Yes, life is not a self-justifying peepshow, but that doesn't mean it can't be justified. Because it's not self-justifying, there needs to be an argument as to why suicide is not the most rational response to it. "Because it's painful and other people might feel sad" doesn't cut it, for to be opposed to something merely on instinctual or emotional grounds is to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Not everything painful need be bad, just as not everything pleasurable need be good. — Thorongil

I would say that this is one of the few issues I truly have with Schopenhauer's philosophy. He accepts that the justification of life is not easy, and defends the right to kill oneself. But ultimately he comes back full-circle by arguing suicide only gets rid of the phenomenon, and not the noumenon.

I don't see this as very satisfactory. Who gives a damn about the noumenon?

To be short and sweet, then, I don't see any rational reason to continue living. It's absurd. Not only is life generally mediocre but it also has the potential to be really, really, unimaginably bad. So bad that you might wish you had died earlier. I see the possibility of horrible trauma and pain as a sort of undeniable "trump card" on the side of the pessimists - opponents may try to argue that it's all about "perspective" or "trying harder" or something, but you can't just get rid of extreme pain by a switch of attitude.

I've come to see this equation as problematic. Life is suffering, but all suffering arises through lack or want of a thing, and so life as a whole is a kind of non-being that lacks being. — Thorongil

I don't think it's adequate to say all suffering arises through lack or want. Clearly getting impaled through the stomach will cause someone to suffer, but it's not as if the only thing going on is a desire to not be impaled. There's a metal rod puncturing the stomach, it's going to be painful regardless.

Our well-being is basically dependent on the health of our bodies, of which we have limited control.

So any sort of eudaimonology is going to have to deal with the looming possibility of horrible, disfiguring, traumatic episodes of pain, physical and emotional but especially the former.

^Apple user...lmfao this is so petty.

Yep. I've just explained at length why I wouldn't invest a cent in the sad dualistic combo of mechanicalism+romanticism. So what's your point exactly? — apokrisis

What's your point, exactly? You haven't refuted shit. I have very little respect for your obsessive devotion to a metaphysics that has not relevance to half the things you claim it to be relevant to.

Appealing to subjectivity is metaphysics. — apokrisis

But not the sort of metaphysics you seem to be invested in or expect from this discussion. Phenomenology is front-and-center here. How humans are affected by their environment from the perspective of those involved.

Instead you want to make some kind of transcendentally absolute deal out of suffering. — apokrisis

Nope, once again you fail to grasp the simplicity of my position. It's not supposed to be metaphysical.

If I understand you correctly then it means you think both ships are valid referents of ''the ship of Theseus'' because both of them evolve through time developing relationships with other objects (sailors, ports, events, etc). — TheMadFool

I would say that it shows that there never "was" a Ship of Theseus in the material sense, because the existence of relations makes material composition vague and indeterminate.

But you are again straying from nature's own logic. Failure spells non survival. So the ability to persist is definitional of what it is to flourish. That is the actual structure of the world. — apokrisis

I would say you're equivocating here and getting dangerously close to the naturalistic fallacy. Being able to live long enough to pass on one's genes is not the only requirement for something to "flourish". Clearly the satisfaction of preferences is an integral part.

One of the pessimistic points, then, would be that the biology of humans and the environment humans live in are not sufficient to maintain a prolonged eudaimonic, flourishing life. We persist not because we enjoy it or because it's good for us to persist, but because we don't really have any other choice. Well. actually, we do have a choice, but it's an unspeakable choice under an affirmative framework.

It isn't me who marginalises failure. Failure marginalises itself. — apokrisis

...victim blaming? Those who can't cope with the demands the universe puts on them are failures...

And thus antinatalism is simply being unwittingly proactive in stepping up to the plate, putting its head on the block sooner rather than later — apokrisis

...but then again, we're only failures under your affirmative framework. If you value being more than non-being, then of course antinatalists are going to be seen as failures. But if you value non-being more than being, or even just a more conservative ethical appreciation of free will, antinatalism could be seen as the height of success. To break out of the cycle of life. That takes real guts.

When I say I didn't say it, perhaps you ought to take note? — apokrisis

And like I said before, you don't have to say something to imply it.

