I voted idealism because I think it's the best solution to the mind-body problem. Also it's a super sexy position. The metaphysical weak are those who depend on an unchanging reality to cope with the flux of existence.

Anyways, long story short, one can still be in the relatively normal range of moods (probably a slight bit more towards acute depression though), and still work within a wordview that keeps in mind the Pessimistic trademarks of relentless desire, the burdens of life, and an understanding of the absurd. — schopenhauer1

I don't think philosophic pessimism can be fully separated from a negative mood or state of mind, even if it is just melancholy or moderate depression. There wouldn't be a problem with the things pessimism identifies if there wasn't a negative reaction to them. Lots of other people think there's problems in life that don't constitute life in the way pessimism sees its problems as - as such, these people can simultaneously affirm life while still remembering that there are certain imperfections with it.

At base, I think philosophical pessimism asserts that life is intrinsically not worth living. It doesn't seem coherent to believe this and yet live consistently in a state of mind that one would expect from a person who believes the opposite - that life is meaningful and valuable. There's no issue with being intermittently happy, but I strongly believe that being a pessimist entails some primary negative experience, like dread, ennui, sadness or whatever that comes as a natural response to the problematic things pessimism identifies. Think about how absurd it would be for someone to say "life is suffering" and smile while doing so.

Because of this, positive states of mind are interpreted differently. Instead of seen as reasons for living, they are seen as episodes of relief, oblivion, unnatural spikes, etc. The big rub of pessimism is that there isn't a good reason for living, and whatever we find to be meaningful is simply killing-time or a hodge-podge kludge. This is why I think it's wrong to call someone like Camus a pessimist, since he definitely affirmed life with the existential rebellion. Or, rather, why I prefer affirmative/negative rather than optimist/pessimist. A negative thinker is one that when asked why they haven't killed themselves, replies "I don't know" or "because I'm stuck in life" or "because life isn't bad enough yet" or "because I haven't gotten around to it" or maybe "because I have ethical duties in life." Life becomes simply a postponement of death.

If you're going to live, that is, go through all the motions of life without really considering why you're doing it, you have to "forget" a few things. A pessimist can only really live if they temporarily forget about their pessimism.

Clinical and severe depression is a mental disease. Those with severe depression have a skewed perception on reality. Oftentimes they develop victim complexes, catastrophic thinking patterns and even conspiratorial beliefs. They cannot function as a worker in a capitalist economy a member of society. Self-medication and suicide attempts are common.

Nowadays there's a blooming movement surrounding depressive realism, which may be equivalent to what you mean by "discouragement". A depressive realist is hypothesized to have a better grasp of reality than the normal, and suffer moderate depression because of it. Of course, most depressive realists would never give up their perceptual capacities, probably out of some form of pride or ressentiment. Being depressed is never fun but occasionally it allows you to feel superior to all the "sheeple". But in general depressive realism is a form of neuroticism.

Metzinger's article was interesting. Can't say I learned all too much that I didn't already "know", apart from Metzinger's own musings about how suffering manifests in his philosophical model of the self (PSM). Was surprised but also disappointed at his short section on antinatalism, was glad to see the distinction between negative utilitarianism and AN.

He's right, though. Suffering is a very important, if not the most important, relevant constraint on inquiry. It's time we start taking it more seriously, in science, phenomenology, and ethics. In this sense, religion has a serious head start.

http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/231

http://heavysideindustries.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HARMAN_IAmAlsooftheOpinionThatMaterialismMustBeDestroyed.pdf

Took a look at the Metzinger essay. I can't say I like what Metzinger writes in general - I read his book The Ego Tunnel expecting to be blown the fuck away and left with a bunch of unanswered questions. Later I realized his view is based largely off of shaky contemporary neuroscience. Graham Harman has a good set of criticisms of Metzinger's positions - his general scientism (contra phenomenology, commonly found in reductive materialist and eliminativist literature), his reductionism (once again, contra phenomenology), and his incoherent notion of a no-self (ditto again on the phenomenology). He uses science as the unexplained explainer - ignoring subjective phenomenal experience in favor of "objective", "hard", "phallic", "scientific" data.

A few pages into the essay and he re-states what Nietzsche had already made clear - that what makes a life worth living is whether or not you would live it over again. The amor fati of a hypothetical eternal recurrence. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's ahistorical wheel-reinvention.

