Interesting theory. In regards to how Christianity engenders atheism, I would qualify this and say that it engenders reactionary atheism. To get as far away from religion as possible by denying the existence of the most central doctrine of (most) religions. It's not based on perfectly rational inquiry, but more on skepticism motivated by social and political concerns. It's telling that modern atheists often try to appear suave and rebellious - they clearly aren't just responding to a philosophical view but are actively trying to separate themselves from what they see to be an oppressive and backwards aspect of society.

Of course a lot of philosophical debates are really just masked politics. For example, the problem of universals is irrelevant to those who aren't specifically interested in it, unless of course someone claims things have essential universal properties that influence moral reasoning. Then you get thoroughly-nominalistic positions that are really implausible and aren't motivated by plausibility but simply a rejection of what is seen as the inevitable consequence of the acceptance of the alternative.

Second-order morality takes its ground to be unquestionably justified, and as such suffers from inconsistencies, hypocrisy, aggressive-ness, and tendencies to compromise.

This is understandable as it's not really a "thing" in moral philosophy. A first-order moral agent can act in first-order moral ways. A second-order moral agent can only recognize first-order morality, but can only act in a second-order, or bastardized first-order, moral way.

Perhaps a similar conclusion, but for different reasons I believe.

I'm not saying we should just dismiss them as hacks, but that we should be skeptical that the metaphysical systems they employed are indeed accurate pictures of reality and not influenced by religion at all. It's why I said Scholastic philosophical systems, like Aquinas', are tailored for the Catholic Church.

Well Agustino, Darth did say they were just personal criticisms he had of Scholasticism. Emotional reasons are perfectly valid from that standpoint. He did not, at least on my reading of his text, adduce them as arguments that Scholasticism is mistaken. — andrewk

This is entirely correct. I suspect Scholasticism is indeed flawed even if has internal consistency, but this is just because it comes across as advocating the "final word" and not an ongoing exercise in inquiry. It seems dogmatic.

For most philosophies it is not possible to prove them correct or incorrect. If it were there would be far fewer philosophies around - maybe only one. Choosing between them is done mostly on an aesthetic basis - ie emotionally-based. — andrewk

I somewhat agree, although I would say that it's far more prevalent and easier to prove something incorrect than to prove something correct. Negative dialectic.

If the philosophy was not consistent it would be rejected and not taught. Any principles maintained would be consistent, and therefore viewed by us as being used to support the religion. So if you are interested in learning some of these ontological and metaphysical principles, without the Catholic influence, I suggest you read the work of Aristotle and Plato directly. Then, after a good understanding, if you proceed to study the Scholastics, you can judge for yourself how well the Church remains true to the masters, or if they distort the principles to support their religion. — Metaphysician Undercover

This was exactly the point I tried to make. Scholasticism, although impressive, has an issue of credibility. The reason it flourished was because the Church sponsored it. And of course it's going to be tailored to suit your sponsor.

Part of why I find scholastic philosophy so fascinating is precisely because it so rigorously tries to make a place for God, while at the same time trying to 'get things right' at the level of the world. This kind of double imperative, stretched between the two poles of God and world, lit a fire of intense philosophical creativity which resulted in all sorts of philosophical permutations that tried to strike the 'right balance', as it were, between the two. The entire spectrum of scholastic thinking can be mapped onto the various articulations between (the) transcendence (of God) and (the) immanence (of the world). — StreetlightX

Interesting interpretation.

One can be all the more secure in one's thinking if one can properly coordinate or triangulate just where one stands with respect to the many strands of scholastic thought that exist out there. — StreetlightX

Right, yeah, it's like the Scholastics thought of everything, or at least everything that was possible to conceive of in that day of philosophy.

And apart from all of that, all the theological puzzles are just so interesting! — StreetlightX

I'm not sure if I would call them interesting, in my opinion at least. They're kind of silly for someone who isn't totally into the whole God thing. And the silliness of them makes me doubt the legitimacy of theology in the first place. Hair-splitting and tangles all over the place.

Potentially an issue for non-theologically-inclined metaphysics could be the justification of metaphysics, or inquiry for that matter. For the Scholastics like Aquinas, metaphysics was basically some kind of sublime activity that brought one closer to God in virtue of studying creation and all that. Without God, the world exists, but there's no independent, transcendent reason to study it. It's not inherently valuable or intrinsically important, or perhaps more specifically, obviously valuable. And so metaphysics can potentially become sort of bland. But it also introduces a freedom that does not exist in theologically-inclined metaphysics. Without God, the world is not required to be perfectly rational or intelligible or even good.

