In my experience, drugs like alcohol can bring out parts of people that they usually keep hidden away, or try to repress. The person you know sober is a fraction of who they are in total. It is not always pretty to see the other sides of them.

Science is a tradition and because of this, it provides meaning to many people. Sometimes the zealous types get insulted when a comparison is drawn between science and religion - "science works, religion doesn't", i.e. religion is just the stupid stuff, and science is everything that is good. But the point is rather that science fulfills the same role as religion did. Religion seeks to:

1.) Explain the origins and nature of the world.
2.) Explain the relationship between humans and the world.
3.) Provide a sense of purpose or meaning behind "it all".
4.) Shield us from the harrowing prospect of death.
5.) Secure social values and keep the community together.

Science arguably does all of this. Or, more specifically, many people think science does all of this, or believe HOPE that science can. And by science, what is really meant is technology.

And so while it is true that science (technology) has given us vaccines and telecommunication, it has not and cannot solve basic constituent problems that are inherent to being alive. It has also brought incalculable suffering in the form of modern warfare, ecological mismanagement, etc.

Similarly, the religion of the past gave us universities and hospitals. But they also carved out brutal conflicts in the Crusades, Inquisition, etc. And so the good is always paired with the bad, as we should expect.

However your post seems to be more oriented to the starry-eyed scientists than the technocrats and their sheep. Ligotti writes:

"Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there” cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own.

One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT."

It spooks me out to see these adults fawning about the beauty of the cosmos as if it "speaks" to them (through the "poetry of math" or some stupid shit like that), or has "secrets" that we must discover, or that only a select few "intellectuals" can truly understand what it all means. Did not the mystics believe that God spoke to them, that God held the all-important secrets, and that some truths were esoteric and hidden from the masses?

From Laing's The Divided Self:

"One's relationship to an organism is different from one's relationship to a person. One's description of the other as organism is as different from one's description of the other as person as the description of side of vase is from profile of face; similarly, one's theory of the other as organism is remote from any theory of the other as person. One acts towards an organism differently from the way one acts towards a person. The science of persons is the study of human beings that begins from a relationship with the other as person and proceeds to an account of the other still as person."



"The other as person is seen by me as responsible, as capable of choice, in short, as a self-acting agent. Seen as an organism, all that goes on in that organism can be conceptualized at any level of complexity - atomic, molecular, cellular, systemic, or organismic. Whereas behaviour seen as personal is seen in terms of that person's experience and of his intentions, behaviour seen organismically can only be seen as the contraction or relaxation of certain muscles, etc. Instead of the experience of sequence, one is concerned with a sequence of processes. In man seen as an organism, therefore, there is no place for his desires, fears, hope or despair as such. The ultimates of our explanations are not his intentions to his world but quanta of energy in an energy system.

Seen as an organism, man cannot be anything else but a complex of things, of its, and the processes that ultimately comprise an organism are it-processes. There is a common illusion that one somehow increases one's understanding of a person if one can translate a personal understanding of him into the impersonal terms of a sequence or system of it-processes. Even in the absence of theoretical justifications, there remains a tendency to translate our personal experience of the other as a person into an account of him that is depersonalized. We do this in some measure whether we use a machine analogy or a biological analogy in our 'explanation'. It should be noted that I am not here objecting to the use of mechanical or biological analogies as such, nor indeed to the intentional act of seeing man as a complex machine or as an animal. My thesis is limited to the contention that the theory of man as person loses its way if it falls into an account of man as a machine or man as an organismic system of it-processes. The converse is also true.

It seems extraordinary that whereas the physical and biological sciences of it-processes have generally won the day against tendencies to personalize the world of things or to read human intentions into the animal world, an authentic science of persons has hardly got started by reason of the inveterate tendency to depersonalize or reify persons."

Schopenhauer

Houellebecq says that for men, love is nothing more that gratitude for sexual pleasure. A good observation, I'd say.

So what keeps you alive, and why? — Rhasta1

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Do you have any tips on how to get past nihilism? — Rhasta1

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For you the movie has been unknowingly paused, while in reality (that for others) it continues on. Until you wake up, you still believe you’re watching that movie. — simmerdown

I would not believe anything, because I am asleep. That consciousness has been abruptly suspended does not mean the experience immediately preceding this interrupt is itself somehow suspended indefinitely. It just ends.

All of the above?

