So there is a stark choice when it comes to metaphysics. You can be like me, or be like you. — apokrisis

A dualism??? :gasp:

God is dead. He never lived. Moral dilemmas can only find a grounding context in Nature itself. Get used to it. ;) — apokrisis

Bullshit, God lived in the hearts of countless human beings over the course of millennia. God was said to have grounded morality, and the death of God is typically seen as a threat to this morality. But really I would argue that God didn't ground morality so much as he limited it. Morality already existed without God. When God is real, humans have a limited responsibility and don't have to ask too many questions - the big guy will figure out the details, and in the end everything will be alright and make sense (theodicy).

When God is dead, humans are confronted with a vast sense of moral responsibility, being the sole reservoirs with any moral sense in the universe. No God to help, no God to alleviate this burden. The post-modern moral view isn't necessarily relativism, but can rather be a sense of infinite responsibility and a radical devaluing of existence. I'm saying the only way life continues is by its responsive devaluing of philosophy, just as Nietzsche articulated. Life can only continue if we stop thinking so much.

But why should I accept your dualism? You can propose it. I simply show its incoherence. — apokrisis

You don't have to, but then we wouldn't have much to talk about, then. None of this pragmatism talk looks anything like ethics or value theory to me at all.

So yes, if we go your pragmatism route then many ethical categories don't make sense. I'm saying that's an argument against your pragmatism, and a very powerful one too given your apparent inability to shrug off what you claim is romantic nonsense.

Yet you are fine telling all natalists how they are simply irrational in their delusions about life having a value for them. — apokrisis

There's no equivalency here. On either end we are using science to help support our views. I'm being more honest, though, when I say science merely supports my views instead of claiming that science just is my view. I don't use science as a trump card like that.

And I'm sure you are aware that disagreement abounds in science, so much so that broad sweeping claims about "positive psychology" being the only relevant authority cannot possibly be taken for granted, since there are competing scientific theories that are contradictory to the nauseating feel-good paradigm leaking around the psychology departments.

There must be a fallacy which is the fallacy of posters hoping to win debates by claiming every possible fallacy that springs to mind once all their other arguments have disintegrated. — apokrisis

Yeah, I think it has something to do with making false dichotomies...

I thought it funny that you again wheel out a theory about the extremes that people will go to to avoid confronting an end to their lives when you are so busy trying to claim folk would universally be happier never to have been born. — apokrisis

Well, they wouldn't actually be happier since they wouldn't be alive. But yeah I think if people were a little more observant and candid about their own lives to themselves, birthday parties wouldn't be so common. Actually things like birthdays parties are effective ways of reinforcing the "life is good" mantra that is so ball-numbingly repetitive.

I didn't think it relevant, and thought you'd straw man it anyway.

Either you go with the subjectivity being expressed by all you anti-natalists - where your personal preferences are treated as a self-evident moral ought - or you are prepared to follow the natural philosophy route that became the pragmatic scientific method. — apokrisis

Yet the choice to commit to the "pragmatic route" must also be subjectively motivated, no? As I said before, there are multiple perspectives on procreation. I'm fine with you going the pragmatic route, so long as you recognize that this isn't a moral avenue. Your decision to pursue the "scientific" route here is not a God-given decree but probably something to do with your character and background.

So mine is the evidence-demanding approach that stands against your subjective articles of faith. :) — apokrisis

But again this is a false dichotomy, your favorite straw man between romanticism and science. I dislike how you claim to speak for all scientists on matters outside of the domain of science.

LOL. I listen to the science. Sue me. — apokrisis

It's not that you're listening to what science is saying more than it's that you're interpreting certain cherry-picked scientific theories in a particular way and claiming this interpretation is what necessarily holds when this interpretation is exactly what's in question. This modern scientific Taoism of yours may be aesthetically pleasing but it certainly doesn't provide the theodicy we're looking for.

Am I to see you as an oracle, proclaiming the truths of reality? Of course I believe what I think is reasonable.

I don't see why anything I said would have left you speechless. Antinatalism, at least in the form I'm delivering here, is simply the consistent application of general ethical categories. It is the problem of evil, consistently applied not just to God but to his imitators.

One thing that seems to separate you and I are our views on the nature of reality. You seem to take reality to be a creative and ultimately playful process of development - a few cuts and burns here and there but who cares?, the world and the synergistic melody of the universe plays on. This is completely alien to me. Reason and life do not always parallel each other, and when they intersect it's not always beautiful. Probably the biggest obstacle antinatalism faces is providing people with a sense of beauty and meaning in the absence of a future society. Samuel Scheffler has a good take on the importance of the "afterlife" (future society that remembers us after we die).

