the referent of a given use of a proper name, such as Aristotle, is transmitted through an indefinitely long series of earlier uses; this series constitutes a causal-historical chain that is traceable, in principle, to an original, or “baptismal,” application. — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saul-Kripke#ref918554

The transmission of the moniker, "unenlightened" is finite, and a baptismal ritual called "signing-up" was undergone in which the guidelines were read and formally assented to. But this is a cultural matter.

If you were a woman of the last century, or if you were a Native American, you would expect your name to change as you identity changed.

You want to declare that formally meaningless, and make me say instead:

A woman of the last century, or a Native American would expect their name to change as their identity changed.

And that I can so easily make the same point either way, strongly suggests to me, that your claim is a matter of linguistic grammar and usage merely, and says nothing about identity or personhood.

That's an argument, but as a reductio it doesn't quite reach the solid ground of contradiction. bert1 could have been unenlightened (if he had registered the name in time) and not-bert1 could've been unenlightened (and as it happens is). Either of us could have been, but only one of us is.

"I am not bert1" by the way, does not (fortunately) entail that I am everyone who is not bert1.

Are you ok with my sister saying "I wish I had been born a man."?
— unenlightened

No, becauseif born differently, she would not be her, she would be someone else. That is precisely what I mean. You can't be born something else without being someone else. — schopenhauer1

It seems a very odd position to take, and you still provide no argument for your claim that I can understand. My sister can transition to a man, but cannot express the desire always to have been one.

"You" could be no one else, otherwise it is someone else we are talking about. — schopenhauer1

After schopenhauer1 drove antinatalist arguments into Sarah's head she was not herself anymore. — Nils Loc

This is much more my sense of identity, a sort of virus we infect each other with - old Arthur was infected by Buddhist philosophy and @schopenhauer1 caught pessimism from him and is infecting the forum. Has there been an original thought on the forums, or are we all second and third hand thinkers? I think not only that we could be someone else, but most of the time we are someone else.

So are you making an argument for a soul that can be embodied by anything? — schopenhauer1

No. Absolutely not! I'm not actually making an argument at all. I'm trying to find out what your argument is.

Are ok with my hairdresser saying "You would look better with short hair."?
Are you ok with my sister saying "I wish I had been born a man."?
Are you ok with my hairdresser cutting my hair and my sister transitioning?

What is the particularity of personhood you are pointing too? Any counterfactual is a false narrative in one sense. I am wearing a blue shirt, so it is a false narrative that I am wearing a red shirt. But yesterday I wore a red shirt. — unenlightened

Are you saying anything about a person that is not true of a shirt?

You don't have to answer my questions, and if you don't I won't keep on asking any more.

There is no counterfactual where you were born something else. — schopenhauer1

And what I say three times is true. — The Bellman

(The Hunting of the Snark)

You don't have an argument. Not a shred of a reason for your claim. You just repeat it.

One case is you born, the counterfactual, would not be you. — schopenhauer1

Yes it would. If the counterfactual were the factual I would be a woman, and the woman would be me, just as the blue shirt would be red if it had been dyed red, even though as it happens it was dyed blue. Is it an argument you are making or just an intuition being declared? Or a universal aversion to counterfactual conditionals?

But this alternate life scenario is a false narrative. Rather, there is no "you" that could have become anything else. — schopenhauer1

What is the particularity of personhood you are pointing too? Any counterfactual is a false narrative in one sense. I am wearing a blue shirt, so it is a false narrative that I am wearing a red shirt. But yesterday I wore a red shirt.

I dyed my shirt blue, but if I had dyed it red, I would be wearing a red shirt. Same shirt, different dye -seems to work. So you are presumably saying there is no substance to identity that can be 'the same' in a counter-factual world? But again I see a difficulty. If the alternate is false, then the original is also false, surely? So when I say 'I could have been born female', there is no substance to the I that is in fact male, and none to the I that is counterfactually female either. Why not the same insubstantiality, just as it is the same insubstantial I that is not wearing a red shirt but might have?

Unfortunately we first have to define consciousness. Sorry. — John Onestrand

Consciousness is the ability to define things.

Always happy to help.

I imagine those who never consider whether they are nice, who dont self reflect on such matters, are probably the worst kind of people. — Benj96

Some of the nicest people you can find are those with Downs Syndrome. They are usually super affectionate, trusting, generous, and it is because they don't self reflect very much that one can be quite sure they are genuine. Folks like you and me who are always second-guessing what they are and what they appear to others, and worrying whether the twain are congruent or not - we are the worst, most false people. Above all, stay away from social scientists and philosophers - they are all psychopaths.

