That sounds pretty cool.

And thanks, I'm feeling pretty good today. :-)

Well from what I recall from my religious studies classes, there doesn't seem to be much canonical mention of heaven (or for that matter hell) at all in the Bible. It's not that people die and go to some other realm that exists simultaneously with ours, it's that eventually all the good people will be resurrected in some utopian future after the world is made perfect; and all the bad people just stay dead. No heaven or hell, just resurrection or permanent death. Everything about heaven and hell people usually think of is as apocryphal as the Serpent, Satan, and "Lucifer" (a nonexistent character in the Bible, just fan-fiction from Milton) being the same character.

Please cite some passages directly attesting to the existence of heaven (or hell) if I'm wrong about that.

What did you find so offensive? You’re maxim says practically the same thing. — I like sushi

That you said I wasn't trying hard enough, and directly in response to me referencing my maxim, admitting that maybe I shouldn't reasonably have had any hopes for something, but that I was at least trying for it.

You have every right to critique the products of my efforts (and I have every right to disregard them if I think they're without value, which I now intend to do with you), but you have no right to tell me I'm not putting enough effort in.

Like I said before, you're not my boss, hovering over my shoulder to make sure I'm not slacking off. You don't have any grounds to tell me I'm not working hard enough. You can be dissatisfied with the result of my work, but it's my work on my own initiative; I am my boss in this matter. You don't know what else is on my plate, and you don't get to judge whether I'm putting in enough effort.

This is also a particularly hot-button issue for me because my father was emotionally abusive in exactly this way when I was younger, turning every dissatisfaction with some outcome of my actions into an attack on my character. (Unexpected problem occurred that I didn't think would happen? "That's right you didn't think!"Any other explanation of how something turned out worse than I meant it to? "No excuses!" It's because of that that I now feel guilty whenever anything bad happens, no matter how out of my control reasonable people would say it was, because I've internalized that I should have been smart enough to foresee every possible problem and proactive enough to preemptively prevent it.)

I also said pretty much this, but shorter, already. I wasn't angry at all about the critique of my work. I was trying to listen reasonably to your criticism even while multiple other people were telling me I ought to just ignore you (and not all of them anyone personally close to me who has any reason to care about my feelings; even Jamalrob said right there in the thread that I should just ignore you). It was only when you attacked my character (immediately after I had finished making yet more revisions based on your feedback) that I lost it.

That doesn't excuse deploying that offense-bomb I used, but here's your explanation as to why I was so offended.

An infinite string is only guaranteed to contain every finite string within it if it is truly random. If there are any constraints on the infinite string, then it doesn't have to contain everything. If heaven has the constraint of being perfect and blissful etc like it's usually depicted, then even if it is infinite it won't contain periods of terrible suffering the way our lives do.

You’re like a used car salesmen that’s trying to sell a car that’s been cobbled together from used parts. — praxis

I think that‘s not necessarily a bad thing, if you’re up front about that fact, and put together something new and worthwhile out of the old parts. If you can take a bunch of pieces of old things, tweak and modify them, and put them together in an interesting new way, maybe glued together with a few novel parts of your own, that is still a worthwhile creative act.

And honestly, maybe better in a lot of ways than completely reinventing the wheel... and all the other parts too.

From what I've skimmed of your website, a lot of the ideas you put forward are not unheard-of among philosophers and physicists, including especially the idea that information is the fundamental aspect of reality. It's definitely not in the "widely accepted and only weird to uneducated people" camp yet like QM and GR, but certainly in the "yeah maybe, that's an interesting approach" camp for people who know what they're talking about.

The only thing that seems kind of sketchy to me about your approach is the neologisms and kind of... style, and terminology... that makes it seem like this is some "crazy" new thing you came up with all by yourself -- and maybe you did a lot of it, which is fine and plausible, but it could put off a lot of people who might just dismiss this as some loony ramblings. It kind of sucks to say but I imagine if you tried to use fewer neologisms and more standard terminology, reference existing work in the same vein wherever possible, explain the things that have already been explored, and then note your own variations or additions on top of that, I think it would "sell" (figuratively speaking) a lot better.