Yes, it seems as though antinatalism can be but one manifestation of the problem of evil. Atheists can complain that God sits by idly, watching innocent people suffer. But parents are like gods in themselves with their creative capabilities. A consistent atheist committed to a logical problem of evil seems, on pain of inconsistency, to be required to endorse some form of antinatalism as well. It seems inconsistent to accuse God of being evil and yet turn a blind eye to the human imitators of God.

Minor boo-boos like paper cuts are so trivial that they can form a problem of evil in themselves. Forget the Holocaust for a second - what possible benefit would a person get from stubbing their toe? Is stubbing a toe a necessary part of God's great plan? Do papers cuts actually refine our moral character? Or are these "minor evils", as minor as they may be, simply useless?

These minor evils are still very minor and so are not something we ought to worry about. Instead they act more as indicators of the overall absurd quality of life.

No. It is unreasonable because the facts are that the majority of people don't go through life wishing they had never been born.

Antinatalism is only logical to those who take a black and white absolutist stance on things. Any pain or suffering - even a papercut - makes existence structurally intolerable.

For most people, life is a mixed bag. And yet overall, they don't regret living. So if you are going to take on moral guardianship for the unborn, deal with the facts as they actually are out there in the world. — apokrisis

Once again, the fact that the majority of people do not often wish they had never been born (but actually claims about being glad you were born are often not about being born but continuing living) is not a counterargument to antinatalism. And once again antinatalism is not concerned about paper cuts and minor boo-boos.

Yes, it is true that many people irrationally find life to be something positive. Yet people can be profoundly misled. And there are many people who do not find life to be something positive. The latter are those whom I am most concerned with here. If you procreate, you make possible the existence of a suicidal person. The claim is that the possible good that may come from bringing someone into existence (such as their happiness, fulfillment, or whatever) does not justify the possible evil that may (and often does) come from doing the same.

Really, then, this particular argument is that the extinction of the human race is preferable to the existence of agony. Pain is the most real thing a person can experience. A billion happy people has no value when it depends on a single victim of torture. You may call that absolutist, and if that is so, then so be it. Every single person who exists is a possible suicide. That's a fact.

Elsewhere I have tried to emphasize how antinatalism is but one perspective on procreation - an ethical perspective. Procreation can be seen in other perspectives that are more favorable to it, such as from the perspective of the continuation of the human species, or the perspective of a prospective parent who wishes to have an intimate relationship with their young. I don't think I'm being absolutist when I say procreation is morally wrong. I'm merely pronouncing a perspective on procreation that is based on moral categories. Feel free to take a different perspective - the argument is not that birth is absolutely bad from all perspectives, but rather that it is bad from the moral perspective.

If we are reasonable people, we could make reasonable judgements about whether on average those babies will later feel grateful.

And being reasonable, it would be on average rather than absolutely. Practical reason also includes the principle of indifference. Near enough is good enough. We don’t have to be fanatics about these things. — apokrisis

It's not fanatical to abstain from having children. People do it all the time.

And I think you are using the term "reasonable" illicitly here, in that you effectively monopolize the term to refer to anything you agree with. I can just as easily say that reasonable people do not take unnecessary risks, especially when other people (who cannot consent) are directly involved. In this form antinatalism is the logical extension of the common ethical categories (common-sense morality), and it's only because of the affirmative assumption that life and reason must never intersect that antinatalism is seen as unreasonable.

The reason as to why this assumption is so prevalent is probably evolution and the basic biological drive to survive.

why though? Do you actually agree with everything he wrote about the will and how it manifests overtime including all the supernatural implications eg the animal magnetism essay ect. — JupiterJess

No, I don't agree with everything Schopenhauer said.

but I was wondering if anyone had ideas for categories one would use for Top Trumps for philosophers. — jkg20

Top ten anime betrayals western philosophers of all time, in order based on nothing but my personal opinion:

• Plato
• Hegel Schopenhauer
• Augustine
• Nietzsche
• Kant
• Heidegger
• Aquinas
• Peirce
• Descartes
• Wittgenstein

Top ten philosophers of all time:

• Schopenhauer
• Plato
• Siddhartha Gautama
• Schopenhauer
• Jesus of Nazareth
• Schopenhauer
• Nietzsche
• Schopenhauer
• Schopenhauer
• Schopenhauer

Trump philosophers — jkg20

A contradiction in terms!

