Well remember that Peircean pragmatism is distinguished by the fact that it does indeed generalise the notion of the perceived. So existence itself becomes a modelling relation - a kind of pansemiotic state of mind. — apokrisis

This is not very coherent to me, unfortunately. By saying existence is x, someone is inherently advocating a kind of monism. I know you call the relation irreducibly complex and triadic, but this means that existence is not basic, that there is "something more", "below" existence, that makes up the relation. A relation without parts makes no sense.

Similarly, let's say I argue the world is a giant cobweb. That is at least coherent, as I am saying that the world as a whole is structured so that it is a cobweb. The same thing applies to theories that make the universe an expanding sphere, or a tube, or whatever.

But when I say that existence itself is a giant cobweb, that is when things are not coherent. A giant cobweb is still an ontic substance that I can visualize. But I can't "visualize" existence. I can't predicate anything about it. This is exactly why Heidegger, when read charitably, can be seen as using difficult and obscure words simply because he was struggling to explain something that normally cannot be explained using language.

So when you say that existence itself is a modelling relation, this is using an ontic phenomenon to explain all ontic phenomenons. It's just ontic all the way down. That doesn't make sense.

So pansemiosis is the ontic argument that there is no such thing as "unperceived existence". And thus it fits with quantum physics and it's demand for "someone" to collapse the wavefunction. — apokrisis

But Peircean metaphysics says all that can happen is a separation of indeterminate possibility towards the complementary poles of the observer and the observables - the interpretation and its sign. It is a very different ontology.

And the proof of which ontology is right is in how fundamental science is turning out. Observeless worlds don't make much sense. — apokrisis

You have a lot more in common with speculative realism than you might think. The idea of ancestrality, ontic communication, metaphysical architecture, etc is all very important in it, and I believe some of them even take from Peirce as well.

What if we want to go beyond the ontic and pursue the status of the ontic itself? Ontic investigations are inherently tied to a human-world relation. But surely the human-world relation is "not all there is". Surely we must go "beyond" the human-world interaction and investigate what the world is actually like independent of perceivers, investigate what we mean by "Being", what the conditions are for intelligibility and how everything "falls into place" a la Sellars.

And of course there's also the potential that natural observations of the world will lead us to believe in something "more" to the natural order of things, something commonly seen as supernatural. Natural theology and even atheological metaphysics thus stems from general empirical observations and modality and creates a metaphysical order of things that is implicitly outside the order of the ontic and presentable; being qua being. Yet this goes against what a meta-philosophical eliminativist would believe. What makes it the case that such matters are outside of "direct" empirical study?

So it all keeps coming back to the "scientific method of reasoning". Or the modelling relation. We conceive of qualities. But that only makes sense if we are able to carry out acts of quantification. There is no such thing as a quality that can't be quantified. And so empiricism - for some reason much derided - is basic to philosophical thought. You can't talk intelligibly about the general if you can't successfully point to its proper instances. — apokrisis

If I am understanding correctly, you are saying that when I conceive of the color "red", I am not only conceiving of "red" but also a single (one) instance of "red"? That as soon as any concept reaches my sphere of awareness, there is already a number attached to it?

At any rate, there's the separate issue of how scientism fails to account for the poor ability of science to study certain things, at least at the current moment. It's one thing to say "science" (however we're describing it as) can "study everything", and another thing to say that it's actually recommended that we use this "science" to do this. To postpone inquiry simply because it's not able to be studied scientifically is an instance of unwarranted dogmatism and short-sightedness.

If we're talking about ethics, say, there doesn't seem to be a clear way of coming to terms with ethical answers that isn't suspiciously similar to how it's already being done in philosophy. Adding a brain scan to the mix is only going to supplement the process, not finish the process. The only test we know of for normativity is how we ourselves react to certain things in a normative way. Thus a "science of ethics" could only study how ethics is done, i.e. what conclusions ethicists produce (ethics as an anthropological phenomenon), but this is still not normative ethics. Only a kind of meta-ethics (re: moral psychology is on the rise in meta-ethics).

Or say we want to study the aesthetic under scientific means. In order to even study the aesthetic, we have to know what the hell the aesthetic even is. Thus ontology is fundamentally necessary to any other mode of inquiry. Attempting to do ontology purely by empirical means would be an exercise in wastefulness and tedium - surely it's conceivably possible, but practically impossible.

