Since it hasn't been said directly, I'd say that it's good to pick a book on the basics and stick to it -- a good one, preferably. As far as the formal study goes, which is, for me at least, effective in the beginning, the good books are designed by professionals that have put much thought in the organisation of the material. No need to reinvent the wheel.

But then the grammar is just rules, and it's difficult to get it to stick in your head for a long time, so plenty of listening to the language is beneficial in order get yourself an intuitive feel for the language. But I think as you keep listening and going forward with the textbook you start to notice more of the patterns in the language you hear, so the formal and the intuitive part of learning start to back each other up. The environment will no doubt help a lot, but I'd listen to music in Spanish too, as it tends to be more catchy and emotional.

Also, a flashcard program doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet, but I think it could do good in the beginning. I use Anki, by copying just about every example sentence into it (as long as I understand the structure of the sentence clearly and it's easy enough to understand--difficult ones get really annoying with repetition). When beginning a new language I use it for single words too, but each time less (now maybe up to about 2000 words), since it often seems like a waste of time after a while. Most of the words will come quite naturally in due time through listening and reading. For Spanish you might be able to find some list of, say, 10 000 sentences with audio on the Anki website; for me it's boring, but it might work for you (but don't force yourself to do something boring).

In short, the way I've gone about it, with at least some success I think, is: 1. start listening to the music 2. start to go through a good textbook, creating flashcards of the vocabulary (important ones from both languages, others only from the target language to english) and sentences (only from the target language); and obviously keep listening and check out translations of the songs you like. 3. listen and read interesting content with google translate completely ready to go (e.g. comics, cartoons and easy books--maybe a Harry Potter book with the audio or something, or maybe online manga, just don't try to translate, but only understand most of it) with very, very selective use of Anki and maybe a second textbook if necessary, or another round of the old one...

After that, it's not difficult to figure out how you'll be able to communicate, but I wouldn't rush into talking if you don't want/need to; more passive learning will get you quite far (obviously you'll have some basic ability to form sentences though, especially since you need some anyway). If all this sounds too obvious, good; after you're organised with the learning it's just a matter of throwing time at it. Some 800 hours and you'll be very good. Just don't underestimate a textbook, I think people are way too quick to go with the more "natural" way of learning a language. I never found much success with Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone for example, mostly because I was bored out of my mind with them.

And don't worry about not understanding all points about grammar, you'll be back at that point in some way soon enough, and you might need some more familiarity with the language before understanding it; as long as you just understand the examples, keep going forward, don't stagnate. And keep exposing yourself to the language in new interesting contexts; the textbook and repetition of the essentials should provide enough of a direction to let you do just what you want the rest of the time.

I don't know if we should put moral value on individual human lives, but I think most of us do put it there naturally; for one, our own lives are bound to others, as we don't survive alone after birth, so already some people are more valuable for our survival, while others are a danger to it. This is obvious, of course, and one might say that this only concerns a very small circle of people for each person. But the survival, and health, of people around us gets its value at least from this, and for them to function as well as possible, their circle of valuable people determines in part how useful they can be to you. So objective value of people I think could be found through this road.

Or if you wan't to go still further: isn't it anyhow the case that the people at the shit-end of, say, capitalist exploitation (say, in another country) have no effect on your or your close circles lives, so they have no value, and we shouldn't care about them. Well. No. Obviously the non-shit-end only is at it is thanks to exploitation, so it's dependent on it. This seems another type of way to give value to people, as parts of a system, but in this case the usefulness is upholding an institution very much bound to your survival in the present state, e.g. the economy.

Now, if you say that this is not moral value, I'll just add that survival is better when the survivor is happy, so the circle of people, and the machine-people under capitalism are still connected to your happiness, of which the first is so directly, the other indirectly. (Also, an unstable system won't survive forever, so happiness of the machine-people is also of consequence.)

The point is, people are (I think naturally) put into order of value to your happiness, and everyone has their own ordering. There are people that have value to you and that you don't know about, since they have a possible effect on the lives of people you know. Since we're not omniscient, you never know, and I think an assumption of moral value is more natural than that of no value, especially since the limits between enemies and non-enemies are no longer very clearly cut in many instances. In people insofar as they are not related to others I don't think there is moral value, and too much of it is placed on some people (e.g. by condemning all instances of capital punishment).