Indeed, I agree with Agustino, thank you for the references!

My mind somehow isn't capable of accepting statements that philosophical pessimism offers. — rossii

If it helps, I struggle with this all the time. Our personalities are not of our own creation - they are socially influenced and thus the optimistic and affirmative morality of society literally bleeds into our psyche.

Wouldn't it be great if the pessimists were wrong? Wouldn't it be just fantastic if everything they said could be explained away by some flawless and satisfying reason? It seems like the existence of pessimism is itself an argument for pessimism...

The unfortunate thing is that pessimism is difficult to fully understand if you've been lucky enough to avoid some serious misfortune or have a flexible mind that allows you to ignore these memories. Another issue is how we seem prone to forgetting all the bad that has happened, downplaying negative possibilities. It's only when life starts to get rough again that you're confronted with the obnoxious and harmful nature of life and move from being sedated to being sober.

For me, at least, it's actually easier to stay in a melancholic mood than to go through radical mood changes. If I am correct, then the anxiety you feel when faced with things like suffering and death and suicide is the result of you bouncing back from an optimistic "high". It's exactly this sudden and overwhelming sense of dread that characterizes disillusionment.

But no, I don't think there is a rational reason to continue living. I think a lot of people on their death beds would not choose to re-live their lives, nor would I think unborn fetuses (if they were capable of doing so) would consent to beginning life if they saw what it entailed. But just because life is probably not worth living doesn't mean suicide is automatically the solution. If avoiding suffering is what you're after, then suicide is actually probably not the best course of action, since suicide has a tendency to fail and cause a hell of a lot of suffering. So you're stuck in a sort of penitentiary. Once life has started, it's hard to stop and you might as well just go along with the flow.

I'm also of the opinion that there's some legitimately interesting and ironic experiences to enjoy while surviving. If there's anything advantageous to being alive, it's that bitter irony and occasional sense of beauty and satisfaction that helps build an aesthetic of a life.

I am afraid I won't escape these feelings of anxiety, panic, depression abd suicidal ideation. — rossii

Like I said before, you're still in the affirmative mind-set. You need to let go of the idea that death and suffering are un-natural and contingent. As soon as you stop clenching on to life so hard, it gets a helluva lot easier and fun. Like Nietzsche said, the possibility of suicide helps comfort those in dark times. I think those who make a "pact" to themselves to never commit suicide are those who aren't emotionally mature enough to trust in their perceptions of their own well-being. If you always keep suicide in the back of your mind, and meditate on it daily, it becomes a sort of symbol of our predicament and can help ground your expectations and comprehension of the world.

For example, I find it funny when Tough Guys hyped up on testosterone try to pretend like they're King of the World and that they can do anything they want. They might be able to do a lot of comparatively-impressive things, but they probably can't kill themselves. Ha!

Since we're ALL on death row and if the law is sensible may I ask what grievious crime did we commit to deserve death? — TheMadFool

I made a similar argument for antinatalism elsewhere - basically, we did nothing to deserve the goods and bads of life, since we didn't exist before we were born so we couldn't have done any heinous or praiseworthy actions. It encompasses both the goods and the bads of life, but definitely is more poignant in regards to the bads.

From a different perspective is the death penalty a sensible form of punishment? — TheMadFool

Absolutely not. It's barbaric, and epistemically over-confident.

Probably I'll give a more thorough response later, but you might be interested in a book on this very subject: Is Nature Ever Evil?: Religion, Science, Value. It's all about not just whether or not "nature" can ever be seen as "evil", but also how humans relate to the world, including the myth of scientific objectivity. I got it for dirt cheap. There's some really interesting and thought-provoking essays in it.

As a human being, it seems like I got very lucky, when it's conceivable that I could have been a bat, cicada, giraffe, cow, rat, spider, salmon, kangaroo, etc. — jdh

False. You are required to be a human to be you. You aren't able to be anything else. That you exist as a human was 100% guaranteed, although your existence in general was not.

I think this is an example of a philosophical thought experiment that seems to be legitimately problematic, but in reality is actually not an issue at all.

First, it's unlikely, if not impossible, that there will ever be two identical stacks of grass.

Second, it's unlikely, if not impossible, that these two stacks of grass, even if they are identical duplicates, will be perceived as identical.

Third, it seems to me that if the ass really, really needed food, the preference for obtaining this goal would over-ride any hypothetical hesitation. Subconscious thoughts might come into play and start to make one of the stacks appear more preferable than the other, even if they are (objectively) identical.

In fact without any sub/unconscious motivation, it appears that basically nothing would be preferable at all. That we are given a choice in the first place depends on previous unknown manipulations.

