He will just respond by saying that creating human life and continuing to live once alive are separate issues. He will say that suicide is difficult to perform because we're hardwired for living and even immoral because it causes suffering for friends and family. — Thorongil

Yes, but in that case he'll at least be referring to people, and evaluating their conduct or experience. He won't be purporting to say something regarding...nothing. There will be no nonexistent people who have rights, or whose consent should be obtained, or who shouldn't be treated in a certain way, or would be or somehow are victims, or who will suffer due to the acts or omissions of people who exist. Nonexistent people don't require protection from people who exist.

It would seem to me to that what is being claimed (once the nonexistent people are out of the picture) is that people shouldn't have children, ever. Of course, that statement will require justification, and I wonder what that justification would be. Would it be--because if people have children, there will be more people? Why, though, would that be a bad thing--something which shouldn't take place? Because it's a bad thing to be a person? I don't know.

A specific person may not be identified, but the counterfactual of not procreating is no future person will exist where there could have been. Not sure why you think this is an abuse of language to think in future tenses and potential consequences from actions. Too literal perhaps? — schopenhauer1

Well, I think people must exist. There are no people who don't exist. There are no people who don't exist whose existence may or may not continue. One can say that people will exist sometime in the future, but that's not to say they're people now. One can also say that people should not exist in the future, I suppose, but that's to say that people living now should die now, or that there should not be any people in the future, which would be to say that not only should all people die, but that nobody should have children before they die.

Well, in the late 1990's I learned from that aforementioned book that apparently in some jurisdictions the way that the law is written a woman can give birth to and raise a child without ever telling the biological father, and then sue him retroactively for child support payments. That is just one example of bad things that hurt men--and more importantly, children--and treat them as less than equal that in twenty years I have never heard again, let alone from anywhere inside women's liberation, and that I probably never would have heard about if nobody decided that there are men's rights issues that need attention. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I'm not sure what it is you find offensive here. Do you feel a father should not be responsible for child support unless he knows he has a child? Do you think that if a mother doesn't tell a father there is a child, the child isn't entitled to support from his/her father?

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic — schopenhauer1

I'm uncertain how the existence of future people can be continued. The existence of people now living, though, may be discontinued through the use concrete, e.g. through the use of the legendary "concrete shoes" of old gangster fame. The Romans, by the way, developed concrete which hardens even while under water.

Population control wouldn't be a juvenile topic, I beleive, but I don't think that entails acceptance of the view that reproduction, in itself, is in all cases immoral.

Hey, wait a minute. Is the title to this thread playing off of Orwell's Homage to Catalonia? Or is it a reference to the cheese makers of Catalonia, or (not to take BC literally) all those Catalans who are makers of dairy products?

Hefner and Playboy may have been remarkable in the 1950s, but were antiquated by the late 1960s. Which is not to say that pictures of nude or nearly nude beautiful young women failed to titillate then or ever will, but the Playboy man as represented and glorified by Hefner became progressively silly, a kind of 50s idealization of a sophisticate and man-about-town wearing bathrobes and pajamas. History passed them by, and rightly so. They don't deserve the lashing they're getting (oooh, a whip!), but Americans have always been upset by and obsessed with sex and especially by the fact that it is enjoyable. They weren't evil, not really, compared with the evil we regularly do, but very juvenile.

Some years ago, I had a heart attack. I was exercising at a YMCA at the time it began, which made it seem strangely inappropriate, not to say unfair. I tried to convince myself that breaking into a cold sweat as a powerful hand seem to reach inside my chest, grip my heart and squeeze was simply an indication I should stop working out for a time. So I did, for a time, and that providing no relief, I found myself in an emergency room where I was fed aspirin and hooked up to various things and eventually told I was having a heart attack and had to be transported to another hospital where they could do more about a heart attack than recognize it is taking place. And so I was "stabilized" to the extent one can be stable while having a heart attack, hauled into an ambulance and given morphine, that admirable narcotic, for my pain.

The ambulance ride took about 30 minutes, I'd say, and it's a curious thing but I didn't panic, or worry, or ask for a priest, but though in pain observed what was taking place with some interest and hoped in a rather vague manner that I would make it through alright. I found myself very much involved in the moment, too busy it seemed to me to wonder what would happen if I died or after I died. And so it went on as I was hauled out of the ambulance and encountered an amiable doctor and his two assistants who may have been nurses or other doctors but in any case gave me something or other, and then I seemed to hover pleasantly while they spoke together and sometimes to me, while they slipped a wire into my wrist, cleaned out my left ventricle or perhaps something else, installed a stent, wheeled me to a room and told me I had "beat the widow-maker."

