Doesn't it tend to homogenize the essence of individuality? I am not saying it cannot be effective, but doesn't reliance the goals that are "normatively" given leave us with just 'normal' individuals. — Cavacava

I had similar objections as well. It seems a bit robotic to have a given set of aims that are supposed to be optimal. But, apokrisis seems to claim that individualism is just a romantic notion that leads to unhappiness.

Empirical studies can only give you non-valued information. You can then use that to figure out how to be more likely to achieve your subjective aims. But the empirical stuff isn't going to tell you what you should do without you already having subjective goals. — Terrapin Station

Well that is my main objection as well.. This is all hypothetical imperative.. First we must justify why the goals of positive psychology should be a goal other than personal preference. Secondarily, we can evaluate whether positive psychology's aims, methods, and assumptions are even correct.

There seems something contradictory (or circular?) about asking what should be used as the standard to determine what we should do. — Michael

Yeah I guess it is.. So I guess it would be stated:
1) If happiness is inherently valuable
2) Happiness is achieved via positive psychology therapies

Then, in order to achieve the inherently valuable state of happiness, one should follow positive psychology therapy.

I have not voiced my criticisms yet.. Just putting forth apokrisis claim that this is the case.

You got the last part right, but you got the first part wrong partly. Science can help inform our decisions. But to say that what science discovers is what is moral is the naturalistic fallacy. — darthbarracuda

Good point.. and what seems to be a theme.

Or we could seek to construct a lifestyle that is sustainable - one based on renewable energy. That is a conservative and homeostatic ambition - although one that could still be high growth depending on the realities of what we can achieve technologically.

And then more than that, I am saying there are reasons why fossil fuels are winning and not renewables. It is inevitable - usually - that the more urgent desire rules. But hey, we're supersmart humans. So maybe we do have a choice in the matter after all. So let's get talking about that in ways which are realistic. — apokrisis

Again, hypothetical imperative.

That's the trouble. Its like allowing McDonalds to exist and hoping a nation exercises its willpower. As soon as you frame the collective problem in this classically romantic fashion - one in which "individual will" is at the centre of everything - then the battle is already lost. A faulty philosophy is going to be the reason you fail. — apokrisis

Why this "romantic fashion" stuff? I was just discussing the willingness to follow your hypothetical imperative. Nothing about individual wills.. I would assume the legislatures and executive branches would or whatever governments would have to agree and follow through with it.. call that what you will...but your tendency for being dismissive at all costs.. prevents you from actually elaborating on much of your own detail. That seems reasonable being that you are more vulnerable for criticism if you actually have something to claim versus simply taking the critical stance.

Its hierarchical reasoning, not circular reasoning. There's no point fussing about the details if the general structure is not right. And life on earth being a thermodynamic equation - a proton gradient - that balance is the one 7 billion homo sapiens most urgently need to attend to.

You know Maslow's hierarchy of needs right? That is hardly circular is it? More triangular. :) — apokrisis

So it does go back to Maslow's hierarchy, eh? So what makes it hierarchical? What does that even mean in any sense that is not simply a hypothetical imperative? There is nothing of necessity, only of unjustified assertions that X is our goal...but don't ask why.

Did you ever check out positive psychology? What they mean in practice is hardly a secret. Although no-one is going to promise you that you can have it all. That's what Romaticism promises you - and why your life consequently feels like shit because you are so far from what is being promised. — apokrisis

Yep..pretty much where I thought you were going. So the goal to have humans is to have them practice positive psychology? Hmm. Why? Also, sounds like instrumentality is still an issue.

You're rather frothing at the mouth there, Schop. I'll wait until you've had a chance to calm down. — apokrisis

I still think I made a fine point regarding your ethical stances.. Your claims are simply hypothetical imperatives that you have somehow found more pressing or dominant than others.. The only two I really fathom if I was to put all the "positive" (meaning not criticisms but stances you advocate) are the following:

1) We should work socially (like some Star Trek fashion..at least moderate environmentalist) to preserve nature/the planet, specifically to do away with the dependency on fossil fuels so that humans can exist farther into the future so that they can...

2) Flourish

Claim 1 is simply a truism in modern political (albeit "liberal") aims. It's true that it is not a priority as it could be, and it might also be true that it needs more "willpower" by the nations/actors involved in lessening greenhouse gasses and overuse of fuels for various industrial goods.. BUT
It is also just a hypothetical imperative... One can just as easily go for and to all wars and conflicts, a more robust education system on the sciences, a more equitable distribution of goods, etc. etc. All are just as social and just as pressing in certain areas of the world.

These kind of vague social actions that we all must "work together" towards are not justifications in themselves, but simply asserted goals... "If one wants X outcome.. one would do X thing..". Putting aside the real life challenges of implementing any effort to get a lot of people to put forth effort to achieve an outcome, the real issue is why one assertion matters over another.. THAT needs justification other than circular reasoning. This means it needs more than just arguing "Well don't YOU want this too!! It's so evident..because I see it... I mean, come on people!!" Yeah, that's not much of a justification. Common sense or "it just makes sense" is speaking as if facts just lead to conclusions on their own.. That the universe just speaks to us through common sense.. If that is your position, then fine, but you REALLY have to hone in that whole common sense being the language of the universe thing...

And onto Claim 2.. Flourishing.. What does that mean?
Why do we have to flourish?
What is it about existing that flourishing MUST take place? What NECESSITATES flourishing as having to be done in the first place?

Flourishing, happiness, tranquility and the like are so vague as to be useless unless expanded on in detail.

