I'm not sure what you mean by noncognitivist... . — 3017amen

I am of the opinion that ontophilia is the proper referent of the term "God" as used by theological noncognitivists, who are people that use religious terminology not for describing reality per se, but more for its emotional affect. Most theological noncognitivists do not identify as such and are not aware of this philosophical technicality in their use of language, but it it evident in expressions such as "God is love", whereby "believing in God" does not seem to mean so much a claim about the ontological existence of a particular being, but an expression of good will toward the world and of an expectation that the world generally reciprocates such goodness. It seems also plausibly equatable to the Buddhist concept of "nirvana", or the ancient Greek concept of "eudaimonia", which were the "meanings of life" of those respective traditions. — The Codex Quaerentis: On Practical Action and the Meaning of Life

TL;DR: there is a real feeling that corresponds to the non-cognitivist meaning of "God", and it is the greatest and most important thing in life, and doing the things that bring about that feeling is kinda like to "become [one with] God", but the occurrence of that feeling really isn't good ground to say "God exists", and doing so just causes unnecessary confusion with people who don't already do that, even people who are intimately familiar with that feeling. — Pfhorrest

In other words, are some if not all, of those metaphysical concepts or features of consciousness confer any type of meaning to lower life-forms? For example, using your definition of will; did the will evolve? — 3017amen

Perhaps like you (not sure), I personally believe that the will precedes the intellect. — 3017amen

I'm not sure I am following that illusionary description there. — 3017amen

Ontophobia's illusory demand for meaning is essentially a craving for validation, for a sense that one is important and matters in some way. I realize in retrospect that so much of what I thought were mere practical concerns in my life were probably actually manifestations of this ontophobic craving for validation. My youthful longing for romance was all about feeling worthy of a partner; stress about performance at my job was all about feeling worthy as an employee; longing for an appreciative audience for my various private creative works was all about feeling worthy as an author, artist, etc. It was only once those were mostly all satisfied that the bare emotional motive behind them all truly showed itself, the true existential dread being all about craving to feel like it matters whether or not I, or anyone or anything, even exist at all.

[...]

I find that, aside from simply allowing myself to ignore the meaningless craving for meaning that ontophobia brings on, the way to cultivate ontophilia is to practice the very same behaviors that it in turn inspires more of. Doing good things, either for others or just for oneself, and learning or teaching new truths, both seem to generate feelings of empowerment and enlightenment, respectively, and as those ramp up in a positive feedback loop, inspiring further such practices, an ontophilic state of mind can be cultivated. In this sense, it could be poetically said that the meaning of life is to love and be loved, to learn and to teach. Learning truths about the universe, and being the recipient of its goods, shows one how everything in the universe matters, how they fit together into the big picture; and doing goods for the rest of the universe, as well as being a font of truths, makes one matter to the rest of the universe. Learning many great truths and doing many great goods places one in a crucial position in the overall function of the universe, being influenced by as much of the universe as possible through one's experience, filtering true beliefs and good intentions out of it, and then influencing as much of the universe as possible through one's resultant behavior. Approaching such a position is also, on my account, approaching what it would mean to be a god — roughly all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful — as will be outlined further below. (And that "all-good" aspect, being the only one that could in principle possibly be attained, can be decomposed into an external aspect, inerrancy, the inability to do wrong, and an internal aspect, emotional invulnerability, or the inability to be wronged, which are attained precisely by attaining wisdom and ontophilia, respectively: wisdom correctly guiding the flow of the universe's function through oneself, and ontophilia emotionally shielding oneself from any suffering one might experience in that process.)

I also find that it helps to remain at peace and alleviate feelings of anxiety and unworthiness by not only doing all the positive things that I reasonable can do, as above, but also excusing or forgiving myself from blame for not doing things that I reasonably can't do. Meditative practices are essentially practice at allowing oneself to do nothing and simply be, to help cultivate this state of mind. A popular prayer (that I will revisit again later in these essays) also asks for precisely such serenity to accept things one cannot change and courage to change the things one can. And the modern cognitive-behavioral therapy technique called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is also entirely about committing to doing the things that one can do and accepting the things that one cannot do anything about. It is of course very hard to do this sometimes, so it helps also to cultivate a social network of like-minded people who will gently encourage you to do the things you reasonably can, and remind you that it's okay to not do things that you reasonably can't, between the two of which you can hopefully find a restful peace of mind where you feel that you have done all that you can do and nothing more is required of you, allowing you to enjoy simply being.

