The big elephant has been hanging out in the Shoutbox. Anyway, as far as I know, there's no maybe left. He's won. As for what happens next, there's only one thing you can be sure of, he won't make America great again. — Baden

I see that now.

Of course not. For one thing, it would be illegal. — Thorongil

@darthbarracuda

Are there actually public universities that teach theology? I know ones founded originally by religious institutions do this, but not aware of state-funded schools that teach theology.

The will to survive.
1) People usually are attached to their individual egos once alive.
2) It is more of an escape hatch ideation
3) Philosophical Pessimism can be a philosophy of consolation

After weeks of watching the roof leak
I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board — Hanover

“Certain it is that work, worry, labor and trouble, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature. In”
-Arthur Schopenhauer

I call this the stress of procrastinating the inevitable and wishing you'd have dealt with it sooner. — Hanover

Yes a common harm. But, even if you deal with it early on, there will always be some other alarm going off to take its place.

@darthbarracuda
That the only exit is suicide rather than a pleasant sleep that lasts a long time. That after sleep comes the awake part and all the energy, stress, and exposure to harm that comes with it.

Disappointment is a big theme in pessimism. So many instances.

But you must explain the harm so we can all be explicitly aware..

Bring out your harms! Any good ones today?

- realizing that after all that has happened, nobody knew the depths of sadness that you've been through, and nobody else would probably know; life goes on, the world does not seem to care, and by the way, you have to better get ready for work tomorrow as if nothing just happened! — OglopTo

This is an interesting point.. It is funny how all this drama in your head can ensue.. this internal emotional suffering.. and how it can be negated simply cause there is no context to even explain the emotional strife.. No one seems to understand, care, empathize, or give a shit. This is why a philosophy of pessimism is a consolation and provides dignity to the individual. At the least, it does not give short shrift of your pain by dismissing it, ridiculing your voicing of it, etc.

I do want to distinguish it from a regular bitch session where you are directing it very personally about a person or group of people.. Rather it is an existential bitch session where the suffering is put into a context of how it fits into the harms of existence. We can see each other as fellow-sufferers and are in the same boat.

That's a really good list of harms. I like that you bring up the nuance that our pleasure may rely on enormous amounts of pain that are so indirect or removed, we do not usually think about it.

Also you bring up a good point about cognitve dissonance.. We know the work is what provides our survival but we also tend to hate many of the tediousness and unpleasantness associated with it. With the idea of work you also bring up the idea that our needs cause others to have to work as well, thus contributing to the cycle.

There is always an isolation, my experiences are never yours, but that has no impact on what may be known of other's experiences. — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, I think it does.. Upset is a broad category.. the mix of other emotions or the nuance of exact kind of upset that the person was feeling may be indescribable and if describable, not similar to what your version of upset may be when you interpret it as you a) may have misinterpreted it or more importantly b) do not understand the nuanced experience as it was lived by the original experiencer. So while broad categories can be shared, the nuanced version of the event as seen by the observer cannot be completely shown or at the least shown to be the same as the how the interpreter is interpreting the nuanced event from the original experiencer.

Also, I don't think you understood my original argument with apo.. Apo seemed to be claiming that there is no territory.. that all is map. I was trying to say that at the least there is territory, that of individual experiences which are not a map.. they just "are".

But what I think Schop1 find problematic (as do I) with some accounts is how they try to get around the fact that feelings can only be replicated, they cannot be shared. The mind is a private world in itself. The external world is public. Feelings are a totally different thing than material objects; whereas an everyday object can be shared between many different observers and still be the same thing, a mental event must be cloned in order to be "shared". — darthbarracuda

Yes, why is this particular conversation with Willow so frustrating? Right when I think we are agreeing he has this congenital need to disagree for the sake of it almost..

The primary experience was never claimed to be transferred (i.e. to literally be the other person's experience). — TheWillowOfDarkness

Go back and read the arguments with apokrisis. Then see if what you are objecting to is really what the argument was about.

Schop: So makes a difference here, meaning counterfactual? To broaden your idea, I think this notion that if there are no counterfactuals, it has no value or useful understanding is skipping over a large amount of phenomena. For example, though for example, mental illness can often be described in systematic inventories of this or that mental phenomena, each individual human has experiences so nuanced as to have no alternative for counterfactual examples. It just "is". It can be described, analyzed, modeled, but the actual experience, the first person perspective of that particular person is unique. It is unique in that no one else can experience it, but even more importantly, it is unique in that no matter how much detail in framing the experience into information, the event itself can never be replicated into information.