But then, like I said, I've barely just skimmed your work, so maybe you do this more than I remember already. Those are just the thoughts I remember having: "the ideas are in the right vein, I've heard of and liked a lot of stuff like this before, but it's presented kinda sketchy".

Just wanted to say @bert1 has been doing a great job in this thread.

Also to add, on my own account of panpsychism, mentality or experience isn’t properly speaking a property of things; rather, it’s a different perspective on the same ordinary physical things, a perspective that can be taken with regards to anything, not just humans, though there’s often little point to taking it for many things.

It’s sort of a combination of two kinds of bundle theory. Objects are bundles of properties. All those properties are empirical. To be empirical means they can be experienced. Phenomenal consciousness is just a bundle of experiences. For a thing to be red is just for it to be disposed to do something (emit photons) to us that provokes the experience of red in us, and both its being objectively red and our subjective experience of its redness are the same event, the interaction between us and the thing. The phenomenal experience is just the subjective perspective on that event, while the physical behavior (of doing the thing that constitutes looking red) is the objective perspective on that event.

To say that all things have phenomenal experiences is thus similar (if not identical) to saying all things are quantum mechanical “observers”: it just means they are subject to interactions with other things, receiving information from those things (which is the same thing as interacting with them). But neither quantum mechanical “observation” nor phenomenal “consciousness” really mean the substantive ordinary things we mean by those words day-to-day. Those ordinary meanings are all about what you DO with the information / in response to the interaction, and there are important functional differences between humans and e.g. rocks in that respect, which differences constitute ACCESS conscious, which is really the more important subject.

Not familiar with Bergson, but I think I’ve had a similar thought: that the meaning of life is enjoying just being alive while you can, and then doing whatever you can to keep on doing that ad long as possible. In contrast to fearing death, or feeling like there’s no point to living. The point to living is to enjoy living, and if you’re really enjoying it while it’s happening you won’t really be afraid of death, even though you should still act as necessary to avoid it.

“Sad is like happy for people who are deep”, said a Doctor Who character once. I used to sympathize with that, I think because dark feelings in literature and other media seem cathartic somehow. But at some point, yeah, you get fed up with all the wallowing in darkness and realize that “shallow” earnest joy is the place to be, and “depth” doesn’t have to mean sinking ever deeper into bottomless pits of despair.

The character Iroh from the show Avatar: The Last Airbender really exhibits a kind if joyous depth. He seems very “philosophical”, but I can’t think of any actual philosophers he resembles.

Thanks to Jamalrob and all the admins, and everyone who said kind words while I was gone. (Carlos, I have no idea where you found such animosity, I feel like we’ve barely spoken at all, but no need to dredge whatever that is up now here).

Especially to Sushi for taking it so well and speaking in my favor even though he was the target. (I still find that “not trying” remark really offensive and don’t want to engage with you anymore, but it didn’t warrant that kind of flaming).

To clear up for everyone what I already explained to Jamalrob, the last sentence of the offending post was a pre-formulated “worse insult possible” that I constructed as an intellectual exercise a long while ago when thinking about what makes swear words offensive, intentionally including a variety of different types of offense (sexual, religious, maternal, self-esteem, etc), and ending with a racist-homophobic term precisely because that’s the most offensive thing to my ear.

I definitely do not harbor any actual racist or homophobic sentiments. I do regret actually unleashing that in public, and surely would have deleted it myself if Jamalrob hadn’t gotten to it first, which he did almost immediately because I actually @ed him in the same post. I was glad it was deleted even then and grateful for the warning in lieu of a ban he gave me, and thought that was that until a few days later it suddenly wasn’t.

In any case, glad to be back and sorry for all the drama.

I came up with my own objection to rent and interest before ever hearing about the Old Testament version of it (or the contemporary Islamic equivalent thereof). Or of David Ricardo's critique of rent, which was apparently highly influential on Marx in turn.

The religious bans on interest don't also ban rent, BTW, and both medieval Christians and modern Muslims get around it by a weird combination package of "interest-free" loans, insurance, and rent. The ancients seem not to have realized that interest is just a special case of rent, namely rent on money, and it's rent in general that needs banning (or rather, which needs to go unenforced; it's only enabled by legal contracts, and the law could just not recognize those contracts), not just rent on money.