The first question on this road is, is Being an artifact of language (i.e, in itself meaningless)? That is, as language is a kind of template laid over the world, does the excavation of Being really mean digging just and only in language, with the consequence that "Being" would have only a language-function that once understood can and should be discarded. Or is it more? — tim wood

Being is not a "thing" (an ontic entity), nor is it some transcendental realm beyond our understanding. Being is that which distinguishes the existent from the non-existent. Dasein is that which can understanding the ontological distinction, and for whom this distinction is important (because it produces anxiety).

We say, "It is," or "Things are." Each thing is, in some sense. Does each thing "be" in the exact same way? Or is Being (i.e., the Being of beings) a many, each being Being in its own way? — tim wood

Heidegger goes to great lengths explaining how things "be" in different ways - at least, existence discloses itself to us (Dasein) in various ways. The most common way things present themselves to us is in terms of tool-use: things are "ready-at-hand".

But another way things appears to us is what Heidegger called "present-at-hand", or "presence", where things seem to simply exist as a Cartesian-esque extended entity in space-time, with a certain set of qualities that are well represented by mathematics. Heidegger thought almost all of Western metaphysics was utterly obsessed with the present-at-hand and forgot about the ontological distinction, which the Pre-Socratics apparently recognized. He also thought that technology made it worse, as technology reduces everything to mere numbers, quantities, piles.

Heidegger's analysis ultimately points to the identification of Being (in this case, Dasein's Being), with time.

The simple difference would be that the artificial doesn't have the means to make itself.

Nature makes itself whether that be at the level of rivers carving out their channels or bodies turning food into flesh. The artificial only happens as the result of someone having the idea and the desire to manufacture the material form. — apokrisis

Right, like I implied earlier, the artificial is that which does not have an identity or telos itself but rather exists for a purpose that has been applied by the manufacturer. Take away the manufacturer and the user and you're left with a material object, bottom-up reductionism with no natural purpose.

The answer is always the same. Machines are our way of imposing our will on nature. And in doing that, we are being formed as "selves" in turn. We become mechanically minded and disconnected as "human beings". — apokrisis

Yes. Heidegger has a famous piece on the problem of technology. Essentially we become obsessed with the present-at-hand and begin to see the world in terms of calculable entities that must be weighed and measured and sorted to maximize efficiency and production.

We want a balance where we are the unpredictable ones and the world functions with machinelike reliability. Or at least we think we do until that gets boring or creates too much responsibility for making up our own individual meanings in life. — apokrisis

But do you think there is something "natural" about, say, a Christmas icicle light string? Normally we wouldn't call this a natural phenomenon, as it was created by human hands. But actually, it was probably created by a machine, which was created by human hands. But that opens the door to seeing the Christmas lights being made by nature itself. There doesn't seem to be a strict cut-off being what is natural and what is artificial.

And of course, what we see as "natural" could very well be a strange anomaly in the big picture, and that the long stretch of time gives the illusion that it isn't.

It is incredible to think that the very same atoms that make life can be milked in such ways to create our animated technological world. The fact that we can crudely arrange them to achieve our purposes this way really reinforces the idea of just how remarkable these little things are and how far we have to go in truly understanding them. To my mind, it points to a type sentience we don't fully understand. — MikeL

Yes, this is similar to what I was getting at, but not necessarily in an awe-inspiring way, although I will agree it is remarkable how flexible reality seems to be. Like it's almost unbelievable how something like a printer is even physically possible. Why is there so much flexibility and diversity? Why not just the same and nothing more?

What I see to be disturbing at times is how technology resembles a form of torture, a mangling of an assortment of unrelated things, put together in ways that, had humans never existed, would never come to be this way on their own.

I'm by no means advocating biological intelligent design or any bullshit like that but it's remarkable how the world is so flexible and allows us creative human beings to come up with seemingly endless new creations.

I'm a computer engineering major. I have some experience with engineering in general and I can tell you that many things that seem to work "perfectly" as if by magic are the result of many, many failures, and may barely function properly itself. "Whatever works" is how engineers tend to go about things. And it's surprising when you learn how things work - sometimes it's cool but for me at least I've found that I'm more surprised that this is actually the way it works. How things work in the inside of the black box can oftentimes seem counterintuitive or unexpected. Often it seems like it shouldn't work, but somehow it does.

Actually I think one of the disturbing aspects of technology is the fact that technology's teleology is entirely imposed by humans. Even the identity of these technologies is a projection of humans. When humans go extinct there will likely be some leftover technology that no longer has an identity. A book will no longer be a book, it will just be a "thing". Some mutated assemblage of random pieces, held together by a purpose that no longer exists. It's creepy.

Have you considered a career in writing? :) — JupiterJess

Thank you. I've considered it but not in any serious degree.

