So I would think from this, I could hold that life is necessarily objectively meaningless and crappy, but still be able to rationally assert that I do have a subjective reason for living (possible reasons might include preaching the gospel of suffering, enlightening the foolish, happy optimists, hastening the arrival of the end times, or maybe just being a decent person to other persons trapped in the same hell-hole as I am) — Sinderion

The point I was trying to make is that without these subjective reasons, would you kill yourself or have the desire to kill yourself? If so, then I there's no argument here.

If not, then something is keeping you from embracing non-existence. Something good. I'm hesitant in making assumptions of people, but I assume you aren't solely devoted to the reasons above and probably aren't suicidal. If you aren't suicidal, then this means that the things life has thrown at you haven't been great enough to break your spirit, and that you have other positive attachments keeping you from intentional death. Like I said before, it's difficult to say that life isn't good enough to be born into but is good enough to continue to experience, at least for yourself.

I guess the bottom line here is: were you glad you were born? How can one be glad they were born and yet also believe it was not worth starting based upon objective features of life (and not other arguments like risk)?

Value here is a measurement of accumulated experience. — Bitter Crank

What if you lose your memory? Are you no longer valuable?

A bad experience (like having a burning marshmallow stuck to one's fingers) enriches one's life despite the pain. — Bitter Crank

These little pains are something to shrug off and laugh about after with your friends.

But something like cancer is not. If you survive, you went through a tremendous amount of turmoil and doubt. If you didn't survive, well...you didn't survive. What part of cancer enriches a person's life? What good part of cancer is not just placed upon it in a post-hoc manner?

Rather, it is a sort of aesthetic outlook. Pessimism is the recognition of the instrumentality of existence. Our world imposes on us our survival needs and unwanted pain in certain environmental and cultural constraints. Our individual wills impose upon ourselves the need to transform boredom into goals and pleasures. Being that we can never have true satiation, we are always in flux and never quite getting at anything in particular. — schopenhauer1

Interesting, I hadn't really considered this perspective. It seems to lead to the view that something can be worthwhile while simultaneously dependent upon something nasty, leading to a disillusionment. Kind of like eating cake: it's really good, but it's also really bad for you.

Definitely rings true to me, and could be an answer to the thread I recently created.

tgw's quote inspired me to make a different thread.

lol True Detective was kinda the catalyst that drove me to look into pessimistic literature. Although I think sooner or later I would have stumbled upon these philosophies. Sometimes corny but overall a great show.

Realism about metaphysical questions just means that they are legitimate questions, not semantic ones. I believe that questions about time, composition, universals, persistence, etc are legitimate questions and cannot be reduced to language as deflationary theorists claim.

Welcome to the club my friend.

Nah what Wikipedia said isn't what I was talking about. I meant Karen Bennett's epistemicism - realism about metaphysical questions but skeptical of any answers to them, because they are empirically equivalent and theoretical virtues are meaningless. Thus there is no good reason to choose one position over the other.

It's edgy?

It's a tricky thing. You mentioned, justifiably, that anecdotal 'I know a..." accounts don't mean much. I have a whole bundle of personal women-who-self-sacrificed anecdotes but these will, inevitably, be chalked up as exceptions, falsifications, romanticizations.

But the flip-side of that, is how do you defend the idea that women, for the most part, deeply hate men, without resorting yourself to anecdotes?

Does it come down to whoever can rally the most anecdotes for their cause?

Where does your insight into the female soul come from? — csalisbury

(Y)

It means a philosophical theory and its competitors are empirically equivalent.

I smell an epistemicist.

Though I don't like the kind of smug dismissal that implies since something can be psychoanalyzed it's therefore illegitimate. Why can't someone own up to, and defend, their neuroses? — The Great Whatever

They can. We usually call that bigotry.

At the end of the day, a woman sees you as something that, if her life were in danger, you would be expected to lay down and die so she could live. I think that's the bottom line, the brass tacks. You can wax about equality all you want when you're safe and nothing matters, but when it comes right down to it and the masks are taken off, who takes the bullet?

There are pretty disturbing convictions lying beneath people's everyday actions. It takes a little prod to bear them out. — The Great Whatever

No, only some women think this.

And psychodynamic theory is mostly bullshit, especially when done by unprofessionals.

I think women genuinely and deeply hate men. — The Great Whatever

Wowowowowow this is one hell of a silly thing to say.

There are some women who hate men. And there are some men who hate women. And then there's most people who only hate those who are mean, men and women alike.

People are still just as racist as they ever were, btw -- and people become increasingly racist as they're forced to live in close quarters with other ethnic groups. I live in Chicago and this city has absolutely disgusting race relations, it's just a foul city. — The Great Whatever

But not you, right? You're not racist. I'm not racist. Apparently we're not part of the "people".

People are afraid to say it, don't care if it's swept under the rug, because only when women die or feel pain is it bad. But no, war first and foremost kills men. Everything first and foremost kills men. — The Great Whatever

Sounds more like a cultural thing than anything else. Men indeed are seen as more expendable than women. But this can be changed, just as the racism of the nation has also been radically changed for the better.