The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics by Arthur Schopenhauer
Neurosis and Human Growth by Karen Horney

I feel this "Telos" is adding a subjective qualifier. You may define it one way, while I define it another. Then we are basing "better" or "worse" relative to our invented ideas of what completes (sorry if wrong word usage) that person. — ZhouBoTong

I think you are correct that we can define it in different ways. But if we do actually define it, then presumably we have reasons for why we think this way. Which entails that we can argue and disagree and believe that one of us is actually in the wrong. Subjective qualifiers may inadvertently point to something that can be identified as objective.

Of course, perhaps all this talk is just cobwebs in our minds. Perhaps nobody is right, and everyone is wrong, and we are all playing a game based on preferences, or what-not. But this is getting into the heart of meta-ethics, specifically error theory and the anti-realist camps. Which I think is what is really at stake in this thread.

To say something is better than something else seems to entail a measurement of perfection.

If we assign a purpose or ultimate goal (also known as a telos) to a person that this person has in virtue of being a person (and not a soccer player, movie star, soldier, mother or philosopher), then certainly it seems that we can evaluate how well this person is achieving their essential telos. And from there, we can compare persons against each other, perhaps by introducing the notion of virtues, or duties, or characters.

As well, it seems obvious that without a system of laws in place there would be more theft and murder and rape etc etc. — DingoJones

This does not seem obvious to me at all. I think it is true that laws exist to control the behavior of people, but under a more radical interpretation, laws exist to keep those in power, in power.

In other words, laws are a symptom of a deeper problem. Laws are supposed to "fix" a problem. Under your interpretation, that problem is human nature. Under a different interpretation, the problem is the nature of a fraction of the human population.

Consider how mass warfare (which involves killing, theft, rape, destruction, etc) is only accomplished by state entities. The irony of a state protecting its function by doing exactly what it seeks to minimize!

Yes, indeed there would likely be more terrible things happening if there were no laws and we still sought to live in a capitalist society. The point is that if we get rid of capitalism, we open the door for a society free of laws that still works.

I need to know what you mean by "obvious drawbacks of anarchism" to respond appropriately.

I am an anarchist who desires the voluntary end of human existence. What are these obvious drawbacks you refer to?

Preferably, nothing.

Because Kant didn't write his philosophical ideas based on modern understanding of science. — Christoffer

But science was already very sophisticated by the time of Kant, and proved to be a reliable way of obtaining useful knowledge about the world.

Therefore, I would argue that while his ideas might be interesting and thought-provoking, they are flawed because they lack all knowledge that came after him. — Christoffer

Although the original Kantian metaphysics does indeed suffer from certain anachronisms in light of newer developments in science and mathematics, the general idea behind Kantian philosophy remains viable to this day.

But really, the best argument against suicide is that you're not sure if suicide is the best course of action (otherwise you would not be making this thread). If you aren't sure about dying, then don't. There's plenty of time to make up your mind.

You might fuck it up.

Also it's a terribly sad thing to do.

Has anyone grappled similar issues? If so, how did you cope and continue living a fulfilling life?. — simmerdown

Yes, but it seems to me that non-existence can never be a bad thing for someone. One must exist to be harmed. And, as my thought process goes, if non-existence can not be a bad thing for someone, then it must be a good thing for them. And if there is nothing wrong with non-existence, and there are things wrong with existing, then it is in our best interests to facilitate the transition between existence and non-existence, even if we have a strong desire to continue to live.

However, a powerful primal panic inside of me squirms in revulsion to this idea, and the clarity of its expression is eventually fragmented so that I am only dimly aware of its existence as I go about my day-to-day life. I have learned that the mind is not the master but the slave, and that believing we are in control brings more harm than good. The logic of death does not mix with the illogic of life. That is how I see the affirmation of life: an illogic that doesn't make sense. But then again, nothing really makes sense if you think about it long enough. Once you get used to the illogicity of everything, things get a little easier and you grow comfortable with the madness. Nothing that exists has any significance at all, because it all gets annihilated in the end and the memories are forgotten. Everything that exists might as well not.

The state of the enlightened ones is a perpetual apathy to everything and a cosmic indifference to their own existences. A state of non-action, because action is the fruit of illusion, and life is the illusion. This is why they do not commit suicide.

