Why should suffering not be called an illusion in the same way for the same reason? — who

I think mostly because suffering illuminates our existential condition while happiness clouds our knowledge of it. We cannot be happy while actually confronting the void.

So I can say that the suffering if the poor and ostracised individual "isn't that bad" because someone else is being tortured on the otherwise of the world? That's just dishonesty.

Suffering isn't defined on some level of scale acceptability. "Worse" or "less" suffering do not define each other. A person who hurts defines the instance of either. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well, no. But when we have to make a decision, someone's suffering being worse than another person's makes them of moral priority. My disappointed wish to own a new car does not compare to the starving African child. In these cases, there's a trade-off - a lesser evil, if you may.

But that's not true. Going extinct isn't a fake victory over future suffering. It's actual. In such a world, there is no longer anyone who suffers. In acting to go extinct, we have achieved this world. We've played the game and, in terms of the world after we are dead, won a victory. — TheWillowOfDarkness

We did not win, because we do not exist anymore. The universe forced our hand.

I'd also be more pissed if I had a headache and someone insisted I wasn't in pain at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Would you be pissed if someone passed up the opportunity to help you in order to help someone who had broken their leg? That's what I'm referring to here. Sacrifices. The fact that we have to make sacrifices is an element of pessimism.

If recognising the existence suffering is of no use, then it has no ethical relevance. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Recognizing the existence of suffering and coming to terms with it is the first step to doing something about it. If you care about suffering, you'll do something about it.

What you might be talking about just keeps getting muddier to me. — apokrisis

The late E.J. Lowe, Jonathan Schaffer, Tuomas Tahko, Ted Sider, Susan Haack, Michael J. Loux, the late David Lewis, Peter van Inwagen, Timothy Williamson, Amie Thomasson, Sally Haslanger, David Chalmers, Kit Fine, D. M. Armstrong, Trenton Merricks, Eli Hirsch, Ernest Sosa, Daniel Korman, Kathrin Koslicki, Jaegwon Kim, etc.

The analytics.

It's hard to be particular because the ways of expressing the generalised confusion of romanticism are so various. But anything panpsychic like Whitehead, or aesthetic like SX cites. I don't mind theistic approaches because they stick to a Greek framework of simplicity and so can deal with the interesting scholarly issues - right up to the point where God finally has to click in. — apokrisis

You read Heidegger, Husserl, the idealists?

Also, contemporary realist metaphysics is largely concerned with ontology and not with the broader metaphysical stories. It's far more conservative than your version of metaphysics, with the only notable things I can think of being discussions of supervenience, grounding, causality and semantic meaning. And perhaps time.

Your didn't talk about any of that. The comments were directed at how the suffering of the childless family wasn't as bad as they felt it was. In that you aren't making an argument that doing something else is more important. All you were doing is trying to placate them, to say they don't really suffer as they feel.

You weren't stepping forward and saying with honesty: "You ought not have children. The ethical course of action is the agent of your suffering and it ought to be (and so your terrible suffering) to save future life from suffering." Everything went into belittling their suffering rather than recognising it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Everything went into "belittling" their suffering in order to recognize the existence of a much worse suffering.

But does not the required moral action qualify as an acceptable condition? At least in the way you describe it. The way you speak treats "minimisation" is as if it's a victory over suffering. In the way you describe suffering, you fear it above all else-- if only life would be put to end, then we could finally say the world was at its best. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Well I wouldn't call it a victory - I mean extinction doesn't really sound very victorious to me. But rather it's just the most rational action after coming to terms with our raw deal.

Think of how Nietzsche saw the under-man sneak his morality into the social sphere and thus "winning" over the ubermensch. It's a fake-victory. Similarly, ceasing procreation and going into extinction is not really victory, it's just deciding not to play the game.

A sort of deep necessity for a world without suffering, to a point where one might say: "With the presence of suffering, life is meaningless." — TheWillowOfDarkness

Life is meaningless with or without suffering, suffering just brings this fact out.

I think this is failed pessimism because it causes a turn away from suffering. Since any suffering person is viewed as meaningless wretch for living in suffering, it's more interested in looking to a final "minimising" than it is instances of suffering themselves. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Acknowledging the existence of suffering does not help anyone. If you had aspirin and I had a headache, and you refused to give me aspirin, I'd be pissed.