Anyway, yeah you can't sell money, but you can spend it. If you can't profit from lending your money, you can spend it on something that you hope will generate more money, paying people to do things that you hope will generate profit. That still ends up transferring real wealth from the rich to the poor.

That's how "capitalism" is naively supposed to work: the rich pay the poor for their work, so the poor get richer and the richer get poorer, unless they're also working just as much. But because of rent and interest, most of what's paid to the poor just gets paid right back to the rich to borrow their wealth, wealth which does not become owned by the poor in exchange for that payment because it's only borrowed. It's rent and interest that break free markets and turn them into exploitative capitalism.

So to me your response is that A (information) and B (matter) are components of X (unknown but more primary than information). — praxis

It seems to me that he is saying that both “matter” and “spirit” are reducible to “information”. Your B is a subset of A, not coextensive with it. C (spirit) is also a subset of A. If I understand him correctly.

I like that general approach at least. As I see it matter reduces to information which is in one fuzzy kind of way “mind-like”, “mental” stuff, “ideas” in a sense; but actual minds in the ordinary sense are made of that matter, which is not necessarily “in” any particular mind. It’s all a wonky way of talking about reality being made of stuff that is mind-accessible, and actual minds being made of that stuff then being able to access is unremarkable.

If everything is information then all programs are data and all data can be executed as a program (even if it won’t do anything but halt immediately) and there’s no mysterious duality to work around.

I have no objection to actual equity investment: you spend money on some endeavor in hopes of making more money out of it. All I object to is charging people for the use of something that you then are owed back in full, in addition to the money you charged. If you’re not going to be using it yourself some way and profiting off it from that, your only option to profit should be to sell it off.

Personally I am opposed to an asset tax strictly speaking, but I am very very strongly in favor of a usury tax. Any money made off of simply owning something and lending it out -- whether that something be cash or land or whatever, so basically any income from interest and rents -- should be taxed at exorbitant rates, up to 100% is fine with me. That will make owning things unprofitable, incentivizing those who make money off of owning things to lend out take their next-best option, selling them off... except nobody else will be buying them for investments anymore, so the only way to tell them off is to sell them on terms that people who need them for their own use can afford. So the rich get two choices: hang on to your usury-generating assets and get all your profits taxed away, or find some way to get those assets into the hands -- into the ownership -- of people who need them for their own use, and escape the tax man. Also, incidentally, millions of poor people enter the ownership class along the way.

Edit: without affecting people who own things for their own use, e.g. my ex-girlfriend's multi-generational family home in Santa Barbara that is now worth millions of dollars shouldn't be taxed out from under them, because other than owning that home they're not rich. I am very much in favor of people being secure in their ownership of things they actually use, and not having to keep paying the government for the continued right to keep them.

FWIW, I also think that UBI can be sold to even conservative people in a way that I was pleasantly surprised to see the recent $1200 CARES stimulus payments done: it's a refundable tax credit.

Tell everyone they'll get 25% of the mean income as a refundable tax credit, to offset a 25% tax on their income to fund an UBI. Make tax refunds paid out in monthly installments, and there you go: that tax credit is the UBI, of around $1000-something a month. Everyone below about the 75th percentile sees their taxes go down, and most of them get a monthly tax refund check, with absolutely destitute people getting such a check of over $1000/mo.

Or you could make it $2000, or $3000, or even about $4000, and the numbers still all work out the same. You just have to make the tax percentages 50%, 75%, or almost 100% to accomplish those numbers, which start to look less feasible. (I personally would aim for about a 50% target, but it's really negotiable).

It seems to me the "installed base" of safety net programs, tattered and full of holes as they are, will make a UBI difficult to achieve here (if for no other reason that the installed base will serve as an excuse for not doing). — Bitter Crank

That reason aside, I think UBI and the existing tattered net can be integrated together rather easily. Just make UBI-payments-minus-UBI-tax count as income for the purposes of determining income for those other programs. Gradually increase the UBI until those other programs wither away as nobody needs them anymore. Or if people who do need them start falling off of them too soon, adjust their income requirements appropriately to keep those people still on them, until UBI is raised enough that people who fall off of them due to UBI can afford to be off of them.

Thanks for that. I hope to have time to work on this a bit later tomorrow, so I'll save this for then.

