But, there is a constant lacking present in everyone's life. This lack is the source of frustration, anger, and sadness. — Posty McPostface

This lack is also the source of joy, relief, and a belly full of warm feelings. Maybe you are stuck outside in cold weather without the right clothes. But then you get home and jump in a hot bath. A hot bath is almost always good, but it's very good when you've been cold.

And there are all kinds of little patterns like this in life. Pain/tension and pleasure/release. Some say that pleasure is just the 'absense' of pain, and I say they are (1) either being silly or (2) a fundamentally different organism to which I can't ultimately relate who just happens to somehow speak English. So we have pain-pleasure or need-satisfaction cycles, one of which is a need for mental stimulation. This need for mental stimulation urges us away from the simple life just as another need (the need for clarity and a sense of control, say) urges toward the simple life. And sure enough we'll see people vacillate in this regard too. Every once in a while I go through all of my possessions and throw out lots of stuff. Pretty soon I've accumulated more stimulating junk for the next purge which is sure to come.

***
I like stoicism. I like the idea of not wasting time on what is out of your control. And I like the ultimately macho idea of staying cool-headed, bravely facing existence. But there's another aspect that flees from the complexity of life into a kind of living death, ultimately narcissistic. If we are going to flee from wants into bare needs, then remind me again why we are bothering to survive in the place? I picture the individualistic stoic who just wants to hold his detached pose above all things. 'Look at me, ma. I don't five a guck, except about not giving a flock.' Then there's the noble emperor, sacrificing complex pleasures for the simple, profound pleasure of a rational, transparent-to-itself, righteous life. The second one seems like the more respectable 'radical' version.

Sometimes folks (philosophers and others) try to basically "wave away" an issue by claiming that it's only a terminological dispute. As if they're implying that everyone really agrees on the non-linguistic stuff, but they just have disagreements about how to use language/which words to use. — Terrapin Station

I'm kind of in this camp, but 'we' don't at all think everything is a terminological dispute. Indeed, 'our' goal is to avoid wasting time on grammar preferences so we can do the 'real' stuff. What that real stuff is varies from person to person, and the line between 'fake stuff' and 'real stuff' is no more clear than the meaning of most phrases taken out of context.

But it's not the case for a lot of disputes that they're merely terminological. People are really disagreeing about what the world is like, independent of language. — Terrapin Station

I agree. Lots. But in lots of disputes it is IMO mostly terminological.

Maybe the person just doesn't want to get into a dispute that they're tired of, or that they find silly, or futile, or whatever. — Terrapin Station

Indeed. Or counterproductive, moving in the wrong direction, starting off on the wrong foot, with the wrong method.

Maybe they're insular (and/or arrogant) enough that they actually have a difficult time understanding that someone could disagree with them about what the world is like. — Terrapin Station

This happens too, but (seems to me) more among the non-philosophical types who don't take so much pride in being open-minded, rational, well-read, etc.

And of course, sometimes disagreements are only terminological, — Terrapin Station

Nice. So we share some common ground. The issue seems to be 'how much' is a terminological dispute, but maybe that's just a terminological dispute.

Sometimes you see philosophers push back against language-first view, and insist that they are interested in X, rather than the meaning of ‘X’. But what do they mean? — Welkin Rogue

That's a good question, or is at least a natural question. Before long we ask: what do we even mean by 'meaning' in the first place? What is meaning? What is language?

This is the 'zoom in' approach. Somehow we use these words naturally/intuitively as a system all the time and yet are knocked silly when we zoom in and look for the individual meanings that we assume must be there. 'Justice' has a meaning. Meaning has a meaning. There is a 1-1 correspondence between de-contextualized 'un-worlded' nouns just sitting there and little crystals of thought-stuff that exist in some hidden dimension where meaning lives.

Does this assumption correspond with readily available introspection? I don't think so. We don't interpret words. We interpret sentences. We don't interpret sentences. We interpret paragraphs. And on, up the chain, until we have a global interpretation of existence from which we speak and with which we listen. Of course we can and do break off pieces of this global interpretation, and we can and do improve our global interpretation mostly or relatively locally at times.

