Most people don't have a problem attributing crow and dog psychology (their behavioral abilities) to evolution, What else would it be? — BC

I think it goes back to what I said in the here:

It's easier to do animal evolutionary psychology. There are much easier ways to point to programming. Obviously as you move to complex social animals such as ourselves with language and strong sense of self-awareness, and conceptual cultural transmission, that becomes rapidly difficult to discern as to what is evolutionarily selected (if that is even the case), or what is cultural. There used to be an idea towards the beginning, as you were alluding to, like humans evolved a swiss-army knife module system. That seems to be out of favor. — schopenhauer1

But yes, I agree with your points about language. That is certainly something in our hardwiring. How and why it is selected for is a mystery, but there are many theories- everything from Chomsky's "all at once for internal dialogue" to better tool-use and social coordination, etc. It's hard to know the causes versus the effects. But if we can't even figure out language, the more modular behaviors would be near impossible, and even so, how would it be attributed to biology versus culture?

The biggest pitfalls is that humans simply live out the tropes that the evopych puts out. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Are we just going to do another round of the endless consciousness debate in this thread? — Srap Tasmaner

No.

"Science still hasn't explained it, so it's not biology." That's a crap argument. Science is hard, and it takes a long time, and people need to deal. Why is everyone so intent on second-guessing science? Why all the armchair quarterbacking? Just say thank you and let them do their work. — Srap Tasmaner

But is it amenable to science is the question. That article actually covers the general problems I am presenting.

But if no one ever tests the biology-first approach, we're not going to learn much. — Srap Tasmaner

I think @BC kind of gets at it:

We didn't evolve a preference for French Roast coffee (or some other inferior slop). What we evolved was the capacity to metabolize caffeine and feel slightly stimulated. The same goes for quite a few psychoactive chemicals.

One could go on for hours citing examples of what capacities we did not and did evolve.

The thing to avoid in thinking about evolved psychology is that we didn't evolve specific preferences -- houndstooth over plaid; vanilla over strawberry; antinatalism over pronatalism. What we evolved was the ability to prefer, and manage preferences. Etc. Etc. Etc. — BC

If the scope is not delineated properly, it becomes absurd. The article again brings up the point:

A study of attitudes toward casual sex, based on surveys in forty-eight countries, by David Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois, found that the differences between the sexes varied widely, and shrank in places where women had more freedom. The sexes never quite converged, though: Schmitt found persistent differences, and thinks those are best explained as evolutionary adaptations. But he admits that his findings have limited value, because they rely entirely on self-reports, which are notoriously unreliable about sex, and did not examine a true cross-section of humanity. All of his respondents were from modern nation-states—there were no hunter-gatherers, or people from other small-scale societies—and most were college students.

Indeed, the guilty secret of psychology and of behavioral economics is that their experiments and surveys are conducted almost entirely with people from Western, industrialized countries, mostly of college age, and very often students of psychology at colleges in the United States. This is particularly unfortunate for evolutionary psychologists, who are trying to find universal features of our species. American college kids, whatever their charms, are a laughable proxy for Homo sapiens. The relatively few experiments conducted in non-Western cultures suggest that the minds of American students are highly unusual in many respects, including their spatial cognition, responses to optical illusions, styles of reasoning, coöperative behavior, ideas of fairness, and risk-taking strategies. Joseph Henrich and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia concluded recently that U.S. college kids are “one of the worst subpopulations one could study” when it comes to generalizing about human psychology. Their main appeal to evolutionary psychologists is that they’re readily available. Man’s closest relatives are all long extinct; breeding experiments on humans aren’t allowed (they would take far too long, anyway); and the mental life of our ancestors left few fossils. — Gottlieb

I meant the list as a whole -- some of the stuff on the list might be cogent critiques that are crucial to the future development of the field or even its collapse. I wouldn't know. But some of what's on there is definitely not that, so the list as a whole is not, say, evidence that the field is disreputable or something. That's all I meant. — Srap Tasmaner

:ok:

we have some pretty solid ideas about how evolution works — Srap Tasmaner

Eh, evolution related to physical artifacts, and biological systems, even perhaps cognitive systems. But more complex behavior? Much more of a grey area.

Cultures and languages also evolve, and the mechanisms are quite similar — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, but that wouldn't be my argument (that culture plays a major part in behavioral phenomena).

I think the big takeaway from the last hundred and fifty years of biology and psychology is that we are not nearly so different from other animals as we used to think. We're still trying to figure out just what is and what isn't different about us, and evolutionary psychology is the obvious terrain for whatever fights we have about it. — Srap Tasmaner

Even just @Wayfarer's article makes the argument clear:

Today’s biologists tend to be cautious about labelling any trait an evolutionary adaptation—that is, one that spread through a population because it provided a reproductive advantage. It’s a concept that is easily abused, and often “invoked to resolve problems that do not exist,” the late George Williams, an influential evolutionary biologist, warned. — Anthony Gottlieb- It Ain't Necessarily So

This was no straw man. The previous year, Robert Trivers, a founder of the discipline, told Time that, “sooner or later, political science, law, economics, psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology will all be branches of sociobiology.” The sociobiologists believed that the concept of natural selection was a key that would unlock all the sciences of man, by revealing the evolutionary origins of behavior.

The dream has not died. “Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature” (Oxford), a new book by David Barash, a professor of psychology and biology at the University of Washington, Seattle, inadvertently illustrates how just-so stories about humanity remain strikingly oversold. As Barash works through the common evolutionary speculations about our sexual behavior, mental abilities, religion, and art, he shows how far we still are from knowing how to talk about the evolution of the mind. — Anthony Gottlieb- It Ain't Necessarily So

No of course not, but why should you care if it's an outlier? You're an anti-natalist, for chrissakes. Outlier is where you live. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes I am, and you're right, I don't care about being an outlier. However, when someone implies that something I am presenting is an outlier when it isn't, I will make that fact known. That was a specific answer to an attempt at snark by another poster.

(I was ever so slightly teasing you about the list because it's obviously a real mixed-bag, even to someone as ill-informed as I am. Some of what's on there is clearly going to be a defense of the ideas you were attacking. Some of it is notoriously, let's say, "motivated" attacks, not taken seriously by anyone, I think, rather like the drubbing sociobiology took mainly from stuffy humanities types. It's nothing like evidence that evopsych is a disreputable field or a field in crisis or something. Might be, but that list would have nothing to do with it.) — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know, that last sentence kind of contradicts what you're saying. Wikipedia isn't academic journals, but it often references them (as there are plenty in there). Anyways, I think it's fine as a discipline. However, I see it really straddling the line. It's not just a field of study. It's underlying premise is that various behaviors, some very specific ones, can be traced back to processes that are hard to prove.