Hotline Miami

Definitely Descartes >:O Infinitely worth skipping, by any student of philosophy. — Agustino

Ehh, I would disagree. Descartes is indispensable to any student of the history of philosophy. Studying philosophy isn't just getting what's important and what's not, it's also understanding the historical context in which these questions arose. Even if Descartes was fundamentally wrong about everything, he was fundamentally important to the Enlightenment and modern philosophy as a whole. For better or for worse, Cartesianism transformed philosophical thinking, and was part of the reason epistemology became so much more prominent in philosophy (again, for better or for worse).

I get kind of miffed when hardcore traditionalists try to argue that Descartes fucked everything up and that we just need to go back to the Scholastics or whatever and everything will make sense. Even if Descartes did fuck everything up, it can't just be all his fault. Political and social issues made Scholasticism decline, and the failure to keep it alive can be seen more as a fault of the Scholastics than of those who came after.

Typically these neo-Scholastic traditionalists end up advocating the metaphysical system of a single person or group, like Aquinas or Aristotle. Regardless of its truth, I find it nauseating and oppressive, and kind of cringy at times. There, I said it: I find most metaphysics to be nauseatingly totalitarian and psychologically limiting. People hold metaphysical views not simply out of rational consideration but out of a deeply-entrenched need for the universe to be some way. The value of a metaphysical belief is not simply its factual correctness but its causal role in the psychological unity. If you take my view on metaphysics, then, Descartes is just another instance of making the world seem one way.

Probably adequately rated actually. Nietzsche is a very deep and profound philosopher even though I think he's wrong in many regards. — Agustino

Generally, I agree. I've spent hours at night reading Nietzsche's Zarathustra and simply appreciating how I can fundamentally disagree with many of the things Nietzsche says but find real beauty and value in his work despite the fact. I like to think that both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer (and others) were tackling many of the same issues, but came to different conclusions. But mostly I just appreciate Nietzsche's obvious passion and mastery of language.

Well I mean I suppose you could say that Kant systematized everything.

But...but...my noumenon...

Wait but why, though? His aphorisms are great.

I think that what you call dispositions and powers - i.e., what I call tendencies and habits - are the laws of nature. Mathematical abstractions are what we use to represent them, perform calculations in accordance with them, etc. — aletheist

I think we generally agree. Habits and tendencies arise from dispositions and powers - they are the "macro" scale "laws" while dispositions and powers form a network at the "micro" level. As such the macro-scaled habits and tendencies can change, similar to the Piercean tychism. How a system behaves is dependent not only on its constituent parts but also on the organization of these parts, which creates a causal web/network in which general behavior arises.

Behaviorism was dominant back in the day, in large part because the mind was seen as unable to be studied scientifically. But clearly people don't just "behave" in mechanical processes and impulses. There's a mind behind it all.

Similarly, you wish to argue the nominalist position that natural laws are simply descriptions of behaviors. But where does causality come from? When two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom bond and become H(2)O, we can make a description of this phenomenon. But this description doesn't cover all the bases. Why does hydrogen bond with oxygen? And why does it bond in some instances, but not others? The element of contingency here leads me to believe that there is legitimately something relevant that "decides" what is going to happen.

So, if A causes B, why does A cause B?

For the record, I am skeptical of laws of nature. I prefer dispositions and powers. Laws of nature are mathematical abstractions based upon these things.

The fundamental behaviour of things is, by definition, fundamental. There is no further explanation. — Michael

But who gets to decide when something is fundamental? If we just said that it's a fundamental law that a computer turns on when the power button is pressed, we'd be wrong, since it clearly isn't a fundamental law in the sense you're getting at. It can be explained further, and thus better, than just stating that it's a brute fact and moving on.

The fact is that what you are claiming to be fundamental is perhaps not; or, if it is, there still remains the question of why it is fundamental in the first place. "It just is" is perhaps even more mysterious than "something else made it this way", but it tries to pretend to be anti-mysterious and obvious to escape any worrysome metaphysical issues that arise when people start thinking.

For as much crap that is thrown at theists for using god-of-the-gaps reasoning, popular scientists are disappointingly inept at answering this question and instead tend to pretend it doesn't exist, or use fortune telling reasoning to assert that the answer will be elucidated later on.

The game of Life, I'm not doing so well as of late ... :s

Natural laws are the natural extension of a Cartesian epistemologically-oriented metaphysics, one that rejects teleology in favor of mysterious, immutable forces that exist for whatever reason. One of the alternatives would be a rejection of natural laws as such, in favor of a re-instituted teleology based upon threshold dispositions and power networks.