I have no idea whether there will be an afterlife, but suspect it's unlikely. Regardless, though, I'm here to say that facing death might sometimes entail simply watching, with interest but without overwhelming fear, things happening or things done to you. You're too busy to do much more than that. Was it the morphine or whatever other worthy drug they gave me while in the operating room? I don't know, but think it's likely that without them I would simply have been not only too busy but in too much pain to do anything more.

It's an imaginary friend of certain philosophers, and, like other imaginary friends, may be part of a process by which they're reconciled to the mundane world.

Thank you, m'lady.

I have a mind that attaches itself to odds and ends, including the poetry that can be encountered in popular songs, especially those composed in hard times, and like to remind myself now and then that they're not far away, that my parents stuffed newspapers in their shoes because of the holes in their soles, and could not afford new ones; but also to remind myself that somehow the lives of those that came before were vital and interesting nonetheless, more interesting I think than mine is, that I had a grandfather who was a prizefighter for a time and a conductor on the Chicago L and is now buried with my grandmother in Mount Carmel Cemetery not far from the graves of Al Capone and Frank Nitti, that my other grandparents were in Vaudeville. How does my life, that of a mere lawyer, compare with theirs?

Another song of the 1920s, "Ain't We Got Fun" contains the memorable lines: "There's nothing surer, the rich get richer and the poor get...children [or "poorer" in other versions]; in the meantime, in between time, ain't we got fun?" That world isn't far away at all, is it?

The rest of it is: Wherever I may roam, on land or sea or foam, you'll always hear me singing this song, show me the way to go home."

What does Ciceronianus say whenever Ayn Rand is mentioned?

"Ayn Rand is to philosophy what L. Ron Hubbard is to religion."

Mares eat oats and Does' eat oats and little Lambs eat Ivy... — ArguingWAristotleTiff

A kid'll eat ivy too; wouldn't you?

Sorry I missed this before. And now: "Hut-Sut Rawlson on the Rillarah and..."

It's interesting how great events, like the Big One and the Great Depression, seem to inspire memorable songs, some funny and some sad. I remember my parents, who lived through both, singing Mairzy Doats and The Hut-Sut song. From the Great Depression, you had Pennies from Heaven and Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?, which for me evoke real pathos.

Fortunately a real jury of scientists would be bound by jury instructions providing them with a definition of "intent" for legal purposes which, if they would deign to follow them, would probably lead them to make a finding. The law, you see, is its own realm.

To get on the way to my question, I'm asking the preliminary question, whether Being is simply a semantic tool that allows language a way to refer to things, or if Being has some significance in itself beyond that. What do you say? — tim wood

I tend to think the concept of Being has no significance whatsoever, frankly, except in the history of philosophy, and as an object lesson in the dangers of reification.

Perhaps you feel metaphysics is akin to science in that modern is (usually) better, righter, or even best and right; and that older ideas, unless they're in the direct descent of modern ideas, are merely quaint, of merely antiquarian interest. — tim wood

Well, I like being silly now and then.

More seriously regarding "Being," if the question being asked is "Why is there something rather than nothing?" I think that's a question best addressed by science, unless we're content with the results of mere speculation. But it's important to determine just what it is that's considered the subject matter of metaphysics. First causes? "Being as such"? The "problem of Universals"?

Ah, but the most important question is whether Being beings, as Heidegger said the Nothing nothings. If Being doesn't being, and the Nothing nothings, the Nothing will eventually nothing Being, which means that nothing will be, as the Nothing will in that case have nothinged.

Sorry. Obviously, the issue of Being is one I find it hard to take seriously.

In answer to your question, what I mean by "absolute truth" is THE truth. The ONE, unchanging, eternal , absolute truth of God the Father Almighty.

Don't be like Pilate. Don't make the same mistake. I exhort you to realise how much is at stake in Jesus' claim to have brought THE truth to this world; to realise that It is literally a matter of eternal life and death; to realise that YOUR own life is on the line right now as we speak. You are an intelligent man. Pick up the Gospel and read. Do this and THE truth will set you free. — John Gould

I know Augustine wrote he once heard a voice telling him to "take up and read," but doubt I'd react as he did if I were to do so. And I have, in fact, read the Gospels (and heard them recited, for a long time, from the pulpit); even some of those considered non-canonical. But it's been quite some time since I did.