It's easier to do animal evolutionary psychology. There are much easier ways to point to programming. Obviously as you move to complex social animals such as ourselves with language and strong sense of self-awareness, and conceptual cultural transmission, that becomes rapidly difficult to discern as to what is evolutionarily selected (if that is even the case), or what is cultural. There used to be an idea towards the beginning, as you were alluding to, like humans evolved a swiss-army knife module system. That seems to be out of favor.

Not sure if trolling? My point is that my point isn’t some crazy outlier.

@plaque flag!
@BC
@apokrisis
@Jamal
@Paine
@Janus

No, it's not science. It's just living in the world and paying attention. — wonderer1

Understandable, I think understanding human motivation and the human condition is valid. I do it all the time. Evo-psych basis for things is harder to prove. I can say, "We (mankind) is an insatiable creature that always is dissatisfied." That's one thing. Then I might say, "And that is due to the fact that in our past we needed this..." Probably true, but vague enough to be so general as to not be too problematic. The more specific though, the more evidence becomes necessary I would think.

I've also made many empirical observations of my own. — wonderer1

Eek, that doesn't seem like good science.

We're going to need a journal for these. Perhaps we should put some effort into testing them, or formalising the methodology a bit... But the name...the name — Isaac

Yeah, "formal".

I wonder if anyone has ever written on this before..oh wait:
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Segerstråle, Ullica Christina Olofsdotter (2000). Defenders of the truth : the battle for science in the sociobiology debate and beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850505-1.
Bricmont, Jean; Franck, Julie (2010). Chomsky Notebook.
Menand, Louis (November 22, 2002). "What Comes Naturally". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 26, 2013.
Wilson, G.D. Love and Instinct, 1981.
Tybur, J. M.; Miller, G. F.; Gangestad, S. W. (2007). "Testing the Controversy" (PDF). Human Nature. 18 (4): 313–328. doi:10.1007/s12110-007-9024-y. PMID 26181309. S2CID 17260685.
Lyle, Henry F., and Eric A. Smith. How conservative are evolutionary anthropologists?. Human Nature 23, no. 3 (2012): 306–322.
Further reading
Books and book chapters
Alcock, John (2001). The Triumph of Sociobiology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-516335-3
Barkow, Jerome (Ed.). (2006) Missing the Revolution: Darwinism for Social Scientists. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-513002-7
Buller, David. (2005) Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature.
Buss, David, ed. (2005) The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. ISBN 0-471-26403-2.
Degler, C. N. (1991). In search of human nature: The decline and revival of Darwinism in American social thought. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507707-0
Ehrlich, P. & Ehrlich, A. (2008). The dominant animal: Human evolution and the environment. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Fodor, J. (2000). The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology
Fodor, J. & Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (2011). What Darwin got wrong.
Gillette, Aaron. (2007) Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230108455
Gould, S.J. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
Joseph, J. (2004). The Gene Illusion: Genetic Research in Psychiatry and Psychology Under the Microscope. New York: Algora. (2003 United Kingdom Edition by PCCS Books)
Joseph, J. (2006). The Missing Gene: Psychiatry, Heredity, and the Fruitless Search for Genes. New York: Algora.
Kitcher, Philip. (1985). Vaulting Ambitions: Sociobiology and the Quest for Human Nature. London:Cambridge.
Kohn, A. (1990) The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life
Leger, D. W., Kamil, A. C., & French, J. A. (2001). Introduction: Fear and loathing of evolutionary psychology in the social sciences. In J. A. French, A. C. Kamil, & D. W. Leger (Eds.), The Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol. 47: Evolutionary psychology and motivation, (pp. ix-xxiii). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press
Lewis, Jeff (2015) Media, Culture and Human Violence: From Savage Lovers to Violent Complexity, Rowman and Littlefield, London/Lanham.
Lewontin, R.C., Rose, S. & Kamin, L. (1984) Biology, Ideology and Human Nature: Not In Our Genes
Malik, K. (2002). Man, beast, and zombie: What science can and cannot tell us about human nature
McKinnon, S. (2006) Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology
Rose, H. and Rose, S. (eds.)(2000) Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology New York: Harmony Books
Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking.
Richards, Janet Radcliffe (2000). Human Nature After Darwin: A Philosophical Introduction. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-21244-1
Sahlins, Marshall. (1976) The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology
Scher, Stephen J.; Rauscher, Frederick, eds. (2003). Evolutionary Psychology: Alternative Approaches. Kluwer.
Segerstrale, Ullica (2000). Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-286215-0
Wallace, B. (2010). Getting Darwin Wrong: Why Evolutionary Psychology Won't Work
Articles
Buller, D.; et al. (2000). "Evolutionary psychology, meet developmental neurobiology: Against promiscuous modularity". Brain and Mind. 1 (3): 307–25. doi:10.1023/A:1011573226794. S2CID 5664009.
Buller, D. (2005). "Evolutionary psychology: the emperor's new paradigm". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9 (6): 277–283. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.04.003. hdl:10843/13182. PMID 15925806. S2CID 6901180.
Confer, J. C.; Easton, J. A.; Fleischman, D. S.; Goetz, C. D.; Lewis, D. M.; Perilloux, C.; Buss, D. M. (2010). "Evolutionary Psychology: Controversies, Questions, Prospects, and Limitations" (PDF). American Psychologist. 65 (2): 110–126. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.601.8691. doi:10.1037/a0018413. PMID 20141266.
Crane-Seeber, J.; Crane, B. (2010). "Contesting essentialist theories of patriarchal relations: Evolutionary psychology and the denial of history". Journal of Men's Studies. 18 (3): 218–37. doi:10.3149/jms.1803.218. S2CID 145723615.
Davies, P. (2009). "Some evolutionary model or other: Aspirations and evidence in evolutionary psychology". Philosophical Psychology. 22 (1): 83–97. doi:10.1080/09515080802703745. S2CID 144879264.
Derksen, M. (2010). "Realism, relativism, and evolutionary psychology". Theory & Psychology. 20 (4): 467–487. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.321.8061. doi:10.1177/0959354309350245. S2CID 145505935.
Derksen, M. (2005). "Against integration: Why evolution cannot unify the social sciences". Theory and Psychology. 15 (2): 139–162. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.1027.3828. doi:10.1177/0959354305051360. S2CID 144467388.