Cons:

• Is woefully incompetent in politics.
• Is a racist and a blatant misogynist.
• Is physically and mentally compromised.
• Is lazy and stupid.
• Is dishonest and malevolent to most Americans.
• Is trigger-happy.
• Is an international joke.

Pros:

???????

But who is to say miss diving beetle isn't just being coy, discovering which male is tough and fit enough to overpower her? — apokrisis

This sounds similar to saying, how do we know the girl wasn't just asking to be raped? For all we know, the girl likes to be dominated, overpowered, abused, etc. Rape apology.

And if you find that framing of the situation objectionable, it is only the reverse of claiming instead it is a case of male rape. We shouldn't anthropomorphise in either direction. — apokrisis

I don't see that framing as an issue of male rape. The male diving beetle is the one that forces the female to stay underwater. The male developed suction cups on their "objects of prehension" to keep the female from swimming away. The female developed grooves on her shell to counteract that. The male developed little points on the suction cups at the same distance as the grooves to counteract that. etc.

Female diving beetles have died because the mating ritual went on for days, preventing her from coming up to the surface to get an air bubble. The male beetle apparently gets so sex-frenzied that he forgets about the value of a living mate and aims simply to deposit his seed.

So diving beetles may evolve sucker arms to clasp the females. And the females counter-evolve ridges and pits on their shells to make grasping harder. But where is the intent here? Where is the choice in the biological design? Are you arguing that the lady beetles do give willing consent to some males that take their fancy?l — apokrisis

No, I'm not. I'm saying that female diving beetles, as well as female blue sharks, female black widows, and a whole host of females in other species are put through a violent act to achieve reproduction. It is commonly thought that male black widow spiders sacrifice themselves for the nourishment of the female, but it has been observed that female black widow spiders will eat male black widow spiders, even if they haven't copulated. What seems to be the case, actually, is that many male black widow spiders will die trying to overpower the female, before a male finally succeeds. However after the act of copulation the male is exhausted and the female can eat him as well.

Nature doesn't actually have "species", we put that label on things that are similar enough to each other and have a similar genetic history. Similarly, nature doesn't actually have any concept of "rape" - but we do. How we choose to describe the sexual reproduction of species is a choice we have to make.

In fact a video I watched that was about the reproduction of diving beetles was called "An Unending Mating War". Is it wrong to call it a war?



I'm also reminded of the book A Natural History of Rape that argued that rape was a legitimate adaptation meant to get access to a non-consenting sexual partner.

I have absorbed more than my share of thought about gender. Many times I have heard it said that MRA's, including female MRA's, are misogynists. I have seen/heard words and actions that left me almost convinced that feminism--at least at this point in its evolution--has nothing to do with women or equality and is purely an ideology through which people are seeking power by any means, including lying, demonizing their opponents, deluding themselves, etc. And probably almost everything in between. But never before, until a few minutes ago, had I read or heard it said that every gender issue is rooted in misogyny. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Liberal feminism is crap and it's easy to criticize it, like shooting fish in a barrel.

More coherent feminist thinking, like radical feminism, aim less at "equality" and more at liberation, primarily from the patriarchal institution of gender. But even then, there are many crazies who would like to separate men from women, who are hostile to transgenders and clearly have a cult-like exclusionary prejudice, where there are "women-only" talk spaces that can breed hatred and suspicion for men.

I find it fascinating as an outside observer but I have very little patience with real time gender discussion. It's like you said, far too ideological. It's about waging a righteous crusade against the infidels and pretending you care about truth or objectivity. Red herrings, more like.

I believe that's a projection of your own ressentiment towards unsophisticated scientists, who make money and get the attention of the public while you, deep thinker and philosopher, who answers existence's hardest puzzles with such elegance and care, the most you can do is chat with five other thorough thinkers on the -currently- greatest online philosophy forum. Oh, I'm feeling so very nietzschean this morning! — Πετροκότσυφας

>:O Perhaps it is ressentiment, but ressentiment is not always unjustified. Sometimes it's due to feeling as though something or someone hasn't been given the credit they deserve.

As far as public perception goes though, conflict and black-and-white line drawing are alot more fun, so it's unsurprising that Dawkins and others find such an audience. Again, just best to not play into it. — StreetlightX

Although I agree that the black and white conflict is not really there, I would say that nowadays it seems like scientists are less knowledgeable about philosophy (and perhaps vice versa). The impression I have is that people think science is where you go to get all the answers and philosophy is some weird mystical shit, an anachronism or something.

No but thanks for the rec! My primary inspirations for this view are precisely Wittgenstein and Deleuze, so it's awesome seeing something that takes both for it's approach as well. — StreetlightX

It's a good read. A few of the chapters are a little rough but overall it's enjoyable.