Simply connecting with other people in itself helps to cultivate feelings of meaningfulness, as it is precisely that connectedness that constitutes meaning in any sense. The linguistic sense of meaning, too, hinges on the connection between signifier and signified, and between speaker and listener. In artistic works, the meaningfulness of creativity comes from illustrating the connections between what previously seemed like unrelated possibilities, as detailed at the end of my essay on the arts. Mathematics is all about exploring the relations, or connections, between things in that same abstract space of possibilities, as detailed in my essay on mathematics. Even the ontology I have put forward earlier posits that the world itself is constituted by a network of interactions, those connections between things forming the very fabric of reality; the teleology I have put forward taking a prescriptive view of that same network of interactions to form the fabric of morality; mind and will being in one sense of each just a different perspective on that same network; knowledge and justice being about connecting to things as described above; and my philosophies of academics and politics hinging entirely on connected networks of people to constitute those respective social institutes. Even the connectedness of philosophy itself, to every other endeavor, is why I find it to be the most meaningful area of study. — The Codex Quaerentis: On Practical Action and the Meaning of Life

I was suicidal at the time. I attempted suicide out in a remote part of the mountains of Colorado. — 3017amen

The heroin example is interesting. What kind of need causes a person to get addicted to drugs I wonder, any clue? — 3017amen

Does any of that (or the foregoing) separate us from the Darwinian thought process? — 3017amen

The central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. — Wikipedia on 'Thinking, Fast and Slow'

I reckon these to be the derivatives of the first principle, which in turn presupposes a third derivative: the goal. The goal in itself might be and optimally is a first principle to any branch of philosophy. — Eleonora

The characteristic activity of philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, not the possession or exercise thereof. Wisdom, in turn, is not merely some set of correct opinions, but rather the ability to discern the true from the false, the good from the bad; or at least the more true from the less true, the better from the worse; the ability, in short, to discern superior answers from inferior answers to any given question. — The Codex Quaerentis: The Metaphilosophy of Analytic Pragmatism

My general philosophy could be most succinctly summed up as the rejection of both unquestionable answers, and unanswerable questions. By this I mean the commitment to questioning everything, and rejecting anything that's beyond questioning, but also to trusting that there are answers to be had, and entertaining the possibility of anything that might be an answer:

I say to hold that there is some opinion or another that is actually correct in a sense beyond merely someone subjectively agreeing with it, a position that I call "objectivism"; in contrast to its negation that I call "nihilism", by which I mean the view that holds there are no genuinely correct answers.

I say also to hold every opinion open to questioning, a position that I call "criticism"; in contrast to its negation that I call "fideism", by which I mean the view that holds there are some things that are beyond question.

I say to freely hold some tentatively opinion or another on what the answer might be even if you don't have conclusive justification to say that it definitely is that, a position that I call "liberalism"; in contrast to its negation that I call "cynicism", by which I mean the view that holds that no opinion should be held until it can be conclusively justified from the ground up.

And I say to reject any opinion that is not amenable to questioning because it is beyond any possible experience that could test it one way or another, a position that I call "phenomenalism"; in contrast to its negation that I call "transcendentalism", by which I mean the view that holds that there are some things that are utterly beyond the ability to discern from our experiences.

[...]

The underlying reason I hold this general philosophical view, or rather my reason for rejecting the views opposite of it, is my metaphilosophy of analytic pragmatism, taking a practical approach to philosophy and how best to accomplish the task it is aiming to do. As explained above: this view, commensurablism, is just the conjunction of criticism and objectivism, which are in turn just the negations of fideism and nihilism, respectively. If you accept fideism rather than criticism, then if your opinions should happen to be the wrong ones, you will never find out, and you will remain wrong forever; and if you accept nihilism rather than objectivism, then if there is such a thing as the right opinion after all, you will never find it, and you will remain wrong forever. There might not be such a thing as a correct opinion, and if there is, we might not be able to find it. But if we're starting from such a place of complete ignorance that we're not even sure about that — where we don't know what there is to know, or how to know it, or if we can know it at all, or if there is even anything at all to be known — and we want to figure out what the correct opinions are in case such a thing should turn out to be possible, then the safest bet, pragmatically speaking, is to proceed under the assumption that there are such things, and that we can find them, and then try. Maybe ultimately in vain, but that's better than failing just because we never tried in the first place.

[...]

As Henri Poincaré rightly said, "To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection." (La Science et l'Hypothèse, 1901). Or as Alfred Korzybski similarly said, "There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking." I would argue that to do otherwise than to try (even if ultimately in vain) to find answers to our questions, to fall prey to either nihilism or fideism, to deny that there are such things as right or wrong opinions about either reality or morality, or to deny that we are able to figure out which is which, is actually not even philosophy at all. The Greek root of the word "philosophy" means "the love of wisdom", but I would argue that any approach substantially different from what I have laid out here as commensurablism would be better called "phobosophy", meaning "the fear of wisdom", for rather than seeking after wisdom, seeking after the ability to discern true from false or good from bad, it avoids it, by saying either that it is unobtainable, as the nihilist does, or that it is unneeded, as the fideist does. Commensurablism could thus be said to be necessitated merely by being practical about the very task that defines philosophy itself. If you're trying to do philosophy at all, to pursue wisdom, the ability to sort out the true from the false and the good from the bad, you end up having to adopt commensurablism, or else just give up on the attempt completely. — The Codex Quaerentis: The Philosophy of Commensurablism

Can you elaborate a bit more on these intrinsic fears? In other words, how does fear impact our way of Being, as you suggested... . — 3017amen

It wasn't until decades into my adult life that I first experienced clearly identifiable existential angst like had prompted the many writers on the Absurd for so long. I had long suffered with depression and anxiety, but always fixated on mundane problems in my life (though in retrospect I wonder if it wasn't those problems prompting the feelings but rather the feelings finding those problems to dwell on), and I had already philosophized a way to tackle such mundane problems despite that emotional overwhelm, which will be detailed by the end of this essay. But after many years of working extremely hard to get my life to a point where such practical problems weren't constantly besieging me, I found myself suddenly beset with what at first I thought was a physical illness, noticing first problems with my digestion, side-effects from that on my sinuses, then numbness in my face and limbs, lightheadedness, cold sweats, rapid heartbeat and breathing, and eventually total sleeplessness. Thinking I was dying of something, I saw a doctor, who told me that those are all symptoms of anxiety, nothing more. But it was an anxiety unlike any I had ever suffered before, and I had nothing going on in my life to feel anxious about at that point. Because of that, at first I dismissed the anxiety diagnosis and tried to physically alleviate my symptoms various ways, but as it wore on for many months, I found things to feel anxious about, facts about the universe I had already known for decades (many of which I detail later in this essay) but never emotionally worried about, which I found suddenly filling me with an existential horror or dread, a sense that any sentient being ever existing at all was like condemning it to being born already in freefall into a great cosmic meat grinder, and that reality could not possibly have been any different. Mortified, I searched in desperation for some kind of philosophical solution to that problem, something to think about that would make me stop feeling that, even trying unsuccessfully to abandon my philosophical principles and turn to religion just for the emotional relief, growing much more sympathetic to the many people who turn to religions for such relief, even as I continued to see the claims thereof as false and many of their practices as bad.