Ehrlich, P.; Feldman, Marcus (2003). "Genes and cultures: What creates our behavioral phenome?". Current Anthropology. 44 (1): 87–107. doi:10.1086/344470. S2CID 149676604.
Fox, E.; Griggs, L.; Mouchlianitis, E. (2007). "The Detection of Fear-Relevant Stimuli: Are Guns Noticed as Quickly as Snakes?". Emotion. 7 (4): 691–696. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.691. PMC 2757724. PMID 18039035.
Franks, B. (2005). "The role of 'the environment' in cognitive and evolutionary psychology" (PDF). Philosophical Psychology. 18 (1): 59–82. doi:10.1080/09515080500085387. S2CID 144931740.
Gerrans, P. (2002). "The Theory of Mind Module in Evolutionary Psychology". Biology and Philosophy. 17 (3): 305–321. doi:10.1023/A:1020183525825. S2CID 82007006.
Looren H, de Jong H, Van der Steen W (1998). "Biological thinking in evolutionary psychology: rockbottom or quicksand?". Philosophical Psychology. 11 (2): 183–205. doi:10.1080/09515089808573255.
Lewontin, R.C. (1998) ‘The evolution of cognition: questions we will never answer’, in D. Scarborough and S. Sternberg (eds), An Invitation to Cognitive Science. Vol. 4: Methods, Models and Conceptual Issues. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 107–32.
Lipp, O.; Waters, A.; Derakshan, N.; Logies, S. (2004). "Snakes and Cats in the Flower Bed: Fast Detection Is Not Specific to Pictures of Fear-Relevant Animals". Emotion. 4 (3): 233–250. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.4.3.233. PMID 15456393.
Lloyd, E.A. (1999). "Evolutionary psychology: the burdens of proof" (PDF). Biology and Philosophy. 14 (2): 211–33. doi:10.1023/A:1006638501739. S2CID 1929648.
Machery, E. (2007). "Massive modularity and brain evolution". Philosophy of Science. 74 (5): 825–838. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.215.1961. doi:10.1086/525624. S2CID 117037111.
McKinnon, S. (2005). On Kinship and Marriage: A Critique of the Genetic and Gender Calculus of Evolutionary Psychology. In: Complexities: Beyond Nature & Nurture, McKinnon, S. & Silverman, S. (Eds); pp. 106–131.
Panksepp, J.; Moskal, J.; Panksepp, J.B.; Kroes, R. (2002). "Comparative approaches in evolutionary psychology: Molecular neuroscience meets the mind". Neuroendocrinology Letters. 23 (4): 105–115. PMID 12496741.
Panksepp, J. (2000). "The Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology". Evolution and Cognition. 6 (2): 108–131.
Smith, E.A.; Borgerhoff Mulder, M.; Hill, K. (2001). "Controversies in the evolutionary social sciences: A guide to the perplexed". Trends in Ecology & Evolution. 16 (3): 128–135. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347(00)02077-2. PMID 11179576.
Smith, E.A., Borgerhoff Mulder, M. & Hill, K. (2000). Evolutionary analyses of human behaviour: a commentary on Daly & Wilson. Animal Behaviour, 60, F21-F26.
Verweij, K.; et al. (2010). "A genome-wide association study of Cloninger's temperament scales: Implications for the evolutionary genetics of personality". Biological Psychology. 85 (2): 306–317. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.07.018. PMC 2963646. PMID 20691247.
Samuels, R. (1998). "Evolutionary psychology and the Massive Modularity hypothesis" (PDF). British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. 49 (4): 575–602. doi:10.1093/bjps/49.4.575.
Wilson, D.S.; Dietrich, E.; et al. (2003). "On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychology". Biology and Philosophy. 18 (5): 669–682. doi:10.1023/A:1026380825208. S2CID 30891026.
Weber, Bruce H.; Scher, Steven J.; Rauscher, Frederick (2006). "Review: Re-Visioning Evolutionary Psychology". The American Journal of Psychology. 119 (1): 148–156. doi:10.2307/20445326. JSTOR 20445326.
Wood, W.; Eagly, A. H. (2002). "A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Behavior of Women and Men: Implications for the Origins of Sex Differences". Psychological Bulletin. 128 (5): 699–727. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.699. PMID 12206191.
Other documents
Stephen Jay Gould."Darwinian Fundamentalism", New York Review of Books, Volume 44, Number 10 · June 12, 1997
David Buller. "Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology" Scientific American. December 19, 2008.
David Buller. "Sex, Jealousy & Violence. A Skeptical Look at Evolutionary Psychology". Skeptic.
"Paul Ehrlich challenges Evolutionary Psychology"
John Klasios. "The evolutionary psychology of human mating: A response to Buller's critique".
Malik, Kenan. 1998. "Darwinian Fallacies". Prospects.
Schlinger Jr, Henry (1996). "Full text "How the human got his spots. A Critical Analysis of the Just So Stories of Evolutionary Psychology" (PDF). Skeptic. 4 (1): 1996. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-11-07. Retrieved 2009-06-12.
Alas Poor Evolutionary Psychology: Unfairly Accused, Unjustly Condemned. Robert Kurzban's review of the book Alas, Poor Darwin: Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology.
Tooby, J. & Cosmides, L. (2005). Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Full text
Tooby, J., Cosmides, L. & Barrett, H. C. (2005). Resolving the debate on innate ideas: Learnability constraints and the evolved interpenetration of motivational and conceptual functions. In Carruthers, P., Laurence, S. & Stich, S. (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Structure and Content. NY: Oxford University Press.
Controversies surrounding evolutionary psychology by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5–67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Why do some people hate evolutionary psychology? by Edward H. Hagen, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. (See also: his Evolutionary Psychology FAQ which responds to criticisms of evolutionary psychology.)
Geher, G. (2006). Evolutionary psychology is not evil! ... and here's why ... Psihologijske Teme (Psychological Topics); Special Issue on Evolutionary Psychology, 15, 181–202. [2]
Liddle, J. R.; Shackelford, T. K. (2009). "Why Evolutionary Psychology is "True." A review of Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True" (PDF). Evolutionary Psychology. 7 (2): 288–294. doi:10.1177/147470490900700211. Archived from the original on June 20, 2010.
The Never-Ending Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology: Persistent Falsehoods About Evolutionary Psychology by Gad Saad
Evolutionary Psychology Under Attack by Dan Sperber
Bryant, G. A. (2006). "On Hasty Generalization about Evolutionary Psychology". American Journal of Psychology. 19 (3): 481–487. doi:10.2307/20445354. JSTOR 20445354.
Tybur, J.M.; Miller, G.F.; Gangestad, S.W. (2007). "Testing the controversy: An empirical examination of adaptationists' attitudes toward politics and science" (PDF). Human Nature. 18 (4): 313–328. doi:10.1007/s12110-007-9024-y. PMID 26181309. S2CID 17260685.
Online videos
TED talk by Steven Pinker about his book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Margaret Mead and Samoa. Review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by Mead's book "Coming of Age in Samoa."
Secrets of the Tribe Documents the conflicts between cultural and evolutionary anthropologists who have studied the Yanomamo tribes.

