existence precedes essence. Being in the middle denies priority between them. I don’t see how we see existence at all without seeing the essence existing, just as I don’t see how to identify an essence without becoming or being or existence.

I think the existentialists prioritized existence because of how precarious it is to fix any essence in all the becoming. But none of the becoming would be observable absent some thing becoming the thing, or the becoming thing becoming. If there is to be a priority, existence needs essence to be prior, just as essence needs existence to be prior. So priority has no place here, in the middle.

Essence and existence simultaneously disclose their place in the middle.

Dare I disagree with Heidegger and Sartre on this point. And the context of their statements about essence were maybe a bit different than my context here; there may be senses in which existence is broader, deeper, more essential (in a sense), than essence.

if we had to "unpack" all our propositional knowledge about complex things every time we used them in thought we'd never get any thinking done. — Count Timothy von Icarus

2+3 = 5 is taken as simple identity, instead of something that becomes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

thought is essentially processual. Eternal relations, taken as what is most real by positivists, are an abstraction from such processes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is all spot on to me, grappling with the exact observation I’m trying to make about being in the middle and how we can proceed to talk about it, and to simply know.

And I agree with Aristotle, and disagree with Wittgenstein.

Which means I was imprecise to say “ALL for human beings is in the middle.” By my own admission, the processing middle incorporates some THING identified as a unity in that process. I had to posit a frisbee to posit its in flight, middle motion. We don’t sense the middle process without simultaneously sensing the thing (whether that thing has its own context and is changing simultaneously or not - that analysis would just take positing something else to start and seeing its motions in its middles). So in the middle is just the processing; the thing processed still must be, to be in the middle. So middle is not “all”.

I may get away with saying “All” because motion is so ubiquitous, even in thought. But any wisdom cannot be recognized in this without both fixing things to demonstrate it (true discursion contra Wittgenstein), and fixing an observation about something demonstrated (adiaireta pro Aristotle).

So we end up in a weird place where trying to know what must be most unified through these discursive means. We try to get to reality rather than appearance, the in-itself rather than the relative, while still firmly stuck in the mode of knowing that is discursive and relativising. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is the whole rub. Seeking the permanent things among the shifting rubble of change, using a process (more change). Pits the knowing (process of unifying) in between its polar enemies of the knower (unified thought) and the known (unified thing).

Which is why I settled on just “being in the middle” for the title of the post. I am attempting to identify a good first premise, a relevant single subject of inquiry, the single albeit complex premise that: motion is, and undoes all things, but like things undone by motion, the motion itself is, so permanence and permanent things to be known, are as well. And this is one premise, like just being in the middle. The key observation to me is that we couldn’t notice motion in the first place without something unmoved in it being moved; motion and fixation come together always, by necessity of thought, of physical being, of any sheer motion or any sheer thing. Permanence and change must each carry with them, the other. Straight out of my hero, Heraclitus.

Leaning to one side (all is relative becoming and no knowledge) or the other (only the permanent can be) are both mistaken, or incomplete.

There is a lot more to clarify and develop here.

Thanks for your post!

The absurd is essentially bound to value, the caring that there is this foundational indeterminacy in our existence. Why does one care at all? Caring is in the nature of the absurd, — Astrophel

the absurd … hangs on affectivity of caring — Astrophel

What I attempt to say is that while K and D are true existentialists for dealing with ethical dilemmas, Camus is a nihilist because he doesn't bother to debate about this issue. — javi2541997

Interesting conversation here.

I think I’m realizing why my favorite existentialists were always Nietzsche and Camus. Nietzsche was the most metaphysical and Camus was the least ethical.

I like the science, be it gay or otherwise. Existentialism disallows any pretense, at least more so than any other approach to inquiry. We start in the absurd, facing the abyss, where everything human is false, and any move may make the situation worse.

I always threw out ethics with reason and truth and all the rest that was suspended and upended by the existentialists, and I paid less attention to whatever ethics were recovered and more attention to what wisdom or truth could be recovered. Ethics was like their vehicle for delivering metaphysics and secondary to me.

But I think you are both right, that the ethical is essential to existentialism, and Camus stripped it down too far, being the closest to a nihilist of the bunch.

You both have me at an existential crisis with my understanding of existentialism! I thought I knew what meaninglessness meant, but now…

Great conversation.

Are you getting this from Heidegger? One question :
If we use the motion of an object as a metaphor for becoming, then do we also keep the fact that the nature of the object doesn’t change through the course of its movement? — Joshs

Not from Heidegger, but I see that it doesn’t contradict Heidegger.

But yes, we need the fixed object to trace movement, but at the same time we need movement to bring about the fixed thing. Both can be separated in mind as concepts, but they are one in a body, in experience, in the midldle.