Alternatively, we are meant to flourish. Or same thing, flourishing would be what would be meaningful. (Try and deny it.) — apokrisis

Alright, I'll try. We're "meant" to survive in a hostile world, as I've already said. Flourishing is contingent and transitory with no guarantees of success. You can marginalize the failures all you want, this doesn't mean they don't exist or haven't existed for the past countless eons.

Why do you keep trying to make out that I say things I don't say? Is it because your argument is otherwise so weak? — apokrisis

I love anonymous internet belligerence so much.

Whether you said it or not is irrelevant, it is implicit in your position. Affirmation of life; i.e. "it's worth it". It may be a mixed bag under your view, but the contents favor overall positive value. Otherwise there'd be no reason not to be a pessimist.

Hah. I hear your discomfort and note you have no counter-argument on that point. You are promoting a philosophy that is self-defeating in only securing what it hopes to avoid. And that fact exposes a basic failure of analysis. — apokrisis

You didn't even really give much of an argument. Something about antinatalists giving more population room for breeders, or something. Either way, someone gets born. Okay...?

Yet nature is structurally a mixed bag in the end. — apokrisis

Depends on what you mean by nature. I'm clearly not meaning nature by the entirety of existence, as I've already stated as such. If that's what you mean, then my position in accordance to this would be that life is one of the negative bits in the mix.

Yep. I've been pointing out the self-defeating nature of anti-natalism in that it in fact must result in the eugenic strengthening of the pool of willing breeders. So it really blows as a practical philosophy in that sense. — apokrisis

As have I, when I said the zombies will inherit the Earth. But you didn't like that description that much...

Even if antinatalism is pragmatically self-defeating (which I doubt, of course), this does not change the formal, ideal value of it. Non-ideal bullshit shouldn't affect the validity of a formal argument.

But yes, it is a consoling thought, that antinatalists might inflict their pessimism on everyone they possibly can, but at least not on their own kids. That counts as a small blessing I guess. — apokrisis

I don't get it. If you don't like pessimism, and if you don't think pessimism is a "real" philosophy or something, then why are you wasting so much time and energy on what you see to be a failed cause?

I have to laugh as life is interesting because it is complex, both in terms of its responsibilities and its delights. Yet you choose to be as crudely reductionist as possible so as see it as structurally black.

This is the actual philosophical sin here. Mistaking absolutism for profundity. — apokrisis

This hand-waves the issues away by trying to make life seem like a mixed bag of goods and bads. We've been saying it from the start, we are not meant to be happy, we are not meant to be secure. We are meant to survive and survival requires us to suffer. Suffering is the structural integrity of life as experienced by those involved in it, i.e. the phenomenological natural-ontology.

So you're coming from the perspective that being is generally, if not intrinsically, good. Yet when asked to justify this, you must appeal to the ontic complexities of life. Naked being cannot be defended, it must be concealed by appealing to the transitory ontic intra-worldly beings, while systematically obscuring/denying the reality of non-being, i.e. the non-being of being. Being-towards-death.

To affirm being is not to find something about being that is good, but to point fingers at the stuff within being to justify being. Ironically enough, the being that is apparently so good is the same being we have to protect ourselves against.

Stick around, act helpless, be a drag on the rest. Then the whole thing might indeed collapse (only to be reborn much the same - sorry, nature and the second law are relentless like that.) — apokrisis

If you think that's the best course of action for me, then I'm already doing that. Although I try not to be too much of a drag.

Why must you keep misrepresenting what I say? I'm not arguing for optimism in place of pessimism, but instead pragmatism. — apokrisis

And once again, optimism and pessimism are comparative terms.

My reply to the OP was about why it would make no difference as that just creates more room for those with a wish to perpetuate their kind. — apokrisis

So your argument against antinatalism is based on a dubious empirical prediction about the consequences of adopting antinatalism in a non-ideal environment?

How does this affect the validity of the antinatalist view?

You have yet to pull words out of your own mouth that would make a coherent case as to how a structurally black world could be quite fun and meaningful in practice. — apokrisis

The point is that it's actually not all that fun or meaningful, but a certain aesthetic can be cultivated in the absurdity alongside the occasional moments of joy and excitation. A world need not be 100% doom and gloom and horror in order to be classified as structurally negative. It could be mediocre, like a B-rated movie that nevertheless has some cool action shots and a steamy sex scene.

