I don't believe that. — Tarskian

What you believe does not change reality. I was not talking about a specific year, it was a generalisation. The scale and intensity of conflicts has changed quite dramatically.

The rest of what you said is probably just an attempt to bait an emotional reaction maybe? Either way, there is not anything substantial as an argument against the claim that the vast majority of people are not "craving war" as you put it.

I do not see people beating each other everyday let alone looking to join a war. I do strongly believe that many younger men are seeking some kind of 'evil' to fight in some way. Most are probably willing to fight for what they deem as 'good'. These items can be, and are, sometimes misdirected by nefarious characters and/or desperation which cause bogeymen to appear where there are none.

You see things a bit like people who eat enjoy eating a steak but who swear that they would never kill an animal. — Tarskian

You know this how? More blind speculation. Saying things is just saying things.

The truth is I would actually be willing to pay more to kill what I eat. My personal opinion is if you are not willing to kill an animal you should not eat meat. I have expressed this view on numerous occasions to numerous people.

As an analogy of views on war. I just do not see this at all. I have travelled the world and not seen a single war break out. You, on the other hand, speak as if people are out there making war all the time. They are not. This is visible to everyone.

We are clearly carnivore. — Tarskian

Omnivorous.

On the one side, the farmers were sick and tired of roving gangs who stole their harvests. On the other side, not everybody wanted to fight. Some farmers just wanted to farm. So, in exchange for a share in the harvest, the farmers appointed their own gangsters to take on the other gangs.

If we don't do any of the fighting by ourselves, that is because we pay other people to do it for us. Someone has to do all of the killing required to protect the harvests. Apparently, it is just not you. In that case, you instead pay for someone else to do the killing for you. — Tarskian

And this is a good point to argue against yourself in terms of currently living in a peaceful time. We have moved on from slavery and serfdom. I can already guess the response to this, so let me make clear I do not mean there is NO slavery NOR serfdom anymore, only that it is no longer the norm.

The world is continuously at war in various places. Wars don't really stop. They just shift location. There are wars going on right now. We conveniently ignore them because we can. — Tarskian

The truth is we can SEE them more now than before. There is far less war today than 100 years ago. We have been gradually becoming more stable.

The way you put your point across you made it sound like if you looked out of the average window you would see death and pillaging on at least a yearly basis. This just doesn't happen anymore in most corners of the world.

Just because we have an aggressive element to our psychological make-up it does not define who we are. War is something we do, it is not anywhere near a defining part of the vast majority of human lives today.

Civilization is just a very thin veneer on top of the brutal truth. Male animals crave war. — Tarskian

I am all for cynicism, but when it is based on faulty assumptions it can be quite dangerous.

Human males do not crave war. If this was the case there would be more war. I think it would perhaps be more fitting to suggest that humans crave conflict rather than war. If we craved war so much then we would pretty much all be dead by now via self-annihilation. As history has shown we are more prone to negotiate to prolong our survival because mutually assured destruction is just that.

I would have thought Chiang Mai would be more like $800 a month. I guess people on that site are from US and want large space to live in or something?

- Chiang Mai, Thailand, $1020/month — Tarskian

That much!?

Some people even volunteer to die in foreign lands for their ruling mafia. I cannot imagine any decision more stupid than that. The ruling mafia does not give a flying fart about you. Never have. Never will. So, why would you? — Tarskian

I agree with everything here pretty much except the view that there is a "ruling mafia". I do not believe most of what happens in the political sphere is directed by any upper echelon of society. Things just move along and some people claim ownership of the resulting milieu if it adheres to their ideology.

I have not quite processed let alone regurgitated something taken from Adam Smith. The 'Invisible-Hand' but kind of find something intriguing about how Nozick reformed the idea little.

When I look at economics in general I am more interested in the distribution and scarcity of ideas and aesthetic sensibilities than focusing so intently on commodities.