So on the contrary, I'm very much pessimistic because I believe our dreams will never be fulfilled, that happiness is an illusion, and that our best-course of action is extinction, something that is not very inspiring and yet the most reasonable reaction to our predicament. A fizzle-out philosophy.

I'd still like to know what you think are examples of bad metaphysics.

How is that the statement of a philosophical pessimist who full appreciates the nature of suffering? You've just given every "Suck it up. It's not so bad." excuse philosophical pessimism is trying to expose. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Because I'm also a consequentialist, and I think some actions are worse than others depending on what their consequences are. So I'm not dismissing the suffering of the potential parents, I just don't think it's as important as stopping the creation of future sufferers.

I would be willing to argue that it is indeed a byproduct of pessimism that we have to sacrifice things even though they make us suffer. Suffering is inescapable.

How exactly is a course of action which is suffering for someone helping them? — TheWillowOfDarkness

Would it remove a worse suffering? Like I said, suffering is inescapable. No matter what you do, someone, perhaps yourself, is going to suffer. We have to pick the course of action that minimizes the suffering that results, not because suffering is some impersonal and vague bad but because we inherently understand what suffering is like and wish it to not be spread.

Minimisation is a lie. It foolishly generalises suffering. Supposedly, there is a certain level of suffering which is acceptable. If only we would "minimise" suffering to a certain level, then it would be all okay-- a suffering-based Utilitarianism if you will. But it's not okay. All instances of suffering are unacceptable. We cannot generalise them into some rule which absolves the problem. Every single instance of suffering hurts too much. We cannot "minimise"-- prevent to get suffering down to an acceptable standard-- only "prevent," avoid individual instances of suffering. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But now you're putting words in my mouth. I never said that suffering itself was acceptable, only that the action that minimizes suffering is acceptable (and rational).

Minimization need not necessitate acceptable conditions. Only required moral actions.

As I've already said, I see metaphysics and science as united by a common method of reasoning - the presumption the world is intelligible because it is actually rationally structured in a particular way. — apokrisis

What is this particular way? The semiotic trifold?

And I am afraid we do see that other showing its Bizzaro head and claiming to be doing Bizzaro metaphysics (and also crackpot science, of course). — apokrisis

Again, you have any examples?

But still, if we are talking about who is best equipped to do metaphysical-strength thinking these days, that is a different conversation. — apokrisis

I'd wager probably those who have a background in both science and philosophy, and the history of both.

But yes, I am saying something much stronger than merely that romanticism does not fit easily with rationalism. I'm saying it is the maximally confused "other" of rationalism. — apokrisis

Do you have any examples of this?

WTF? Have you ever taken a biology class? Are you so completely unaware of the impact that science's understanding of constraints has had on metaphysics? Next you will be saying Newton and Darwin told us a lot about falling apples and finch beaks, and contemporary philosophy shrugged its shoulders and said "nah, nothing to see here folks". — apokrisis

It might have had a great affect on your particular conception of metaphysics - again, we're having a meta-philosophical debate here, and your version of metaphysics is not automatically the gold standard. Analytic metaphysics today is largely independent of these kinds of debates, although definitely evolution poked a hole in Aristotle's natural kind ideas.

It's true that those employed in philosophy departments struggle to produce anything much that feels new these days. The real metaphysics of this kind is being done within the theoretical circles of science itself. The people involved would be paid as scientists. — apokrisis

Bingo. They are to be considered scientists. Theoretical physics. Why not just call it this and eliminate the confusion?

What legitimate differences are there between your conception of metaphysics and theoretical physics?

I think you may just have an idea that science is somehow basically off track and you need a metaphysical revolution led by philosophers to rescue it. — apokrisis

On the contrary I think most scientists don't really care about philosophical problems, at least not enough to publish anything substantial about it and instead stick to what they were trained to do. Nobody pays you to think about the world, they pay you for results that can be applied to the economy in some way, and everyone's gotta pay the bills. Of course they can, and have done so, especially in the beginning of the 20th century. I just don't see this happening today.

That's the transcendent fiction talking. In this understanding, you are ignoring the suffering of the living and treating like the absence of future suffering solves the problem. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I don't see how I am. People are suffering, and they will continue to do so while they are alive. It's akin to taking an aspirin for a headache. You remove the source of suffering.

What of the people desperate to have children? An anti-natalist policy only makes them suffer. Even as a personal responsibility, for it would be akin to someone denying an integral part of their identity-- how would you feel if you felt an obligation not to be a philosophical pessimist, yet still had the same feelings about suffering? — TheWillowOfDarkness

The suffering they experience from not having children does not, necessarily, make up for them having children. Furthermore they wouldn't suffer themselves if they hadn't been born, or had they died earlier. And if death or non-birth is too extreme for this situation, then not having children must not be that big of a deal.

The end of life being a preferable/rational option doesn't help their suffering, no matter how ethical it might be. — TheWillowOfDarkness

It doesn't help their suffering, but it certainly would help them.

Suffering cannot be minimised. Any instance of suffering is too great. Not even the absence of any future suffering can help. If we are to prevent suffering, it's not as an absolution or minimising of suffering which is occur. Rather, it is about preventing the instances of suffering themselves. — TheWillowOfDarkness

While I basically agree, I'm also a consequentialist. Suffering can indeed be minimized. The instance of one person suffering is better than the instance of two people suffering. It would be wrong to pick the latter option if you had the choice. So we can indeed, and should, minimize suffering, because suffering is bad. Elimination is also a form of minimization.

I don't see why we need to make a distinction between prevention and minimization. They're two sides of the same coin.

Suffering is not absolved in death, only prevented from occurring again. Our end does not provide a transcendent victory over suffering. Those who lived still had horrible lives. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This same reasoning could be applied to birth - suffering is not absolved by abstaining from procreation, only prevented from inflicting it's harm. Part of pessimism like you said is that there is no transcendent, victorious solution to the problem. Only more preferable/rational options that minimize the problem. We can minimize the problem so that it no longer is problematic to anyone and is only a problem in a counterfactual, aesthetic view.

So everything reason does, Romanticism would want to do the opposite. — apokrisis

I don't really understand what you have in mind when you say "romanticism" or "PoMo". Do you not appreciate Spinoza, Descartes, Husserl, Heidegger, etc? Only some? Only those who aren't easily fitted into your pragmatism?

Yes, the business of measurement is various.

But I thought you were saying there are other methods of seeking intelligibility itself - methods that aren't just the general method of scientific reasoning. — apokrisis

Well, yes and no. If measurement is the only way of understanding the world (what I see as empiricism), then either is must be shown how philosophy utilizes measurement, or it must be seen with skepticism.

Outside of measurement, I'm not sure. Surely we need some kind of cognitive architecture to be able to even measure to begin with, something Aristotle, Aquinas, or Plato would have called the Intellect/Soul/Mind/etc.

Usually philosophy utilizes things like counterfactual reasoning, thought experiments, etc. Other fields use these as well. These are generally "fuzzy" in their nature, though. When a philosopher thinks up something like, let's say, Neo-Platonism, it's extremely abstract and fuzzy.

If it can be modelled, then presumably it can be theoretically seen in action, i.e. able to be measured. Metaphysical things, on other hand, seem to be able to be at least conceptualized but never actually seen outside of how they manifest in other things. For example, you can't imagine a "constraint" without associating this with various other things, whether that be a metaphorical image of a fence, or a set of numerals, or anything else. Similarly, we can't imagine a "property" without associating this with an object. We can't imagine "God", we can only know what he isn't. We can't imagine what these metaphysical "forces" (that structure reality) by-themselves - if we could, then a physicist or some other scientist would be studying them as a specimen in-themselves.

In other words, a constraint is a totally different kind of thing from a zebra. The latter is studied by biologists, the former (as it is-itself) the metaphysician.

Nope. That seems an utterly random statement to me. Do you have an example of current metaphysics papers of this kind? — apokrisis

I'm referring to contemporary realist analytic metaphysics.

There's different methods within this broad "scientific" account you presented. If you're an astronomer, you'll use a telescope. If you're a microbiologist, you'll use a microscope. If you're a chemist, you'll use a thermometer and a plethora of other expensive equipment; same goes for practically any scientific field.

So I guess what matters here, then, is the subject matter. Different subjects require different equipment, methods, specialization, etc. The point being made, though, is what exactly is the subject matter of philosophy, in particular metaphysics, that makes it a legitimate attempt to understand the world, and why this subject matter is usually unable to be studied by more..."mainstream" science.

We can be realists here and go Aristotelian, and say that metaphysics studies being qua being, or being itself. The most general attempt to understand the world. But as it is currently practiced today, metaphysics is quite different from any other sciences. It doesn't have to go out and explore the world like all the other sciences do. There aren't really any "discoveries" within metaphysics, just explanations of what we already see on a day-to-day basis. Why is it that this field is such a black sheep?