Individualism wants to shed all constraints - social and ecological - and so finds itself plugged directly into fundamental thermodynamics, the most general and mindless constraint that can't be avoided. — apokrisis

You would make a good science fiction writer... The problem is that you yourself, apokrisis, WANT a goal to happen- that of humans working together to achieve some sort of stability. To do this, we must put on the proper constraints to do so. Apparently humans are around to put on the appropriate constraints so that we "fix" some sort of over-entropification. For what reason we must fix things, is not stated other than the generic "flourishing" which, to be frank, seems quite Romantic of you. Flourishing of what? The arts? The sciences? The mind's ability to work out problems and create X stuff that YOU, Mr. Apokrisis find to be worthy? This all sounds quite individualistic (by this I mean Apokrisistic).. But you will wrap this in terms of the idea that Apokrisis speaks for the holy Naturalism which apparently you intuit and spread work of through your pontifications regarding it.. thus It cannot be refuted like a mere mortal tries to disprove a the prophet (but this time of Naturalism).. The universe speaks to Apokrisis about recruiting US the humans into making sure we balance things out (entropically speaking)...

Apokrisis, lay it out less obtusely in bullet points, what is it that humans "should" do? There is a certitude of "objectivity" of the human "should" that you really never get at other than "overusing oil sucks because it leads to ruining the planet so let's stop that" and "humans can flourish and there is some kind of vague thing (insert preferred study of some psychological preferences)". Why humans need to be around to fulfill preferences that may or may not be true (which can be it's own debate) is not explained other than circular reasoning.. But I'd like to see you try.

This is where my own personal experiences come into play. When I was contemplating suicide in the past, I would almost always conceive of how great non-existence seemed to be. No stress, no burdens, no deadlines, no concerns, no pain, no boredom, tediousness, shame, or horror. Non-existence seemed calm and peaceful, like an infinitely long relaxing vacation. — darthbarracuda

I've said before, often it is not the actual suicide but these fantasies about a calmness and escape that go along with the suicide ideation. There are actually two possible things going on psychologically:

1) The idea that one can take control of the situation
2) The idea that one is escaping

For the first part, one can do a thought experiment. Let's say someone is tired of the tedium, pain, suffering of life and they go out and try to throw themselves in front of a train. Right before they decide to do this, ANOTHER person comes along and shoots them and they die before they were able to jump. There is something not quite the same here. There seems almost an injustice. The suicide act itself was trying to be some sort of romantic gesture of rebellion against life's pain. The fact that this ability to control one's fate was taken away, even if the same result occurred, seems to make a difference.

The second part of escaping is really the ideation of thinking what it would be like to not exist and, as you point out, misapplying intra-worldly experiences where there are none. However, it is simply the idea of escape from this world that this ideation is trying to achieve. It does not actually bring these things.

This all just strengthens the antinatalist's argument to not even bring someone into the world in the first place.

How is it not justified exactly? You are arguing the minority position here. — apokrisis

But I don't have to claim something- we live out instrumentality even if the absurd feeling of it does not dawn at all moments for everyone. Shooting for flourishing is not a fact like instrumentality, but a value statement that must be justified with something other than "that's what the majority want". Flourishing is a pretty tawdry trope anyways. That's what some Greek philosophers said back in the day, and may have become the current trope for dialectic in modern ethical discourse, but besides the obvious that people survive to survive, and that time moves forward and there is no rest from the organism's need for need (which is essentially instrumentality but sans self-awareness of it), there is no basis for this or that principle (flourishing) being any inherent goal we are trying for or should try for.

It is easy to take a position with the word "flourishing" but, to just take some idea for granted because it sounds pleasant or is the recognized established trope among some schools of thought, or is recognized by a mass audience says little. It's simply catering to an established preference for what people are conditioned to hear as reasonable and thus another way for your argument to gain leverage through being the "sophisticated" understanding of way things are and how things got to where they are. It's like being at a Sunday cocktail party in a middle class suburb and discussing sports, mortgages, and school districts- it "seems" like the most responsible and sophisticated topic that everyone can agree on.

The problem with the way you argue is that you give little credit to the interlocutor. Just because I have a fundamental argument that describes the situatedness of the human being, does not mean I have not considered other arguments and the nuances of history/linguistics/neuroscience/anthropology/contingency/hard sciences/social sciences/actuality/potentiality/entropy and the like.. However, understanding the hows and whys of the world described via empirical apprehension and modeling does not nullify the human condition itself.

So start again and explain to me what a life would be like if lived in a non-instrumental fashion? Let's see if that sounds appealing as a counterfactual option. — apokrisis

Life could not live in an otherwise fashion. The closest thing to describing non-instrumentality is perhaps (and a big perhaps) something like what I described in the first response to the OP which sort of kicked this whole debate off: Schopenhauerian ideal world All would be stasis and not flux. There is no want or need as one would be completely unified with everything else. Thus a unitary existence where everything is everything is almost equivalent to everything is nothing. It is absolute completeness in the metaphysical sense. Nothing is lacking.

However, the above situation is not possible (and never was/is.. hence the discussion of the whole transcendental nirvana thing being a pipe dream). To strive for flourishing is not only not justified, it is actually the process of instrumentality sentimentalized... To flourish to flourish to flourish is not much different than to do to do to do.. It is just deciding certain things are valued more than others.. for some instrumental reason (keeping such and such going to keep it going to keep it going). I've discussed Maslow's hierarchy before and I can do it again if you so wish (as for some reason I predict you moving in that direction).. The idea if humans had a certain set of needs met, some sort of completeness or "full potential" is reached.. Please, let us hash that out.