Also got the girlfriend finally reading/proofreading it; she's not interested in philosophy and so hadn't read it until I pressed her to read the first part of the intro a few days ago, but I asked her if I can try to teacher her philosophy while she teaches me to be a better writer by collaborating on this, and she's tentatively agreed and given me partial notes on the intro already.

If you give everyone an UBI of $X and then tax everyone ($X/mean income)% of their income, it is mathematically guaranteed to be revenue-neutral (and have no effect on the money supply, so no devaluation or inflation). Everyone below the mean income ends up getting more than they pay, and only those above it end up paying more than they get. Because the mean income is around the 75th percentile, this ends up giving a supermajority of people more than it will cost them, while remaining revenue neutral. Even most of those above the mean income don’t make much above the mean income, so the cost to them would be minimal. This is because so much income goes to a tiny fraction of the population, who would bear the brunt of the burden.

This works for any X less than the mean income. The median income is around half the mean, so we could easily guarantee that nobody ever gets less than what currently half of people make less than, and not only that bottom half but the next quarter would still come out ahead. All without printing a single new dollar.

Are your ideas so far out of the mainstream that they are incomprehensible to those who "don't yet know the first thing about" philosophy? Or are they so radical that they offend those who think they know a lot about philosophy? Or are they so abstruse that they don't appeal to those who don't care anything about philosophy? — Gnomon

I think my views are a refined version of pre-philosophical common sense views, shored up to withstand the attacks on that common sense that bad philosophy has levied over the ages. I expect that most people have been exposed to some form of such bad philosophy, and so hold what they think are sophisticated views superior to that pre-philosophical common sense, which I aim to disabuse them of. Most of the pieces of my philosophy should be at least passingly familiar to anyone who has actually studied the subject, though.

I heard an adage once that went something like “Before walking the path to enlightenment, tables are tables and tea is tea. While walking the path to enlightenment, tables are no longer tables and tea is no longer tea. Upon reaching enlightenment, tables are again tables, and tea is again tea.”

So tell me : how does your book relate to my personal philosophical interests? In general terms, what is "the thing" you were looking for but never found? — Gnomon

Your interests seem very similar to mine, in that you are trying to forge a balanced middle path between two extremes. You call them spiritualism and materialism, I call them fideism and nihilism. I don’t think those are exactly the same things as each other, but they seem to share a common theme. Your information ontology is also very similar to mine.

The thing I never found was one comprehensive philosophy that took the good arguments from every side on every philosophical topic, eschewing the bad arguments, and put them all together in a systematic way, so it’s not just a hodgepodge of “things I like”, but a consistent complete picture where the positions on every topic are each held on the grounds of the same common principles as the positions on other topics.

I don’t understand the distinction you are making.

Can you give me an example passage from the codex that is too “personal” and rephrase it in the tone you think it should be? When I look through for ways to make things less personal, all I see are opportunities to falsely claim my own views as indisputable facts, which seems like it would be much worse.

You might, however; want your work published to reach a wider audience — jkg20

The audience of people willing to pay for something is wider than the audience of people willing to read something for free? That seems counter-intuitive.

depersonalise it. The "I" count is very high — jkg20

I still think this advice is countermanded by people with better standing to give such advice, such as all of my philosophy professors, who explicitly instructed everyone that philosophy is written from the first person; and a survey of most of the historical philosophical literature, which bears out that instruction, being written in the first person unless it's a dialogue or some kind of literature review not putting forward its own arguments.

I understand that other kinds of disciplines, and high school teachers apparently, drill first-person writing out of people, which is why the philosophy professors have explicitly hammered on how that kind of advice is to be ignored for the sake of philosophical writing.

