Haven't I explained this to you before? If everything tries to happen at once, most of it will be contradictory and so will self-suppress its own existence, cancel itself away to nothing. — apokrisis

Okay, but apo you still have to explain why these things are happening all the time. Why this outcome? Was it inevitable? Is there only one universe that can emerge from the cancelling action? And why was this foamy apeiron stuff there? Where did it come from?

You're still implicitly avoiding the question of Being: why does anything exist? Why something, rather than nothing? We can always ask "why"?

This actually takes political and community action to help solve, and even then the problems don't just disappear but are cyclical. Anyways, this is just one social ill that is way beyond one person's charity or volunteering or even a lifetime of a Mother Teresa lifestyle. — schopenhauer1

Right, this is why more "sophisticated" consequentialists typically advocate change through institutions and organizations. A mass effort. For the consequentialist, the state of affairs is what matters. What is moral is not always what makes you feel good. Of course, people are needed to actually go out and interact with those in need. But it's similar to a military campaign. For every soldier, there are ten support units behind him. The support units are necessary and important but don't get the "glory" so to speak. They are the units "behind the scenes".

I have an acquaintance who decided to switch majors to social work because he wanted to "help people". True, social work will help people, but he was more concerned about human interaction and all that. The "good feelings" of helping people. But let's not forget that impersonal donations of money or labor can do just as much, if not more, good. Giving $20 to a homeless person might make you feel good. Donating this $20 to a food charity will help far more people, though, and it will guarantee this money will go to good use. But it doesn't "feel" as good...

For Schopenhauer, then, its seems that he was committed to the view that there are some things you just don't do, like murder or rape, but generally being an altruist is entirely voluntary and only worthwhile so long as you experience some form of compassionate aesthetic. The "bonding" moment.

Those who are consequentialists are given an unfair amount of responsibility, since reality is non-ideal and not everyone are consequentialists. For consequentialists, one does not necessarily need to feel sympathy all the time, but merely recognize that their cognitive faculties are preventing them from seriously sympathizing with those in need.

Now, the Mother Teresa types are often religiously inspired- so they much of their actions are trying to model a religious ideal or mandate and even using it to proselytize. They are trying to get a metaphysical change from the action and save souls while they are doing it. The good deeds are bringing about the Kingdom of God or bring about a spiritual change. Some people might genuinely be doing these actions out of some sort of innate capacity for extreme altruism, but this is rare, as Schopenhauer pointed out. — schopenhauer1

True. Actually Mother Teresa once said that it's not about the people you help, but the relationship between you and God. She cared very little for the suffering of others, it seems. Rather it was merely a way of getting closer to God. Twisted if I say so myself.

Thus the best one can do is make do with long-term goods, help out as much as possible without it becoming simply a negative slavish force for oneself and strip all long-term goods from one's life (thus making one's goals to help others more meaningful as they too can pursue long-term goods), and finally, to not procreate, and thus end the harm and addiction to the next generation. — schopenhauer1

Generally I agree. We're not robots that can just do something 24/7. Those who do typically do so because they like doing it or like you said they have a metaphysical redemption in mind.

Now that I think of it the greatest threat to my view has got to be the fact that those who are better off could become very much worse off at the flip of a coin, perhaps in the process of doing altruism. I already recognize that one shouldn't be obligated to kill themselves for the benefit of others, that is too extreme of an obligation to be seriously expected. Yet every day we expose ourselves to life-threatening risks, even if we don't recognize it.

180 Proof — Erik

Also where is 180 Proof? — Maw

I think 180 Proof showed up briefly but didn't return. Not sure why though.

What is the Pessimist's incentive? — schopenhauer1

Does there need to be an incentive?

I think I've explained to you before how I hate guilting people, but all anyone has to do is imagine the suffering a wild animal feels while being devoured by its predator, or sympathize with the unknown nobody in Ethiopia who hasn't had anything to eat for two weeks.

The guilt one feels is incomparable to the suffering experienced by these sorts of situations. As Peter Unger said, it's "living high and letting die."

Is it to impress his fellow man as to what a great person he/she is; in other words pride in how selfless he/she is? — schopenhauer1

Not precisely, and I would personally feel bad about intentionally bragging about my adventures in altruism. Although I will admit that at times I feel a sense of superiority that I can only see as justified.

Perhaps this is a cop-out- some people have the right stuff, and others do not and thus did not give enough credence to free-will to justify why some people are more compassionate than others rather than everyone, especially the Pessimist, doing his/her part. — schopenhauer1

I might be willing to argue that since nobody asked to be born, nobody has an obligation to clean up to the mess and do anything for anyone else.

