One of his most famous quotes- enigmatic yet meaningful. Any thoughts what he is trying to convey?

“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

Should it read "Opportunities are not guaranteed"? If so, then we ought do what we can. — Banno

Let's say a lot of opportunities are a product of contingency- right person, right place, right time. What works for some people, doesn't work for all. Some people will win out and benefit from opportunities, and others will not. Benefits of finding ideal preferences and circumstances are not equally distributed. Some people will just have better outcomes given the same opportunities. That means people are used in statistical ways so that the losers are paying the price so some people can win.

Also, not only are the outcomes uncertain, but it is implied that everyone wants an opportunity to seek the outcome of an opportunity. Why is the race to get the benefit of the opportunity itself deemed a good thing or necessary for people to deal with and overcome? It isn't that hard to analogize life to a work camp with bad slogans that don't hide it very well.. "You get the 'opportunity' to work to survive." This implies a) people want to be foisted into this scenario of working to survive and b) that they like going through the process of obtaining the least worst preference they can find (which will most likely not be their ideal optimal preference anyways). So somehow struggle for maintaining opportunities is implied as good, but with no other justification.

There's something amiss with ethical theories that set out an algorithm for evaluating actions - as the greatest happiness, or to do one's duty. Pretending that the complexity of human life can be so reduced... It's more complex than that. — Banno

I agree with this too once people are already born. The procreational decision is easier to assess based on the asymmetry of obligations for happy people and suffering people when there is no actual person born to be deprived. But this decision is more important than any other as it actually makes existential and political statements in the very act itself- that life should be lived by a new person and that this person should continue the societal ideals as instantiated in the habits and forms of life of that new person.

And, continuing the line I introduced earlier, given that you think the sum of the value of human life is negative, you are not going to agree with this approach anyway. — Banno

This is true, but I am also trying to give some details on what I see as some inherent inconsistencies and assumptions overlooked that at least should be addressed.

Well, at the very least, do you accept that "people" are not accepting the role you describe because it sickens them?
If there is nothing in the package but what you describe, I would kill myself. — Valentinus

People don't question the role. There is no real way out of the situation. You either accept it (survive in a socialized context of equipment-maintaining and updating), or you do not (essentially take on the view of philosophical pessimism and decide not to put more people into the situation). There is no middle option, unfortunately. There is no stepping back from the equipment unless you want less complex (advanced?) equipment. You can perhaps become an ascetic hermit ala Schopenhauer's suggestion for those characters who are capable of "denying their wills". You can be homeless, but that would still be using the system in a different way. Existence just has so many options. The constraints of survival and the contingencies of the society as it has already been developed dictate that.

From the perspective of the CA, then, deprivations of health opportunities or opportunities for emotional well-being are just as pertinent to the concept of human dignity as deprivations of liberty of choice. — Banno

If opportunities are not guarantees, then where does that leave the CA? There is no clear path to any endeavor labeled "well-being", if that can even be so defined arbitrarily.

Also let me add.. the situation is, "Hey buddy, you get a chance to have to maintain the equipment (survive) or die...that is the choice you are given! Along the way contingently harmful circumstances will befall you and frustrate you... but don't worry you get chances to also use the equipment you are maintaining for 6 or so inherent 'pleasures' (physical pleasure, aesthetic pleasure, flow-states, relationships, etc. etc.). This is a consolation, and not guaranteed, and often contingently less applicable or available to some character-types/people than it is to others. But that is okay, because we are deeming this all 'good' because something is better than nothing. Experience is better than non-experience! Equipment maintained is better than equipment not maintained".

But no generation is interested in giving the one before them the last word.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, you are correct. The next generation could not care less about that judgement.
That is why the problem is like Job's. — Valentinus

Well, you can deny what is the case, but if it is the case, it is the case. I don't see how subsequent generations can dodge characterizing the social/economic/political sphere as pretty much maintaining and upgrading the equipment. That's what we are essentially doing. If this is in some way uncomfortable or disturbing to some, I don't blame them. It does seem that we are either being used in some way, and cannot escape being in this system, and most glaringly, are absurdly keeping it all going. It's absurd in the fact that we agree to keep it all going. We have more people so as to maintain and use the equipment to have more people to maintain and use the equipment. To ask a really simple question to all this: What's the point? It is a circularity that begs the question. When put in terms of procreation, it is a vicious circularity. No one needs to be born to maintain and use the equipment in the first place.

