What's influence ontologically? Or, what's the difference between causal determinants and influence ontologically? — numberjohnny5

Influence consists of a person experiencing something and either liking it enough that they consciously steer something they're doing in a different direction intentionally due to this, or alternately experiencing it enough or in particular circumstances where it has an "unconscious" impact that something related to it emerges in later actions. (These are events in someone's brain, in response to environmental phenomena.)

Influence doesn't determine later states, because more than one consequent later state is possible. Intentional influences necessarily emerge as the result of choices that someone makes. "Subconscious" influences are not as cut and dried there, but the person in question can still choose to do something different than what the influences would prompt.

Re consequent states differing, for example. Both Adrian Belew and KISS were influenced by the Beatles. Adrian Belew and KISS made music that was notably different from each other, however. The influence didn't determine what the consequent state would be like.

Causal determiners, however, leave no options. There's only one consequent state possible given an identical antecedent state. In the context we're talking about in this thread, causal determinants would also be events in someone's brain. They'd not necessarily be events that are have mental properties. Influences do have a mental component, especially when we're talking about intentional emulation.

I don't think we can. Do you think you can lie to yourself and not know it? — Rank Amateur

No, a fortiori because I don't buy the notion of unconscious mental content.

But I think that someone could think that any arbitrary action is "purely out of love" or not.

So I don't see how that would make prostitution an unordered desire. I can see how it would be in a religious context simply via stipulation, but outside of that I don't know if the distinction works very well.

That is significant if people argue that we are "depriving" something of pleasure. — schopenhauer1

I'd agree with that, but who argues that?

However, that harm is absent IS a good thing, even if there is no actual person to enjoy the not being harmed. — schopenhauer1

No one argues that the absence of harm for nonexistent people is a good thing, either. (I mean, outside of Benatar and some followers--I'm not saying literally no one on the face of the Earth. I mean, to characterize it as some common sentiment is completely unfounded.)

If it's just a self-assessment like that, then any arbitrary desire could either be ordered or disordered, couldn't it?

Examples would include phenomenal, intentional and normative properties. — Theorem

Those are brain states. Brain states are measurable.

Why would you think you need to explain change, anyway, by the way?

If there were a lack of change, would that need to be explained?

Okay, so how do we determine whether a desire "increases love" or not?

think this point from above addresses this point.

" As far as " they could make a different decision" that again, for me comes down to if the desire is ordered or not, there is no good option, just less bad ones, to fulfill a disordered desire, except to eliminate or control the desire itself. " — Rank Amateur

I don't see how it addresses it unless you're claiming that one can't, in fact, make a different decision.

So I went back to review the "ordered/disordered" desire distinction you're making.

You said:

"A very Jesuit way of looking at this is not that desire causes suffering, but disordered desires do."

So a way to understand suffering that you're suggesting is that disordered desires cause suffering contra ordered desires. So we need to understand that distinction to understand what suffering is.

You say: "Ordered desires . . . are those desires that stated simply increase love, desiring things that increase love in yourself and in others will not cause suffering."

So you're defining ordered desires in terms of suffering (not just, however that was part of it), but you just defined suffering in terms of ordered/disordered desire distinction.

That's the point he was trying to make. — schopenhauer1

In making the point he was making, at least according to you, he talked about people not feeling sad for nonexistent people, as if that was significant. It's not. Because people don't think anything about nonexistent people.

Ok, a lot of people are unhappy about things that they may want to do to other people that they maybe shouldn't do. — schopenhauer1

Whether anyone should or shouldn't do anything is subjective, of course.

I don't want to lessen prostitution. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with it. Rather I'm very much in favor of it. I think it's a good thing for people who want an alternate means of having sex.

Re your definition, I don't see how prostitution has anything to do with "lessening love," etc. . . . although I don't see why that should be the criterion, anyway. Re defining suffering with respect to ordered/disordered desires and then making the part of the ordered/disordered desire distinction a reference to suffering, that's pretty shallowly circular.

From that point, you can make a decision to drive the nail or not.

What I'm saying in general is that political correctness isn't an ideological innovation, it's about avoiding fights. People who assert the right to say all the horrible things that naturally pop into one's head through the frictions of life, are asserting the right to get their heads kicked in by the people they enrage. If people value honesty over a peaceful neighbourhood, they're liable to get what they want. — unenlightened

You don't have a right to physically attack someone just because they say something. Learn how to deal with people saying things that you don't like/don't agree with.