At the core of philosophy is the assumption that nature is intelligible. Rational inquiry can thus produce some kind of answer.

But from there, you get a major divergence. The very position that nature is intelligible leads "philosophically" - by the same dialectic method - to the counter position that existence is fundamentally irrational. Or contingent. Or whatever else is the rationally contradictory position that could be thus put forward as the stark alternative. — apokrisis

Yes, I suppose I agree with this. You have to be able to conceive of something in order to reject it.

I think you want a more mechanistic definition - one that rules the wrong stuff out. But I would prefer an organic approach that only cares about the general "growth of reasonableness" in human models of existence. — apokrisis

Well, I was attempting to construct a view that captures the modern scientistic views of many of the average Joes, which resembles a foundationalist approach (science is the bread and butter of everything). The idea that science can answer everything is simplistic, but I don't think it's problematic at the metaphysical sense, rather, simply the pragmatic sense. "Do not block the road of inquiry" as Peirce said. If we are serious about inquiry, then philosophy is something that is needed, not as a field with a subject matter itself but as a field that engenders subject matters and clarifies the notions of other fields.

Or, alternatively, we could just go the Deleuzean route and call philosophy the study and assimilation of concepts.

Raphi, to be clear, you are saying that pleasure is not independently good because it really is only the experience of being in a comparatively lesser suffering state?

What does it mean when you say that my experience of pleasure, or perhaps my mood of happiness, is actually just a form of suffering, albeit a lesser kind of suffering? How is it that I am "mistaken" by what I feel? Do you think it is plausible that I can be sunbathing on a beach in the Caribbean, drinking a margarita and reading Shakespeare and believe that I am feeling independently positive pleasure, and yet be mistaken in my belief, and actually suffering in all these forms of experience?

That is the issue here: belief.

But there's also other issues. In the OP, you refer to suffering as an "unpleasant" experience. Notice how you use the term "pleasant" with the "un" as a prefix. You could have used the word "hurt" or "painful", but you chose "unpleasant". The use of "unpleasant" means that there must be a meaning of "pleasant", but since you are arguing that any pleasant feelings are actually lesser-unpleasant feelings, neither pleasant nor unpleasant have any meaningful definitions. If pleasant feelings are simply lesser-unpleasant feelings, what does it even mean to be unpleasant, since pleasant is deemed to be equivalent to a form of unpleasantness. It seems as though you have a conception of pleasure, and know what it feels like, but wish to get rid of it anyway.

In other words, it seems that you recognize that people commonly believe they have independently pleasurable experiences, but wish to eliminate them by reducing them to lesser-unpleasant experiences.

And you later used the analogy to temperature, however this is also problematic, because temperature is an objective feature of reality whereas the experience of heat is subjective. Just as someone may have a million dollars and feel poor, someone else may get their first job and feel rich.

There's another issue here, a phenomenological one. Compare the experience of avoidance and pursuit. We avoid suffering and pursue pleasure. We do not simply avoid suffering. When I find something to be pleasurable, I do not tell myself "this sure is better than the alternative!" I tell myself "I sure am glad I'm able to experience this, it feels good!"

Are you attempting to argue that what we see as independently good experiences only look good when in comparison to our current state? If so, then this also runs into problems when one considers going into a worse state of experience. Consider: you have a splitting migraine, and suddenly get your arm broken. Clearly you went from a bad state to an even worse state. But then say you get your arm mended but you retain your migraine. You of course will call this a better state of experience, but surely you wouldn't forget about your migraine? Surely you would still have a migraine that is painful and hurts? Surely you wouldn't see the migraine as pleasurable?

Thus there seems to be a necessary threshold.

Perhaps, as you said earlier, the neurotransmitters act as a sort of "forget" function in the brain, so that we forget our needs. In the OP, you said that suffering is the phenomenal experience of needs. Therefore, if we forget our needs, we no longer suffer. Thus pleasurable experiences, far from simply being lesser-suffering experiences, are independently positive experiences that we feel when we do not have to worry about our needs. In fact this is similar to the Buddhist conception of bliss, which states that basically bliss is attainable when we stop striving. As soon as we simply be, bliss comes naturally and automatically.