I'm not sure that was a critique of evolutionary psychology rather than of a critique of the idea of human nature, and maybe even of psychology tout court. — Srap Tasmaner

Psychology is too broad.. Freudian Psychology or Cognitive Psychology? A bit different. Evolutionary Psychology just seems to be something that is especially egregious of not being able to really delineate and, might never have a definitive criteria to do so. Whereas genetics and artifacts can tell us about evolutionary development to some degree of accuracy, using ourselves to tell us about ourselves, is fraught with assuming the consequent.

We are forced to wake from the mud, but life is to some degree a choice. I've known suicides and half-suicides (junkies who overdosed.) I don't judge them. I don't think I'm better than them in some absolute sense. Our mortality threatens all such calculations. Does it matter that this boy got himself killed by messing around with the wrong girl or driving drunk ? Another plotline features him dying of ass cancer in Florida. It matters to a few other mortals while they last. Meaning is a function of the perishable flesh. — plaque flag

Other people are hell- Sartre wasn't wrong.

Most people are narcissistic- they think their estimation of life, and their loneliness means more children should be born.

Most people are robotic- they produce and consume, buying into the modern trope. The ennui hasn't sunk in. In fact, they try to out pace it with goals and reasons.

Most people are inconsiderate- they don't care about their surroundings. They are noisy and disturbing (the gods were rightly pissed at all the noise in The Epic of Gilgamesh!)

Much of life is a zero sum game. No good deed goes unpunished.

The sooner we are all at the level of world-weariness, the sooner we can get past the illusions of an enthalpic creature staving entropy, burdened and burdening others.

Who was the pessimist who hung himself by stepping off a stack of copies of his just-published suicidal opus ? There's a dark beauty in that. — plaque flag

That would be Philipp Mainlander

When I was younger, I was occasionally gripped by intense depression -- to the point of almost continual suicidal ideation. — plaque flag

I bring up sleep, perchance to dream, because it is so discounted as a transcendent state. Often elusive, we all want it, most of us can't get enough of it, and often desire it more than most other things. It is torturous when it cannot be obtained easily.

Here's some good Cioran quotes on sleep:

Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.

If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself.

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself. — E.M. Cioran

But look at modern man. All the trappings to have a "good night's sleep". How can something so supposedly "natural" be something so wrought with anxiety? Can we just sleep on the bare dirt with maybe some leaves and straw like our ancestors?

All the production and consumption to maintain this edifice. It is the awake part that is questionable. Sleep can never be its own absolute realm because it must be the slave to that which keeps the person at homeostasis for the next round of it. We can never literally "sleep our life away". We must embrace the layers upon layers of work, of keeping entropy at bay with more enthalpy. Of putting one's own will, and engagement, and effort, with the physical and social interactions. And all at the end of the day for escape to do it again. We are forced up and out and engaged in this or that. All of this fuss. Look at Cioran's quote again:

If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself. — E.M. Cioran

.
When I think of Schop's idea of "life affirming" philosophies, I don't just think of pure optimism or stoicism, but less associated philosophies like Taoism. Taoism, seems to want one to sort of glide through the surface of the struggle rather than fight it. There is a Way and it flows like a river. But you see, that is tolerance of the struggle, not escape. Sleep is escape par excellence. The Way is tolerance (meditate whilst doing the dishes, sweep the floor in a fluid motion, etc.). Sleep is escape.

But calling it vapor and fog and emptiness creates a distance, transforms the passionate anguished submersion into a spectacle, a game, a view also above and not just from stage. Schopenhauer discusses the genius (surely a self-portrait) as hardly really there in the world, living mostly in a symbolic realm, finding Platonic structure (and therefore beauty!) is the otherwise empty spectacle --in the ambiguous vapor, blurry form without substance. No matter. (No matter as solid substance surviving the fire of time -- unless the fire of time itself be that 'substance' -- or we count the patterns that are destroyed and created again and again (a Finnegans Wake theme.) ) — plaque flag

Indeed, the ascetic goes even beyond the artistic genius who it is claimed, sees the eternal Forms. It is a full-blown denial of will. Everything indeed becomes vapor. However, in a literal sense, what does this character of serene detachment do? I do know that Mahayana Buddhism has an idea of a Bodhisattva. This is anathema to the goals of Nirvana in Theravada schools. Buddha was "enlightened" but he did not simply cease to exist. He was free of all attachments, so some sort of "ego death". But what is that really? Is that really what Schopenhauer is referring to? Schop's seems to be much more thoroughgoing. I see the detached person as not just "enlightened". Supposedly Buddha gets hungry, but Buddha doesn't care if he can't eat. I see this as the stoic phase. Rather, what does complete denial of will look like, or is it really that pedestrian?

I was claimed by the real world all day. — plaque flag

Damn world of appearance!

I'd say that sleep (including the sleep of death ) is fine, but this serene detachment is also a worthy goal. In my view, it's preferable to sleep/death --- while death is preferable to hopeless torment. — plaque flag

Indeed. What is serene detachment?

Schopenhauer described it as thus (at the very end of Book IV):

Before us there is certainly only nothingness. But that which resists this passing into nothing, our nature, is indeed just the will to live, which we ourselves are as it is our world. That we abhor annihilation so greatly, is simply another expression of the fact that we so strenuously will life, and are nothing but this will, and know nothing besides it. But if we turn our glance from our own needy and embarrassed condition to those who have overcome the world, in whom the will, having attained to perfect self-knowledge, found itself again in all, and then freely denied itself, and who then merely wait to see the last trace of it vanish with the body which it animates; then, instead of the restless striving and effort, instead of the constant transition from wish to fruition, and from joy to sorrow, instead of the never-satisfied and never-dying hope which constitutes the life of the man who wills, we shall see that peace which is above all reason, that perfect calm of the spirit, that deep rest, that inviolable confidence and serenity, the mere reflection of which in the countenance, as Raphael and Correggio have represented it, is an entire and certain gospel; only knowledge remains, the will has vanished. We look with deep and painful longing upon this state, beside which the misery and wretchedness of our own is brought out clearly by the contrast. Yet this is the only consideration which can afford us lasting consolation, when, on the one hand, we have recognised incurable suffering and endless misery as essential to the manifestation of will, the world; and, on the other hand, see the world pass away with the abolition of will, and retain before us only empty nothingness. Thus, in this way, by contemplation of the life and conduct of saints, whom it is certainly rarely granted us to meet with in our own experience, but who are brought before our eyes by their written history, and, with the stamp of inner truth, by art, we must banish the dark impression of that nothingness which we discern behind all virtue and holiness as their final goal, and which we fear as children fear the dark;we must not even evade it like the Indians, through myths and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahma or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. Rather do we freely acknowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky-ways—is nothing.