Yep. By definition, anyone posting here about antinatalism has a full belly, a roof over their heads, time on their hands. They can take for granted all the civilised advantages that hold real discomfort at bay. — apokrisis

By definition, just about anybody posting here about anything at all has a full belly, a roof over their heads, and time on their hands. And they all certainly do take for granted all the civilized advantages that hold real discomfort at bay. :roll:

So it is easy to see how a generalised dissatisfaction arises. The more luxurious your life, the more you can become overwhelmed by everything that is just slightly not perfect about it. — apokrisis

Alongside? In what sense are they treated with the same scientific/therapeutic respect? — apokrisis

Terror management theory has been around for a while, and depressive realism is only slightly younger than positive psychology, as far as I am aware.

Ah. So they are better because they don't paper over the essential badness of existence! For people in a hole, they are a help to dig the hole deeper. — apokrisis

No, I think TMT, et al are important because they fundamentally put into question some of the things about positive psychology. Incidentally, Ernest Becker would have wanted TMT to help create a more meaningful and positive society.

Probably because antinatalists keep mentioning it. Although I agree, you might take the more interesting position that basically life is 99% OK for you, but the 1% that sucks then makes the very idea of living an intolerable burden. Even the possibility of dying slowly in a mangled car wreck means an otherwise cheerful life is a metaphysical no no. — apokrisis

Yeah, dying slowly and in great pain sounds awful.

Well I can't get over the hopeless irrationality of a view that says a 99% full glass is still a cosmic tragedy in its 1% emptiness.

I mean I scrapped a knuckle doing some gardening this afternoon. It bled a little.

Even worse, the fibre cable installers cut through the underlawn irrigation despite me telling them exactly where to look out for it. Oh, the agony.

And yet I don't regret having been born. It's been another great day. — apokrisis

You persistently bring up the most unimportant aches and pains as a reductio of antinatalism. It would be absurd if little finger scrapes and boo-boos were what we were concerned about.

Instead of taking the 1% to mean the minor aches and pains you may experience, instead take the 1% to mean the percentage of individuals with, say, debilitating neurological disorders which cause intolerable pain and premature death. Think about innocent children who die from medical complications in their early youth - think about how terrified this child must be, to have just barely come into this world before being violently yanked out of it again. Consider the countless individuals who have and will be tortured by governments. Or wild animals, where the rules are that you run or you die. If not anything else, consider what your progeny will think about the world you bring them into. Will they ever feel appalled, even if they're not personally experiencing the brunt of it?

The antinatalist point is that it does not make sense to mourn the existence of these terrible things, yet accept and even support an institution that single-handedly perpetuates them (procreation). The basic point is that very bad things only happen to people who are born.

You may object that technology + human will = a better future where these horrible things do not occur to people who are born. But this is going to lead to a more broader pessimistic point, which is that problems seem to find a way of popping back up again. Solving one problem creates the opportunity for another problem to fill the role. There is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes has it.

I accept one part of antinatalism. We ought to consider long and hard about bringing kids into the world. The future could be quite dicey.

But then that just commits you morally to doing the best that you can for them if you do. There is nothing particular to fear about life as a journey in itself. The variety of that journey, the challenges it presents, is pretty much the point.

To build a cult around persuading everyone to stop having kids seems weird. Frankly it is weird. It has value only as an illustration of what bad philosophy looks like. — apokrisis

Another way of putting the antinatalist point could be: the best parent is the one who never is one (biologically, speaking at least). As Cabrera said: "Because I love you, you will not be born!"

The current way of looking at things has it that you can be irresponsible as a parent of a child by how you provide for them and treat them, but hardly ever is it considered that having children tout court is irresponsible. This is what makes antinatalism a radical position, one that may seem "weird". It questions a fundamental, fundamental assumption of affirmative societies, that life is good and having children is also good. It is a culture of parenting, made and perpetuated by parents.

Antinatalism, at least in the way I'm presenting it, is an ethical orientation that doesn't require any sophisticated metaphysics beyond what the average person already believes. Antinatalism is a final consequence of taking the contemporary ethical categories and applying them radically and consistently.

With respect to antinatalism being a "cult" - I admit that many prominent and "vocal" antinatalists on the internet are cultish and probably narcissists/schizoids/avoidants. Separate the substance from the shit.

Why does that have to be so? I absolutely don't see it that way. A rational science like positive psychology certainly wouldn't teach things to be that way.