It would be silly of me to argue for this view at the level of detail, since that misses the whole point. I think introspection makes this (just paying attention to the way meaning flows 'between' and 'around' the words in what we write and read, and its relationship to time [it's not instantaneous but like thought-music.])

Trump's claim that he can with a stroke of his pen overrule the US Constitution is the very definition of authoritarianism. — LD Saunders

Good point. But I think political fanatics on both sides would gladly see their kind of tyrant trample over the 'red tape' in the way of what they just 'know' is right.

https://jacobinmag.com/2011/03/burn-the-constitution

'Popular sovereignty' can be a real nice paint job on mob rule that has no respect for individual rights.

Instead i feel more motivated and inclined to live a simple life of happiness, a life where i travel the world, make lots of friends and get lots of girls (lol). — Johnpveiga

Sounds great, if you are already rich. I'd settle for a few friends and not much travel if 'lots of girls' were still on the table.

If you aren't rich and want nice things, you pretty much have to learn some skills and create value for others. If you are lucky, these skills are meaningful to you. And it's not just the money that matters. You are more likely to be respected by the people you meet if you work for a living. And sharing skills with others offers you a specialized community, so that you can talk shop with other insiders.

Finally, in my experience, most people end up paired off. 'Lots of girls' is always a titillating image, but the depth of monogamy usually wins out. And then your partner will often end up being your best friend. And friendships with other of the same gender tend to become less important as everyone pairs off, gets more invested in a challenging career, has kids, no longer cares about being in all the once cool places, etc. Ask a sample of 40 year olds what they want or want to keep. I'm guessing most will settle gratefully for work that they like that pays enough and a happy healthy family life. And really this stuff offers quite a sense of completeness when and while it works.

[To answer your question more directly, I think the grandiose sense of making a great mark tends to fade away naturally, and that most achievement is a by-product of seeking a good work and family life.]

That was awesome.

There seems to be almost universal agreement among theists and atheists that a God either exists, or not, one or the other. We might be suspicious of the fact that this widely shared assumption appears to be taken as an obvious given which requires no examination. — Jake

Well said. And we might asks exists how? Presumably not like an asteroid. If God is a 'spirit,' then this already suggest some strange mode of existence. What did those early writers have in mind? Probably lots of different things, and probably nothing quite exact. Chances are that they were calling some part of the experience God.

If we were to examine reality without the burden of this blind assumption, we might see that the vast majority of reality from the smallest to largest scales, space, does not fit neatly in to a tidy simplistic dualistic "exists or not" paradigm.

Thus, it's at least possible that the simplistic "exists or not" paradigm the God debate is built upon may not accurately represent reality, which if true, tends to turn the entire God debate in to a big pile of pointless rubbish. — Jake

Exactly. The idea that existence is a singled-meaning predicate that switches on and off seems very questionable. That kind of crude, binary understanding may even mostly exist because it makes a certain game possible.

Upon seeing this, some people may wash their hands of the God debate and turn their attention to other matters. This seems a reasonable choice. Other people may choose to dump the questionable "exists or not" assumption and then continue a God investigation on that basis. This seems a reasonable choice too. — Jake

Indeed. Hegel and others seem to be in the second category.

Most people will ignore all of the above because they've memorized a collection of beliefs and arguments which they use to publicly inflate their ego, and they don't want this fun game spoiled by some party pooper. Ok, I suppose this is reasonable too, but perhaps not all that interesting. — Jake

Nice. I think you just described quite a few philosophical issues.

Yes, what are these limits and how do they dictate discourse? — Posty McPostface

I know you are a fan of Wittgenstein. What I mean is at least associated with the later Wittgenstein. In short, people assume that they can do 'math' with individual meanings. Look and see the spaces between the words of this sentence. Those spaces can be misleading. They do not indicate a genuine or conclusive gap between plural meanings. Or not as I see it. The fantasy of being able to do conclusive math with words is one of the driving motives (as I see it) of the analytic or atomic approach. If we can snap truths together with the right bricks (meanings), then we better obsess over these little bricks individually. We assume that we should start with the 'atoms' of meaning to build securely. So we need certain atoms to be especially reliable.