The Elementary Particles aka Atomized by Houellebecq was fantastic. Reading Submission now.

zomg philoso-memes, the new medium of critical thought

The Neuroscience of Religious Experience by Patrick McNamara
The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq

Friend, this will cure your depression (or at least rejuvenate your sanguinity):

Death is really bad, but sometimes life is even worse.

Not with the population we have, the goals we aspire for and the values we uphold. It might be too late.

Whatever by Michel Houellebecq.
Pensieri by Giacomo Leopardi.

No, I didn't vote. My reasoning by analogy: if you are overweight and in a Burger King, and you are pondering whether you should get a single pounder or a double pounder cheeseburger, the best choice is to just leave Burger King and get something more healthy.

Voting legitimizes power structures.

My intellect says it's impossible to know, but my heart says there is no God.

Feelings, like pleasure or pain, are similar to hallucinations. There is no logical connection between a perceptual object and the affectivity associated with the object, however the two are very often mixed together such that a perceptual object just is good or bad by means of its association with certain feelings. An apple pie is deemed "delicious", and an abdominal wound is deemed "excruciating"; however, the apple pie is not literally delicious, and an abdominal wound is not literally excruciating, because these are terms for the relation between a subject and an object. Thus, an apple pie is delicious for-me, and an abdominal wound is excruciating for-me (or for-us, etc).

There is nothing actually good or bad; objects are neutral and the values associated with them are projection of subjects. Every pairing of perceptual object and associated affectivity is entirely arbitrary. Every feeling is coercive, because without them, nothing would happen. Nobody would do anything at all, because there would not be any reason to.

To be free of feeling, then, is to be free of this enslavement, to no longer care, and no longer care that one does not care. Indifference is the "highest" form of consciousness because the subject is quite literally free of the world itself. They have "woken up" from the nightmare.

R. D. Laing made the case in his book The Divided Self (which explores the developmental phenomenology of psychological phenomena, such as psychosis, schizophrenia and schizoid disorder) that psychiatry (at the time, and actually today still as well) treats patients as "things". They are not people, they are objects to be poked and prodded and evaluated as one would poke and prod and evaluate an impersonal object as the natural sciences do.

However, at the same time, we cannot deny that humans are indeed primates. They have squishy internal organs, hidden away in the dark behind a thin, fleshy coat. We die after ~75 years or so. The reality of this seems to only really come into our awareness either when we are explicitly investigating it as curious scientists or when part of our body starts to hurt.

Like said, it seems to me like the truth is a little bit of both. The troubling aspect, though, is that the personal, meaningful, social/artifactual levels are dependent on the impersonal and meaningless (all the interior life is dependent on something that isn't interior). In fact, the meaningful levels seem to often times be reactions of revulsion or disgust at the meaningless - terror management theory is a great elaboration of this. The meaningful also often seems to be essentially illusory. Furthermore, it seems (at least to me) to threaten the legitimacy of the meaningful by describing it in terms of the impersonal. It is not the "meaningful", it is the "social". "Social" - a dry, general, scientific term that describes something that it (the term "social"), is not. "Social" is not social, if that makes sense.

So it's not that the meaningful doesn't exist, it's that it's effectively impotent in the grand scheme of things.

The new atheists are beating a dead horse and the neo-scholastics are trying to resuscitate it (that's my sweeping generalization of the situation).

Wait, isn't the Catholic Church the largest charitable organization in the world?

Wasn't atheism state-enforced in Stalinist Russia?

We can cherry-pick all sorts of examples of religious or non-religious groups to fit an agenda. To say "faith erodes compassion" or "religion poisons everything" or "there are no atheists in foxholes" is to make a sweeping generalization, and it reduces complex philosophical topics to shallow slogans and straw men.

Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
After Finitude by Quentin Meillassoux (re-read, never finished previously)
The Basic Kafka by Kafka
The Trouble With Being Born & Drawn and Quartered by Cioran

I prefer philosophy undiluted and esoteric. I do think there are a small minority of people who really do "get it", but it's impossible as a principle to determine who is part of this minority. It's easier to determine who evidently doesn't get it, though.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with what you wrote here, but want clarification.

Aristotelian universals, as I understood them, exist and are in fact real (independent of minds), but are not Platonic ideas. Rather, Aristotle's universals are multiple-realizable entities that exist only insofar as they are instantiated in a substance. Perception is the mind's impressions of substances, akin to how pressing your thumb into a piece of clay creates an impression of your thumb in the clay. Aristotle's mind is thus a model of substances.