I have a very simplistic view on politics. At the top, you have the ruling mafia. At the bottom, you have the populace. I cannot imagine a society without either. I acknowledge the existence of both but I do not trust either. — Tarskian

This is precisely what Popper is looking at. He seems to view this as a remnant of Closed Society carried on in Open Society. Something akin to harking back to a "Golden Age" where some magnificent Ruler held sway over society.

Nassim Taleb. — Tarskian

Ah! Heard of the Black Swan idea before. Looks interesting.

Democracy is rule by the mob. I will never endorse it. — Tarskian

If that is how you see Democracy then who would ever disagree with that? Mob rule is not exactly an enticing idea :)

Like every single ideology it has its uses but also its limitations. Popper does not offer a solution only seems intent on pointing out the reason for the problems - that is Reason itself. The cat is out of the bag now so we just have to sit back and see how things play out.

I have had the feeling that we are living through a very significant revolution right now (on the scale of the creation of civilization) but like many a blind sage I am probably completely wrong because the more I come to learn about everything the less certain I am about anything. Undoubtedly every person in every age felt some kind of severe revolutionary movement on the immediate horizon.

You can find the full text online for free.

There are obviously more nuances than in the Wiki entry.

He offers some opposition to what you seem to be sketching out as inevitable. Reading the introduction should give you a reasonable outline of this with the distinction of an Open Society and Closed Society and how in our civilised state we are caught between harking for some form of primitive Closed Societal tribalism or transferring this paradigm into rational society by recreating a 'magical' scheme that results in tyranny (authoritarianism).

In terms of naivety I am fairly sure Popper would frame your position as naive due to a clinging to historicism.

Either way, it is an interesting read whether you agree or not. Will help you to either fortify your opinions with a more rational opposing line of argumentation, or perhaps question some assumptions you consider to be fundamental.

No reading suggestions for me?

Note:

The idea that philosophers would be effective rulers, is laughable. — Tarskian

That was over two millennia ago. Keep the context in mind.

Have you read Karl Popper's "The Open Society and its Enemies"?

I am in the process of reading this currently and it may serve you well to have a browse of it.

I am currently reading several works covering the broader topic of society. If you have any suggestions for me too would be very much appreciated. I try to cover subjects from as many unique perspectives as I can.

Thanks

Temporality is 'essentially' what we are. Our memories, although altered with time, remain for the most part intact. Our brains soak up what we experience in relation to what we have experienced.

What is special about humans compared to most other living organisms is that we can extend ourselves into an abstracted past and future sense of self. This is the experience of having an individual identity and like every human experience once we question its authenticity we always find something wanting ... this is basically what conscious experience necessarily entails.

A 'pure apodictic knowing' is to experience nothing. We are aware of what can be questioned not what cannot be questioned.

In this sense when you draw yourself away from the concept of an identity, and focus your attention elsewhere, your identity takes on something resembling a 'pure apodictic knowing' because it is no longer held up to the light of scepticism and rational analysis.

Marx equated happiness with power. That was the mistake.

Just another case of bourgeoise dictating their views to the proletariat because they deem themselves wiser and more worldly.

It was from a meta-ethical standpoint I said this. That is why I reframed 'Moral' and 'Ethical'. Anyway, I think we mostly understand each other here even if we disagree about AN :)

Thank you

I think it is hard to articulate - hence the problem of vagueness. It is something some people struggle to fully grasp. Emotivism that is!

The fact that I don't think I should be forcing other people to adopt my view doesn't make it less ethically-driven. — AmadeusD

In common parse, yes. In the framing I made for 'Moral' and 'Ethical' I am satisfied with how you have responded. If you had said some other things then I would have pulled you up about them. This is because AN only makes rational sense if it is either 'Moral' OR 'Ethical' in the way I framed those terms.

Could you expand? My understanding of Moral Naturalism is that it more or less indicates that morals are evolutionarily-required aspects of human development, which I don't agree with. — AmadeusD

It just seemed that you were framing emotional dispositions as the grounding for moral choices rather than there being no moral choices. I made the leap from biological necessity to emotional dispositions. That is clearly not what you meant though.