So you suggest that science would merely neutralise our feelings here. Somehow your belief in "savage reality" can be presumed to be correct - because you feel that way - and any other view, no matter how differently founded on a system of reason and evidence, must be an ego defence mechanism.

Sure, it is possible to use selective facts to explain away something unpleasant. But the argument is that you (and your cite) are employing selective facts to make that unpleasant case in the first place. You are referencing observations like female diving beetles burying themselves in the mud. So it becomes rather contradictory to both cite science and decry science in bolstering a position. — apokrisis

I don't see how this follows. Anyone can go out and observe the mating ritual of diving beetles. Anyone can see how the female beetle frantically tries to escape the male beetle.

The hesitation to call this an instance of "rape" is from a general belief that morality is a "human construct" that is not suited to be applied to descriptions of reality. It is not scientifically accurate to call the chemicals in male semen "evil" (as the essay does), as this carries normative connotations that aren't found "in nature". However it is just as accurate to call the male diving beetle's appendages "rape arms" as it is "objects of prehension". There is a choice to favor the latter over the former - but because the latter gives us a bit of shielding or padding, "it is what it is".

The fact is, however, that a disturbingly high proportion of sex acts in organisms that, if these organisms were moral agents, we would call rape. It is also the same thing with R-selection. A sea turtle may lay hundreds of eggs but only a few survive. It's not technically genocide ... but it kinda is. At least, from the perspective of those harmed, i.e. the victims of nature.

you are adopting a catastrophising metaphysics were things are either right or wrong. If rape is wrong, then rapish looking behaviour is just as wrong. And in the end, anything in the remotest construable as rapey is wrong. There just is no smallest degree of rape that isn't wrong because you have no demarcation line where rapey behaviour becomes either instead a positive - as in a shift from globally cooperative reproductive strategies to locally competitive reproductive strategies. Or indeed, it just becomes background noise - so insignificant that it doesn't count as action of either kind. — apokrisis

I'm not necessarily saying anything about the "wrongness" of rape - although I obviously see rape as wrong. All I'm saying really is that a common form of sexual reproduction is in fact rape, no quotation marks, and scientific terminology disguises this, softens the blow. It's a great big universe with a great big story and the little itty bitty details like the rape of countless female organism isn't important. It's not rape, it's simply how things are.

But this "how things are" is consciously decided to be described in a certain way.

Who do you have in mind exactly? And how much is this simply just a fact about what the public wants to buy?

The best-sellers are probably those that take the triumphalist reductionist tone you may be objecting to. And the same will then apply to philosophical best-sellers, like anything Dennett writes. — apokrisis

Yes, "triumphalist" is a good way of putting it. Reminds me of Hegel's quote from his Phenomenology:

"The more conventional opinion gets fixated on the antithesis of truth and falsity, the more it tends to expect a given philosophical system to be either accepted or contradicted; and hence it finds only acceptance or rejection. It does not comprehend the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive unfolding of truth, but rather sees in it simple disagreements."

Which of course has the context of Hegel's criticism of the ahistorical mode of thought in consciousness. The habit of forgetting that everyone in the past thought they had it figured out as well.

Another point is that you already seem convinced that naturalism can't explain stuff like morality and aesthetics. I find that to be the unsophisticated philosophical view - left-over 1800s romanticism and theology. — apokrisis

Aesthetics, maybe? We'd have to have a good idea of what the aesthetic even is, and I take that to be a philosophical issue.

Naturalism can explain morality, sure, as it exists as a phenomenon that can be described. But yeah I am supportive of the autonomy of ethics. Naturalism is not a substitute for moral philosophy, even if it helps inform it. This is not romanticism or theological. It's simply ethical non-naturalism, which works even better when we're anti-realists about morals and/or value.

Naturalism in meta-ethics has promised lots but delivered very little, all things considered. I think it's running on fumes.

When science is working at the edge of things, the spirit is "can this new idea be crazy enough?" Science can afford to speculate wildly because experiment sorts it out. It is at the other end of things that the discipline kicks in. — apokrisis

The problem, as I see it, is that they are given an audience to speculate, which makes their wild speculation come across as more grounded than they really are. Additionally, they get embolded by this new fame and start making stupid metaphysical claims - see Lawrence Krauss declaring the universe can come from nothing (but only if we re-define something as actually nothing). Krauss' book is hardly the "new Evolution of Species" that Dawkins made it out to be. It's laughable and insulting to both science and philosophy to call this egghead's book that.