Then there's also the issue where I have options to cease consciousness. I could take sleeping pills and go to bed, but I choose not to, because I want to stay awake because I enjoy doing the things I'm doing. And it's not that I feel suffering when I go to bed. There is a positive reinforcement going on here.

The biggest issue by far, though, is that you have to explain where we got the idea of an independently-arising pleasurable experience and how we believe we have them while in reality not ever getting such.

I'm curious as to what your reply might be. It seems you have a tall order in front of you - you must be able to defend the claim that all experiences are a form of suffering, even if we don't consider them to be sufferings.

I wouldn't say that suffering can obtain if it's not a present-to-consciousness state. — Terrapin Station

Exactly. Deprivationalism like this requires the holder to not only reduce pleasure to the activity of removing pain but eliminate the byproduct goodness as well. "How can everyone be so happy if all their experiences are just suffering?" It requires you to believe that people actually don't know what they are feeling. As soon as I start considering this I begin to feel as though an illusion might be slipping away - but surely this illusion is nevertheless something real?

I find it difficult to have an adverse reaction to something I enjoy. Probably because it's actually not suffering.

Well, my perception is far from over simplifying human experiences, and I don't deny that people live what they call independently-good experiences. (I just dont see them that way) In my perception, suffering manifest itself under many different forms, (all the possible feelings people would call negative), and the feelings people call positive would be explained by some periods of time where those forms of suffering would be less intense than normally. I don't understand why the presence of chemicals in the brain would refute my hypothesis. Can't these chemicals be the ones that makes you "forget" certains needs during a certain amount of time, which would fit nicely with what I say? — Raphi

You still have to refute the experience that something feels good. It's not just relief, it's positively independent good feelings. And it wouldn't be evolutionary advantageous for chemicals to make you forget needs, as needs would not be something we ought to forget about. Rather, these chemicals act as a reward mechanism for achieving some goal.

Imagine someone hooked up to an experience machine and is artificially fed dopamine hits, a reward mechanism in the brain. This is good feeling, independent of suffering. Or, consider pleasure to be similar to the heat released through friction. It is (usually) inherently tied to some form of striving, but it would be incorrect to identify pleasure with the reduction of suffering, just as it would be incorrect to identify the heat produced through friction with friction itself. It's something that is produced from friction.

It's one thing to say that positive experience is tied to the relieving of pain, i.e. pleasure is oftentimes reactionary to pain. It's a whole 'nuther thing to say positive experience is only the relief of pain. People aren't just reservoirs of negative experience. To ignore that independent positive experiences exist is to essentially believe that people are fundamentally mistaken about what positive experience is - positive experience is just "an illusion"; yet how can something like this be an illusion? How can we actually be so mistaken about something so personal to us and believe in something that, according to you, is actually impossible? By doing so you have reduced positive experience to nothing more than an absence of something else, when in reality nobody who isn't depressed actually considers their positive experiences to be merely an absence of bad, rather they consider it something independently good.

Think about it: why does someone like myself like music, or coffee, or walking my dog? Do I like it because I know it is an instance of suffering-reduction? Or do I like it because I like the nature of the experience, because the experience is actually good? Clearly I like to do things because I find them fun, entertaining, pleasurable. It's not just a reduction of suffering but an opportunity to be taken and enjoyed.

To deny this requires you to believe that all pleasure is a relief from a worse state of experience, and that we're "fooled" into believing this lesser-suffering state is "actually good" (yet where did this concept of an independently good feeling come from?)

But the same way temperature is just about the presence of energy, I think our feeling is just about the presence of suffering. The way you formulate it, it almost look like your perception of pleasure rely on faith more than reasonning, but I might be wrong. — Raphi

No, I think you're trying to reduce all human experience to the pleasure/pain dichotomy, which is crude and not the full picture.

If everything were suffering, then there would be no independently-good experiences. Deprivationalism 101. But this is too simplistic. Pleasure occurs when we get a dopamine hit, or a hit of serotonin or oxytocin or some of the less important neurotransmitters. This is wholly different than simply the absence of suffering.

What may be the case is that our satisfaction, our enjoyment, of life can only occur when we aren't suffering very much, in which case the positives outweigh the negatives. There's been countless psychological studies on this; there needs to be roughly five positive experiences to counteract a single negative experience of the same "intensity" so to speak.