Your objections continue to miss the mark.

Your best attempt was to label people who might have a different opinion "the inheriting zombies." Nice. — apokrisis

Thanks, I call it as I see it. Those who disagree can either show me where I'm wrong (and I'll gladly take it!), or they can go about their merry way. But for some funny reason, people take it as a personal insult when other people don't like the stuff they do, as if everyone at the party (that nobody was invited to!) has to enjoy it.

Why is this? Why do dissidents have to be forcibly convinced to be optimistic? Why aren't they automatically optimistic, and why can't they just be left alone if optimists don't like them?

You don't have to agree with everything the pessimist says to understand the principle behind antinatalist arguments. Choice. Had I payed for a bad concert, it wouldn't be right for me to complain about its quality. I knew what I was getting into. Not so much for life.

Rubbish. The bar on what counts as being properly human has simply been set impractically high by institutionalised Romanticism. That is the subcontract causing all the problems. — apokrisis

Except your revisionary history leaves out the pessimists of the ancient world...try again I guess.

If you expect your life should be Picasso, Einstein and Pele all rolled into one, you might indeed view your lot rather pessimistically. — apokrisis

I don't expect it to be anything. That's you putting words in my mouth and assuming pessimism is merely a reaction of disillusionment.

Suicide is a logical thing to encourage biologically as a way to deal with the diseased or malfunctioning. — apokrisis

Antinatalism is never going to be accepted, so the next-best thing is to promote the legalization of assisted suicide for those who aren't satisfied with the lot they were forced to draw in life. But of course that's probably never going to happen, either, because people don't like to have the concept of non-being around in an affirmative society.

So self perpetuation is no evolutionary mystery. Voluntary eugenics can only ensure the strengthened identity of what you claim to detest. You are only making yourself part of the process of institutionalised self perpetuation in trying to promote the self annihilating trope of anti natalism. — apokrisis

That's the sad thing - the world has and always will be inherited by the zombies.

False dichotomy.

This whole white-grey-black thing is an oversimplification. The good parts of life are not illusory (non-existent) themselves (rather, transitory), but they are a source of illusion. They give us the illusion of security, permanence, and meaning; they seem this way when they are not. The man wins the lottery and believes himself to be a happy man, yet less than a week later he will return to the equilibrium and perhaps even be disappointed by how little money he actually gets to keep. Previous good experiences are used as justification for an optimistic prediction of the future, yet curiously bad experiences tend to be marginalized and forgotten. And with the death of God, the secular man is left with nothing but the future to reassure him when his secular theodicy support structure fails to do so.

As I've already said before, there is nothing incoherent in accepting that life is not worth living yet continuing to live anyway. There's no logical connection here, even if you demand there to be. Existence is absurd. We're seduced into continuing living by some little novelty. The ennui emerges from the constant tension between this and other related realizations and the systematic covering-up of them by society at large. It's madness.

Once you swallow the absurdist pill, you can move on and start to make the best of the situation you're in. The false dichotomy you present is such because it simplifies the matter to suit your agenda. I can accept that happy people exist, no problem. That's not what's at stake, though. What's at stake is the fragile contingency of this happiness, and the looming threat of disorder that oftentimes puts people in situations of suffering above that which they can handle. And, in general, the observation that these people are happy oftentimes only due to a structure of illusions that provide comfort and security. Once you have this realization, it's hard to go back. You've transcended the immanent.

There's also no need to give life or existence "objective" value in the sense you seem to be demanding it be. Life is what it is. However, how it is experienced by those involved in it is inherently value-laden. To be conservative, then: life is bad for those involved, even if it takes a lifetime for them to realize it.

How can you see grey in a world that is structurally black? What is going on there? — apokrisis

I already explained this already, try to keep up.

If you see only grey — apokrisis

But I never said I see only grey. And I never said the world was black through and through. I said it was structurally negative.

Take, for example, how you presumably see human life as generally positive and worth continuing. That doesn't mean bad things can't happen. And so in the same vein, I see life as generally negative and not worth continuing, but recognize good things when they do happen.

If we ask ourselves, "what makes that telescope that particular telescope?", we have already assumed that there are such things as telescopes. We already have presumed it right to believe objects in general exist.