As the world progresses into more of a unity and your present way of existing is bound to more and more people, I think assumed value of them is more reasonable than no value. Whether this has meaning as far as the universe goes hardly makes a difference... This got too long. If someone reads it, sorry.

True. I considered the fantasy one-sidedly, just listing the aspects that came to mind.

And yeah, Japan is pretty restrictive as far as I can tell, but I think similar effects could happen in a less restrictive environment with a person with stronger drive to that direction. Probably this would involve earlier exposure to this kinkiness in some way, so culture definitely helps in other ways too.

I think there is something to say about a person feeling weird about some fantasies afterwards, so to make it something to avoid, but one has to wonder if some fantasies are not just an expression of something that is prior to morality. One can be turned on, for example, by many things in a rape fantasy; to hurt, dominate, control, be feared, and whatever. I don't think these are not inhumane things to want to let out in fantasies, even should it involve something quite horrible, as long as one is strong enough to completely lock their expression in this way out of the everyday life (minus the fantasies) and indeed more strongly push them away the stronger the urges are. This fantasy then, as I see it, is just an expression of who-knows-what, with no connection to reality.

Also, as has been mentioned, there might be some people that can't lock them out and fantasies just strengthen the urges, but this doesn't bring them to the moral realm without an actual action. If one actually carries out a disturbing fantasy, then we can say that she shouldn't have fantasied about it, but chances are, she was already on the way to the action due to her weakness before the urge. If one however, say a paedophile, never carries out an action, then she has not done anything wrong, and should maybe even be commended for it. Since the fantasy has not been acted out however, the reality of the urge is, I think, to be questioned. It never found its steps into reality, so maybe what the urge was about was not what is thought to be its end.

And indeed, is any willing of something completely known? We don't know their causes, as is shown by the constant belief in "free will". So any actual decision is based on something irrational, and this irrational I think finds expression in fantasies. There's a lot of taking away in them; they don't necessarily consider people as people with a past, the actual thinker can appear as someone completely different, the imagined visual image is unclear and emphasises again and again that which captures the thinkers attention right now, depending on what his drive right now is. You can, for example, be quite certain that the very unrealistic, idealised portrayal of children in Japanese hentai has quite a few fans that would never actually like to see such things in photos, and so on. Would imagining the drawings be that different from imagining an actual child? I don't think the visible difference would be enormous, nor the difference between other content.

I feel like I'm all over the place, but the point is this: Societal life can be incredibly restrictive, and many aspects of the human nature can't be expressed in it, but are pushed down by force as something bad. To find ways to let these urges out without harm is maybe even a necessity for the society. Moreover, even bypassing into the "wrong" might work as an encouragement for disturbing fantasies, so the real end of the urge from which the fantasy is born is even more unclear. The thing to be judged are the actions and the quality of the person (unfortunately also shown through actions).

Since the obvious effect of the past on the present has been mentioned, I'll just offer the point of view that the past is potentially, e.g. if one was omniscient, knowable through the chain of cause and effect. Assuming there are no jumps in history, the chain can be followed. If there are jumps, they are either caused non-randomly (e.g. time-traveller killing Hitler, or God doing whatever) or they're somehow random.

The nonrandom causes however don't seem to put the reality of the past in danger. Time-traveller going from the present to the past and changing it perhaps can't exist after the change, thus creating a paradox (at least if we send an indefinite amount of time-travellers), unless the time-traveller moves actually in a two-dimensional time, and instead of going to the past of his present, he goes to the past of another present (to clarify this, consider a line A as the time we're living, and add a parallel B above it, C above that etc., and the time-traveller moving normally through line A, but switching to B to kill Hitler). Moreover, the time-traveller would carry his past with him, so the previous time would have to remain real (having an effect on another timeline). The other example of God surely affirms the reality of the past, as otherwise there would be no reason for his action (e.g. why, and why now?) and it would be random.

If the jump in history is random, and so some things existence does not have any reason whatsoever, it does not of course require the past in order to happen, and so, admitting this, the past may indeed be very different from what it actually was if you go back the causal chain. This type of randomness however, where nothing can be known, does not seem plausible, at least on the historical level that is as the subject here, and it's difficult to say what it could even be.

