I would say the essence of arguing is trying to win the argument, usually because you think your position is right, and the opposing one is wrong.

In which case they are not doing philosophy and have no business on a philosophy forum. — bert1

Maybe you miss the part where people like to argue.

I maintain that there is no feeling of 'life being worth living.' That's something you can say, but not feel. — The Great Whatever

Is that like saying that there is no feeling of being in love, but just something you say?

Anyway, I do feel it and I say it to myself when I do. And sometimes I feel the opposite.

Shouldn't it worry you that precisely where the issues matter most, your ability to think about them is the most facile? The solution is to invent a magical realm within your head where your opinions control reality, and everything you say or think is beyond criticism? — The Great Whatever

But I don't need to do that to feel like life is worth living. That stems from how I feel, which admittedly I don't always feel good about life, and I can't say for sure on the whole if it's worth it to me, but sometimes it certainly is. I would say based on observation that some people would feel that their lives were worth it overall, despite whatever rough patches they went through.

Why are you under the impression that whether you disagree with something has anything to do with whether it's true? Notice that the following is an invalid inference: — The Great Whatever

Because you're arguing about the subjective state of other people. You're claiming that life can't be worth living to them, even though they disagree with you.

And what kind of feeling is that? Is it sweet or sour? — The Great Whatever

Feeling good, interested, motivated, like life has a purpose, looking forward to things, enjoying other people, etc. It could include joy, flow, intense interest, or just feeling like things are going well.

Of course they don't always go well, so then it's a question of do they go wrong enough to spoil the good feeling about life? Does it become hopeless? Burdensome? Depressing? Then it stops feeling like it's worth it.

I am saying that opinions are impotent. If they were omnipotent, as you say, then I could simply have the opinion that my life was perfect, an that would make it so. Yet life has real problems. Does your opinion about whether you are suffering control whether you are Clearly not. And clearly your position that it does is bizarre. — The Great Whatever

Fortunately, I never made such an argument. Yeah, life has real problems. We suffer at times. Okay. The question is, does that make life not worth living? The pessimist says yes, but other people disagree. So what makes the pessimist right? Maybe I disagree that problems and suffering necessarily make life not worth living. Who are you to say otherwise for me?

Then nothing. Who cares if you agree or not? That means nothing. We are doing philosophy; we care about what is true, not who agrees with it. — The Great Whatever

So you think there is an objective, universal truth to be had here? That's very odd for someone who values the Cyrenaics.

Why not just opine that my life is great, and make it so? Why does anyone have problems at all? — The Great Whatever

I never claimed that anyone could do that. I have said that whether one finds life worth living or not is a feeling. If I consistently feel that life is worth living, then it is for me. That's my opinion on life based on how I feel about it. Or it could be more complicated than that, where it sometimes feels worth it, but sometimes not. In that case, I don't know what the truth is, if there is such a thing.

Because we're talking about how an individual values their life. Sure, the pessimist can point out the bad things about life, but what if the individual doesn't agree that those things overwhelm the good in life such that it would have been better to not be born? Then what? You're saying that this person is valuing their life incorrectly because they view the bad differently than the pessimistic position.

I can't see how you can be right for someone else here, unless you can show that their words don't match up with their psychological profile over time, or something like that. But that's not an easy task. You would have to monitor that individual on a regular basis, and somehow get accurate reports.

Maybe life isn't so bad for some. Maybe they don't feel like they suffer that much on the whole. The good outweighs the bad and all.

A value judgement is being made. What else is it but an opinion? My life is worth living or my life is not, or it's a mix between the two. It's an opinion I form for myself. What else could it be? You think a logical argument can determine the value I give my own life? Absurd.

Sure, the pessimist is right about those problems, but the big problem for their position is that a judgement is being made about the value of life, and that sort of thing is up to the individual. The only retort they can give is to deny that individuals are really being honest with themselves when they say that life is worth living to them.

That's a really weak argument to make. It's one thing to say that one's own life isn't worth living because of X,Y,Z. It's something completely different to say that therefore it isn't worth it to me. Because just maybe X,Y,Z doesn't make my life not worth living. Who is the pessimist to say otherwise? They can't determine life's value for me. That's ridiculous.

The pessimist is arguing that everyone is the same boat here living lives where they would have been better off not existing. But not everyone agrees with that. If a person finds their life worth living, then the pessimistic position simply doesn't apply to them, whether they're stoical about X,Y,Z or whatever. The point is that those problems aren't enough to make life not worth it to that individual.

Exactly. The pessimist seems convinced that the rest of us are lying to ourselves because we don't agree that life is so awful. But that's a really poor argument to make. How can anyone else possibly tell me how I feel about life?