But what if meaning is mostly not like that? Everyone will grant context some importance, but (from my perspective) perhaps not enough. Holism starts with the forest to make sense of the trees. It starts with entire personalities and communities. It starts with the mysterious linguistic know-how that we already have. What's scary about it is that we work from a foundation that we don't understand. If we try to understand it, we rely on it as we try to test or justify it. It's a fundamental possession that we can't get behind. This is humiliating to a certain kind of theological project, which is to say the construction of a system of words that somehow justifies itself and answers all questions beyond reasonable doubt, implicitly obliterating the significance of time.

Wittgenstein was a sort of mystical poet. Have you read any of his works? Start with the Tractatus, it's pure enjoyment. — Posty McPostface

I adore Wittgenstein. He's one of my very favorites, and I did have a kind of 'mystical' response to parts of that book. For me the great philosophers are like great music. They enrich existence. But 'enrich' is too tame a word. Great philosophers are like thunderstorms.

Cheap in what way? Grows confused. — Posty McPostface

The same sentence offers itself both to profound and shallow interpretations. And then people who have had profound experiences can 'forget' them without forgetting the words. So they repeat the same words and yet do not really remember. Or they are seduced into pleasing a crowd, seduced by their success into a kind of dogmatism. I think I see this in certain public intellectuals. Having so many people hang on their every word encourages them to pontificate and make too much of their idiosyncrasies.

The limits of my world are the limits of my language. — Posty McPostface

Yeah, that's a very suggestive line. We might also say that the limits of my experience are the limits of what I can mean --and, more troubling, what I can understand. In my view, we have to be someone to understand them. But the human imagination is powerful. So the right words can allow us to be them sufficiently to have a breakthrough. Hence the massive importance of the poet. And I think the great philosophers are poets. They paint the intellectual version of the spiritual hero. Like, what did Kant love? What was his image of virtue, and how did that affect his image of precritical metaphysics? Did he find that kind of approach to be clever shallowness? I think Wittgenstein at least experienced a sense of clever shallowness and that he was irritable about it, irritable enough to revolutionize philosophy.

Go on... — Posty McPostface

Well other philosophers talk about living one's own death. I think of it as the continual incremental death of the small self. Now it's very easy for this all to become evangelic and systematic. That obscene possibility haunts it from its origins. Everything can become cheap.

More pieces of wisdom — Posty McPostface

I hope they are pieces of wisdom. One man's meat is another man's poison. I'm often ambivalent about sharing. In some moods I find a great joy in it. In other moods, I want to get back on the other side of the wall and keep my own counsel. Like Francis Wolcott, 'I don't want you to...have seen me.'

In the meantime tell me if you agree with Schopenhauer? — Posty McPostface

About irritability, yes. But I can only speak from experience. This was also written about in Steppenwolf, a great novel. I'd say that there is a certain violence in spirituality. 'Our God is a consuming fire.' Metaphors, passwords, secret handshakes.

The epistemic closure comes to my mind. Can it ever be attained? — Posty McPostface

I doubt it, but we don't really need it in its general form. What humans really crave and indeed find at least for stretches is certainty enough about their positions in life. Like trusting a spouse or a friend. Like feeling at home in one's career (until maybe you or it changes.) Or feeling at home in one's fundamental grasp of the world (that things make sense and are justified.) Basically closure is more of a feeling and way of acting than a theoretical entity. Yeah, we can theorize about it in the abstract, but that usually means we already experience it where it counts. That's why we can simply play with concepts, because life isn't currently tearing us to pieces and we aren't suffering real doubt (identity crisis.)

What do you mean by that? — Posty McPostface

For instance, I was raised in a 'red' state with a 'red' perspective on the world. But over the years I moved more and more away from that, which means that I became less and less intelligible to the people I first knew as a child. Now I know mostly 'blue' people. But I still feel a distance from them and a desire to not live in a bubble. I feel drawn to the 'crack' where complexity gets in. There's a self-mutilation in openess and self-criticism, but it's also the source of intense joy, a real sense of transcendence. It's like going beyond the wall to enjoy the open space where one can unfold oneself, nevermind the whitewalkers. And maybe every philosopher (in Nietzsche's sense and mine too really) is a bit of a whitewalker --at the very least a wildling who feels cooped-up in finished systems --and a little grossed out by a room full of people who know that they are right and the others are wrong.