There still remains the possibility of psychological flourishing. There is a goal at the heart of human activity that we can still shoot at. — apokrisis

So where is this justified that we should/can "shoot" at flourishing? What is true is that we must survive/upkeep and entertain ourselves at all times. Instrumentality is the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice. There is also a feeling of futility as, the linguistic- general processor brain cannot get out of its own circular loop of awareness of this. Another part of the feeling of futility is the idea that there is no ultimate completion from any goal or action. It is that idea that there is nothing truly fulfilling. Time moves forward and we must make more goals and actions.

The Otaku/gamers version of Romanticism lacks any entropic/organic realism and so its criticisms of modern life have no penetration. — apokrisis

Ad hominem. Not that this has bearing on anything, but I do not play video games and I had to look up what Otaku is. The criticisms of modern life, already frame the debate in terms of "modern" vs. "non-modern", when instrumentality is an idea about life in general- fossil fuel burning or not.

You are close to certain ideas when you discuss the instrumentality of using fossil fuels, but the instrumentality is more pervasive than the specific focus on fossil fuels and its impact on culture. You make a pipe dream out of this "flourishing" rather than see the instrumentality that is inherent in all actions, situations, decisions, motivations.

You want me to define a term you invented.... — apokrisis

Yep, otherwise we are just talking past each other.

But it already has a philosophical definition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism

You might need to coin a different word. What's Greek for "pointlessly eating free time"? — apokrisis

I tried to avoid that term due to the fact that it has a different meaning otherwise- the pragmatist one you decided to divert the debate towards. I am asking you to define the neologism that I am using- just so I know we describing the same thing, before we start going down rabbit holes. I want to know you even understand the proposition.

God forbid that we might narrow our definitions to the point where they would make a meaningful commitment to anything. How could we simply presume our conclusions if we had to start doing that? — apokrisis

Again, you miss the point of instrumentality to make rhetorical ones. Not cool man. I'd first like to see you define instrumentality in your own words, grapple with the concept before going on tangents about definitions being too broad.

You might not have noticed it, but entertainment is an industry. — apokrisis

So you really think I am using entertainment in the very narrow sense of the entertainment industry rather than as shorthand for how we are pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice?

Where is your evidence that anyone living on a desert island would think about their existence in this fashion? In what sense are you describing a natural state of being for humans? — apokrisis

So, we don't go from upkeep/survival to entertainment in a social setting?

You can't scale up from an unnatural state to explain the natural state. Complexity is different (as the slogan goes). — apokrisis

If you don't like the analogy, then we can use one more to your liking. What you are definitely doing is ignoring the argument for an analogy that you deem to be false. Even if I was to let the analogy go to move the debate forward, that does not lessen the argument, only provide more room discuss the actual matter at hand. So, you can continue trying to shoot the dead horse in order to try to get as much as you can about the analogy or your can actually discuss the argument which is that of the idea of instrumentality. By the way, it is not about being an unnatural state.. It is actually THE natural state.. upkeep/survival and entertainment for big-brained social animals. Sounds about right for the big picture. All the "complexity" which you want to use as leverage for trying to "seem" more sophisiticated in your argument, comes out of the fact that we must do to do to do.. instrumentality.

Again, here is one way I described it:


Language is a double-edge sword in this regard because it provides a structure and logic to give shape and form to experience but it also provides us a possible misunderstanding that the lived experience has some reason behind it or salvation behind it instead of just a happenstance of moving forwardness. People think the goals themselves are the solutions, are the reasons. Rather, it is just the need for need. Upkeep/maintenance and entertainment are not options. One must wake up, one must do, one must..

That would be more convincing if you just hadn't begun by presuming the opposite - that society is a bunch of people who for some reason wandered off their desert islands, with their abundant food supplies, to go live collectively and dependently in the name of a little light entertainment and big city distraction. — apokrisis

You are completely off-base with your interpretation. That was meant to convey that LIKE being a on a desert island where we are solely focused on upkeep/entertainment- where there are less complex versions of said upkeep/entertainment SOCIAL reality that we actually DO live in, is the same except DUE to the social nature of it and more complex environmental/historical situatedness of it, we may THINK that it is otherwise. This has nothing to do with us being isolated beings or having an origination outside of a social context. You are making it a strawman by turning it into a different argument.

I predicted you would say that.. Actually, I was going to say after that statement "Cue Apokrisis generic quote about socially constructed reality and how I couldn't be farther from the truth. Yet, I mentioned linguistics which comes from social construction, and despite being social animals.. we are still in the same place. It does not change the scenario. You make a strawman because you think I deny that we are social animals. I do not deny this at all. That would be a tangent from the argument which is the fact that we are maintaining upkeep/survival and finding entertainment goals trying to get caught up in something so as to avoid instrumentality.. Again focusing on the tangent rather than the heart of the argument. Social construction is not some weird cure all that dissolves the problem of being a person albeit one who is in the context of a society and a historical development. This is all acknowledged by me.. To say I don't is to ignore some things I say to make a your argument stronger. It is not acknowledging that your interlocutor already thought of it, acknowledges it, and is still making a certain point that incorporates those things which are supposedly overlooked.

Schopenhauer may have been a pessimist, but if his ideal world is as you describe then he's still anchoring on to the idea of a redemptive staticity. While a full-going pessimist, in my view, negates any redemption. There's bad and not-bad. Never any good in our case. Equivocating not-bad as good reeks of desperation. — darthbarracuda

I agree. Hence I usually label it a "pipe-dream". As far as using "non-existence" as a placeholder for better outcome, I agree that these two have become interchangeable in Buddhist/Schopenhauerean terms.. But if you recognize that, you can simply realize this interpretation of non-existence as a future non-painful state of affairs which you appear to be doing in this post.