This of course conflicts with intuitions regarding drowning children, but it's at least coherent.

Scheffler argues that there should be nothing preventing people from doing good, but there is no obligation to do so. Perhaps he's right. I'm not too sure, cases like drowning children make me believe we do have some obligations.

And anyway if we eschew obligations then Schopenhauer and co. have absolutely no right to condemn those who have children, as they have no obligation to care about the welfare of their offspring. It's a double-bladed sword.

Rather, if we were to only think of others' alleviation of suffering, life would be even more absurdly tormenting than it was originally, as not even its enjoyment, that which is the goal of alleviating others' suffering, would be enjoyed by anyone. — schopenhauer1

I would say that there this sort of enjoyment is not as important than minimizing the suffering these people feel. This goes back to distributive inequality issues. I believe that the angst and ennui that characterized pessimistic philosophies in the past is largely irrelevant when compared to the feelings experienced by those worse-off.

Indeed it seems wrong to feel ennui because one knows someone else is being tormented, because this means one is viewing them as some kind of tarnish in a world they would rather see as good.

2.) As others commented above, Pessimists inherently think that suffering cannot be eradicated. — schopenhauer1

Without such a context, a cathartic metaphysical "something to show for it", it is essentially putting a band-aid over a mortal wound and then saying- you must be a good Pessimist, like they used to say you must be a good Christian. — schopenhauer1

Yes, indeed, I have quasi-religious conceptions but they are only inspiration, not legitimate options I think. Like I told TGW, it's not about eradicating suffering, it's about minimizing it.

Perhaps an argument against mine would be that we can never distribute altruistic care equally. There will always be someone "left out" wondering why they didn't get help. If you care about equality then perhaps this is important - maybe it's more important to preserve equality than to minimize suffering. I don't think it's very strong, though, because you yourself would be left out of the equation. And in ideal theory, those worse-off would still recognize that there are those who are equally as worse off as they are.

If this is the case, then what was the cause of this dynamism stabilizing? It couldn't have started itself, otherwise there's obviously a chain of being within this dynamism that isn't accounted for.

Yes, indeed, we might actually agree on something here. I'm skeptical of cosmological arguments since they attempt to superimpose a metaphysics of the here-and-now on the then-and-there. There's no telling what was actually going on way back in time.

However Apeiron doesn't seem to answer anything either, since it doesn't exactly explain why anything started at all. And thus we come to Heidegger with his question of Being: why does anything exist? And, surprisingly enough, we see the same sort of thinking in Aquinas that Heidegger later refined.

I wonder why you said that Aristotelian four cause causation "flickered in the background" - on the contrary, it was perhaps at its height during the medieval Scholastic period. Aquinas was a hardcore Aristotelian and his Five Ways reflects this. It wasn't until Hume's time that we saw the reduction of causality to mere efficient and material.

To be fair a lot of those 'comfortable pessimists' espoused anti-natalistism, something which really would 'end the problem once and for all' once implemented. Neither Schopenhauer, the Buddha, nor Emil Cioran had children. — dukkha

That doesn't change the fact that they weren't really doing anything else. Not having children isn't especially that impressive.

Okay chief, whatever you say.

I think I'd start genuinely considering suicide if all I did was suffer, and pleasure was some sort of illusion.

The problem is not that pleasure doesn't exist, or that it's some sort of illusion, or that pleasure isn't actually positive in the way suffering is negative/bad. The problem instead is just it's rarity. A lot rarer than I think most people believe (or want to believe). — dukkha

Yes, indeed, true pleasure is so rare that it's hard to see how it could possibly still be seen as a good, that is, something that is good for us to obtain for its own sake. An analogy would be being dragged across a cheese grater.

Suicide is generally out of the question unless one is suffering tremendously or has an abnormally strong will. Contemplating suicide may cause more suffering than would be if suicide was not an option. Personally I think the threat of annihilation is a major contributing factor to our suffering. It magnifies the suffering by making it unnecessary.

So I see a disoriented penguin in Herzog's film. — apokrisis

It's not, though, since apparently if you picked it up and brought it back to its waddle, it would just turn right back around.

Also animals like penguins, who aren't exactly apex predators, typically wouldn't just go off exploring by themselves, miles away from everyone else in their waddle.

I'm sorry if video evidence isn't enough for you. :-}

Males are known to walk into the ice desert of Antarctica when they can't find a mate, or in general when they just hate their clan.