It is only if you can't escape the clutches of literature and religion that you would be trapped in such a myopic view of personal identity. — apokrisis

This sounds too good to be true, probably because it is. Alongside positive psychology, we have theories such as depressive realism and terror management theory. But those don't make people feel good.

Literature and, to an extent, religion, are treasures that are manifestations of hopes and dreams of real human beings. They ought to be taken as testimonies of the experiences of real people, not dismissed as being somehow fake or opaque.

So just note how you choose the third person voice. You already presume that objectively, for any possible person, life doesn't work. Thus you hope to win by rhetoric an argument you can't sustain by logic. — apokrisis

First off, antinatalism need not depend on the claim that everyone's lives suck. I don't know why you keep bringing this up, apart from as a rhetorical strategy. That, or you never took the time to really understand the antinatalist point of view.

That being said, I do think even the best lives are still quite atrocious. And I'm allowed this opinion. I'm not telling people to kill themselves. The strong argument is that life necessarily is horrible for the person living it and thus birth is always a harm to the person being born. The weaker argument draws from the indisputable fact that many people have horrible lives and that this reality depends on them having been born. Any counterargument to this will require some form of justification of this reality - basically you need to provide a theodicy.

So this is the science-based framework through which I would view the "philosophy" of antinatalism.

Antinatalism depends on a theistic/romantic metaphysical model - one that treats mind or identity as something inherent to a body. A soul stuff of some sort or other. But I am arguing from the point of view where the mind or the self is emergent from the pragmatism of a modelling relation. — apokrisis

Yet there is a difference between science of life and life as it is lived. You say the self is fluid, but the self we value as a self is precisely the differentiating self. It's rather akin to religious interpretations of the cosmos - we cannot help but wonder "where it all came from" or "why it's all here", even if something like the anthropic principle dissolves these issues. And so similarly we cannot help but see the self as a soul-like resident of the body. As it stands, there are individual, different physical bodies that are often reflective and solitary - most notably in the moments of pain, suffering and anguish. Coincidentally enough these are exactly the things antinatalists tend to be concerned about.

To say the antinatalist point doesn't work because soul-like selves do not exist in reality is akin to saying the antinatalist point doesn't work because there is no such thing as free will, or God, or whatever, and this risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Antinatalism is instead about curling up in the corner and wishing you were dead. It is giving up on the possibility of "controlling things" - or rather, being a properly active part of the negotiations always going on "out there" in the real social world. — apokrisis

This is about as true as the claim that pragmatism is about incessantly accusing others of romanticism and sentimentality. :meh:

Antinatalism is about taking control of one of the few things we actually do have control over. Life is not "working". It's not up to standards and it never will be. The pragmatic solution is to conserve what resources you do have and stop wasting them on future progeny. Of course, that's a pragmatic, intra-wordly justification - but I've already explained in this thread why I don't regard intra-wordly ethics as anything more than a prejudice.

Word play. My argument was that selfhood is fluid. So we can (socially) construct a contracted definition of the self - as a solipsistic soul stuff. Or we can recognise that selves arise contextually to serve purposes, and so a social-level of self is also a thing. — apokrisis

The objection I will raise here is that you are making it seem as though because the self is socially constructed, it must be within our control to destroy this same self.

So yeah, we can see how selves serve contextual purposes, etc etc. But that doesn't mean it fails to be an enduring concept that breaks its own limits.

What is it about an ethic being "intra-worldly" that makes it insufficient? — Thorongil

The intra-worldly is morally disqualifying - most if not all of our actions have repercussions that are regrettable, even if they aren't within our control. As such we have to prioritize which morals we find to be the most important, the most appropriate given the situation. For instance, you may come to see that keeping a promise and reimbursing your friend is less important than donating to charity. Prioritizing morals is common, normal, and necessary. What I think gets passed over is how this makes morality irrevocably broken. To go off the previous example: to be a philanthropist and donate to charity requires that you be a bad friend who breaks promises.

That is one of the crucial reasons why I believe the intra-worldly cannot be a satisfactory grounding for morality. The morality of the intra-worldly is contradictory. There are good moral reasons for doing things that cannot be completely reconciled. This is why is makes sense for us to regret breaking a promise to a friend - "in a perfect world" we'd be able to be both philanthropists and good friends.