So I'd say that the past is as real as it gets through the possibility of the reconstruction of the events through a thorough knowledge of the causal chain. This potentiality is ever-present and I don't know how it could lead to two different reconstructions, unless by insufficient information, so the past would here be real as a condition of the present; and this in the case of two dimensions and a time-traveller too.

Yeah, I think the criticism (as presented) is mostly disrespectful honestly. Is this really the point where one of the greatest thinkers in history starts stumbling? Well, not that respect is much of a strong point for bad philosophers in general, and I'd be doing the same if I said I understand Kant, having not read his works in a few years now.

With that, I'd say that yes, I think Kant's view is for another type of world, that of moral agents, of which one takes part of as one acts morally. Since the real world however provides all sorts of situations, the obligations would seem to necessarily get mixed up with one another. I don't see how it's a problem for the theory that it's wrong to lie to a murderer insofar as she is a moral agent. Blindly following a dogma is certainly not a commendable reason for acting morally, and I'm sure Kant was not of that opinion, so we can't just list up the universal laws and start acting only on them all. Were chained to the natural world after all, and never completely free agents (and so as citizens of the moral world), because the natural world demands us other things, and sometimes we need to pick one of many bad options and admit that we can't be perfectly free and perfectly good.

So to me the criticism seems to miss the point, which is about a constant structure beneath the actions, not about the acting-out of them. Which seems close to the point made in the opening post.

I think there is a mistake being done, and I think it is implicitly done in the OP, when just by denying the free-will, one assumes the equally absurd unfree will. Whereas free will assumes the possibility of a decision between two things without anything previous determining the will to one or the other, unfree will would imply a subject separate from the will, like it would just tag along as a sort of epiphenomenon, always wanting what the world makes it to want.

But the subject is there looking at the world, being in it, not as a ghost in a cage watching as the body is living the life that's supposed to be the ghosts. The subject is in the body, which I think should be acceptable according to the views expressed in the OP, and the body is a part of the world. Now how does the willing of the subject happen? Obviously through being in contact with objects in order to be able to will at all, and then having the proper motivation for example through the past of the subject himself, through the situation in the world, through all the possibilities and hopes for the future that that she has. The willing out of nothing of anything is impossible, since obviously, there is no need to want anything without a motivation. But the will is not boxed in by the causal chain, but allowed to exist through it.

The mental and the physical are related through the thinking thing. Although I think this might mean that they are related necessarily just by the mere possibility of the thinking thing (also, for Descartes, through God), even if we suppose that not, your argument seems to me to play on the connection with the physical and mental, hence as if the thinking thing exists. Take it away and you're saying not much at all, I think.

'tis true, being a substance dualist would hardly make sense if you thought they're completely unrelated and the assumption of the physical would be quite arbitrary at that point. But the Cartesians were not stupid and Descartes himself even located a point in the brain where the physical and the mental interact, the pineal gland, the "seat of the soul".

Not that it's not a good argument, just against a straw man.

A thought at a time, is how I'd go about it. If you really can't relax not knowing, then you're already on the path to do what you need to do, namely, to think. It's just a matter of not falling asleep now. From wherever you start to philosophise, it doesn't really matter, you'll be back there soon enough as long as you keep buying time to think or learn. I wouldn't expect, nor want, any sort of belief system any time soon however. For that you need to take a lot of things for granted, and you're, I assume, much too early in the game to start setting limits (I know I am, so maybe I'm contradicting myself, but whatever).

In order to keep going with life, just note that if you feel uncomfortable not knowing, then starting to understand should bring a bit of a reward with it. And what else are you going to do after all, if all is vanity? Not that you should try to stay away from side-tracks, like has been mentioned, but as long as you honestly feel good as you grow towards understanding, you shouldn't stop with it. And "towards understanding" is pretty vague intentionally. Just keep going for what you think it is, and you'll figure out the specifics. Everything else which seems arbitrary is just noise, just keep a good conscience and try to focus on getting to your ideal...

Or accept a ready-made belief system, what do I know anyway. To post or not to post, that is the question.

It is only an analogy, so I wouldn't be surprised of another possible interpretation for it, but that hardly matters. Explaining an analogy is one thing, grounding the explanation on something is another.