What about sincerity? — Posty McPostface

Sure, I think that's in the mix too. Basically the point of a friendship is largely that one can finally be sincere in a world of prudent faking. And by faking, I don't mean lying necessarily. I mean keeping one's counsel, swallowing one's objections for various reasons. A large reason is that they would not be understood in the right spirit, so that the desired relief would not result from the failed attempt at disclosure.

So, why so much disagreement about various issues? Is this just moral relativism stated another way? — Posty McPostface

Have you ever looked into artificial neural networks? I'll use them as a metaphor. Different 'souls' are trained on different datasets (experiences.) We adapt to the world as it has shown itself to us. But the world shows itself differently to different people. By the time we learn to question what we think, we're already starting from very different perspectives. In a way, the idea that questioning what we think is virtuous is a technology for bringing us together. One understanding of being reasonable would associate it with openness and curiosity.

But philosophy is always (OK, often) rebellious in some sense. It's easier to hide behind a flag or a bumper sticker with a warm mob. What is it that lures or drives some humans to think 'away' from their 'initial' mob or initial community more than others ? Probably lots of things. Some philosophers have said 'irritability.' Others have talked about really facing one's mortality. I think there's a connection to religion, where Truth serves as a substitute for God. A larger more universal (or more noble or more beautiful) and ultimately future community is identified with. 'Some are born posthumously. '

But, how do you reach Rogerian agreements between such opposing views as supremacism or such matters? — Posty McPostface

I do think there are limits. As I mentioned, we have to start with a minimum of affection, respect, and curiosity. A very strong or open spirit can feel its way into darker positions than most, but that's about it. Ultimately I think life is a mystery. And everything I say I can only say from my own experience, trusting but not quite sure that it will be intelligible or useful for others.

Then what job does a philosopher have? A questioner of truth? — Posty McPostface

What if philosophy is something like the essence of being human? Or one of the highest modes of human existence? I think it is or at least can be.

I'm asking whether there is any merit to philosophical quietism? Or must we be loud and rambunctious about the issue of God, life, ethics, and so on? — Posty McPostface

I'd say look to the difference between a talk between friends and a kind of evangelism that insists it has THE truth. Some of the best and most deeply joyful conversations involve really connecting with someone on the grand and terrible issues of what life and death are all about. In these conversations we speak for ourselves from our own experiences. We try to meet in the middle (understanding one another) because there is already affection, respect, and curiosity. We are open. We don't just want to send or convert. And while we do hope for some amount of mirroring, we also hope to be surprised and learn.

I would phrase this in terms of the limits of the analytic approach. These things are understood globally, not locally. What Billy means by 'God' or 'truth' is a function of Billy's entire personality. If you want to know what Billy means, you have to listen to Billy as a whole. You have to 'become' Billy via empathy and learning the language of Billy.

As far as epistemology relates to these matters, the situation is similar. A person can try with limited success to formalize their epistemological way of being. But much of what is going on is 'behind' any particular sentence. This connects to your post on attitudes. 'Attitude' points at a global approach or a fundamental grasping of existence in a certain way. This fundamental grasping is not the sort of thing that can be squeezed into a few sentences (or, if so, only with great talent via an apt metaphor.)And this strong metaphor as metaphor doesn't give itself way cheaply. It requires interpretation.

We might say that an atomic approach (a low level epistemology that analyzes single words) toward God, ethics, aesthetics, etc. attempts to make this approach easier by making it impersonal and algorithmic. In some ways it offers individuals a way to hide from the depth of the questions behind some inherited and unquestioned method. Lots of public intellectuals fill their fans with a sense of their supreme 'rationality.' And yet this concept of rationality is often shallow and has not been subjected to criticism. So we end up with a 'rational' mob.

Final thought: there can be and already is lots of great writing on God, ethics, aesthetics (the 'hard' and 'holy' stuff.) Perhaps the only problem is assuming a particular argumentative approach toward these matters. Why should they be approached quasi-scientifically? Why should we focus on whether they are true as opposed to how they are true in context? What about 'Nothing human is alien to me' ? Approaching in this way, the point is not to prove or disprove but to understand so that one's existence is enriched and one's world is widened.