Heh. I doubt it. — The Great Whatever

No, really, it was good. Chocolate syrup, sprinkles, a banana, all with three scoops of vanilla ice cream. Perfect snack for a hot summer night, only tainted by the ever-present understanding of our existential conditions.

I don't know, man, I think you might be a little depressed and unable to experience pleasure independent of pain. It's inconceivable to you.

I myself am depressed. But I just ate a bowl of ice cream. That was nice. I'm going to a concert tomorrow. That'll be dope. What I'm not currently experiencing is an overwhelming amount of pressure or pain. And if I am, then I'm just kind of used to it and have accepted it as part of my deck of cards. It's really not that bad, but it's not fantastic either.

Clearly there's an asymmetry between pleasure and pain. It may be difficult to characterize, but I'm convinced that the latter is in some sense the servant of the former. In order to augment pain, having a carrot on a stick (pleasure) helps. — The Great Whatever

Of course. Pleasure is contingent upon structural imperfections. But it nevertheless is pleasure independent of the relief it often accompanies. Which is why the river allowing you a couple gasps of air is not a sufficient analogy. Pleasure motivates continual existence, pain forces it.

If Schopenhauer's metaphysics is untenable, what else could explain the problems of life?

The problem with Schopenhauer's metaphysics, and the metaphysics of any rationalist philosopher it seems, is that it takes the human condition as an example of the entire enterprise of existence. The problems of human existence may be like a pimple on the overall purity of the world.

However, even if we take a naturalistic perspective on this (by naturalistic I mean scientific-oriented, especially in regards to physics...if apokrisis from old PF were reading this thread he'd be having a nightmare), we still need to explain why human existence seems so bad.

It will not do to impose a metaphysical picture of the world that contradicts or does not take into account the human condition. That would mean ignoring the most personal and obvious while being committed to a potentially unknowable doctrine.

Basically, we need to have a manifest image of humanity. We can say that humanity gradually evolved out of other species of organisms. We can say that life is a result of entropy-dissipation. We can say that the universe was created 7+ billion years ago.

But none of these by themselves explains why human existence is the way it is. It does not explain why we feel so much suffering, boredom, angst. So what is it?

I think it's the human mind. Being able to reflect, contemplate, predict, and critically examine things leads not only to a greater ability to survive but a crippling defect as well (Zapffe).

So I think, from a naturalistic perspective, it's not that the world is malevolent or malignantly uncaring, but that some of the residents of the world are aliens to it. This, of course, still begs the question as to how and why these residents became aliens. Which I believe is why Schopenhauer thought the only explanation of this was that life was a kind of cosmic punishment. And we're right back to rationalism.

(there are just enough breaths that the river gives you to believe that pulling your head above water is a sot of 'gift' that the river gives you, notwithstanding it's the river drowning you to begin with). — The Great Whatever

Romantic as this may be, it fails to explain pleasure. Deprivationalism is incoherent. The pleasures of life are not just breaths of air to maintain us from drowning.

Of course many times these pleasures accompany needs. But it's obvious that these are pleasurable experiences in themselves and that there are also pleasurable experiences that are not dependent upon reliefs.

Most antinatalists, imo, want their pain recognized.That's what it's about. — csalisbury

We shouldn't diminish this pain, however.

But I consider myself rather pessimistic and have issues with birth, and yet I haven't really experienced anything absolutely horrible, at least nothing that I couldn't internally repress and attempt to ignore. I hold these beliefs because I am acutely aware of the conditions of human existence.

I've mentioned that before, I think, here or on the other forum and I've also mentioned my favorite anecdote - Cioran's letter to someone or other about seeing Beckett on a park bench and being just bowled over with envy for how deeply he appeared to be in despair. Susan Sontag, apropos of Cioran, describes the pessimistic style as often veering dangerously close to a 'coquettishness of the void.' . One becomes invested in one's pose and routine, which begins earnestly, but which becomes a well-oiled machine that runs on examples and aestheticizations of suffering. To quote Beckett: ''I must have got embroiled in a kind of inverted spiral, I mean one the coils of which, instead of widening more and more, grew narrower and narrower and finally, given the kind of space in which I was supposed to evolve, would come to an end for lack of room" — csalisbury

This is interesting. I think, however, the reason Cioran, Beckett, or Schopenhauer were able to live somewhat normally but still have such pessimistic views on life is because they got used to the reality. Schopenhauer explicitly calls the world a prison. They live lives not of extreme depression but neither extreme elevation - a contemplative and melancholic existence.

The anecdote of Cioran is funny because Cioran, being aware of the problems of existence, was unable to really feel any angst about it because he seemed to have become numb to them. Life will beat you to a pulp, and you either die or survive. Those who survive have to numb themselves somehow. Cioran wishing he felt despair would have allowed him to write more on the problems of the world, the same problems he had become numb to.

There does seem to be a certain tone of romanticism in some of their thoughts, though. The romanticism however seems to be just simply that - a fantastic tragedy meant to entertain by a catharsis. But when life hits you, it's not romantic at all. It's stupid, pointless, and raw. There is no romanticism in despair. There is no romanticism in actual angst. There is no romanticism in intolerable pain. It sucks, plain and simple, unworthy of any aesthetic elevation.