Having a child with the vision of using them as a means to an end of greater utility only makes sense within an intra-worldly perspective, in this case utilitarianism, where everything gets subsumed under a single banner: utility. What the affirmative utilitarian in this case fails to understand is that moral ambiguity, the tension between competing duties, is a symptom of life itself. It is part of the structure of life. The utilitarian is unable to account for the regret we would obviously feel for using a child in this way - once again, we might be philanthropists, but we'd also be horrible parents. "Being a good parent", for the utilitarian, is something that does not have value independent of the principle of utility. This is nonsense, in my opinion.

In my view, then, there are a plurality of competing moral duties that often contradict each other. Monistic, affirmative theories of morality are an attempt to downplay these contradictions by ascribing "ultimate" value to a single source - for instance, the principle of utility, or the categorical imperative, or whatever. Monism in ethics is a theoretical attempt to simplify something that cannot be simplified. Morality just is pluralistic, and fundamentally "beyond" the world we live in, so that there is always a friction between what is and what should be. There simply is not enough space for what should be.

You were a utilitarian, though, weren't you? — Thorongil

I was a consequentialist for a while, yes. I've come to see consequentialist theories as inherently intra-worldly and incapable of acting as any fundamental ethic. This is primarily because consequentialist theories like utilitarianism are monistic, and I don't think this sort of reductionism is sufficient to cover the plurality of ethical concepts we have.

This means I'm not a Kantian, either.

This isn't facetious? I thought you were a utilitarian of some kind. — Thorongil

NO-no-no-no-no. No.

If I remember correctly, some Buddhists (?) see procreation as a necessary evil that prevents souls from regressing into "lesser" states of being. Paradoxically, if humans do not procreate, they doom everyone to an endless cycle of rebirth in lesser forms of life (which do procreate).

Any reason to have children, in my opinion, must either be religious or intra-wordly, the latter being things like economic stability (such as government incentives to procreate). Intra-wordly reasons seem to me to almost always be selfish and immoral, since they necessarily use a person as a means and not as an end. The only non-selfish, non-religious reason for having children might be from the expectation that your children will be great altruists - unfortunately it's impossible to tell if one's children will have the proper character, let alone survive long enough to provide a positive utility. Yuck, utilitarianism :vomit: In that case, it may not be selfish, but it certainly isn't wise or prudent. And it certainly contradicts everything that goes into being a good parent - try explaining to your child that you had them with the sole intention of grooming them to be providers of utility. That's a shit parent.

So God is beyond words? Makes for a short thread. — Banno

If we are to go the Scholastic route, then God is beyond all human propositions. The most we can manage with are analogies and metaphors, as well as certain metaphysical properties (infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, etc). We can know the existence of God through metaphysics - the essence of God comes from revelation.

How we know something exists without knowing anything about it makes for a puzzle. Perhaps we can get away with saying that God exists, and we all know what this means intuitively but cannot express it in exact words. God is transcendent, radically Other, and the ground and source of Being. That's about as much as we can say.

but I do agree that scientists who think metaphysics should be buried are wrong. — ProcastinationTomorrow

It's not about getting rid of metaphysics. To do science, you must do metaphysics. But the metaphysics scientists need to operate is not something only a metaphysician can figure out. The problem is not that metaphysicians are being ignored - the problem is that some scientists are ignoring metaphysics, and some metaphysicians are ignoring science. The ideal scientist should also be a philosopher, and vice versa. So you have some scientists who think "Science" is a magical, perfect, self-contained intellectual project that can do no wrong and will ultimately figure everything out, "given enough time" - this is a problem.

Typically these sorts of scientists (or science-fanatics) are annoying and not wise. They make grandiose claims about the scope and potential of science, with little to no actual evidence to back it up. There's science, and then there's scientism, and the problem is that the latter is being appropriated into the former, so that science must now necessarily be scientistic. With the development of any kind of monism, such as scientism, comes the threat of dogmatism, so that intellectual progress is no longer open and free but now constrained within the metaphysical parameters that are informed by a select few charismatic individuals and their biases. These people can, upon realizing their position of authority in the public eye, use their platform to push unscientific and sometimes immoral public policies.

There is something unsettling to me about power-structures, and science isn't exempt. In my opinion, scientific realism might be justified, but anti-realism certainly provides a solid foundation for healthy relationship between science and the rest of society. It keeps scientists from getting too arrogant and presumptuous, and it helps secure the freedom of individuals to choose a worldview that fits their way of life.

The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith

An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent by John Hick

Doesn't seem correct to me - I've met a few physicists in my time and they tend to think that what they are doing commits them to nothing other than constructing models. Are they wrong about that? — ProcastinationTomorrow

Seems to me that constructing models requires background assumptions - that's all metaphysics is, at least in the sense philosophy of science tends to use. Fundamentally, to construct models about reality presupposes that reality has some kind of formal, rational structure that can be modeled, typically with the use of numbers and logic.