The frustrating part is that I suspect people like Krauss or Dawkins, or even Dennett, know they aren't philosophically literate but also know the public isn't, so they can get away with selling this snake oil bullshit.

One of the main things I'm concerned about is the desire to assimilate all philosophy into a "scientific" methodology, in the sense of, divide-and-conquer and make each part of philosophy into some specific field with a specific subject matter and a specific methodology in order to simply "acquire" facts.

Philosophical "facts" aren't like scientific "facts". Both are true but philosophical facts should be not be seen as simply another fact. "Metaphysics" shouldn't be a "discipline" in the Scholastic sense. It shouldn't be the case that philosophy is "taught", as if there's certain facts that someone can learn and be like "yup, that's what metaphysics has discovered."

Rather I think the close proximity philosophy has with our Being creates an attitude of hospitality towards subjective, personal inquiry. There is an element of flexibility in metaphysical belief. For instance I think Cartesian dualism is not tenable, but it's fine to let someone follow that path and defend Cartesian dualism. Whereas in science it's less flexible - perhaps because scientific theories are easier to formulate given the restricted subject matter.

I don't see the necessity of pitching philosphy and science in an antagonistic relationship, and if anything the strange animus towards science in the OP seems more like 'little discipline syndrome' than anything else. I also think what reigns in the public is not 'jealously' of philosophy so much as sheer mis- or non-understanding. Philosophy remains largely opaque as to what exactly it 'is' to alot of people, who for the most part encounter it only ever as bumper-sticker quotes to append to those Sunset-inspiration posters. — StreetlightX

While I agree "the public" has lost its understanding of philosophy, it is informed by the pop-scientists who continue to label themselves as "rationalists" and who erect a false dichotomy and misunderstanding of science and philosophy.

My point, I think, still stands though: that the questions philosophy tackles are by and large the most interesting and difficult questions, and that many other things get their interest by being relevant to some philosophical questions. I am not antagonistic to science - I am antagonistic to the philosophically-illiterate scientists of today. They are brazenly arrogant and have little understanding about anything they're talking about.

For my part I'm more and more inclined to see philosophy as something like a second-order sense-making enterprise: that is, philosophy examines how we make sense of the world - it makes sense of our sense-making (hence 'second-order'). Another important function of philosophy is to propose new ways of sense-making: we should understand the world like so, instead of like so. 'Sense', I think, being perhaps the most important question of philosophy, underlying even that of truth; thus the question of truth - 'what is truth'? - ought to be understood to ask not after this or that truth, but the very meaning and sense of truth itself. — StreetlightX

Are you familiar with A. W. Moore, and his book The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things? Moore sees metaphysics as the broadest way of making sense of things, including making sense of sense (which we see as effectively started by Kant).

I have no issue with the methodology of science, and I don't deny that science has bequeathed us with many helpful things (but also many harmful things). But to demand that something like philosophy "justify" itself by providing some pragmatically useful thing puts the cart before the horse. We have to already be in the mindset of technology to formulate this demand.

Heidegger sees the origination of philosophy as a homesickness. I think it's at least also partly a feeling of helplessness, disorientation and confusion. Anxiety, which both Heidegger and Wittgenstein seemed to have picked up on. The idea of philosophy as being a noble, determined, phallic enterprise is not correct, I think. Leave that to the "hard" (pun) sciences.

Make no mistake I see a kin relationship between philosophy and religion. Or, at least, philosophy and religious orientation, even if you're an atheist. One can be, as I am, religious but in a more sad way, in that I regret the non-existence of God. I am religious without any religion.

The Right and the Good by W. D. Ross.

I'm not sure.

Contraceptives. They were instrumental in getting us out of the Malthusian trap.

So come on scientists, prove to me there is no God and let me see how strong your arguments really are. Pile on. — MikeL

Scientists =/= atheists. There are plenty of theistic scientists.

Actually, more specifically, science =/= (metaphysical) naturalism.

Scientists are not in the business of proving the non-existence of supernatural entities. If a scientist attempts to do so, they've crossed over from science and into transcendental metaphysics. Even if they don't realize it.

Proving a negative is almost always impossible to do. — Michael

But in philosophy, if you call yourself an atheist, you better have good reasons for believing God to be non-existent. If proving a negative is so difficult to do, which I don't think it necessarily is, then agnosticism should be the go-to.

Atheists shouldn't get a free-bee and claim it's up to the theists to ground their metaphysical claims. Atheism is just as strong, if not a stronger, claim as theism. Yet annoyingly enough it's often the atheists who claim the privilege of laziness.

Another question would be, is it the ball that shatters the window, or is it the individual atoms that collectively shatter the window? Is the ball an epiphenomenon?

Compassion

What is the ideal government? — Sigmund Freud

A contradiction in terms. :s

I will reply to you when I get around to it, I'm fairly busy.

oky doky.

Can you give an example, I don't know what you mean.

Thanks.

The problem is that I've found it very difficult to operate in everyday life because of a lack of answers to these questions -- answers which would make up a person's core belief system.

I feel as though I can't go live life without having some sort of belief system(I would even count denying everything as a belief system), but with that premise, I would have to wait a very long time before I can go live life.

So the real question is:

Although I can't be sure of it right now, there is likely value in living life. So how do I bring myself to live life right now without having any certainty that anything is true? How do I make myself do things which seem so arbitrary when I feel lost in the infinite. — Bryan

The issue I see here is that you're wanting a foundationalist structure of belief when there in fact is none. Phenomenologically, we do not "live" by beliefs. I do not pick up my coffee cup because I "believe" the coffee cup "exists", and because I have a belief in what "existence" amounts to. I pick up the cup because I'm already enmeshed in the world. I do things habitually, I "know" objects through their use, not through their theoretical existence. I have no need for beliefs to get things done.

If you take a Wittgensteinian approach to this, it's not that philosophy "answers" these questions but that philosophy "dissolves" these questions. The aim of Wittgensteinian philosophy is to get rid of philosophical problems by showing them to be non-problems. This "anxiety" of having a foundation-less epistemology is to be remedied by absolving one of the need for a foundation in the first place.

Do you have a background in biology? You seem to know more about this than the average person like me. I most exposure I had to biology was my high school freshman class and a bit of independent research on my own time. Anyway:

This all seems like a highly skewed "just so" story that bolsters a victimization stance that the author clearly wants to be the case. The Hurst-Hamilton Hypothesis, is a very plausible hypothesis that proposes that the female gamete (the bigger one) does not have a suppressor gene and the male gamete (the small one) did develop a suppressor gene to prevent it from passing on its organelle DNA and cytoplasm. — schopenhauer1

I agree that the essays are literally dripping with rhetoric and irritating neologisms (the author insists on calling males "dudes", sexual intercourse as "fucking", male sex organs as "goddamn hellacious satanic shit" and semen "dudegoo", lmao at that last one), and that the essays are definitely written in a way that victimizes females and prosecutes males.

I'm not too familiar with the H-H Hypothesis. What does a suppressor gene do exactly? Why would it be a "good" thing to have a suppressor gene to prevent the passing on of genes?

As Schop says, a general reply is that nature is a balance of competition and co-operation. So rather than reducing the issue to a debate where cooperation = good vs competition = bad, the informed question is what is the appropriate balance, and is that being met? — apokrisis

One of the problems as I see it is that it's actually a choice to call certain things a certain way. So we can call an instance of a diving beetle reproduction (in which the female dives into the water to escape and the male pursues her), or an instance of blue shark (in which the male actually has to physically restrain the female by biting her neck) as "sexual prehension", or we can call it "rape". It's not wrong to call it "rape" - it just carries this normative baggage that scientists maybe don't want to include.

The semen males produce in sexual climax includes chemicals that keep sperm alive, not only in the vaginal environment of the female but in the overall "bonding" of females to males (despite the fact that the cause of death for women is disproportionately men), as well as inclusion of "sub-lethal" pathogens that keep a female alive but in a non-reproductive state. We can call this a neutral adaptation, a positive reproductive reinforcement, or we can call this brainwashing, mind-control. Once again it's not wrong to call it mind-control, but it goes against the desire for a neutral description of phenomena. When you say:

A naturalistic view doesn't presume that there is some moral absolute position here. — apokrisis

The question, then, is why a neutral "naturalistic" description is desirable, or why a neutral description is seen as superior to a description with normative undertones. Is it purely on the basis of scientific "objectivity", or is it also perhaps a psychological defense mechanism of sorts? Is it not easier to "deal" with an apparently savage reality by construing it as blind, purposeless, unintentional and amoral?

It's similar to the popular way of approaching the environment (but this time it has positive normative undertones): the ecosystem "is what it is", humans shouldn't "play God" and get involved, nature exists on its own, "separate from morality" and we shouldn't try to impose our moral will onto it. The conclusion being that, even if we see nature as morally repugnant, it nevertheless is "wrong" to try to correct this, because the preservation of a morally-repugnant nature is actually good. Human civilization exists "over here", and the rest of nature exists "over there".

Humans of course, more than any other species, rely on heavy parental investment. Or rather, communal investment - it takes a village, etc. And social structures have developed to support that. The prediction would be that "rape" would be rare in a stable, well-balanced, social situation. Or rather, that rape would be construed differently. So socially accepted if a child resulted and the man was forced to marry and support the girl, for instance in Olde Englande. — apokrisis

Sure, I mean one of the things I thought about the essays linked is that, although males do seem to subjugate females disproportionately in the world, it seems like it could be a lot worse. What that means is that it's not very plausible to say males are "waging a war" against females, for it they were, then why isn't it the very worst it could possibly be? One of the essays concludes:

"The problem with males is not that they are too lecherous or that women aren’t lecherous enough. The problem with males is biology. Feminist-leaning women fail to spend what would be far-more-productive brain-time deliberating on this fact: Being a human male is a genetic condition, a genetic condition wielding a proprietary biochemistry, a proprietary biochemistry for warmongering against females – and every other fucking thing. – Men have always warred against women. — And always will. — Men must – to keep us making them. [...] men’s war against women is in fact, ultimately, men’s war for control of the genome."

The annoying part of the essay series is how it repetitively ascribes intentions to an unintentional process. It blames males, rather than masculinity, male-ness, for all this. It's obnoxious and narrow-minded to paint the picture of males being these "sex-crazed maniacs" who would like nothing more than to go around raping and pillaging and killing everything they could. Generally speaking when people, male or female, get sexually aroused, the mechanism isn't "let's make more of me!", it's "let me release some stress!" or "let's have some fun!" or, in the case of rape, "let's humiliate/dominate!". It is through this thought-process that genes are passed along. But it's definitely not this conspiratorial scheme intentionally performed by males. This is why I think that even if someone like the original author is talking about legitimate things, they don't really care about the liberation of women so much as they care about having a good ol' time fighting an internet crusade. It's fun to be a mean person on the internet.

But I have to say that (as a male) my decision to try to see this "objectively" is not entirely for the sake of "truth" but because I feel the need to absolve myself of blame. So even if I technically don't have any guilt in this, especially since I don't have sex and don't really plan on doing so, the motivation for adopting such an "objective" stance is not a pure and uncorrupted pursuit for the truth. The evolution of sexual reproduction and the male type is in fact based largely around what we would call, if we were not trying to be passionless objective scientists, "rape", "mind-control", "parasitism". Just as we could call the evolution of life a "gladiator arena", a "failure factory", or a "red, tooth and claw massacre".

I don't particularly like being associated with parasites, just as I don't particularly like seeing my very existence as dependent on unimaginable violence and brutality. I can choose not to act in such a terrible manner but the reality is that I exist because my ancestors killed, raped and destroyed, and my physical body and psychological thinking patterns are made in such a way that doing these things is easier, perhaps even in my "nature".

If you want to fix it, turning it into a cod evolutionary debate is hardly sensible. — apokrisis

The position presented in the essays is that we can't absolve patriarchal problems within the patriarchy itself. It's radical feminism. Fixing these issues can only happen if the patriarchy itself is dismantled. And in this case the patriarchy is traced back in time through millennia of biological evolution. Rape, battery, violence, etc can not be solved though conventional means but only through the eradication of the patriarchy (which is oftentimes theorized to be connected to capitalism and religion).

Turn it around. Imagine women had a dick, men had a hole. But men - or a subset with social issues - still had a rage to humiliate. Would the shape of the biological equipment make a difference? — apokrisis

It's hard for me to imagine a male with a vagina that is actually a male. Male-ness seems to be inherently tied to the capacity to penetrate, flood, neutralize and dominate.

What do we know about the development of sexual organs? Did the male and female sexual organs develop concurrently, or was one organ around before the other developed, i.e. the "vagina" existing before the "penis" developed, which would have formed as an instrument of vaginal penetration?

All this is interesting but also quite confusing for me. I like to think I have a decent understanding of the basics of biology. I suspect the essays have been intentionally cherry-picked in some places.

The basic idea of the essays before seems to be that males developed as a biological parasite of sorts, taking advantage of the now-females by trying to replicate their Y-chromosome, so that it's not about the survival of the "species" but the survival of the chromosome. I'm not a biology expert so I'm not sure if this is plausible. But what does seem to be plausible, thanks to the many provided examples, is how sexual reproduction is oftentimes "rape" - the males want sex and the females don't. The males have to pin the females down, or inject them with paralyzing toxins, mimic behavior in order to sneak into female "harems", even spray chemicals that break down the tissue of females.