To expand the topic a bit, I would say that instrumentality should really be the focus of the existential philosophical inquiry. If we were to prune everything down to one person sitting in a deserted island with enough food to stay alive.. We must move forward and make choices, goals, decisions within a context of our physical/social settings and historical institutions/education.

There would be ways to find some entertainment.. some flights of fancy in imagination and in natural surroundings.. Life is just an expanded version of this scenario..

Society is just this concept multiplied- Upkeep and entertainments in a setting with others who agree to similar upkeep and entertainments doing the same things day in and day out.. Liberal-minded "modern" society perhaps looks up every once in a while to try to find a lofty goal.. say that of space exploration and scientific discoveries.. Or to perhaps discuss the arts and literature.. drugs every once in a while to alter the mind and "expand" its experiences.

The oppression of being is that we must do- our wills move forward in survival/social-physical upkeep, and entertainment-seeking. We long to get caught up in moments so we do not think of the need for need in the first place. To those caught up- perhaps instrumentality makes no sense at all.. Many people might feel it eventually in angst, but do not reflect on it enough to make sense of it and thus is a subtle feeling of discomfort behind the scenes and not seen as something that drives every decision and forces us to move forward.

Language is a double-edge sword in this regard because it provides a structure and logic to give shape and form to experience but it also provides us a possible misunderstanding that the lived experience has some reason behind it or salvation behind it instead of just a happenstance of moving forwardness. People think the goals themselves are the solutions, are the reasons. Rather, it is just the need for need. Upkeep/maintenance and entertainment are not options. One must wake up, one must do, one must..

But yoga, asceticism, trance states, and those kinds of practices, are more derived from shamanism than from deity worship. — Wayfarer

Indeed. Hence my neologism of neo-emphasis on the impersonal force. Perhaps the shaman taps into the force in a proto-version of what the Yogi is trying to do. Alongside (and probably prior to) animism was/is animatism. However, though similar in a sense that it is tapping into a transcendental reality- equating shamanism with full blown Raja Yoga practices may be more of a surface-level comparison. Although, I would not doubt that shamanic practices were a proto-type that led to more developed metaphysics of such practices. Being that Mohenjo-Daro is considered one of the first full blown civilizations, even by that time, these theologies were probably more developed than localized shamanic practices of foraging bands or semi-permanent small subsistence villages.

Non-existence, despite it's literal interpretation, is given existence-dependent values. — darthbarracuda

Was this from my response to your other post earlier regarding goals?

But there is nothing satisfying about non-existence, rationally speaking. — darthbarracuda

I remember explaining a while back the difference between a totally ideal world in the preference satisfaction sense, and a totally united world in the Schopenhaurian sense, and I think these two ideas might help with your question..

Preference satisfaction idea world: In an ideal world all preferences would be satisfied at a particular instant of time for the exact outcome one would want at that particular time (even the preference for an unknown amount of pain/misadventure that might enhance one's overall satisfaction). All dials would be adjusted accordingly. The idea of one's life needing to be a tragi-comedy would not even have to be entertained as one is just "satisfied" enough not to default to this coping aesthetic.

Schopenhauerian ideal world All would be stasis and not flux. There is no want or need as one would be completely unified with everything else. Thus a unitary existence where everything is everything is almost equivalent to everything is nothing. It is absolute completeness in the metaphysical sense. Nothing is lacking.

The fatal flaw with all such analyses is that they presume a privileged perspective from which they claim to really know what is 'behind' religion, in a sense that religion's hapless adherents cannot possibly know, they being so caught up in the muddled superstitious ways of thought, etc, which scientific rationalism and modern political theory have so helpfully swept aside. So they are invariably materialistic and tendentious in my view. — Wayfarer

It does not have to be evolutionary necessarily, but there seems to have been a trend from localized gods to the more universality of gods (usually in some council or family) as societies developed into larger stratified civilizations and empires. Monotheism was a simple derivative of taking the president of the gods and pretty much making that one subsume the other gods' roles into a unified being that handles all of it and who doesn't like the petitions going to anything else.. Anyways, I am not even suggesting it is as simple as a progression because even in animistic religions or polytheism (like many Hindu sects and Yoruba of West Africa), there is usually an underlying "force" that the other gods are a manifestation of. However, this "force" is usually deemed too impersonal to care about human events, and thus impotent to the psychological needs of surviving and social relations that humans must contend with. Interestingly, as societies became more complex, the Force in the background started to get in the foreground again and you get a situation where Hindu samhadis are trying to unify with the Atman. So you get a situation where there is a neo-emphasis on uniting with the impersonal force of the universe rather than petitioning so-and-so god for a particular event to occur or for favorable outcomes in a particular aspect of life (fertility, good agricultural conditions, trade, etc.).

I wrote this a while back in a "What is Love" thread:

But see, this just shows you the very theoretical nature of evolutionary psychology. A lot of it is "just so" theories and hard to pin down what is an adaptation, or what is an "idiosyncrasy" as you might call it. There are many variables, biases, and cultural contingencies that make even an accurate hypothesis hard to distill. A lot of the mating game rituals have become their own runaway stories. Something was written down long ago, it became a trope, and the trope manifested as real in the culture, and the culture became the trope to a slight degree. What was originary and what was the trope becomes muddled. Then the trope is considered originary when it perhaps is not. Then, a reaction against the trope poses an opposite theory, but that is even worse as it is a reaction to a false original theory to begin with, and on it goes. Again, this comes down to the fact that much of it cannot be verified it "feels" true.