It seems you are saying the hammer drives the nail and ignoring the carpenter swinging the hammer. — Rank Amateur

I'm excluding decisions from causes, as one could decide to do differently. The carpenter has to apply physical force to the hammer, though. (Just as they'd need to apply physical force to falsely imprison or criminally threaten someone).

not sure there is very good evidence to support this. Legalized gambling hasn't prevented folks gambling away the mortgage, legalized alcohol hasn't prevented alcoholism, etc etc — Rank Amateur

??? I didn't say anything like "Legalized prostitution would get rid of prostitution."

If prostitution is legal, it would eliminate the illegal industry. There's no illegal alcohol industry to speak of, because alcohol is legal and there's no motivation to produce alcohol illegally.

I don't want to get rid of prostitution. I want to get rid of the absurdity of it being illegal.

Was he figuring that? It seemed to me that he was wondering about a conscious entity with no needs, not arguing that consciousness is incoherent without needs.

Am I correct that what you are saying here is there is no link between the desire to pay the coerced and trapped woman and the desire of money to enslave them - and the suffering of the people involved ?? — Rank Amateur

I'd say the desires do not cause that specific suffering. What would cause it is someone falsely imprisoning someone else or criminally threatening them. Whatever reason they decide to do those things if they do is another issue. They could make a different decision.

Re that decision, by the way, the issue would be easily dissolved if we would simply legalize prostitution.

Well, that's the point in regards to the absence of pleasure for a possible future person. — schopenhauer1

I don't think anyone is lamenting the absence of pleasure for non-existent people. Some people are rather upset at not having kids, not being able to have kids, etc. If they'd not be allowed to have kids they'd be upset at that, too. (And people are also upset at being penalized by laws that put them at a disadvantage if they have more kids.)

I wouldn't say that free will has anything to do with "complete control."

Influences are not the same thing as causal determinants.

That choices may be limited doesn't imply that one can not make a choice.

I would propose that the disordered desires above are causing great suffering - to the women, to the people entrapping/enslaving the women and to all the Robert Krafts that pay the woman. — Rank Amateur

I'd say that the only suffering happening there would be (a) if the women are really being held against their wills at least via what I'd classify as criminal threatening, and (b) the arrested Johns due to it being illegal to pay for sex.

But none of this makes desires sufficient for suffering.

Yeah, I knew that was a big tangent. The idea of that just always struck me as bizarre.

As I mentioned, or hinted at, in my first post in this thread, I don't understand why we wouldn't focus on pain when we talk about suffering rather than focusing on desire. I can't really make sense out of saying that not having a desire met is sufficient for suffering when we also use the term "suffering" for, say, someone who has just been in a serious car accident and who now has a sharp piece of metal going through their trapped leg--especially where it's supposedly not a different sense of the term.

God created human beings to praise, reverence, and serve God, — Rank Amateur

This is going way off-topic, but why would something create something else to praise, revere and serve it?

Well, I can see the "serve" part if we're talking about something like machines or robots and a creator who could use/would like some help getting things done, but that's the only angle from which I'd say that doesn't sound wonky.

no I think existing before conception isn't part of their argument. — wax

Okay, but we can't avoid that with Benatar's "asymmetry.".

"Pangs of compassionate sadness for the aliens not born to experience pleasure," to have any rhetorical impact, requires that we ever think it makes to talk about nonexistent entities as if they exist.

Otherwise, we can say, "Well, of course no one feels that, as no one thinks it makes sense to talk about nonexistent things as if they exist in any capacity."

People too quickly jump into thinking, "But how can that be so without me knowing about it?", as if our knowing about it determines the metaphysics. As if the world won't just carry on as before, only without us. — S

I agree with that, but I don't think it implies that meaning would exist if we didn't, any more than emotions, desires, etc. would exist if we didn't. Some things are mental "in nature" and some are not. The mental-in-nature stuff requires things with minds.

It's no different than saying that some things are, say (to use your other thread), potato-oriented (we don't have a word like "potatal" lol) in nature and some things are not. So we're just not going to have potato-oriented phenomena if potatoes do not exist.

I don't know; it is often an argument in meat-eating vs. veggism debates as in..'those sheep wouldn't have existed if they weren't brought into the world to be turned into meat.' — wax

Do you think those people are literally saying that they existed prior to being "brought into the world to be turned into meat"? I don't think that would make sense if they're saying "They wouldn't have existed if not for . . ."

