Moral Realism attempts to cross the divide by claiming that both descriptive and prescriptive statements are true/false propositions and that some are made true by objective, mind-independent features of the world. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, the first thing that I want to point out is that there actually seem to be some ought statements that cannot be called prescriptive statements. According the first definition of the word “prescriptive” that I could find on the Internet, the word “prescriptive” means “Relating to or making rules, laws, or directions.” I can think of plenty of ought statements that have nothing to do with making rules, laws, or directions. For example, the statement “you ought to brush your teeth” doesn’t seem to have anything to do with making rules, laws, or directions. Also, I think it’s worth asking why couldn’t ought statements be considered descriptive statements. For example, I tend to think that the word “ought” is just a short hand way of expressing complex evaluative propositions. For example, I think the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” is synonymous with phrases like “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” or “having a habit of brushing your teeth is better than not having a habit of brushing your teeth“. A phrase like “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” seems to be a descriptive statement and it also happens to be an is statement. If you don’t agree with me that the phrase “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” is a descriptive statement because you’re one of those philosophers who doesn’t think that evaluative statements are descriptive statements then it’s worth noting that this disagreement seems to have nothing to do with an alleged is/ought gap.

I think that the phrase “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” sometimes means the exact same thing as the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” kinda how the phrase “John knocked me up” is synonymous with the phrase “I’m pregnant with John’s baby”. There is a psychological explanation that could be given for why the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” is synonymous with various phrases expressing complex evaluative propositions. Phrases like “brushing your teeth is the best available decision option at this time for you to take” and “having a habit of brushing your teeth is better than not having a habit of brushing your teeth“ are extremely long and wordy. It would be a pain in the ass to always have to say them to express the basic kind of evaluative ideas that we are trying to express. So, the creators of the English language created the word “ought” that could pretty much be substituted most of the time for these long winded evaluative propositions.

It’s also worth noting that other languages like my native language of Russian do not have a word that cleanly translates to the English word “ought”. Instead, “ought” is translated to several words in Russian where one word also translates as the word “need” and the other word also translates to the word “must”. So, the phrase “you ought to brush your teeth” literally translates in Russian as “you need to brush your teeth”. So, it would be very hard to explain what the is/ought gap is to a Russian speaker since they don’t really have the same conventions regarding helping verbs as English speakers have. I have actually read about the is/ought gap in Russian and it was confusing as hell.

Lastly, I want to mention that I am not a moral realist myself so I don’t necessarily disagree with the latter part of your post that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the is/ought divide. I was just suggesting that the is/ought gap doesn’t say anything profound about meta-ethics and it mostly just makes an observation about formal logic and how some people are too quick to draw moral conclusions from basic empirical claims without including that “if x then you ought to y” premise that they really should add in any normative arguments that they might be trying to make. Btw, I learned about this more modest interpretation of the is/ought gap from a moral anti-realist philosopher named Kane B. He makes philosophy YouTube videos and he has a pretty popular series on meta-ethics. I suspect that you might have already heard of him though.

Our difference of opinion is, therefore, not due to different intuitions, but rather definitions: I identify honesty with the telling of the “whole” truth, while you identify it with what I would call telling the “convenient” truth. — Todd Martin

I want to elaborate a little more about my views on honesty and dishonesty. My use of the phrase “perfect honesty” was a poor choice of words that I wish I could take back. I meant to describe what I was talking about as “excessive honesty” instead. For example, we sometimes talk about someone being too honest when they constantly share information that they don’t really need to share with others. For example, suppose that someone was asked a simple question about what she likes to do for fun. Suppose, that this person responds by talking about how she spends roughly 20% of her free time watching pornography and maybe 30% of her free time watching Alex Jones conspiracy videos and she also likes to kill stray cats on a rare occasion. She also mentions some uncontroversial hobbies like playing chess, hiking, and watching tv. My point was that she seems to not be required to talk about every one of her controversial hobbies just to avoid answering the question dishonestly. Rather, she seems to be excessively honest in her response.

Every time someone asks you a question, you can pretty much always provide more private information than the information that you decide to provide. The question is how much information must you give in order to avoid being dishonest. You might say that you think your mom was being dishonest because she would have told the literal lie if she couldn’t figure out a way to make her statement true. I don’t think that criteria suffices for dishonesty either though. Suppose that a person gets asked the question about what they like to do for fun and they refuse to mention a particular hobby that they might find embarrassing or maybe a hobby that might be controversial and reveal too much information about them. They may be willing to be dishonest in order to avoid revealing their engagement with that hobby to others but it strikes me as highly unusual to claim that they are being dishonest for simply failing to mention that hobby. My question to you is would you call failing to mention a hobby after being asked about hobbies dishonesty. If your not willing to call that dishonesty then what makes that case different from my case involving telling my mom I was at the library and the case involving your mom and Sally?

Which is it, O Hedomenos: were you honest in your response to your mom because you were literally “at the library”? or were you honest because, — Todd Martin

Well, the “literal” definition of dishonesty is usually understood as telling false information when you know that the information is false. It’s doesn’t extent to a refusal to tell true information. So, that’s my understanding of dishonesty.

And, btw, I think you meant to say “...that you WANT to know...”, for, if you withhold information from someone they NEED to know, that becomes morally problematic, doesn’t it? — Todd Martin

Yes, I meant to use the word want. I knew I shouldn’t have tried writing a philosophical response after having like 3 beers worth of alcohol lol. I didn’t realize how sloppy the use of language in my last response was.

hope I have straightened out our dialogue in a more philosophical path, more in the direction you wish it to head. I didn’t want to respond to the other things you said for fear of distracting you from our intellectual discussion — Todd Martin

Thank you, I really appreciate that. The conversation we are having about the nature of honesty is very interesting and productive I think.

you and I share an apparent affinity with older women. I have had several relationships with different women throughout my life, and most of them have been older than me, a few much older: my current girlfriend is almost 30 yrs older than I am, and I have been with her more than eight years. — Todd Martin

Well, I’m glad we have something in common. We seem to be polar opposites in almost every other regard. Dang, I’m really surprised that your girlfriend is 30 years older than you. I figured you were in your 50s so I guess she’s either in her late 70s or early 80s. That’s older than my grandma.

One of these is that she obviously, for some reason (it happened too long ago for me to remember now) did not wish to speak to her friend. — Todd Martin

Well, I think that you can avoid being dishonest while still withholding information from others. A person doesn’t have to tell you everything that you need to know in order to remain honest.

Notice I said “taking” a shower, not “in the” shower: the genius of Mama’s plot was in the difference b/w taking a shower and being in one. If she had said, “tell her I’m taking a shower”, then I would have discovered Mama naked under a shower of water, soaping it up and all. As it was, since she said “in” the shower, and “shower” stand in for “shower-stall”, all she had to do was walk in fully clothed and BE there, no water flowing, in order to orchestrate her air-tight alibi. — Todd Martin

Well, being careful with words could make a subtle difference between something being x and something not being x. At least that’s just my current intuition on this topic.

So, O Hedomenos, where in my analysis have I gone astray? — Todd Martin

Well, I think we just have different intuitions about the nature of dishonesty. It’s kinda hard to resolve those differences in very basic intuitions. Though, I kinda feel like you are confusing dishonesty with a lack of perfect honesty. It seems to me that one can avoid being dishonest without mentioning every piece of information to someone else. For example, I used to date a 40 year old woman when I was 20. My mom wouldn’t approve of that sort of thing. I used to mess around with this woman in the back of my car at the local library(we kept all our clothes on so it wasn’t as risky as it sounds.). Whenever my mom asked me where I was at, I told her I was at the library. Do you think I was lying to my mom just because I failed to mention my 40 year old girlfriend? I just find it unusual to think that I must tell someone every one of my secrets that may pertain to their question in some manner just to maintain honesty. At the same time, I think it’s also kinda silly that we would think that telling lies as a means of withholding information that the person to whom we lie doesn’t really deserve to know in the first place is bad in any way.

you still believe that the literal truth is the whole truth? — Todd Martin

I never said that the literal truth was the whole truth. I thought we were having a disagreement about the literal truth of dishonesty. Of course, there are multiple metaphorical ways of understanding of dishonesty. For example, I can say something silly like “Sarah is being dishonest about not wanting to cheat on her boyfriend with her handsome physical trainer Tom because her vagina is soaking wet when he helps her stretch.” If her boyfriend asks her if she wants to have sex with Tom, it wouldn’t necessarily be dishonest for her to say no because she isn’t planning to have sex with Tom and her choosing to leave out details about the wetness of her vagina when Tom helped her stretch doesn’t really constitute dishonesty. It’s just not wanting to mention certain private information.

Would you like me to give further examples as evidence that it isn’t? — Todd Martin

Yes, that would be nice.