Any advice appreciated. — Posty McPostface

I'd say go for it, too, but I think it's hard to predict how you will feel about it. When the instructor is bad, he or she just wants you to see the world as they do, and you will be graded to some degree by how much you conform. And these grades convert the whole enterprise into a kind of business. There is a strong temptation to just push the right buttons and keep one's real thinking private. Good teachers may welcome this real thinking, but (in my experience) the student is largely conceived as a vessel to be stuffed with a predetermined set of opinions and skills.

University cannot be a place of free discussion when it's expensive, when funding is connected to grades (winning scholarships, etc. ), and when a teacher ultimately gets to grade papers according to their own standards. In some ways instructors are like employers. They 'pay' you with grades if you figure out how to make them happy. If you feel genuine respect for them, this isn't a problem. But sometimes they will lack charisma, and then you will feel that you are feigning respect and grudgingly conforming in a way that betrays your idealistic notions of philosophy. (I'm still loyal to a 'spiritual' or 'high' notion of philosophy myself, so I was often frustrated by a sense that my thinking was neither required nor even welcome. Despite the context of fine talk about 'critical thinking,' the 'machine' is designed to sell certification for both money and conformity. Ideally it sells some other nice things too, but it's not clear that these aren't best pursued individually in a more authentic context. I will say that academia is itself a kind of important life experience.

TL;DR
Give it a try, but it's hard to speak for the decisions of the future you to continue or not.

Yes, though not all traditional approaches. Both had various heroes within the tradition.

From my own perspective, this is misguidedness-in-retrospect relative to personal 'spiritual' goals. Re-approaching discussion with a holistic conception reveals lots of discussion as irrelevant, confused, or both. Again, in the light of making sense of life or existence as a whole, which includes making sense of others' sense-making, in order to be a better person as a whole.

Discussions are revealed as irrelevant when they are revealed as arguments about difference that make no living difference. Grammar preferences, attachment to this or that particular favored use of a word. This is a perspective that obsesses over the 'trees,' ignoring the forest. For me philosophy is an extreme form of thinking in terms of the forest. It attempts to grasp existence as a whole. But in its obsession with a kind of scientific certainty, it needs language to behave like math, like a set of atomic meanings with which one can prove things. The real is understood as the output of an argument machine, which spits it out in little truth nuggets. Even the highest human capacities (religion, art, science in its roots) are understood 'mechanically,' and not in their living connectedness. And yet this living connectedness is our basic experience in non-theoretical life. So the atomic approach is an inherited pose which is applied uncritically.

The confusion is not really separate from the irrelevance. If we stubborn expect words to correspond to fixed, independent meanings, then again and again one philosopher will recontextualize the words of another so that the first philosopher's system breaks down. Concepts are ripped out of the fullness of the concept system in a particular way for a particular purpose, and this never exhausts their meaning. When the argument machine outputs little atomic truths, it has to do so in terms of fragile, stipulative, idiosyncratic narrowings of use. When the naked result is brought back to the tribe, it released back into the wild. Divorced from the 'computation' that engendered them and the idiosyncratic understanding of the terms involved, the theses are merely suggestive meaning-sludge.

At its worst, philosophy becomes a mere sport (clever, small -hearted verbal combat.) A great example is common on youtube. '[Public Intellectual] DESTROYS [Cardboard villain type.]' The intention is not to include and perhaps transcend the other (a mirroring that extends) but rather to vanquish and resist the other, which is to say a willful ignorance of what the other may be 'on to,' albiet in terms that violate the listener's grammar preferences. In short, an obsession with the 'right' terminology to the neglect of 'feeling one's way into' another's 'global' perspective looks almost like the opposite of philosophy as a sincere quest for understanding and wisdom.

