Yet, it won't take long for scientists and non-scientists to realize, in complete understanding of their choices, that science is the one true activity that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. — TheMadFool

In what way does it separate humans from other animals? What objective purpose does it ultimately serve besides helping us guarantee our survival? (which is actually questionable seeing how it can also help us destroy ourselves)

Yes, there's art and music but these are non-rational as far as I can see and so must be on a lower rung of the hierarchy of natures that define a human being. — TheMadFool

What makes rationality the criterion that puts science above art or music?

Do you realize that rationality alone cannot tell you what to do? Rationality alone cannot tell you what goal to pursue. It is your feelings in the first place that give you goals, what you desire, and only then can rationality help you decide how to reach them, what you may do so you can reach them.

There is this widespread view of seeing logic and reason above everything else, without realizing that logic and reason in isolation can help us decide nothing.

So then what gives science a special status above art or music?

These were more rhetorical questions rather than a personal attack, I only phrased them that way to provoke thought. Probably many german people back then didn't see anything wrong with concentration camps. What might we see as the concentration camps of today's society, infrastructures and ways of doing things that lead many people to suffer but that we see as normal?

Humans tend not to be consciously aware of many of their beliefs. Scientists and professions that rely on science work within a system of beliefs they often are not consciously aware of. They believe they take all factors into account, because they omit to take into account the factors that depend on the truth of their beliefs. They think they are looking at all the factors that could be responsible for why one individual suffers, without looking at what they take for granted or what they see as normal.

In an earlier post you mentioned the reality of being stuck in traffic. That's one example where many people might have come to see it as a normal part of life that one has to adapt to. Like sitting in an office looking at a screen for 9 hours a day doing some repetitive task, while being occasionally pressured by some other individuals who get to decide whether you can keep doing this every day, so that you can get at the end of the month some pieces of paper or some numbers in an account that give you the right to sleep in a place you can temporarily call your own. Taking part in all this is the normal thing to do these days, and not adapting well to it is being mentally sick.

No it doesn't. This is not how assessments work. We take into account all external as well as internal factors that could contribute to a persons dysfunction. — Anaxagoras

If you were a psychiatrist trained in a system where you are taught that concentration camps are normal, and that mentally healthy people are well-adapted to concentration camps, if your career and social status depended on you accepting that concentration camps are normal, would you look at the concentration camp itself as an external factor that could contribute to a person's dysfunction, or would you see the concentration camp as an essential part of reality that the person ought to adapt to? Would you then look for other causes behind the person's dysfunction, such as hypothesized brain defects, and then attempt to treat them by making the person ingest some drugs? If these drugs made the person's behavior appear less dysfunctional in the concentration camp, would you then consider these drugs to be an effective medication to treat the mentally ill?

Doesn't this mean that psychiatrists may not be completely wrong in their outlook that mental illness is a personal issue? — TheMadFool

This is partly the case, but does it mean we should consider that people who can't adapt to being tortured in concentration camps are mentally ill and ought to be medicated so they become well-adapted to the concentration camp? Do we have to be machines that always put into question the individual rather than the system the individual is in, only trying to change the individual and not the system we impose on the individual? That seems like a good road to mayhem.

To that I respond with the simple observation that pscyhotropic medications work and their pharmacology is understood even if it's only basic. — TheMadFool

A lot of things work, exercising, eating healthily, feeling loved, supported, understood, feeling free, feeling having one's own future in one's hands, not feeling threatened, which all could be attained in various ways without having to ingest drugs, but some of it would require rethinking society and education as a whole.

Psychiatry/Psychology does not deal with the metaphysics much when it comes to defining what is real and not real. — Anaxagoras

Sure it does, you just haven't realized it. If your patient sees or hears things that you don't, either you will find an explanation within the range of phenomena that you deem to be real, or you will deem the patient to have delusions that cannot be explained by anything that you deem to be real other than it being some brain disorder. The diagnostic of delusion is based on your own preconceived beliefs (based in great part on your training) about what is real and what is not.

I didn't understand this at all. — Anaxagoras

I know. Do you believe other people feel? Sure you do, it's obvious to you, so much that you don't even see it as a belief but as a fact, as truth. Yet how have you come to the truth that other people feel? You are you and they are them, how would you know what it is like to be them?

Either you imagine what they feel based on what they look like and how they sound like, and you deem it to be real, so you believe that something you imagine is real, which by psychiatry's definitions makes you delusional. Or you believe you have some supernatural sense that allows you to read their minds and know what they feel, that you have telepathy, which psychiatry deems to be not real, which again makes you delusional.

So in any case according to psychiatry, you believing fiercely that other people feel means you suffer from delusions. But psychiatrists won't say that, because they're the ones implicitly deciding what is real and what is not, telling people what to believe and what not to believe, forcing their own world view onto others.

Psychiatry does rest on shaky foundations. For instance the idea that psychiatry knows an absolute distinction between what is real and what is not real, and uses that distinction as a basis to categorize some people as mentally sick people that need to be treated. Without acknowledging that what is deemed to be real is what the majority deems to be real, and that different cultures have different ideas about what is real.

As an example, there is no direct evidence that other people feel, we aren't themselves to know that they feel, all we can say really is that we believe they feel because we feel and because they behave in a way similar to us. Yet someone claiming that he has no reason to believe other people feel anything would be quick to be labeled with some mental illness, simply because his distinction between what he considers real and not would not be the same as that of the psychiatrists.