I just did a quick search for philosophical writing advice and found these choice quotes:

“Philosophers often use the first person, especially when announcing their argument.”
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/writing/wp-content/uploads/sites/164/2016/10/phil-papers-handout.pdf

Some examples of “good writing”:
“In this paper, I will refute Smith’s argument against the existence of free will by showing that it trades on an ambiguity.“
“ As I have shown clearly in my reconstruction of Smith’s argument, the word “free” as it appears in Smith’s
first premise (meaning uncaused) must be interpreted differently from the word “free” as it appears in Smith’s third premise (meaning unforced) – otherwise at least one of those premises would be highly implausible. But in that case, Smith’s argument is logically invalid.
It might be objected that I have interpreted Smith’s argument unfavorably. I can think of only one other reasonable interpretation of Smith’s argument. It uses the same first two premises but...”
https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/files/phildept/files/brief_guide_to_writing_philosophy_paper.pdf

All of this article generally:
https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/should-i-use-i/

Also of interest:

“There is no need to point out that your topic is an important one, and one that has interested philosophers for hundreds of years.”
http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/resources/writing.html

It kind of sounds like many of you have never actually written a philosophy paper and are running on old high school writing rules.

Are you familiar with Alfred North Whitehead? I think you would like him a lot.

2. Find someone close enough to your target audience as you can and who has no, or very little, vested interest in your emotional wellbeing, and ask them to devote some time to reading your work. You will no doubt have a clear picture of that kind of individual, so you can perhaps identify a suitable person or some suitable people within your circle of loose acquaintances. — jkg20

Nobody in my close circle of friends seems to be that kind of individual. I would generally characterize that kind of individual as “philosophy fans”: non-experts with an interest in the field, the kind of people who might otherwise be philosophy students. I thought a forum like this would be full of them.

Do not expect that person to advise you what to do to improve the book, you are writing it, not them. — jkg20

I don’t understand what to do to improve something when the feedback is just “I don’t like this” or “I don’t understand this” and any attempt to get more details about what or why is taken as defensive. When I have tried just blindly rewriting something from scratch, like I did for sushi, the response was just more “I don’t like this”. I don’t even know if the change was in the right direction or the wrong direction. I have no idea where to proceed from feedback like that.

On a different note, if you goal is to see this book in print and to be published by someone other than yourself — jkg20

It’s not. I don’t see what the point of that would be, I’m not doing this for money, I’m trying to give away something useful to the world.

Sushi made it obvious from the start he didn't give a shit about your feelings and was just going to say what he was going to say. — Baden

It’s not about him not caring about my feelings. I was trying to work with his criticism, as useless as it was, as best I could. I was trying to get better clarification on what kind of change would be more in the direction he wanted. I had just finished another round of attempting to adjust for his comments and came here to say so only to find that he had just attacked not the work but my character (in the other thread), saying I’m not trying hard enough. That personal attack is the only thing that made me angry.

And now I've got another good reason, which is people getting pissed off that everyone doesn't love their stuff as much as they do. — Baden

I never expected anyone to love it. I think I’m garbage and everything I make is garbage. (Even that game mod that lots of people love still looks like garbage to me). All I hope for is someone to find it interesting garbage with potential and give constructive feedback on how to make it less garbage.

And as I said, I only got pissed at the personal attack on my character, not the criticism of my work.

Download link for Firefox is broken now, got a newer one?

I spent the first half hour of free computer time I've had in days trying to adjust my work in light of your criticism and that's "not trying hard enough"?

Not devoting that tiny bit of time to your meaningless "chair" exercise instead is not "trying my best to avoid" actually constructive collaboration on something that means something to me.

I try enough because I try as much as I can, and if the results aren't enough then tough shit, I'll try again when I can and see if it gets better.

You're not my fucking boss, this isn't my fucking job, this is a passion project I do when I can as best I can, and I know it's not enough, it's not enough for me, and I don't need you fucking telling me it's not enough for you, because your opinion doesn't fucking matter.

You've outed yourself as a concern troll. You pretend to care so that your attacks will hurt more. You're not worth the pixels your words are printed on. From here on out I'm considering you a hostile actor not to be trusted.

I'm looking for people who like what it is that I'm trying to do and have thoughts on how I can do it better. It seems you don't think I should be even trying to do this, and your only thoughts are on how it's awful, with no constructive suggestions for how to make it better.

Sorry, I'm unlikely to have the time, energy, or self-esteem to participate in this. (Same situation with that video game fandom... I've barely had time to even play anyone else's projects for 20 years, since I barely have time to even play-test my own, much less work on it, much less play anyone else's, much less work on theirs...)

The big hold-up is that the rich aren’t going to pay the workers the same money for “less work” = fewer hours, so if the work can get done in fewer hours, the workers have to convince the rich that they still need to put in as many hours in order to justify continuing to get the same pay (and therefore deserving the same access to the things they need to live).

The problem, as always, is capitalism.

Oh okay. I'll look for a way to work something like that in then.

You seem not to have actually read that post at all, because that is the "other" opening (the one that's currently up, that you were critiquing before), with commentary on what it's trying to communicate, in case you wanted to offer suggestions on how that could be better communicated. Which I said in the quoted bit at the very start of that post.

I would like to instead explain what I am trying to communicate (which is not arguing with the critique) and get suggestions on how that could be better communicated. — Pfhorrest

So here's a quick attempt at that, looking at the current version post-revisions-based-on-your-critique:

"It may be hopeless, but I'm trying anyway."

This is the moral of the story, so to speak. It's the maxim that everything boils down to. It's also catchy. (Someone in the other thread liked it as catch phrase, and my girlfriend said it caught her attention immediately). I hoped it would make people ask "what is hopeless? what are you trying?"

"Trying to live a meaningful life, by empowering and enlightening myself and others. Trying to bolster and support the right institutes of governance and education, that will best promote justice and knowledge, helping bring ours wills and our minds into alignment with what is moral and what is real. Trying to understand what it even means for something to be moral or for something to be real, by understanding the language we use to even discuss any of this, and all that that entails about logic and rhetoric, mathematics and the arts. "

The book is about philosophy. These are the things philosophy is about, so these are the things the book is about. Three sentences, for the three general sections of topics, in reverse order: the practical how-to-live-your-life stuff, the core sequences about reality/knowledge and morality/justice, and the abstract communication stuff. They're in reverse order to start with the stuff people might care more about, the less abstract stuff, first, even though in the book itself I have to start with the abstract stuff to ground the more practical stuff.

"Maybe that endeavor is hopeless. Maybe life is meaningless, all social institutes are incorrigibly corrupt, justice and knowledge are impossible, the mind and will powerless to grasp what is real or what is moral, if anything is at all, if it even makes any sense to try to talk about such things. Maybe that's all hopeless. But just in case it's not, I think we stand a better chance of succeeding at that endeavor, should success be at all possible, if we act on the assumption that it's not hopeless, and we try anyway. "

This is that 'moral of the story', applied to that subject matter. These are the things at stake. Meaningless, incorrigible corruption, impossibility, powerlessness, incomprehensible nonsense, etc, are the threats posed by lack of a good philosophy. But I'm offering hope against those, in the face of apparent hopelessness.

"That is the core principle at the heart of my philosophy, that I am to elaborate in the following essays: to always try, and so to act under whatever assumptions trying tacitly necessitates, namely that success is always possible, but never guaranteed. I consider the general philosophical view supported by that principle to be a naively uncontroversial, common-sense kind of view, from which various other philosophical schools of thought deviate in different ways. In these essays I aim to shore up and refine that common-sense view into a more rigorous form that can better withstand the temptation of such deviation, and to show the common error underlying all of those different deviations from this common-sense view."

Restating the kind of thing I'm going to do in the book: defend the common-sense view that things aren't completely hopeless/meaningless/etc, using that core principle.

"Put most succinctly, that common error is assuming the false dichotomy that either there must be some unquestionable answers, or else we will be left with some unanswerable questions. All of the deviations from the view I defend stem ultimately from falling to one side or the other of that false dichotomy, on some topic or another, because doing so in either way constitutes a failure to even try to genuinely answer the relevant questions. In contrast, my philosophy is the view that we must always try to answer our questions, and must therefore always proceed on the assumption that there are no unanswerable questions, and no unquestionable answers; that every question can in principle be answered, and every proposed answer is open to question."

Overview of what is wrong with the competition, and why what I'm offering is better.

"Very loosely speaking, that means that there are correct answers to be had for all meaningful questions, both about reality and about morality, and that we can in principle differentiate those correct answers from the incorrect ones; and that those correct answers are not correct simply because someone decreed them so, but rather, they are independent of anyone's particular opinions, and grounded instead in our common experience. Put another way: that what is true and what is good are beyond the decree of any of us, yet within reach of each of us; and that we can in principle always eventually tell whether someone's opinion is right or wrong, but we can never immediately assume any opinion to be such, and must give each the benefit of the doubt until proof is found one way or the other."