Or the countless wild animals currently suffering and/or dying in some way, whether that be by disease, malnutrition, predation, infirmity, injury, etc. Hell, even penguins are known to commit suicide.

Sorry to hear that. I can't offer you any of those nauseating self-help three-steps to happiness pep-talks.

I conceive of a threshold that people need to be kept above in order so they can take care of themselves so to speak. Prioritize those who fall below this threshold, or those who ask for help. This also means I typically don't tell people to "get help" because they probably already have tried and failed to accomplish anything productive.

So I do share your general pessimistic evaluation of humanity as a whole. We're a sorry lot. So I focus more on non-human animal welfare, those residents of the Earth that are continually neglected and forgotten about.

I don't have a name for it, and the sublime is not quite it. — The Great Whatever

Cathartic?

Been getting into doom metal lately.

So my contention is just that people don't have the skills to improve the world in that way - they're too stupid. — The Great Whatever

It's not perfect, and it's sort of infected by the scientistic types, but the Effective Altruism movement is perhaps one of the most effective and reliable groups that is focused on making things better than they are right now.

At any rate I sense the same sort of isolation in your response as I did in the writings of Schopenhauer and co. You say that people are just so stupid. Not everyone is. Apparently you and I have enough brain cells to figure some of this stuff out.

It'd be nice to be able to just say that the world is kept alive by the zombies. Unfortunately humans aren't zombies because they can feel. And every now and then there's those like you and me and others here that pop out and wonder why the fuck they're here anyway.

Yes, I think I would agree with that for the most part. Very similar to my analogy to heat and friction. Pleasure is something produced through the process of alleviating discomfort. Not always, but in the natural sense, this is what it is.

Isn't pessimism 'worse' than nihilism, in its valuation of the world? It seems that the pessimist is yet more extreme than the nihilist in the extent to which he voids the relevance of such observations. — The Great Whatever

To the pessimist, nihilism is worse than pessimism because it ignores values and is thus a bystander perpetrator of the whole disvalue game.

To the nihilist, this is all dumb and there's no value for anything at all, including nihilism.

Like I said, I see nihilism as a cop-out. In the past, "nihilism" was seen as anything that threatened the status quo, the teleological status of human civilization set up by the Christian theologians of the middle ages. Nowadays it's seen as a rejection of all value. It's the final stance a person will adopt - a position of no position - in order to deny the reality of value in the world. For the acceptance of nihilism rests upon value itself.

Unless your view is that some sort of activity can lessen the poor quality of the world, despite its being in some way fundamentally or irreparably bad. I'm not quite sure of that, largely because I believe that humans are animals that aren't smart enough to figure out how to make things better. But it's a logical possibility. — The Great Whatever

Too many times do people make the mistake that it's pointless to do anything because we'll never fully succeed. Will we ever get everyone to stop popping out babies? Will we ever have the opportunity to nuke the planet (I would prefer more peaceful methods...)? My bet is that we won't.

What I still hold on to though is the fact that the world can be improved without being fully good. There's no need for a good outcome to act in the right way. Getting a C+ on a test is better than an F.

And this seems to be a common way of thinking about the matter throughout history, e.g. in the Indian parable of the man drowning in a river and feeling pleasure at coming up for air before getting pushed back in. It may not be right, but it's one of the broad options out there, and the one that seems right to me. — The Great Whatever

Deprivationalism is an attractive theory. All experience is some form of bad, maximizing at a neutral state of mind. But I don't think it's quite accurate. I won't argue against the observation that pleasure is almost always accompanied by some relief of discomfort. You eat cause you're hungry, you shit cause you're stuffed, etc.

But I hesitate to simply call pleasure merely an absence of pain, or merely a state of lesser-suffering. Back a few comments, I said how I saw pleasure as akin to the heat produced from friction. It's independent of friction but almost always closely tied to it, and it typically dissipates fairly quickly. And if you get enough pleasure from an activity, it makes up for the process. Hence why people climb mountains.

I'm just saying - doesn't an 'active pessimism' betray... pessimism? — StreetlightX

This is perhaps one of the reasons why I'm tempted to eschew the term "pessimism" entirely. "Pessimism" is only "pessimistic" insofar as it is compared to more optimistic philosophies.

Instead, I prefer the term "negative", emphasis on the "negate", as opposed to "affirmative". Or perhaps rejectionist, although this too carries ascetic connotations. "Negative" it is. While affirmative thinkers base their philosophies on the assumption that life and existence are at least acceptable, negative thinkers find inherent flaws in the system that threaten to undermine the whole thing.