As a year of that wore on, brief moments of respite from that existential angst, dread, or horror grew mercifully longer and more frequent, often being prompted by a smaller more practical problem in my life springing up and then being resolved, distracting me from these intractable cosmic problems, at least for a time. In those moments of respite, I would often feel like I had figured out a philosophical solution to the problem: I saw my patterns of thinking while experiencing that dread as having been flawed, and the patterns of thinking I now had in this clearer state of mind as more correct. But when the dread returned, I felt like I could not remember what it was that I had thought of to solve the problem, and any attempt to get out of that state of mind, simply to not feel like that any more, felt like hiding from an important problem that I ought to keep dwelling on until I figured out a solution to it, even though it seemed equally clear that no solution to it was even theoretically possible. It wasn't until nearly a year of this vacillating between normalcy and existential dread had passed that the insight finally stuck me: the existential dread was just the opposite of the kind of "mysterical experiences" I had occasionally had and attached no rational significance too for my entire life. Just as, during those experiences, some things sometimes seemed non-rationally meaningful, just an ordinary experience of some scene of ordinary life with a profound feeling of "this is meaningful" attached to it, so too this feeling of existential dread was just my experience of ordinary life with a non-rational feeling of profound meaninglessness attached to it. The problem that I found myself futilely struggling to solve, I realized, was entirely illusory, and it was not irrational cowardice to hide from the "problem", but rather entirely the rational thing to do to ignore the illusory sense that there was a problem, and do whatever I could to pull my mind out of that crippling state of dread, wherein I had painfully little clarity of thought or motivational energy, and get myself back into a clearer, more productive state of mind.

I have since dubbed that feeling of existential angst, dread, or horror "ontophobia", Greek for the fear of being, where "being" here means both the existence of the whole world generally, and one's own personal existence... — The Codex Quaerentis: On Practical Action and the Meaning of Life

...it is the greatest and most important thing in life, and doing the things that bring about that feeling is kinda like to "become [one with] God", but the occurrence of that feeling really isn't good ground to say "God exists", and doing so just causes unnecessary confusion with people who don't already do that, even people who are intimately familiar with that feeling. — Pfhorrest

We all know that it is more meaningful to spend time on things like reading or outdoor activities than on playing video games or choosing luxurious clothes. — Rystiya

the entire so-called "red people" philosophy which is a minor internet sensation — IvoryBlackBishop

I've found that I agree with you 75% of the time or so on the art stuff — Noble Dust

For this reason, some philosophers such as Plato were vehemently opposed to rhetoric, seeing it as manipulative sophistry without regard for truth, in contrast with the logical, rational dialectic that he and his teacher Socrates advocated. His student Aristotle, on the other hand, had a less negative opinion of rhetoric, viewing it as neither inherently good nor bad but as useful toward either end, and holding that because many people sadly do not think in perfectly rational ways, rhetorical appeals to emotion and character and such are often necessary to get such people to accept truths that they might otherwise irrationally reject. I side much more with Aristotle's view on this matter, viewing logic and rhetoric are complimentary to each other, not in competition. I like to use an analogy of prescribing someone medicine: the actual medicinal content is most important of course, but you stand a much better chance of getting someone to actually swallow that content if it's packaged in a small, smooth, sweet-tasting pill than if it's packaged in a big, jagged, bitter pill. In this analogy, the medicinal content of the pill is the logical, rational content of a speech-act, while the size, texture, and flavor of the pill is the rhetorical packaging and delivery of the speech-act. It is of course important that the "medicine" (logic) be right, but it's just as important that the "pill" (rhetoric) be such that people will actually swallow it. — The Codex Quaerentis: On Rhetoric and the Arts

the ability to accomplish greater feats than without it'. — A Seagull

It's like imposing a ban on the meat industry but still allowing people to consume meat. — TheMadFool

And a 'force multiplier to thought' is meaningful??? — A Seagull

This confusion of liberalism with fideism, or equivalently of criticism with cynicism, and likewise of phenomenalism with nihilism, or equivalently of objectivism with transcendentalism, leads many people, I suspect, to see the only available options as a transcendent fideistic view, or else a cynical nihilistic view. The differentiation of those superficial similarities and so the opening up of possibilities besides those two extremes is the key insight at the core of my entire general philosophy, embracing objectivism without transcendentalism, criticism without cynicism, liberalism without fideism, and phenomenalism without nihilism. — The Codex Quaerentis: Commensurablism

Knowledge is a kind of belief. — Pfhorrest

No it isn't. — Frank Apisa

[Why do people] ...almost NEVER use "guess" rather than "believe/belief?" — Frank Apisa