Okay...

So, do you agree with my point there being cases where the role of knowledge in relation to metaphysics is being overestimated? — S

In the cases like you're describing, I'd just say that the person is confused. Knowing something and how we know it is often not the same thing as what we know about. (They're only the same when the topic is knowledge itself.)

The mistake is to think when I say 'how are you?', I am asking how you are. I'm not, and I don't want to know how you are. — unenlightened

Hmm . . . with the people I say this to, I actually want to know how they are. I just figure that if they don't detail anything, they're par for their course.

Sure, in that sense it seems alright. I do the same thing. But the sort of thing I meant by that - and if you're a metaphysical realist then you should agree with me here - is the kind of thinking that goes, "But how do we know that the cup is still there?", which is fine in a sense, but not in the sense where it is being asked because in their head they're imagining a link between knowledge and existence, such that the cup can't exist at the time without us knowing that it does at the time. That's a gross overestimation of the role that our knowledge plays, in my assessment. — S

I'm a metaphysical realist in general, but I believe that some things, like emotions, desires, thoughts, etc. are only mental phenomena. That's not giving them any different status aside from placing that phenomena in a particular location--brain activity.

We don't usually feel pangs of compassionate sadness for the aliens not born to experience pleasure in a far away barren planet. — schopenhauer1

Because most people think it's ridiculous to even talk about "persons who don't exist" as if they do.

For me, it's difficult to separate epistemology from ontology. If I'm going to ask myself, "How do we know that 'dog' still means something if no people exist," I don't know how I could answer that without exploring just what meaning is ontologically in the first place. At it seems to me like once we know that, it's easy to answer the epistemological question.

Given congruent, re: similarly constructed, rationalities, if to “point at meaning” is to indicate an origin for it, or if to “point at meaning” is to summarize its possibility, I can offer such pointing to be none other than reason itself, in the form a judgement whereby a conception conforms to its object or it does not. Here, it is judgement that points to, or in effect, mediates, meaning. Meaning is merely a product of reason and in no way is a property of that which reason examines.

As you say, you have to do something theoretical. — Mww

The problem with this for S's view is that S claims that meaning would exist if no people existed.

I don't remember what your hypothetical scenario is (I'm guessing that it's just something about meaning when no people exist).

Why is insisting that it's imaginable any different than someone insisting that it's imaginable that there are emotions like happiness, sadness, etc. when no people exist, or someone insisting that it's imaginable that there are ecliptics when there are no solar systems, etc.?

Political correctness not only fails to achieve its stated goals of tolerance and respect; — Ilya B Shambat

The goals are bogus anyway. No one is required to like anyone else or what they do, and no one is required to respect anyone else. If you want respect from someone, earn it.

PC is the "participation trophy" mentality applied to tolerance and respect.

It would be true that the word "dog" means what it does in the language. My logic can deal with that without a problem. — S

What problems do you think crop up if "dog" doesn't mean something objectively?

I'm trying to imagine anything that could persuade me to believe that notions of objective, persistent, abstract existents aren't simply examples of a type of projection.

like asking where is Tuesday, — S

I can tell you where Tuesday is. (Although by this point, you should be able to successfully guess my answer without me having to provide it.)

As I explained above, S apparently believes that a "christening of meaning" (at least per communal usage) makes some sort of objective, persistent abstract existent obtain, an abstract existent for which it's a category error to contemplate location, concrete properties, etc.

So, if we are using measuring devices to indicate time, — philosophy

What are you really measuring with those devices? For example, doesn't a traditional clock really measure the motion of its gears? Doesn't a sundial really measure the motion of the sun relative to a shape that produces a shadow? Etc.

Aristotle’s philosophy was framed in the context of a different epoch. — Wayfarer

There wasn't an epoch in which there were real abstracts or in which properties were somehow separable from substance, etc. It's maybe understandable why Aristotle made the mistakes that he did, but that doesn't make them not mistakes.

They have characteristics, yes, but not empirically measurable properties. — Theorem

How would there be a property that's not empirically measurable (whether it's been measured yet or not)?

It's okay if your answer is that we can't point at meanings contra expressions of meanings, but if so, that's one important difference between meaning and potatoes or oranges.

Meanings? Wouldn't that answer be kind of uninformative?