As someone who has greatly reduced my participation (for various reasons), I feel quality issues are coming more from the interests and behaviour from many people in the community (some old and some new). I do think things like the prominence of the shoutbox might have some effect on which discussions users are pulled into, but I feel most of it would come from an interest in arguing rather than learning philosophy.

Particularly, I feel lot of people don't have a respect someone else might be saying something knowledgable. People frequently start off in the wrong foot of trying to "debate" or prove something, instead of trying to understand.

I don't think this is necessarily an issue with an open forum. Its an inevitable aspect of being a community welcoming to everyone. PF had the same sort of issues, even at it peak. The counter is of knowledgable, generous posters interested who can from good discussions and bring other people along. This is what I think is really missing at the moment. A lot of regulars are spending a great deal chatting about politics, for example. Or they are not generous with or interested in topics which fall outside what they already know (props to Banno for breaking out of his usual patterns with that gender thread).

A certain lack of quality, I feel, is coming for either complacency, self-absorption or just a lack of interest from regular members. Distraction of shoutboxes and lounges might be a thing, but I think most issues are going to be coming form the interests and behaviour of regulars.

I'm not merely playing with words. Error is your concepts are my target. I'm pointing out logical different/facts about the meanings of sex and the body you are missing.

The property of being a vehicle (a body) does not define the property of being a SUV (female). Only the property of being an SUV (female) can define the presence of being an SUV (female).

Sex does not simply refer to genitalia. If it did, we wouldn't even have the logical distinction of sex. We would just be saying: "There is this genitalia" not "This person has some genitalia and has the sex meaning of "female." Your own usages include this distinction.

Does that mean a door is not really a door but its a concept we impose on the object? If you understand what I mean. — Terran Imperium

It means a door is a door by virtue of them meaning of door, not because it is an existing body.

Our language is also something we impose upon our object here. Neither our concept of the door nor our language acts of speaking about the door are the thing of the meaning of door.
The existence of a door is nor defined by the meaning of the language we use. Our language is not magic in that way.

The existence of the door defined by the presence of a thing, in its body being present. In terms of how it maybe be talked about or categorised, there are many different ways. Some language, for example, might even give the door a gender, despise it having no human body and no genitalia!

The deeper performative contradiction is that no gender/gender is a meaningless is an identity category. Rebecca is getting up to say people have an identity of gender. This puts their position in the same place as anyone claiming to have a gender. Both are asserting a meaning about an individual is true.

In terms of understanding gender, Rebecca's issue is treating like it is a standard which defines something else or a rule someone has to meet. Why would anyone both with gender when any reason for thinking you have to belong to one of the other (i.e. you must be X because you dress/behave/have a body part Y)? Well, for the reason that gender is its own distinction and meaning, given not be the constrictive terms of some other quality meeting a standard to "be a gender", but rather in gender being its own feature of oneself.

Categorisation isn’t an issue. People categorise things all the time. Many categorisations are true. My position isn’t against categories. I’m talking about how it is one category is true or not. When I say sex identity is independent of a body, my int is not to say bodies do not belong to categories.

I’m saying a body does not belong to a category by virtue of existence as a body. We can see this in how imagined bodies (which do not exist!) belong to categories. Belonging to a category is a particular and independent logical meaning, separate to just the presence of a body.

A body does not take on belonging to a category of “male” or “female” because it is “a body. One does not get belonging to a category from the fact of a body, from a hormone, from a penis, from a vagina, form a womb, form a certain set of chromosomes, etc. It’s always a fact of belonging to a category itself— i.e a body which is of this category because it is of this category rather than a body which is of this category because it’s a body.

The equivocation of the body with its category leads to erroneous locating of bodily difference in the meaning of a category. A man can get pregnant, provided he has a functioning womb and other associated body functions . When such a body is in the “male” category, there is a man who can get pregnant. The difference maker is the bodily state in question, not what category of identity they have. It's about having body, not a meaning of sex.

I wasn't thinking you were denying bodies are what they are (though you might do so if I was to talk about some intersex bodies).