Furthermore, the existence of moods and attitudes effectively rule out suffering as the "only thing". I don't really care too much about how much pleasure or pain I get, so long as I get them in satisfactory amounts, i.e. within a certain threshold.

No suffering is not "all there is" - evolution not only made pain to act as a motivating scheme but pleasure to counter this. If pain and striving and death were all there was to life, organisms would be more apt to kill themselves. There had to be some form of positive motivational scheme to keep organisms in a state of mind that expects and anticipates a positive experience, as a depressed and always anxious organism is not only likely to kill themselves but is also not very adept at maintaining a healthy existence in general.

That being said it does seem correct to me to say that the most pleasurable experiences are only able to be experienced when one is not suffering.

No, not God. That would be stupid. — apokrisis

And here I thought you were sympathetic to teleology ... ;)

Thanks fam, I'll get back to you.

So it is simple to see "the how" of biological, neurological and cultural complexity. There is more going on than just material dynamics. There is also the very different thing of symbolic regulation. — apokrisis

Apparently it's not as simple as you think, as there are still people who don't quite understand what you're talking about. Can you give an example as to why semiosis is necessary, and why material composition is not adequate? The only way information can be represented are by parts, no?

The tricky new thing is pan-semiosis - extending this metaphysics to existence in general. But it is hardly a secret that physics is undergoing its information theoretic revolution. — apokrisis

Can you give a specific example(s) of where this is happening instead of just asserting that it's public knowledge?

I mean what do you think an event horizon actually is? Is it matter? Is it information? Or is it really about a habitual relation between these two disjunct aspects of reality? — apokrisis

I have no idea, but "information" is meaningless without any form of predication.

Yep. So that is why a functioning whole needs the power of constraint over its parts. It must limit the freedom or indeterminism of its components to ensure they remain "the right kind of stuff". — apokrisis

But, again, how does it do this? Is this "power" somehow something "else" other than simply interactions between the parts of the whole? A network of causal powers can function together but I hesitate to actually call this limitation function a thing itself.

The parts can only construct a state of organisation. The whole has the opposite kind of causality in that it can constrain the state of organisation. — apokrisis

But what is this kind of causality dependent on? Presumably the arrangements of parts. All the parts working together create the illusion of emergence, the illusion that there is "something more" to the whole other than the sum of its parts.

Ascribing causal power to a whole seems to me to simply be a heuristic, and also oddly similar to the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation. According to the doctrine, the bread and wine is literally transformed into the flesh and blood of Christ, yet none of the features actually change (something I believe Peirce called "bullshit" essentially). Similarly, would the addition of "wholes" really change anything about how things work? What difference does it make if there actually is a whole that is greater than its parts?

If you want to call a set of parts working together a "system", I'm fine with that. But to add on to this and say that this "system" is something greater than its parts, I have issues with, because it's not clear to me how this "system" could possibly be "more" than its parts in any meaningful sense. All a system is, is a network of causal powers supplementing and contradicting each other to lead to an eventual outcome. Change the parts and the system changes. Indeed it would seem to be the case that the only way a system can change to begin with is if some of its parts change.

I misread your OP. I thought you meant "can I debate those entrenched in their views", not "can debate itself entrench people in their views?"

It's not even a complete sentence.

What's the question?

What?

Really? I thought scientists were more bigoted than philosophers. A lot of science types I have met seem to think that we can know everything there is to ever know and that we will find a theory of everything even despite me pointing out that they are a finite brain with limited computational resources. — intrapersona

Well don't go to scientists for philosophical advice. Fuck the modern trope that makes scientists out to be these omniscient gurus, the priests of knowledge and power. As if working in a laboratory makes you any more wise than anyone else.

This reminds me of the sectarianism in the churches hundreds of years ago that prohibited the manufacturing of literature etc. Bastards, just like scientists. Narrow minded pricks who think their interpretations are WIN. — intrapersona

I mean, I wouldn't say every single scientist is a narrow minded prick. In fact I would say that a vast majority of them are normal human beings who decided to be scientists out of curiosity, or perhaps some idealistic goal, only to be disappointed with the academic wall and the bureaucratic bullshit in the way of scientific advancement.