Damn, that political compass test is ridiculously biased.

What book?

I don't know!!! — mew

Welcome to philosophy! ;)

I'm afraid I don't understand the question :s — mew

Analogy: there are different sorts of noodles. But are all noodles made of the same thing?

Similarly, there are cars and people and numbers and mountains. Are they all "unified' in the sense that they all exist in the same fundamental ontological way?

I didn't want to imply something like that. So, are there different ways of existing? Do these ways have something in common? — mew

There certainly are different ways of existing, in the sense of different sorts of arrangements and configurations and what have you. But the question remains: are all these different ways only ontically different? Are they unified ontologically?

Existence as a false predicate comes from Kant. Aristotelian hylomorphism is the theory that substance (another esoteric term unfortunately) is made up of a two-part duality, Form and Matter. Peircean semiotic theory is a system of signs meant to help explain a lot of things. OSR = ontic structural realism, a theory in the philosophy of science.

The job of government is to monopolize violence so nobody else gets to.

To ask such a question seems to presuppose that there is only one "way" or "mode" of existence. Does an Boeing 747 exist in the same way the number three exists? What's the difference between the existence of a unicorn and a mountain, or an appointment and a lawn mower?

Tentatively, I would say that a characteristic of existence would be causal relevancy. To exist means to be a value in a causal sequence. Inert, motion-less, and undetectable beings don't exist - or at least they don't exist in the same way actual existants do. They're pure possibility, a contingency waiting to be understood and apprehended by another entity. They're "dead" in the sense that they are not an active part in the operation of the world and thus their existence is entirely redundant. What difference would it make if eleven unknown, causally inert existants existed instead of ten? There would be none, and it's also hard to see why they would exist to begin with.

But to ask for an "essence" of existence; well, this opens the door to the question of how essence exists. If there is something that makes existence what it is, then there has to be something "below" existence, something more primal and formal. If existence is seen like Play-Doh, then we can ask what Play-Doh is made of. Maybe there's something "less" than existence, but more likely I think is that existence is either a false predicate, or it's an irreducible complexity (it has parts that cannot be separated - re: Aristotelian hylomorphism, Piercean semiotic theory, hell, even OSR or something goofy-looking like that).

What Being is, the ontological question, has been an ongoing issue in metaphysics since its very origin, but one that has largely been ignored in favor of "weaker" ontic questions. What exists takes precedence over the question of existence itself.

The extreme nominalist would probably have a difficult, maybe impossible, task of explaining qualitative similarity. The extreme realist (or universalist) would have to explain why it seems as if there are particulars, and explain how our language talks about particulars without there actually being any. The extreme universalist, it seems to me, has it easier, as particulars could potentially be argued to be just loose bundles of properties held together by symbiotic powers and forces. To be crude.

In the end, it's all about taking what we are commonly acquainted with - particulars and universals, and trying to eliminate one of them by reducing it to the other. When in reality it seems as though both exist in co-operation. Is one "prior" to the other? That is to say, is one more ontologically simpler than the other? I'd say they're equally simpler and co-dependent; it makes no sense to talk about particulars without properties, and no sense to talk about properties without any instatiation relation between the property and the particular. Thus we arrive at a substratum, or substance, view.

So what is the argument? In what way is the interaction between the mental and physical mysterious, that interaction between physical objects already is not? What provision can you make for one that will not carry over to the other? — The Great Whatever

Y'all need Leibnizian monads and vicarious causation, bitches.

Each step, as noise and signal start to be divided in the brain, has to feed back either positively or negatively as a "test" for the germinating concept. As an attempt at symmetry breaking, it either finds that it works and so runs to self-justifying completion, or it stalls and dies, quickly forgotten. — apokrisis

This works well with my own phenomenological analysis of how I reason. Except I would add that higher-order thinking processes seem to be based largely on counterfactuality (whereas in the OP I was mostly focused on the initial alarm that something has been stirring below immediate awareness, the vague impression that there might be something). Evaluating possibility, testing compatibility, comparing similarity, predicting eventuality. For a mind like mine with diagnosed OCD, sometimes reasoning essentially skips the initial step of evaluating all the possibilities (perhaps the most crucial step) and tumbles through a garbled prediction - what psychologists might call "black and white thinking", "fortune-telling reasoning", or "catastrophizing".

And it can be explained neurologically in terms of symmetry breaking. Answers form in the mind as we organise a field of uncertainty. The brain starts to suppress some possibilities as "noise", focus attention on other possibilities as "signal". If it is working - the symmetry does want to break itself in that direction - then rapid feedback drives both kinds of action. What counts as noise, and thus what counts as signal, become ever more strongly felt to us as we "tune into" the best inference to an explanation. — apokrisis

And this also works well with the Heideggerian analogy of a path in a forest. Although I don't really see what symmetry has got to do with anything. If anything it seems like symmetry-forming would be what answers are made of.