My point the idea of sex you are using claims bodies are more than bodies. If I take a body, let's say one with XX chromosomes, a womb, breasts, a vagina, etc., your position proclaims it must belong to the sex category/sex identity of "female." It is subsuming our linguistical/conceptual/social practice of "female sex" into the body itself. You say such a body must be "female" when such a categorisation is not actually given in the existence of body.

A body with XX chromosomes, a womb, breasts, a vagina, etc. might be categorised any number of ways. We might have such a body and not refer to it be a sex at all. We might categorise such a body as "male ". The body itself doesn't pose a meaning of sex itself. It will be a Y chromosomes, a womb, breasts, a vagina, etc., not matter which category we place it in.
A body being present doesn't suppose anything "male" or "female."

This is why people using your categories have to say: Well, that body is definitely female because XZY...". If the present of a body did suppose sex, we wouldn't have to suppose an extra understanding over the body we already know. I would be able to think: "There's a body with XX chromosomes, a womb, breasts, a vagina, etc." and understand them "female" without engaging with sex as a distinction.

Yet, sex is a distinction. It means something distinct to "there is a body with...". Sex is not contained within the body. It always remains a seperate concept/meaning. The step of placing the body in the extra meaning of "sex" has to be taken.

I think the act of "questioning" us dubious itself because it has no aim knowledge. The challenge of "How do you know you are right?" only has cutting down the idea a person you are talking about in mind. It ignores responsibility to understand and respect what is true. Everyone is assumed to not be saying anything of value (except of course oneself) by default. Profoundly disrespectful of anyone challenged, for it begins in an assumption no-one understands what they are talking about.

That's before we even get to the obviously discriminatory usage of such "challenges" only being put forward to devalue and reject the experiences of minority groups. You don't see people going about "challenging" the cisgender man over whether his claim to be a man can be trusted.

They do have a drastic effect(all human events, actually, given that any human reposes involves their body reacting), just not the sort of of essentialist, reduction to singular meaning of gender behaviour or social value effect some people like to imagine. Gender and sex constructionists are well aware of the presence and effects of bodies. They are not interested in denying our bodies are our bodies.

Instead, they are drawing out the distinction between bodies and meanings/categories of sex and gender. A body is not a category of sex. A body is not a category of gender. Bodies are what they are no matter the category they are sorted. They are defined independently of any sex or gender categorisation.

In the respect, the sex/gender split is rather unhelpful. Not because there isn't a difference between sex categories and gender categories, but in the distinction asserts that gender is "constructed" while sex is supposedly immutable aspect of the body itself.

The sex/gender split is still caught in confusion of the body with categories into which bodies area placed. It doesn't recognise sex isn't the body at all.

Our alternative is realising we are movement. Movement isn't a goal to be achieved, it's already given in moment. We don't need to burdened with a ghost of what we must supposedly do next. We can just be, rather than thinking we have to achieve one end. Even we are aiming for an end, it needn't be a burden. We can act towards an end no matter if we end up achieving it or not, the moment of movement all on its own.

At all times, we are always choosing. To sit, doing nothing, in our (perfect or imperfect) world is a choice. Your notion of a perfect, movement less world is one without life.

If someone never suffered, they would still be movement. They would do doing (or not doing) whatever they were.Your understanding does not grasp boredom, it rectifies all movement as boredom. Rather than just hating suffering, it hates life/movement, turning every moment of it into a suffering-- "Ah really, I have to do or not to do today. Woe is me: I exist."

I'm referring to Schopenhauer's pessimism. Deep down, he cannot accept a human life might be and just be terrible. He's still got a notion it's our destiny to live otherwise. In doing so, he builds himself into his own psychological torture device. This destiny is something he must achieve, but no action will get him there or even get him closer. So whatever action he takes, he's haunted by his failure to reach this destiny. Nothing he does will ever good enough for himself.

The irony is will is chasing itself into being. At heart it still hopes with a Pollyanna fervour. Somewhere, beyond and over the distant rainbow, we have a miracle life waiting for us. Our world without suffering is just waiting to keep fulfilled, only we will never get there. Dorothy sings "Why, oh why can't I?" then answers: "My shoes could never get me there."