If there is a world, then there is a problem of perception. Get rid of the world and you can dispense with the problem of perception. Problem with that is most people consider it insane to get rid of the world. So you end up with drastically different starting grounds to argue from.

I guess it would be. It's just something interesting I heard on NPR.

But you can read their stuff and see they aren't. — The Great Whatever

Only if you happen to agree that there is no world.

The form of the good, primarily. But maths is good. — unenlightened

One could flip the cave allegory so that the forms are the shadows on the wall, and our experiences are being in the sunshine. So it's the philosopher (or the scientist) who is in the cave. Consider that the forms, be they mathematical, the good, or universals, are abstracted from experience.

The philosopher concerns himself with the contemplation of the forms. — unenlightened

Mathematical?

So the real question is how viable is the theory that language provides a mechanism for disparate parts of the brain to communicate which otherwise wouldn't?

But I think the idea here is that language allows us to form associations which wouldn't be possible otherwise. Somehow, it allows different regions in the brain to communicate in a manner they wouldn't be doing, linking together disparate concepts. The various phrases Shakespeare made popular illustrate that nicely. A bird might understand left of blue, but it can't comprehend the notion of a fool's paradise (just to pick one randomly - perhaps it would be better to pick a more concrete one since birds understand neither fools nor paradise).

Pain cannot be fought. At least that is my reading. The dishonesty of the stoic is in presenting a solution to pain. Nothing helps with pain. If there is pain, there is no means by which to endure it or mitigate it. It must be cut-off entirely. It must not exist. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Depends on the pain. Is it the pain of running an ultra-marathon, or is it the pain of losing a child? Is it the pain of trying to meet a deadline for a project you've poured your heart into, or the pain of not being able to follow your dreams?

Seems to me suffering is not the result of pain necessarily, but what accompanies the pain. Is it accompanied by purpose? Is the pain under your control? Do you retain a positive attitude after breaking your leg, knowing that you'll be able to walk again in a few weeks? Of course it depends on how great the pain is. Probably a lot harder to be positive under torture, or seeing people die. It's also harder to remain positive if you don't expect to walk again, or don't expect the pain to go away.

If someone tells me that life isn't worth living because we experience pain, then my response is how much? A headache doesn't make me wish I never lived. Being stretched on the rack probably would. Being disappointed at not getting something I want doesn't make life seem pointless to me, but being stuck in deep depression does.

I think the Stoic is right up to a point, but I'd change it from being indifferent to being in the right mood, or having the right attitude toward normal life, which may not be under the individual's control. Just pointing out that how a person feels about things can greatly effect how much they think life sucks. Or at least it does me. Waiting in traffic is only mildly annoying when I'm doing fine, it becomes near unbearable when I'm very tired and highly irritated.

Don't know. I'm inclined to think it is one of the parts that is tied, rather than ties. In any event, various parts of the brain in a rat have to interact. Sense of smell, vision, hearing, and memory all go into rat-navigation. — Bitter Crank

Sure, but for some reason, rats can't combine blue and left together to understand left of blue. Is that because they lack language, or because their brains aren't wired up to allow such a combination? Maybe rats just aren't smart enough. The show didn't say anything about squids or dogs. I'm guessing there are some birds which get the concept.

And as The Great Whatever indicated, it's hard to gauge what people really think when they evaluate life on a philosophy forum. In the moment of living, it can be very exhausting, one thing after another, and at the end of it emptiness, but in rhetorical forums as this, or in hindsight questionnaires, people tend to Pollyannize the situation when trying to evaluate the world. I can't prove it. No doubt, people's anecdotes can be taken as the truth with no reason to give pause or one can be more suspect of it. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, but I've been asking myself that question the last couple weeks as I live my life, and it very much depends on how I feel. Sometimes I feel the emptiness and the meaninglessness of one desire after another, and sometimes I feel the fullness of life, and I look forward to the one thing after another.

This leads me to believe that all this talk really depends on how one feels about their own life, setting aside tragedy. Of course all those terrible things happen in the world, but the pessimist is arguing something more. They are saying that even if everyone were fortunate and escaped any sort of tragedy, they would still suffer from the ceaseless desiring. And yet I can't verify that for myself. It only seems to be true when I'm depressed, or highly stressed, or grumpy and irritated. It doesn't seem to be the case when I'm feeling good.

So which is it? What makes the empty feeling more real than the full feeling? What makes it wrong when I think to myself that life is worth living, for me anyway, at least for this part of it? It makes me wonder if the pessimist isn't just chronically depressed. Now that doesn't mitigate all the terrible things that do happen in the world, but just living doesn't seem to so terrible all the time. Not to me.

I can understand both points of view, but I can't understand what makes one more true than the other, except for how one feels about it. I harken back to my experience of competitive running. It was hard and painful, but whether it was worth it and enjoyable depended entirely on how I felt about it.

It's a historical fact that, in general, women were not gifted by Nature with the capacities for reason that man has. — Agustino

No it's not. And it's scientifically false. You want to know what the truth is? We all begin life as females. You might have noticed that you have nipples. Prenatal hormones differentiate males from females in the womb.

You want to know something else? Women live longer than men on average, despite those difficult nine months of labor.

This is pathetic. You should be aware that Schopenhauer is doing metaphysics, and as such he's talking about the position that Nature has allotted to women. His talk is not meant to be seductive at all; an entirely different form of discourse. — Agustino

Metaphysics? LOL. What he was doing is degrading half the human race due to his cultural prejudices as the privileged gender. There is nothing metaphysical about that.

Now the fact that your average woman in Western society today would feel insulted by those sentences says nothing of their truth, but merely proves Schopenhauer's point. — Agustino

The average male would be insulted too.

It's more like Schopenhauer was unable to find company which matched his; and therefore he preferred none. — Agustino

Or maybe he was bitter, caustic and anti-social which drove people away, and thus he masked that with his own inflated sense of self-worth.

I think Schopenhauer was a genius - and he had all the right in the world to mock mere mortals. — Agustino

Geniuses are mere mortals too. Without the unwashed masses Schopenhauer mocked, he would be spending all his time trying to feed and cloth himself, instead of writing great works of philosophy. Society afforded him the opportunity to do otherwise.

The real genius comes from collective humanity, building up on itself and providing the opportunities, not accomplished individuals, who are fortunate to be born when and where they are, and get to stand on the shoulders of millions who came before them.

think Schopenhauer had a bad case of of a bad attitude and was pissy that his colleagues were getting dates and lectures while he wasn't. So he became caustic and bitter and transformed it into a kind of miserable pride. — darthbarracuda

Certainly doesn't help one's attitude toward life.

To take just one example, I believe that the so-called 'problem of perception' was actually definitively resolved over two thousand years ago in ancient Greece. The reason it persists is not because it remains mysterious, but because people are not very good at arguing. — The Great Whatever

So that means all the professional philosophers since then who disagreed were not very good at argument. I doubt that.

Maybe people engaged in philosophical discussion deliberately choose to not answer questions as a debate tactic. Or they don't like your questions and would rather ask you a question back. Or perhaps they see your questions as an attempt to frame the debate in a way favoring your position.

These are all common strategies in any discussion forum across the net. Often times questions are asked in an attempt to force a poster to answer a certain way. But most posters are smart enough to see through that.

One small improvement would be mood alteration. There are some individuals who have a mildly manic temperament. They tend to be overachievers. It should be possible to figure out their brain chemistry and induce that state in others.

Sure, life is fundamentally impermanent, and no amount of progress will change that. While that can be unsettling and depressing, if somehow I was provided with a means to live for a billion years, my eventual death would become a very remote thing, and not something likely to cause me existential angst. At least not for the first 500 million years or so. For all we know, there are such long lasting civilizations out there in the cosmos (no idea on the lifespan of their constituents though, although I would guess it would be considerable).

I'm going to guess that our impending deaths are unsettling because our lives are so short, relative to deep time, and it seems like just yesterday when we were 20 years younger. But if they weren't, we might view that matter a bit differently. A billion year life span could provide you with all the existence and experiences you ever want. And when reflecting upon how several decades seemed to fly by, one would shrug and say, well I still have 890,000 more decades to go.

I do realize that such lifespans sound completely hellish to pessimists, but I'm going to assume that extremely long lifespans are accompanied by many other improvements.

Progress is ultimately doomed though, whether it be from our own self destruction or the eventual heat death of the universe. It is inevitable. — darthbarracuda

Well, yeah. If it's the heat death of the universe, I'm not getting too depressed about that. Of course I'm not going to be around for those billions of years, so there's that.

Mainly that I can't tell anyone how to feel — schopenhauer1

I just see that as a potential flaw in the pessimist position. It's one thing to note everything that sucks about life, it's another to convince people of this if they don't feel that way. Because some people feel that life is worth living despite the sucky parts.

As a metaphor for this, I used to run middle distance and cross country competitively. It hurt. There was a certain amount of suffering in the training and racing, and one didn't always feel like putting forth the required effort. But whether it was worth it or not completely depended on one's attitude. If you wanted to race and improve, then the suffering was worth it. If not, then it wasn't and people either quit or muddled through until the end of the season. And I know this firsthand, because I experienced both wanting to compete, and not wanting to. It made all the difference.

Anyway, I'm led back to the point that whether life is worth living is a subjective matter determined by how the individual feels about life. The problem with the pessimistic position is that it's trying to argue that how people feel is somehow wrong when it disagrees with the pessimistic position.

I experience both on a regular basis. In one state, the pessimistic position seems very convincing. In another, it seems highly debatable. After all, who are pessimists to tell the rest of us whether our own lives are worth living or not? Is not that up to us?

Also a note on suffering. I don't dislike all forms of suffering. Some suffering is actually worth it to me. Last night I played tennis for several hours, and my joints started to hurt and I tired, but I liked the feeling and I liked how I was sore and limping afterwards. It felt good. Similarly, I spent three days intensely working on something with little sleep and it was difficult. But it was totally worth it. I'm sitting there at 3am in the morning, very sleepy, thinking to myself how much I enjoy doing this.

I know several people who have run the Grand Canyon or up a 14,000 foot mountain without altitude training, both of which are dangerous and very exhausting. But they tell me how much they liked doing it.

Can't argue with this. Pessimism will never garner strength as a major philosophy because most people are unfortunately brainwashed into the progress mentality. It runs against all they have been taught. — darthbarracuda

But there is progress, and that's undeniable. It's not evenly distributed, but the trend has been toward better nutrition, sanitation, shelter, educational opportunities, more avenues for entertainment, more opportunities to travel, and improved communication. There is also a growing knowledge base in various subjects which can lead to future improvements.

Now as to whether any of that deals with the fundamental condition of being born is a different matter. But I personally would much rather live with today's advantages than what was available in the Middle Ages.

I'm not sure about contentment. I've certainly felt respite, but it feels more like getting a break to breathe from drowning. Not only is it not a positive enjoyment, but rather one that's only defined relative to just how bad what was previously happening was, but it's also backhanded in that that respite is precisely what allows you to live and continue to suffer more. — The Great Whatever

But whether this bothers me or not depends very much on my mood. If I'm depressed, I will tend to agree with you, as I did in my PM. But now I feel differently and am not really disturbed by the matter. And I do experience positive enjoyment, some contentment, and even joy at times. Those moments are certainly worth it to me. Whether all the bad ones overshadow the good is a judgement that very much depends on how I feel at the moment. So it becomes a very subjective thing.

We are not content, nor can we ever be, when life demands that we desire and want- sources of suffering. There is no way to escape it, even in principle. Thus, no practice of indifference will truly get rid of the Will/flux/becoming. — schopenhauer1

But is everyone bothered by that? Sometimes I like having desires, even when they aren't met. Sometimes I like the struggle. And sometimes not. It really depends.

But sometimes one does experience contentment with life, and feel good doing whatever they happen to be doing. Maybe it's just a fleeting feeling, and maybe it can be cultivated. And also maybe it's possible to arrange one's life to encourage feeling that way more often. It doesn't do away with all suffering or discontentment, but it sounds less bad.

Whether or not bad things happen to you is determined first by how you define bad, and second by how immersed you are in thinking in those terms. Stoics limited good and bad strictly to moral character, or virtue. To say something is still bad regardless of what your response is, is to assume the conclusion that stoicism is working with incorrect definitions. — WhiskeyWhiskers

That can work with things like boredom or minor annoyances. It's a little bit different when tragedy strikes. A storm that kills thousands of people is not good, period. Responding stoically to such an event is absurd.

One observation that I would make is that IN GENERAL pessimism is unfounded. Now this is entirely speaking in generalities, I understand. Bad things obviously, reliably and regularly. However, can't we say with some certainty that the world is, in general, always improving? Throughout history all the indicators of well being that you could possibly name - wealth, education, access to clean drinking water, medical advancement, life expectancy, likelihood of dying in a non-violent circumstance, gay rights, women's rights, racial equality etc. have advanced steadily upwards in a sawtooth (obviously not quite linearly in all regions, for all people, in all eras but generally speaking). Things just get better and better — invizzy

There is that, but I think the pessimistic position goes much deeper. It's concerned with the nature of being a conscious animal, not that material progress occurs. It is good that there is progress in those areas you listed, as it generally decreases suffering and opens up opportunities for better experiences, but it doesn't get to the heart of the matter. Which is that we're born human, and thus will suffer. And more than that, we realize it and reflect on it. We're aware, when we're honest with ourselves, what all life has to offer in the various forms of restlessness, boredom, disappointment, disillusionment, frustration, annoyance, alienation, pain, etc.

So progress in technology, science, governments, economic policies and so on won't change the fact that we are all born conscious meat with the various limitations and flaws that it has to offer our existence.