Once, after the revolution, you banish them from the political sphere, — thewonder

Do your revolutionary history. It's not just a theory of mine; you the revolutionary is just the sort of person that gets banished from the political sphere. You cannot help yourself, your every proposal is a litany of authoritarian language - impose, eliminate, banish, incarcerate.

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House — Audre Lorde

Otherwise, what leads people to be authoritarian should just be eliminated — thewonder

Let's call it "The Final Solution". Do you not notice how you have become your enemy?

Is not an authoritarian one who has a clear idea of how things ought to be and seeks to impose it on the others whether they like it or not? An anti authoritarian on the other hand, has a clear idea of how things should be...

...but only seeks to impose it on others that don't like it.

...ethical interment camps, but I do feel like it is the most humane solution to this problem. — thewonder

Haha. Let me know when the anti-authorities are in charge.

The difficulty for anti-authoritarians is how to deal with authoritarians. One would like to ban them, but alas it is impossible.

Roman citizenship was extended to all free men — Ciceronianus the White

But not slaves, so it remains a system of privilege. Oh the irony of your pedantic and irrelevant historical diversion. Never mind understanding what's going on right now, as long as we get the ancient history right.

Prive - private or personal.
Lege - law.

So if it is the case, for example, that having black skin is in practice reasonable grounds for suspicion, whereas white skin is not so treated, that is an example of law operating differently according to the person, and that would constitute white privilege in the same way that a citizen of Rome had the privilege of appeal to the Emperor whereas the non-citizen did not.

The notion that simply because the state pays lip-service to equal rights there cannot be in practice any privilege is laughable. As is the notion that poor people cannot have privilege.

he outlines that every action is a result of a desire for one's own pleasure. — JacobPhilosophy

@boethius has already shot your fox a number of times, but let us tear the corpse to pieces none the less. Determinism requires, as you say above, that it is not the pleasure of the act that causes the action (because that comes after the action), but the desire for pleasure. And desire is a thought, an idea of pleasure. And of course an idea of pleasure can be anything at all; one can find the idea of another's pleasure pleasurable just as well as the idea of one's own pleasure, or the idea of doing God's Will or any damn thing.

This completely eviscerates the theory, because it no longer specifies anything as moral or immoral, or even describes human motivation in any way. One needs a theory of what ideas one ought to find pleasure in...

I'm not interested in love but I like living. There are more reasons than love to live. — Michael

I'm open to persuasion on that, though I take 'love' broadly in my universal pontification. Reasons that are not about other people you may have, but a solitary life is certainly harder to sustain in a positive frame of mind. But tell us about it. Personally, I find I am dependent on others not merely physically, but psychologically - but there are sociopaths and hermits I suppose.

I guess i am sceptical mainly because liking living seems a very fragile motivation for living, if one became subject to chronic pain, such a liking might not be sustained.

If you are trying to prevent someone from killing themselves in the context ive laid out then you are in some sense forcing them to suffer (in cases where ending their suffering is their reason for killing themselves.) — DingoJones

Yes, it is certainly possible to use coercive control or the mental health system for such selfish ends. It is possible too to have selfish motives for opposing suicide in general - one might have the patent on happy pills or something.

One would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to understand that in addition to longstanding depression, anxiety, loss, grief or money troubles that there are places in people's hearts and souls that are not open to others to analyze or tabulate or study. And these "places" are not subject to life coaches, or the endless American drumbeat of "tomorrow, tomorrow," or cheer-up drugs.

Sometimes it is just time to end life.

Sometimes the struggle to pretend that all will be well becomes absurd and burdensome.

I think we need to do our best to love, understand and help all around us, but allow that middle-aged person to opt out, when they no longer feel able to endure. — Chisholm

If I used the term 'personal' instead of 'selfish', would you allow that I might be somewhat sensible of each and every one of those considerations you mention?. All i have really said is that if one kills oneself for the benefit of others, rather than to end one's own suffering, we do not call it suicide, but self-sacrifice.

In addition, I was responding to the particularity of the op:

If someone finds their life to be "useless".., — Anthony Kennedy

I may have misunderstood, but it is indicative of a very common line of thinking philosophically that demands that life should have a use. A cost-benefit analysis of life is bound to find it useless. because use is relational, not an objective property. I do think this is quite important, and that it is a great pity for people to die of a philosophical folly that arises from a totally self-centred viewpoint and that leads inexorably to depression, feelings of absurdity, anxiety and so on that you mention.

Thanks for your honesty.

to put too much emphasis on oneself, greatly contributes to the existential angst. Constantly worrying about yourself can put you in a funk. — 3017amen

Oh yes, that's really insightful. I say selfish not as a moral condemnation, because it comes very often from trauma, childhood trauma often. It's just a simple fact that might sound more acceptable if I put it thus: only love is a reason to live.

Why don't the most self-centred twats (e.g. putin) commit suicide then? I consider people like that the most self-centred and useless beings on Earth. — Professor Death

Dude, you can be right and I can be right too. I say 'Stop lights are red' and you say 'How come tomatoes aren't stop lights? Tomatoes are the reddest things ever.'

the specific instance of forcing someone to suffer because you are not comfortable with their death or suicide is just as selfish. — DingoJones

Except it doesn't happen. Forcing someone to stay alive is difficult even when they are incarcerated. I keep asking you what is your experience of this or what cases can you cite, and you don't come up with even a description of an instance.

And again, even if it were commonplace, what is the relevance to my description of the nature of suicide? I'm certainly not forcing anyone to stay alive, I'm posting on a philosophy site and I wouldn't have a clue how to go about it.

About the only cases I can think of that might fit the bill are the force-feeding of the suffragettes to prevent their hunger-strikes in prison. Which no one would attempt these days in any country I know. Again, once they are unconscious, medical ethics would probably mandate treatment, as with anorexics, but that is not what you are describing either. Who is forcing people to suffer? What situation are you talking about? Tell me about it and I'll join your protest.

This is non-sequitur to both the posts you’ve responded to. — DingoJones

So your response to my pointing out that the line of thinking that sometimes leads to suicide is self-centred is, speaking of non-sequiturs, to point out that other things can be self-centred too?
Cool.

What does that matter? A lack of frequency alone doesn't justify ignoring the instances if it happening. — DingoJones

Well it seems to me that it doesn't happen much at all. Institutions obviously can't be seen to allow suicide, prisons, mental health institutions, etc, but apart from cases of incarceration, there seem only to be some rare cases where suicide is impossible without assistance, and one cannot demand assistance, so i am wondering what cases you are talking about and how they relate to what I have said.

I think its just as self centred to force a person to suffer through life just because other people aren’t comfortable with losing them. — DingoJones

Does that happen much in your experience?

I am reminded of The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five. by Doris Lessing.

If someone finds their life to be "useless", — Anthony Kennedy

I wonder how many suicides people have known. I have known two with some intimacy, my ex, and my current wife's niece.

Consider a hand tool - a hammer, say. It it useless to itself? It is useful to the hand that uses it, and when the hand has no use for it, it waits on the tool rack. So to be useful or useless is a relational term, just as morality is relational. So if one wants to think of oneself in terms of use, and if one wants to think of what one ought to do, one must consider others, not merely oneself. Otherwise nothing will make sense.

Suicide is totally self-centred just as the phrase I quote above indicates. And necessarily, a self-centred view cannot reach a use, a purpose, a meaning, or a reason to live.

Only drivers know about roads, civil engineers are full of shit.

And I can prove it because a bridge fell down once.

Drivers never crash, and entrepreneurs never go bankrupt.

That something, or nothing should be seems to imply at least a time when it is or isn't as the case may or may not be. Being and non-being happen to time or within time or as time. Time itself therefore does not exist; there is only the being and not-being happening that give rise to time as the relation of one to the other. Or to put is more simply; only being can exist, and being necessarily happens to nothing. and that's why there is something and nothing both.

Is this philosophy as practiced by academia or the kind of “philosophy” that believes in crystals and scented candles? — apokrisis

Are you high? — apokrisis

you just wanted to rant and blow off steam. — apokrisis

You have a curious way of discussing. Are you dismissing what I say without argument? Are you unable to understand another point of view at all? Is your wife having an affair? It seems you and I need to talk about personal issues before we can do philosophy together. (Mine is bigger.)

Are you high? — apokrisis

I'm quite interested in what you say, apo, but you are clearly not interested in what I say. For you there is your way and silly ways. I think that makes you higher than me at least in your own estimation.

This is a very serious matter. It involves what philosophy is and should be.
In my opinion, philosophy is meant to clarify, not to hide. However, there is a constant tendency towards "esotericism" - as you call it - in the history of philosophy. Why? — David Mo

Nietzsche is about the only philosopher I can think of who was avowedly and openly obscure, and he would disagree with you about what philosophy is meant to do. I imagine him deriding your 'bureaucratic' view, as opposed to his own 'revolutionary' one. My suspicion with Sartre though is that his obscurity was more to do with obscuring from his own understanding something which he did not wish to face. I think this is common, unfortunately.

Pointing is a gross oversimplification. But you know that. — Banno

Indeed. The meaning of number is moral. Not pointing but sharing is the foundation of mathematics. Oops, I seem to have entered a new universe.

Nonsense is important. — Banno

Whatever can be sensed can be ostensively defined.
Abstraction is non-sense, but has import. Thus one arrives at "five" by pointing to the beans and saying "not beans". Or some such.

Seriously. — apokrisis

What is serious? Is it a property of words or things? I'd say it is more an attitude one takes to them - a relationship one enters into. And relationship forms identity. At any moment one takes the language for granted in questioning one word. And the word in question leads to a philosophy. The smaller the word, the bigger the philosophy. Eg, "Is" -> ontology. "I" -> theology. "we" -> ethics.

You mean a philosophy consisting entirely of jokes? I heard that one before somewhere.

An example.

One might want to discuss "What is a force?"

strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement.
"he was thrown backwards by the force of the explosion"
Similar:
strength
power
energy
might
potency
vigour
muscle
stamina
effort
exertion
impact
pressure
weight
impetus
punch
Opposite:
weakness
2.
coercion or compulsion, especially with the use or threat of violence.
"they ruled by law and not by force"
Similar:
coercion
compulsion
constraint
duress
oppression
enforcement
harassment
intimidation
threats
pressure
pressurization
influence
violence
force majeure
arm-twisting
badassery
3.
mental or moral strength or power.
"the force of popular opinion"
Similar:
intensity
feeling
passion
vigour
vigorousness
vehemence
drive
fierceness
vividness
impact
pizzazz
oomph
zing
zip
zap
punch
Opposite:
shallowness
4.
an organized body of military personnel or police.
"a British peacekeeping force"
Similar:
body
body of people
group
outfit
party
team
corps
detachment
unit
squad
squadron
company
battalion
division
patrol
regiment
army
cohort
bunch
verb
verb: force; 3rd person present: forces; past tense: forced; past participle: forced; gerund or present participle: forcing
1.
make a way through or into by physical strength; break open by force.
"the back door of the bank was forced"
Similar:
break open
force open
burst open
prise open
kick in
knock down
blast
crack
2.
make (someone) do something against their will.
"she was forced into early retirement"
Similar:
compel
coerce
make
constrain
oblige
impel
drive — google

In physics, a force is any interaction that, when unopposed, will change the motion of an object. A force can cause an object with mass to change its velocity, i.e., to accelerate. Force can also be described intuitively as a push or a pull. A force has both magnitude and direction, making it a vector quantity. — wiki

End of discussion?

So looking in the dictionary there seem to be varied uses, and a question might arise as to whether his is mere linguistic accident or there is some connection between the coercion and the physical movement. @apokrisis if i remember right, has much to say in relation to fundamental physics, of the relation between freedom and constraint as limits, yet here they are both embedded in the meaning of a single term that has already been appropriated by physics and defined and delimited by Newton's second law. Force is what physics is all about, except when it is about form/information??

To a technician, every word is a technical term, but to a philosopher, every word it a gateway to a universe.

I think its pretty clear that human flourishing depends on a flourishing ecosystem. Thus it is I think morally imperative that we care for the health of our planet. — Thomas Quine

That is exactly what eco-philosophy critiques as entirely backwards. It is the Judeo-Christian tradition of man the crown of creation and steward of the world. Everything is made for man, and morality is just the generalisation of human self-interest. But an understanding of geological history and how very recent a newcomer mankind is makes this untenable. Not the dinosaurs, not the trilobites, and therefore not the lion were made for man, but are their own measures of value. Hence the idea of wilderness - of places and things that are not, or rather should not be, available for human exploitation. This is not nature as adventure playground or nature as human support system but nature for itself and human-free. Not therefore the nature reserve as part of the system of exploitation - nursery for fishes or therapeutic holiday destination, but more the parents' bedroom where the children do not enter because not everything is for them.

What is the use of reading something that the author himself has made illegible? — David Mo

The tradition is called Esotericism in philosophy, but a similar deliberate obscurity is a commonplace way of avoiding persecution by convention and authority. The use of slang or jargon serves to identify by exclusion. Whether it is worth the trouble to initiate oneself into a particular group or not is largely a matter of taste.

But perhaps you were not asking a serious question, but just feeling frustrated....

So let's not assume that.

What a sad little thread. The idea of 'flourishing' comes from eco-philosophy and Arne Naess in particular. It's been around for a while and the primary insight is that it does not make sense to speak of human flourishing in isolation from the whole ecosystem.

To be clear: humans do not flourish, ecologies flourish. It is as if a morality were to be founded on the flourishing of noses. Everything to be measured and judged as to its value to noses. Hearts are important because they pump blood to noses, legs are important because they take noses to the best smells, fingers have value because... well let's end the stupidity there. Get with the project chaps.

Like you, we are curious; but unlike you, we are not greedy. We came, we saw, we left quietly, picking up our litter as we went. We travel but leave no footprints, and live lightly on the galaxy. You project onto us both your faulty physics and your diseased psyches; not understanding yourselves, you assume we are like you. With us, more is not better, and so we do not seek endless growth or endless expansion or infinite power.