@plaque flag, where did you go?

Again, nirvāṇa is not non-existence or non-being or a dreamless sleep, or anything of the kind. — Wayfarer

I wasn't referring to Nirvana per se. I was referring to the idea that Schopenhauer was world-denying rather than stoic or other such similar-looking philosophies. Chill out man. I know more than you think I do on these. Don't assume I don't know these things and also make me out to be a boogie-man.

I like to use 'gnostic' as a metaphor for a person with a vision of the fundamental amorality of the world (as if the product of a clumsy or apathetic demiurge). The world is not run by the wisest and kindest, not administered by dutiful guardian angels. But there a rebel/underdog god or principle that one can fall back on. Muted post horn, countercultural esoteric spiritual comforts, etc. Schopenhauer seems to fit into this group. He does not preach world conquest. His 'escapism' (as an earnest communist might call it) is akin to that of certain stoics or skeptics who focus on their own private interpretation of the world and the training of their heart toward serene detachment. — plaque flag

Indeed. Much of life is enduring. Sleep is best. But sleep cannot be forced. So then there is meditation or just learning to sit quietly in an empty room. It's the opposite of the two instincts of the modern man- production and consumption.

In this conception the virtuous man focuses on production. He betters his "skills". He becomes a more able and better X. And X is some sort of ability or knowledge in various fields of knowledge and trade.

But the idea of quietude works against this. It isn't for a goal of being better at X, but to as you say, escape. It is a rejection, a denial. Perhaps this is what makes Schopenhauer's pessimism more thorough than ones that are simply austere. The austere ones generally are to get you to be better at X. Be a better soldier, worker, citizen, etc. No, that is the opposite. That is life affirming. This is rejecting all of it for an eternal nod to non-being as @Wayfarer once said.

Sleep I would see is the ultimate ideal in this philosophy. It is the easiest route to escape.

That gels with my memory of his bold claim to do what Kant said could not be done. — plaque flag

It's hard to classify him, but these are the things that make it hard to really get at. I think he is saying that it is all illusions of mind, and that there is nothing like an outside world "there" in any way. And that these minds are manifestations of Will. But the minds are so thoroughly representational of the physical that you can almost say they mine as well be without really disrupting the philosophy.

. Schopenhauer looks to me like an indirect realist who thinks the Will appears as everyday stuff through the lens of the nervous system. But our intuition and music lets us peak around the rest of our cognition at the essence of reality, blind striving. — plaque flag

Even more, he's a fullblown Idealist. Indirect Realists think there is "something" material external to mind but it's perceived in some constructed way that makes it not directly perceiving the thing itself. Schopenhauer would say something like the Mind is constructing reality itself and there is nothing external to it. The Mind itself being a manifestation of Will. And as I said, how this happens is where Schop kind of has a hierarchy of the real REAL (Will) and the Objectified Will (Forms), and then Conditioned Will/Forms (PSR).

It does not make sense to say that the brain is its own product, as if it's the dream of itself. — plaque flag

It's the direct realist idea that the brain is just a mirror "catching" reality (such as the objectivity of time and space) and reflecting it back.

Schop has a unity: Will.
Schop tries to explain a plurality: Forms

There is never really a good explanation of how Will is objectified into Forms, or why. It just "does", which is kind of assuming the consequent.

If one was to put a teleological bent on it, perhaps it is the Will "needing" its playground, but then this is akin to some sort of theism.

Thus it becomes a sort of "immediate" flipside of Will. But if Forms are not "formed" but exist contemporaneously with Will, then Will was never a unity. It's hard to pin down. Not to mention, what then is "prior" to what outside the PSR? That's not even a thing so "processes" like "Objectification" can't occur. So it MUST be always there in the equation. But why the Forms and not just Will. Why the bifurcation of subject to object in the first place? Then it is just duality, not unity.

You can formulate some of your own theism to fill it in, but then you are speaking for Schop and not answering as Schop perhaps.

Pretty funny stuff: a mixture of sense and nonsense, like a terminator trying to pass as a fellow nerd until its target arrives. — plaque flag

Oddly pretty accurate actually. I wanted more jargony and technical. Math equations and statistics, and engineering problems, and farming, and clothes-making, a list of every minutia-mongerin fckn thing we can be thinking of and pouring over and MONGER over. But GPT is too polite to do that. Little bastard.

Ignoring consciousness for a moment, what is life in energetic terms ?
A little replicating piece of crystalfire. A strange but ultimately futile climb away from the unstoppable heat death, its accidental servant. apokrisis understands the details much much better than me, but I think I grasp the basic idea. Life can exploit (release) potential energy by using stored energy to pay the cost of activation, push the heavy boulder off the hill, install the waterwheel, build a fission plant over the course of many years at great expense. Can we measure the 'intensity' of life in these terms maybe ? — plaque flag

You can't ignore consciousness though when talking about us. A sun is "working" no? A river? A human produces stuff to keep its metabolism going, a whole cultural-social-economic epiphenomenon for this. But all this is external. What is it to be the little worker working? You cannot avoid Zapffe. He seeps into everything human. You can't shear consciousness from the human problems. It is the "dagger in the flesh" as Cioran says.

FWIW, I agree that it's not rational or righteous. There's some brutal game theory involve, probably some thermodynamics. To oversimplify, whatever form of society can out reproduce and outfight other societies will end up with the land. Individualistic capitalism proved massively productive, even with all its corruption. It doesn't matter that it has no exit strategy and assumes endless growth. — plaque flag

Good points. Well, I did start a thread called "Entropy and Enthalpy" and asked what the ethical implication is. As predicted, the minutia mongering over if "enthalpy" is really the right term, or whether it's natural law or human-derived concept ensued, which helped answer the wrong point. Ha. All well and good moving dirt to grow crops. Let the dirt-movers move their dirt eternally like Sisyphus fussing over the dirtness of the dirt they will be moving eternally. You mentioned Moloch, no? Moloch of science and dirt. Minutia-Moloch.

I leave you with a ChatGPT poem of minutia:
"The paradigmatic synergy of the ontological foundations in quantum mechanics, coupled with the teleological aspects of evolutionary biology, explicates the intricacies of emergent phenomena observed in complex systems. Utilizing a multi-level analysis grounded in statistical mechanics and network theory, researchers can delineate the hierarchical structure and interplay of micro and macro components, uncovering the underlying mechanisms governing self-organization and systemic behavior. Moreover, employing a neurobiological lens informed by cognitive neuroscience, one can scrutinize the neural correlates of subjective experience and elucidate the intricate interplay of neural networks and higher-order cognitive processes implicated in consciousness. These interdisciplinary insights, rooted in the confluence of physics, biology, and neuroscience, foster a comprehensive understanding of the intricate tapestry of natural phenomena."

Please note that while this paragraph includes technical jargon, it may be challenging to understand due to the dense language and complexity of the concepts presented."

Darwin and Dawkins 'naturalize' Schopenhauer. The 'Will' is an evolved set of 'irrational' motives and fears that serve the 'stupid' replication of genes. — plaque flag

Certainly, but this would be antithetical to Schop's main point regarding materialism, that it doesn't properly account for the inner dimension of mind. It is all in our heads which is somehow the Will presenting itself to itself via this weird dynamic of objectification conditioned by time, space, and causality. But WHERE is time, space, and causality coming from? It's in the mind, but mind is not itself explained. He claims a subject/object so maybe mind is like the subject-for-object, and then this becomes further conditioned (by time, space, causality?). I am not sure. One of the better diagrams that tries to make sense of it is here:

https://www.friesian.com/arthur.htm

I'm reading the Wallace bio. I think Schopenhauer recognizes two imperishables -- the demonic Will and something like Platonic forms. A strange fusion, really, but fascinating. — plaque flag

Whence the Forms from Will? Whence Objectification of Will into Forms? And "whence" is time, space, causality turning that into the "kaleidoscope" of the phenomenal world of experience? WHAT is projecting this? Mind? Then where does that fit in with Will and Representation?

As a half-civilized man with some grey hairs creeping in, I agree. But I can't help but think that only a cooling of passion makes this possible. 'I can live without you' seems implied in that admittedly mature attitude. Fair enough...but then life moves toward being a spectacle on the screen for an ego. I speak of this ambivalently. I understand the pull of radical autonomy and basically reconceiving marriage as an intense friendship that includes sex (though sex too loses some of its barbaric-mystic meaning here.) — plaque flag

I think it's funny that the atomism of Western society only focuses on economic institutions. It creates its own self-contained nihilism. If we take anything like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs at all seriously, why wouldn't society be about properly slotting people's "needs" rather than market-driven transactionism? That is to say, institutions are ad hoc transactions rather than concerted caring about people.

Ok, that's fair. I don't want to divert from the intent of the thought experiment. If it is your parallel for procreation, then we also don't know what the benefits are either right? Further, we don't even know what we're gifting them. Its a mystery box to all involved. Since no one knows the outcome, is it even worth considering as part of your decision? — Philosophim

It's not worth considering, but it's worth mentioning. The very fact that the good comes with such unknown (and very objectionable negatives) should negate it from even be considered.

Its not like if we don't give them the gift they'll be fine. They won't exist. So we can really only judge by those who have received that gift. — Philosophim

You would really gamble on something with so much negatives and suffering attached to it? Stay far far away from me when handing out gifts! Your heuristic would be horrific!

"Is the gift overall worth gambling on?" That is up to each individual and their own experiences. No one can tell you "Yes." No one can tell you "No". — Philosophim

Sure they can give you their input on whether giving a gift of harm along with good is a good idea. They can't force you but they can inform you. Presumably the child is even closer than a friend, and I would never give a friend a gift like that just because it has some good stuff too, not even if other friends say they don't mind it. I would not presume that kind of negatives onto another because yet other people told me they don't mind it. That seems perverse in anything other than this special pleading situation.

But, you can't reasonably tell other people that they must follow your decision. The rational conclusion is it is a decision for each individual, not that there is a blanket answer that is the same for everyone. — Philosophim

It's not as clear-cut for most people as murder or theft, but it is certainly a moral decision that impacts someone else, and my point is that it should be raised as something to consider. I liken it to at least the level of vegetarian/veganism or perhaps abortion and topics such as these. They should be debated, but they should not be forced. However, it simply isn't the same kind of topic as picking your favorite flavor of ice cream, just some personal preference that no one should bother themselves with either morally or philosophically. Also, take a look at the Wiki link I sent you. First catch up on some of the relevant philosophical arguments.

It has been my observation that people generally only toy around with pessimism and indulge in gallows humour when they are not actually facing the gallows (metaphorically speaking, of course). — Janus

Not this guy:

Working in the metaphysical framework of Schopenhauer, Mainländer sees the "will" as the innermost core of being, the ontological arche. However, he deviates from Schopenhauer in important respects. With Schopenhauer the will is singular, unified and beyond time and space. Schopenhauer's transcendental idealism leads him to conclude that we only have access to a certain aspect of the thing-in-itself by introspective observation of our own bodies. What we observe as will is all there is to observe, nothing more. There are no hidden aspects. Furthermore, via introspection we can only observe our individual will. This also leads Mainländer to the philosophical position of pluralism.[2]: 202  The goals he set for himself and for his system are reminiscent of ancient Greek philosophy: what is the relation between the undivided existence of the "One" and the everchanging world of becoming that we experience.

Additionally, Mainländer accentuates on the idea of salvation for all of creation. This is yet another respect in which he differentiates his philosophy from that of Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer, the silencing of the will is a rare event. The artistic genius can achieve this state temporarily, while only a few saints have achieved total cessation throughout history. For Mainländer, the entirety of the cosmos is slowly but surely moving towards the silencing of the will to live and to (as he calls it) "redemption".

Mainländer theorized that an initial singularity dispersed and expanded into the known universe. This dispersion from a singular unity to a multitude of things offered a smooth transition between monism and pluralism. Mainländer thought that with the regression of time, all kinds of pluralism and multiplicity would revert to monism and he believed that, with his philosophy, he had managed to explain this transition from oneness to multiplicity and becoming.[16]

Death of God
Main article: God is dead
Despite his scientific means of explanation, Mainländer was not afraid to philosophize in allegorical terms. Formulating his own "myth of creation", Mainländer equated this initial singularity with God.

Mainländer reinterprets Schopenhauer's metaphysics in two important aspects. Primarily, in Mainländer's system there is no "singular will". The basic unity has broken apart into individual wills and each subject in existence possesses an individual will of his own. Because of this, Mainländer can claim that once an "individual will" is silenced and dies, it achieves absolute nothingness and not the relative nothingness we find in Schopenhauer. By recognizing death as salvation and by giving nothingness an absolute quality, Mainländer's system manages to offer "wider" means for redemption. Secondarily, Mainländer reinterprets the Schopenhauerian will-to-live as an underlying will-to-die, i.e. the will-to-live is the means towards the will-to-die.[17] — Philipp Mainlander Wiki

Glad you brought up Von Hartmann. I really want to get into him but I have no idea how. His “philosophy of the unconscious” seems like a massive tome dealing with all sorts of crap and owes a lot to Hegel. Doesn’t help that he seems very obscure by todays standards — Albero

Oh it is as you say, which is why sometimes secondary sources are fine for me. I don't need a bunch of wrong attempts at psychology and science stretched out over long tombs and translated from another language nonetheless. But my main point was how thorough he rode the pessimist wave. In a way he has a prior and parallel idea to my notion of "communal catharsis". That is to say, he thinks that humanity, in Hegelian fashion, will go through some sort of dialectic whereby it reaches an end state of admission of ascetic quietude. But we can only achieve this through going through the prior stages.. that this life has nothing to offer, that an afterlife has nothing to offer, that "progress through science" has nothing to offer, and that at the end, we should just kind of realize the pessimism of it all. That is some thoroughgoing pessimism! He even thinks that we should attain the end state through moving the prior states along. In other words lean into progress through science (presumably this phase) so we realize it is all for naught! Shit man, there is some cynicism par excellance!

I think he just needs to lose the dialectic and scale it down. That is to say, simply offer the idea that we can communally commiserate on small scales. Even the anti-utopian utopia of an End Phase, is some sort of hopeful idea (ala Hegel).

Toying around with it is the transcendence of gallowshumor. That detachment from the mortal self is the 'demonic' Will glorying in its indestructibility, seeing through the triviality of a merely personal death to the ongoing life of the species. Cosmic humor, what Blake might call perception of the infinite, is like some ironic irreverent twist on Nirvana. Golden laughter, winged feet. Easier talked about than activated of course. But traces of it are all over that Freud quote and all through Cioran. — plaque flag

I'm reminded of Eduard Hartmann:

The essential feature of the morality built upon the basis of Von Hartmann's philosophy is the realization that all is one and that, while every attempt to gain happiness is illusory, yet before deliverance is possible, all forms of the illusion must appear and be tried to the utmost. Even he who recognizes the vanity of life best serves the highest aims by giving himself up to the illusion, and living as eagerly as if he thought life good. It is only through the constant attempt to gain happiness that people can learn the desirability of nothingness; and when this knowledge has become universal, or at least general, deliverance will come and the world will cease. No better proof of the rational nature of the universe is needed than that afforded by the different ways in which men have hoped to find happiness and so have been led unconsciously to work for the final goal. The first of these is the hope of good in the present, the confidence in the pleasures of this world, such as was felt by the Greeks. This is followed by the Christian transference of happiness to another and better life, to which in turn succeeds the illusion that looks for happiness in progress, and dreams of a future made worth while by the achievements of science. All alike are empty promises, and known as such in the final stage, which sees all human desires as equally vain and the only good in the peace of Nirvana. — Eduard von Hartmann Wiki

Same with Schopenhauer. 'I'd rather be this gloomy asshole than anyone else.' What is the perverse pleasure here? A glorious doomed rebellion against godnature or something. — plaque flag

It's the pleasure in watching George Carlin on a pessimistic rant perhaps. But to me, it's a little more. Rather, we are always but evaluative creatures. There is no such thing as "non-evaluative view of existence". Even so-called "neutral" views are with the capacity of evaluation being in the background. So it is about seeing it for what it is. And they are evaluating it more realistically and accurately as to the how humans experience their way-of-life within it. Of course, Schopenhauer tries to reify it to metaphysical proportions, but you don't even need that. Will can simply be human's will. Becoming and not being, as the human condition.

Not to spoil your thought experiment, but I would think the only right thing to do would be to tell the friend what the gift entailed and let them decide. But this is probably how we can also save that thought experiment. Instead of a gift to others, why not shift the focus of the gift to oneself? It should keep the spirit of what you're trying to say. — Philosophim

No it wouldn't though. The thought experiment works only if there is a rough symmetry between the situation of procreation and the already-existent, That is to say, in both cases the recipient of the "gift" would not be able to consent or know what the harms were.

I know that I would definitely take some of those detriments to obtain some of those positive goals in my life. It depends on what I value. I have sacrificed much in my life to obtain my personal goals and achievements. And I willingly knew it when I made those choices I did in my life. If I could save the lives of 100 good people by getting eaten by a lion, would I do it? Here in my comfortable home I would say, "Yes". Hopefully I would pass that test if it ever came to it in reality. ;) — Philosophim

I am not a utilitarian, so these debates aren't as relevant. It would be about proximity and capacity in that case. Obligation to help someone in a dire situation looks different than purposefully causing the situation and then trying to help what you caused.

My point is that in our own lives we must weight the costs for benefits in our lives. Nothing is free. Marriage is a loss of freedom. Children are a loss of financial independence for many people. It can add stress to your lives, poor health, etc. And yet if you asked many parents, they would do it all again in a heartbeat. So I would put that question to yourself. Are there things that are worth suffering through in life? Is avoiding suffering, the negative shift, the only goal, or is it simply the price we have to measure out for living? — Philosophim

I'm going to have to give you a bit of a primer here because this is tangential and though "touching" in a sort of ho hum ethical way, the ethics cuts much deeper than this kind of preference-fulfillment you are discussing regarding one's own life. It changes when you cause the life of another:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism#:~:text=Antinatalism%20or%20anti%2Dnatalism%20is,humans%20should%20abstain%20from%20procreating.

https://iep.utm.edu/anti-natalism/

This is what we want. — Paine

What are you saying the poem is saying of what we want? Ascetic stillness? Grace from suffering? Death? Dreamless sleep? Nirvana? Moksha into the cosmic reality of nothingness?

as you’re interested Schopenhauer I will mention a 2014 publication I’m reading, Schopenhauer’s Compass, by Urs App. ‘Schopenhauer was the first major Western philosopher with a deep interest in Asian philosophies and religions. His favorite book was a Latin version of the Indian Upanishads-the Oupnek'hat-that he used to call the consolation of his life and death. Urs App explains in this book for the first time why Schopenhauer regarded this work as the most excellent in the world, how it is connected with the birth of his philosophy, and what caused him to list it even ahead of Plato and Kant as his major inspiration. This groundbreaking new introduction to Schopenhauer's thought and its genesis explains the role of Indian, Persian (Sufi), Neoplatonic, and mystical ideas as well as meditative states ("better consciousness"). But its focus lies firmly on the central dynamic at the heart of Schopenhauer's entire work: the inner compass that gave it its overall direction.’ — Wayfarer

I do know the works that influenced him the most are Upanishads, Kant, and Plato.