Of course, like said before, the existence of goals can be derivative from the need to survive, since goal processing would have been helpful in managing and implementing plans necessary for survival. This habit, then, is carried down from this initial need and "re-used" in processes outside of survival itself.

So, in one sense, it does seem correct to say that everything we have and do are due to natural selection - we wouldn't have these basic derivative processes without natural selection. But in another sense, this explanation is so broad as to become meaningless, and discounts the existence of freedoms that aren't focused on survival. — darthbarracuda

This is instrumentality in a way- making goals because there is no other choice. Life oppresses us with moving forward in a constant state of flux. Stasis would be non-existence. Your speculation is probably true regarding the origins of goal-seeking and its roots in survival and more specifically, survival within the framework of linguistic-based cognition.

They just take themselves and everything else too seriously to get past the door. — Barry Etheridge

Religions take themselves too seriously to realize the historical development over time based on people's social and psychological needs. Both fed into each other to create a scenario where first animistic gods, then polytheistic, then monotheistic (consisting of dualistic/polythesitic/animist tendencies).

The Abrahamic religions consist of nodes breaking off, misinterpreting original versions. The Jewish original was a nationalistic mythological deity. The God of the Universe- Yaweh, takes petitions and sacrifices from a specific nation of people- the Israelites (an amalgamation of cannonite peoples of various similar cultural backgrounds united and eventually who formed a small kingdom). He's the patron god of the Israelites that got more credibility due to some influential prophet-types that were devoted to the President more than the rest of the council and they were able to convince the higher ups and priests to whittle away the the other pcannonite/midianite gods (remnants of this can be seen in Yaweh's other title of Elohim which is plural- meaning subsumed aspects of all other cannonite gods into one deity).

Anyways, Christianity is an odd Greco-Romanization and thus universalization of the a more-or-less nationalistic religious system (Judaism/proto-Judaism). It is taking Greco-Roman-Assyrian-Egyptian concepts of Mystery Cults (dying gods that transform the initiated), combining it with Greek ideas of corrupted matter (copies) and pure spirit (Ideas) (aka.. Paul of Tarsus notion that the Laws of Moses (Torah) is related to lower physical and Jesus' death and Resurrection related to higher/spiritual realm and supposedly thus nullifies the lower Laws of the physical realm).

Islam is a further combination of both Christian and Jewish concepts but instead of being being Greco-Romanized it was Arabized and thus the Jewish nationalistic religious system was oddly changed to retrofit it with Arabic cultural tendencies with some added on features of Christian theology in there as well.

All of this points to my original assertion that religion and thus notions of a deity are historical developments that placate certain social constructions and psychological needs of a certain time and place.

Derrida: Signs always point to other signs but have no meaning in themselves.. Everything is mere indication and not completed expression. Meaning cannot be bracketed as was the project of Husserl. It would be an error to jump to presence, the underlying experience of the signifier.. Essentially, the map is not the territory. Pace Wittgenstein: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Maybe it's an artifact of German-translated-into-English? — Bitter Crank

Neologisms abound in philosophy. Maybe a philosopher's greatness should be measured by the amount of neologisms that are repeated and made into philosophy memes. I vote for my own use of the word "instrumentality".

Because of this, any attempt at a radical metaphysical rebellious existentialism is going to be shallow as it ignores our inability to free ourselves from our preferences to begin with. The only rebellion worthy of such a name would be one in which the agent performs actions that are entirely against his own preferences - which is impossible to do without having a preference to rebel in the first place. — darthbarracuda

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

So in Ancient Greece, there were thoughts about these things - among the small circle of the privileged class. Not so much among slaves and women. — apokrisis

Again, that is speculation. We don't know much about slaves, and women because they had little if anything to write and all we know is characterizations from those who could.

The West did not win and takeover the planet because it looked inside itself and discovered some superhuman source of will. It won because it empowered the individual to act - as an intelligent and self-interested choice - in an unrestrained collective fashion. — apokrisis

One possible story, but perhaps just one story out of many for why the West won out. This may be a good generalization, but you know more than many I am sure, that there is way more complexity to the West besides the small number of cultural reasons that are encapsulated here. Not doubt, free-thought, and individualism within boundaries that cultivate some social benefits is a good start, though not complete.

Of course, you will now miss the point and say this machine-like social style is exactly what you are complaining about. But again, I emphasise that when it works, it works precisely because it socially constructs individuals who can think for themselves - and through that, really commit to the collective action which best advances any self-interest. — apokrisis

Now you are going from "what is" to "what should happen" in an ever so sleight-of-hand way. What I am talking about is not that we "should not" try to benefit the social good with our individual problem-solving skills and curiosity, but rather, "at the end of the day" the individual problem solving and curious things to puzzle over are part of the instrumentality of being, that we clearly are capable of being self-aware of. You called it earlier- overshooting our mark, but really it is just assessing the situation as it is. Again, to quote myself earlier- instrumentality is: the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice. There is also a feeling of futility as, the linguistic- general processor brain cannot get out of its own circular loop of awareness of this. Another part of the feeling of futility is the idea that there is no ultimate completion from any goal or action. It is that idea that there is nothing truly fulfilling. Time moves forward and we must make more goals and actions.

But you are not seeing the bigger picture if you don't actually understand the dynamics of the cultural history that produced you. — apokrisis

Who says I don't understand the cultural history? Just because you put down some interpretations of the Enlightenment and backlash of Romanticism, and then some ideas about development of Western values from Greek democracy, that means that I do not read about history, read other interpretations, and make my own conclusions- in good ole Greek free-thought, individualized fashion?

so you could fritter your existence away in gaming and complaining. — apokrisis

Condescending- again, employing "rightness rhetoric" does not mean you are right.