I was once a Catholic, or a kind of Catholic. Never a very good one, I'm afraid, but I retain a sort of fondness for it as I remember it from when I was young. Now, I'm if anything an aspiring Stoic. I find the simplicity of Stoicism attractive and think its conception of the divine less unreasonable than others. It doesn't require a commitment to a transcendent God, which would be unknowable as we cannot know what isn't in the universe though we can know something about what's a part of it, as we are. Nor does it require a belief in the divinity of Jesus and that he was fully God and fully man, whatever that means, which raised so many disputes in the early Church and which I think has never made much sense. What I know of the history of the ancient Western world leads me to believe that institutional Christianity is remarkable indeed, but as a kind of conglomeration or hodgepodge of the beliefs of pagan philosophy and mystery cults, and Judaism.

But I thank you for you kind words.

You claim "there are no absolutes". I take that you therefore deny the notion of absolute truth ? Is that correct? — John Gould

Quid est veritas? Pontius Pilatus had a point, though it's not one he intended to make, I think. To answer your question or any such questions I'd have to know what you mean by "absolute truth." Are tautologies "absolutely true"? [If so, who cares?]

What I was referring to was more in the way of absolute certainty of judgments made in science or in life.

I tend to think that the most correct judgments we can make are those made based on the intelligent assessment of the best available evidence, but there's always the possibility that other evidence may become available which will require a reassessment. That may be extremely unlikely in some cases; not so unlikely in others. But we live in a world of probabilities. This made people like Kant nervous, or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that Hume made him/them nervous. I don't think it a problem. We successfully make decisions/predictions/judgments all the time and are warranted in doing so.

And, almost predictably, discussions of the legacy of the European Enlightenment always seem to include at least one reference to how pre-Enlightenment people were worse or no better. My guess is that they did not see life, society, the world, etc. in terms of moral superiority and inferiority. I don't know if moral superiority was an Enlightenment goal or is just a byproduct of other Enlightenment developments, but it seems to be an irrational obsession among the disciples and heirs of a movement that supposedly epitomizes the appreciation of rationality. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

If it's maintained that the Enlightenment is especially "bad" it's entirely appropriate to respond that there's nothing especially bad about it.

I doubt if moral superiority or anything in particular was an Enlightenment goal, although it's clear certain Enlightenment figures had agendas. Certain Enlightenment thinkers, like Voltaire and the Frenchphilosophes, thought it appropriate to "enlighten" people and society by exposing the flaws of institutional religion and noting the manner in which it restricted thought. I'm one who would say it was appropriate for them to do so, as it was appropriate for certain Renaissance thinkers to rediscover those pagan philosophies and art which had been ignored or condemned by the Church (yes, I know Aquinas and others were aware of Aristotle, for example, but Aquinas's time was the beginning of the Renaissance, I think).

I would say that anybody who thinks a human creation like science is some innocent being that has done nothing but good in spite of its creators is really desperate to deny reality and find something to cling to. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

But science, of course, isn't a being at all, you see, So it makes no sense to think of it as innocent, or for that matter guilty. It's something we do, or some of us do in any case, like painting. Painting isn't innocent either. But when someone spray paints a swastika on a synagogue, we don't blame the paint, or painting, or even the technology by which the spray paint can was invented.

Science, or the scientific or experimental method, has allowed us to understand the way many things work, make predictions, do things with things, as it were, much more successfully than we have in the past by recourse to such things as prayer, deductive thinking, trial and error. There are no absolutes and so it's unreasonable to condemn a method because it doesn't establish matters to an absolute certainty. It's also unreasonable to condemn a method because its results are misused.

For one thing, a case could be made that modern science and technology have only corrected problems that they created. And that while some people have lived longer and healthier lives other people have been made worse off.

And it could ultimately be a losing battle. All of the antibiotic use, vaccinations, etc. could result in a superbug that costs more than the sum of the benefits we have accumulated to date. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Well, not a very good case, I think. We're the cause of the problems which afflict us, not science or technology. The Enlightenment can't be blamed for the fact that we're corrupt, stupid, greedy, selfish, cruel, ruthless, ignorant, immoral etc. We always have been, and were so long before the Enlightenment, in defiance of and in blithe if not eager disregard of what's being referred to in this thread as the "Judeo-Christian tradition" or Christianity itself, and for that matter were before the moral insights and wisdom of the pagan philosophers which Christianity relied on so entirely in its theology, though combining them with the mythology which grew around the figure of Jesus through the efforts of Paul and others has never been an easy thing.

Is it really thought we were "better" people in pre-Enlightenment times?