But what would make an object? What composes or constitutes an object?

I think it is fairly common to see artefacts, or human-made stuff, isn't really "anything" outside of what we see them as. A hammer is only a hammer to the eyes of the wielder.

But what about modern inventions, like genetic engineering or artificial intelligence? If there's no ontological difference between a solution of hydrochloric acid in the lab and hydrochloric acid in a digestive tract, then what is the difference between a cow born naturally and a cow cloned in a test tube?

And the fact is that humans are not separate from the rest of the world. The world produced humans. The phenomenon of human creativity is not something spawned from the endless depths of some ethereal dualistic plane of existence, but a phenomenon that is rooted right in the world as a whole. The world produces agency.

So we can ask a further question: what difference does it make if objects exist or not? Would it make any real difference in the grand labyrinthine causal structure of the universe if a telescope actually existed, or if it were simply a structure of simples organized telescope-wise?

Neither theories seem adequate in my opinion. There is too much ambiguity and vagueness in nature to be able to set any real strict boundaries between material objects. But there are patterns the universe falls into, patterns which the mind is able to pick up. And here we have the threat of extreme nominalism: maybe all the "work" is done by the mind, maybe it's "all in the mind". But we simply have to put this into the perspective of a cosmology and evolution, and question how or why something like a mind would arise out of a mess of non-patterns and disunity.

So the verdict, in my view, is that the reality of objects is determined by their causal role in a system, which includes minds. What we call something is irrelevant, the fact is that something materializes as a real entity as soon as it becomes an active part of a causal system, and dissolves or mutates into something else as soon as it loses or switches roles. This includes things that signify or represent something else: a piece of clothing may not "actually" be a piece of clothing, but it is something that tells me I can wear it for warmth and to avoid indecent exposure. It's not an "object", but it's not "nothing" either. What something is is not simply a question of its material constitution but of its relationship to other things as well.

For a different, idiosyncratic perspective: Utilitarianism as virtue ethics.

False. Getting real tired of you setting people up only to claim victory when you switch the bait. I have no idea what you mean when you say my perceptions are incoherent, nor how it's even coherent to say perceptions are incoherent. Perceptions are what they are, they may be false but they certainly aren't incoherent.

If you see the world is generically grey, you can't coherently claim it to be black on the grounds it is not white. Just as the pollyannaish reverse is also an incoherent claim. — apokrisis

But I don't see the world as generically grey, I see it as structurally black.

How I act upon this belief is entirely different. There is nothing stopping me from appreciating the ambiguity, or vagueness as you so love to say, of sentient welfare and the irony that this cultivates. Part of the pessimistic, or even just plain old existentialist, literature is the focus on the apparent paradox of human sentient existence. If you think the ways I cope with existence are not compatible with a belief that life is structurally unsound, then that's fine. Indeed it would be strange if the methods of coping were perfect, for there wouldn't be any reason to talk about the issues at hand.

So you're assuming pessimism has to be accompanied by a poor attitude. Not surprising, as I doubt you've actually read anything substantial in pessimistic literature, despite your ironic belligerence against it. If you had, you would have been familiar with the words of Camus, or Nietzsche, or Leopardi, who explicitly deny this assumption.

It is relevant that in one breath you tout the mood enhancing benefits of pot, the next you imagine it as the very worst advice I might give you and Schop (when it is as far away from sensible as any advice from positive psychology would get. — apokrisis

Mood enhancement is hardly a genuine solution to anything pessimism focuses on (or really anything for that matter, apart from maybe glaucoma or something), that's why I brought it up as an example. There's nothing incoherent in having a generally euthymic equilibrium while simultaneously having negative beliefs about life and existence. I've mentioned Leopardi's spontaneous explorer and Nietzsche's ubermensch before as examples. Leopardi's especially works well with what you implied elsewhere, the obvious aesthetic of the scientist (explorer of sorts).

For the record, I wouldn't get high again for the funnies. I'd do it to cope with the anxiety and tension I deal with on a daily basis, since years of therapy hasn't done much to ease my stress. There's a whole lot of ifs involved here, chances are I'll probably never get high again in the near future.

Thus the relevance is illustrating what awful arguments you make. — apokrisis

By planting a red herring and misdirecting the focus off my actual arguments and onto my so-called worship of weed.

I defined it - going the furthest in reducing awareness of reality to a matter of signs - that is, the theory we create and then the numbers we read off our instruments. — apokrisis

But why should I see this as the "height" of consciousness? Are you saying that this is consciousness at its most effective, as a well-oiled cog in the dynamic of the world?

The soccer goalie does just the same in the end. Success or failure is ultimately read off a score board ticking over - the measurement of the theory which is the rules of a game. — apokrisis

I mean, soccer isn't the only example available. What about artists who paint pictures blind or compose pieces deaf? Or the taxicab driver who doesn't need to look at the speedometer to know how fast he's going? Or the laborer who pounds stakes in the ground in a perfect repetition?

You are forgetting the role of measurement. Ideas must be cashed out in terms of impressions. — apokrisis

So, Hume? mkay

Science is the metaphysics that has proven itself to work. It is understanding boiled down to the pure language of maths. And so measurements become actually signs themselves, a number registering on an instrument. — apokrisis

It's really not that romantic, though. What if the instrument isn't working properly? What if you messed up in the calculation? What looks like understanding can easily be an error propagating through a system.

You say it boils down to the pure language of mathematics. Yet surely not all science rests on mathematics. Unless you wanna go all Meillassoux on us.

Yeah it's just so obvious. Alcohol doesn't cause drunkeness, drunkeness causes alcohol. Lobotomies don't cause a destruction of integrative thought, a lack of integrative thought cause lobotomies. Etc, etc. — apokrisis

Isn't this just begging the question, though, by implicitly assuming consciousness is akin to the effects of a physical reaction?

Consciousness isn't really weird, at least not in comparison to the apparent outside world. We at least know what consciousness is like. The "real" world is only able to be ascertained indirectly. It's probably nothing like what we experience it to be, if it even exists in the first place.

Smoked some weed for the first time last night at a concert. — darthbarracuda

I don't see how this is relevant.

and the superficiality of pot as a solution to life's problems — apokrisis

Dude, I did it once. It was alright. I'm not a pothead, sheesh.

But why do you presume the job of the mind is to see reality "as it is"? That makes no evolutionary sense. — apokrisis

If I may interject here, it seems to me that the job of the mind (or any organ for that matter) is to provide the organism the necessary nutrients to survive. In the case of the mind (or the brain depending on how you see the relationship between the two), paired with the sense organs, provides the organism a valuable nutrient - information.

Information, of course, needs to be accurate. The mind needs to be able to predict future outcomes, and it does this through trial-and-error learning, habitual behavior and unconscious memory. If everything was perfectly known, there would be no need for a mind. No thinking would be required. Thinking is the process in which we evaluate different sorts of information and construct a path of action. If we wanna go the psychoanalytical meta-psychological route, then consciousness is the (painful) method in which the unconscious satisfies its endless depth of want and need in a temporal world of insufficiency. Without this inherent ambiguity and uncertainty, there wouldn't seem to be any reason for an organism to expend energy on a representation of the world for the sake of representing the world. Certainly the mind cannot be an easy thing to maintain.

So apo is right in that for biological organisms, less tends to be more. Efficiency is what's up. But of course the mind has to be modelling the world somewhat accurately, otherwise theories like apo's wouldn't even make sense themselves. Here we have Plantinga's argument against naturalism, which in my opinion fails but certainly provokes discussion and refinement of naturalism.

The goal is to reduce awareness of the surrounding to the least amount of detail necessary to make successful future predictions, and thus to be able to insert oneself into the world as its formal and final cause. We gain control in direct proportion to our demonstrable ability to ignore the material facts of existence. — apokrisis

The tricky part is to figure out that balance between seeing too little and seeing too much. Curiosity as much as ignorance is a source of many problems. A cultural domino effect.

This is why science is the highest form of consciousness. It reduces awareness of the world to theories and measurements. We have an idea that predicts. Then all we have to do is read a number off some dial. — apokrisis

Why just science, though? Why not soccer? Surely goalies reduce their awareness of the world to the game, its rules and the movement of the players and the trajectory of the ball. Why isn't this the highest form of consciousness?

To denote science (or anything else) as the "highest" form of consciousness is sort of ambiguous in my opinion. Higher than what? What measuring system are we using here?