Generally scientists are at least methodological, if not metaphysical naturalists, and work on science within this naturalistic framework. When approaching a question about the world, the explanation sought is one that is naturalistic and has no reference to something that cannot, in principle, be studied by science. Note that this does not entail circular scientism but rather is merely a methodological bracketing-off of anything not within the parameters of science.

Then, of course, there are the assumptions that other people do in fact exist, that there is actually a real, external world that continues to exist without our participation, that there are "laws" that are explicable mathematically, etc. Sometimes assumptions are proven false, or have to be revised: we call these paradigm shifts. Look at special relativity, biological evolution, quantum mechanics, etc.

Basically, then, if science is the study of the ontic, phenomenal, natural world, then there must be some basic assumptions ("metaphysical" ones), that are required for science to even get off the ground. These don't need to be complex, necessarily, and I hardly think scientists "need" metaphysicians to help them out. What's important to remember is that these are metaphysical, and not scientific, and that they can be up for debate, and, historically, have been. What's dangerous and incorrect is the ahistorical belief that science has operated under one continuous framework since its "inception", whenever that is claimed to be.

And what is this idly looping? What is the nature behind all the looping? What does this tell us about what it means to be human, about life, about humanity as whole? Are the projects/programs something to quickly queue up in memory so to execute post haste or does the idling have any merit? — schopenhauer1

Julio Cabrera sees this idle behavior as ultimately negative - the authentic decision to commit to projects and whatnot is an onerous reaction of disgust. Every sequences of positive instance that comes from our own initiative is preceded by this gathering-of-oneself:

"In the slaughterhouse that morning, I watched the cattle being led to their death. Almost every animal, at the last moment, refused to move forward. To make them do so, a man hit them on the hind legs. This scene often comes to mind when, ejected from sleep, I lack the strength to confront the daily torture of Time." — Emil Cioran,

Also, I know you don't like the idea of a mind as a computer- but what is your best analogy if there is one? If not neural networks, what would you use? Is there any appropriate analogy or is the brain's mechanism of a category original and ontologically different? — schopenhauer1

A window would be a better analogy, in my opinion. Dasein is the "opening" from which Being is understood, including its value.

Thanks for sharing your experiences here. Good point. Maybe kinda like not wanting to see sausage being made. And it’s probably better not to think about airline cost-cutting affecting safety as one is about to get on a flight. — 0 thru 9

I think, for me at least, it's like going through disillusionment about technology. When I was a child I thought technology was magic and that scientists and engineers were basically gods for knowing all they know. I wanted to become one of the people who "knows things".

Well, now I know some things and I can tell you now that technology is by no means magic, nor are scientists and engineers gods. I have become more and more attracted to instrumentalist and anti-realist philosophies of science. The attitude I've sort of come to adopt to all of this is that a piece of tech will fail one day, because it is made by humans. People will die, devices will be recalled, updated versions with hastily-added patches will be made available ... rinse and repeat.

Yes, the A.I. hype is in full swing, and full funding mode. Lots of promises here, more than a presidential campaign, which is hard to top. Even daring to critique a specific “technology” is a tricky position for one to take because it is at the risk of appearing to be a fud-dud or an eco-extremist or something. However, i must concede that the advances in driverless vehicle tech is impressive imho, despite some recent tragic accidents. — 0 thru 9

Artificial intelligence is being over-hyped, in my opinion. The science behind it is still developing. The paradigms still seem to be overly-reductionistic and materialistic. The same old metaphor of the brain as a computer, the mind as the software, is just wrong but it keeps on being presented in the media as though it were fact.

I'm hoping to go into research and development after my undergrad, perhaps in artificial intelligence. I've been trying to see if we can't integrate philosophy of mind into some of the upper level courses at my university but I haven't had much success. The current paradigm is still in full swing, it seems.

If the A.I. really is intelligent, when you tell the A.I. robot to do something no warm blooded animal would want to do, what you are going to hear is "You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I am going to sit there and sort all that crap out." — Bitter Crank

The logic here seems to be that, in order to do everything we humans don't want to do, the A.I. needs to be as intelligent or as self-conscious as humans. If that were the case, A.I. wouldn't even be needed - we'd just make more babies, like the capitalists want us to.