Apo: It is illogical to claim that there could be phenomena that aren't distinct and therefore counterfactual in the fact that, given different conditions yet to be discovered, they wouldn't be there.

Schop: People have individual, personal experiences that cannot be shared. How can that be communicated? No other thing can have these experiences.. It may change some event to communicate and participate in these experiences, but the actual experience is only experienced by the individual. There is something that cannot be made a map, but is simply territory.

Apo: Perhaps you don't understand what it means when I say I am defending a pragmatist epistemology? If you believe instead in private revelation, go for it.

Schop: Go ahead and school me if you think I mischaracterize you apokrisis. "Private revelation", personal experience or anything else is still had by the individual and cannot be experienced by anyone else and cannot be mapped to anyone else either. Prove me wrong if you like.

Apo: Why would I dispute the very problem pragmatism sets out to resolve?

Schop: That we have a private experience that cannot be mapped? That's what I dispute about what I perceive to be your pragmatist stance.

Apo: Yeah, but as soon as your private experience is framed by yourself as an argument, it is social, even if never in fact articulated publicly. So to be mapped is already crossing the line that is the epistemic cut upon which human introspective "self consciousness" is constructed. It invokes the "self" as the interpreter of a sign, the sign being now the observable, the claimed phenomenon.

You seem to imagine that naive experiencing of experiences is possible. But to talk about the self that stands apart from his/her experiences is already to invoke a pragmatist's sign relation.

Schop: How is the actual experience experienced by the experiencer "framed"? Only afterwards in analysis or description, not the experience itself.

So you see.. this conversation was about whether what apo called "personal revelation" was possible.. I took that to mean some sort of closed off event that cannot be shared.. and yes primary consciousness is closed off and cannot be mapped.. it is pure territory.. One can try to map it by communicating it, but the map is not the territory of course..

So the crux of the fight was around whether there is actual any territory or if everything is map.. Apo seems to say everything is map.. Territory is not real or something of that nature.

That's what it means to know something: to have a model which is not exhaustive of the world. My point this is no limit on what may be known.

If I know what you are thinking of feeling at sometime, the point is I have a map of a tiny part of you and the world. The failure of the map to be exhaustive doesn't prevent it from telling me your upset. I can know that perfectly well. — TheWillowOfDarkness

If it's a strawman then it's from your confusing statements. According to what I see above:

Models are not exhaustive
Map has a "tiny part" of me in the world
You can tell X thing from the tiny part (like being upset)

Yes, I agree that all these things can be had from mapping the world. But my claim was not that things cannot be communicated, simply the claim that experiences cannot be completely recreated in models. I did not claim that it cannot be useful or effective for a certain outcome by communicating so and so information. Rather, I am claiming contra apokrisis, that personal experiences, no matter how much communication, cannot be conveyed as it is experienced in that moment by that person. The primary experience is not perfectly translated through the map, but a semblance of it through communication can be expressed through language. As Wittgenstein seemed to be saying, we develop the correct language games so that this information can be translated into something others can understand, sent out, received, and hopefully clearly understood as the message was intended.

Since it is only the map which tells, the fact it's not the territory has no impact on its ability to say something. Anyone may know anything about another experience. They'll just never "be" that experience. — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, I cannot exhaust the experience by simply verbalizing/mapping it. I can simply recreate a model of it. It may be a detailed map, but a map nonetheless. That is not simply saying you can never "be" the experience, but you can never really communicate the experience the way it was either.. there is a distinction there.

According to scientists, there are at least two trillion galaxies. Each galaxy has 1 star around which a life-supporting planet revolves, and on which intelligent life now exists. That makes two trillion planets loaded with intelligent beings who are much more subject to harm than they are benefit. There are, thus, billions of trillions disappointed and annoyed individuals nattering away about the unfairness of life -- RIGHT NOW! — Bitter Crank

So you are saying that the situation can be that much more? On each of those planets does there also exist Elders and nasayers who blame the aliens for not being able to cope with the harms well enough as a feedback mechanism to ensure self-conscious beings find existence well enough to perpetuate itself? Perhaps they are just at the stage of bacterial slime mold or insect larvae in which case they have a couple hundred million years to go.

I find this question to be a little be strange. Is not the point of the map that it is secondary, only a representation of a territory which is some other state? If so, doesn't that make all experiences maps? — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, communicating the experience is the map.. making it "information" a "difference that makes a difference".. there is still the actual experience which is not the map itself.

Right because what you say exceeds the norm.. Anyways, I was just guessing what you were trying to get at with your last statement. To go even further, it looks like you do not even acknowledge the distinction between a primary and secondary consciousness.

The clue is in the fact you have to mention the experiencer. — apokrisis

No.. I mapped the experiencer to you on this philosophy forum.

I don't understand you objection.

You can tell from your own feeling how thinking or believing one way or another makes you feel about life. Well at least I can; I guess I can't really speak for you, For myself I know; I have tried both.

So I can't see any contradiction. — John

It seems that you want to take the stance that things are inherently uncertain. Then certainly, if things are uncertain, feelings of spirit and love depending on believing in uncertainty seems more certain than the stance of uncertainty would seem to imply.

Yeah, but as soon as your private experience is framed by yourself as an argument, it is social, even if never in fact articulated publicly. — apokrisis

How is the actual experience experienced by the experiencer "framed"? Only afterwards in analysis or description, not the experience itself.

You seem to imagine that naive experiencing of experiences is possible. But to talk about the self that stands apart from his/her experiences is already to invoke a pragmatist's sign relation. — apokrisis

That's because I am choosing to have the experience of introspecting and analysis that these philosophy forums demand when explaining consciousness.

I say that believing either way that life is meaningful or not involves equally a leap of faith. On the other hand where you place your faith may strengthen either the spirit and love of life in an acceptance of mystery or intellectual illusions of certainty; so which way will we jump?. — John

That seems to be contradictory in that you cannot have a "real" acceptance of uncertainty (mystery as you put it) if you assume a spirit and love of life is dependent on this.. That itself is an underlying assumption of certainty.

The demand for that comes form being dominated by a narrowly carping intellect. In a spiritual sense life is a profound mystery; the kind of mystery that can never be 'solved' or dispelled by discursive thought.

I think our bodies instinctively want to live; and I think our spirits also, if they are not oppressed and unable to think and feel freely and creatively, also have a strong love and desire for life. — John

Yet you seem to contradict yourself earlier when you stated: "There is nothing in the world, according to this notion, that tells us unequivocally, what it is right to believe about our lives, about human life and about Creation itself. So, we must take a leap of faith; we must believe one way or the other, if we are not to perennially 'sit on the fence'.

Camus tendentiously presents his leap of faith (the belief that life has no inherent meaning) as not being a leap of faith at all, but as a resolute refusal to believe, as an abnegation of belief itself on the ground that there is no evidence. This is almost the archetypal modern presumption; the one-eyed outcome of the dominance of the scientific paradigm."

Perhaps I misconstrued your own thinking with Kierkegaard and Camus? Or are you taking a leap of faith in believing the unconscious desire for more existence?

That we have a private experience that cannot be mapped? That's what I dispute about what I perceive to be your pragmatist stance.

I wouldn't call sexual desire whether it is being enacted in conventional marital contexts or not "conviction". Even marriage in its most conventional expressions does not necessarily involve any deep conviction; it may just as easily consists in a more or less blind following of convention. I just think a language of 'conviction' is out of place in the context you have been trying to employ it. — John

Granted, but nowadays with abortion and all and contraception..I guess my point originally was that absurdity may be true in terms of no truths or right course of action is certain, but that if people procreate there is an underlying conviction that living is supposed to be good (not necessarily something I personally believe but is certainly the case with others)

Perhaps you don't understand what it means when I say I am defending a pragmatist epistemology? If you believe instead in private revelation, go for it. — apokrisis

Go ahead and school me if you think I mischaracterize you apokrisis. "Private revelation", personal experience or anything else is still had by the individual and cannot be experienced by anyone else and cannot be mapped to anyone else either. Prove me wrong if you like.

It is illogical to claim that there could be phenomena that aren't distinct and therefore counterfactual in the fact that, given different conditions yet to be discovered, they wouldn't be there. — apokrisis

People have individual, personal experiences that cannot be shared. How can that be communicated? No other thing can have these experiences.. It may change some event to communicate and participate in these experiences, but the actual experience is only experienced by the individual. There is something that cannot be made a map, but is simply territory.

The universe produced us. And thus it is capable of producing such harmful ignorance. And like you said, more pragmatic visions essentially boil down to victim blaming. Even the victims themselves are willing to blame themselves, as a method of maintaining order and stability. — darthbarracuda

Indeed. I agree that the way to put a lid on any consternation is to simply say it is the victim's fault. It's a great trick really.

Or they just failed to contracept successfully, or they just did what one does; both of which require no deep commitment. — John

I did not mention what kind of conviction... They can have a conviction in the pleasure of sexual relations.

1) there is only God. many people are ignorant of him. many people have false ideas about him. many people call him by the wrong name. However, none of that changes the fact that there is only God who hears the prayers of every human. He is God, and there is no other. — taylordonbarrett

And your evidence is what? You know this because you were exposed to a culture that spread these ideas.. which were a set of evolving ideas that solidified overtime but could have been any other set of ideas at any other time.. A tribesman isolated, does not "know" this.. nor cares.. but somehow they need to.. It's just sales for a way of looking at the world instead of a product.. but it is sales nonetheless.. Christianity can be summed up in one word- evangelism.. That's all it really cares about.. If you want to meditate and think about escoteric musings.. you can do so in a cave... but no Christianity wants to go the extra step and make sure EVERYONE has to hear about it over and over and over again..because somehow the salvation of humanity NEEDS to just happen.. as if this was not a bug already in the system from the start.. Did you ever stop to think the designers of this ideology MEANT it this way so it would maximize its ability to spread and not die out? Talk about psychological warfare.. Paul of Tarsus should have taught Sales 101..

2) Yes, God knew that we were going to rebel against Him and cause ourselves a whole ton of suffering. And He knew that as a result He would have to become a human being and endure excruciating torture (both physical and spiritual) in order to rescue us from rebellion. But He loves us anyways, and He was willing to do that for us. Do I fully understand why He allows suffering to go on? No. But He is Omniscient. He has good reasons that you or I could never imagine. — taylordonbarrett

So, we have a situation where there is (to the human) a capricious god who does not mind that we are tortured or suffer for causes that we cannot fathom. How am I supposed to be grateful or supplicant to such a force? Simply because I need to learn submission and to lessen my own ego? I do that every day by encountering other people and just about anything.. I do not even need the added notion of a creator god that wants you to love him despite your misery. It sounds like this god was kind of bored.. if that is the case it is a metaphor of the absurdity and boredom of existence itself. It is just that the metaphor was taken seriously, WAY too seriously.. Snap out of it man!

3) Paul gave up a life of wealth, status, and privilege in order to go on the road as a missionary. He lived a life of poverty, and was constantly arrested and tortured for his preaching. The end of his life was that of martyrdom. He did not gain wealth, or power, or status, or privilege from his preaching. He lost all those things. You can believe what you want to, but Paul was no con artist. He sincerely believed what he preached and gave up everything for Christ. — taylordonbarrett

I really do not give a hoot what Paul did or did not do.. I do know the effect of his teachings and his ideological descendants is to sell ideas really well to the Roman communities and eventually the Roman hierarchy.. The rest is history.. Germanic tribes bought into it or were forced into it or forced converted their tribes into it and thus became "Christian" of one heretic variety or another, until the whole things stabilized around a certain accepted authorized version by the early Middle Ages. As far as I see, Paul was an opportunist who saw a small Essenic-leaning Jewish group (possibly associated with the likes of the Dead Sea Scroll Sect or others similar), that had more or less the usual understanding of Mosaic law as practiced by Judeans and Jews across the Mediterranean.. Saw a way to fit in ideas of Gnosticism (i.e. Mosaic laws no longer needed due to death and resurrection motif). and mystery cults (resurrection leads to redemption).. slapped it on top of the already existing more-or-less traditional Jewish group (the Jesus Movement) and made it his own thing which he then spread to "gentile" (non-Jewish) communities who really had no attachment to the original group being that they did not really care about what they would consider tribalistic ideas of Mosaic laws that did not apply to their particular community anyways..

Anyways, what actual thing does a resurrecting god do anyways besides being a metaphor for the seasonal rebirth of plants during the spring? It's all metaphorical bullshit that is taken too seriously. Nothing has changed since that myth was created except now we have a myth that is valorized and spread to millions of people.. If spreading an idea to millions of people is supposed to be the harbinger of what is truth, then that is not really truth as much as really good marketing.

So God (whichever one we mean here) is a solace for his own creation which lead to suffering? If God is omniscient, and he knew humans had the possibility of straying and thus causing their own suffering, why even create the event in the first place? High hopes? But if he is all knowing, he knew the outcome as well, so it was perfectly in his "plan". Thus our suffering was there from the start. This is not to construe that I believe any of these unsubstantiated ideas that were essentially sold throughout the Roman Empire by conartists like Paul of Tarsus, his ideological descendants (the Church Fathers).

Camus tendentiously presents his leap of faith (the belief that life has no inherent meaning) as not being a leap of faith at all, but as a resolute refusal to believe, as an abnegation of belief itself on the ground that there is no evidence. This is almost the archetypal modern presumption; the one-eyed outcome of the dominance of the scientific paradigm. — John

Yet procreation meant some people had a firm belief in something if you are here to contemplate it..so anyone who is born, their forebearers had conviction in something.

You forget that I am arguing the pragmatist view and so Occam's razor applies. You can pretend to worry about invisible powers that rule existence in ways that make no difference all you like. You are welcome to your scepticism and all its inconsistencies. But as I say, if whatever secret machinery you posit makes no difference, then who could care? — apokrisis

So makes a difference here, meaning counterfactual? To broaden your idea, I think this notion that if there are no counterfactuals, it has no value or useful understanding is skipping over a large amount of phenomena. For example, though for example, mental illness can often be described in systematic inventories of this or that mental phenomena, each individual human has experiences so nuanced as to have no alternative for counterfactual examples. It just "is". It can be described, analyzed, modeled, but the actual experience, the first person perspective of that particular person is unique. It is unique in that no one else can experience it, but even more importantly, it is unique in that no matter how much detail in framing the experience into information, the event itself can never be replicated into information.

You have provided many unique harms. Good job.

Only in an unfortunate world would someone like the pessimist exist and actually be wrong about their pessimism. By its very existence, pessimism validates itself. — darthbarracuda

Interesting.. can you explain further? The self-validating pessimist.. Isn't it a bit strong to say though that being wrong on a theory proves the pessimistic point? Or is it rather that being wrong about pessimism is bad because, even if pessimism is wrong, the mere fact that others can feel this way proves that a world exists that has people that feel this way and thus shows the non-idealty of the world to allow people that can feel this way about the world. The pragmatist would just chortle that this is simply the fault of the pessimist, not the universe.

Not dying quite soon enough can be extremely bad. Like, if the stroke you had while driving had been just a little bit worse, death would have ensued immediately, but because the stroke wasn't quite bad enough, you lived just long enough to experience what it is like to find your delightful self engulfed in flames, and one's skin (then deeper flesh) being charred, and one's lungs filling up with hot, horrible smelling smoke, and yet you still aren't quite dead... — Bitter Crank

Points for vivid imagery..

That's fairly bad. Even worse are Islamic terrorists causing sewers to back up and explosively ejecting great quantities of feces into the toilet stalls of America, including the very one you are occupying, drenching you in indescribable, unimaginable slime and filth. — Bitter Crank

Points for originality.

>:O

Somehow you managed to capture the these harms so well that anyone whose experienced them can truly empathize.

Like I said before: The feeling you get when you start to doubt if you're even suffering, and you start suffering even more (i.e. Tolstoy). Am I myself suffering, or do I simply suffer because I know others are suffering? Am I pessimistic because I myself experience these things, or because I hear about other people experiencing these things? — darthbarracuda

I guess you can suffer from knowing about other people's pain but surely painful experiences can be had by everyone. True, some people have more of them than others, but that just goes to show you earlier my point about harms being unequally distributed.

Awkward occasions
Paranoia
Losing face
Villages being wiped out (if you happen to live in the wrong area)
Torture
Inter tribal warfare (if you happen to live in that kind of society)
Gang warfare
Ailments associated with aging
Many experiences that go along with dying
Putrid smells, tastes, and exposure to "gross" stuff in general (sewage, bed bugs, scabies)
Food-borne illnesses
Pressure to have forced occasions of interaction with unpleasant people
Automobile anything (bad drivers, accidents, potholes, etc.)
Primitive tribal societies having their way of life and worldview wiped out to be reintegrated in a Western context (if that sort of thing matters)
Loud noises

That's it! Yes, keep going... Anyone else can join in and continue... My original post asks for more general things, but I think the rules can change to include more specific types of events that cause harm.