It is a faulty binary to go about saying science is empirical, philosophy is rational, therefore the two are mutually exclusive. Sure, you can advance that theory of the world in a way that makes it intelligible for you. But measurement should demonstrate the faultiness of such reason.

You yourself just said Schopenhauer was a rather empirical chap. And science is a deeply metaphysical exerercise, explicit in making ontic commitments to get its games going.

So you are applying the method by which we attempt to achieve intelligibility - trying to force through some LEM based account of the world. But you are failing to support it with evidence. — apokrisis

I'm not trying to separate philosophy and science per se, merely point out that there seems to be more than one method of understanding the world. In other words, what I'm trying to access here is a systematic understanding of how we come to understand the world in the first place. Surely it is not as simple as the naive realist "self-object" dichotomy, but requires at least a third instance, or perhaps a transcendental element if we are non-realists.

Preventing suffering does nothing to make the suffering which has already occurred better. For anyone who has suffered, the world is still just as bad as it ever was. Suffering is still unresolved where it counts. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But the spirit of preventing future suffering can make sure something that happened in the past does not happen again. The universe does not keep score, when someone dies, all their memories die with them. The suffering that occurred, the injustice and obscenity, all of this goes away after death. Forgotten.

Camus' rebellion would be a pseudo-solution, though. What would make life already meaningful?

You should read The Last Messiah. It's a short essay available online outlining his metaphysical views on all this. Humans require meaning in a meaningless universe.

Yes, indeed, pain is not equivalent to suffering. But pain without meaning (amongst other factors) constitutes suffering. Zapffe touched on this: humans have a metaphysical concern for meaning that their environment cannot give. All meaning is thus contrived, artificial, and a pseudo-solution, and thus everything we do can be seen as a way of escaping our higher-level concerns. If that doesn't count as suffering, or at least something undesirable, I don't know what would, other than extreme pain.

We can replace "predominantly" with "structurally necessary" and get the same general conclusion, albeit a more aesthetic one. Although I think it's largely both.

There is no warrant for claiming that life predominately consists in, or must predominately consist in, suffering for others. — John

The point of phenomenology is not to evaluate your own personal experiences but to make a science of consciousness, i.e. to create a generalized account of conscious experience/presentation. I think it's clear that life has suffering, what is the issue is whether it is predominantly suffering.

If you count aesthetic disillusionment and spiritual decay as suffering, then yes, the un-manipulated life is indeed filled with suffering.

Your namesake was a philosopher and yet his evaluations of the human condition were more empirical than anything else. It is an empirical issue whether or not organisms experience boredom, or suffer, or how they experience desire.

Schopenhauer was not alone in this kind of empirical-philosophical reasoning. Existential questions seem to be empirical - a point that IIRC Brassier pointedly advocates. It's just that empiricism is now dominated by science. And so these kinds of questions and answers must be undertaken by science. But I think the part that makes it philosophy is knowing where to look, i.e. identifying problems and having the gall to do so.



What strikes me as odd is that in modern philosophy you get philosophers who have carved their own little intellectual realm in which they get to study while everyone else waits outside, as if reality itself is actually structured this way as well. Lots of reactionary metaphysicians today are apt to call certain questions "ontologically metaphysical", or outside of the realm of empiricism and science, and only a priori intuitions can even attempt to solve these issues. Now I'm skeptical of science alone being able to answer these questions, as if it can operate without a rudimentary metaphysical structure, but what remains to be shown is why this is the case - that is to say, why some questions are empirical and other apparently not.

What would seem to be the case, then, is that many of these philosophical insights are produced through reasoning "shortcuts" rather than a specific methodology that you see in the special sciences.

Right, so pain is not equivalent to suffering.

So science has no epistemology? Gee, that's news to me. — apokrisis

If it is indeed the case that science has an epistemology, then this just further shows how philosophy is a separate and prior domain.

The good is not constrained by our abilities or the environment.

Really? — Sapientia

Indeed.

Can you please elaborate? — Sapientia

See here.

and no argument can rule out the possibility that there are other goods which we can affirm that have nothing to do with our lives. — The Great Whatever

Indeed, I have wondered about this myself. What if there is a non-agential good that really ought to be cultivated?