You'd have to explain the different ways that you think that people are using "exist" in more detail, without just trying to contextually hint at it without spelling it out. — Terrapin Station

We need only look to the OP. Is there a subconscious? Does a subconscious exist? How this entity is supposed to exist is the crucial factor. If someone thinks that thoughts exist consciously (adverb on exist), then they might answer no. Ontology, epistemology, and identity are all entangled in the same field of meaning. I mention identity because epistemological frameworks are held self-consciously. People identify with science, logic, hermeneutic ontology, anti-foundationism, various religions, mysticism, skepticism. They don't enter stage right with no method at all either. And they persuade and are persuaded not only in terms of their conscious method (argument versus explorative discussion vs etc.) but also by presenting/perceiving possible ways of being (new self-conceptions.) From one perspective this might seem like a digression, but from a holistic perspective it's an attempt to put the 'tree' in the context of the 'forest.'

One cannot have the game without the board and the pieces. One cannot have epistemological language-games without there being first something foundational, and I believe that our background reality gives us such a foundation. — Sam26

Yes. I've heard different phrases for this 'background,' but the most important thing IMV is to just become aware of it. It recedes. It's so close that we overlook it.

Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us.

I agree, and this seems related to a particular interpretation of what it means for something to be.

It may be that it's difficult to say what being is, but that is no relief from a duty to try to say what it means...Think about all the nonsense, pseudo-philosophy, pseudo-metaphysics that goes on about topics in which the being of the topic has neither been established nor defined, nor in many cases even made explicit. — tim wood

Indeed. And maybe it can't be defined, but that recognizing the difficultly is itself a protection against pseudo-philosophy and its artificial/shallow problems. Of course talk about being can itself degenerate into a tedious language game.

Reason arises out of the language of reason, we reason from one proposition to another, that's what we do in logic. However, as I've already stated, there are beliefs that have nothing to do with the language of reason. These beliefs are shown in our actions, they have nothing to do with the logic of reason. We show these beliefs everyday in our actions. I open a door, I sit in a chair, I pick things up, all of these actions show certain fundamental beliefs. I don't justify them, no more than I need to justify my belief that I'm sitting at my computer typing, again, they are part of the background of our reality. I believe that being or the thing that is fundamental to reality itself, I refer to as consciousness, is such a foundational or fundamental thing. — Sam26

Right. The understanding of being an ego or a self is a kind of 'blurry' given. We know how to use words like 'I' and 'mind' in particular contexts. But this tempts philosophers to treat them like devices with a fixed nature about which we can be 'scientific.'

And then lots of to-me-silly philosophy (like insincere, radical skepticism) depends on the receding background without realizing it, lost as it is in a sort of mechanical play with concepts divorced from use. The LCD of Wittgenstein and Heidegger seems to be a critique of traditional approaches that are fundamentally misguided if the intent is to make sense of the human situation.

Note that your attempt to define 'exist' was basically a list of synonyms. I don't blame you for this. It's natural. I would probably do the same if asked for a general definition of existence. But of course I would also object to the relative uselessness of a general definition. I would retort that a better request would be that I interpret a particular use of 'exist.' Then I would do my best to paraphrase this particular use and finish with a reminder that meaning is distributed rather than localized. My paraphrase would really be no less 'mysterious' or 'atomizable' than the original use, but it might gel better in the context of the listener's personality.

As to a ground in ultimate value as desire, overlooked is the possibility of good as a matter of reason. If you want to base reason in desire, I suppose you can, but it's not very useful, and is destructive of what is useful. — tim wood

Note however that you critique my approach in terms of utility (the useful.) As I read you, my approach is possible but not useful and therefore not good. What is utility if not another word for giving us what we want? A free floating reason would be like a calculator with nothing worth calculating. Why would we bother to prove or criticize if the proved or criticized thesis wasn't promising or threatening?

In short, I think people mean all kinds of things by the word 'exists' in different contexts. IMO, treating words as if they refer to clear and distinct meanings independent of context is fundamentally misguided and leads to 'artificial' problems that disguise grammar preferences as a kind of super-science. This is not to say that analysis isn't sometimes worth the candle. For me, though, what I call meaning holism is a useful suspicion that helps us avoid 'artificial' problems and uncharitable misreadings of others' communicative intentions.

EXAMPLES

Does she love me? (Does love exist in her 'heart' for me?)

Am I talented at painting/music/etc? (Does real quality exist in my work?)