A failed pessimism, still mesmerised by a notion, a telos even, that human life is destined for the place nothing bad ever happens. It plays at recognising our suffering, unwilling to conceded our life will amount to it. We are really destined to be "over the rainbow" in a place which does not exist. The ultimate goal horizon, to reach that place which is not, to live a life which is never you, always eating your soul because it's a goal which cannot be achieved. No-one can even work towards it.

More than just being moved to act, it's a failed pessimism which understands all action to be a failure, for no action brings us closer to being over the rainbow. A nihilism of thinking our value is found in another world without us, in a teleology which brings who we are for outside ourselves.

I think you are missing my point of the analogy. The "work" of entropy doesn't depend on humans undergoing suffering of striving. If we accept that suffering is a contingent state, then activity in a life without suffering doesn't cease.

The happy, contented and sufferless to move in their ways of living. Such a life would always be engaged in its maintenance, people doing whatever amounted to a life without burden

If this entropic movement does not fit with Schopenhauer's Will, so much worse for Schopenhauer. Entropy clearly doesn't reflect the Will on account of the latter being only a specific experimental results reaction.

The implications aren't very great. Entropy is almost a metaphysical notion. Knowing we are (a part) of a system that moves towards an end tells us exactly nothing about who we are or how we live.

A world without suffering, for example, would still have entropy. Humans would be doing what was an absence of their entire lives. They would always be this "work." Thinking about entropy this way leaves out our own lives and how they are distinct. We are more complex than being of a system that moves.

I'm going to be bold: I think such comparisons are more or less a version of the "hypocrisy argument." When someone uses such a comparison to try to claim a political side is "better" than another, they utterly disrespect people suffering the injustice and ignore the impact the supposedly "better policy" has on people.

Failing to torture people for give years, doesn't make torturing them for two months okay. It doesn't make the latter policy any " better." Any good only comes from the stopping of either policy ("No more torture"). Time doesn't make a difference to this consideration. Torturing people for only two months doesn't make people any better for taking that action.

Length of detainment is not a factor in judging either of these policies ought never gave happened. A shorter time is not an ethical success with which to score political points.

That's not a failure to respect nature. It's a moral failing of failing to take into account how crops would grow in the environment, against the advice of people who knew how they worked (farmers).

"Evolved naturally" is a meaningless ethical standards observation beacause that's true of all actions and systems, all being human actions formed out to of the evolving natural world.

Well, more of less yes... this is an important point in regards to reasoning about ethics. Just because someone does something terrible, it doesn't mean other people should be let of the hook for terrible behaviour.

If someone is behaving poorly, pointing out the behaviour other shouldn't be used to excuse it. Someone else's wrong doesn't make another's right.

I guess my issue is more I'd consider everyone one the site in that category. The relevant between myself, SX or Bittercrank and such a new poster is only that the latter fails to meet a standard for engaging with community.

If the goal is for them to be part of the community, I don't see why the goal would be just to make a space for them make statements that go unnoticed. I'm not sure how it really benefits them because learning from other makes up such a large part of development.

I'd rather see them engaged with the rest of the community rather cordened off to their own hall where no-one really goes.

I guess you could have a space to put posts that aren't good enough, but I worry about the distinction it creates and fear it falls into a motivatation outside helping people learn.

I don't think it does. People ignore guidelines all time. I mean its fine for transmitting information about the guidelines and putting in place the paperwork for any ensuing moderation, but it doesn't get to the heart of the underlying question here. The focus of this topic seems to be involving or bringing up people who don't yet meet a standard.

Having a system to which we can point and say: "We pointed out a rule" (as fine as it might be for other purposes) doesn't address this question about the knowledge/skill/participation of those who don;t meet the rules.

I find the idea a bit questionable from an activity point of view. If a post is so incoherent, esoteric or lacking in quality that it runs afoul of the rules, I'm uncertain how it will amount to a substantial discussion amongst the community.