To everyone else who calls themselves a virtue ethicist or any non-consequentialist: I have problems with virtue ethics (or any other non-consequentialist ethics) as it makes it seem as though you need to have a person breathing down your neck for you to help them. As a consequentialist, it doesn't matter to me where or when something good or bad is happening. Whether it's down the street or in the savanna of Africa, there's no difference, it's still happening. In my opinion, if you care about something, and I mean legitimately care about something, then you'll do something about it. I can't understand how people can reasonably say they despise, say, suffering, and yet not do anything about it, as if recognizing that it exists is "good enough". If you don't do anything about suffering, you either don't care, or you don't actually consciously understand how important suffering is. Being a "nice person" in my opinion does not cut it for moral obligations, although perhaps it's the best we have for legal obligations.

essimism might be described as a negative emotional or presumptive reaction — VagabondSpectre

On the contrary, philosophical pessimism is a term meant to capture the realism of thinkers that others would label as pessimistic.

Minimum morals are the laws you have in your community. Laws pertaining to theft, murder, assault, etc. Typically they tell you what you cannot do, although they also tell you what you must do, like pay taxes, or go a certain speed limit.

Why this is the case is because humans are not perfect and cannot be expected to be moral saints.

The government should, in my opinion, make the laws that constitute the minimum moral expectations of a citizen. Even if being a moral saint is unattainable, there should be laws that lay out, within a reasonable limit, the minimal requirements.

The "problem" with pessimism (life is essentially bad) is, in my view, that it lives in a state of contradiction. If life is bad, then suicide looks like the only consistent and heroic move. — who

Indeed, it is, but this also falls into the Tu quoque fallacy. Life is problematic, and even Cioran himself wondered why he hadn't killed himself yet. But this is merely a problem of will, not a problem of doctrine.

Not officially but I've worked on some sketches.

I think naturalistic moral realism isn't very convincing. And I'm not a theist or mystic. So I'm not too sure about moral realism in general. But what I am leaning towards is aesthetic realism, or the reality of perfection. And I think morality shares some things with this aesthetic realism.

What led you to such a seemingly robust teleology? — Thorongil

Well, nothing else I could think of really made as much sense.

Although, you do say "would be." Does this mean you doubt it can be achieved? — Thorongil

Yes, I doubt it can be achieved. In fact I think aesthetically-authentic eudaimonia is impossible - a full understanding of the world is not compatible with eudaimonia. Whether this leads to suicide is something I'm not quite sure about, although some like Zapffe thought suicide was a natural death from spiritual causes.

If it's not perfect enough to start, can it be enough to continue? What difference does it make?

Hmm, so what are you proposing eudaimonia as, if not an ethic? — Thorongil

Eudaimonia would be the only perfect experience, and thus the only perfectly good experience. The attainment of all goals, or the anticipation of doing so. The feeling of power over one's environment, instead of being controlled by it. It's the one experience that you can reflect upon and be able to say without a doubt that it is a positive experience, uncorrupted and pure.

What is nothing-ness in this case? Suicide or simply lack of any concern/pain? — schopenhauer1

Nothing-ness is the lack of experience, whether that be by the non-existence of agents, sleep, meditation, etc.

But I deem compassion, not happiness, as the basis of morality, and compassion can sometimes only occur when someone is suffering. Perhaps this makes me a suffering focused ethicist (though I am no utilitarian). — Thorongil

I wouldn't say you're a suffering-focused ethicist, more like a suffering-prioritizing ethicist. I agree that compassion is the source of morality, in addition to the fact that eudaimonic individuals are self-sufficient and therefore not in need of our assistance.

And what makes it better? Not suffering? Perhaps I missed it. If one is feeling pleasure, then one is by definition not suffering, so what, beyond pleasure, is necessary for eudaimonia? — Thorongil

When I said "pleasure by itself" I meant more like "look! there's pleasure, it must be a good state of affairs!" when this is clearly not correct since pleasure and pain can exist simultaneously.

If I remember correctly, Nietzsche never explicitly endorsed eternal recurrence. He merely used it as a thought experiment.

Yes, philosophy has had a major impact in my life. It has changed it radically and filled a gap that I had previously sensed was missing and could not be filled by science or irrational religious practices. It has made me appreciate how little I know, and even more so how much I depend on the actions of others before me.

Unfortunately many times I end up becoming obsessed with one specific topic and it's difficult to sense when I've stopped doing philosophy and have started an obsessive-compulsive cycle.