If you would but consider that your belief that we were promised that the Enlightenment/modernity would establish heaven on Earth is mistaken, you might recognize that certain things have been resolved. For example, with regard to what have previously been fatal diseases, like malaria, polio, smallpox, typhoid fever, tetanus, diphtheria. Of course, the resolution of diseases merely saves and prolongs life, and you may consider that insignificant.

thought that it is not about subjective satisfaction. Most people are subjectively satisfied being dumb, ignorant, passive fools who never question anything.

I thought that it is about objectivity and intervention. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

No, I think it's mostly about your satisfaction. The things you think important have not been resolved, alas. I wouldn't expect postmodernism to resolve them either, if I were you (not, of course, that I can truly understand you, or anyone or anything else, not really). Nor do I think Heideggerish fear of technology will make us better people.

But I don't think the proponents of the Enlightenment have ever claimed it has or would resolve all questions and make us perfectly good and just, and to complain because it has not done so is therefore rather pointless. It merely provided a method to more successfully explore the world and provide answers to its workings in comparison with, e.g., praying or thinking really hard about abstracts.

...and as we all well know, the Roman Empire continues to thrive to this day. — Wayfarer

In a sense it does, as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, a kind of ghost of the Empire. And otherwise, in the civil law of most European countries (and it seems the state of Louisiana), the Romance languages, the Republic of the United States the government of which mimics in certain ways that of Republican Rome. An empire which lasted around 1500 years counting from the principate of Augustus to the fall of Constantinople in 1453 (though in diminished form as the years passed), and before that was a major player and then dominate power in the Mediterranean for about 300 years before that. For good or ill, the Western World is what it is due to the Roman Empire.

Your selection of what you consider to be unresolved is interesting. I'm not certain those questions/issues will ever be resolved to the satisfaction of everyone, but I don't consider that to be particularly damning of the Enlightenment. The impact of the Enlightenment can best be assessed by considering achievements in, e.g., medicine and science which have taken place since the year 1600, and comparing them with achievements before then. Wikipedia has its faults, but something like this is interesting and suggestive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries

LW also used James's Principles of Psychology as a text for his "classes". — Srap Tasmaner

Thanks, I didn't know that. it's supposed to be James' finest work, but I haven't read it (yet).

Ciceronius stated that the pragmatists, for the most part, ignored what Wittgenstein had to say about meaning and use or utility. Why is that? — Posty McPostface

I think it's more accurate to say that the Classical Pragmatists were unaware of Wittgenstein. Peirce died in 1914, James in 1910. There would be no reason for them to know Wittgenstein; the Tractatus didn't come out until after the First World War. As for Dewey, I don't know whether he knew of Wittgenstein or his work. Wittgenstein isn't mentioned in any of the works of Dewey I've read, (I haven't read them all, of course) and I think their interests differed for the most part. From what I've read, Wittgenstein was fond of James' Varieties of Religious Experience. It's the "neo-pragmatists" who have championed the view that Wittgenstein was a kind of pragmatist, so far as I know.

The understanding that to desire or disturb myself with what is beyond my control serves only to make me subject to others, and unhappy.

My brain is telling me that this is a difference that makes no difference (it apologizes for paraphrasing William "Wild Bill James" who Mr. Spock was paraphrasing when he made a similar statement--or perhaps when their brains told them to do so). My brain tells me to say that if what we (me, you and our brains) perceive is different from what "really" is there, then what "really" is there would have to be pretty much what our brains tell us to think is there, since we do all sorts of things with what is "really" there which we couldn't do if what is "really" there is significantly different from what our brains tell us is there. Now my brain tells me to go back to doing the work it tells me is there for me to do.

Is this still about statuary? I wonder why Lee is so venerated, myself, as he arguably lost the war by invading the North and committing his army to battle at Antietam and Gettysburg. Be that as it may, I have no difficulty with statutes being consigned to museums, where those who are fond of them may gather to gaze upon them in wonder and admiration. I personally find nothing admirable about the Confederacy, though I'm amazed that people were fooled into fighting so hard so that certain families could retain their wealth and property and enjoy a life of leisure, waited on by slaves.

But the statutes are clearly not the problem. I doubt anyone is inspired to violence or hatred by them; I suspect they find that inspiration elsewhere. So remove them by all means, but the question to be considered, I think, is what their removal would accomplish and what the consequences of their removal would be.

Well, I was being silly, you know. No serious assertion, or for that matter question, was intended.

But it strikes me that if one is "satisfied" with a question, there's no question to begin with. That may imply an assertion which isn't expressly made, but most of all it indicates no serious thinking is taking place. There's no question to answer; we're pretending there is one. There's nothing at stake, nothing which needs to be resolved.