Whoops. Yes, that doesn't have to be your job of course. It would be nice if you applied yourself to society's question of what better collective action we should be striving after. That might be a really useful use of the gift of life. — apokrisis

Ha! That is my point, my dear sir... USEFULNESS for WHAT!?

But you get the gist. The fact that you find yourself at a point of cultural history where - like a small circle of Greek aristocrats - you have endless "free time" to contemplate your navel, does not mean you should then waste your time in that fashion. — apokrisis

So, you are going to paint me as aristocratic and navel-gazing- again a canard and patronizing.. all rhetorical, nothing of sound argument.. and you are going to contrast it with what? The "simple man" working in the factories, working in the trades.. the blue collar.. the "real" scholar? Those solving "real" problems.. and again, for WHAT... that is the POINT of instrumentality.

So if you do indeed find your own personal meaning to life in terms of "striving after the bigger picture", then you have to put in enough effort to make sure you really achieve that. Instrumentality and pessimism just seem like lazy shortcuts to me. They demand the least effort to make sense of the world. Just curl up on the couch and wait to die. — apokrisis

Yep, that's how I make a living.. Again, so many poor assumptions.. "Striving after bigger picture"- what the hell is that? What is the "bigger picture" talk about false telos. Fame? To be in a Scientific American? Encyclopedia Brittanica? The smile of knowing you "did" something "innovative"? How is that still not instrumental? Is this innovation, creation (making furniture, writing a theory, creating art, what not), are you making some really vague case that these are intrinsic goods.. that just NEED to be accomplished by any person of worth? Besides your rhetoric of some 19th century middle-class gent who thinks he knows "common decency" and "good taste", you have no argument, just some arrogant dude on an internet forum who thinks they know what is "good taste" and that for explaining my views on instrumentality MUST not have it.

The absurdity lies in the new culturally-evolved and rather pointless habit of being able to question what we in fact take for granted. — apokrisis

Though you gave a somewhat interesting history with regards to Enlightenment and Romanticism, you overlook earlier periods of probable ennui. The ancients wrote about this- thought it was probably limited to the upper class. It is hard to say with any certainty what a peasant thought when he was plowing his fields. Perhaps he had a vague feeling of instrumentality when he saw each day look pretty similar. However, perhaps he was simply too forced with immediate survival needs to even have such vague thoughts enter his mind. Either way, as you say, when humans come to a point of this kind of rationalization- perhaps only after a certain time period, as you mentioned, then we can come to this conclusion. The more free time, the more we can see the bigger picture of what is going on behind the immediacy of simply reacting to hand-to-mouth needs. Like a lot of things (math, science, etc.), the brains that evolved for certain tribal lifestyles had the latent capacity to unlock far beyond the probable social/biological niche problems our species were trying to figure out in the original habitats of our first ancestors.

Instrumentality is simply a line of questioning that has painted itself into a corner. It is no different from Cartesian doubt, solipsism, and other familiar exercises in rationality which overshoot the mark by leaving behind the original grounds for belief that made such questioning meaningful.

Sure, the whole point of the modern, empowered, enlightened, negotiating individual is to be an able-minded questioner of the given. But to overshoot the mark and wind up disempowering their own selves through a questioning regress is obviously silly. — apokrisis

If that is the point you have reached, time to turn back and engage with mundane reality again. — apokrisis

I think the key here is that you already know the given, so you cannot just turn back without distraction, isolation, anchoring, and all the mechanisms at your disposal to do so. Its like the brightness of the sun was too much, so you cannot sustain it. That is fine, but realize what is going on. The instrumentality may be the farthest we can go, as you indicate, but at least we understand our situation. De facto, by continuing to live life, we have already engaged with the mundane reality, so that is simply a truism. If you want to ignore it, you may do so.

By the way, you can be as condescending as you want, that alone does nothing against the argument, it simply gives the ambiance of "rightness" but proves little. Hopefully, people who read your comments cut through that style to actually see the arguments rather than the rhetoric.


Condescending: showing or characterized by a patronizing or superior attitude toward others
condescendingly play \-ˈsen-diŋ-lē\ adverb

Your instrumentality appeals to the issue of there being possibly contrasting points of view. So your argument is that we are divided against our own desires in being self-conscious creatures able to wonder what the hell is the point. And my argument is that check out how most people still live their lives and - even in their apparent self-consciousness - they still seem to show a unity with nature which suggests they deeply share its point of view. — apokrisis

But your point of how we still persevere and survive despite our self-consciosness which is able to ask "what is the point?" also goes back to instrumentality as well. We have coping mechanisms in order to not dwell on it- usually by ignoring, isolating, anchoring, etc. etc. You name it, we do it. Also, note what Schopenhauer called our "will-to-live". Survival may be both partially socially constructed or biological but it is certainly exists and adds to the absurd state of having to move forward at all despite the knowledge of the situation.

I say life is thermodynamics in action - complexity in pursuit of dissipation. And humans have evolved a mentality that befits that in being the super-entropifiers. We are organised around the idea of being maximally wasteful.

And while you say the problem is that we are self-conscious - we look at the crazy lives we are meant to live and wonder "WTF?" - I reply that we are not yet generally self-conscious of this real living mission. And so we have not - within philosophy - even begun to debate whether it is good, bad or indifferent in some fundamental sense.

I think the answer is important. To the extent we are conscious of the fact that we are burning up the planet with unstoppable neo-liberal zeal, it seems as though automatically it must be a bad thing.