If I haven’t offended you, please answer the question whose answer I most looked forward to: what were the traumatic experiences of your life that didn’t involve physical pain? — Todd Martin

No, because I’m tired of you trying to psychoanalyze me. I find it very rude and disrespectful. Please treat me like I’m your equal philosophical conversation partner and not like I’m your patient and you’re my therapist. I find psychoanalysis to be very arrogant, rude, and condescending. To demonstrate why I think this way about psychoanalysis, I want to give you a taste of your own medicine. I’m going to be rude for once and psychoanalyze you so that you know how it feels to be treated in the manner in which you are treating me. So, here it goes......

The hypocritical thing about you is that you accuse me of denying that the cause of my trauma is not related to physical pain but in reality you just want to believe that yourself because you can’t emotionally accept that there may be people like me who can’t be explained by your rigid universalist worldview about human nature. You want to believe that everyone is like you deep inside and you want to believe that everyone who says that they aren’t like you is just a “sad person” or has some kind of mental illness.

You have a choice to make: you can either realize that your understanding of human psychology is wrong or you can conveniently claim that any testimonial evidence against your views on human psychology is predicated on self-deception or misunderstanding about the cause of one’s own trauma. Of course, you are going to make the convenient claim of arguing that anyone who contradicts your false understanding of human nature is wrong about their trauma. This is because it’s difficult for you to admit that you are wrong and so you feel like you have to explain away the trauma of others that does not affirm to your worldview. By doing this, you are unfortunately doing exactly what you accuse me of doing; you are confabulating a narrative about me confabulating a narrative about my trauma to protect your precious theory about human psychology.

As you can see, I can be a psychoanalyzing asshole too if you want me to be one but I hold myself to higher standards and I prefer to talk about ideas and not the motivations of my interlocutor in holding those ideas. So, our discussion can either be a complete shit show where we just accuse each other of lying to ourselves or we can just have a nice calm discussion about the relevant ideas and not be rude or condescending to each other. I think the latter option is much better.

Now, obviously, Mama had been dishonest; but did she realize it? Had she realized it, would she have ever retreated to the shower stall? She thought by doing so she would be telling the truth, and she DID tell the literal truth. But, clearly, the LITERAL truth is not THE TRUTH, a thing my mama didn’t understand or appreciate. — Todd Martin

I don’t think that your mom was dishonest. She really was in the shower and so what she said wasn’t false. Also, I think genuine dishonesty causes most people to have an emotional reaction or hesitation in the process of telling the dishonest thing. This is why lie detector test often work(though not always.). Liars fail lie detector tests because they know that they are being dishonest and that causes them to breathe heavy and their heart rate to increase.

Segue to your evidence of blue-balls and phantom limbs: yes, ppl obviously experience physical pain in very individual ways...but is this the whole truth about pain? — Todd Martin

No I don’t think that it’s the whole truth about pain, but I think it’s the most relevant evidence to consider. This evidence seems to suggest that we shouldn’t really be too surprised when someone reports experiencing pain in ways that are very counterintuitive to other people.

Is the traumatic pain you suffered as a “child” being slammed to the ground over and over by a “grown adult” not similar to how my mother was “in the shower” when Shelby called? — Todd Martin

I don’t think it’s similar at all. Though, it’s hard for me to give you a convincing reason for why I think that way because it just comes down to speculation either way. I spend more time thinking about the physical pain of my physical abuse so I tend to see that as the most likely explanation for my trauma. Though, in a way, it’s really hard to know for sure what causes any given instance of trauma or even if trauma has a cause at all. It’s not like we can observe trauma with some kind of a scientific instrument like a microscope or a telescope. Psychological explanations always lack that rigor that might be present in a hard science like Physics and Chemistry. It seems that the best evidence comes from within the person who experiences the trauma but even that evidence falls short of the rigor that real scientific evidence has. Unfortunately, hard science and it’s rigorous methods is useless for anything relating to the mind and private experience.

Notice that, initially, you didn’t say “...universalism about PAIN...”, but rather, “ANY SORT of universalism about HUMAN NATURE, and the ways humans experience THINGS to be highly implausible, as I think people just experience the WORLD in vastly different ways”. Now, had I said that, bright man as you obviously are, wouldn’t you have jumped all over it, accusing me of having made a generalization that I then tried to make look like a statement about something very specific? — Todd Martin

The way that humans experience pain is one aspect of human nature. By the phrase “the way that humans experience things”, I was talking about private emotional experiences. I suppose you could say that human beings have some kinds of common perceptions but I was talking purely about psychological human nature. I’m sorry for the confusion.

Also, please don’t accuse me of things especially before even asking some clarification questions that might clear up the confusion. I’m sorry that you sometimes get the wrong message from my choice of words but that’s a normal part of any philosophical conversation. Words can have multiple meanings when used in different contexts and this is especially true with more complex concepts like “human nature” which normally refer to universal psychological human traits when used colloquially(hence, my use of the term) but you might have someone that thinks that human nature is like akin to how all humans have certain kinds of body parts or that all humans perceive the shape of an object very similarly. Either way, it’s really bad manners to accuse the person that you are speaking to of being dishonest in any way. If you really think that I’m dishonest then you should stop talking to me. Why would you talk to someone that you really thought was dishonest? Also, why would you bother telling me that I’m being dishonest? Doesn’t the very definition of dishonesty require someone to know that they are not being truthful? If that’s the case, then why would tell the person something that they would already know? It just seems to me like you just want to be insulting because I don’t see how your accusations add anything to the discussion at all even if they were hypothetically true.

Also, I really want to know your thoughts about the evidence that I have provided for there being radically different ways that people experience pain like the evidence regarding the phantom limb symptom and the blue balls symptom. You asked me to give you the evidence for my position but now you seem to be bringing up lots of things that do not even pertain to the discussion that we were having.

But this, I assume, doesn’t apply to your circumcisor, for he, I presume, had no intention of hurting you. You said, of your circumcision, that it was as traumatic as your beating, yet the two men had inherently different motives, so how do you reconcile your theory of intentionally inflicted pain with that? Or do you think your circumcisor was sadistic? — Todd Martin

There can be intense pain that wasn’t intentionally brought about and some of those unintentional pains can be more intense than most intentional pains. The only reason why I brought up intentionality is to suggest that the hardness of the door and the man isn’t the only singular variable to consider than trying to predict how intense a pain is going to be.

Since you have admitted the element of intention into our discussion about the trauma of pain, let me give you some examples of that sort of trauma that involved no physical pain whatsoever...yet long-lasting trauma... — Todd Martin

I never said that trauma can only come about from physical pain. Of course, people can and do get traumatized from things that don’t cause physical pain. I was just arguing that I was traumatized only by physical pain in the incidents in my life that we were discussing and not by something else. Also, I want to point out that I have actually been traumatized by things other than physical pain in other incidents that I haven’t mentioned but I was traumatized more by physical pain in my life.

Maybe it seems that way to you, but plenty of others would contest that that is removing the tenant from their rightful property at the behest of an unjust claim over it by another, because use justifies ownership. — Pfhorrest

Well, with that mindset, I think nobody would rent anything and we would often have to spend way more money buying something. The benefit of being able to rent is that sometimes you need to use something for a short amount of time and it wouldn’t be worth buying that thing. I’m not sure how radical your viewpoint on this is. Would you go as far as to say that a hotel who has a guest that just stayed there for one night owns that hotel room? For how long do you have to use something for you to think that the user of that thing owns that thing.

How can you believe in the objective truth about anything if you don’t assume it has a common nature? — Todd Martin

What do you mean by common nature in this context? I thought we were understanding common nature in discussion as just a short way of saying common human nature regarding how we experience physical pain. You seem to be talking about common mathematical nature and common physical nature now so I’m a bit confused. I’m not rejecting the viewpoint that there are some kinds of common natures. Rather, I’m just stating that there could be very radical differences in how human beings experience pain.

But, Honey, you have given no proof of your argument other than your own subjective (not objective) experience. — Todd Martin

I have made an additional argument earlier actually. I talked about the phantom limb syndrome and how it is difficult to explain why some individuals experience pain that feels like physical pain and happens to be localized in a limb that isn’t really there because it was amputated from that person. This phenomenon is certainly not universal among all amputees. So, why do some amputees have it or others don’t? Another challenge that could be posed by the viewpoint that people have a pretty common experience of physical pain is the phenomenon of “blue balls”. This is where a man reports experiencing testicular pain after having his sexual or masturbatory session interrupted and the pain gets alleviated once the man finally gets to orgasm. Though, I’ve actually had blue balls where the pain got worse after I orgasmed so it does seem to feel differently for me than it feels for other men. The thing about blue balls though is that there isn’t a good physiological explanation for it. Some skeptics of blue balls say that blue balls is just disappointment and it is an emotional pain actually. I think a better explanation for blue balls is that it is a form of culturally engrained physical pain. It is physical pain because it is localized in the testes as men who have experienced it have reported it and it has the same sort of felt quality as physical pain. Nonetheless, I think being taught a narrative that blue balls exists can actually make the physical pain exist through the placebo effect. Though, the pain can still be considered context independent as it could be experienced regardless if you are with a sexual partner that stopped the sexual activity or you had your masturbation session interrupted.

Lastly, I want to point out that it’s just difficult to talk about the intensity of pain without feeling that pain itself. The intensity of a given pain is subjective but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t objective facts about our subjective experience of pain. We just don’t have any reliable way of accessing those objective facts and testimonial evidence seems to be the strongest type of evidence here.

As long as you respond to me, so will I to you, and I will never give up in attempting to show you the weaknesses of your arguments...in case that somehow benefit you, and your responses somehow benefit me. — Todd Martin

That sounds awesome to me. I rarely get to have really long and epic discussions on this forum.

Is there still a threat of violence in effect when the punishment is exile instead of imprisonment? I would assume so. If the person refuses to be exiled, what would the state do? They would force them through physical violence. In other words, the threat of violence is still there. — Tzeentch

Well, there are plenty of cases where the government does seem to be justified in using physical violence if someone refuses to comply with something. For example, it seems that the government can be justified in using physical violence to help a landlord evict her tenant that refuses to leave her property. If they are justified in using violence to help some individuals remove other individuals from their property, then why wouldn’t they also be justified in removing unwanted citizens of a country from the society which seems to belong to the public?

From where would a state derive the right to remove individuals from what it no doubt considers as "the state's property"? Who gave it to the state?

It is the state's, because the state has the power to enforce that claim. Ergo, it acts on the principle of "might makes right", which, as far as I am concerned, is no right at all. — Tzeentch

Well, the state could be viewed as a tool used by society to ensure that people give a portion of their money back to that society. One could argue that it’s not the state per se is entitled to the taxpayer money but it is the public or society that is entitled to that money. Of course, this sort of defense of taxation would mostly apply to taxation in democratic countries with low levels of corruption. No one is trying to defend taxation for something frivolous like the building of a fancy mansion for the president of the country or something like that.

Wars, corruption, propaganda, government scandals, well-intentioned but ill-advised policies. The evils of government should be self-explanatory. — Tzeentch

How much of the taxpayer money in countries like the US is actually being used to fund these sorts of things though? Based on what I know about the US federal budget, most of the money is going to Social Security, Medicare, and the military. At worst, this would fall under well-intentioned but ill-advised use of money category. But, that use of money can still be defended if that’s what the public actually wants and it seems most of the public is pretty cool with taxpayer money being used for that sort of stuff.

It is analagous insofar as the father's ill parenting can be compared to the state's ill governance. — Tzeentch

Well, I think it’s also analogous in that both cases do not seem to constitute theft. The question of whether or not taxation is theft is different from the question of whether or not it is justified. You can think that something isn’t theft but it is unjustified nonetheless.

Because most people, wisely, do not let it get that far. However, that does nothing to change the fact that this is what is being threatened with. — Tzeentch

Ok, so would taxation still be theft if the final punishment that you were threatened with involved the government sending you to live in some forest away from civilization unless another country wants to take you as it’s citizen? After all, you might be entitled to not go to prison for refusing to pay your taxes but are you entitled to be able to continue living in the country that you refuse to pay your taxes in?

We are, however, continuing to assume states are benevolent and don't use the wealth they received through threat of violence to commit injustice.

We know that in fact, they do. All the time. — Tzeentch

Well, could you provide me with some specific examples of what you have in mind here? I’m guessing you might be talking about some small portion of the money being used for something stupid like fighting a war on drugs but I wouldn’t imagine that this constitutes very much of the taxpayer money at all. Though, even with something like the war on drugs, it may be argued that if the majority of the public agreed with this use of money then the government would still just be fulfilling the desires of the people that it represents as it ideally should do.

The state taking money under threat of force from private individuals for its own benefit is clearly theft — Pfhorrest

I agree but I think taxation can also be justified if the state uses this money for the maintenance of civilized society that allows us all to be somewhat wealthy in the first place and just for the general public benefit. I don’t think that the government is spending most of the money that it collects in taxes for its own personal benefit at least in developed countries. Also, I don’t see how taxation couldn’t appropriately be understood as just like the rent that an individual has to pay to a civilized society to live in that civilized society. Even if the rent happens to differ based on income, it may be argued that wealthier people just benefit more from living in a society than poor people do and thus they should pay more taxes.

I think this example clearly constitutes theft. Just because someone lives under someone else's roof, does not forfeit their right to their property. — Tzeentch

If the adult child wants to move out then the father would have to give the console back. Though, the father can demand the console as rent if the adult child still wants to continue living under his father’s roof. I think this is analogous to how taxes can be collected as a kind of rent for living in a society that allows you to be wealthy in the first place. Even progressive taxes wouldn’t necessarily constitute theft as it could be argued that those in the upper wealth class receive more benefit from living in a society than some poor person that might only be slightly better off living in a society.

I suppose it might seem problematic that the punishment for not paying your taxes might be jail time. Though, that is rarely the punishment. Usually, the punishment is that the government will try to lock you out of being able to access certain institutions that are kinda important but not essential in the strictest sense. For example, you might have difficulty getting a loan, you might not be able to go to college, and you might lose your job or it might be difficult to find a new job. Most of time, people would just repay the taxes that they haven’t paid once they are caught. Of course, one can just avoid sales taxes in the store by just choosing not to buy anything. In summary, most of the punishments for not paying taxes essentially just involve the person refusing to pay taxes being kicked out of various social institutions that they aren’t entitled to be a part of in the first place or the person always just gets charged these taxes whether they like it or not. So, it’s hard for me to see how this would be unfair to the person who refuses to pay taxes because they always seem to have an option to just go live in the wilderness somewhere where they can be completely free from paying any taxes. The problem is that they seem to want to have it both ways. They want the benefits of living in a society and they don’t want to pay the fees that their society has indirectly voted that they must pay.

That’s another good argument against taxation being theft that I haven’t thought about.

Well, I think I started a potentially good dialogue on that. After all, it seems to be the case that most of our taxpayer money goes into servicing the public in some way either through medical care or retirement programs or public infrastructure. I think the public usually wants what is being funded by the government and that seems to be a good consideration. Also, taxation doesn’t really make a particular individual less wealthy than another individual only because of taxes under most circumstances. So, it seems that taxation doesn’t disrupt the natural dominance hierarchy of our society that much at all either. So, I’m not entirely sure why people would use the strong language of calling it theft.

If there is no universal human nature, and no common human experience, how can two different human beings discover any common truth together concerning either their natures or experiences? — Todd Martin

I’m arguing that the common truth to be discovered is the truth of there not being any universal human nature. I believe in objective truth but I don’t believe in universal human nature. I don’t see why the existence of objective truth would entail the existence of universal human nature.

What do “grown man” and “child” have to do with intensity of physical pain? — Todd Martin

Well, adult men are usually stronger than children and children usually have a worse pain tolerance than adults. This isn’t always true but it’s usually true and it might help explain why the experience hurt me more than you think that it should.

Well, your first premise pretty much puts an end to that, O, Hedomenos, doesn’t it? — Todd Martin

Well, it only puts an end to the discussion if you can’t come up with another good reply or counter-argument. You gave me some counter-arguments and I think I gave you a good reply each time. If you can respond to my replies of your counter-arguments well or you can present additional considerations or arguments then I might agree with you. This issue is very complex and there’s always new opportunities for you to make some novel points that I might have not considered. For example, usually when a philosopher tries to argue for the existence of notable universal similarities between human experiences of something specific like pain they will either cite studies in psychology or cognitive science that provides evidence for universal human experience of pain or they will elicit a thought experiment that can better elucidate their intuitions on the matter to their interlocutor.

By using those terms you prejudice the reader: he imagines a powerful brute having his way with a defenseless weakling, and the effect on the reader is not one of excruciating pain (though that too may be involved), but rather of stronger taking advantage of weaker in order to vent his animus. THAT, O Hedomenos, is the context of the pain you keep denying exists, though you have given it to us in your very words. — Todd Martin

Well, I’m afraid that you are reading too much into a few choice of words that I used and you are misinterpreting what I was trying to say. I wasn’t trying to use the words “grown men” and “child” rhetorically or emotionally in any way. I was just pointing out that adult men have more potential to beat up children than a door has to hurt an adult men by accident under most circumstances.

I doubt you would agree with this, but I think any medical procedure done in “the nether regions” of the body on a sentient being must be more traumatic than if performed most anywhere else. Why? Because those parts of the body are most private... — Todd Martin

Well, my parents and doctors have examined my penis on multiple occasions and it seems like your explanation for my trauma implies that I should be just as traumatized by the touching of the penis as I would with circumcision.

a couple of things stand out to me: firstly, if we are to judge the intensity of pain objectively, wouldn’t we do so by observing the reaction to it by the one experiencing it? — Todd Martin

Stubbing my toe hasn’t ever caused me to scream as much as my physical abuse did. Stubbing my toe only ever caused me to have a mild scream. Me getting beat up caused me to scream very loudly for the whole 15 seconds. My body did also hurt afterwards for several hours but that pain wasn’t nearly as painful or important so I wasn’t even thinking about it. Secondly, I don’t think you can observe the intensity of pain objectively. I think asking people about how badly that pain hurt is a far more accurate way of gauging the intensity of that pain.

So when you say that the examples of pain I listed are “very mild” in comparison to what you experienced, I just can’t believe that, at least judging pain by mere intensity. — Todd Martin

So, is it not possible that you just experience pain differently from the way that I experience pain? I don’t see why it’s so implausible to think that people have vastly different ways of experiencing pain. Rather, I find any sort of universalism about human nature and the way humans experience things to be highly implausible as I think people just experience the world in vastly different ways.

A grown man is indeed much stronger than a child and can therefore inflict great pain on him...but a door jamb is more solid than a grown man, and can inflict great pain on my toe also. What’s the difference then? — Todd Martin

Well, a grown man beating me up with a door would be more painful than than a grown beating me up with his body alone but you are extremely unlikely to accidentally hit yourself with a door as hard as the big muscular guy who hit me did as he was using the force of his body more efficiently as to increase the damage caused by his hits. It matters not only how hard the thing that hits you is but also how hard it trying to hit you. To use an analogy, imagine a wooden robot that is as thick as a door beating you up. Well, that robot can probably hurt you much worse than you accidentally stubbing your toe on a door can. This is because the robot will swing it’s robot arms in the most efficient way to hurt you. In contrast, doors aren’t trying to hurt you and so they aren’t going to be as efficient at doing so.

The real reason the experience of being slammed to the ground was traumatic to you is not because it was painful to your body—that pain only lasted 15 seconds—but because it was painful to your soul, and THAT pain has lasted all your life; and until you realize this, you will continue to misattribute the trauma to mere physical pain, and you will fail to realize that physical pain is always context-dependent; that is, on how it touched your soul. — Todd Martin

Well, I don’t know what else it can be except the physical pain. You mentioned that you thought it’s related to me feeling that a grown man beating up a child is unjust. I did feel it was a bit unjust indeed but I think that theory has other explanatory weaknesses in the context of my life because I think my experience of getting circumcised when I was 9 years old was also traumatic. That experience had nothing to do with justice. That procedure was actually done for a legitimate medical purpose and I’m actually kinda glad that I got circumcised as circumcised penises are usually preferred by the ladies. So, there are definitely some clear advantages to being circumcised. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be willing to undergo that pain again for those benefits. It seems like the physical pain explanation would be the obviously best explanation for why I was traumatized by that. I don’t see any other good alternative explanations for that trauma.

but everybody knows that a child’s bones are more supple and pliant than an adult’s; and, besides, you don’t say any bones were even broken. — Todd Martin

Well, it’s more about the sensitivity of the nerves rather than anything to do with bones. There are certain excruciating torture methods that do not require you to cause any bodily damage like water boarding for example. Slowly pealing off a very small portion of one’s skin also does minimal bodily damage but it is extremely painful. Sometimes a particular way of being hit can also be much more painful even if it didn’t correspond to obvious bodily damage. Then there are also strange phenomena like the phantom limb symptom where someone with a missing limb reports experiencing physical pain in the area where the limb used to be. I think this sort of thing really challenges any sort of theory that claims that physical pain always strongly corresponds to bodily damage. In reality, it’s possible that physical pain can sometimes work in very mysterious yet still context independent sorts of ways. It’s sometimes hard to explain what makes something hurt someone with any theory.

If any of my words have cast the shadow of a doubt in your mind about the etiology of your trauma, then let me know, and I will continue to attempt to persuade you; otherwise, I will leave off, and consider my efforts to have been in vain. — Todd Martin

Well, that’s something that I find mildly disappointing about many philosophical conversations. So many times everyone just wants to be the persuader and no one is open to being persuaded themselves on anything. I think that I’m always open to persuaded but I don’t really want to talk to someone that is just interested in promoting their own way of thinking about the world. I want to talk to someone who sees this conversation as an opportunity for 2 people to discover the truth together. That often means considering that one might be wrong at least about something that they are probably far from being an expert in(such as the personal experiences of the person that they are speaking to.)

I am thinking why not maximize the next 10 years and do what I REALLY want to do, instead of merely surviving. I have some savings due to a property I sold, and so could rent and work part-time at a low stress job (something related to cars which I love) and just live life to the fullest. Live the kind of free life I would likely live if I won the lottery. I would live in a cool light filled loft, drive an exotic car and just wake up and do whatever the fuck I want that day.

I don't have the means to extend this kind of lifestyle for longer than 10 years. Working part-time at a low paying job would mean the savings would likely run out in about 10 years and so it would be time to leave the party. But I am seem to be good with that, and why not do it before my body breaks down? — dazed

I’m a young man in my mid 20s and I actually already have a 30 year-ish Suicide plan for the exact same sorts of reasons that you expressed your desire to have one. So, I do think that what you are suggesting can be pretty rational under ideal circumstances. Having said that, I do think it’s pretty dangerous to leave yourself in financial destitute in 10 years because you think that your Suicide plan would actually work out. Statistically, suicide plans rarely actually work out in the end. There are many obstacles and logistical challenges to overcome that are quite difficult. They mostly relate to the method that you will want to use in your suicide. Here is a list of what I think are the best courses of action to consider and why even those courses of action are quite challenging:

1. Get legal euthanasia in Switzerland. There are some organizations In Switzerland like Dignitas who provide legal euthanasia to foreigners even if they don’t have a terminal illness. You just have to have some illnesses and bad health that can’t easily be cured. So, you would probably qualify. It does cost like $15000 though and I think they require a doctor from your country to sign off on you having conditions bad enough to warrant euthanasia so that could be pretty difficult to get. It’s probably the most painless and reliable method though.

2. Using a gun and hanging are probably the most obvious reliable options. Though, having a botched attempt will likely be catastrophic for you especially a botched gun suicide attempt. I am really scared of that as that just makes your life a living hell. Also, those attempts leave behind a nasty scenery to anyone that discovers your body. This might not be something that you are ok with. Also, I think it takes more willpower to use those methods because most of us are biologically programmed to be extremely hesitant to commit violence against ourselves. By contrast, methods that involve seemingly benign things like pills and gas that put you to sleep are easier to actually go through with.

3. Another really underrated method is using certain kinds of inorganic salts like Sodium Nitrite or Sodium Azide. These are legal to buy and own(though, you might get cops to come to your door if you try to buy them as many anti-suicide advocates will make fake ads for those salts to essentially identify people that might be looking to commit suicide.). These salts get mixed with water to produce a euthanasia cocktail. Also, there is a prescription drug that you are strongly recommended in having to avoid puking the salts out and having a botched attempt. The great thing about these salts is that they produce little suffering and you will just have a normal headache and dizziness. Also, if your attempt
fails and you get revived, the attempt will not cause any permanent damage and it will be a pretty pleasant revival. Nonetheless, you would have to find a discreet way to buy those salts which may be hard since you live with your wife. Also, many manufacturers of these salts have decided to stop selling them to individuals and now they only sell them to companies because these salts are mostly something that just gets used commercially. So, I’m not sure how easy it is to actually purchase that stuff.

4. The last option that seems kinda reasonable is using innate gases like Nitrogen to quickly put yourself to sleep. This method is very technical though and you really have to know what you’re doing and it can cause permanent brain damage so that’s not ideal. It’s very quick and painless though.

So, given the logistical challenges of actually committing suicide, I don’t ever want to assume that I can actually make it work in the end. Given this, I am actually investing a crap ton of money into my retirement plan because I don’t want to assume that I will definitely be dead by then. It would really suck to have to go through the pains of aging while being impoverished also. Being stuck in an abusive government nursing home for the impoverished is probably the closest thing to hell that could be found in an American life.

A needle stuck in your arm is painful, right? — Todd Martin

Not really, I don’t find that painful at all.

But isn’t the thought of being safe from a deadly disease worth a little painful prick? — Todd Martin

Yes, but it’s not worth suffering intense pain(for me at least). The badness of pain is not just determined by its duration but also the intensity of the pain. If a pain is very intense then I think it is really bad and catastrophic even if it is short lasting. A pinprick isn’t intense at all and it isn’t even long lasting so it’s not the kind of pain that I’m concerned about.

On the other hand, do you entrust your health to a pervert? — Todd Martin

If that pervert happens to be a doctor then yes unless given a reason not to. Honestly, how do you know your current doctor is not a pervert? He might have chosen this line of work because he’s glad that he’s allowed to grab men’s balls for all you know. It only bothers you if you know that he gets aroused by it. So, why does the mere knowledge of his excitement of touching your privates something that might bother you? Or would it really bother you?

What if his perversion is delight in cutting boys’ balls off? — Todd Martin

Well, that would be bad because that would cause physical pain and having balls is good for other stuff that is valuable like getting women to be comfortable having sexual relations with you. But, I was asking about why people would be bothered by a pervert who only wants to molest you since doctors typically only molest you for medical reasons except prostate exams and colonoscopies. But, those can also cause a significant amount of physical pain or discomfort and that’s the main explanation for why we are bothered by those procedures to some extent.

Who in their right mind fears 15 seconds of pain more than an eternity of death? — Todd Martin

Well, first of all, I don’t think it makes sense to talk of death as eternity because you don’t perceive time after you die. I think time is actually just a subjective experience and so it doesn’t seem to make sense to talk about eternities that you don’t actually experience. Second of all, we are all going to die eventually anyways so why is it that much worse to die sooner? How much benefit am I going to get for living past the age of 55 anyways? Thirdly, I just want to illiterate the point that I made earlier about the intensity of the pain being just as important as the duration of the pain. For me, the intensity is even more important because extra duration of pain has at least some silver lining as it gives me time to adjust to the pain and it will just start to hurt less. Intense pains, on the other hand, make their sting before your mind is even prepared to deal with it. Fourthly, I think that this 15 seconds of pain that I have experienced might have actually been worse than any pain that you have experienced in your life because I am just more sensitive to pain. Of course, if I had to undergo your painful life moments, I would really just go insane but luckily I hadn’t put myself in that sort of a situation quite yet.

Do you have this same reaction when you stub your toe over a chair-leg, or receive a paper-cut on your finger, or bang your knee against a door-edge? — Todd Martin

No, because those things didn’t hurt me as bad as the physical abuse did. The intensity of pain from different stimuli can also kind of differ from person to person. You seem to be listing very mild forms of pain in comparison to my scenario of being beaten by a grown man as a child. Trust me, it caused me much more pain than stubbing my toe would. I might partially be because I was still a child with a fragile child’s body and that would also increase the pain involved.

Have you considered exactly why Mozart’s music was not popular in his day, yet was revived, or why Wagner became a footnote, despite his popularity? — Todd Martin

Yes, I have actually. I think it has to do with the music education establishment choosing to fetishize Mozart’s music over Wagner’s. I’m not convinced that it is really based that much on merit. A lot of it is also preserving a status quo music curriculum that was created 100 years ago. Also, I wonder how much Wagner’s white supremacy tendencies and how Hitler loved him had to do with his eventual fading. There is a lot of politics that go into determining what composers get taught to children at school. I personally have learned about Mozart in music class at elementary school at 3rd grade in the US. Before then, the only composers I knew were Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Beethoven. This is because I learned about them in 1st grade also in music class at an elementary school in Russia. Hmm..... I wonder why they taught me about Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov instead of Mozart in Russian elementary school. It’s probably not predicated on the merit of those composers. Also, first author that I had learned about was some guy named Alexander Pushkin. In Russia, this guy is more admired than Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or Shakespeare. In the US, I never heard anyone talk about him. The Americans consider Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky to be the greatest Russian authors. Again, I’m not sure how much of that has to do with merit and not politics and tradition.

Is it wise to judge the quality of something by its popularity, to take a poll? — Todd Martin

No it’s not, but Mozart had to be more popular than other composers to some demographic in order to be remembered. If it was just a demographic of skilled composers then he would deserve to be remembered above other composers. I suspect that his popularity was more influenced by his popularity among the wealthy and powerful who continued insuring that his music got introduced at least to those who studied in the music academy. Of course, this would cause future composers to be influenced by him as well and they will have nice words to say about him as well.

Well, I think your stories mostly just suggest that you are less sensitive to physical pain than I am and you are also probably more afraid of death than I am. I actually never recall ever being anxious about death and my mortality but I am constantly anxious about the future physical pain that I may have to endure. It’s possible that I’m not anxious about death because death seems so far away for me but I’m curious to know if you ever felt anxious about death before you had one of your injuries that you mentioned in your comment.

Also, I find it a little weird that most people are perfectly ok with having a doctor touch their genitals but they feel very violated if a pervert touches their genitals for sexual gratification. Why do you think that people are like that? I always just found that very confusing to be honest. The hatred of physical pain seems much more straightforward though. If a doctor causes physical pain for a medically valid reason, then it’s still viewed as being pretty bad because the badness of physical pain seems to be less context dependent. I’m not a very sentimental guy so I have a hard time caring about the intentions behind the person who caused me suffering and I care more about the actual sensation that produced the suffering.

don’t you feel a bit like you are exaggerating things when you publicly state that you were physically abused as a child? — Todd Martin

Suppose that I were to get sexually touched by a pedophile for 15 seconds when I was a child. Wouldn’t you think that it is appropriate to call that sexual abuse? If it’s appropriate to call that sexual abuse then I don’t see why it wouldn’t be appropriate to call my 15 second beating physical abuse. After all, many people including myself would have preferred to get molested.

Consider all the countless children that have endured such abuse constantly, almost every day of their childhood, and what trauma that must have permanently afflicted on their souls! — Todd Martin

Yeah, I probably would have tried to kill myself by now if I were in their shoes.

At any rate, as I said, my brother did not hold his grudge because of the physical pain—how can physical pain that is soon gone last in the memory of a child?—but rather because of the sting of injustice. So I suspect your 15 seconds of pain as a child must have been etched in your memory for some reason other than that it was physically painful (?) — Todd Martin

No, I think it’s mostly about the physical pain because I remember the sensation of that pain quite vividly. It felt like someone had broke my body in half. I think the guy threw me on the grass or something like that. I think he then continued to slam my body on the ground covered in grass because the sharp pain in my back kept repeating. Also, I actually was being an awful brat that whole day and that caused him to snap and attack me. I kinda empathize with him and understand why he did it. Though, I really think this person should never be allowed around kids again. That moment really haunts me to this day because the pain was just unbearable for those 15 seconds. I think it did teach me the value of respecting others but I still feel very traumatized by this moment even if there is some positive narrative that could be attached to the experience. Once again, I would emphasize that I’m very sensitive against physical pain. Like, you know how professional mma fighters don’t seem to feel any pain even after they have been hit over 100 times by their very strong opponent. Well, I’m like the exact opposite of an mma fighter. I’m hypersensitive to physical punishment.

I didn’t mean that you would experience it in your soul, as a felt desire or emotion; just that you would experience it from the women you get involved with, drawing from my many relationships with them over my lifetime — Todd Martin

Ahh ok, I actually agree with you there. It’s kinda hard to have regular casual sex with a woman for awhile without there being any discussions about relationships or without giving the woman some kind of financial incentive to keep things casual.

I, this random guy on the internet who, actually, is not so random now, since I to you, like you to me, have shared particular, even sometimes intimate, details of each others’ lives? — Todd Martin

Well, I now realize that I was kinda wrong to assume that you would know less about me than other people because you are a random guy on the internet. I actually share more private information with random people on the internet than I do with my own family. Heck, it is actually large internet corporations like Google that know me best because they know my internet search history lol.

I heard nothing in his music that was not predicated on Western harmony, — Todd Martin

Well, I’m kinda suspecting that you are not very familiar with western harmony or harmony in general. As a music theory nerd and someone that has dabbled in songwriting and composition, I can notice lots of extremely unusual harmonies in pretty much every one of his songs. I also want to point out that I actually enjoy the music of Mozart more than I enjoy the music of Collier. Collier is a little too experimental even for my tastes. I believe that it is more difficult to compose music like Collier due to my admittedly limited but fairly decent understanding of music theory. He constantly uses unusual time signatures and it does make composing music more difficult as I have tried to compose music with those time signatures and I don’t even know where to start. By contrast, classical music usually just uses a 2/4 time signature if I recall correctly and many classical pieces are non-rhythmic or they have a loose relationship with rhythm. This means that you don’t really need to worry about the groove of the song as a classical composer and that does make classical composition easier in an important respect to groove centered genres like funk, disco, pop, jazz, hip hop, and jazz fusion.

As far as the harmony used by someone like Mozart, he used the same chords as pop musicians but his chords were more spread out and this is pretty common in classical music. By contrast, Collier uses very rare chord inversions and he typically uses 5 note chords which were actually popularized by classical composers like Debussy who came after Mozart. Collier also incorporates really fast chord progressions which you rarely see in any genre except jazz and jazz fusion. You mentioned that Collier is a pop star. I would agree with you that he can pass off as one but he also incorporates elements of jazz fusion, funk, hip hop, and electronic music. I think he pretty much invented his own genre of music. Collier also occasionally uses notes that are in between the notes that are found on a standard piano and he usually mixes those notes in a composition with mostly normal notes. This is one of the things that give his music that disorienting feel that it has. Though, to give classical composers credit, I think they were extremely talented at composing music for large orchestras which might be something that Collier wouldn’t be as good at. Writing operas is pretty hard as well. Also, classical composers didn’t have access to recording software so they had to write everything down in sheet music which was super time consuming and it made a trial and error approach to composition a bit more difficult. I think that Collier is more talented than Mozart not adjusted to the fact that he has a clear technological advantage. Collier has the privilege of being able to work on his compositions even while he’s on the toilet or waiting in line. Mozart had to spend time drawing out the sheet music and that would limit you in many ways as a composer.

You are wrong about the diet of the ancients: they had excellent sauces and spices, drawn straight from the garden, both aristocrat and plebs, and the former had blocks of ice drawn down from the snowy mountaintops to cool their perishables. — Todd Martin

Well, that isn’t what I have heard. I would interested in knowing where you read about this. Admittedly, my claims about the diets of emperors are just bits and pieces of what I remember from school and what I remember from watching history videos on YouTube.

But let me ask you this, O Hedomenos: what effect do you think your physical abuse as a child had on the way that you perceive the world now? — Todd Martin

Well, the physical abuse was really just one incident that lasted for about 15 seconds. It was no worse than the typical ass whooping that lots of kids my age have gotten as punishment. I have had friends and acquaintances share similar stories from their childhood with pride as they believed that this physical punishment has disciplined them and made them into a better person. The interesting thing about corporal punishment is that it affects different children in different ways. I would say that I feel traumatized by the experience because of my sensitivity to physical pain and because of my belief that intense suffering is really difficult to justify. If I wasn’t so anti-suffering then I probably wouldn’t care that much about that really short moment in the past.

Why 55? I am ten years north of that and have never felt better. There are many people who have taken really good care of themselves (or have genetic privilege :) that are in great shape well into their 80's and even 90's now. — synthesis

Well, I would have to wait and see if I end having health problems. It’s kinda common to start having them before 55 though

I’m not sure why you fear debilitating pain in your later years so much, unless there’s something I don’t know about your present physical condition that would explain it. I’m a late-middle-aged man, and the pains I endure are typical of my age: arthritis in my knee requiring a brace, a pesky hernia causing occasional back pain, a tooth sensitive to hot and cold liquids, etc, but certainly nothing I would rather die than suffer. — Todd Martin

Well, I think I’m just much more sensitive to physical pain than most other people. I get really upset if I have even a fairly bad cold. The worst moments of my life are when I got physically abused as a child and when I got circumcised at the age of 9. I was actually put to sleep during the circumcision but it was still hours of agony. I would do anything to avoid having to re-live those bad events.

Didn’t you, in an earlier post, say one of the benefits of our day was being able to eat better than any emperor ever did? Surely you weren’t thinking of a Big Mac when you said that!...or were you??? — Todd Martin

Actually, I was thinking about foods like cheap ramen noodles and a sandwich with just cheap white bread and bologna. I think a Big Mac just blows the food that the emperors ate out of the water. It was really hard to find any kind of sauce or seasoning or spices for their food. Plus, the food and water wasn’t very safe for consumption by modern standards. They didn’t know about germ theory or how diseases got spread so they didn’t bother sanitizing anything. Also, they didn’t have access to refrigeration so they couldn’t have delicious desserts like ice cream and meat and dairy products spoiled super fast. So, even modern day budget food seems to be better than what the emperors had. Big Macs are pretty damn delicious though. I think they would be worth their weight in gold during the 16th century.

As far as Mr. Collier is concerned, I frankly have neither the time nor inclination to look his music up and listen to it. — Todd Martin

Well, isn’t that kind of the problem with people that don’t appreciate Mozart? That they just don’t have the time nor inclination to try his music. You kinda have to listen to a musician in order to know what you are missing. Though, admittedly few people would like Collier if they listened to him kinda like few people would like Mozart if they listened to him.

I realized there were vistas of musical experience that had been hidden from me...not purposefully, but by a general denigration in the culture of classical things. — Todd Martin

What is a culture of classical things?

I know musical appreciation is a very subjective thing. All I can say—and this doesn’t help our discussion—is, let’s see whose name is remembered a hundred years from now: that of Jacob Collier, or that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The latter’s name has certainly outlasted all the names of all the “McDonald’s” folk musicians of his own day. — Todd Martin

Well, I think luck plays a pretty big role in determining who ends up being remembered and who gets forgotten. For example, the composer Bach didn’t become popular until 200 years after his death. Mozart was also not super popular while he was alive and his music had to be revived long after his death. In contrast, a composer like Wagner was really famous during his lifetime but became a mere footnote in the history of classical music. Jacob Collier has a sizable following today and he might be regarded as being better than Mozart 300 years from now because you never know. These opinions about who is a greater composer are often dependent on the opinions of an establishment of posh music critics.

Whatever is most emergent and new, contrary to what ever came before, is praised prima facie, at the expense of true skill and accomplishment. — Todd Martin

But, how do you know that Mozart is the one with the true skill and accomplishment? You never even listened to Jacob Collier whereas I have heard both Mozart and Collier and I think Collier is more talented. Isn’t my testimonial evidence about this more reliable given that I have actually listened to both composers whereas you haven’t?

Similar to this is the assertion that his music appeals to all cultures, not just the stultified Western one of a Mozart. O Hedomenos: what is more modern and ultra-democratic than all things multi-cultural? especially if they aren’t derived from the traditionally dominant one? — Todd Martin

I feel like you misunderstood the point that I was trying to make. I was not arguing that all cultures were equal; I was arguing that musical taste is largely predicated on what musical patterns you have been exposed to growing up. For example, there is some music that sounds out of tune to western ears that sounds in tune to ears of a particular culture which was engrained in feeling that the note belongs in the music. Collier is known to be a master of something called microtonality which means that his compositional abilities are not limited to the notes on a western piano. He can make notes that normally sound out of tune to us sound kinda mysterious and strange yet somehow befitting the music. Mozart didn’t have that talent and it’s a rare talent to have. You don’t see many microtonal composers in the Western world. Of course, Collier can also compose great music using just the notes that can be played by a piano as well. So, he can arguably do what Mozart did to some extent yet Mozart had no ability to write anything using notes he wasn’t familiar with. That is an asymmetry of talent worth pointing out I think.

You apparently live a life very independent of binding attachments to other ppl, apparently even to ppl of your own family, but the vast majority of other ppl don’t live this way. — Todd Martin

Yes, but why should I live like other people? It’s also worth noting that this trend is changing because of modernity. So, my question is why exactly is it bad that people are slowly becoming more like me?

Consider all the cultures of mankind past and present: do you find any that don’t consider sex more than just having fun, experiencing a thrill? — Todd Martin

Yes but modernity is creating new cultures that are challenging the old trends. I’m saying that I think that there’s nothing wrong with challenging traditional relationship preferences because as I think people are slowly changing their preferences and that this preference change isn’t a tragedy in my mind. Just because something has been popular throughout history doesn’t mean that it ought to be popular forever.

Much of the thrill of a sexual encounter in the good ole days was due to the fact that it was prohibited and forbidden. Now that all is laid bare and everything is permitted, what do we find? — Todd Martin

Umm.... I still find it very thrilling even though it isn’t really stigmatized as much.

...I imagine that your sexual conquest and pleasure, the girl old enough to be your mom, either coaxed you into a ho-hum regular not-as-exciting sexual routine, or pressured you to become more committed. Either way, what you sought was lost. — Todd Martin

I was actually just talking about a sexual fantasy that I have rather than an actual event that occurred. I don’t sleep with my coworkers and I just don’t get invited to cuddle and have sex very often. I’m the one who has to invite the girls over for those things because we don’t really live in the kind of world that I think it might be cool to live in. Nonetheless, there are ways to get women to sleep with you without the promise of a committed relationship and I like modernity because it makes this sort of thing safer and easier than before. I also think it’s kinda epistemically arrogant for you to think that you likely understand better regarding what I want in a sexual relationship than what I’m claiming that I want in such relationships. After all, I have private assess to my emotional states, desires, and beliefs. In contrast, you never even met me but somehow you feel that I likely have some sort of a secret desire to have a romantic relationship as though you have some kind of private knowledge about the inner depths of my mind or that you think that some psychological claim about human nature is more reliable than my testimonial evidence predicated on my introspection that suggests that I don’t want to have a relationship. I personally think that it’s more rational to take people at their word most of the time as I think most people know themselves far better than some random guy on the internet knows them.

I think many times the clash happens when the so-called "modernist" solution, or what is viewed to be a "modernist" solution to some problem, which likely is the rather pragmatic, technocratic (that the solution is to use technology, science and experts) or free market oriented (let the market mechanism solve the problem) solution to a complex problem, which then the "anti-modernist" doesn't like (and likely sees a political power play in the modernist solution). — ssu

Well, I think the effectiveness of the modernist solution is that it led to the modernity that we are living in today. If one agrees that modernity is pretty good and up to snuff, then I think it would be hard for them to be too critical of modernism as the results seem to speak for itself.

I think this lacks precision. Thinkers across millennia are often critical of the era they live in. Each contemporary era has its preoccupations and ideas worthy of criticism. What is it about the present era that sticks out for you? — Tom Storm

Well, I was talking about the views of many philosophers that I have encountered that seem to be critical about the age that they happen to be alive in. It just so happens that philosophers that I’m most familiar with are alive today and are talking about the 21st century as modernity. I agree with you that those criticisms are no better than the criticisms made in the past about the past time periods.

Perhaps it should be noted that modernity and modernism are two different things. — ssu

Well, what is the difference between modernity and modernism? I’m a little bit confused by your use of the word modernism. I thought modernism is just the belief that modernity is highly preferable in some manner but I don’t know if you have something else in mind.

Hello. I think every part of Creation, every species, is universally unique and I value that intrinsically. — Photios

Would you extend such a sentiment to complex non-living things like a robot that is controlled by a sophisticated AI?

O Hedomenos, that was a personal affront to me, that you set the preferred end of your life at an age, 55, younger than my present years! You are obviously yet a rather young man, and I doubt the sincerity of your sentiment: I would like to know how you feel when you turn 54. — Todd Martin

Well, I think my comment about preferring to die by the age of 55 was a little bit misleading. I don’t value dying at a particular age for its own sake. Rather, I’m extremely against the idea of continuing life under the threat of severe physical pain like the physical pain that might come with old age or maybe the physical pain of cancer. Unfortunately, I will probably have to either euthanize myself or I would have to be able to afford enough palliative care to numb most of my pain until I die a natural death. The latter only seems like an option if I get diagnosed with cancer that will be lethal without medical treatment or something like that. Theoretically, I would want to live past 55 but I doubt I can maintain a life free from physical pain past that age. Given this, I think that I will need to find a way to die before life hurts me too much and I probably won’t be able to wait beyond the age of 55.

As far as Mozart is concerned, there are three sorts of ppl that are attracted to him out of the general population: the most obvious are the white-hairs who commonly go to classical concerts because that is the music that they were steeped in as youngsters (that group may have already died out); another is the younger sort, wealthy and upwardly mobile, who take an interest out of vanity and ostentation; the last is the mothers who think their infants will become smarter if they hear his music regularly... — Todd Martin

Well, it’s worth noting that most people who liked Mozart in the past were also just elitist aristocrats who treated his music as a frivolous luxury and a status symbol. Classical composers were like caviar and golden crowns for the royals and aristocrats who employed them. They were used as means to show off wealth and prestige. In fact, Mozart and other composers like Bach and Beethoven were often quite angry about how their royal employers didn’t give him enough creative freedom and that they wanted to dictate what compositions they should compose and what compositions they ought to perform. Classical music was never actually popular or appreciated contrary to popular historical misunderstandings(well, maybe during the romantic period it was but that’s past Mozart’s time.). Folk music and religious choral music was really the pop music in the past. They were like the McDonald’s of the music of the past. In contrast, composers like Mozart were considered to be like a fancy restaurant where everyone pretended to enjoy the food to look prestigious.

...but there are very very few who listen to his music now simply because it stirs their soul, regardless of how many listen to his music on YouTube, and there are no new Mozarts, or Schuberts, or Beethovens, or Brahmses being produced in our day. They have all been replaced by jazz and rock and hip-hip and rap in the popular consciousness...which is an opprobrium less of classical music than it is of the modern soul. — Todd Martin

Well, I would say that there are plenty of jazz and multi-genre musicians that are more talented than any classical composer was. For example, listen to a guy named Jacob Collier and tell me that he isn’t more talented than Mozart. The dude can write beautiful compositions using notes and scales that have never been used in music before. In contrast, Mozart used the same musical vocabulary that have been used by his predecessors and by the majority of modern musicians. Whether or not Mozart’s music is more beautiful just strikes me as highly subjective. For one, Mozart’s music can only be appealing to a Western audience that are accustomed to certain rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic patterns. I think a guy like Jacob Collier can actually write compositions that people of all cultures would find appealing which is an especially rare talent.

But is the bald fact that a power can be abused reason to eliminate it entirely? — Todd Martin

No, but it’s a pretty big downside of collectivism. One could reasonably argue that the cons of collectivism outweigh the pros. My whole point is that individualism is probably better because it isn’t as appealing to tyrants.

Don’t such powers often also conduce to greater good? — Todd Martin

Maybe, but I honestly can’t think of very many upsides of collectivism. I’m not saying that collectivism is always bad but I think we have more than enough collectivism in our modern world today.

Do not the traditional marriage vows, “for better or worse”, take account not just of misfortune, but also of the frailty of the paterfamilias, his proneness to error, of the fact that he is a mere mortal? — Todd Martin

Well, as a guy who never understood marriage or romantic relationships, it’s hard for me to make sense of that question to be honest.

When divorce becomes easy, when a man and woman who have formally pledged to devote their lives to each other decide that they might be happier going separate ways, and split up, what do their children learn from this to guide them in their adult lives? They learn that there is no unbreakable bond between human beings, and that, with whomsoever they should form a bond with in their own lives, be it a wife or husband, mother or father, brother or sister, priest or friend, that bond has no fetters, is a will-o-the wisp. — Todd Martin

I agree but I don’t understand why you think this is a bad thing. I’ve never been a fan of being intimate with only one person for the rest of my life and I kinda wish that I lived in a world where it was normal for friends and acquaintances to have sex with one another just for fun except considering the risk of pregnancy, STDs, and romantic drama that it may cause in the real world. It’s kinda a growing trend today and I’m kinda happy about that as it does create a lot of unexpected excitement. For example, the idea of having one of my female coworkers old enough to be my mom inviting me to her place for some friendly cuddling and sex just excites me to no end. It’s most exciting for me when it’s so shocking and unexpected. It just makes the experience very magical and unbelievable for me.

Whatever the case may be, it seems to me that those who approve of modern life, as you do, do so on the same ground: the benefits of science and technology to the improvement of man’s physical well-being; as though merely living longer and in better health were the keys to human bliss. — Todd Martin

Well, I don’t actually care about living longer. I actually think one legitimate criticism that people can have of modernity is that we spend too much money and resources trying to keep people alive as long as possible. I personally hope that I’ll die around the age of 55 in a fairly painless manner. In addition, it could be argued that modernity has enabled the obesity epidemic which is actually making people die sooner. My reason for thinking that modernity is great has more to do with how it enables us to live comfortable, cozy, and pleasant lives. After all, it’s really great that I live in a house that is just the right temperature and that I’m not freezing in the winter. It’s also great how I’m able to eat the kind of delicious food that would make the aristocracy of the past envy. I’m also able to be sexually intimate with women who have great hygiene and who take care of their appearance and I’m able to look at extremely beautiful women on the Internet. In contrast, even an emperor from the past was sexually entertaining himself with women who haven’t showered in months and had lots of leg and armpit hair. Honestly, would you want to live in that kind of world?

According to this optic, one might say,”Oh Mozart! If only he had lived in this day, when modern medicine prolongs lives, so that he could produce so many more masterpieces!”...but modernity has not only extinguished the aristocratic taste that he exemplified in his music: it has also turned our taste away from any real appreciation of it. Not only this, but Mozart, who died at the age of 35, accomplished far more than any present musician will ever accomplish, should he live to the age of 100. — Todd Martin

I agree that Mozart wouldn’t be any more accomplished but I have a hard time understanding why it matters if people appreciate Mozart’s music. Wouldn’t Mozart’s music be just as valuable in a world where no one cares about his music? Besides, there are actually more people today listening to Mozart than any other time in history. This is because everyone can just listen to his compositions on YouTube today. In contrast, Mozart was only heard by the aristocracy of the past and the peasant were too busy performing back breaking labor all day.

Genius aside, let’s consider the everyday lives of everyday ppl like you and me: what modernity promotes is individualism, the notion that each human being is a separate entity with peculiar rights, not necessarily attached to anything other than his or her own selfish self — Todd Martin

Well, I think we shouldn’t ignore the harmfulness of the collectivist narratives that were promoted in the past as well. For example, was it better that people were pressured into continuing a bad marriage in the past for the supposed benefit of the family unit? Isn’t it a travesty that we sent lots of young men in the past to die on the battlefield for some stupid king who promoted a collectivist narrative of national unity? I’m pretty anti-collectivist mainly because I fear that collectivist narratives are often used to take away our freedom and it’s not clear to me that this freedom reduction is useful to anyone but the power hungry tyrants who often use these collectivist narratives. Those power hungry tyrants might include a husband who wants to control his nuclear family and accuses his wife or children of being selfish individualists if they go against his will. Other examples of tyrants using collectivist narratives might be religious institutions and rulers of nations who might justify taking away freedoms in the name of some supposed collectivist greater good.

I am as concerned about the extinction of the majority of flora and fauna species going extinct as I am humans going that route. — Photios

That’s interesting, what makes you value plant life? Do you believe that it is sentient or something like that?

I wouldn’t say that I favor the satisfaction of immediate wants as I actually favor a pretty prudent lifestyle focused on avoid tragic events from happening as much as possible and having the best long term strategy for alleviating the suffering caused by those tragic events as much as possible. Also, egoism doesn’t really have anything to do with egocentrism. Egoism is simply the view that one ought only to improve one’s own life as much as possible. I don’t think that the world comes to an end when I die. I just don’t think that I have reason to care about the world beyond the consideration of how caring about the world might benefit me.

Though I would think that for a philosophical hedonist considering all options, it might follow more to avoid the greater evils and pains first before seeking comparatively more transient pleasures. — magritte

Yes, I would say that many hedonists like myself tend to think that minimizing suffering is more important than maximizing pleasure. This sort of view does tend to encourage a less negative or more positive view on suicide since suicide might be viewed as a strategy for minimizing your own suffering. Though, it’s probably more popular among hedonists who are also egoists like myself rather than say utilitarian hedonists. This is because a utilitarian hedonist might argue that suicide causes too much suffering to others even if it alleviates your suffering. I think the combination of egoism and hedonism is more likely to produce a more positive attitude towards suicide than the belief that suffering is more significant than pleasure as even a pleasure seeking egoistic hedonist would probably have a hard time justifying continuing a life of sickness and disability which probably wouldn’t produce much pleasure either.

Why is the only alternative to modernity "living in the past". What about an alternative modernity? — Isaac

What is alternative modernity exactly?

It's literally the definition of criticising. — Isaac

In the sentence that you have responded to, I said “I don’t see why pointing out problems caused by something requires us to criticize that thing in any significant way. The key phrase here is “any significant way”. I was referring to the kind of severe criticisms of modernity that I often hear from philosophers who seem to think that things were better in the past.

Really. What is more severe than suicide then? — Isaac

I would say that having someone scream in agony for many years and not be able to commit suicide is more severe than suicide. I think having time, energy, and resources to commit suicide is actually a privilege in many ways. People in past often didn’t have adequate means to commit suicide and they often were too busy trying to survive and find comfort to even seriously contemplate suicide.

You're happy with it so the rest of us should be? What a bizarre argument. — Isaac

My argument is that there’s no one who would be completely happy to live in the past but there are some people like me who are perfectly happy with modernity. This is an asymmetry that I think gives us some good reasons to think that maybe modernity is better than living in the past.

As you acknowledged, the modern day reality of total nuclear winter is nothing other than nightmarish, if given sufficient focus. And why shouldn't it be. — Outlander

Well, I thought about a potential consideration that could be given regarding the existential threat that modernity poses. Some people might think that the risk of extinction cause by technology is smaller than the risk of natural extinction without having technology to prevent that extinction. It requires a rather optimistic view of how humans will use future technology or it requires a rather pessimistic view about the possibility of extinction through natural causes that are unrelated to human stupidity. One can think about how an asteroid or a super volcano would eventually kill off the human race if advanced technology never comes about to prevent that. It can then be argued that if technology keeps progressing that it would actually provide a way for humans to prevent asteroids or super volcanoes from being an existential threat with the use of futuristic technology. This question really comes down to how much one believes that technological causes of extinction are more probable than natural causes of extinction. Nonetheless, I personally don’t find it very plausible that natural disasters are more likely to make us extinct than human made disasters as I think it’s pretty easy for someone to cause some sort of accident with technology that will just kill a bunch of people. Yet, it’s still worth admiring the potential that technology has to keep everyone safe from something like an asteroid.

That's why you don't ever need to get too comfortable, and when you do, consider taking say a weekend outing in the woods with the pledge that any modern technologies you bring with are to be used solely in case of an emergency only. — Outlander

Well, that’s one way to do it. Some things that I do to reset myself is eating mostly a bland and healthy diet. This has made appreciate food that actually tastes good a lot more and I can now experience a lot of pleasure from just eating some yogurt or a turkey sandwich with nothing but turkey and wheat bread. In the past, I almost never experienced any pleasure from eating food because I just ate what I wanted to and eating just got boring. Another thing that I found helpful is working long hours. It really made me good at being able to entertain myself with just my thoughts and I now appreciate my leisure time so much more.

Someone on here introduced me to the concept of the hedonic treadmill, something I believe may be of relevance to your claim.

Take my favorite PC game. I really like it. When I first played it I couldn't stop. Then after I beat it, started a new game, several times over.. I kinda just needed a break lol. It didn't "give" what it did when I first got it and everything was new. — Outlander

I think one can acknowledge the reality of the hedonic treadmill and still argue that modern technology and material goods increase the welfare of humans. At the very least, the continuous improvement of technology will lead to more pre-adaptational periods of great happiness. For example, you might remember the first time you played a PC game. It was probably the late 90s or maybe the early 2000s. You were probably pretty excited even though the graphics and features of the game were pretty inferior compared to modern games. This created a period of great joy and happiness which improved your own welfare. Then, you got tired of the game and your level happiness returns back to normal until a new and better game comes out which might raise your level of happiness again. Even though this raise in your level of happiness isn’t permanent, it doesn’t follow that temporary raise in happiness that those games provided had no significant impact on your level of welfare. I think that the way that you can hack the hedonic treadmill is by making slight improvements in your material wealth that will give you a continuous boost in happiness and maybe it’s also helpful to practice modest abstinence from activities that give you pleasure so that they can give you more pleasure as you start to miss those activities more.

A prime positive example is technological progress, but so is the alarming ballooning overpopulation and ensuing loss of planetary resources. — magritte

In regards to overpopulation, it’s worth noting that birth rates are actually decreasing quite a bit in the world due to a greater widespread use of contraceptives and the greater education of women in the modern world. Of course, contraception is also getting more reliable which likely is going to lead to a population decline at some point in the near future. As far as the loss of planetary resources, it’s worth noting that modern technology will likely allow us to extract resources from places where we couldn’t extract them before like Antarctica and even asteroids in space. In addition, we have come a long way in developing technologies that can utilize renewable resources and so I would wager that the future will probably be even cozier and more comfortable than the times that we are currently living in.

I could go into many other examples but my observation is that the "modern" is an inevitable result of experiences more than an invention or diversion that distracted us from some stable form of life that we gave up for something else. — Valentinus

So, would this mean that it’s possible for there to be a society that has technologies like our modern society without it actually being like our modern society?

But will someone two hundred years from now look back in horror at what I tolerated? Probably. So, in the end, I think people are just as dissatisfied with their lives as they ever were. — RogueAI

Well, I would say that plenty of modern humans living today might look back at horror at what you have tolerated as well. But, I’m not sure if dissatisfaction is really the best judge of one’s welfare. It may be argued that suffering that one feels is acceptable and justified is still something really bad and that we have plenty of reason to avoid it. In contrast, there may be some forms of suffering that make someone contemplate suicide that are not actually all that bad. For example, if someone thinks his life is not worth living because they have to put up with doing laundry, then does it make sense to think that this person’s suffering is more significant than that of a person who cheerfully undergoes a very painful surgery?

I think existential threats actually constitute the best argument to be given against modernity as this is a pretty uncontroversial downside with modernity. I’m kinda surprised that most critics of modernity don’t seem to place that much emphasis on it. I would say that I’m ultimately not convinced that these existential threats make modernity worse because I don’t think it’s obvious that the average human life contains more benefits than harms. Given this, it’s not clear to me how much we should really fear the possibility of extinction. On the other hand, having to live without running water, Internet, or electricity would cause people to suffer more rather than simply killing them which I think makes the absence of those things seem bad to me in a more obvious way than the badness of existential threats. Though, my views on this are probably pretty unpopular and the critic of modernity could likely just get away with appealing to the intuitions of most people that extinction is like the worst thing that could ever happen.

In any case, the three of us should agree that contemporary philosophical understanding interprets Humes is/ought divide in this more general sense that Wayfarer speaks of. So it's what we must contend with. — Philguy

Well, it seems like Wayfarer didn’t actually explain how the is/ought divide implies that moral realism is implausible. It’s possible that Hume falsely believed that the is/ought gap implies this but he never explicitly stated that it does to my knowledge. In addition, my whole point is that the is/ought divide doesn’t seem to do anything to threaten moral realism. It seems like believing that you can’t defend an ought claim without making another ought claim is still perfectly compatible with moral realism. Moral realists could just argue that ought claims can be just as objective and factual as is claims are. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason to think that they aren’t. It’s also worth noting that just as you can’t defend an ought claim without making another ought claim, it also seems true that you can’t defend a scientific claim without making another scientific claim and you can’t defend a mathematical claim without making another mathematical claims. But, this just wouldn’t imply that science and math are subjective or not real in any way. This is because you don’t need to derive those other claims from other kinds of claims. We just treat those claims as credible and some philosophers have a tendency to dismiss ought claims for reasons that are unrelated to the is/ought distinction itself. It’s not clear to me what the is/ought distinction actually adds to the conversation here.