If science is about facts then who is doing the interpretation? Scientists? Aren't philosophers the masters of interpretation? — intrapersona

The truth is that there really isn't a turf war between science and philosophy, contrary to what those pop-science pricks make it seem. Actually, it's a fairly recent phenomenon for scientists to be dissociated with philosophy. Not to name drop but Einstein was heavily influenced by Kantian metaphysics, and thought highly of Schopenhauer as well. So were his contemporaries.

It's always philosophy + science that produces real results. Not everyone can be a genius and do both, so you need specialization. But with that you also need communication, something that seems to be lacking in today's academic world. Instead of isolating themselves, philosophers should be branching out to other fields, and instead of claiming superiority over everything, scientists (especially those annoying pop-science physicist pricks) should be less confident and more reflective.

Thomas Aquinas. He continues to impress me with his systems thinking. I'm not qualified enough to seriously criticize anything in his metaphysical system. He seems to have foreshadowed many future philosophical developments, and even his triad of the mind is strikingly similar to Peirce's theory of semiotics. Kant may be the best answer to Scholastics like Aquinas; not very contemporary Scholastics seem to really recognize Kant as a legitimate threat to their entire metaphysical enterprise.

However I do think Aquinas' ethics is more open for controversy. Natural law theory is unintuitive (to me) and reflects the attitude the Scholastics had at the time - the world was their oyster, ripe for the taking, and was also overflowing with teleology, thus making it easy to feel at home in the world. All you have to do is follow the telos of your natural kind and you'll do fine. I personally try to argue that this essentialist doctrine is nauseatingly oppressive, and puts the natural kind over individuality in terms of importance. I try to argue that part of the existential predicament of man is that he has no telos at all, thus teleological ethics are null. The ability to transcend effectively means humans no longer have a place in the immanent, where all the teleology is at.

I also take the route Kiekegaard and Nietzsche went and criticize how Aquinas seemed to think there was a universal purpose for humanity (what Nietzsche would have called nauseating, which I agree), and that his theological-metaphysics excludes personal experience, a la Kierkegaard's criticism of Hegelian systems. The idea that we'll all be part of some City of God (except for all the animals, cause fuck 'em) gives me a knee-jerk reaction of opposition.

That's the thing about system theories - they are intoxicatingly all-encompassing and yet oftentimes sideline other things in the process. They promise answers to everything and thus act as an intellectual crutch of sorts, the promise of a future complete understanding gives meaning and purpose to inquiry. In my case at least, devotion to an INCOMPLETE metaphysical system is fallacious and inauthentic.

It's also likely that Aquinas was pressured in some ways to synthesize Aristotelian metaphysics with Catholic dogma, which, unless Catholicism is "correct", means Aquinas essentially bastardized Aristotelian metaphysics.

G. E. Moore and his common-sense intuitionist philosophy.

"Here is one hand, and here is another, therefore there are at least two external objects, therefore an external world exists."

How the hell is this even an argument?!

Can't that be said for all academia though? Usually after you studied you are so specialized that it makes no sense to make it public to people because they don't understand. That is the essence of why we create groups in the first place, to gather with people who know all the relevant information on how to be a klu klux klan etc. — intrapersona

Every discipline has it's esotericism. It's just that philosophy, especially analytic philosophy, tends to be almost entirely esoteric. It's meaningless, worthless, and an Other to those who have never studied it.

Seriously, the analytic metaphysicians have some good stuff but it's also almost entirely separated from any relevant scientific inquiry. This means two things:

1.) There is no communication between the relevant sciences, especially physics and the biological sciences, and philosophy, specifically metaphysics.

2.) Because of this, metaphysical questions might be better suited for science, or relevant scientific theories are not being taken in account when metaphysicians "work".

Problems arise when you think you know everything and you actually don't. We see this on both sides and it's only really not a problem when you are knowledgeable and active in both philosophy and the relevant sciences. Philosophy divorced from science is pure, unaided speculation without natural constraints (it can come across more like intellectual art than actual inquiry; everyone tries to make the most aesthetically pleasing or excitingly surprising theory, even if it's outlandish), and science divorced from philosophy makes it crude and dogmatic.

There's philosophy of religion, but not religion of philosophy.

8-)

It seems you can have non-futile actions if a futile universe. What sense does it even make to call a universe futile though? If it has no purpose, then it is futile. I doubt we can find out the answer to that so the best we can do is imagine both states where it is futile and where it isn't and decide what the differences are. — intrapersona

I wouldn't say the universe itself is futile. Maybe it could be argued that it has a knack at creating futility. Or in a more absurdist light, the universe is programmed to maximize irony. Ha!