But why? You could take the view that giga-joules of buried decomposed planktonic mass - petroleum - wants to be liberated. So we are doing nature's work as intended. Then you can counter that by the calculation of how much more entropy Homo sap could eventually liberate if it avoids its current reckless crash and burn lifestyle.

So this is an approach to humanity's basic dilemmas that no doubt absolutely everyone finds more distasteful than the everyday cultural familiarity of existential ennui or pessimistic despair. And I can make it even worse from a philosophical viewpoint by showing that it is the inescapable scientific truth of what is happening.

So I can have my extremist fun too. :) — apokrisis

This may well very be true regarding entropification. You are looking at entropy as a principle whereas I am looking at the internal phenomenal point of view.

So it is not a flaw for my position that there are these further things which your position wants to deny. I am simply pointing to the stages towards a more complex triadic position. — apokrisis

I think you are looking passed the phenomenon of instrumentality. It is not about the evaluation of parts of your umwelt. That last sentence felt funny to write, but I am going to keep that.

Instrumentality is a conflict between the necessity of being and the contingency of the world. It runs deeper than being upset at having to make a particular effort. Even doing “nothing” takes effort. By existence we are forced to work. We are made in each moment by our presence. “To be” amounts to being engaged in effort.

But why this effort? What to I ultimately gain by writing this post? If I sleep on the floor all day, what do they gain in the end? There’s no reason. I just woke-up into life. All my effort is not occurring for or because of something else. It’s all me. I am rather than not. Existence doesn’t deal in any other term.

The effort I’m forced into always comes down to me. To live of an ascetic sage takes this effort, and it is really no less effort than being a hedonist beast, for either path requires the effort which is the existence of myself. Seeking death or wasting away involves the application of similar effort. Will is present no matter what we do.

We might say that Will is embedded far deeper than suffering. It’s burden isn’t pain (that would be stuff like hot stoves, red-hot pokers, illness, the betrayals of others, etc.,etc.), but effort. Even success and joy are effort. To exist means to Will. Joy or suffering, love or hate, we cannot escape who we are. So long as we live, we are more actions, more goals.

In a sort of ironic twist, the much sought after ultimate end (to be free of the burden of existence), is entirely self-destructive. If I want to live without feeling the burden of existence, I have to be particular actions and have certain goals for the rest of my life. I have to be burned with existence and be fulfilled in it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You did a great job explaining instrumentality itself, though you focused more on the causes of instrumentality and less on the feelings associated with the self-awareness of it. Then you stated this

To Will (exist) is not the enemy, but the only means of victory (fulfilment in existence). — TheWillowOfDarkness

I do not really get this as it doesn't necessarily precede from what you wrote about instrumentality previously. If everything is for no reason and you just "woke-up into life" then how is Willing a victory or fulfillment in existence? This seems like a backdoor way to promote Nietszchean ideals. Even if is so, I'd still need more explanation.

Absurd in comparison to what? Is it absurd as living creatures to have the goals that define life? Should I feel it is unnatural to be natural? — apokrisis

Well, that kind of the point. Since we have big brains, we have the ability to have what you call this "unnatural" feeling of what seems to be natural.

That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation.
... — Sarte

Yes @Hoo, I have read Nausea and I do appreciate Sartre insight there. His idea right here very much gets at the point of not confusing the explanation for the actual event.

contingency is not a delusion, an appearance which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, and, therefore, perfectly gratuitous. Everything is gratuitous, this park, this city, and myself. — Sarte

This pretty much gets to the point of absurdity here of a world's contingent nature. Interestingly, I think that the human experience has a bit more necessity due to our cognitive apparatus. Even though nature may present itself in sublime moments of just "being there", our own desires and goals are shaped by culture as well as by the basic existential needs of our big-brained natures- that is to say the two poles of survival (in a cultural-linguistic context) and boredom (also in a cultural-linguistic context). When laid in its barest necessities, these are things humans contend with at the limits of our motivations. Also, this phenomena of seeing contingency, is slightly different but in same vicinity of instrumentality. Instrumentality has more to do with the feeling associated with what I call "doing to do to do". It is more in regards to our actions and goals. It goes along with questions such as "Why do anything" or even better "We must do something". It is the realization that we must upkeep our bodies (and possessions and property), maintain institutions, and make short and long term goals in order to repeat this process. The feelings of nausea and absurdity that Sartre is discussing may be the same result but from slightly different experiences.

It's also not my problem that you interpreted what I said to mean that you shouldn't do anything and have everyone effectively do everything for you:

For you to be able to do literally nothing (feed yourself, wipe your arse, turn you over to avoid bedsores) would require others to do everything for you. So you are advocating for a parasitic state where your idleness forces more busyiness on those around you. — apokrisis

It looks like you wanted that to be the position so you can attack it.

Anyways, yes, you do have it sort of correct now that goal states are "futile" but to just keep it at that is to not get at the affect or feeling I am getting at- that of absurdity. It is that which I wanted to focus on. The maintaining in order to maintain. Certainly you can say "that's what organisms do", but we are also self-reflecting organisms who know a bit about our own condition and one of those aspects is our awareness of the very circularity of our repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and spending our free time pursuing short or long term goals.

If this is true, then 'Other' exists before our individualized self does. Therefore, our individual self may want to go back to Other, and it might be the origin from which it came, but it can never fully reach the land of Other until it gives up the idea of self.