The likelihood of being labelled as mentally sick is correlated with how distant or incompatible your beliefs are with that of psychiatry. A big part of what psychiatry does is pushing one world view and shaping people to adhere to that world view, and it isn't clear that's the best way to make many people feel better. Some people would feel much better simply if they felt loved and supported and understood, than if they were told there is something wrong in their brain and they need to take some drug regularly to mask the disease.

If it's true, then what does it mean that we are bothered by it? Wouldn't our desire for something beyond all of that ultimately be some masked version of the same 'will-to-survive' that it finds so offensive as a foundation? — old

I think one of the traits we have in our survival toolset is not wanting to pursue pointless endeavors, yet once we find life as a whole to be ultimately pointless we enter a deep conflict between our will to survive and our will not to pursue life, and that's what bothers us and that we see as absurd.

I don't know what it is we are looking for beyond all that, maybe it is just another survival tool, that keeps us living and wondering and reproducing, then hoping that our children might find the answers, themselves then hoping that their children will find the answers, and so on endlessly.

In the unknown anything is possible, so we think maybe there is something we cannot comprehend yet that lies in the unknown and that we have yet to discover, that would somehow give meaning to all that. I don't know what I am looking for beyond, I think really it is just the hope that there is something there that would save me. Which as you say could still be interpreted as another instance of me trying to survive, but the hope is that what I would find, how it would make me feel, would make me not care.

The people who believe in an afterlife are not faced with the absurdity, since they see their life as a step towards something greater. I want to believe there is something more after death, but I can't get myself to believe it without seeing any sign here in my life. And me reacting that way is probably yet another trait in my survival toolset, not to believe in something without seeing evidence first.

Life is very much different depending on what we believe. I think I could ponder these questions forever and still be as lost in the end. I am really lost, and afraid about a lot of things. I want to live, but I live in fear. When we feel good we don't look for meaning, we've already found it. It is when we stop feeling that absurdity appears and meaning is nowhere to be found.

A few times in my life I have felt connected with something beyond. Once the feeling passes it remains as a distant memory, it seems like it was a delusion, but on the moment it is as real as anything else we deem to be real, yet it cannot be communicated in a way others can comprehend since it is so different from what we are used to experience. Some will interpret it as a psychotic episode, others as a true connection to the beyond. But we can never really be sure. Maybe the only way to access it is to somehow let go of our fears and certainties. Or maybe it is yet another survival tool that shows up to save us as a last resort. I want to know for sure, but maybe that's what prevents me from feeling it again.

Interesting, indeed continually trying to find the best way to perdure might keep us busy forever. That includes finding ways to keep wanting to perdure. Although it's hard to say if some activity that we judge to be useful now might not turn out to be catastrophic much later through its consequences. Some people will believe they know the best way and will try to impose it on others, who might think differently, and then they will fight, and it's not necessarily the most useful beliefs that will perdure but those for which people fight the hardest. Competitive evolution will select the beliefs that people fight for the most and share in great number, even if these beliefs eventually prevent us to defend ourselves from some existential threat.

It's not necessarily the beliefs that would allow us to survive beyond the death of the Sun that would allow us to survive on the short term. With a common goal given as the meaning of life, if people disagree on how to reach it they will fight to death. It all seems to be an intractable problem.

For instance we all want to survive (else we would have killed ourselves already), and yet we wage wars, we can't even agree on the fact that we would all be better off if we cared for each other instead of fighting each other. Many people feel better when they prove to themselves they are better or stronger than others, not when they help others. So we're stuck in this pointless competition for survival, and it's not clear our species will even make it past the next 1000 years, except maybe for a tiny minority. I surely don't think we are smart enough as a whole to prevent the collapse of civilization. Some people will spend their lives looking for solutions though, good for them I suppose, it seems useless when most people don't want to listen and don't care about anything but themselves, they are probably the ones who will get to decide the fate of humanity through their sheer number.

The notion that science is useful, makes it better in some value or axiological sense. I welcome any ideas relating to that theme. The very use of its products speaks for itself, despite what comes out of the mind. But is there something missing here from its supremacy by pragmatic default? — schopenhauer1

There are regularities within experience, or at least apparent, temporary ones, I suppose in a world without regularities we couldn't exist. Science's job is to uncover these regularities, then by making use of these apparent regularities we are able to manipulate our environment in a predictable way, which is technology. These regularities could be expressed in various ways, our culture has chosen to do it through its language of mathematics.

Scientists feel a sense of superiority or meaning because they believe they are able to see the world beyond our senses, that through their activities they gain access to the 'beyond'. But in effect what they actually do is imagine a world where the regularities they describe hold (such as a world of particles, or a world of probability-waves, or a world of energy, or a world of strings), and yet an arbitrarily large number of possible worlds can be imagined that fit a finite number of regularities. So they are not actually gaining any access to the 'beyond', they simply choose to fixate on one world which they imagine that can be made to fit with the regularities of experience and that suits their personal preferences, out of an infinity of possibilities, and then use the world they have imagined to tell people what they are made of, where they come from, where they are going, without realizing that if they had picked another world the answers would be very different.

As a basic example, light, as an entity that travels at a given speed and behaves in a specific way, is a product of the imagination and not something that we actually experience. We never see light traveling, what we see are colors, what we do is describe the way these colors change relative to each other through imagining a world in which an entity we call light travels from the things to our eyes. But the same regularities could be described without invoking the existence of an entity actually traveling between these things and our eyes.