So while I hope I have finally understood your intent, I cannot help but feel gratified either way. I look forward to reading more. — ENOAH

Kind words. I appreciate you are giving this a good hearing, and I’m grateful as well.

And honestly, I think we are so close, the differences may not be worth the effort. Indeed leaving our positions as not fully aligned places my concept “in the middle” separate and in between us both (so it sort of makes the point clearest, to leave the misalignment be.)

So instead of thinking I need to explain myself to you, I’m trying to develop it just a bit more.

If I were to try to say what I’m saying slightly more analytically, I’d say I’m am pointing at middles and motions.

This is really two. Things; and their motion.

Seen this way there are middles (things) and motions in so many philosophies (maybe all of them).

There are things and motions (middles and motions) in the eternal recurrence of the same or the Apollonian appearance facing the Dionysian source, in the Hegelian dialectic, in the Platonic dialogue (the midwife), in the phenomena with its noumena.

So by positing our being in the middle, I am trying to see the overlap in so many differences.

But with the “middle” I explain these two with one.

Above you talked about stepping into the same river twice. That is exactly where I’m at. This is all straight out of Heraclitus. He’d love the being in the middle, I think.

A thing in the middle must be moving. There is no rest in the middle. Things are like starts and finishes. Resting only. But with starts and finishes, between the start and the finish, is the motion. Motion and things. These both are the starting point for all experience, as it is starting, experiencing.

Heraclitus is forever tied to flux and motion, but he admitted this means things must fix to be moving things.

But by just saying middle, the start and the finish in are captured in motion at once. The middle carries with it the start it moves from with the finish it moves toward, with the motion, all in one phrase.

So it is really one thing. In the middle. This is the Heraclitean incite. “It rests from change; the barley drink only stands still, while it is stirring; there is unity and harmony in opposing tension.”

The middle as an analytic concept, as a strictly metaphysical entity, characterizes the concept of identity (as Heraclitus put it), or maybe as you put it:

in this context, becoming to being and so on — ENOAH

The difference is that Camus answers his question, whereas you reject his answer and think everything is meaningless "in itself". — Moliere

Hmm. I don’t think everything is meaningless. So I’m giving you the wrong impression.

Camus’ answer is that it becomes absurd to seek answers where answers all vanish in the grasping. He allows himself to stop asking the question. I love the question anyway. I see that the answers vanish in the grasping, so absurdity is always lying in waiting, at every step, around every corner, but also that seeing this, knowing absurdity, is now fixed and permanent clear and rational.

Personally I see:
1.absurdity outlines the rational mind that is confounded by it, and,
2.the rational mind creates the conditions for its absurdity,
as the one and the same thing.

One object in opposites united is the meaning.

The absurd, or instinct, is enough to beget all of all that.

Anyhow, Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre were the first philosophers I read and I initially took it as a sort of gospel. — Count Timothy von Icarus

My gospels used to be (some maybe still) Heraclitus, Plato/Aristotle, Nietzsche and the others, and then Kant of course (but must visit Hume, Descartes and Locke and Hegel). But if I had to stay local, I’d never want to leave Greece - they tried to describe all the same things we discuss still today, right now, and gave us all the questions we’d ever need.

Nietzsche was a correction after all of that. Needed. He was right.

Reason had become a facade, a monolith, standing in place of everything. Platonic eternal forms more cherished than a cup of coffee - rediculous!

But moral nihilism, extreme relativism, and radical skepticism are as old as philosophy — Count Timothy von Icarus

Never need to leave Greece. Cratylus, Gorgias, Sextus Empiricus..

Existentialism addressed everything. It showed that the sum total of our progress was both a loss, and something new. I think existentialism, to me is the philosophy of modernity, and we are still in its era. Like 500 years from now, when we line up the renaissance, and the enlightenment, through the romantic to the modern, it is existentialism that brought the modern, the era that we are still living today. The internet and digital life may finally bring something new (but post-modernism, like post-existentialism, still refers to the modern, to the existential.)

Most of the famous existentialists demanded they were not relativists or nihilists. With the bleak scene they create it is easy to see why they had to scream so loudly.

It’s hard to describe, but I don’t see the relativism or nihilism. I just see the existential as the stage, the basecamp for being human. It’s necessity and purpose as much as it mingles with nothingness and becoming. The existentialists just were sick of talking about the “truth” of it all because we had so often botched it, lost our sense of what there really was in life to talk about - our disconnection, our predicament wondering what else is there besides these ancient questions.

In the end though, we need more than existentialism to explain who humans are here at basecamp. Existentialism is good stuff, but not enough.

realizing that whatever you do, if you think it is not ultimately absurd, you are doing it wrong. — Fire Ologist

I am painting too stark a picture, even for existentialism, but just to highlight the point.

if one is "doing it right," where is the standard to determine this? — Astrophel

The absurd becomes the standard. If you are doing something without any irony, with absolute certainty instead, without at least a nod to the absurd whatsoever, you are wrong (and so are an example of the absurd, because you would be thinking you found a new standard.)

But this doesn’t leave you with nihilism, nor is it a dogma. Everything is still there as it was, just now you placed yourself, in it, up against it, experiencing it, making the very disconnection you now absurdly endeavor to reconnect, knowing you never will.

You can lean towards the barren side of this bleak picture, and call this leaning “nihilism”, but that is just a leaning. Or you can lean towards you, the subject, in it. The existentialists had real bodies, and never let go of this instinctual being, but facing the predicament that is the human in it, the being with.

This is where the ethical component of existentialism comes in. The OP drew a line between the metaphysical and the ethical components of existentialism, and leaned towards the metaphysical. I’ve been staying on this to highlight the metaphysical backdrop in which existential ethics sits. It has to be an ethics that addresses not only the fact of our reasons and choosing, but also the fact of the absurd.

Again, there is plenty of room left to talk about ethics. But the backdrop, where Dionysian instinct for Nietzsche lives, where either/or matters and matters not the same, the abyss, where existence precedes…, where Sisyphus absurdly climbs again. Precise in its starkness, yet somehow setting the widest stage. I love that stuff.

At this lonely place of separation, you build an ethics of authenticity, something intimately tied to a “self” and need foremost one’s lonely disconnected will, to chose, and only then be ethically.

Perhaps it is not so much John Deigh who misunderstands Camus, as the contributors to this thread. — unenlightened

I never said Camus was a nihilist. I don’t really even know what nihilism means. I see why people attach nihilism to existentialism, but the existentialists actively resist that attachment and so would I.

You don’t see the absurd without looking for meaning and truth.

And when you find the absurd you don’t forget the truth and meaning of it.

This thread seems like a scattered mess. Are we asking whether people eating meat is ethical, whether ethics is something that humans can apply to the animals we often eat, whether ethics is something humans should apply to eating other animals?

What about vines that choke the life out of trees in order to blossom and spread - is there an ethics we should look for there? I saw a deer kill and eat a mouse. Is the that an unethical deer because the deer is supposed to be vegan?

I’ll skip to the end. Eating meat isn’t an ethical issue. Animals and plants consume other objects - it’s how it all works so that bacteria can grow, so that eagles can fly and so that we can ask these questions.

Killing an animal inhumanly is an ethical issue, not for the sake of the animal, but for the sake of the inhumane killer (the person, and those who would eat an animal killed inhumanly). The eating of meat isn’t an ethical issue. The killing inhumanly or not, for humans, is an ethical issue.

I don’t want to insult the lion who primarily tortures and kills animals to eat them alive, by judging the morality of an otherwise perfect act, innocent of all ethical judgment. But then, the lion wouldn’t sense the insult as they wouldn’t sense the ethics.

We are animals too. Animals kill plants and other animals to eat, just like the other animals and plants do. People create ethics and can apply it to everything they do, such as how they kill animals to eat. People should kill to eat humanely. But meat is plants is water is air - all for consumption - as are human bodies that the worms can’t wait to be planted in the ground.

Hi Jussi.

I always found the metaphysics (so to speak) in existentialism much more compelling than the ethics. So I basically agree with you.

I’d say you have to take out the “should” when reading anything about our actions in existentialism (despite all of Nietzsche’s scorn against the lies and weaknesses), which sort guts ethics anyway.

Bottom line, I agree with you that

Camus is making no claims about what anyone should do. — Jussi Tennilä

Once we realize the absurd, specific acts are never a “should” (so not really ethical). You can do anything or nothing at any time or all of the time. The sole quasi ethical component is merely realizing that whatever you do, if you think it is not ultimately absurd, you are doing it wrong.

acting with integrity requires taking up the perspective of despair about life and choosing from it the values and principles by which one will live. Only by first regardin the world as valueless and absurd and - Prof Deigh — Jussi Tennilä

Notice he says “requires” and not “should”. I think the practical point is that, when making a value judgement, one has to realize this is being made against an empty abyss. Each judgment needs to be admitted to oneself as ultimately absurd, before proceeding to judge and act anyway. Arguing whether a honking taxi is also a symphony is an exercise in absurdity. But that is because arguing, a human thing, is always arguing with the abyss. So if one chooses to value this above that and that below this, it “requires taking up the perspective of despair about life and choosing from it the values and principles by which one will live.” It requires choice and artifice.

Ultimately calling the existentialist approach to life “ethical” seems to misuse the term ethical to me. It’s not acting ethical to take responsibility for one’s absurd reasoning, it’s just the true nature of authentic acting. In the end, any particular act (murder or self-sacrifice, either/or) is meaningless in itself, beyond good and evil.