If anything I would have to say philosophy is the "highest" form of thought, since it deals with abstract concepts in a purely possible modality. Or, hell, even just daydreaming.

I'm legitimately curious as to why you think it's alright to blatantly ignore everything I just wrote by pretending it's the words of a seasoned stoner. Is it the impersonal culture of the internet, cognitive dissonance, or do you have some wisdom from above that isn't just scienced-up "suck it up"?

You smoke your first joint yesterday and today you talk like a seasoned stoner. — apokrisis

What?

And that existence is what you make it. — apokrisis

Empowering, yet false. Again this comes back to the whole schpeel about the requirement of illusions for personal security and optimism.

Of course Pollyannaism is as superficial as Pessimism. There are limits to what any individual can change. So Pragmatism accepts the necessity of working within limits. — apokrisis

Pessimism is pessimistic only in relationship to the very pollyanna optimism that is so widespread in the media and government and general public.

But it's not just blind pollyannaism but the general affirmative attitude towards life. Ever wonder why people are so resistant to suicide being legalized? It's because the existence of death is systematically obscured (oblivion!) and the non-Being of Being is forgotten and replaced by a delusion of permanence and progress.

Yet in accepting responsibility for playing a part in the making of a better world, at least we start acting like a grown-up. And that responsibility starts at home with ourselves - hence positive psychology. — apokrisis

I'm all for positive psychology if it makes us more productive. I'm not for positive psychology if it's seen as the Scientifically Correct way to deal with life.

So the problem with your pragmatic "solution" is that it's using a non-radical therapy to "solve" a radical problem that is not actually able to be solved, especially not by non-radical methods. You might as well just tell pessimists like me and Schop1 to go hit up the bong.

Of course pessimism thrives on the claim that misery (for us, in this era of history, due to the way we live) is inescapable.

But that is what makes it superficial as philosophy. — apokrisis

No, I think what makes pessimism so idiosyncratic is how easy and obvious it is but how paradoxically difficult it is to accept. Whereas other philosophical projects are somewhat successful at solving problems, the issues pessimism brings up are not really all that solve-able. And that's probably the rub of it. It's only superficial if you expected anything more.

Actually I'd say pessimism can be deeply interactive.

So misery exists (in nature) as a signal to get changing. It says you are in the wrong place and need to head to a better place. — apokrisis

But of course this better place has to be existence, right? :-}

But where are they discovered from? Nature is no guide to moral behavior, plus the whole is-ought distinction. It's left to human culture, and human cultures vary quite a bit. Individuals and groups within a culture often disagree a lot on what's moral. — Marchesk

Exactly why I believe naturalism is insufficient grounds to justify moral realism.

I think the moral realism/anti-realism debate can be approached in a different angle: moral realists typically believe moral truths can be discovered, whereas moral anti-realists typically believe moral truths are (in a certain qualified sense) invented. But just because something is invented doesn't mean it's useless - in fact inventions are generally useful by nature.

Okay, but I just want to understand your position. Is your position that it's not wrong to torture children, but that you pretend that it's wrong to torture them for convenience? — The Great Whatever

My position is that the common conception of morality is that morality is an objective and mind-independent source of guidelines for living, and that the moral anti-realist rejects this. Perhaps morality is a social phenomenon grounded in agreement and compromise.

I dislike the term "convenience" as it makes it seem like I don't have any emotional investment in morality when in fact I do. It's just that I don't think there's anything more to morality other than impulses from the unconscious and agreement between members of a society. These sorts of things can nevertheless be quite causally powerful, but nevertheless fail to qualify for "moral realism".

This is contradictory. What makes us moral if not that which grounds morality? — Thorongil

I meant morality in the realist sense is groundless. It doesn't exist.

It's not incoherent, but it's also not binding. If you believe it's a fiction, then you're acting, it's easy enough just to turn around and say, OK I don't actually believe it. — Wayfarer

Right, exactly. "Technically" speaking I don't actually "believe" it, but for all purposes I do because I act as though I do. It's practical, conventional, and comfortable to have morality instead of constantly reminding yourself that nothing actually matters in the end. Especially in situations where you have to make a choice, since error theory doesn't just magically transport you elsewhere where you don't have to make choices anymore. Something has to guide our action, and I find that phenomenologically-based morality does this quite well and is more robust and dependable than both moral realism and egoism.

The only problem is why one ought to care at all in the first place, not whether moral statements can be justified or not. — Wosret

Ideally, meta-ethics shouldn't interfere with the practice of normative ethics. We're moral beings, even if morality is ultimately groundless. We'll continue to be moral regardless.

Is that the issue? I thought the issue was whether there are 'moral facts' or not? Nothing about the mind was mentioned.

Are mental states not 'real properties?' What relevance does any of this have? — The Great Whatever

The relevance is that morality by and large is phenomenologically experienced as a sort of command structure from elsewhere, a series of hypothetical imperatives and obligations that don't derive their existence from the unconscious mind.

So yeah, if we're gonna say mental states are facts, then sure morality has a factual basis. But there's really no reason to go this route, because it's clear that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about objective, mind-independent truthmakers of normative claims and to say otherwise is a red herring.

Now of course if you're an idealist, morality is not going to be mind-independent because nothing is mind-independent. But this doesn't necessarily make you a realist either, since you can still see morality as ultimately subjective.

But surely you think certain things are actually illegal? And that there are legal facts? — The Great Whatever

From a purely descriptive sense, yes, just as I can say certain things are commonly seen by humans as moral or immoral without attaching any prescription to the description.

So, if there is no truth to moral claims, it must be that there's no truth to 'torturing children is wrong.' And so you must be committed to thinking it isn't true that torturing children is wrong. Or what am I missing? — The Great Whatever

I'm saying the belief that torturing children is wrong has no mind-independent factual basis. That is all. Just because something is a hallucination doesn't mean it's worthless.

Is torturing children wrong? By your own lights, it seems you can't ascertain the answer to this question until you have a philosophical theory of truth. But this would make you either an idiot or a psychopath. — The Great Whatever

Again, this doesn't have much to do with anything, since I already said that moral fictionalism is not only a rational position to hold but also a comfortable position to hold. Like how you can play a game while understanding it's not actually reality. We exist, and we live and interact with other people, and figuring out how we should live that satisfies us in various respects, not altogether self-interested, is important.

What does it matter whether it's 'dependent on the mind' or not? — The Great Whatever

Because that's the whole issue at stake here, whether or not moral propositions are in some way dependent on the mind or not for their truth. People typically think and act as though moral propositions are indicative of real properties and not just mental states.

If you don't think torturing kids is wrong, but you pretend to think that so others don't suspect you of thinking torturing kids isn't wrong, aren't you a psychopath? — The Great Whatever

Erm, no, because I'm still abiding by and studying morality. I just don't see it as being actually grounded in anything. Just like I can believe the legal system is wholly dependent on minds but nevertheless not be a criminal.

You mean, you think moral claims are true? — The Great Whatever

No, I think moral claims aim at truth but always fail to attain it, because there is no truth to moral claims, because there are no objective, real moral truthmakers.

What makes anything true? Before asking that question, we need to agree on the simple fact that they are true. But a deflationary account seems promising. — The Great Whatever

I fail to see why. In order to agree that something is true, we need to know what truth is, which you said apparently comes after determining what is and is not true. This isn't coherent.

So you don't think torturing children is wrong, but it's convenient to act like it's wrong? — The Great Whatever

I don't think there is any legitimate ground for the proposition that torturing children is wrong that isn't dependent on the mind, particularly the unconscious.

But it is useful to continue acting as it morality does exist, not only so others don't see me as a psychopath but also because I nevertheless have moral compulsions that motivate me to act in a certain way. I feel the universe should "be" a certain way, even if I know there isn't ultimately any mind-independent reason for the must-be.

I'd be curious to know what you think makes moral propositions true. Without God (or even with him...), there's nothing, from what I can tell, preventing us from asking "so what?"

But what can this mean other than to say that it's not actually or really wrong to torture children? — The Great Whatever

It means that I have the preference, or attitude, that looks down on torturing children (non-cognitivism), or it means that I legitimately believe that torturing children is wrong but understand that this is a belief that exists outside the philosophy room (error theory).

There's nothing incoherent about believing morality to be a fiction, but nevertheless see it as a useful or preferable fiction. Especially since it's not really practical to be a nihilist about everything.