So perhaps you are right that an active pessimism betrays pessimism, but only in the sense that there are two sorts of pessimism - the psychological "everything is futile and everything will fail, waah" and the metaphysical "things are not good". And it seems that people such as Schopenhauer unknowingly adopted both at the same time. When in reality there is nothing logically preventing someone from being a pessimist and yet simultaneously euthymic about the prospects of the pessimistic goal.

You can't lose if you don't play. — The Great Whatever

At the same time, though, they seem to find some value in the irony they produce when they advocate views like these and yet turn around act possibly even worse than their own contemporaries. If philosophy is anything to its etymology, you would think the wise would do something with their wisdom instead of keeping it all cooped up and sacred.

But I think a thoroughgoing pessimism voids the effects of any prescription – it doesn't matter what you do, and not in a meta-prescriptive sense that you 'ought not' to do anything, either. So what we have is an observation about these men, not a criticism of them. If pessimism has truth to it, these observations cease to be interesting. — The Great Whatever

I'm not sure I would still consider that "pessimism" - just straight up nihilism. Nothing matters because what you do doesn't matter. It's interesting, if you ever take a safari over to YouTube and watch all the bickering between all the self-proclaimed torchbearers of truth, there's typically two sides that both use the same strategy. There's those who bitch and moan about those who have children ("breeders") yet are content with not doing anything about it by claiming nothing matters anyway, and then there's those who try to salvage any sort of value to birth by pretending there is no value and that nothing matters.

To me, "nihilism" is one of those vogue terms people throw around to ignore those who don't have the opportunity to understand what nihilism even is.

For those interested, this is a relatively short and thorough introduction to quantum mechanics:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~djmorin/waves/quantum.pdf

Or SSRIs can take away their depression. — apokrisis

mhm, guess we agree on something.

Can someone please explain to me how to quote ? — Raphi

Highlight the text.

What is the point of active pessimism? — Marchesk

Actually, I'd change this to say what is the point of comfortable pessimism? If nothing substantial changes based on your beliefs, what's the point? Especially when something like this has the inherent potential to be practical and not just theoretical.

Me, I'd rather drink a beer and pass the time doing something half-way enjoyable or interesting. — Marchesk

As would I, but this doesn't make anything better. I'd be willing to argue that, from a consequentialist perspective, not doing anything could be considered criminal negligence in some cases (like a drowning child), or inappropriate apathy towards the rest of the world.

Now, if everyone were consequentialist, our responsibilities would drastically decrease. Unfortunately we live in an non-ideal world where not everyone recognizes the importance of suffering, and so we have to switch to non-ideal theory.

The way our brain misinterprets our reality leads to it stating “I feel good” when it feels less suffering. — Raphi

The problems is that the only thing that feels is you. There is no other thing feeling suffering. If you are feeling pain, but interpret it as pleasure, then you're not feeling pain. At least you're not experiencing the negativity of pain.

Yes that is part of my whole hypothesis. I think the human brain would have evolved in such a way that it perceives some experiences as good, whether or not those good experiences really exist. — Raphi

This is exactly what is problematic, though. You can't know what a concept it unless you experience it yourself. Where does this good concept come from?

I don’t claim anything about how you perceive your feelings; I claim something about what constitutes those feelings. — Raphi

Yes, but you claim that what constitutes them are more feelings, specifically suffering. There's the "illusory" feelings of pleasure and goodness, and then there's the "actual" feelings of suffering.

If you sit on your hand for a while you will lose feeling. If you immediately poke your finger afterwards with a pin, you won't feel anything. Presumably you will say I did not feel pain when I did this, despite the fact that something has harmed by skin.

You might argue that there exist independently positive experiences, which can arise when we don’t suffer, but to me it feels more like faith than anything else since my hypothesis seems complete without it. — Raphi

Yet your hypothesis is wrong. Completeness has nothing to do with accuracy in this case. If anything it is you who demands faith for their hypothesis, as you claim to know better than I do what I am actually feeling.

Pleasure is any experience that we want to continue to feel. We prefer it over unconsciousness. To ignore the existence of pleasure is akin to ignoring the existence of suffering and claiming all pain is just less pleasure. This does the exact same work you theory does. We avoid pain not because it's actually painful but because it's less pleasurable and we want to maximize our pleasure. Both theories are inadequate.