What is it about making more equipment-maintainers that needs to occur? To say that this brings value into the world is then begging the question that value needs to be brought into the world. That is, even if a world with equipment and its maintainers can be argued to be valuable.

Also to note is the aspect of who is pulling whom? Are we for the equipment or is the equipment for us?

But while most people can agree that "radical philosophies" lead often to misery and oppression politically, people don't stop to think that "common sense notions" also lead to misery and oppression.

You seem to be saying that all attempts to limit authority as a means to predetermine conditions for subsequent generations is a loser's game. — Valentinus

I'm not sure I'm saying this. Rather, the economic/political/social conditions will de facto stay the same with various upgrades for each generation as that is the path of least resistance. Have children, have them maintain and upgrade the equipment and so on. And this is taken as a given and called "good".

On the other hand, it is interesting how dependent those forces are upon our simple compliance with particular requirements. — Valentinus

The inertia is a large part of the compliance. People tend not to do more than they need to. The path of least resistance is literally and figuratively, the easiest course of action.

Having children is not only replicating the conditions that will cause them to suffer. It is not all just about receiving or not receiving an inheritance. If you want your kids to be smarter than you are, that can be arranged. If you want them to be stupid, that can be done.
Generations of choice. — Valentinus

For standards of living to be maintained all must comply. The equipment- the tools and knowledge to maintain and upgrade the systems are in place. We are here to maintain and upgrade the equipment and then spend the remainder time using other equipment to entertain ourselves with. We are equipment maintainers now, each and every one of us.

When referring to "representation" in my previous comment, I was thinking there is a continual criticism of the "original" deal because that articulation concealed those who were being spoken for without their participation. — Valentinus

Fair point. This is part of many people's criticism of having children. No participation. The conditions of life are something that cannot be negotiated- survival or death (a choice everyone born is forced into). That is the originary political state of affairs all humans are born into. Next is how society deals with this survival or death in its economic-social-political relations. In this part, people are beholden to forces and historical developments far beyond their control or knowledge. It is too stultifying to do anything really, thus we simply get some sort of recapitulation of what is already the ideals of the society, but with some hemming and hawing over minor details. The structure itself cannot be moved. You still need steel, electricity, large industrial plants, housing, and all the other stuff. Once you see the immensity of this, any other thing regarding redistributions, political participations or the like is laughable.

We do not have a choice as to whether we are born or not. If someone thinks it is better to not bring children into the world then that is their choice. But it is not everyone's choice. As long as there are people being born and living then how they live is an issue.

Since this thread is about Nussbaum I am going to leave off on this line of inquiry. — Fooloso4

Well, really any ethical system or how to live the good life, I would put under this scrutiny. Do people need to be born to live out X system. Of course the answer is no. Once a person is already born, I agree that that person then has to figure out how to live in the world. Clearly having the capabilities for opportunities to experience certain inherent goods of life would be better than not if our preference is to maximize opportunities for good experiences. But there is no justification for needing good experiences in the universe in the first place.

In other words, all other ethics beyond the procreational decision are after-the-fact and relative to something else. The procreational decision is the only one that is getting closer to a metaphysical and existential truth of some kind. Why? Starting a life is making a statement about life itself- that it should be started. Everything else comes from that.

Right, but why does someone need to exist in the first place to develop capacities? In other words, should people be born to develop capacities over not being born at all? I don't think you can automatically justify that "yes, being born to develop capacities" is something worth starting for someone else.

Would you prefer the opposite? Would you prefer that everyone else live such a life? — Fooloso4

But this is relative to another type of life. Perhaps there is an argument for a better life in relation to another, but the question was why does someone need to live a full life in the first place?

What hidden just so theories lurk behind Nussbaum's enumeration of capacities? — Fooloso4

That people need to live X, Y, Z type of life in the first place.

What happens when life is full and flourishing? Do people get a thumbs up on their gravestone? Why does someone need to live a full life in the first place? Interesting what hidden just so theories lurk behind most ethical claims.

But why would capabilities be their own end without something like happiness adjoined with it? Robots also have capabilities.

I'll take that as you dont want to address the issue. Taking another argument..if a tortured man prefers non existence are they just committing a paradox?

Why not address my argument rather than the first sentence out of context? It did refute your claim or at least show your claim doesn't apply.

Yeah. The paradox is in valuing a world without values, of preferring a world without preferences. — Banno

I don't see it as a paradox. There is a state of affairs whereby no bad will befall a new person and no good will be deprived of any actual person as well. That is the best state of affairs because no bad will occur for any actual person, but there will be no person who will be actually deprived of good. This is for future people. I have preferences because obviously I already exist. If there was a state of affairs where no one existed, this asymmetry argument need not matter. Once something exists with preferences and self-awareness, this asymmetry argument takes effect.