Big John Dewey claimed that we only really think when confronted with a problem. I tend to agree. When we're satisfied, there's no problem--there's no need, no discomfort, no uncertainty, no desire to change circumstances-- and we don't think.

The problem lies in assuming that a question is being posed. It's actually an assertion. It's not "what is the meaning of life?" It's:

"The meaning of life is....WHAT???"

No. Nor do they have the "right" to be happy.

Why such a dim view of humanity? Are you saying this from a moral standpoint? Even if you are, I think we're doing quite well. Morality is, what, 2000+ years old. Evil is much older. It's an uphill battle and we're fighting hard. Shouldn't that be a good thing? — TheMadFool

We're a part of the universe, but only a very small part. Our concerns are largely selfish; what we can do is limited. Our knowledge of the rest of the universe is limited. If we're the "mind" of the universe, it's mind is very human-centered, very Earth-centered. A tiny mind of a huge universe. The universe would in that case be an ignorant, brutish lout (carrying on with the mind-body analogy) fixated on a tiny planet.

It is finding the meaning/purpose of life, not the meaning/purpose of humans, the universe, etc. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Is it? I had the impression the OP was referring to human life, i.e. what we as the "self-awareness" or "mind" of the universe exist to do.

Be that as it may, I don't think there is any single meaning of "life" (which I assume encompasses anything living), either. And, as it seems you object to the "meaning of life" being considered singular, I don't think there are any meanings of life.

I don't think, in other words, life of any kind, general or particular, is intended to convey anything, or has any particular destiny or destinies, or exists for any particular purpose or purposes, nor do I think that it should. It simply is. There is life. There will be life in the universe regardless of what we think or want or do.

No, you seem to have something you want to say. If love to hear it. Thanks — Rich

If you say so.

In fact, I have no objection to having as a goal understanding all we can about the universe. But it's a goal only, albeit a worthy one. I think there is no one (single) "meaning of life." There is no one (single) end or purpose to life. We're part of a vast universe, and in light of its vastness it seems to me foolish if not absurd to think we're the best part of it or of any special significance, or that it was created for us or is a kind of vehicle or forum made so we have a place in which our destiny plays out.

I'm fond of the Stoics. The ancient Stoics believed that the universe is alive and that the governing part of it is a Divine Reason, and each of us possesses a part of the Divine (usually conceived of as material but of a very fine nature, similar to fire as an element; they were constrained by the physics of the time). As parts of the living universe endowed with the capacity to reason, our goal should be to "live in accordance with nature" i.e. live as reason dictates, consistent with the Divine Reason. making the best use of what is in our power and taking the rest as it happens, as Epictetus said. What happens which isn't in our control is the universe acting in accordance with the Divine Reason, which isn't necessarily concerned with what we finite creatures want or what we think good or bad. But reason requires that we act virtuously.

In my more spiritual moments I think this is a lovely way to view the universe and is in any case a good way to live. But what we should do is something which must be determined on a case by case basis; too much goes on in life to say that "I've found the meaning of life."

He found some meaning to his life. What's the problem? You prefer I AM ROBOT? — Rich

There is no problem. I'm convulsed with joy that he's done so. Nonetheless, if we're the mind of the universe, the universe is diminished.

Through us the universe has achieved self-awareness. — TheMadFool

It must be very disappointed, then, to find it has such a mind.

Well, I suppose:

Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, Death and the Maiden
Any of Beethoven's Late String Quartets, op. 131 if I must chose one of them
Brahms' Symphony No. 1
Haydn's Trumpet Concerto
Beethoven Piano Sonata op. 106

The disused probe will be garbage when it falls into the Sun, even by the common ordinary definition of garbage: Disused material.

I didn't say that using materials and manmade things is offensive. I said that sending them into the Sun's corona, and then letting them eventually fall into the sun, is offensive and objectionable.

People here evidently believe that there's literally nothing that should be inviolable by human-monkey tinkering — Michael Ossipoff

Well, our computers, etc., will be garbage some day as well then. They're disposed of on Earth, for the most part. You seem relatively indifferent about that. The Sun, then, must have a special, greater significance than the Earth. Since the probe will likely be incinerated, it will have a lesser impact on the Sun than our other garbage has on the Earth. As that's the case, your objection presumably has nothing to do with any harm to its environment which can be anticipated after the probe becomes garbage. But if it has nothing to do with that, what's the basis of the objection? Is it the mere fact that the probe, as it transforms into garbage, does so in the vicinity of the Sun and falls into it?

If that's true then it would appear you believe the Sun should be immaculate, inviolate, untouched by man. Rather like Mary the mother of Jesus in the Catholic tradition (beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini).