The wanting to-be a certain person is itself is a becoming. You do not even know what kind of person you will want to be in the future. So my answer would be yes.

My point is all the answers will one day be known and as some have pointed out what then! — Nort Fragrant

Wrong. You see, the thing about certainty (having all the answers) is that it closes the future. If we had all the answers we would cease to exist. A being that knows all ceases to become.

The less I know, the happier I am! — Nort Fragrant

You are not enlightened. Hate to break it to you.

This book is, in my opinion, the single most important philosophical text ever written — Isaac

Could you expand upon this (or anyone else who happens to agree)? I'm genuinely curious. I have no philisophical knowledge of Witty at all.

Western convert to Buddhism from a Christian cultural background but brought up in non-religious family. Read a large number of spiritual books and some philosophy and have developed a syncretic approach basically Buddhist in orientation but with some ideas from Christian Platonism. — Wayfarer

My background is similar. Christian. Picked up a mish mash of everything over the years, but predominately lean towards advaita, non-dualist, Buddhist flavours. I don't think the word religious applies to one who created his own spiritual patchwork, cut from the cloth of various faiths and philosophies. There is truth and untruth in all of them.

I understand your point more clearly now, though I didn't say anything about feeling nothing. I agree with you that the pain is a measure of the value. It's well put. The fact that you are able to focus on, and even embrace the difficult emotions, seems to me a good sign. A healthy and positive sign.

Why is it a duty? You are allowed to mourn and experience a full range of emotions. Why the self imposed pressure for joy in mourning?

Get terms right in the first place and go from there.. Problem solved?

Individual actions are insignificant, but we won't choose to do anything collectively until there is a major, major catastrophe. I imagine the impetus for real change would require something horrid, like a 3rd of the planets population being wiped out. Then maybe it will be too late though.

I guess I misunderstood your post

Emotional, social systemic cause, insanity--all seems to be plausible, but a suicide only triggered by the meaninglessness of life, in the purely philosophical sense doesn't seem plausible. Have people committed suicide for purely this reason? — Kushal

I don't think these things are so clearly delineated from one another. They are all entangled. Ontological beliefs permeates through, and informs all other aspects of subjectivity. So an existential crisis such as the meaninglessness of life, is necessarily never detatched from one's psychic state.

If someone tinkers, by ending their life just because they decide that they don’t like it, without genuine urgent need to, they just make it a lot worse for themselves, because what you end-up in depends on your actions — Michael Ossipoff

Sounds like religious/karmic superstition.

I am trying, as much as possible, to stick with S notion that meaning is "X means Y" in the sense of a dictionary definition. So meaning is the "particular thing or notion", the symbol conveys. — Echarmion

Its this narrow view of meaning that causes the problems

The real question is: is there meaning when no life at all exists?
— emancipate

Yes. Linguistic meaning. — S

Linguistic meaning is a redundant term. "il n'y a pas de hors-texte".

That there is meaning when no people exist is my conclusion, utilising the thought experiment. That conclusion leads to the conclusion that meaning, once set, is objective.

You could put it in your neutral way of talking about ink marks on a piece of paper if you want to. It's a scenario where everyone is dead. An hour previously, when everyone was still alive, these ink marks had meaning. On that we presumably agree. But, of course, I would say that, afterwards, as before, they're not just ink marks: they have a meaning. — S

Yeah of course that scrap of paper, with those blotchy squiggles, have meaning after all humans are dead. Say a bird grabs the paper and utilises the paper for nest padding. Voilà, now its meaning is warmth and insulation or some shit like that. The real question is: is there meaning when no life at all exists?

but how would you experience time, if it wasn't by measuring physical activity? — wax

Through an internal intuitive experience. In same way that motion of the body (raising your arm for example) is experienced from within. It does not require an outside observer. You experience time tacitly by existing.

How is même being deigned here (roughly)?

Do you think that 'subject' is a necessary property (Deixis) of language?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deixis

Only if I agree that it's necessary, and I don't in your example. “What can be said at all can be said clearly”. — S

"The less you understand, the better you listen."

And the predictable ad hominem. It's not about that. It's not about me. It's not about my willingness or ability to understand. It's about the language they use. That's what my criticism is regarding. It's bad for being obscurantism in the first place, even if the philosophy has some merits — S

I didn't mean any ad hom. Anyway, what you call obscurantist might simply be a philosophers attempt at discourse, without the associations or baggage that comes with using traditional terms. Such as heideggers dasein for example. In such cases the difficulty of their language serves a purpose. Is this OK by you?

You would say that, though. It's clear that you're a big fan of obscurantism from your posting history — S

You use philosophical terms on this forum that the ordinary person would not understand, therefore I should conclude that you are an obscurantist because you haven't dumbed down your language and that you do not, as you claim, privilege ordinary language. I do think I have been clear in this thread though.

Why is it that hegel, lacan, Derrida etc have been accused of obscurantism by some and yet others have found their work insightful and meaningful? With a little effort you could understand, but I'm afraid that would mean stepping out of your ordinary langauge cave. One man's obscurantism is another's philosophy

The inability on here, for no particular good reason, to not readily accept simple understandings of language, simply as tactic often drives me nuts. — Rank Amateur

Yes as a tactic it is a game of mere one-upmanship. But, not readily accepting the traditional (or simple) understandings of language is useful to ascertain and analayze potential presuppositions.

And I privilege ordinary language philosophy because it makes more sense and is far more useful outside of the special little context of bad philosophy, and because ordinary people don't think I'm some kind of idiot or crank, and more astute people don't think that I'm some kind of sophist. — S

OK I understand that it serves your purpose but be aware that this is a limit to philosophy's potentiality. Not only philosophy but yours also. Philosophy isn't about regurgitating what has been said before, but an exploration of concepts in novel ways that push the boundaries of our understanding. Sometimes experimental and even creative language is needed for that. Anyone who doesn't spoon-feed you with easily digestible concepts is a sophist I suppose.

So you are content to talk about things in peculiar ways if it is through the mode of science, but not philosophy? Afterall, the ordinary way of discussing (or understanding) something is not the scientific way. And why privilege the ordinary epistemologicaly?

There's the orange, and there's the experience of it. There's the orange, and then there's how it appears. I eat the orange. Have I eaten the experience? Have I eaten how it appears? — S

In a sense you have eaten how it appears, because it no longer appears in the same way as it did before you took a bite. You are consuming and modifing the experience and the appearance.

I would rather say the source of suffering is not heeding one's desire. As to your question: I don't know.

@op

You have to define your understanding of 'God'. Perhaps start with saying whether God is immanant or transcendent, as I think this will effect your inquiry significantly.

SO there is a way of understanding words that does not involve interpretation — Banno

Not really. When a baby hears a sound for a first time, a word from his mother. He attempts to repeat it. The interpretation is the way it sounds when he hears it, the way it moves his tongue as he articulates, the reaction of his doting parent, the way he feels when he sees his parents reaction. It is later that he learns to associate words with things, but the initial experience is full of interpretation.

I am not interpreting the meaning of a car horn when I am being startled by one. I might afterward try to interpret it, but this process isn't similar to the initial reaction.

This means "meaning" is equivalent to "experience". Why define terms this way? — Echarmion

How do you experience reality, but through a filter that allows you to make meaning (interpret) of it all? Meaning is not just linguistic.

You experience the car horn which startles you and then you retrospectively apply analysis to the situation. Meaning has flowed through sense (sound), emotion (fear) and intellect (analysis). Really it is much more than this, the situation (initial experience) is complete morass of meaning. But in retrospective analysis meaning has been reduced by the intellect to a speck of what it was during experience.

Can you expand further on what you mean by this? — Judaka

'Many people have a tree growing in their heads, but the brain itself is much more a grass than a tree.’ (Deleuze/Guattari)

Meaning is what arises when a conscious entitiy encounters anything other to itself. This is a constant process of experiencing reality. Meaning would not be possible without rhizomatic connections between difference.

I would call that more "association". The word "apple" means something to you because you have physical experience of apples. Eventually, words refer back to the experiences they are associated with. — Echarmion

There can be no non-reaction to a word you haven't encountered previously. Even if you hadn't the physical experience of apples, the word itself would generate an interpretive experience.

A neologism: qwerpaz. You have had no physical experience of this word, yet it might induce a feeling of confusion or irritation. Perhaps the utterance is euphonic or unpleasant.

Nothing can be encountered without invoking a process of interpretation. This is meaning.

↪Moliere
The act of explaining what something means. The important thing is that it is a verb. — Judaka

It's more than this. Interprétation is how being expériences reality. Every moment of existence passes through a filter unique to the individual. That filter is multifaceted: mind, associations, senses, emotions, etc. To exist is to hold a particular comportement towards reality. All we do in life, in every moment, is interpret.

Expérience is interprétation.

Meaning is the jostle of difference. It resides neither in one place nor another, but flows in-between events of encounter (other meets other). Meaning belongs not to me or you (reading this), but it is shared in-between.

if someone thinks that kicking the pup is fine, then I wouldn't say they have a different preference to me in the way I like vanilla and they like banana. I, and I hope you, would say rather that there was something quite wrong with them — Banno

Your reaction to the idea of a pup being kicked is grounded in, and informed by a context: the society you live, historical experiences, philisophical positions you hold, unconscious associations, etc. There is a whole milieu informing your position towards this hypothetical dog punting.

It is quite easy to imagine an alternate milieu: another society with radically different moral leanings, where kicking a pup would be interpreted differently (perhaps as a non-event for example).

Both contrasting positions would exist within a context. Objectivity attempts to remove context.

Only relativism allows you to judge the dog kicking as 'wrong'. I just happen to agree with you because we grew up in a similar milieu. I don't think there is a universal here.

Sure, and then what you'd offer as empirical support would be? — Terrapin Station

Why do you impose such limitations upon yourself?

If goodness is subjective, then you can be right and I can be right, even if our views contradict one another. — Banno

Sometimes it's like that. I don't see it as a problem

The issue is that moral judgements are about what should be done. They're not speculative and individual like the question what a person would do, given a set of circumstances. A partial truth cannot support an general statement, so how can the subjectivist make any moral statements? — Echarmion

Notice my comment was about subjectivism at the extreme end of the spectrum. I think there can be different degrees between subjectivism and objectivism, so that these are not simple binary opposites. I am not one for general truths. Every situation exists as a complex milieu, with its own specifics. One size fits all: doesn't. There is no ought but that which is created, individual or collectively.

If goodness is subjective, then you can be right and I can be right, even if our views contradict one another.

Hence a subjectivist cannot claim their moral view is true. — Banno

They can claim that their moral view is subjectively true. True for them and anyone who agrees with their position (whatever that may be). Seems like subjectivism taken to the extreme must privilege the right to be different. Acknowledging a plurality of truths. He can only claim his truth to be a partial truth. His truth is also false for others.

I pointed out that the charge of madness comes from those who lead an unexamined life. Worse than unexamined, ignorant. It is this collective ignorance that decides what should be denoted sane.

Yes the masses are ignorant. Make of that what you will. Hint: its more of a brute fact, than a value judgement.

who said anything about nobility? The subject is madness. I'm merely describing the typical lifestyle of the masses, which includes an average working week of 40 hours.

Mad people are those who go blindly through life, working 40 hours a week in some menial job, fully invested into this 'life' of materiality. So much so, that no question of enigma remains, no hint of awe. These great swathes of dull, anaesthetised people who live as if they are already dead. That is mad. It is not knowledge they possess, but a dangerous forbidding of knowledge.

So, it seems to me that the difference between madness and genius depends on the intelligence and knowledge of the audience. — TheMadFool

I think this is a good starting point. I also think it's a label that gets thrown around from a collective, to what is an unaccepted (by said collective) difference

'It's raining' has no reference, but it's perfectly understandable — Purple Pond

'It' références the sky