That is great for Craig Coombs. I commend him on "staring the void down with his arse" :lol: . I think my response in another thread works just as well here though so I will simply paste it below.

That's all fine and good, but then I will point you back to my thread about the happy slave. Foisting challenges on a new person by giving them life (which de facto requires challenges to overcome) is never right. If you answer that overcoming challenges is necessary, this would be a contradiction, as the person did not exist for anything to be necessary for. You are creating the situation out of nothing. You are then saying, "There needs to be someone who exists that then must overcome challenges". This is slightly sadistic, even if meant as gentle "doable" challenges. The point being that it is ethically never good to promote suffering or foist challenges to a new person who never needed to be exposed to it in the first place. Just like the happy slave scenario, even if the slave/child eventually identifies with their situation, it was not right to have been given challenges and exposure to suffering in the first place. The conceit is "something needs to get done by somebody!" But nothing has to get done by anybody. Your romantic vision perhaps that there will be no one around to enjoy things and love, is just that, a romantic projection.

What actually would be the case is that there would be no one deprived of anything, as there is no person to exist. You can then say, "We all agree life is better than not-life" but this doesn't make sense. Good experiences in life in and of themselves only matter relative to an actual person. However, overcoming challenges and suffering are the result of being born. Good experiences would not be missed out by an actual person, and challenges and suffering would be prevented. The hidden assumption here is that pleasure, relationships, flow-states, accomplishment, et al (the good experiences) need to be carried out by someone. No they don't. Nothing needs to happen for anyone. To bring up some odd socially constructed assent argument would not work either. Like zombies saying, "We the united people of peoplehood need more people to experience good things, because we need more people to experience good things, because we need more people to experience good things...". New humans aren't vessels for the mission of carrying out humanity's goal of furthering good experiences like they are a Starship Enterprise living out existence for humanity's benefit of having someone to experience the world. That would be using people with the conceit that existence is for them to make utility of, when it is not. Rather, the person would be used as a vessel to carry out romantic visions of humanity's need to have "someone" experience life. That would be using people, despite the harm they would be endure as well.

Am I on your side or am I still too attached to the 'animal' value of gadgets, art, food, and sex? — g0d

It's targeted at those who think by being wrapped up in complexity, they are doing something greater. It's like Shakespeare's quote about an idiot on stage that signifies nothing. Think of the programmer wrapped up in the complexities of his language or the mathematician who can delve into the deepest of set theory proofs. The complexities of these seems to mean something here here. Think of using a complex device made by those who value complexity for a living. This use may "mean" something to some people. Think of the fact that we can delve into such complexity. This seems to "mean" something here. All I'm saying is this complexity too signifies nothing. It isn't an indicator of something more going on.

I hustle like many others to protect and expand what I have. I just got a memory foam mattress. Those things are nice! I've got 2 pets and a S.O. I get paid for intellectual work. I'm in good shape. Whatever I say about Life I must say from this detailed situation which is not life in general but my life. That's why it's hard to be convincing with evaluations of life in general. You end up trying to tell depressed people that it's not that bad (which could be radically mistaken) or happy people that it's not that good (when life can indeed be paradise for long periods of time.) — g0d

That's all fine and good, but then I will point you back to my thread about the happy slave. Foisting challenges on a new person by giving them life (which de facto requires challenges to overcome) is never right. If you answer that overcoming challenges is necessary, this would be a contradiction, as the person did not exist for anything to be necessary for. You are creating the situation out of nothing. You are then saying, "There needs to be someone who exists that then must overcome challenges". This is slightly sadistic, even if meant as gentle "doable" challenges. The point being that it is ethically never good to promote suffering or foist challenges to a new person. Just like the happy slave scenario, even if the slave/child eventually identifies with their situation, it was not right to have been given challenges and exposure to suffering in the first place. The conceit is "something needs to get done by somebody!" But nothing has to get done by anybody. Your romantic vision perhaps that there will be no one around to enjoy things and love, is just that, a romantic projection. What actually would be the case is that there would be no one deprived of anything, as there is no person to exist. You can then say, "We all agree life is better than not-life" but this doesn't make sense. Good experiences in life in and of themselves only matter relative to an actual person. However, overcoming challenges and suffering are the result of being born. Good experiences would not be missed out by an actual person, and challenges and suffering would be prevented. The hidden assumption here is that pleasure, relationships, flow-states, accomplishment need to be carried out by someone. No they don't. Nothing needs to happen for anyone. To bring up some odd socially constructed assent argument would not work either. Like zombies saying, "We the united people of peoplehood need more people to experience good things, because need more people to experience good things, because we need more people to experience good things."