Overview of what the thing I'm offering is, in more detail.

"That general philosophical view is the underlying reason I will give for all of my more specific philosophical views: everything that follows does so as necessary to conform to that broad general philosophy, rejecting any views that require either just taking someone's word on some question or else giving up all hope of ever answering such a question, settling on whatever views remain in the wake of that rejection.

The core principles I will outline have immediate implications about what kinds of things are real, what kinds of things are moral, the methods of attaining knowledge, and the methods of attaining justice, which will each be covered in their own essays. Those positions then raise immediate questions about the nature of the mind and the will, and the legitimacy of educational and governmental institutes, which will again each be covered in their own essays. But all of that first requires a framework of linguistic meaning to make any sense of, which will be covered in its own essay, along with attendant essays on the related topics of logic and mathematics, and rhetoric and the arts, each covering different facets of communication in more detail. And with all of that in place, we finally have the background to tackle the most practical questions of enlightenment, empowerment, and leading a meaningful life, each of which will be covered in its own essay as well."

Structural overview of the rest of the book to follow.

"For these far-reaching influences, I see philosophy as the most central field of study, bridging the most abstract of topics like language, math, and the arts, to the physical and ethical sciences that in turn support the development of all the tools used to do the jobs of all the world's various trades. It is in light of that pragmatic role of philosophy that I will begin my approach to the subject, and it was likewise that centrality that initially drew me to it."

Another take on why this subject is important, and segue to the next section where I explain why I found this important and how and why I'm sharing it with others now.

...

That's the first section for now, gotta run.

:lol:

I have added that reference back to my earlier essays On Language and also On Being, between the two of which are laid out what it means for a descriptive assertion to be true.

I've also preemptively added similar callbacks to the equivalent paragraph of my later essay On Deontology, Intention, and the Methods of Justice, referring back to the earlier essays On Language and On Purpose for an account of what it means for something to be "good" (since in that essay I formulate justice, as a personal attribute at least, as analogous to knowledge, in that it is justified good intention).

Yeah I was excited to see you had a similar project when I first got here, and even seem to take a similar approach of trying to combine the good aspect and leave out the bad aspect of two opposing camps. I took a look into it a bit a while back and think I saw too much that I disagreed with on the broad level to bother reading more deeply into it. But I like that you’re doing that kind of project and I kind of expected that more people would be too, that such project would be the equivalent of the big mods popular in the video game fandom I mentioned before, would have their supporters and collaborators and such. But it seems like this community really isn’t into such projects.

I’ll just quote my response from the other thread here:

There is indeed an infinite regress there, and that is precisely why the normative equivalents of justificationism would be absurd; there is likewise a similar infinite regress about beliefs that makes epistemic justificationism equally absurd. But nevertheless, it still makes sense to wonder what it is about something that makes it seem good to you (or makes it seem true to you). You may not have an answer, but if you do then I’ve learned more about the details of your thoughts by asking. — Pfhorrest

There is indeed an infinite regress there, and that is precisely why the normative equivalents of justificationism would be absurd; there is likewise a similar infinite regress about beliefs that makes epistemic justificationism equally absurd. But nevertheless, it still makes sense to wonder what it is about something that makes it seem good to you (or makes it seem true to you). You may not have an answer, but if you do then I’ve learned more about the details of your thoughts by asking.

Thanks for that! I think the last is what I’m going for: it’s a book on the topic of the act of questioning.

I notice that you don’t have a chapter in your book dedicated to metaphysics, incidentally. — praxis

The chapter on ontology is most of what I would write about metaphysics, though other chapters also touch on metaphysical things. I also don’t properly have just one chapter on ethics, but rather several chapters on ethical subtopics.

Only if Hedonism is false can we hope to provide an answer different to "I'm here because it gives me pleasure" and, if my suspicions are anywhere near the mark, you seek an answer different. — TheMadFool

My question is what is it that you find pleasurable here, whether that be intrinsic or instrumental.

A little of both. Why are language, math, art, being, purpose, knowledge, justice, mind, will, education, governance, and the meaning of life all topics of one thing, “philosophy”? How and why are they related? That kind of thing.