An alternative look on this is that the A.I. needs to be just smart enough to get the job done, nothing more. There is no need to make the A.I. a "person", or give them the burden of self-reflection. This is all assuming strong A.I. is more than just a fantasy.

Bingo.. what ARE we doing. What is humanity's point? The error written in our code is that self-awareness leads to understanding of systemic futility. If projects work with functions, the fully self-aware human has to trick himself into constantly being "driven" by these programs.. Every once in a while the baseline futility seeps in; the eternal WHY creeps in and haunts us. It's as if the software has run out of programs to execute. — schopenhauer1

Yes. Holocaust survivor Jean Amery, in his book On Suicide, wrote about what he called the "logic of life". The logic of life is what makes living "make sense" - everything we do "makes sense" because it's "part of life", it's what people do and what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have projects, we're supposed to have jobs, relationships, progeny, etc. "Edge of life" issues, like suicide, are swept under the carpet because they are outside of the logic of life. Suicide does not make sense, from that perspective.

I don't like to use the brain-computer, mind-software metaphor too much, but it does seem to be as you say - the software ("us") is fundamentally an infinite loop that only breaks when it is interrupted by some priority. When there is no queue, we are simply idly looping, waiting for something to happen.

That's funny actually.. any product types in particular? I've had TVs with shitty speakers and hard drives that break real easily, but I'm not sure if that is much resistors as other technology.. hard drives that aren't solid state can break easily due to their physical movement of parts. — schopenhauer1

New products tend to break because they were rushed, always wait for future versions. With a little bit of technical background you can fix a lot of things on your own. My point was more about the "phenomenology" of technology. For many people, myself included at times, learning how something works is cool. Oftentimes, however, I find myself struck by how kludge-like things are. The documentation isn't always great, sometimes non-existent. When you ask professional engineers for help with some device and they tell you "I don't know", that doesn't always instill confidence. It's also scary how many people are desperate to get through error checking, testing, etc.

What's super sketchy are unregulated products. Literally, use at your own risk. A lot of things aren't regulated, and even if they are, the standards aren't always satisfactory.

Going back to how technology replaces meaning- what do you think humans' relationship with technology is? Are tools one and the same with what it means to be a fully functioning Homo sapien? Some posters on here seem to place technology as the be all and end all it seems. Our very brains are said to work similar to specific kinds of computer- connectionist programming networks with neurons acting like transistors or circuits of sorts. What's funny is that if robots became fully sentient, I don't think it would end up like a Terminator scenario, but more like a Douglas Adams book. That is to say, the computers would have existential angst like us humans, and not be able to compute the systemic futility of existence. That would be truly horrifying for the poor little machine bastard. — schopenhauer1

I've always been amused by the niche cult surrounding artificial intelligence, because as much as it's "transhumanist" and "futurist", the hype fundamentally is related to our own insecurities. Those touting A.I. do so because they seem to think A.I. will do everything we don't want to. They will work - we won't have to. But what will we do instead? We'll still have the existential angst, and even more so when we realize that the A.I. is, in that respect, superior to us by being able to work without burden. Artificial intelligence might make some people question the value of human existence qua human existence, as A.I. presumably would do most of the work while we sit around idly, twiddling our fingers.

If the creation is "better" than the creator ... what will motivate people to reproduce? Why make humans, when artificial intelligence is even better? But without humans, what's the point of artificial intelligence? Hold on, back up a moment - what's the point of humanity in general?

Perhaps this is one manifestation of Heidegger's fear of technology - eventually we won't need humans, and if humans lack the understanding of Being, they won't see the value of being dasein. Or something.

The processes and those who get the "privilege" of making the complex technology lives in large labs in corporations and universities. The rest get to run the cogs.. I don't mean computer programmers- they are modern bricklayers.. It's the Intels, Apples, IBMs, Ciscos, etc. etc. and the Harvards, and Oxfords, and MITs, etc.etc . Sure, some might get to be a part of it, but most will be simply the ones who get the final products in consumption form or nicely printed "How things work" books to ease the mind enough to not "really" want to know the complexities and minutia. Essentially there are those who make the cogs, and those who run the cogs. Probably 98% run the cogs. — schopenhauer1

Hahaha, this is somewhat ironic in my case since I just recently switched majors from engineering to computer science. One thing I realized in my experience with engineering is how janky things tend to be. It actually sort of lowered my confidence in many pieces of technology that I regularly use. When the only thing that keeps something running is a single resistor, and the rate of failure of this resistor is relatively high, suddenly the whole thing looks as if it's already broken.