As for my opinion on the possible other explanation... My house, my computer, and my body are all both big and small. Water at one temperature can feel hot and cold at the same time. There is then bigness and smallness, hotness and coldness, and they're mixed together in some things. It's not that the sensation of things disappears as we analyse it, so we have the sensation and the ideas of which it seems a mix of. This is looking at more than the outline, the shadow that doesn't show the parts as different in quality, like in a sensation, but it doesn't mean we don't see it.

If the ideas are "shadows" of sensible things, there is a reason for them, so knowing them is knowing more than only the things perceived, so the philosopher is not the one in ignorance. If the ideas are creations of a philosopher, then is there no bigness and smallness? Not as ideas, but in things and their relations, someone says--the creation, I suppose, being a universal idea abstracted from particular cases and claimed to be more true than them. But the particulars can't be dealt with without universals, and x having the property of being bigger than y appears to mean very little if there is no such thing as bigness. So I'd suggest that the idea is a necessary companion to the sensible thing, and the one who can distinguish it knows more than the one that cannot, thus leaving philosopher closer to a true view o the world.

This just to show why I think that the philosopher is not the one looking at shadows; I don't consider myself to understand Plato.

I think that's an empirical question, so, I've no idea. But if it is, the essence is there; this doesn't mean that we have to be aware of it in any way.

Been a while since I've read Aristotle, but here goes. The essence is something that is abstracted from particular things. In this way a property is universal; it can be said of many things. Now since property can be abstracted from every individual of some species, and in part distinguishes it from other things, it's essential to it insofar as it makes it what it is. (e.g. a human being is distinguished from other animals by rationality, and it is an animal, thus it's a rational animal.)

It's possible for the expression of the essence to be hindered, so that something that is proper to a member of a species doesn't actually show up or does so in a lacking way, but this doesn't touch the essence as long as the possibility of the expression of the property, e.g. rationality, remains. A person in a coma surely doesn't lose her essence for it, but rather something is hindering its acting. A newborn is still learning to express it. It seems an empirical question, however, at what point the essence is completely away, but when it is, that thing is just something else.

While he definitely needs to act to reach any goal of his, I don't think that that the "philosophy" is a crutch to not do them, though it is an act itself, as has been mentioned. What we want is very difficult to figure out after all, and nowadays there's a lot of choices, so I would see the philosophy as a projection of a sort of tendency towards the future that we all have, but that is too unclear to lead to any action, since the steps needed for action are not clear. There's no first step to be taken, so no action is possible, like not knowing where to start to clean with your room as a complete mess.

So I'd say the talk stage is important, though can be frustrating to others. It could provide an opportunity to start him on thinking of the goal more concretely (e.g. what does he want, what kind of person is he in those visualizations, why does he want it) so that he can get a more clear picture of it and start finding the steps himself. I do think that he has to act as well though, but if it seems there's nothing to gain it's difficult to start before you've started, and to gain something from an action before it gives an external reward (e.g. money, ability to do something, appreciation from others) there has to be some end to an action.

What he seems to have is hope for the future and the will to act (this I assume from all the talking, though it might just be for the rewards of seeming like the motivated, successful type of person, and a kind of self-delusion), so I'd agree that there's insecurity (from what seems a kind of imperfection, as has been said), but that's just a necessity to live with your (what seem like) imperfections when you hope so much from yourself. I'd think that if he finds the end and is able to figure out (with trial and error) the steps towards it and diminish his affection towards things irrelevant to that end, he'll be able to walk the talk, so to speak.

The soul is (for Aristotle, according to me) indeed the form of a living body, but this body is material and the form of a living body doesn't exist without the body at all. The substance is the thing that is, say a living being, and it is a composite of matter and form; for a form to actually exist, it needs matter, and for matter to exist, it needs to have some form. So no, Aristotle was not a substance dualist, though his substance is a composite of matter and form, with the latter actualizing the former so as to exist at all.

As for Descartes and Plato, the way of being accidental to the body at least differ, since for Plato the body appears to affect the soul even after death (though obviously Plato never uses his own mouth to say this, I think, so who knows), but I don't think that's true of Descartes. If not that, then still Plato poses a theory (not sure where, sorry, it's been a while) of several souls existing in different parts of the body, with the rational soul being the highest type. Of course, one could just say that Plato is talking of different things than Descartes with the other souls apart from the rational, but he still uses the word soul of them (in the translation I read at least). Though I guess whatever was said in the lectures is the interpretation you carry to the exam, so maybe all this doesn't matter.