Actions, processes, goals, those sorts of things are futile, again in terms of a limiting context.

So does having a broken leg. Berating yourself over it won't make it any better, would it? — Question

Ignoring it doesn't really work either.

I don't mind analytic philosophy, in fact I study it often. It's just that it has the tendency to create over-specialization and cottage industries: professional philosophers writing for professional philosophers. Nobody else, except the oddball like myself who takes a glance at their work. Analytic philosophy, especially metaphysics and epistemology, is largely irrelevant to other fields and society at large.

Why should anyone 'suffer' from depression? — Question

Cause it sucks?!

but I find it fairly difficult to find those people who are interested and have the time. — Bitter Crank

I'm still looking. :s

Philosophers are a bunch of oddballs.

Last time I checked I was a classical liberal.

if you were asked to explain philosophy to someone who didn't know much about it... where would you start? — anonymous66

Yes, so long as they seem genuinely interested. When discussing philosophy with some friends a few months back, the topic came up: what even is philosophy? All sorts of answers (it's how you live!, it's like science but less cool!, it's kinda stupid!) were given until I, the great darthbarracuda, laid waste to the terrain and enlightened everyone with my unquestionably superior view, that philosophy is rational speculation into the nature of the world and humanity's relationship to it.

Many heads nodded in agreement and two days later I received an envelope in the mail asking if I wished to be the head lecturer at my university's philosophy department. I declined, of course, because I won't support the nihilistic regime known as contemporary analytic philosophy.

This is 100% true.

I'm going to be polemical here and say the people who are socially conservative and "religious" are not typically seen as the sharpest tool in the shed.

I won't deny that you can be very intelligent and be religious and socially conservative. But I will affirm that, at least in my experience, encounters with people of this dual nature tends to leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Both positions may be reasonable but from my own experiences the vast majority of participants are not.

In fact, now that I think about it, the same applies to the opposite spectrum. There are some really stupid liberal atheists.

No, I tend to keep to myself in regards to philosophy. Philosophical discussions with those who don't have a background in philosophy nor take the material seriously are usually disappointing in depth and field.

Futility is a limitation in terms of something else. Fighting a one-man revolution is an exercise in futility, for example. Trying to bring back the dead is futile. Proving God's existence on pure reason alone is an exercise in futility, despite what some super-sophisticated theologians might pretend to know.

Not everything is futile so long as it's described within a context that makes action worthwhile.

But if we're talking about the state of the world, where it's going, where we are going as a species, what we're doing and why we're doing it in the first place, all within a broad, existential cosmic context, then I would say it's pretty obvious that we spend a great deal of effort fighting the unstoppable force of entropy. That surely is futility.

The Sartreian leap into freedom, as I interpret it, involves accepting the absurd irrational character of life, as you put it. This is liable to give you the nausea of the novel's title, an existential despondency; it's only by the existential leap of choice, of decision, however absurd, that one makes oneself, and thereby makes one's contribution to making the world. — mcdoodle

Bennington does comprehensively show, however, that Kierkegaard's meaning was about 'folly' or foolishness not 'madness', a conclusion which has its own ramifications. — mcdoodle

I can't see how else we are to describe such an existentialist leap of faith, though, apart from irrational, absurd "madness". There has to be a good reason for why we ought to continue living. Otherwise why else should we continue living? Why take the leap of faith, why live absurdly?

Camus attempts an irrational reason for continuation - the aesthetic of a survivor, of a rebel. But this is surely irrational, as a revolutionary would not rationally choose to fight the government on his own. Playing a losing game or a highly risky game is similarly just plain stupid.

I say keep the likes away from here. I agree with , a voting system fucks everything up. It subconsciously influences people's decision-making.

If we have to bring back the like system, make it transparent so that only those receiving the likes are notified. Nobody really needs to know how popular an opinion is.

In that case they have a diagnosable mental illness. Crazy wishes are best suppressed with a little Thorazine. — Bitter Crank

Who gets to decide whose wishes are crazy?

Or what about the Platinum Rule: treat others how they want to be treated. Simple.

I fucking love Egypt.