So if scientists do not uncover anything about the 'beyond', about what exists beyond our senses, they simply uncover ways to predict to some extent what we will observe with our senses, and then essentially all they are doing is predicting the future to some extent, which is a useful survival tool, but such is also the belief in a greater power, or altruism, or exercising.

They feel they are participating in something more important by believing they gain access to the beyond, like the people who believe they gain access to an afterlife by worshipping some deity. Belief makes us see what we want to see.

We can see wonderful things within imagination, some believe they are traveling to other worlds or dimensions with it. But what do they ever bring back from it? Motivation, ideas, but they're still bound by the same constraints as everyone else, as if we couldn't ever really escape this place without death.

What kind of evidence are you looking for? — Possibility

Evidence that we are not just biological machines driven by feelings that have been selected through evolution as a survival aid, evidence that there is a point in spending great efforts in understanding the world other than it being an instance of us being survival machines that attempt to understand so we can predict better and increase our chances of survival, evidence that there is a point in exploring the universe other than it being another instance of us being survival machines attempting to spread as much as we can like an invasive species, evidence that helping others feels good not just because evolution selected it as a trait that made our species survive, evidence that love isn't just another meaningless drive whose only purpose is to make us reproduce and preserve one another, evidence that there is more to existence than just it being one big survival game until we die, that we aren't just puppets controlled by our feelings whose only purpose is to keep us alive until we die.

Well, yes and no. My main point there is that helping people is not the end in itself. Helping people so they can then pursue other goals outside of helping other people would make more sense. However, I broadened the idea a little and said even the other goals outside of helping other people are absurd as well. All human activities are absurd. It's built into our existence. The whole point of surviving, comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking that is. — schopenhauer1

Yes, but what makes the other goals absurd? Behind every goal there is a feeling, a desire at the source that gives rise to the goal in the first place, the desire gives the meaning to the act. Helping people or looking for more comfort in itself is not absurd, it is only when these activities are put in relation with the fact that all they serve is to increase our chances of survival, and with the fact that the end result of all of this is to not survive anyway, that the whole of existence becomes absurd, as it is all one big effort to guarantee our survival and yet die in the end anyway.

What do you think it means to ‘survive better’? — Possibility

By survive better I mean simply to have one's survival more guaranteed. For instance those who have to hunt for food every day and who can't cure their diseases have their survival less guaranteed than those who have plenty of food available and who have the tools to heal themselves.

To live is not only to survive, yet it seems that you equate the two, as if there were nothing else to the act of living except not dying. — Possibility

I didn't use to equate the two, but I've come to equate them when it seems that all the activities we do are driven by feelings which we have because they serve a survival purpose, or which served a survival purpose for our ancestors in making their survival more guaranteed than if they weren't there.

The human organism was never designed to survive on its own. It has instead evolved to make maximum utility of awareness/interaction/relationship with everything in the universe - including itself, its history and its future - as a fundamental requirement of its survival, let alone its ability to achieve anything beyond that. — Possibility

Yes, survival involves one's interaction with the environment, involves understanding the environment and making use of it, involves learning lessons from the past and attempting to predict the future, they're all activities that serve to increase the likelihood of one's survival. It is as if we spent our lives attempting to guarantee our survival as best we can, all to die in the end anyway.

We don't help people because we think it is going to help them survive, we help them because there is a feeling that pushes us to help them, but the sole role that this feeling serves is to help these people survive, which helps you survive when others are the ones helping you. What evidence is there that this feeling serves any other purpose?

Helping people is an apt example. Let us say that we believed helping people is the highest good we can do. To that end, everyone in the world decided to maximize as much time helping other people as possible. Life itself would be absurd for the individual. Helping people for simply the sake of helping people, in itself makes no sense as it NEGATES the very reason for helping people. The very reason for helping people is not so they can then help other people at all times, and those people help other people at all times, etc. but rather so that the people being helped can then enjoy their individual pursuits and goals (whatever that may be). Simply helping people is not the full story of the ethical value of helping people, rather it is helping people, so that they can pursue other stuff, otherwise it is an absurdity of simply helping, so others help, so others help, etc.

However, circling back to the completion idea, the other goals and desires and pursuits (other than helping people.. the individual ends and goals people have of all varieties) are also absurd. — schopenhauer1

Yes you understand. The drive to help people seems just like another survival tool we are equipped with, it doesn't necessarily help directly the one helping survive but it does benefit those who are being helped, who can then engage in activities that would help themselves or the tribe survive. If we had zero drive to help others, we wouldn't be helped and we wouldn't survive as well.

In the end everything seems about survival. Only to die in the end anyway, and that's the absurdity.

I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook. — Wayfarer

I can see how that would be true, but isn't the reason essentially that those people are faced with the conflict between their will to live (that underlies everything they do) and the inevitability of death, and that their way out of this conflict is to convince themselves that they will keep on living after death?

I am willing to entertain the idea that death is not the end of the road, but I need a sign to believe it, and I can't when all the signs point to the contrary, when everything is as if we were biological machines driven by feelings and beliefs whose sole reason for existing is that they allow us to survive, while those who have feelings and beliefs detrimental to their survival die early and don't reproduce.

Yes and no, is my answer. Yes because we have instincts, same as animals. No, because we sometimes focus on pleasure instead of survival. Is riding on that roller coaster good for you? No, it decreases you chances of survival or yes, it feels amazing and I want to go on it again. Get the drift? — OpinionsMatter

I would argue that looking for thrill is another example of a feeling that has helped the species survive. While taking risks seems detrimental to survival on the surface, it allows to obtain things that couldn't be obtained without taking risks, which could have been a matter of life and death for our ancestors when they had to choose between chasing a dangerous wild animal to eat or die of hunger, or traveling across dangerous places to find resources. Without the excitment of facing danger and pushing one's limits and the thrill of triumph, those ancestors would have been less able to survive.

I can't point to one single feeling shared by most people that is only detrimental to survival. Is that a cosmic coincidence, or is it simply that we have the feelings we have because they helped our ancestors survive? Why do we want to avoid pain? Because those who enjoyed it didn't last long.

Secondly, even if we were to assume all our feelings were forged out of necessity to survive, that wouldn't invalidate them as feelings. The actual feelings and motivations of people are still real experiences. There is no justification to treat this as mere charade or illusion. — Echarmion

I agree, but if we are biological machines driven by feelings whose sole reason for being there is that they were shaped through evolution so we can survive, then existence is nothing more than a constant struggle against death only to die at the end anyway, which seems to go against one of our survival instincts that tells us not to pursue pointless endeavors. And when this latter instinct is stronger than the other ones people who have it remove themselves from the gene pool, ensuring that over time there mostly remain people who don't mind much pursuing pointless endeavors, or who are able to convince themselves that they are immortal and that death is a new beginning, or who simply don't think about it all.

I agree that our basic survival requirements are usually met, but it seems that once they are met we engage in activities to guarantee our future survival as much as we can. We look for cures to diseases. We try to amass resources. We compete to be better than others. We build tools that make what we do easier. We look for immortality through worshipping a deity and believing in an afterlife. There is very little we do that doesn't seem related to survival or guaranteeing our future survival as best we can, including convincing ourselves of life after death.

There are a lot of references to the themes of immortality and eternity in Keats' poem, eternal love, truth. What is truth if not something that we deem to be eternal and cling on amidst the chaos and unpredictability of existence?

For as far as I remember I've had the drive to understand the world. I used to think that there was some great answer I would find, something greater than us all. Did I have the intuition that there was something, or was it simply an instinctive drive that kept me living and doing? But I found nothing, it was a mirage. There is no truth to be found in fundamental science, only ways to predict the future to some extent, and use that ability to build technology which is nothing more than manipulating our environment in a predictable way.

I've had the drive to help people, to change the world, but is that anything more than another instinct that was driving me? I kept myself going by telling myself that in the unknown anything is possible, but if what drives us is nothing more than survival instincts then where is the unknown? If all I'm doing here is desperately trying to find a reason to keep on living, is that anything more than my survival instincts trying to keep me alive, with no greater meaning other than the fact that if my ancestors didn't have that instinct I wouldn't be here today, and that those who don't have that instinct don't get to live long and reproduce?

It is as if there was no meaning to everything we feel other than the fact it has been helpful for us to survive, as if feelings and beliefs were just another traits selected through competitive evolution, with only those who have feelings and beliefs useful for survival who get to live and reproduce, and all the others who get to die. I guess there is a reason most people don't think too much, because when they do it doesn't tend to end well for them.

I agree to a point, we spend our lives fighting to live, fighting against death, it takes effort to survive and guarantee our survival as best we can. I suppose we could have peace in a utopian world where we all cared about each other and where we wouldn't reproduce too much so that there remains enough resources for everyone. But most of us are driven by an urge to have descendants, as a way to have a part of us that keeps on living after we die, and there is competition in finding a member of the opposite sex who agrees to have children with us. Men will fight to have the woman they want, they will compete with one another, and I don't see how that could ever change. They are fighting against death in a way, fighting against the death of their genes.

And besides, we fight against other forms of life who too want to live, we kill them and eat them. What we may see as peace from our side might be a nightmare from their side.

I would say going to work is done for survival, as it is done to get money which allows to then easily get food and shelter and tools helpful to survive. When we do not work for basic survival, we spend our time on other activities. Some try to become the best at something, whence that desire to become better than others? Isn't that a desire that has evolved because it helped our ancestors survive? Some spend their time trying to be attractive to the opposite sex, or trying to be admired, or trying to understand the world, which are objectives that once attained are beneficial to survival or to that of one's offspring. They may not be necessary for survival in society today, but they are helpful, and were even more so for our ancestors.

Or in our free time we may read a book or watch a movie, which might make us reflect on the world or on ourselves, or make us imagine ourselves as the hero of some adventure where in the end we get to be admired or get to kill what was a threat to survival. We find it entertaining when we grow, when we overcome a challenge, when we become better, when we gain the confidence that we are better able to face whatever threat may appear.

It feels good to have friends, but why does it feel good? Isn't that simply because we know we can count on them if we need help? Then sometimes faced with a difficulty we find out that most of those people don't come to our rescue when we are in need, but the few who do come we call 'real' friends, and we end up caring less about maintaining relationships with those who aren't there for us when we need them.

As to Brenton Tarrant, it seems clear from his manifesto that he is one of those people who see immigrants as a threat to the white race, which he is a part of.

As to Van Gogh's Starry Night, it is said that Van Gogh associated the night sky with the afterlife. He said, "It would be so simple and would account so much for the terrible things in life, which now amaze and wound us so, if life had yet another hemisphere, invisible it is true, but where one lands when one dies. Hope is in the stars".

But there are clearly things like art that have no discernable value for the survival of the species. — Echarmion

Art is used to communicate things to others that can't be easily communicated through speech, things one may have noticed or understood about the world, that others can then see and reflect on.

But those aren't their actual motivations. Those are your interpretations. Someone who studies philosophy for the love of wisdom does not do so merely to survive. — Echarmion

Indeed, they aren't doing it consciously for survival, they are doing it for the feeling it brings them, what I am saying is that it seems the feeling is there in the first place because the feeling is helpful to survive. The love of wisdom is the desire to understand things, but where does that desire come from if not from the fact that the desire to understand helps us survive through its effects?

"Eugene M. McCarthy (no known relation) is a pseudo-evolutionary crackpot biologist famous for his completely ridiculous crackpot idea that “humans evolved after a female chimpanzee mated with a pig”
...
"More recently, McCarthy has expanded on his hypothesis and claimed that humans have hybridized with chickens*, dogs, apes, goats, cows, and turtles. His “evidence” is based on mythological accounts (satyrs are evidence of goat-human hybrids, for instance), and imaginative interpretations of stories of women who had grossly deformed stillborn babies with peculiarly warped features.

Diagnosis: Another fine example of pure pseudoscience: Formulate a hypothesis that superficially fits certain pieces of data you’d like to fit together, ignore the vast amount of contradicting evidence, never test it, and maintain it with dogmatic rigor no matter what falsifying evidence might come your way. One might be inclined to believe that McCarthy is also completely harmless, but his work – given the media exposure – has been actively used to try to undermine the legitimacy of real science, so whatever influence he has is certainly not benign." — Baden

Is that supposed to be a disproof of the theory? A blog post written by an anonymous individual, who finds the idea ridiculous, and who lies about what McCarthy has actually said?

As an example McCarthy doesn't claim that humans have hybridized with such animals, but that it is possible, which is a scientific claim, while claiming that it is impossible is not.

History is full of strange ideas that were ridiculed and rejected only to become mainstream later on, but hey surely we have learnt from history and we won't make the mistake again, if the idea sounds ridiculous and goes against the mainstream then surely it must be false, because the majority of scientists can't ever be wrong again.

When you look at the life of people who have done atrocities to others, there is always a story. The guy who killed a bunch of people in Christchurch felt they were a threat to the white race, to him and the people he deems to be like him. The mexican dude who cut a bunch of women into pieces saw them as monsters because of what he experienced as a kid. Hitler thought the jews were going to lead to the extinction of the species and that he was saving the world.

I don't know about people who wake up to kill for fun, I'm sure there's probably always a story behind, but even if there wasn't these people wouldn't tend to reproduce or live long and so they remain a tiny minority. Those who tend to survive and reproduce are those who spend their lives trying to be the best able to survive, and so we spend our whole lives doing just that, and then we die.

Some people also risk or sacrifice their own survival for what they describe as a ‘greater cause’ or ‘something larger than themselves’. — Possibility

Is there any example where that greater cause isn't aimed at making others survive better? Some women fight for women's rights so they can survive better. People with specific characteristics fight so other people with similar characteristics can have a better life, survive better. They sacrifice their own survival so others they deem to be like them can survive better.

People who in their lives felt helped emotionally by their dog or cat will tend to fight for animal welfare, as if they wanted to help survive what helped them survive.

Some people argue for multiculturalism based on reasoning such as ‘diversity makes the species stronger’, but deep down they want multiculturalism because it ‘feels right’ or because the alternative seems destructive, hateful or even fearful. — Possibility

But where does that 'right' feel come from? Isn't it simply that those who feel that way believe that they would survive better in a society where they wouldn't be ostracized or rejected for being different or having unconventional beliefs?

Some people decide to share their life or dedicate it to others, not for procreative or even pragmatic reasons, but for ‘love’ or something similarly metaphysical. — Possibility

It is the love of a mother for her children that allows them to survive, but what if that feeling of love exists precisely so her children can survive?

Love is seen as that powerful and mysterious thing, but don't people fall in love simply when they see in the other someone who could 'complete' them, when they subconsciously evaluate that the other has abilities or characteristics that would be a good complementary fit to survive better together, or characteristics that would make their children good at surviving?

As to the people who feel unconditional love for all other humans, don't they feel that way simply because they have realized that if we all cared for each other and helped each other we would survive better than if we fought against each other? That fighting violence with violence only creates more violence, and caring for others unconditionally is the only way to make it disappear.

I think there is something ‘beyond survival’ that motivates us in many situations, especially once we have reached an awareness beyond the mere physicality of our existence. — Possibility

I used to see feelings and imagination as proof that we are more than physical beings, than biological machines, but if all our feelings are geared towards survival then what evidence is there of the 'beyond'?

No, that'd be saying to much, even from an evolutionary perspective. That'd be claiming we are perfect survival machines, but we are not. — Echarmion

I agree, what I meant to say was, it seems as if everything we do is geared towards survival in some way, even though sometimes some act that would help us survive in one situation is actually detrimental in some other.

You can certainly put everything in that context. That is, essentially, what evolutionary psychology does. Doing so will provide you with some interesting perspectives on human behavior, for example the connection between altruism and survival. But it's still all based on a context, a perspective that you intentionally set up. You can choose other perspectives. — Echarmion

I actually do not like that perspective, because it renders meaningless everything that had meaning to me, and I tried to get away from it, but what other perspective can we choose? Essentially all we do is spend our lives trying to survive better, we are driven by our feelings but our feelings drive us in that direction.

People dedicate their lives to things whose end result is increasing survival chances for themselves or for those they deem to be like them. Some people will dedicate their lives looking for a cure for some disease, a feeling drives them, but the end result would be that someone they know or the species would survive better. Some will dedicate their lives for their children so their survival can be the most guaranteed possible. Some will dedicate their lives to understand the world, whose end result is being able to predict better to survive better.

Surely we aren't perfect survival machines, but it seems as if everything we do goes towards becoming just that. As if every feeling we have was a tool to help us survive in some way. Many people escape depression or death by believing in a deity which gives them a meaning to keep on living, convincing themselves that they are or can be immortal.

I'm desperately looking for another perspective, but if everything we do is linked to survival, what other perspective there is?

Properties of the tabletop
1. Is not coloured, but rather reflects light of particular wavelengths
2. Size is fixed
3. Shape is fixed
4. Is discrete not continuous, because made of molecules. — Herg

Those would be appearances too, within the range of experiences that we use to call imagination. You visualize that object somehow, but you're still involved in the act of visualization.

I agree that it matters we apply technology responsibly. What I don't agree with is that science gives us the way to apply technology responsibly. Some use science to reach the conclusion that some beings are 'better' than others, and use that understanding to justify doing the worse atrocities to beings seen as below as long as it can improve the well-being of the 'better' ones. Sometimes these 'lower' beings are from other species, sometimes they are from our own. Science gives us technology, but remains moot on how we should behave with each other, on where we should go.

You have the view that science gives an approximation to truth and approaches it ever closer, only working out details over time while keeping the same big picture, and that it is not conventional. But what makes that broad-brush picture somewhat coherent over centuries is not that scientists of each generation evaluate all the available evidence and agree that this broad-brush picture is the only one approximately valid, but that they grew up in a world where they are taught this picture, and are taught to build upon it to work out the details. It's the story we tell each other and tell our children and that they tell to their own children that remains coherent, rather than the story remaining coherent as a sign that we must be approaching truth.

As an example, the available scientific evidence does not show in any way that Earth is not 'fixed in the heavens'. All we can really say if we're being scientifically honest, is that the story where Earth revolves around the Sun is easier to match with the available evidence than the story where Earth is the center of the heavens. You can come up with a story where Earth is fixed at the center and still account for the motions of the celestial bodies in as precise a way as we do now. The two stories cannot be compared scientifically, they are a matter of taste. Those who hold simplicity as a greater ideal want to stick to the first story and that's the one taught in schools, while some with other ideals prefer the second one. Why would simplicity make the first story more 'true' than the second one, what would make subjective simplicity a criterion for truth? It's only a matter of subjective taste.

And sometimes some parts of the broad-brush picture do change drastically. It used to be common scientific wisdom that there are no such things as microscopic germs causing diseases, that there are no such things as tectonic plates moving under the surface of the Earth, that we would never reach the surface of the Moon, that we would age at the same rate no matter our velocity and no matter how close to a celestial body we are, that all things have definite trajectories, now the current scientific wisdom is the opposite, and maybe the one of tomorrow will be something totally different yet again. We have now the common scientific wisdom that we can't see most of the stuff in the universe and that in the far future everything will have disintegrated and all life in the universe will have ceased to exist forever, which has far-reaching implications, but possibly the scientific wisdom in some decades or centuries will be the opposite yet again.

And then there is the fact that current scientific wisdom sees us as meaningless heaps of elementary particles subjected to unchanging cosmic laws, if all people really ascribed to this point of view I think the world would fall into a chaos worse than we have now, into even more widespread nihilism and depression. So for all these reasons I don't think that by pushing a 'scientific understanding of reality' onto people you will get what you really wish for. The picture it gives is not that nice at the moment, and not that true or devoid of conventionality either.

We build weapons to protect ourselves from others or to attack others, because we fear others. Increasing the power and efficacy of these weapons without reducing the fear that gives people the incentive to create them and use them simply brings us closer to destruction. We don't see others as beings like us, we see them as potential threats. We don't attempt to understand what led someone to hurt someone else, out of fear we see the one who hurts as a monster. And then we hurt the monster, and become monsters ourselves in someone else's eyes. But what if there is no such thing as monsters, but only beings who fear and who commit atrocities out of fear? What if if we really attempted to understand others we would learn to see the good in them and the fear on which they act, rather than assuming they are threats we need to attack or defend against? Then maybe the solution is not to be found in science, but in caring about others rather than only about oneself. Then how do you get people to wake up about this, I don't know, maybe it's a matter of caring about others every day until love spreads and wins over fear.

If science is truth, why do scientists contradict each other? If a scientific consensus is truth, why are scientific consensuses of the past contradicted by scientific consensuses of today? And how do you know scientific consensuses of today won't be contradicted by those of tomorrow?

There are big issues with seeing science as providing truth. Scientists identify apparent regularities in our collective experience, then use them to build devices that behave in a regular way to achieve a specific goal. That's the part of what they do that makes people say science works, because it has brought us technology. Another big part of what they do, is making up stories about what happened in the distant past or what will happen in the distant future or what happens on tiny unobservable scales or what happens in conditions with too many intractable variables, we call it science too but what it really is is fantasy storytelling, fiction, remotely connected to the regularities they have identified.

And then if you take one of these stories as truth, and call it the scientific understanding of reality, you're gonna be disturbed when someone else comes with a totally different story that matches the identified regularities just as well.

What I do agree with in your post, is that we would probably be much better off if we focused on what we have in common rather than on our differences. Find what we all have in common then build from that starting point, rather than focusing on the differences and then ensuring that what's different remains separate, under control. People focus on differences because they fear, they fear what's not like them because what's not like them they don't know and they don't understand, they don't want to take the risk, better protect oneself from it or kill it. That's how we get genocides and wars. Now how do you get people to stop fearing each other, that's the hard part.

Inequality is rising but overall everyone is better off. — Judaka

I disagree, many people hate their life, and would give up some of the comfort brought by technology in exchange for more freedom. In fact it is quite sad that after all these technological advancements most people are still slaves. We live in a society fueled by economic growth, to sustain it we have to produce more and consume more, and more and more, endlessly, but resources are not endless.

What I was getting at is that when you do experience the wonderful things you don't see ending your life as a better state of affairs. When you do experience them you want to enjoy them as long as possible before falling into a state of non-existence. And I would say that if you don't see how you're better off by keeping on living then that's because your life is filled with too much suffering and too little joy. When you don't experience these things you don't see what you see when you experience them and what you miss by not living them.

I would have a lot to say on the subject, because it can't be put concisely into words.

You see, you hear, your smell, you touch, you taste, you have a whole bunch of experiences. You notice regularities within some of these experiences, which allow you to predict to some extent what you will experience.

You observe some ball of light rise in the sky, you call it the Sun, you see it happen again and again, you assume it will keep happening, and you write down the law that the Sun rises regularly, that after night comes the day, and after the day comes the night.

Then you may wonder, does the Sun die every time it disappears and is born again every time it rises above the horizon, or is it always there even when you can't see it? If you assume that it is there even when you can't see it, you are constructing in your mind a world where the Sun goes somewhere out of your sight then comes back. You are imagining that world, you are making it up to some extent. How much of the world we live in do we create ourselves?

Science is about creating a world in our minds that is predictable, about imagining underlying regularities to apparent irregularities. You could come up with vastly different imagined worlds that would have the same predictive power.

The imagined world is called a model, a theory. We don't see the particles or waves or strings of the current mainstream theories, we imagine them. A theory makes predictions of future experiences from past experiences. We don't test whether the world imagined through the theory is an accurate representation of our world, we just test whether the theory's predictions are observed.

Some philosophers and scientists look for the fundamental building blocks of 'reality'. But those building blocks are whatever we want them to be, particles, waves, leprechauns, gods, feelings, so long as we imagine them to behave in ways that allow to account for what we experience, to predict what we will experience.

I see the root of existence as change. And science as an activity that attempts to predict future change, through observation and imagination. But I see 'science' as it is practiced today as very narrow-minded, resistant and oppressive to unconventional ideas, for no valid reason, dismissing lines of inquiry without attempting to explore them, having certainty on things that are far from certain, displaying characteristics similar to religions.

You're misunderstanding the entire concept. We have to eat. Some things will have to die in order to fulfill that need. Veganism is the choice to reduce the suffering caused by that need.

Also, if we killed all animals, the ecosystem would go totally out of wack and we'd likely hurt such a great number of plants in the process so as to make the whole thing cause more suffering than just leaving it be.

We can only act on the basis of things we know or can be relatively certain of. We KNOW that animals feel pain. We don't know that plants do, and we have no good evidence to suggest that they might. — NKBJ

The thing is, you can't prove being a vegan causes less suffering, whatever proof you come up with will be based on some untestable belief. Sure most people react more strongly to an animal being killed than a plant, and animals resemble us more than plants, but that's no proof. You don't know how much each being suffers, you just speculate based on your own beliefs and experience of the world. You're just trying to push your untestable beliefs, someone with different untestable beliefs would reach a different conclusion. Your own beliefs lead you to assume that we have no 'good' evidence plants feel pain, pick different beliefs and there's a lot you might interpret as evidence.

What it all boils down to is that seeing animals apparently suffer makes you suffer, but you get no such reaction with plants, so you feel better about yourself by killing only plants, and you want to force others to do the same as you. This way you have of categorizing people as 'vegans' or 'omnis' as if what they eat was their whole defining feature, and attempting to convert the latter into the former.

There is a lot we used to 'know' in the past, and today we 'know' things totally different that have replaced what we used to 'know'. What we 'know' is in great part a product of the shared beliefs of the time we live in. I'm sure there is a lot we 'know' now that will be replaced by something very different in the future.

You believe you cause less suffering by eating only plants, but really you don't know. We just shape the world based on what we believe, maybe we commit atrocities on a daily basis and we don't notice it, because to see them as atrocities we would need to have different beliefs.

Myself I don't enjoy suffering, I don't enjoy seeing others suffer, so the uncertainty about what other beings feel is a bit unsettling. If I really convinced myself that plants do feel it wouldn't take much for me to react as strongly to plants being killed than animals. People who have zero empathy towards animals often simply believe that they feel nothing. If you believe some human is going to kill you, you wouldn't care about his feelings and would probably kill him first if you believed that was the way to save yourself. We have empathy to others as long as we don't see them as a threat, or as long as we see them as being alike to us. But in the end it's really a competition for survival. We pick what we want to live and what we want to kill, and then the world gets shaped accordingly. When I focus on the suffering of others, I find it hard to find any comforting thought in all this, unless one turns to spirituality.

If you believe something is good for the community, and you believe someone acts in a way that goes against this common good, then you may want to make them steer in the 'right' direction, make them understand that they must not act that way. Punishment is a way to force others to go your way, regardless of whether your beliefs were correct. The desire to punish is the desire to be in control. The desire to be punished may be a way to feel relevant, for people whose worst fear is to be ignored or abandoned.

