Comments

  • Antinatalism Arguments
    ↪schopenhauer1
    Another "so what?" thread. :meh:
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    ↪Bartricks
    :roll:
    No problem to discuss here, moving on. — Sir2u
    :yawn: :up:
  • Is Buddhism truly metaphysical?
    Nirvana is not heaven! Or so they tell me! — Agent Smith
    They told you right. :up:
  • Is Buddhism truly metaphysical?
    ↪Gregory
    The 'metaphysical concept' at the heart of Buddhism (and other dharmic traditions) is "reincarnation" which when interpreted literally makes no sense (re: if "no self", then "rebirth" of "no self") but can be interpreted figuratively as suggested in this old post:
    "Reincarnation" represents merely waking up again each day – but religiously(?) generalized into a metaphor about 'birth-awareness-death' – the arc of daily living from sleep to sleep again (Sisyphus-like "wheel") with each yesterday (like) a different "past life" ... — 180 Proof
    ... an attempt at a pragmatic deflation of 'the supernatural' to the existential.
  • Liz Truss (All General Truss Discussions Here)
    How mad is it?! How desensitized we are to this chaos. Amazing! How used we are to the cogs of government not moving at all. How accustomed we are to the self-serving lack of talent that constitutes the British Conservative Party! (or U$ GOP)
  • Grammar Introduces Logic
    ↪Joshs
    :100: :up:
  • A definition of "evil"
    ↪ucarr
    Psychopathy in h. sapiens and, more broadly, opportunistic predation in nature.
  • Currently Reading
    Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx: The Fight for a Secular World of Universal and Equal Rights, Jonathan Israel
  • How to begin one's day?
    ↪Agent Smith
    :up:
  • How to begin one's day?
    Open eyes ... "Aw fuck – this shit again?!" :sweat:
  • Is Buddhism truly metaphysical?
    ↪Agent Smith
    :halo: :up:
  • Philosophical Chess Pieces
    Irrationality represents one abstract ideal but it is so many varied real things as logical fallacies, to intuition, to emotion, to divination, to imagination and so much more. — introbert
    The antithesis of philosophy (i.e. reflective / dialectical discursive practices aka "reason").
  • Does Camus make sense?
    ↪Agent Smith
    Tempermantally or clinically?
  • What does "real" mean?
    Of course, our own experience/interpretation can be compared and perhaps found wanting by others but it's real, no? — Amity
    Yes. Fictions, or interpretations, may consist of 'truth-telling lies' which (can) indicate realities.
  • Does Camus make sense?
    ↪introbert
    ↪Agent Smith


    :death: :flower:


    addendum to 180 Proof
  • Does Camus make sense?
    ↪Agent Smith
    Absurdism =/= nihilism. Absurdism =/= existentialism.

    I wouldnt take criticism of interpreting foucault from someone who shamelessly uses psychiatric discursive practices to defend realist tyrannical intetpretations — introbert
    :rofl:
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    We suffer more in imagination than in reality. — Seneca
  • What does "real" mean?
    How much of quantum "weirdness" is metaphysics and how much is physics? — T Clark
    Mostly 'metacognitive dissonance.'

    Sure, I would agree that physics is epistemic.

    Would you say the same thing about the things studied by biologists?     — Manuel
    Yes, even more so.
  • Philosophical Chess Pieces
    Chess is a finite syntactical game of strategy played within rigid parameters (64-checkered squares board & 32 pieces). Philosophy, however, is an infinite semantical meta-game of 'hermeneutics' played without rigid parameters. It seems to me that analogizing chess to philosophy (or vice versa) makes about as much sense as analogizing "Guitar Hero" to music theory.
  • What does "real" mean?
    ↪T Clark
    :smirk:

    The idea of “real” or “reality” comes up frequently on the forum, often in relation to quantum mechanics. — T Clark
    Since science is epistemic, not ontic, I don't see what "QM" has to do with "reality" as such (i.e. map (QM) =/= terrain (reality); therefore, interpreting one in terms of the other seems to me a category error), and puzzles me why (the Mods allow) so much pseudo-quantum graffiti to deface these fora.
  • Deep Songs
    ↪Amity
    That "little band" was (is) soooo good. :cool:
  • What does "real" mean?
    My position - I don’t think the idea of “real” has any meaning except in relation to the everyday world at human scale. Reality only makes sense in comparison to what humans see, hear, feel, taste, and smell in their homes, at work, hunting. — T Clark
    This "idea" is pragmatic, or existential.

    Here are some of my own attempts ...
    Reality is ineluctable and, therefore, discourse/cognition–invariant. Thus, it's the ur-standard, or fundamental ruler, against which all ideas and concepts, knowledge and lives are measured (i.e. enabled-constrained, tested). — 180 Proof
    What is reality?
    — Eremit
    The encompassing of reason that necessarily cannot itself be encompassed by reasoning,     — 180 Proof
    The real is that which hurts you badly, often fatally, when you don't respect it, and is as unavoidable as it consists in whatever preceeds-resists-exceeds all (of our) rational categories and techniques of control (e.g. ambiguity, transfinitude, contingency, uncertainty, randomness). The real encompasses reason (Jaspers) and itself cannot be encompassed (Spinoza / Cantor) ... like 'the void within & by which all atoms swirl' (Epicurus). — 180 Proof
    Reality is that which does not require "faith" and is the case regardless of what we believe. — 180 Proof

    So I use "real" to indicate some X is ineluctable, subject-invariant and/or which exceeds-our-categories.
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    "Philosophical pessimism?"