My sense is such post will languish at the bottom of the forum drawer where no-one looks. Maybe a few esoteric conversations might run between a couple of users who grasp what the other is getting at (though that might not be a good thing, if they are only talking crackpottery).

I think there is absolutely value in people drafting threads and getting input from other people. Such a process, to would seem to me, would be better conducted on an individual basis, where the writer consulates users knowledgable in that area. Shouting out to a whole forum doesn't seem to be a very effective way of handling such a development process. Though, this general involves a focus and relationships I've not seen too much of on this forum.

I tend to avoid those sorts of propositional relations in this context because they try to set out identity as a language rule (e.g. "Trump is the president") of a proposition.

They don't give an adequate account because they are about whether someone's claim meets a rule, rather than the definition of identity.

Even "Trump is president" has the first kind of "is." Before we get to a point of suggesting the truth or falisity of a proposition, we need to index the relevant elements.

I cannot make the conclusion "Trump is president" is a true proposition without first understanding the identity Trump is president. The former is understood only in the context of the latter.

Without gasping that identity, I couldn't answer the question. If I just knew Trump is Trump, and the president is the president, I wouldn't have an answer to whether Trump was president. I would lack the indexing of what I knew to the relevant person.

It's a bad description. In those instances, the conflict is between one's existing body and a sense of body one belonging to.

The specific connection to identity is defined in how those bodies relate to sex and gender catergories we use. It's not a question of measuring from the presence of one body or not.

In this sense, there is no "what is it like to be a man" or "what is it like to be a woman". Belonging to such an identity is not determined by an external criteria like what body one has, how someone behaves or what they wear, etc.

Instead defined by a truth of belonging to an identity itself.

I should go back trough the questions to try and clarify where I think you are going wrong.

1. isn't a metaphysical question. You are asking whether dragons and aliens exist in Middle Earth. It's an empirical question of an imaginary world.

2. is an empirical question. The site is just beyond our observation range. Inside or outside our light cone doesn't matter to this one. "Out in the larger universe" is just a red-herring. Other places are still exits in the same reality no matter which universe we are identifying them with.

3. is a metaphysical question... but it doesn't off up any contingent alternatives. There is no alternative structure because a world in which A follows B form necessary causality is identical to a world in which the randomly follow each other. We have A followed by B. This presents the same whether B is necessarily caused by A or if it just randomly follows A.

Thus, we have no metaphysical question of whether there is casual stature or not.

(at this point, we need to reconsider causality and what it means, since there is literally no difference in the world between our supposed opposition of causal structure vs no causal structure).

4. That's an empirical/phenomenological question. Whether an "illusion" is present is down to if the appropriate experiences exists, ones which show the relevant states or not.

In your examples, you haven't got one coherent ontological question. They all involve some sort of confusion formed out of putting speculation before knowledge.

For sure, but I don't think anyone was arguing statements weren't meaningful without verification. Carnap certainly isn't trying to make that point in his accusations against metaphysics. The point is, rather, to avoid making errors in our thinking, tricking ourselves into asking questions that are "meaningless" and don't have an answer. (as the oppose a logical incoherence own the premise of their query).

With respect to empirical claims, for example, that means them being verifiable in principle. That's to say, the posing of some state of affairs such that if someone encountered them, the claim would be verified by their observation/perception of the world.

So in the case of the distant galaxy, to form a coherent empirical claim, one would have to pose something which, if encounter in observation, would be verified-- e.g. the alien planets orbiting each other, the, lifeforms with three heads, etc. One couldn't just allude to some undefined, unknowable mystery and make a coherent empirical claim. (e.g. in the distant galaxy, there is creator God who is beyond description).

My point is we cannot tell.

The question of trying to verify such a claim is meaningless. It not longer makes sense to ask: "What is the verified answer to this question?" or "What is the verified answer to this question/how do we know this is true or not?"

This takes out the sort of questions you are asking with respect to metaphysics and knowledge. There is nothing to say on the level of verification.

If you want to talk about what is true of a distant galaxy or some other unknown space and an instance of knowledge about it, you have to use a different account of knowledge, such as expected behaviour based on (an assumed) likely similar form (i.e. the space is like the rest of the universe) or outright conceptual grasping itself (i.e. like a prophetic vision: "I'm aware that an inhabitant of Earth will have toast for breakfast tomorrow" ).

What is the relevance of such a question? In effect, it ignoring it's own insight. It takes an instance we know to be unverifiable... then supposes to address the question of whether it's veritable or not. The supposed "metaphysical" condrum being tackled, to have some verfied account of what is true or not, is directly obliterated by its definition.

If a claim is unverifiable, a challenge to verify it does not make sense.

I want to claim this as thinking of us. Though, here I am posting on a forum, so I guess the past is sometimes the future.

The OP seems okay to me, just a bit impenetrable without a certain background. It's taking about how we consider knowledge in relation to our experiences.

The major point is about how we consider the distinction between what exists/is true compared to what appears our experiences.

Descartes makes a split between reality and appearance. We find ourselves in a space in which appearances are consider seperate to reality. On the one hand, there is what appears, which can be anything and is true in its appearance. While on the other, there is reality, things which are true outside of appearance (e.g. the desert which is there when I see a mirage).

The OP is taking this distinction to task for seperating appearance from reality. While it's correct to make a distinction between our experiences and the world which doesn't appear, it has an unfortunate effect of implying appearances are outside reality.

To avoid the issue, the OP is suggesting we consider appearance differently. Instead of this making of them opposed to reality, we instead understand them to be part of reality, shifting the question from "appearance Vs reality" to "Our appearances are part of reality. What of reality do they show or do not show?"

In doing this, we deflate and remove the issue of how to get from appearances to reality. Appearance are of reality and show (or do not show) parts of reality we are interested in.

Spinoza ia not a pantheist. He's more or less the opposite: an acosmist.

For Spinoza, God is defined by the infinite nature not found in anywhere else. The necessary unity of reality which is not found as anything but is of everything. God is not found in everything. God is found nowhere but is of everything.

We might say the nature of God is not to exist because to exist amounts to a finite being. The infinity of God puts them outside such beginnings and endings. God is Real (i.e. the necessary infinite) precisely in that God doesn't exist.

I would say the line of questioning is off. What's the difference between "universal talk of something" and just regular talk of something? They would appear to be the same. If I speak about something, I invoke its meaning concept, a logical necessity expressed by that which I speak. I'm using the idea/name of what I refer to.

And, obviously, this is always whole different to the thing being spoken about. My talk about eating breakfast yesterday is a different thing that the event. One is my speech, the other is what my speech is about.

By this both (2) and (3) amount to a category error. Since our speech is a different thing than what we speak about, we are not going to get an explanation of either by the other-- I cannot account for a car by pointing out a tree.

(5) also leads to a similar collapse. Meaning is a given with statements. All statements mean something, even "meaningless" ontological questions; they have people floundering over in all directions all the time. The debate isn't over "meaning." Meaning is necessary and is unremarkable in that even nonsense has meaning. It's not a measure of logical judgement.

Carnap has something far more specific in mind when taking issue with these ontological questions. The challenge is formed on the basis of meaning, but rather the coherency of their meaning. He's asking as to pay a critical eye to the questions we are asking, to check them (their meaning) for logical coherency.

The question of whether there can be meaningful metaphysical statements is essentially a debate over meaning. — Marchesk

This, for example, is a "meaningless"-- i.e. not coherent-- question. It doesn't actually identify anything about metaphysics and statements. All it does is vaguely allude to people having some disagreement.

In this sense, yes, there is a "debate": people are arguing over whether these sort of ontological questions make sense, but this fact has no relevance to questions of whether they have any force. The fact people disagree or are talking about something doesn't identify any said ontological questions and reasons why we might approach them one way or another. It just useless noise.

If our question is about the coherence of ontological questions, we don't need to know people debate it. We need to understand what ontological questions are and how they relate to our points of interest. Our goal is to understand them and what the logical response to them would be. Anything less than that, you are just speaking rhetoric or giving out ad hoc notions of an unknown.

Well, that's where Hume diverges, and correctly so.

There is nothing necessitatng any ball or window will have the same strength, etc. and form the given causal relationship. We don't get a causal relationship from the form of window or ball. They can have different strengths, momentums, etc.

States with those forms have to do the work. We might always encounter a window/ball without that causal relationship.

So no, we don't need to assume any future instance will behave that way. In fact, that's bad reasoning (and science! ) since it assumes future states can only be like ones we have seen before.

Yes, I know.

I assumed for the discussion context you we relating "see" in the context of realising a casual relationship from our observations of the world. My point I don't see a conflict between this sort of "sight" (or smell, sound, etc.) and Hume's observation that causality isn't an empirical thing in front of us.

The trouble with this account is it is rectifying abstraction as creative. Supposedly, if someone was to take the step of rejecting the primacy of universal abstraction, things could not be, as if the universal abstraction were a filling to a foundation of the world which was otherwise missing.

So called universals do not have this power. The world is never an empty set which gets filled by the action of a universal. Meanings of things, which are then abstracted, have always been. There is not an empty void filled by the action of a rescuing universal. Things have always been (and will always be) themselves in their infinite meanings.

In this respect, they do not need our judgements to be. Meaning was always present and far more powerful than our particular whims of abstract judgment.

Hume's identification is of logic, causality is a meaning/concept, but one which is about things that exist, experiences and whats they encounter. (as contrasted to the oft imagined notion of logic as a pure abstraction defined solely in timeless a priori).

The reason he says we "see causality" or rather experience casualty is an awareness of its relation to the things we encounter. We "see" the casualty of a ball breaking a window because the causality of interested is of those things-- the causality of a ball braking a window (if someone is present), involves the sight of the ball and window in a certain reaction/relationship.

It's rubbish because we are defined by our seperation from other things. The issue isn't that our experiences are somehow seperate from the world (and perceptions). Rather, it is no matter this connection of our experiences, things that I encounter are not me.

The mountain I see in the distinct is not me. Another's body I see across the room is not me. Any connection I have with the world around me doesn't undo or remove this seperation.

In any instance were we are investigating the world, this seperation is necessary defined. My experience of investigating the flight of birds is not the flying birds themselves. The birds are other beings who would fly just as well without my investigation.

Such an account is already making the error of nihilism. It supposes value is absent only to come from someone or something else's assessment. There is no "making valuable" because it supposes contradictory circumstances. I cannot form a judgement upon what is valuable without already including awareness of what is truly value (thus, making my judgement correct and justified, as opposed to meaningless words). Value, in any case, is given in itself in the first instance.

For Nietzsche value is that which cannot be destroyed and is eternal. It's space is the world which expresses it. In the case of me, my actions. my relations to others, etc., that value is inseparably of me.

It might be defined independent of those who would disagree (i.e. true even is someone thinks otherwise, including me), but it is not seperate for the world we exist, and and speak about. I am never nothing and no-one has the power of definition over me because I am beyond them.

Even those with a social authority to order me about (e.g. a moral authority, a king, God, etc.) are stuck working with me as I am self-defined. God cannot command, for example, a group of people who lack the self-defintion of "under God's authority" in their existence.

The "slave morality" aspect lies not in an absence of worldly power, but in the falsehood that it is otherworldly. Whether we are speaking about the God or the Chruch, the power in question is worldly. It deals with our value and treatment as living beings.

To say we don't matter, that we lack value and have to be saved from it by an otherworldly force of God, is a lie. We've never lacked value and have a certain status on account of ourselves, as living beings in the world (afterlives included).

The "slave" aspect is failing to recognise value is about ourselves, instead thinking it is granted by something else, some otherworldly force-- quite literally "I am nothing. You (refering to the otherwordly force) have all power and definition of me."

Depends what you mean. If you that it's God who is a way to meaning is dead, sure. Nietzsche's account doesn't have a problem with any sort of being acting in the world. A being who enacts power upon the world, who makes judgements upon people, puts them in different places in their future lives is entirely possible.

Such a being though, is entirely worldly. They aren't granting an infinite of meaning, rather just more states of living in certain places. "Being saved" changes from a question of gaining a certain kind of greater value or special meaning than others, to a mere description of gaining a certain sort of material life.

Nietzsche is not just aming at some sort of distant God. He's talking any sort of God which is posed to be a transcedent rescue to meaningless. If a belief holds the position, "God saved me from meaningless, from worthlessness, by putting me in a realm above and beyond my Earthly life," it's hit by Nietzsche's critique. This hits far more than a 19th century conception of God. In the case of Christianity, it hits most because they don't usually consider God to be only a worldly being granting more (if different) worldly life.

Within the context of Christianity, the best way to show the difference in kind is consider fallen Earth.

In transcedent account, fallen Earth is considered completely overcome. Reality has stepped to a transcedent level. Not merely ending or replacement of the fallen, such as a immoral state our world being replaced, but rather the complete undoing of the fallen. Almost like it never happened in the first place. More or less, the overcoming of sin.

Nietzsche's point is this is an illusion. Since life and values are talking immanent, there can only be existence. There can be no stepping to a transcedent level. We can pose whatever afterlife we want, whatever deity we want, it will will only be more existence. Fallen Earth cannot be overcome. Evil states may be destroyed or replaced, but they will never gain the "overcomed" status. Only Earth (Reality) has meaning and thus will always be the case, no matter how much is destroyed or what changes.

You're right that this has similarity to some aspects of Christianity. It can be seen as an extension of the Christian rejection of sacrifice to achieve meaning. Just as the Christian argues no amount of property, money or sacrifice will return you to meaning, Nietzsche is extending it to the entirety of sacrifice.

Not even the sacrifice of the Son of God can return as to meaning. If are to think in those terms, we are no better (in the context of Nietzsche's critique) than the man who thinks paying the temple the most money will save him. We are no better than the man who thinks going out and killing another will save him.

In any of those cases, we envision that the sacrifice of something or someone else will return us to meaning, will make it as if our failings had never been, taking us up into the transcendent realm.

Meaning is infinite in an immanent context. There can be no transcedent answer. If I sin, nothing can undo what I've done, the people I've harmed, the difference it made to what happens in the world. God could sacrifice 10000 sons and I would have had the same terrible impact. Sacrifice does absolutely nothing with respect to undoing the meaning of my sin. All it can do is tick a bureaucractic requirement of God (or man, if we talk about having the most money, status, etc., which supposedly required to have meaning).

Meaning can only be given in life and affirmation. I'm stuck with sins past (as it was my life). The best that can be done is live without sinning into the future (as it would be my life). I am never without meaning. There is nothing to be "saved" in a transcedent sense. I could be "saved" from a terrible life, one full of suffering or unpleasantness, but this would just be a change in my living circumstances.

Thus, God is dead.

(Or if you prefer, God was never alive or acting because God is beyond such things, an infinite of meaning we cannot be separated from, even in our darkest hours).

That's not really accurate to what he is talking about in his notions of slave morality vs master morality. In the concept, he's not talking about domination and slavery in the usual sense, but rather whether an understanding of morality locates it meaning and power within its own perspective.

Christianity isn't held to be slave morality because it argues for some form of equality. It's understood as slave morality because it denies the worldly nature of values and powers. It claims God is responsible when it's the world at stake.

The slave/master morality opposition isn't about whether any instance of dominance in the world is justfied or not, it's about whether people recognise their morality as their own and a site of power.

(in this respect, the person who is in a lower postion of a hierarchy may have a master morality, when they recognise a moral relation is if the value of themselves and forms a power relation with others in the world).

The turn is quite Cartesian in that it is about securing the world we know. One of Descartes major moves is to arrive at a conclusion our understandings amount to knowledge.

In thus respect, Descartes shares a similarly with Kant. Both are positioned against those who would argue our experiences are somehow deficient in reporting what is happening. Descartes doesn't have the strict seperation between mind and body that a lot of people attribute to him. For him, experiences are not somehow incompatible or a non-relation to bodies. In many senses, they are mixed up in relation-- hence he's able to talk about what we can understand in relation to bodies that are present.