What is Right For You (Emotivism) is not deemed Objectively Right. Ergo, your claim is Subjectively Led not Objectively Led - for emphasis this is what I meant in my distinction between Moral (Right for Your Perspective) and Ethical (The Right Objective Implementation).

Only you can shake yourself free of dogma sadly. If you cannot admit he was wrong about anything then that should tell you something at least.

GL

He was wrong about the immediate collapse of capitalism. This is not a controversial point.

He has yet to be proven right about where a communist revolution would occur too. Where they did occur did not fit into his vision at all.

It generally does happen. — Tarskian

It did not happen. If you cannot admit this simple truth then there is nothing to discuss.

To be fair to Marx he envisioned a transition from capitalism to communism through socialism NOT a jump from feudalism directly to socialism. Either way, it was all hypothetical and has yet to have come to fruition on a national scale.

That is silly. What he said would happen did not happen. Pretending he made this claim yesterday is simply ignoring that fact that capitalism did the exact opposite to what he predicted after his death.

Charles Dickens made the very same kind of predictions too. It is completely understandable given the socio-politcal climate of their times. It just didn't pan out as they expected.

And again, all that aside, Marx certainly pointed out problems with the economic system that are worthy of examination today. I am not simply dismissing every criticism he had of capitalism.

He said the middle class would get sucked down into poverty. They didn't. That fact is not up for debate.

That is not to say he pointed out valid issues with capitalism. I do not believe any one in history has ever been proven correct in every prediction that they made - and even those that were correct are seldom so for valid reasons.

If we can believe Plato's account (which I doubt we can fully) then he was threatened under the assumption he would flee Athens. Socrates called their bluff though and refused to leave on principle. If he had left he would have been shown to be a hypocrite.

In general, I believe Plato wrote what he wrote because he was against Democracy. I doubt Socrates was against Democracy (if he was the kind of person we generally think of him as) because he always questioned everything rather than reaching specific conclusions about broader political matters.

Emphatically NO!

This is because it is like asking for white to be black OR black to be white. If either were the case neither would exist. The kind of utopia many hope for essentially culminates in annihilation of everything as a 'solution'.

The point of this thread: Marx's vision of communism has been corrupted in various ways. — Deletedmemberzc

"Corrupted" and also amended. Some of his criticisms of capitalism have not aged well but some others have.

I think it is clear his main criticism of capitalism was in fact wrong. He predicted that capitalism would lead to an increase in poverty. In his time it is quite easy to see why he would think this, but he was simply proven wrong by history on this main point.

That said, many of his subordinate criticisms of capitalism have yet to be resolved.

It is probably worth listening to what someone said about Lenin here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TK9c-caEcw

Allow me to sum up your position then, generally.

You deem 'suffering' as 'bad' (or rather "Boo!") knowing it is your subjective emotions talking.

How then can you state, in any serious way, that something is 'right' or 'wrong'. The whole point of AN is to state that natalism is wrong. But you seem to be saying "it is 'wrong' (boo!) for me" not that it is out and out wrong (Boo!) for everyone or that there is anything dictating what is objectively viewed as 'right; or 'wrong' other than commonality of emotional expressions.

It is interesting how this, in part, appears similar to moral naturalism rather than moral scepticism.

Following this lien of questioning I find myself framing you as what I previously expressed as harbouring a 'Moral' stance of AN rather than an 'Ethical' stance of AN. I made this particular distinction in an essay I wrote on AN to highlight the flaw in some who make claims to both 'Moral' and 'Ethical' stances on AN as to do so is to hold contradictory positions.

Anyway, thanks for your replies. I think we could argue back and forth a bit more but it may be mostly a semantic issue given that emotivism is hard to articulate (a serious flaw of emotivism).