Sometimes we can find logical justifications to why we want such or such thing, someone may want to become a movie star because they want to be admired, or because they want to be like someone they admire. Then we may ask why do they want to be admired? There it's a bit trickier, we could say one wants to be admired because the idea of it makes them feel good, they believe that it will make them feel good, and they want to feel good. Then we may ask why does one want to feel good? But when you feel good you see precisely why you want to feel good, there is no logical justification needed for the feeling itself is the justification. When you experience the feeling of love for something or someone you don't need a logical justification for it, experiencing it justifies itself, it's where you want to be and it makes it all worth it.

One could say depression is precisely the lack of experiencing such feelings. When we feel like shit chronically and believe it's not gonna get any better then we don't see the point in anything. It's not a rational justification that gives meaning to one's life, it's a feeling that is experienced. And by focusing too much on rationality and logic we miss the fact that we are beings who feel. You're looking for a rational justification behind why you want to live, but why would a rational justification suddenly make your life worth living? You have put rationality on a pedestal such that if you find a rational justification then it makes you feel good, but again I would say it's the underlying feeling that gives the justification, rather than merely saying "I want to live because it helps me attain X". X is not a justification unless it is something you want, unless you experience the feeling of wanting it.

So why do you want to live? For everything that you want that living helps you attain. When there are things you want the answer is obvious, when you don't want anything the answer doesn't exist. But you desperately want to live, you said so yourself, so this is telling me that there are things you want out of life, but somehow you've become disconnected from them. Maybe you had dreams when you were a kid, and something killed them, but they're still there buried somewhere and they're what make you want to live. Then the real question becomes how do you reconnect to them. What was your life like, and how did you get to where you are now?

I want to live. It's just incredibly difficult to do so when I don't have a logical justification. — simmerdown

But then, why do you so badly need a logical justification to do something?

You go grocery shopping because you expect to get something you want there. Then what's the logical justification behind wanting something? It's not logic that makes you want something in the first place, and indeed you see that since you want to live but have no logical justification for it. There is no logical justification to wants that are not a result of a logical reasoning but that preceded it.

It is wanting that leads to doing. If you didn't want anything, I could argue you wouldn't do anything, that you wouldn't exist at all. You have a will moving you, going somewhere, seemingly nowhere, but maybe there's a point to it all in the end.

You're entirely ignoring the fact that the total sum of suffering is less if you don't kill animals for food. — NKBJ

If we follow your assumption that the more animals live the more plants die, then if you wanted to reduce the total sum of suffering over time you could kill all animals once and for all. Why don't you do that? Being a vegan makes little difference.

We can locate where in the brain pain is processed. We know the biological function and process of pain. It's not some huge mystery. — NKBJ

What you don't get, is that "plants do not feel pain" is not a logical consequence of "an animal's apparent experience of pain is correlated with the detection with some instrument of some activity in some area of its brain"

Vegans try. It's the stubborn omnis who want to posit that plants have feelings to and therefore lets slit pig's necks who don't want to change a darn thing about the status quo. — NKBJ

Why do you assume people who wonder whether plants feel pain are barbarians who enjoy slitting pig's throats?

We're not professionals and I fear we'll do more harm than good if people commenting seriously (or just for kicks) entertain suicide as a viable option for someone who is clearly dealing with mental issues beyond our control and expertise. — NKBJ

I think mental health practice would benefit greatly from an in-depth critical philosophical analysis. Mental health professionals are not bearers of inscrutable truth.

You just know that you feel pain, and you know that other beings with brains appear to feel pain but you have no proof that they do feel pain either. And the fact you wouldn't know how a life form without a brain could feel pain has no bearing on the likelihood that it does feel pain. And then you wouldn't know whether a plant suffers much more than an animal, so you couldn't tell whether you cause more suffering by killing one plant or a thousand animals.

Many animals need plants to survive, and plants need light to survive, and supposedly photons can be converted into matter and photons never die, maybe we could devise a way to feed ourselves with light, but then the Earth is a limited space so we can't multiply indefinitely, unless we go out and explore other worlds, and then who knows what's next...

Myself I'm not happy with killing neither animals nor plants to survive, but then if I don't survive I can't find a solution and then others will just keep killing both animals and plants, I guess that's one way to rationalize it...

I guess we can't solve a problem without believing it can be solved. We tend to limit ourselves with what the 'laws' of physics say, but then maybe these laws are limits we impose to ourselves. We tend to be very fatalistic, believing that things can't be changed, but do we really try?

How can you attach any probability to it? How would you know that a brain is required to feel?

I think the desires and beliefs we have are closely linked to the mental state we're in. If you desire something strongly but believe you can never attain it, then you feel hopeless, depressed. Suicide doesn't feel like such a bad option compared to living a life that is bound to contradict the life we want. But what if the belief that you can never attain what you deeply desire is false? There's something that's keeping you there, there is a strong will that doesn't want you to die, trying to tell you that you can achieve what you want deep down, but you need to believe that you can.

I think it's the depressed people who can create a better world, not those who feel fine amidst this madness. Maybe the cure to depression is changing the world so that it stops being depression-inducing. We all have beliefs about what can and can't be changed, but maybe many of them are just false.

Because applying eternality to the universe is arbitrary and completely lacking in explanation. God, by virtue of being beyond time, is necessarily eternal. — AJJ

But then one could say it is no more arbitrary than invoking an additional eternal entity.