Upanishads- The Maya illusory realm of representation that a few can escape via ascetic contemplation

Kant- the idea of time, space, causality as ground for Principle of Sufficient Reason. The trappings of the representation. And the idea of noumenal (Will) that is the "real" (not conditioned by time, space, causality), and the phenomenal (that which is the Maya projected and conditioned reality).

Plato- This is shoe-horned in my opinion (and I think Brian Magee also agrees). But Schopenhauer took Forms seriously, and that not only species, objects, but individual characters had a Form of some sort and these were kind of gradations of objectification of the Will that are then conditioned (from the illusory aspect coming out nowhere?) of time, space, causality, creating the "becoming" of the suffering Will to Live that characterizes subjective being.

Edit: And indeed these gradations of being have a Neoplatonic ring to it.

Hurting other people sucks. I feel like you are asking a leading question. — Paine

No I'm not really. I'm just trying to understand the metaphor on a concrete level as you brought it up so asking you more direct questions about its meaning. Be like a tree near a good source. What is the source? What does the tree represent? And things like that.

The main audience would say the source is God or divine law or something of that nature, I would imagine.

I still like Schop, but I can't unsee the performative contradiction. I'm guessing part of him knew well enough that he was a fame-thirsty poet looking for applause, looking for a personal survival of death in the usual literary way. I don't judge him for this. I only give him hell for incomplete analysis. But we all die too soon, and he was more honest than most. — plaque flag

Before such thing as a "personality disorder" was really known, I think Schopenhauer had one, and probably something akin to Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder with his emphasis and severe exorations on how other people didn't meet standards (and yet not looking at himself very critically). That being said, I know it's not good to backseat psychologize, but thought it was relevant here.

In my opinion, framing the perception of the evils of life in terms of an impossible activism obscures the true goal, which is commiseration, communal gallowshumor. Personally I'd 'advertise' it (when looking for others to talk with) in terms of the dark side of life, or the ugly side that people largely ignore. — plaque flag

True enough. But I do think taking seriously the pessimistic mindset is significant and not just a fun thing to toy around with. I think it leads to greater empathy (goes with commiseration). The gallows-humor is actually also part of this. Communal laughter. There is a reason many comedians shine a light on the pessimism and we commiserate communally (George Carlin, Louis CK, MOST comedians that aren't just doing a one liner but bigger themes...hell even the one-liner comedians often are doing that in their own form of aphorisms).

Freud comes to mind. From a letter:
“I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that has been restored to health, you will be better armed against that unhappiness.”
I think Freud is trying to be funny and sincere at the same time, joking about the shit sandwich of life, while being personally 'saved' more than most by his powerful curiosity and sense of mission. As Nietzsche points out, Schopenhauer was probably happy in this way too. — plaque flag

Excellent quote!! SO much to unpack there actually. Imagine someone with a chronic but debilitating mental illness (schizophrenia, OCD, anxiety, personality disorders etc.), and that is getting in the way of existential unhappiness (think more Maslow, Viktor Frankl, etc.). That is to say, there are unhappy existential situations that are universal to the human condition and then there are individualistic psychological illnesses that affect only certain people. The point is to move everyone from those individualistic diseases to grappling with existential problems.

In a way, I've said this before, I want everyone from sub-Saharan Africa, to Western Europe, Mongolia, and North America to achieve the level of existential ennui on par with Cioran. In other words we need to get past the socio-economic, and acute psychological issues to the existential ones so we can all see the human condition as it is.

What I really like about Psalm 1 is that it encourages so much reasoning by means of negation. We know what assholes are like and what it looks like when we are like them. Before going into the desert to deprive ourselves of all those temptations. The choices are all more local. Even accidental. Pay attention. — Paine

What do you think is wicked and sinful? The usual murder, theft, dishonesty, et al?

schopenhauer, couldn't the view point that you're noting is really about making life less negative overall? Which doesn't that translate into the relative idea that you're making life more positive overall? Someone being happy is a less negative experience then not feeling anything at all right? — Philosophim

No not at all. The main point is that the negatives come with positives and that positives are not really a "gift" if they come with intendent burdens too. Life is never burden-free, so this is always wrong. The giving "benefits" is not even in the realm of moral consideration. It is supererogatory, but is not required, and certainly not required if one is giving very significant negatives along with it.

In other words, if you never cause happiness, you did nothing morally wrong. However, if you caused suffering, that does become morally significant. It is not symmetrical. Happiness causing and harm-creating are not commensurate.

Hence my thought experiment in the other thread went like this (and hopefully this gives you better context):

Here is a thought experiments for you:

If you had the ability to give the gift of the following to a friend:


Creating or experiencing art and music that inspires and moves you.
Accomplishing personal goals and achievements.
Falling in love and experiencing deep emotional connections.
Building meaningful relationships with family and friends.
Exploring new cultures and traveling to different parts of the world.
Embracing adventure and taking risks
Appreciating nature
Reading/writing good literature
Learning X thing and mastering Y ability
Experiencing technological innovations
Flow states
Games and hobbies

But then, in order to gift the above positives to a friend you also definitely had to give that person at least several of these things below:

Chronic illness - cancer, disease, mental illness, breakdowns, etc.
Acute illness- bed bugs, disease, mental illness, parasites, food poising etc.
Accidents and misadventures (everything from broken limbs and car accidents, to getting eaten by a lion)
Disasters
Betrayal
Loneliness
Anxiety
Trauma
Addiction
Financial hardships
Poverty
Loss
Practically unavoidable, unwanted and tedious situations
Abuse
Discomforts of great and small variety that adds up when combined (everything from mistreatment by others in small ways, to traffic jams, to stubbed toes, to uncomfortable situations, to embarrassment, etc.)

Would you feel comfortable and moral providing the group of positives if you knew you will 100% also be giving some variation of the group of negatives?

I think you would not feel comfortable nor think that this was moral. But procreation is not seen this way. And here lies the misguided and wrong-headed thinking regarding procreation. It's no different. — schopenhauer1

Just as importantly, the metaphor expresses a desire to be supported directly by whatever it is that supports anything rather than choose between what humans make up for each other. — Paine

Indeed, so how do you suppose this manifests in life? Religious life? Ascetic? I'd imagine that is what the usual interpretations are.