The world is becoming, but our thoughts are eternal. — Gregory

Technically there is very little evidence for this. It is simply a subjective assumption we make due to our appreciation of time (or rather entropy).

The phenomenological positioning of Husserl might shed some light on this topic. What is experienced is experienced. The 'reality' of it is neither here nor there. We experience. From this point we can then pick out certain universals.

It is kind of funny how they both seem thrilled about the moral implications when judging people as agents yet seem to detach morality from consequences :D

In fairness to Sapolsky he makes no claims to be a philosopher.

If you look at all the arguments and conclude "Not good enough", fine, but I'll think you're wrong and would try to persuade you otherwise. — AmadeusD

You do this actively or only when questioned about your AN beliefs?

I do think it can be quite problematic to argue about moral positions unless you adhere to some kind of moral realism. I am assuming you are a moral realist? If not how does this fit into your views on AN?

Thanks

Thanks for that insight! Interesting :up:

So in light of what I said you are framing yourself as 'moral' not 'ethical' in regards to AN? I say this because of the following:

My views are odd - because I am conceptually in line with AN entirely (including the above prescriptive thinking and hte delineation between living and potential persons) but I don't take anything seriously enough to think this is a view I could enforce. And nor would I want to. I have better things to do. Thsi is an intellectual position that I do believe in, but as with all of my positions, I think they apply to me. I can simply think one has their reasoning wrong without impugning htem intellectually. — AmadeusD

This is directly in line with what I outlined as 'moral' and almost entirely opposed to the 'ethical'. Do you agree that what you say here aligns with what I stated as being a 'moral' stance rather than what I stated as an 'ethical' stance? If not why? (Note: I used these terms fairly loosely so there is wiggle room).

ANs do believe in the extinction of society being the ethically correct outcome of hte near-middle future. But, not by genocide. Not it's better 'for society'. It 'is better'. Full stop. — AmadeusD

No they do not. Only if they proclaim AN as an 'ethical' paradigm that must be followed by others. When it comes to believing that it should be followed the same would not apply if should is framed as a suggestion rather than am order based on irrefutable reasoning.

You are a believer in AN? If so I am curious what your views are. I know already know well enough what Schopenhauer believes what about you? Even if you are one of those I said I would have 'contempt' for I would still like to try and understand why you think what you think :)

morals as personal position and ethics as suggested action.

I am not saying I understood what they said just that it made me think of this. Whether they can apply it or not we will see.

One possible route would be licensing for parentage. — AmadeusD

I have mentioned this before. That is not exactly something I would favour but it falls far away from the kind of of extreme I was talking about - an essential ban on procreation - which is not really what AN is about.

It's possible you missed that your arguments support action, while what I'm outlining supports the position. Maybe? — AmadeusD

I have a feeling this is parallel to something I have tried to mention before on the subject of AN.

Often what is ethical is used synonymously with what is moral. With AN we are really talking about a 'moral' view (individual conscience) whereas as an 'ethical' view (general rule for society) it is something quite different.

The lack of common distinction with these terms causes discussions about AN to become fractious. This is why you see so many people believing that others are condoning the extinction of the human species - they see the 'ethical' stance as saying this is better for society (the destruction of society is better for society).

Brain would equate to body. I am sure you know of the most famous case in neuroscience: Phineas Gage.

An argument for some kind of self permanence, in the sense you are talking, would probably be better grounded in emergentism or something more applicable to entropy at large - meaning metaphysical grounding rather than in physicalism.

Personally speaking I think of 'Philosophy' as essentially meaning "ways of thinking about ..." rather than "love of knowledge," which is too question begging for me.

In theatrical performances the line between the audience and the performance often disappears in many cultural traditions (see Clifford Geertz for that regarding his experiences in Bali).

What I was trying to highlight in that quote from Nietzsche is how we partake in the performance and reveal something harsh about the reality of human existence. The essence of such brutal experiences (secondhand or imagined) taps into the essence of being human. We cherish such stark encounters with brute reality.

The 'pleasure' may be interpreted as more or less a recognition of reality as a means of value even though there is suffering - or rather because there is suffering.

Anyway, this is a topic that hits some familiar ground for me as I ended up reading 'Beyond Good and Evil' and then realised I needed to read 'On the Genealogy of Morals' first and then realised I needed to read 'The Birth of Tragedy' prior to that ... and then eventually I started with Aristotle's Poetics and worked my way back to 'Beyond Good and Evil'. I recommend doing this, it is fun watching different threads of ideas weaving together and interesting questions surfacing.

I think this sums up Catharsis fairly well and answers the question of why tragedy gives 'pleasure':

§17 - Dioysiac art, too, wishes to convince us of the eternal delight of existence - but we are to seek that delight not in phenomena themselves but behind phenomena. It wishes us to acknowledge that everything that comes into being must be prepared to face a sorrowful end. If forces us to look at terrors of individual existence, yet we are not to be petrified with fear. A metaphysical consolation wrests us momentarily from the bustle of changing forms. For a brief moment we really become primal essence itself, and feel its unbounded lust for existence and delight in existence.

- Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

It almost sounds like schadenfreude is trying to muscle in here? Is that the real hidden question? I think Cartharsis is quite a different beast to Schadenfreude. Maybe discussing the distinction could prove fruitful.

I've come to see some limits to his thinking and I continue to think through that. — Moliere

The same for all philosophical ideas as far as I can tell. I hate it when I cannot see something wrong with someone's thinking BUT I know there is always something.

Sadly people tend to stick resolutely to one idea or another believing it is infallible. I am wary of folk who put any philosophical idea on a pedestal. I believe there is something to be learnt from them all but that none have any universal application.

Here is something that might interest folks here.

There's No Free Will. What Now? - Robert Sapolsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvDrFwyW4k&t=2804s

I think it could be interesting to have a particular Member on of the forum as a focus for a month. Where others are actively encouraged to engage in 2-3 of their ideas/thoughts in threads (maybe highlight them somehow).

Obviously it would be a case of asking Member(s) to prepare for this. It could even be a joint effort perhaps? With 2-3 Members focusing on 2-3 particular topics and interacting that way?

Just a passing idea so not thoroughly fleshed out. I think for such thread it would make sense to be a little more strict too in terms of sticking to the topic in the OP rather than like elsewhere on the forum where threads can take a life of their own and meander into other interesting areas of discussion (which is great!). Just feel a more rigid format for something like what I am suggesting could be interesting in building a more thorough engagement with people who are particularly knowledgeable/passionate in more specific areas.

Literally everything I say is a lie, therefore, not literally all things others provide are true.

This is assuming lie as equivalent to some opposite forms.

How we interpret the sentence matters. Some will do so more literally than others and use their own methodology. If it is paradoxical then try to make it not so and see if any meaning can be established.

We don't have one for thinking with consciousness, and one for thinking without consciousness. — Patterner

Thinking that is not in a state of consciousness is not thinking - dreaming is a conscious state btw.

We don't have one for thinking independent of the physical events of the brain, and one for thinking that is the physical events of the brain. The ideas of thinking without consciousness and thinking being nothing but the physical events of our brains are not parts of our culture, or our language. — Patterner

Because such would be fairly nonsensical so specificity would be required to distinguish such ideas.

Is this because our culture and language grew in a people who, rare individuals aside, never considered these concepts? The things we have words for are the things the people assumed were true without even saying. — Patterner

They exist is specialised fields but are often uncommon in colloquial speech. An example of a technical jargon being transferred to daily parse is "meme," but it did lose a fair bit of its meaning once taken into colloquial speech.

If terms are rarely used they quickly die or are repurposed. A great many philosophical idea from people like Kant or Hegel are often construed in many different ways by different people.

Time is probably the most troublesome concept philosophers have to deal with.