Now of course we can take an objective stance on this is adhere to some fact/value distinction and see this "rape" as simply a mechanism, with no evil or immoral intentions on behalf of males. But biology is not so dependent on only this efficient causation. Whether we like to admit it or not it does seem to be the case that sexual reproduction via rape is a prevalent phenomenon. Males might not be "intrinsically rapists" as the essays annoyingly imply, but I don't think it's implausible to say males' physiology evolved as to maximize the chances of spreading genes, which oftentimes means rape. The essay linked here says:

"Males of many species have evolved specialized appendages to seize and hold down females. This seemingly infinite diversity of “organs of prehension in males” was noted by Darwin. (Dude can call them “organs of prehension,” – but what they are are rape-arms)."

Yes, it's obnoxious and irritating that the author keeps calling things by these weird neologisms. Perhaps its a defensive mechanism on the part of males to call something "organs of prehension" instead of "rape-arms", but I hardly think only male biologists are responsible for this nomenclature. But the description stands - they are instruments of domination to manipulate a female into sex, whether we call them objects of prehension or rape-arms.

Now of course there can be sexual reproduction that is far less intrusive and "rapey", maybe even consensual. But it's also true that rape is an efficient way of getting your genes passed on (especially if there's no contraceptives available). The crux of all this is thus that rape is not simply a morally repugnant action done by sick and twisted individuals but that rape has been a common and efficient way of reproducing for millennia. Evolution has no intrinsic need for consensual sex. Whatever gets the genes passed on - specifically the organism's genes.

The opposite is true for seahorses. The males are the ones that bear the children and raise them and it is the females that compete for the males. — Harry Hindu

Very true, good point.

Interesting points, thank you.

The argument doesn't work. An organism that can asexually reproduce doesn't have gender. So, women can't claim to be the ones who were reproducing asexually. Both men AND women can claim that territory. — TheMadFool

It's not really about gender more than it is about biological sex. If we define biological sex as whatever chromosomes you have or sex organs, then females were at least in the past able to reproduce asexually.

If she had those qualities, how could you ever be sure she did not take you in out of pity? — Sir2u

ouch

It's hard to say how much pain is necessary for survival to be lexically removed. I can't give you a precise amount but I would say that any amount of pain that would make you wish you hadn't woken up that day would be enough to make death a good.

This would seem to make the amount of pain a lot less than you might have had in mind.

I, therefore, find it pretty impossible to justify my political positions to myself because they are probably expressions of self-interest. — Particle thing

Why?

Error theory is an extremely implausible hypothesis. Are you absolutely committed to the thesis that the wanton torture of innocents is amoral?

So do people who subscribe to nihilism need some kind of working system of provisonal morality to navigate everyday life ? Even though that seems like doublethink. — Particle thing

Generally speaking error theorists simply dislike what we consider to be immoral, or like what we consider to be moral. Or they adopt a fictionalist account of morality, in which we act as if morality was objective and real, but secretly believe it to be a sham, in the interests of the well-being of whatever society we live in (which, presumably, we find to be morally important...? There's a real tension here in error theory, the motivation for adopting a fictionalist account of morality sounds suspiciously moral).

Of course there are definite good reasons for contributing the majority of one's disposable income to charity. The consequentialist has to find the balance between not contributing enough and contributing so much that it fails to be sustainable in the long run.

This is why most consequentialists will argue that, although you'd be making the most money by pursuing a high-income job, you're better off pursuing what you want to do, because then you won't get burnt out, and will therefore make everyone else better off as well. Generally speaking. A high-income job won't deliver if the worker burns out after a few years.

One of the non-obvious aspects of consequentialist thinking is that we are not normally consequentialists in our everyday living (which of course raises the issue of why we should even consider consequentialism in the first place - but that's another issue). Consequentialists typically will argue that, although not having any hobbies might theoretically open up more charitable possibilities for a person to choose, in reality not having any hobbies will probably decrease your own welfare and your ability to contribute to the overall value of the state of affairs.

The same sort of reasoning is used to explain how we can still be consequentialist and yet not robots, precisely calculating the perfect outcome. For if we tried to be this way we would not be able to sustain it, and it would be detrimental to our own welfare.

It's similar to how hedonists approach the paradox of hedonism. Enjoyment is good but if you are constantly focused on maximizing your own enjoyment, you aren't going to enjoy anything very much.

Consequentialist thinking usually results in the continual maintenance of our common-sense, everyday notions of morality and only becomes more explicitly consequentialist in political discourse or in extreme occurrences.

So the consequentialist answer to this question, is it moral to have hobbies, is really context-dependent. It's basically what Parfit would have called "blameless wrongdoing".