Point being is that I was confused when you said:

It takes the middle ground by saying (against Plato) that there are no actual universals outside of thinking minds, but (against nominalists and conceptualists) there is a foundation in reality for our universal concepts. — Dfpolis

but then said:

Thus, universals are not just names or concepts, they reflect reality. — Dfpolis

If universals in the mind reflect reality, then doesn't that mean reality does, in fact, have real universals?

Here we go (again).

Darth, am I hearing you right? All life that intends to live is cowardly? Including that which perseveres against what can nearly be insurmountable odds? There something in the way to this. At any rate, it’s not how I ascribe meaning to the desire to live, nor to what courage is all about. But maybe this isn’t at all what was intended in your last post after all. — javra

Some of the most inspiring individuals were those who didn't care if they died in the process. Why do we admire these heroes? Because they were not afraid of death. Imagine this kind of radical detachment towards your own existence - does not everyone wish they could simply let go?

When we think about those who have died, we often think about them as resting peacefully. They are better off, even if at the immediate moment of their death we mourn. Why should we pity them? Secretly we are all jealous of the dead, and we regret our own inability to throw off our chains to join them. In my view, to love living is to be ignorant of the alternative.

The challenge is to transcend our own desires and ask why it is that we desire what we do. We are not the authors of our own desires. We desire things - but why? Why do we desire to live as opposed to die? Could desire be a form of manipulation, in the same way that pain and fear manipulate us into certain courses of action? This manipulation is what Ligotti alludes to when he describes the conspiracy against the human race. When Cioran calls life a state of non-suicide, he is illuminating the idea that suicide is a natural and rational course of action that is perpetually frustrated. The idea is that without repressive and oppressive mechanisms, a human might immediately kill themselves and be done with it without a second thought, and without vertigo, as if we were blinking, or tying our shoes.

You can't just expect a "life of pleasure". It is personal growth and social connectedness that is what most folk actually report as rewarding. So right there, that includes meeting personal challenges and making various social sacrifices - the kinds of things you regard as part of the intolerable burden of existence. — apokrisis

I understand this. A charitable interpretation of hedonism also recognizes this. What folk "report as rewarding" they are reporting what makes them feel good. Reward. Pleasure. etc.

Check out the neurobiology of the sympathetic nervous system some time. Arousal is arousal. Why do you think people pay so much to ride roller coasters or bungee off bridges? — apokrisis

Are you implying that I ought to read about the impersonal thing instead of just asking people what they feel? Or asking myself how I feel?

This just seems like a red herring. Of course there's adrenaline junkies. Of course people like being scared for entertainment. But it's not real, none of that is actually real. It's fun. These people are safe (ish). There is a harness. There were engineers who checked the rollercoaster for structural integrity. etc. The fear is kept in check.

Running from a bear that will maul you if it catches up with you is not fun. Fighting your friends in an online shooter game might be fun, but fighting enemy combatants in a firefight is not fun because it's really-real. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, and we typically see these exceptions as unstable or dangerous (who actually likes being shot at?).

The research of course shows a U curve of arousal. There is a case of too much as well as too little. But peak performance requires excitement/fear. Step on to the stage and your heart ought to be pounding as if you were running from that bear. — apokrisis

Yes, I understand that not-too-much but not-too-little stress is necessary for peak performance. But as I said before, an organism in an extreme environment will not have this perfect balance. It is as if the organism was not meant to operate in these situations (just as we are not meant to operate in the vacuum of space). In fact sometimes people in extreme situations will stand there in shock, unable to comprehend what is happening and die where they stand instead of seeking shelter (Vesuvius). Or they go off running in a wild panic and get shot by the enemy instead of waiting in position (war).

And try giving a public lecture or doing a TV interview. Or playing a sports match in front of a crowd. You need to be shitting yourself with adrenaline to give a top performance - intellectually as well. — apokrisis

What? My experience and the experience of many others would seem to contradict this. I would not give a good public lecture if I were shitting my pants in fear. Adrenaline might make me pumped up and excited but I may be too excited and stumble over my words. etc.

As you said, there is a right balance between the two that facilitates a smooth reaction. But I take issue with your equivocation of fear with excitement, adrenaline with panic. There is also very big difference between being confronted with fear but keeping it in check, and being overwhelmed by fear. For example, someone who successfully kills themselves may have successfully kept the fear of death in check, while someone who attempts to but can't bring themselves to accomplish the act may have been subdued.

Gawd, it must be true then. :roll: — apokrisis

No, but it points you in the direction of where I'm coming from.

So my pendulum swings, as much as I can manage it, away from what I am ceasing to enjoy. Then because I accept that life has to be lived - hedonism is an illusion - the focus would be on structuring my life so that it gives me the right general mix of the two on a habitual basis. — apokrisis

Why did you say that hedonism is an illusion, but then suggest that structuring life in such-and-such manner gives the "right general mix" (presumably for living an enjoyable life)? What is the point of your life? What does the general mix support that makes it right?

Epicurus et al have made it clear that directing one's efforts at obtaining pleasure is counter-productive. The seed of the pessimistic evaluation is already in this. Happiness is a byproduct of a struggle. Paradoxically we are most happy when we are not thinking about how happy we are.

Such rubbish neuroscience. What kind of thinking - rationalisation - do animals do? What is the difference between anxiety and excitement exactly? What is the point of confusing the confusion of the unprepared with the clarity of acting on well-developed habit? — apokrisis

Excitement isn't a fearful state of mind. The fight-or-flight response can only work if higher-level thinking is temporarily put on hold. You are not thinking about philosophy when running from a bear. It is fear that fuels the escape.

The brain is just so much more complicated and well-adapted than that. The response to moments of stress is not automatically a generalised panic attack. You are talking about what might be the eventual result of prolonged stress, not a normal healthy neurobiology as it was designed to function. — apokrisis

Yes, I agree that the response to irritation is not usually a generalized panic attack. My overall point was that anxiety/fear/panic is a very basic and very crude motivational scheme. It's old and it works. It's not intelligent. People fear stupid stuff all the time - for example, I have a fear of miller moths. They are harmless creatures and I rationally understand this, but I nevertheless have an intense fear of them.

It's not unreasonable, I think, to suggest that an organism in extreme situations will not react as gracefully as it may in normal situations. It becomes clunky, clumsy, awkward. One of these extreme situations is when an organism thinks about its mortality, or its capacity to suffer, or its fundamental identity, etc. It begins to have certain thoughts which I think can be appropriately called lethal. An organism with lethal thoughts is in a critical condition that jeopardizes its own survival. Fear sweeps in and suffocates the mind (ssshhhh), coaxing it into submission and back into the perimeter of "safe thoughts" where the organism is no longer a threat to itself. The mind is not the master here.

This idea of the mind being the way the body enslaves itself features prominently in the work of Metzinger (meh), the horror of Lovecraft and Ligotti and the philosophy of Zapffe.

I have some kind of inner (thought/mood) record and there's a big old scratch and inevitably it starts skipping and the song is lost. — csalisbury

Yeah, I get it. Feels like your mind is bruised.

We seek discomfort because we are too comfortable and comfort because we are too uncomfortable. — apokrisis

Apo, this doesn't make sense. To seek discomfort because things are "too comfortable" simply means to no longer be comfortable with your comfort. You seek discomfort (adventure) to escape the discomfort of excess comfort (boredom). So the pendulum swings between painful discomfort to boredom discomfort. Just as Schopenhauer observed.

The natural goal of the mind is not to arrive at some fixed state but to maintain a state of adaptation in regards to the world. — apokrisis

I do not disagree with this, but we have to speak plainly here: the natural state of mind is not of comfort. That is not conducive to survival. The creatures that survive are those who are in a near-perpetual state of controlled anxiety.

The Bene-Gesserit of Frank Herbert's Dune call fear the "mind-killer". I think this is true in a very literal sense. Fear/anxiety/panic literally suffocates the mind and prevents it from thinking. This is helpful to an organism's survival, such as during fight-or-flight situations where thinking is only going to slow the organism down. However I think this also extends into the realm of abstract thinking. A human that thinks too much or too far is confronted with the strangulating hands of anxiety. Epicurus has already shown that death is not to be feared, and yet we continue to fear it anyway. We are quite literally not allowed to think beyond a certain perimeter without anxiety immediately slamming us down and choking the thoughts out of us.

I agree that a balanced lifestyle is recommended. But this also means a balance in terms of thinking. Too much thinking, too much seeing, will either kill or cripple you.