In other words, the minutia to the minutia mongerer may seem more of signifier of "something" that is not there. Just more minutia to focus on.

Fair enough. But why wouldn't we consider an inventor virtuous in some sense? We love the inventor for making something useful or pleasant. We love the composer for the music produced, etc. For those who aren't going to hang themselves, this stuff is genuinely valuable. So we value those who give us these things.

I just have ordinary valuing in mind, as in not resenting their getting paid for intellectual property rights, etc. Or having respect for someone who was clever and creative. Loving our best fellow monkeys the most is true religion, or so some thinkers have said (in other words). — g0d

Granted. In the light of suffering, it doesn't provide a reason to bring more people into the world in and of itself. No X value does. A further consequence of the inventor himself is the minutia that is mined from it. More jobs understanding the minutia so that more stuff can be pushed around and/or produced, continually. From previously: Minutia mongering- our focus on the particular, especially as it pertains to technological mastery. Some type of people think that by "mining" existence- that is to say, by knowing/mastering all the minutia of life (minutia mongering), that we are somehow fulfilling a higher goal of some sort. Even if they say there is no higher goal to work towards, de facto by being wrapped up in the minutia, by trying to master it, they are regarding the fact that we are able to mine some understanding that can be useful for prediction/functionality from the materials/universe as being something of value. The value comes in the output of more mining. For example, if I show you a really complex and extremely detailed math formula or proof, and then go about solving it, and then applying it to some world event that it maps to, I must be doing something of meaning because of its very complexity and its use in a functional application. I have mined the information and presented it and solved it and used it in a complex tool. That in itself must mean something. The very fact of my understanding and solving the complexity or that I advanced a functionality.

Enough for what or who? We don't have to dwell on this point if you'd rather not. — g0d

The hard stop for me is foisting challenges and suffering onto a next generation. Survival itself, in any socialized context, with any buffers, or contingencies attached that you can think of, is enough to prevent any other X value. No challenge needs to be unnecessarily foisted or foisted for some third-party reason X (to experience X). To go any further and say, "But people need..." is to then beg the question and engage in circular reasoning. If you want to get into subjective post-facto justifications that a net majority of people would say life is good in some survey we can.

I guess I am demystifying the use of 'meaning.' A few people might indeed build it up into something transcendent. But I think this is the exception. In the same way a few people might build science up into scientism. And someone can make that their windmill.

So maybe it's a vulnerable target but not a challenging target. Is sex or food a 'bastion of meaning'? I don't know. Depends what you mean. I see that 'all is vanity' and men die just like dogs. OK, Preacher, but what now? Laugh with Democritus perhaps. Or hang ourselves. Or do the first while it's possible and then the other when it's not. — g0d

Yes meaning here I guess is tricky- but I'm using it to mean something that is valuable. Some people that understanding the complexity of a subject must mean one is inherently providing value. That this act of understanding complex subject matter must bestow is own virtue. The technology created from the complexity must bestow virtue for the technologist, and the fact that we can comprehend such complexity itself bestows virtue.

So maybe it's a vulnerable target but not a challenging target. Is sex or food a 'bastion of meaning'? I don't know. Depends what you mean. I see that 'all is vanity' and men die just like dogs. OK, Preacher, but what now? Laugh with Democritus perhaps. Or hang ourselves. Or do the first while it's possible and then the other when it's not.

I think I mostly see the world as you do but I can't embrace the transpersonal value judgment or the project of trying to build this negative value judgment into something more. I'm down with grim thinkers. I don't mind the grimness. I just don't believe in some essential badness or goodness of reality/experience. It's different for everyone, but also there is enough similarity to be moderately intelligible to one another. — g0d

The constraints of survival are enough.

Let me add.. even having a common framework of values, would still be debated on a granular level, still giving the CI problems in everyday situations.