Do you get me? ('Does the meaning in my 'head' also exist in yours')

There is a God. (Is this really a statement about an object for physicists? I don't know exactly what theists mean. Some of them might not themselves. But I think they mostly don't mean what some of their critics take them to mean.)

The correspondence theory of truth is true. (This has some weird problems. How does this theory exist? And to what does it itself correspond that is mind-independent?)

I don't think that's anything complicated. Exists=obtains, occurs, is instantiated, etc.--whatever synonym we want to use. — Terrapin Station

I think the meaning of these synonyms will themselves depend on context, starting with the context of the sentence and expanding outward to include not only the entire personality of their user but also that of the culture from which they emerged.

To make this more concrete, one typical interpretation of 'exists' means something like exists-for-physics. This is not some neutral position. It grasps the object (the real) with a particular method that does not justify itself.

If the real and the method for grasping it were truly non-controversial, then it would be hard to make sense of the endless parade of -isms in philosophy.

I respect that position, but my natural response is to question what it means for something to exist. My natural answer is that it means all kinds of things in different contexts.

The way I use the terms is simply that "subjective" is mind-dependent, or in other words, we're talking about mental phenomena when we talk about the subjective, and "objective" is mind-independent--we're talking about something that isn't mental phenomena. — Terrapin Station

I generally agree, except that I find that mind-independence and intersubjectivity sort of blur together. Why? For the usual reasons. We can't compare our cognition of the object to the object itself, so we largely edit our understanding of the 'real' versus the 'merely imaginary' by the consequences of our actions (what happens to us physically and socially.) IMV, this is issue is difficult if not impossible to 'clean up,' given 'meaning holism.' We can't hold the meanings of the words we need to use sufficiently fixed. Even if we could, the results of our reasoning are therefore results about stipulated and limited interpretations of words/concepts. As soon as we present our 'results,' they are understood in terms of the usual blurrier use-meanings of the terms.

And then "authoritative"--there, we're probably just talking about a social phenomenon. People who are considered, due to social conventions, biases, and all sorts of things, to be experts more or less. — Terrapin Station

I agree, and I think our nihilistic relativist would agree. Truths are as mortal and untrustworthy as these experts. Some are less mortal and less dubious than others. IMO, this is actually a common view, so that a weak version of nihilistic relativism is the norm. The strong version strikes me as indulgent rhetoric for expressing the weak version. For me this is very common in philosophy: nothing that exciting or revolutionary is being said (or sincerely meant), and yet the expression is spiced up. In some ways this is defensible as good marketing. Exaggeration focuses the attention on what is at stake and urges conversation. But one can become desensitized and impatient for something truly revolutionary (which gets harder and harder to find as one is more and more exposed.)

Great post. As far as the no-brainer, I find that one difficult myself. I hope to respond more after a little thought, but I'm excited about this thread.

So the real issue, which isn't simply a terminological issue, is whether memories always exist just like they do when you're aware of them, — Terrapin Station

In my opinion, that's a tangential issue. I'm trying to point out in general terms what sensible people might have in mind when they talk about the unconscious. The old iceberg metaphor is pretty convincing in my view. The hope is that we get a more predictive and illuminating theory with a wider conception of the object (the mind or soul or psyche.) In Freud there is something like a continuum that runs from the 'psychoid' to classically conscious thoughts. I'm not terribly invested in Freud, and it's been a long time since I've read An Introduction to Psycho-Analysis (one of his last books.) But I would claim to understand why talk about an unconscious seemed useful. I also understand concerns about this concept.

The problem is that things like "objective knowledge," so that the knowledge itself has as one of its properties that it is objective, are really category errors (knowledge, by definition, can't have the property of being objective), so you can't have a "kind-of objectivity" when it comes to something like knowledge. — Terrapin Station

Perhaps you are right under a particular interpretation of the terms involved. I was admittedly using a rougher language. But I'm aiming at a more charitable holistic reading of the issue. I think we should understand the discussion more globally, with a sense of personalities involved.