It's too perfect

I'm not knocking your theory, at least not here. I'm genuinely interested in - if a little uneasy with - your approach. I'm still browsing the philosophical market and probably will be for some time yet. But don't you see the joke? — csalisbury

I agree.

I had no idea you'd published. I'd be interested in checking out your book(s). — csalisbury

Nor did I, although I think he doesn't want anyone to stalk him or something.

There is, in other words, a kind of mutual propelling of the idea in which articulating the thought makes or fabulates the very thought which is there as a hazy seed to begin with. Recall also that the etymology of the word 'articulate' comes from the Latin arthron, or 'joint', referring back to the language of woodmaking, with it's cognates relating to the conjoining or uniting two pieces of wood. — StreetlightX

Yes, very much so this. It's as if you're given a proto-thought and it's up to you to either germinate the seed or let it die.

To identify with a philosopher is to identify with the way in which they parse out the field of intelligibility, the ways in which they say 'this belongs to this category, and that, to another'. This is what accounts for the fact that the understanding in question is, as you've put it, 'pre-reflexive': it is operative at the level of the 'problem', the organizing principles of intelligibility, and not at the level of 'answers'. — StreetlightX

Very interesting.

(2) If mind is not spatio-temporal, and body is spatio-temporal, then mind and body cannot interact. — quine

Curious, why not?

This premise seems to rest upon the assumption that something can only be causally relevant to something else in its ontological "space".

If the mental and the physical are indeed two completely different things that have nothing in common at all, it does seem difficult to see how they can interact.

But if the mental and the physical are different, but not entirely, then there is room for them to interact. Say the mental has the property M and the physical has the property P, but both have the property T. By having T, they are able to interact with each other in a way that is not possible to understand from within the ontological "spaces" of those of M or P.

To illustrate, then, say we have the mental: M=====T , and the physical: T=====P. M and P cannot interact directly from the M or P endpoints, but can interact through their T endpoints. Thus just as you cannot understand how a tree obtains nutrients from the ground by only looking at the leaves, we aren't able to understand how the mental and the physical interact from the perspective of the mental or the physical. A holistic picture would be required, but this is exactly what is impossible to obtain directly. Correlationism, basically.

Not saying I necessarily agree to all of this. I'm undecided on what I see to be the most reasonable mind-body interaction theory.

What do you think physicalism says about reality? — Marchesk

In my honest opinion, nothing really important or deep, at least in the holistic sense (and not the more specific sense, like social or political issues). Every time someone tries to cover all their bases and come up with a definition of "physicality" or "material" or whatever, something else pops up that contradicts this definition. Cartesian res extensa, Newtonian billiard balls, radiation, waves, and now some super-spooky quantum stuff and anti-matter and all sorts of exotic things that mess up our orderly spice rack model of the world.

We can, of course, come up with a list of what the physical is not, but this negative dialectic ends up looking suspiciously similar to just plain ol' naturalism: no ghosts, no souls, no gods, no teleology. No "spooky" shit, which of course is up for grabs as well. Some might see universals as spooky, I certainly don't. Some might be against teleology, and again, I have to disagree with them. Hell, even "souls" in the Aristotelian sense could be legit. Pretty soon this physicalism/materialism/naturalism becomes less of a methodology and more of a dogma that limits discourse.

(1) All ravens are black. — Michael

Isn't this an inductive premise, though? In the sense that it cannot be deductively proven that all ravens are black? What if there was an albino raven, or a raven spray-painted lime green?

Since it is an inductive premise, then, we shouldn't be surprised when green apples fail to give us any substantial deductive information regarding the qualities of ravens.

"The future is the only transcendental value for men without God." - Albert Camus

The "idolatry of tomorrow." in Cioran's words.

I would say that I agree with the overall sentiment that reason is a burden as much as it is a gift. And I would also agree that philosophy has a history of attempting to "solve" problems using reason, the same reason that was used to identify these problems to begin with. Wittgenstein would have thought that philosophy is meant to untangle ourselves from problems, whereas pessimists like Leopardi would have argued philosophy is the means in which these problems are brought forth into clarity.

But I think, at the same time, that there is some kind of non-hedonic satisfaction in acquiring truth, even if truth overall is a detriment to happiness. It's the thing that keeps us from wondering if we'd be doing a service to people like Leopardi by euthanizing them or something edgy like that.