Just as there are only a few that actually design the products we use and consume, there are also a very, very small amount of researchers and explorers who actually get to take the pictures you see in Nat Geo. The hope is to be one of these few, but the chances are small. But it's better than working as a desk-slave, designing products that will be replicated ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

Work will continue to be alienating so long as capitalism is instituted. If capitalism is to go, then there has to be something to replace it with, and socialism isn't going to work with the massive human population. Seizing the means of production (of new workers) by the workers themselves and the subsequent abstaining from producing new workers will deprive capitalists of their labor force.

In that sense, condoms and other forms of birth control are symbols of liberation. No political philosophy will ever be satisfactory, and a contributing reason why this is so is because it just is not possible to get along with as many people as there are. Less people = less potential for conflict.

As Epicurus illustrated, if atheism is true, death is nothing to us. So why would there be any kind of existential crisis surrounding death whatsoever? I think that quite the contrary, death anxiety is a manifestation of theism - namely you are afraid of what comes after death, as Hamlet put it in his soliloquy. — Agustino

But we need not be Epicureans if we are atheists, and in fact this Epicureanism is the same sort of thing that Hume is complaining about - it doesn't actually help in reality. Perhaps because it attempts to rationalize an irrational scenario. Epicurus' principle does not explain why people so desperately cling to life, nor does it help alleviate their suffering. It is just another mantra.

The Epicurean principle that death is not a harm is very counterintuitive. Most people, even if they are swayed by it, nevertheless will believe that it's not ideal. Death may not harm us in any empirical sort of way, but it surely does still hurt us in the form of annihilation. Losing one's identity, having one's projects foiled by the inevitable échec, our downfall, that is bad. We cannot stand thinking about a world that is not illuminated by our lights.

The charge that the fear of death is theistic is thus false, however I could retort that the continuation of existence is atheistic in that the person does not have enough trust or faith in God to expect deliverance after death. God, predictably, has commanded everyone to live and breed, so maybe that criticism doesn't work. But you get the idea.

I'm agnostic, by the way. Perhaps there is a redemption to be found, somehow. Philosophers have proven time and time again that just about anything can be presented in a manner so as to make it seem plausible. I have yet to find a theodicy that adequately explains evil to me, and if the current trend in theology and philosophy of religion is to be followed, then it's decidedly anti-theodicy and more and more based on a pure leap of faith. The failure of theodicy forms a key aspect of God's mysterious ways.

GPA seems to be more relevant for larger companies who can afford employee training; they use GPA as a simple way of sorting through applicants, just as they do with drug tests. Seems to me that often (but not always), having a high GPA is correlated to following the rules and doing what people tell you to do - large corporations prefer these kinds of people because they don't ask very many questions.

How is this a repression? — Agustino

I am speculating is that theism is a form of psychological repression that has origins not only in the economic structure of society but also existential crises surrounding death and annihilation.

No, this would be an argument from desire. — Agustino

Can you spell this out?

What are you talking about? Dostoevsky was a religious man, he died with the Bible in his lap. And Levinas wasn't exactly an atheist either. Don't know about Jean Amery. — Agustino

Right, but all three struggled with their faith. Dostoevsky's characters reflect a man with many contradictory perspectives, such as the duality between the nihilism of Ivan Karamazov and his religious brother Alyosha. Levinas explicitly rejects theodicy for being indecent, as does Jean Amery in his defense of suicide as a basic human right.

Just a minority though. — Agustino

Sure, if the majority was unable to repress, the human race wouldn't exist.

There would be no desire if there was nothing that could fulfil that desire... — Agustino

Are you trying to pull an ontological argument here?

So Hume is simply factually wrong if he wants to claim that theodicy does not provide psychological comfort to those who are suffering. He is right merely if we restrict what he says to mean simply that theodicy does not take the pain of those who are suffering away. — Agustino

Yet there are also many, many people who were believers, and who went through all sorts of awful experiences and came out stripped of their religious beliefs, or at least very unstable about them. Jean Amery, Dostoevsky, Levinas, to name three I am reading right now.

I think you are trying to derive some kind of objective legitimacy to theodicy and religious belief based on how powerful their psychological effects can be. I'm willing to argue that it has nothing to do with religion being true and everything to do with a person's psychological and physiological type. Some people are more robust than others and can run marathons while most of us struggle to finish a 5K, just as some people find an outlet in the search for God while many struggle with the pervasive emptiness. This emptiness is mostly humans wanting God to be real when he is not. And some people have very good imaginations.