Sup mate. Great to see you here.

perhaps more pertinent is: What is science? Science is doing a lot of work in the OP. Everything can be elucidated by science. So also what is 'explanation'. What is Science and what is Elucidation and what does it mean that Science can/will Elucidate everything? — csalisbury

Yes, this is probably the biggest issue at play here. Re-defining what "science" is, is exactly how charlatans like Sam Harris get away with murder and trick the average person into believing that science can actually answer philosophical questions like morality.

And of course I am sympathetic of philosophers of science like Feyerabend who argue for a more "anarchic" version of science. Where there's no "one-single method" to getting something done. The Scientific Method is a general guideline for ideal circumstances but can also be a hindrance in some cases.

The unifying piece that makes science what it is, I think, is the empirical nature of its approach. The use of data acquired from observation or instruments of reliability, which is used to model reality and produce theories that can accurately predict future outcomes. I suppose this is a primary reason why science is so seductive; it allows us to control nature. Not only are we diving into its quantum depths but we're harnessing the very stuff reality is made of. To engineers like myself this can make me salivate. (also being an engineer tends to make me focus more on material and efficient causes than formal or final, to the apparent dismay of )

So the question, then, is this: is there anything that can't be studied empirically? Put under a microscope, modeled, placed within mathematical structures, etc? The first things that come to mind are the various things we take for granted when we study the ontic, the empirical. And, if these cannot be studied empirically, then it looks like we might actually have to go through some sort of negative dialectic, i.e. figuring out what's not the case, and narrowing down the possibilities (similar to negative theology).

As explained, a constraints based view of materiality sees matter being produced via the limitation on possibility. So solidity arises as freedoms of actions are removed. — apokrisis

So what is material/efficient cause made of? Top down constraints on possibility. — apokrisis

I go back to your example of a vortex in water. You can't just scoop out a vortex. Similarly I have a hard time visualizing what a constraint is supposed to be independent of a material basis.

I'm not an "expert" but I would recommend "Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed" and "Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed". The "Guides" are typically very good. The latter book is nice not only by how deep it goes but also how it questions some of the pragmatist ideas, especially the post-modern "pragmatism" of Rorty but even some of the ideas of Peirce (for example, I found the authors convincingly argued that pragmatism, although attempting to be anti-foundationalist, nevertheless was empiricist and thus foundationalist in that empirical perceptions are the foundations of belief.)

But do Peircean signs require material cause? What are Peircean signs made of, more signs?

So try again with my earlier example of scooping a vortex out of a flow in a bucket. — apokrisis

Yet clearly the vortex is a vortex of something - a flow of water. It's not just a vortex, it's a vortex of something else.

The Philosophy of Disenchantment by Edgar Saltus. Great prose.

So you accept the irreducible triadicity of relations ... and now want to change the subject. Sweet. — apokrisis

Only to point out that the irreducible triadicity of relations doesn't mean relations themselves are irreducible. One can pick apart an engine without worrying about keeping the engine intact. And we can pick apart a relation without worrying about keeping the relation intact.

I don't see how that is relevant, as I've already demonstrated why relations are not primary.

Sure you can count three things. But none of these things are the same thing, nor can exist without the other two. So your reply is pretty flippant. — apokrisis

Yet clearly since they are not the same thing, this means they have a different nature. And their nature cannot be completely dependent upon the relations between the three, since this would lead to an empty regress of relations: A's nature is dependent on B and C's, but B's nature is dependent on A and C's and C's nature is dependent on A and B's, but A's nature is dependent on B and C's so A's nature really is dependent on the relations between itself and B and C, but we don't know what A, B, or C even are to even begin to sort out anything.

I don't pretend to know what the big theory of everything is, so don't expect me to come up with a replacement theory. I just think your confidence is unwarranted as your theory isn't sufficient.

I would imagine a whole lot, but this doesn't answer my question: calling the most basic "something" irreducibly triadic is like saying the United States government is irreducibly triadic and also the most simple and basic thing in the country. The government is surely triadic, but it can also be dismantled into the three branches of government. Similarly, the Peircean sign can be reduced to sign, object, and interpretent - yet surely these three things are "things" in themselves, no?

So YOU can only understand a relation as another part. Yet how many things must you have to have a relation? I count a minimum of three ... even for the reductionist. — apokrisis

So as you say, a relation must have three parts. Are these parts themselves also triadic relations? If not, then what are they, exactly? How can we know what they are?

How am I supposed to understand a concept that is usually used in a reductive sense, like a relation, but is claimed to be non-reductive, irreducibly complex? How is it that "complexity" is not reducible to parts and yet maintains its identity as complexity? How is this still meaningful?