I think what is often meant by 'objective' is certain and authoritative. The relativistic nihilist is trying (often awkwardly) to communicate a sense that perfectly certain and perfectly authoritative knowledge is impossible. Unfortunately they tend to imply that this perspective itself is a kind of perfectly certain and authoritative knowledge. The problem is the unperceived uselessness of this 'perfectly.' Another problem is the failure to subject their own position to its own kind of criticism. How did they end up with their essentially atheistic and pragmatic view? How do they intend to convince others that nothing is 'really' convincing? While attacking the weaknesses in their language is potentially useful, it's a little too local for my taste. Our more or less developed sense of the forest largely controls our perspective on the trees. I like examining approaches at their fundamental grasp of the situation.

For me it's still about an interpretation of the terms. Most would agree that we are only partially aware of our own psyches. For instance, where do memories come from and disappear to ? I remember 'those are pearls that were his eyes.' That phrase came to me 'randomly' when I decided I needed an example of a 'stored phrase' or 'unconscious thought.' And then, if I remember Freud correctly, he would say that this retrieval was not 'random,' but subject to some kind of law (an assumption that makes a science of association possible.)

It's not even some unique genius of humans. — SophistiCat

That's a good point.I suppose what I had in mind is the linguistic sophistication that goes along cooperation. And I also like the point about conspecifics. War is 'expensive,' and it only makes sense (even from the perspective that assumes an amoral greed) when the reward justifies the risk.

The reason people settle down in their lives is that they have (at least partially) satisfied their thirst for life and are ready to die. The people in whom the desire to live is the strongest is the young, who have yet to have lived the life to its fullest and who still are pursuing their dreams; settling down is nothing but abandoning and giving up on these dreams. — BlueBanana

Great theme. I agree that there can be an increase in the readiness to die, and I think this is related to settling down. One way of thinking of this among others: youth has a in-retrospect-unrealistic fantasy of its novelty, of its difference from what came before. This is a great motivator, as long as youth is self-critical enough to try to shape the real world after this fantasy (to make a mark.) Sometimes this results in universally recognized or at least financially recognized achievement. More often, not much really comes from it. Youth (while it still has time) can start from scratch a few times, each time thinking that the fault has been located and removed.

At some, however, youth is no longer youth. Their is less time between the grave and the present than between birth and the present. The future becomes finite. And then all along the location and removal of these faults involved the mind/spirit/personality becoming more 'universal,' more aware of some 'boring' old-fashioned virtues as being the truly essential. If our youth was talented and chose talented and ambitious friends, then our aging youth is also less liable to mystify/delight said peers with whatever level of achievement attained. And then advancing in this or that realm involves a specialization that closes off real appreciation by non-initiates.

While this sounds lonely, more and more our aging youth does things for the 'right' reason, for their intrinsic value. So they are happy enough to just have the free time and the health to amuse themselves creatively, enjoying of course whatever high-level bonding is available-in-passing, mostly relying on the more primary bonding with spouse, children, pets.

And maybe our aging youth when younger invested in various save-the-world oversimplifications (political or religious or philosophical or artistic, etc.) And discovered that each runs up against both its own blind-spots and the simple different investments of others who vastly outnumber any particular individual, coming to terms with a certain impotence and invisibility in the world. And doing this not as a victim but as the same kind of person as the others.

We become more sophisticated and talented as we age (up to a certain point) by becoming better judges of our relative talent/importance. In order to fulfill grandiose dreams of the self, a dream-subverting knowledge must be assimilated, fulfilling and destroying the dream simultaneously. The readiness to die increases with the consciousness that one is not 'really' tied to the dying body, but rather has existed in a distributed state all along, becoming more and more conscious of it.

You leave out what to me is the most plausible response, which is that the question itself is flawed. It lives back in the time of pre-critical metaphysics, where just because we had word always meant that we had some kind of entity referred to by that word.

And then we can act as if we are launching super-scientific hypotheses about the relationship between these entities. But what do we really mean by 'mind' and 'body' in the first place? Of course we have some rough sense of what we mean, but the problem is that this sense is way too coarse to do any real work with. As others have said, the LCD of 20th century philosophy is an attention paid to language and how that changes philosophy's conception of itself.

Thanks! I've identified with a kind of nihilistic relativism before, so that response was an opportunity to try to give the position its due while reeling in its tendency to paradoxically present itself.