    'To exist sucks' mostly because – even though you ought not to exist – as Cioran points out: it's always too late not to exist. So 'embrace the suck' if you have the courage and the wit to do so; otherwise, you can always 'unfuck yourself' with either a pharmaceutical or surgical lobotomy. :eyes:
  • A definition of "evil"
    ↪Agent Smith
    Freddy is talking about the religious, or priestly, valuation of "good and evil" – to move "beyond" the other-worldly back to this-worldly, naturalistic good and bad (i.e. virtuous and vicious cycles/habits).
  • A definition of "evil"
    How would one ever prove who they are? — Benj96
    All I've got is this old bit of scripture:
    Ye shall know them by their fruits. — Matthew 7:16
  • Deep Songs

    "Taxman" (2:36)
    Revolver, 2022 (remix)
    writer, G. Harrison, 1966
    badass guitar solo, P. McCartney :fire:
    The Beatles
  • Luck
    ↪Agent Smith
    :up:
  • A definition of "evil"
    ↪Agent Smith
    :nerd: :up:
  • Immanence of eschaton
    ↪Real Gone Cat
    :sweat:
  • A definition of "evil"
    Addendum to
    ↪180 Proof





    ↪Agent Smith
    With g/G, scripture says "evil is sin against g/G". However, with or without g/G, evil is also sin against all descendants. :mask:
  • Why Must You Be Governed?
    Neither 'stateless individualism', which is license, nor ''statist individualism', which is legalism; are forms of liberty insofar as liberty means socially accountable self-governance.

    If I could choose to be governed or not... — NOS4A2
    Yes, "if" – but you don't get to choose, nobody does, any more than you get to choose the body, family, society or class you're born into, etc. "Why must you be governed?" You/we mustn't, just like you/we mustn't speak English. Instead: Why are you/we governed? Because, NOS, as your wannabe-gangster hero Individual-1 keeps saying the quiet part out loud: "They're mine, mine, mine ..." Wtf?! :mask:

    You want to abolish the centralizing authority of the state? First abolish the ego-centralizing psychology in our social arrangements. In a post-Indigenous, imperialistic, overpopulated world, the realpolitik of cosmopolitan social contractualism, where it is effective, is the statist counterweught to 'failed state terrorism' or 'Dark Ages warlordism'. But what about a counterweight to "the tyranny of the state"? Democratize the economy as much as practically possible.

    Political democracy in the absence of economic democracy (aka "economic autocracy" (becomes neoliberal corporatocracy)) has always been a failing project. Political autocracy (i.e. statist tyranny) is the manifest policing infrastructure required in order to protect economy autocracy. Read A. Smith closely. & Read P. Kropotkin closely. Read D. Schweickart & T. Picketty closely.
  • Immanence of eschaton
    Living on high ground in the Southern Hemisphere will be sustainable for centuries at least so "the Malthusian eschaton" isn't "immanent" everywhere (yet). I had an old Chinese-American friend who was lifelong New Yorker just relocate this past summer to Rivera, Uruguay (a small city on the inland, southern border with Brazil) for similar reasons you mention.

    At any rate, catastrophes due to accelerating climate change won't be unsurvivable (uninsurable) for a few decades yet, possibly not to the end of the century. Your concern – alarm – is n't "irrational" though, IMHO, it may be premature.
  • A definition of "evil"
    ↪universeness
    No. Self-victimization doesn't make sense.

    ↪universeness
    No. The evil act is done to the child, whether or not she is his child. Same as above.
  • A definition of "evil"
    ↪universeness
    Not if it is victimless, which it almost always is.
  • A definition of "evil"
    ↪universeness
    "Quick & dirty" is just a common phraase.
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    There is always a philosophy for lack of courage. — Albert Camus
    ↪schopenhauer1
    And as I have asked you on other threads: So What? :eyes:

    There is joy in affirming the struggle to live for its own sake; not enough joy to compensate for our suffering, no doubt, but enough joy – well, enough for most of us and most other living beings – with which to create and recreate and, yes, (selfishly? atavistically?) procreate. There are no "pessimists" or "optimists" in foxholes – who, under fire, can afford the luxury of such poses? – there's only the quick and the dead. "Pessimism", after all, is just disillusioned "optimism"; thus, in spite of it all, I'm a bluesman and absurdist (A. Murray et al).
  • A definition of "evil"
    Follow up question for you; having defined it now what would you think motivates such people to commit those kinds of perverse pleasures?
    As in do you think it's nature or nurture?     — Benj96
    I don't know. Besides, I think that's a psychiatric problem and not a philosophical question.

    Do you think people who do such things are redeemable?
    No. They are more lethal pathogens than bad people. I've never heard of remorseful animal torturers, child / elder rapists, serial killers, or mass murderers, have you?

    Do you think those that pursue evil things are simply mis-directed or do you think there's nothing one can do to salvage some civility in them?
    In every culture "the devil" is portaryed as a being of utmost "civility". Folk instincts in this regard are instructive. All that glitters is not gold ..., etc. Such inhuman folk, it seems to me, forfeit the right of inclusion in any human community. Put out both of their eyes and permanently exile them to the remotest place on Earth – under constant electroonic / satellite suveillance with RFID tags like wild animals – with prefab shelters and enough training (while medicated) and tools to manage subsistence living – either they blindly work togrther to survive or they don't.
  • Luck
    ↪Agent Smith
    Never mind.
  • Deep Songs

    w/lyrics
    "What a Fool Believes" (3:41)
    Minute by Minute, 1979
    writers M. MacDonald & K. Loggins
    The Doobie Brothers

    *


    "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)" (3:54)
    Sky's the Limit, 1971
    writers N. Whifield & B. Strong
    The Temptations
  • What are you listening to right now?

    "She's Nineteen Years Old" (3:14)
    A-side single, 1958
    Muddy Waters

    *

    "These Arms of Mine" (2:35)
    A-side single, 1962
    Otis Redding
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