But then, dear schopenhauer1, you're plunging directly into the unseemly waters of... utilitarianism! — Theologian

Yes, or a general axiology/value theory. It would revolve around the values themselves. I refer back to the Nussbaum thread, for example. Even though I was critiquing it there, it makes much more sense to acknowledge what most humans value first. It may be justified through social construction, or simply a rough idea that we can get through reflecting on our own moral sensibilities. Similar to how "rights" are agreed upon, ethics can then proceed to what would would be in violation of its own principles, something like the CI. But, of course, being a pessimist and antinatalist, these values themselves would not take precedent over suffering which in the context of procreation, can be prevented for future individuals without any actual consequence to a particular individual- a case I was making with @Banno in the Nussbaum thread. But again, I still think the Nussbaum approach or other like-approaches of mining for what we value would be where to start over the CI which seems more about heuristics of how to judge if the values that were listed as important were violated.

Because those things are worth doing, despite suffering.

But I don't expect you to agree. Nor am I that interested in arguing the point. — Banno

Granted, but if you were to be interested in arguing the point, I would ask for a justification that puts experiencing a list of human activities is more ethical than exposing new people to (theoretical) structural suffering and (definite) contingent forms of suffering. It is obvious that prior to birth, there is no actual person that needs anything. I would question then why have people that need to experience X, Y, Z experiences in light of the fact that all suffering could be prevented and no actual person would exist prior to be deprived otherwise.

Then my guess is the debate would go down to something like, "a majority feel that these experiences would be good" in which case I would bring up the thread I had about the happy slave. In other words, having an agenda for the new person of to experience X,Y,Z seems oddly unnecessary and circular being that the person did not need to experience those things in the first place (especially in light of suffering being a consequence).

Then it would devolve further into some "net benefit" form of utilitarianism that is arrived at through combining surveys of subjective evaluations of life. Then I would point back to the claim that it would always be wrong to foist known and unknown challenges and sufferings on a new individual, even for some X, Y, Z reason that purports that the person needed to born to experience those things, but without justification. Why would humans then be beholden to the principle of X, Y, Z? Saying, "they are just good" seems too brute fact to be much of a philosophical point.

But we shall not argue any of this.

It's amusing. Lots of other pleasures fade as we age. Our knowledge organ is reliably erect. When my mind 'eats' a book, I don't feel sluggish. Our personality expands, a swelling microcosm. For many of us (and I think you'll relate) it becomes more amusing to talk among 'oneselves' than with others who don't have much appetite for thought. I count at least 3 dudes in my skull. You may have heard of them. — g0d

Yes, but remember I am actually critiquing this argument of meaning in complexity, technology, and science.

I'd like to add something to this argument. Not only is it that we think that there is some extra meaning in the fact that we get esteem from understanding complexity, and that we use the products of complex mathematical-sciences, but thirdly, that that we can comprehend the complexity itself is meaningful. Somehow the fact that we can develop all this minutia of complexity into our explanations of the world and in our technology, that this is meaningful in itself.

I've never quite understood romantic talk of "absurdity" along such lines. I might agree that each of us is more or less out of tune -- with the truth, with the facts, with his own good, with other sentient beings, and so on. Life is dukkha. Is there something more -- apart from this sort of generic conception of disharmony, misalignment, conflict, ignorance, and confusion -- to existentialist talk of "absurdity in our way of being"? — Cabbage Farmer

I'm using it in a specific way, qualifying it with the concept of radical freedom. That is to say, the choices of what we do are of any range of things, but we often use a set of habits and heuristics to give ourselves constraints and focus. In this case, a constraint and focus for many inclined to the math-science-technology realm is to be adept at mastering the minutia of that particular interest. So the absurdity is the relative freedom of choice where we start as socialized individuals directed at the world before we make a decision on how to direct our thoughts and actions. That's how I am using it in this case at least. I can think of several other ways to use the term in an existentialist context.

I'm even more at a loss to make sense of your talk of "values". I'm not aware of any natural science or objective standard of values; I take it axiological discourses are predominately philosophical, political, and anthropological discourses. Is it commonly maintained that philosophical pessimism "posits that the world has an inherently negative value"? I'm not aware of this formulation of pessimism. I expect philosophical pessimism may be compatible with the claim that there is no such thing as "inherent value"; that judgments or dispositions of value are relative to the priorities of those who make such judgments or have such dispositions. I see no reason to say that the world has "inherent value" in itself, or to say that any particular thing we may distinguish in the world has "inherent value" in itself. Things have value for creatures like us; a thing that is positively or negatively valuable to one creature need not be valuable to another creature; a thing that is valuable to many creatures need not be valuable in the same way for each of them. Pessimism needn't be pessimism about values, it can be pessimism about outcomes, starting points, historical tendencies, natures, conditions... relative to a set of values. — Cabbage Farmer

You are not aware of this formulation of pessimism, but that is the essential view of pessimism, so now you know :). Pessimism is actually not compatible with the claim that the world has no inherent value. If anything, that is aligned with what we commonly call "nihilism". Pessimism does view there to be value, but that existence has some structurally negative value attached to it. Thus, earlier you mentioned something like "dukkha". Buddhism is in a way a form of philosophical pessimism, as it purports that life has inherent dissatisfaction for the individual, and that there is a kind of constant deprivation inherent in the human condition. Yes, I think pessimism can be used in many other ways, but I am specifically applying the use of it in terms of "Philosophical Pessimism" which is very specific in the Western tradition to a form of evaluating life or existence as negative for the individual. The primary philosopher for this position, is of course Schopenhauer. So it is not nihilism, nor should it be construed with other uses of pessimism. Just as if someone says, "That person has a stoic expression" does not mean that that person necessarily believes in the philosophy of Stoicism, pessimism can be ascribed to other contexts, but not actually be referring to Philosophical Pessimism.

Shall we say knowledge and power are well used the more they tend to produce desirable outcomes, and are abused the more they tend to produce undesirable outcomes?

Perhaps we can split the difference this way: Knowledge is better than ignorance, and knowledge well used is better than knowledge abused. Power is better than impotence, and power well used is better than power abused. I expect even many of the giddiest optimists about the prospects for technological culture like ours would be disposed to agree with some such evaluation.

Beyond such ready common ground, I suspect the disputes here at issue consist primarily of conflicting expectations about the likelihood of and means toward various desirable and undesirable outcomes, and about which outcomes are desirable or undesirable. What else is at issue in these disputes, discounting the vain boasts and insults of diverse cults competing in misguided contests for esteem and self-esteem? — Cabbage Farmer

I think you are closer to my point with your point about contests for esteem and self-esteem. Imagine someone who has the ability to perform advanced calculations and apply it in such a context as to make applications that are utilized by people in various technologies. There are several directions to take this. First the person who is performing these advanced calculations and detailed experiments, may have a greater sense of utility. They are the ones that are maintaining and developing technologies used by society. But also, there need not be a subjective element to the esteem given to the technology-creator. That is to say, by simply using these technologies, we are already assenting that this is indeed important to us, whether or not the actual contributor to the technology got esteem from their contributions or not.

A work of fiction, carpentry, or empirical investigation may be simple or complex in comparison to other works of its kind; I see no reason to suppose that in general the more complex work is the more valuable. One might argue the simplest work, achieving the greatest results in exchange for the least resources, is the most valuable. — Cabbage Farmer

We value complexity as it is needed to keep mining the world. Newton and Leibniz needed to develop more complex systems in order to answer certain questions. They mined more complexity that then translates to opening fields of inquiry that require more minutia-mongering- that is to say, wading in the weeds of this complexity, mastering it, and using it. Charles Boole, opened up the idea of Boolean logic, which indirectly translated into computer science. This applied to logic gates and physical circuits opens up the way for computers. This gets much more convoluted and complex as the way hardware and software that is created becomes used in various ways. So the computer programmer then has to get in the weeds of the minutia and become an expert in the complexities of the software program. The IT person must get in the complexities of the OSI internet model, networking, and general computer operation. The computer engineer has to understand the complexities of the materials, electrical components, and computer science principles to create the hardware that interacts with higher programming languages, etc. It just keeps going until much minutia is mongered. The more complexity one can monger, the more valuable one is in creating this output. Now you ask, where does this value come from? It comes from the fact that we use the outputs. Even if we did not acknowledge the person who contributed to it, we do by valuing the products of their output. Thus, we indirectly value the minutia they can monger.

Let's also look at it another way. Let's face it, if someone is positing an advanced mathematical or logical set of formulas and symbols that are being presumably calculated correctly, and correctly understood in their context, that person seems to be of more value based on their ability to master the calculations and understand such formal sets of information. That sort of formalized understanding is more sociologically deemed as valuable by many.

So, sure, other forms of outputs may achieve great results, but this thread is focusing on how many people view complexity and the mastery and mongering of it, is deemed as valuable in both a use and psychological way.

This list of capabilities implies that this is something that people should be born to do. If suffering is a part of life, why bring more life into the world, in order for them to carry out these "capabilities" in the first place?

An alternative would be to not produce more people who even need to experience the execution of these human capabilities. Answer solved. But somehow, without justification other than, "we just want it", these capabilities being carried out, are deemed as of the utmost importance, even in light of suffering being brought into the world.

But really my question is, what makes this list of capabilities inherently more valuable than preventing suffering?

If I proposed an argument that said that suffering takes precedent over producing more people that should have opportunities to carry out capabilities, why would that be automatically wrong?

But the CI, being a fully general method, does not rely on us first establishing a certain type of society. It works on any possible society. So long as the members of that society have shared interests, it will end up providing a framework to further those interests. That's the idea, anyways. All that you need to do is the ability to put your self in other people's shoes, as the saying goes. If everyone does that, and everyone's minds work roughly the same way, the result is that everyone ends up with roughly the same rules. — Echarmion

Yes, in that case the CI really has little to do with the actual morality itself, and certainly cannot be said to be a grounding for it. If anything, it is a clever heuristic. Even duty itself is not much of a ground in itself, because the question becomes, "duty to what?". I think we would be getting closer if we mentioned the actual things that people value- relationships, physical pleasure, aesthetic pleasure, etc. The heuristic to see if one is violating a principle by which people obtain these things can be useful, but only if we understand what it is that people value, if that can even be ascertained. But then it is really a theory of value that comes first before talk of how a value may be contradicted.

It seems perhaps you're aiming to correct an immoderate bias you believe you have detected among some other speakers. I happily agree, some people tend to exaggerate the value of quantitative, scientific, and technological work as compared to other sorts of work. — Cabbage Farmer

:up:

What purpose would it serve, if our characterizations of their excesses should be disfigured by the opposite deficiency? — Cabbage Farmer

In a roundabout way, this has to do with pessimism. Pessimism posits that the world has an inherently negative value due to structural and contingent sufferings. There is an absurdity in our way of being that has evolved, whereby we have a whole variety of choices- what Sartre appropriately called "radical freedom", but we choose to put weight on various focuses to keep the absurdity constrained into discrete goals.

Some of those from the intelligentsia community (specifically mathematico-scientific-technological) would argue that they are a source of positive value. Why? Though not articulated in this manner expressly, the argument is that since they have the capacity/propensity to calculate advanced mathematical concepts, and since they are able to apply them to an empirically verifiable outcome in science and technology, that this is meaningful and counteracts a negative evaluation of the world, or its intendant absurdity. Rather, they might argue, the fact that we can "mine" consistently verifiable/falsifiable information about the world, that "cashes out" in the outcome of more accurate explanation and technology, that this is inherently something of value.

Further, people might feel that simply the sheer complexity of new technologies makes them meaningful. The fact that there is so much minutia to monger to understand a process, maintain it, and further its development into more areas of minutia, is somehow inherently good. In other words, somehow, complexity of subject-matter bestows it value.

Others, who are not the actual scientific-technology communities might also look to the value of this minutia and say, "see this work that the community is doing is proof that human production is "doing something". There seems to be a forward momentum, that technology and science is showing human values. Those who can monger all the related minutia must be of most value then. Again, this is a sort of critique of a way-of-thinking. Because we can use principles of math applied to science, we have something inherently meaningful that bypasses any notions of absurdity. People need to be born to maintain this mathematical-scientific human society. By the mere fact that our "modern lives" are touched in almost every respect by math-derived scientific/technological outputs, by having more children, and putting more people into the world to push minutia around and monger it in order to survive, many people are assenting to this being something meaningful that needs to be maintained by future generations. To put it in less words- "mine more minutia and create more complexity as this is somehow inherently valuable in itself and the people who can do this best are providing the most value".

These maxims result in societies no sane person would want to live in though, hence they still fail the CI. Of course there are persons who'd genuinely want such circumstances, but they would not be accessible to morality, no matter how convincing. — Echarmion

Okay, so this is my point. Morality is then not really to do with the CI but something else beyond it, or prior to it. You seem to be positing either some sort of moral sense, or socially-constructed agreement, or list of values that we all share and THIS becomes the source of the moral framework, not the CI itself. In fact, the CI presupposes that we already have a sense that hypocrisy is wrong. The CI does not therefore provide any of the actual morality, it's the values that we already have when we are applying the CI. This is where then we should focus it would seem to me. He can then admit that really it is more of a hypothetical imperative- "If we want to maintain a certain type of society, and we do not want to be hypocrites about maintaining that society, then the standard of CI would apply". But again, the type of society, and not being hypocritical would have to be addressed and examined first as to why that counts as moral in the first place.

:joke:

But these are assumptions that the acting people have. They are not inbuilt into the CI. The thief assumes something about property, the oathbreaker something about oaths. People have assumptions, and so their maxims will include them. — Echarmion

So the thief who revels in a society of treachery, and the oathbreaker who wants a world of untrustworthiness...

What is assumed about good and bad by starting from the fact that we are human beings that live together in a society? — Echarmion

It's more about good or bad about what a society should do and the relations of people in that society. That is an assumption inherent in the ideas of property, trustworthiness, etc.

Kant doesn't say this when he talks about the CI, though he did write about property and I don't think he ever questioned the idea of property. Whether or not Kant was correct in assuming that individual property is moral is a different question from the question of whether the CI is the correct standard to assess morality. — Echarmion

No that's the point, he doesn't say that, but it is implicit in the ideas of property in the case of stealing.

So, what is behind it? How does it get in? — Echarmion

Views about what society should feel is important- like property.

Yes, I agree, but thread was about how mongering minutia about a subject matter doesn't make life more meaningful because we have "mined" this information and can use it. In other words, "Look at all this stuff we have figured out! Look how adept some of us are at building immense equations that translate to technological output! This is meaningful!".

The reason you apply though, is practical reason. As such, it does not operate in "some possible world" but always in the context of human society. And humans, by and large, have common interests. Sociopaths and mental illnesses exist, but those are exceptions. Kant assumes that humans have a common ability to reason, and I think it's difficult to disagree with that. — Echarmion

This really is very murky.. "human society".. "common ability to reason".. Not everyone has, does, or will come up with a same common reasoning about society and its interests. All I have to prove is that there is an ethics above and beyond the categorical imperative and being bound by duty for which morality lies, otherwise the categorical imperative is just a clever line of reasoning that explains little of morality. There is already an assumption of what is good behind the "practical reasoning" for which the categorical imperative is supposed to focus on. Thus, "property is a concept that is good for society" is really more what Kant is saying morally, and not the categorical imperative. Rather, it reduces to a list of goods that people think are worth living for. But this already means that the CI itself is just a heuristic and not morality itself- there is something beyond it whether that be a good, a value, or an emotional weight or moral sense of something, depending on your theory.

For example, one might simply steal because one has no other way to acquire food, or simply to deprive the owner of the item in order to spite them. In those cases, no self-contradiction occurs, and it's then a matter of asking whether or not one can will the maxim to be universal.This second step is similar to the well known "golden rule", or perhaps in a more modern form Rawl's veil of ignorance. — Echarmion

There's several problems here. First, again is that it reduces to a hypothetical: "If you want to live in a world where property is honored for daily living, then you would not steal". There is an element of common interest there. We can choose to not value property and be okay living in a society that property doesn't matter. Perhaps it is a treacherous "all man for yourself" society that we desire. Then stealing would be fine. Sure, this is probably not something most people would value or desire, but in some possible world, person can indeed value this type of society. Thus, the contradiction itself like "property being useless as a concept", or some such, is really based on social norms, emotional feelings about the value that may or may not be contradicted, and more generally things that are more qualitative, probabilistic (being socially constructed and contingent), and not universal in application.

a positive value, but maxims that, if universalized, would defeat their own purpose. The thief aims to enrich himself, but if stealing were universalized, all the thief's wealth would be itself subject to stealing, and hence mostly worthless. — Echarmion

Right, so the theory itself rests on the value/emotional weight put on property itself. There is something beyond the contradiction that is added. The thief has to actually value property in the first place. Thus, it does turn hypothetical: "If you value property, then you would not steal, as property itself would be useless for you". Hence why I claimed that the supposed "categorical" imperative becomes "hypothetical".

There wouldn't be emotional exception to a maxim, since that defeats the point. The idea behind the CI is to have reason guide your actions, not emotion. Kant would uphold the duty of civility (assuming it applies for the moment) even if an emotional reaction would be understandable. — Echarmion

I don't see why there couldn't be something that shakes out in some universal violation.. "If everyone didn't allow for exceptions for emotional grieving, out of reasons of civility, that would itself endanger civility".. I don't know.. I'm sure I can think of a better one, but you get my gist.

I kind of find it funny that he is pitting "reason" with "emotion". That's kind of a false dichotomy. Property, life, civility, trustworthiness would be things we would have to value in the first place. Presumably value has some sort of emotional preference attached to it. Actual, now that I think about it, another criticism is that these contradictions might reduce down to preference theory or a hypothetical imperative.. because it presumes that we must value property, getting along, etc.