This makes sense to me!

It's hard to be an antinatalist when your friends are all having kids though :’( — csalisbury

Shit, I accidentally flagged your post.

Anyway thanks for the remark. I suppose it is difficult to remain an antinatalist while everyone else is having children. It's especially difficult when you know that most relationships you get into will end when you tell them you don't want children because of certain reasons.

I don't see how 'other things being equal' applies here. Can you explain? — John

What I meant is that in an isolated, laboratory-like setting, we have a duty to give other people pleasure and take away their pain. This setting would make us omniscient, omnipotent, and not restricted by other things, such as our own desires. This is why we have an obligation to stop a child-kidnapping by an old man, but we don't have an obligation to immediately get involved in a child-kidnapping when the kidnapper is a physically-hefty giant of a man with a gun. All of these are variables that affect our judgement, and more often than not this judgement revolves around our own self-preservation.

But that's the whole point of why I said we have no right to intentionally bring millions of people into existence ( by mass-cloning, say?), because we cannot know whether their lives would be predominately pleasurable or painful.

It's bad enough that we indulge in mass-breeding of animals! — John

Right, we can't know this. But suppose we can know this. Then it would be, at the very least, morally good to bring people into good existences.

The very process of philosophy is at least partly anchored on intuitions. We believe things because of reasons, and intuitions are often these reasons. If I can show you that one or more of your intuitions are wrong, then you will hopefully take my position. It's what I'm doing right now.

Those who are in their respective camps aren't usually so steadfast that it's impossible to change their intuitions on things.

I don't think our intuitions vary to such a degree that we can't come to a unified consensus.

1) Why do you think morality is (at least partly) about consequences?
2) Why do you think pleasure is good and pain is bad?
3) In what sense is the problem with life "structural", given your responses to (1) and (2)? — Sinderion

1) (At least partly), what we do is largely caused by our reasons, and our reasons tend to be a prediction of the future end-state.

2) I take it to be a blunt primitive that what is good is what is pleasurable, and what is bad is what is painful.

3) I would refer you to the various pessimistic philosophers.

Is that what your argument rests on? An intuitive acceptance of your claim that we have a duty to not prevent pleasure and a duty to not impose pain?

Or are these claims something that can actually be supported? — Michael

It's not that simple, obviously. We have a duty not to prevent pleasure as long as this does not create more pain, for example.

I take it to be obvious that ethics is keenly related to intuitions, if not entirely formed from them.

I would say you have no obligation to either bring pleasure to, or remove pain from, others, your obligation is only to refrain from (to the best of your knowledge and ability) removing their pleasure or bringing their pain.

Of course this is not to say that you should not help someone who is suffering when it is within your power, or that you should not give someone what they want, if it is within your power to know what that is, as well as to give it to them, and if you judge that what they want will truly benefit them, and not harm others. — John

That's why I mentioned ceteris paribus cases.

You certainly have no right to bring millions of others into existence, regardless of whether it is to bring them to experience pleasure or pain. — John

I would argue that we have no right to bring millions of people into an existence of suffering, but we at the very least have no constraints upon bringing millions of people into an existence of pleasure. If these people go on to have an objectively good life, I see no reason to call this immoral. However we can't know if they will have a good life and we have to look at the worst-case scenario.

That's not what I said.

So my point stands. If you don't have a definition of what a p-zombie is, your entire argument is empty. And if you stand that p-zombies are entities without qualia, your argument is trivial and question-begging.

It's fine. I'm a little sick of all of it myself I feel like I've already 'graduated,' no one has anything interesting to say on the subject I haven't heard already,and I think the important insights can't be communicated anyway. — The Great Whatever

How is this any different from esoteric nonsense? If you can't communicate, or at least help someone understand what these insights are, they're only important to you. And unless you're about to claim that you're infallible, there is a concern about whether or not it's bullshit.

Come now, didn't you just define a p-zombie as a specimen that lacks qualia?

Aren't p-zombies just people with no qualia? — The Great Whatever

That's what I thought.

If you believe that the absence of qualia makes someone a p-zombie, then the conclusion is rather trivial. It's like saying the disbelief in god makes someone an atheist. Of course it makes them an atheist, it's the definition of atheism. So of course if you define p-zombies in such a way that it means they lack any and all qualia, then they become p-zombies.

P-zombies are only a thing for those who take qualia seriously. Dennett doesn't take qualia seriously and would find the entirely concept of a p-zombie incoherent and empty. To say that Dennett is a p-zombie would again beg the question that qualia is something coherent.

About as funny as claiming nobody else has minds.

This is as I suspected: the thread is going to devolve into a thread about qualia itself, since without arguing for qualia, we can't assert that Dennett is a p-zombie without begging the question.

I don't really get Dennett's position. He has some good points but overall they don't convince me. Like I said before, I think this shows that Dennett is hell-bent on materialism, not that he is a p-zombie.