I speculate, of course;

What do you think? — saw038

Your question is a bit different than what I was discussing but in the ballpark. I was saying what would it be like if existence had no individuation and everything was a unitary whole. You are not necessarily posing a unitary existence, just complete knowledge of existence. I thought that interesting because it made me wonder if knowledge of everything all at once would be similar to experiencing a unified existence- the view from everywhere. Anyways, the Other in the previous thread's comments had to do with simply the fact that if everything was unified, there could be no room for processes or things to happen. So, possibly similar to the unitary existence scenario- knowing everything at once may be so complete, that it is similar to experiencing non-being as if everything was everything, it would be almost like saying everything was nothing (because there would be no room for individuation and therefore no room to know "other things" in relation to itself).

You may want to look at this thread I started a little while ago.
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/461/what-is-a-unitary-existence-like/p1

So what this tells me is you really didn't read what I wrote about instrumentality as this has little or nothing to do with what I was writing about. It looks like you might have peaked at the link and saw the title "Why do anything?" and then started writing so many strawmen that all I see are scarecrows in my view. I also mentioned how the article tangentially fits with what I was discussing and then explained how it fit. You seemed to get all bent out of shape but did not really grasp or care to understand the content. Since this has little to nothing to do with the topic, I can't even write a response. I would be happy to respond and discuss with you about instrumentality but you at least have to be charitable enough to engage or consider the topic at hand.

However, if asceticism is what floats your boat, then go for it. The unattainable is still worthy of striving for, I'd say. In the end of the day, what matters is whether or not you managed to cope well enough with your situation. If you treat meditation more as an exercise and less of a lifestyle then you'll get my meaning here: people lift weights to get buff, people meditate to relax the mind. Nihilists will say any action is equal in value to another, and this I think is absurd. There are more appropriate responses to certain situations than others, depending on one's beliefs. — darthbarracuda

Ok, but this is a truism and doesn't diminish instrumentality. I am not saying we should not do what we can to cope, especially using coping mechanisms that precisely target certain problems. This being said, meditation and asceticism is not going to solve the main root of the problem, even if taken as an end in itself. Like exercising, it can have psychological and physical benefits. I never refuted that so to bring it up as if I did is kind of strawmanning it. I am simply saying that, as far as I see it, it does not allow for a backdoor escape or anything. If anything, if used in a Schopenhauerian way, it is just a signal to oneself and others of rebellion against the instrumentality.

It's true that asceticism and meditation and whatnot cannot "resolve" the problem, like you said. It's a pipe dream to think we can achieve anything like nirvana on a long-term basis. But that's the rub of pessimism, that this problem cannot be resolved. It can only be mitigated, repressed. Which is as good as it's going to get. — darthbarracuda

This I definitely agree with.

I think your definition is too specific in my opinion. I'd broaden the scope of instrumentality to outside sentient minds. Instrumentality becomes any manipulation of another thing by some form of domination (power). A larger planet coalesces the smaller planets into its gravitational maw because it has more mass. A leopard takes down the antelope because it was stronger, faster, and more agile. A tsunami destroys a Somalian village because of its massive force. An object inhabits a certain sector of space: no other object can persist in this sector unless it somehow manipulates it out of its position.

Being is expansionist and absorbent, and it fundamentally needs space. The entire history of the universe can be narrated as a conflict for space, the need to persist, the need to inhabit an ever-growing area.

This of course is a bit poetic but it gets the point across. — darthbarracuda

Well, I didn't extrapolate beyond the human experience of this feeling. I think this might be conflating two things happening. This sort of idea of "instrumental" that you are using seems to be in the sense that some things are used for the benefit of other (usually stronger, better, but definitely for something else). That may be true, but the way I am using it as a sort of neologism (admittedly) is kind of the opposite. There is no end. As long as we can get up every day, as long as time moves forward, as long as we are awake, we will constantly be thrown into a given situation and context and pursue our upkeep repetitively, maintain institutions, and spend our free time pursuing goals (immediate or long-term) so that we can keep pursuing our upkeep repetitively, maintain institutions, and spend our free time pursuing goals. It is quite circular and leads to the idea of "why keep this going"? This is why it leads to feelings of absurdity, ennui, world-weariness and the like. Only our uniquely human brains can perceive this.

The idea of instrumentality- the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice. There is also a feeling of futility as, the linguistic- general processor brain cannot get out of its own circular loop of awareness of this.

The hard problem of consciousness- how it is that experience can come out of non-experience.

Sorry, I meant in previous threads. I seem to recall you arguing that you view all desires and needs as though they are bad. When I think there needs to be a distinction between the satisfaction of a concern and the mood that is associated with it. — darthbarracuda

Remind me never to go in battle with you.. I guess this is a segue for dueling antinatalism? Interesting place to put it after I was defending a more general argument we both agree on.

Anyways, I don't deny that there are happy moments, simply that it is usually short-lived and the need for more quantity, novelty, etc. usually persists. If you can sustain happy time periods for long periods, or forever, then I'm all for it. Usually, rather we look at it the other way- that it is foolish to expect or chase this, but rather that we need to quell our inner churning so that it doesn't want and need so much and, similar to the negative utilitarian approach, thwart off that which is bothersome, as joy cannot be as joyful when there is a lot of bad going on alongside it. The priority is to get rid of that which annoys, and then to pursue that which gives utility.

What I emphasize is that life brings us to a state of instrumentality where we are doing to do to do. The absurdity of repetitive acts can sort of be an analogy to this, but just generalize it to the absurdity of any act. But instead of free form absurdity ala Camus, it is more like very predictable absurdity due to the constraints brought upon by the condition we are in (throwness perhaps?) which are the outer boundaries of human motivations and mainly include survival (in cultural/linguistic contexts) and boredom (also in cultural/linguistic contexts) as the two poles.