What is your philosophical obsession?

_db

I think we all tend to have one idea, a la Bergson, that we consistently keep on coming back to. The problem that we keep on thinking about when we're in bed and staring at the ceiling, or what keeps us entertained in the long transits between work and home.

My philosophical obsession is what Jeff McMahan coined "the Asymmetry". In a nutshell, the Asymmetry is a population ethics intuition that we must make people happy, but not make happy people (i.e. giving birth to happy people), i.e. the world is made worse by the addition of a miserable person but is not made better by the addition of a happy person (as if the happy person is entirely irrelevant). It's an extremely compelling and intuitive principle that nevertheless is rather controversial because of the various consequences associated with accepting/rejecting it (such as Parfit's mere addition paradox). In my opinion, it is a superior dilemma than, say, the trolley problem, since it's actually real and happening right now, and it also seems to grab you by the collar and force you to make a decision, thus forcing you to evaluate and refine your own ethical views, which end up being quite complicated and more nuanced than you originally had thought.

I personally am leaning towards symmetry views but still find the Asymmetry to be compelling in its own right (symmetry is logical in this case) - but why this is the case is what needs to be deconstructed. Are ethical intuitions subject to logic? Can ethical intuitions escape charges of ad hoc?

In addition to the aforementioned problem, I also focus heavily on meta-philosophical problems pertaining to the nature, scope, and legitimacy of philosophy as a source of information. I also tend to pass time thinking about ontological problems associated with universals, objects, and persistence, although I don't take them as seriously as I do the other issues.

So that's my general list of philosophical obsessions. What are yours?

apokrisis

In a nutshell, the Asymmetry is a population ethics intuition that we must make people happy, but not make happy people (i.e. giving birth to happy people), i.e. the world is made worse by the addition of a miserable person but is not made better by the addition of a happy person (as if the happy person is entirely irrelevant). — darthbarracuda

Not to derail your thread, but why - given this equation - is it not justified to go around killing off all miserable people? (Or equivalently, tanking them up on heroin, giving them lobotomies, or whatever.)

As an asymmetry, it still harbours the symmetry with would be subtraction instead of addition. And subtraction would seem to have the advantage of fixing things right away rather than waiting to make the desired change over time.

Anyway, in terms of your thread, I think "why anything?" is as good an obsession as any.

_db

Anyway, in terms of your thread, I think "why anything?" is as good an obsession as any. — apokrisis

Probably the first truly philosophical question.

Hoo

The heroic mind. Freedom, power, beauty, laughter. Who do we think we should we be? How does/did this who change? How do/did we get there, or close enough?

Streetlight

The question of individuation (how things come to be as they are) has always fascinated me, and it's probably what guides everything I do, philosophically speaking. Specifically, thinking individuation through immanence: a world adequate to itself, engendering itself though itself, innocently. And this ramifies all around: how to think art, biology, morphology, society, language, cyclones and ethics on this basis. Always a matter of forging connections, keeping on the move, looking elsewhere.

OglopTo

Why are we here? What is the purpose behind human struggle?

Janus

I'd say the most interesting aspect of philosophy is its historical relationship to modes of personal transformation; philosophy as practice in other words.

Michael

Meaning and its implications for truth, metaphysics, and morality.

My philosophical obsession is what Jeff McMahan coined "the Asymmetry". In a nutshell, the Asymmetry is a population ethics intuition that we must make people happy, but not make happy people (i.e. giving birth to happy people), i.e. the world is made worse by the addition of a miserable person but is not made better by the addition of a happy person (as if the happy person is entirely irrelevant). It's an extremely compelling and intuitive principle that nevertheless is rather controversial because of the various consequences associated with accepting/rejecting it (such as Parfit's mere addition paradox). In my opinion, it is a superior dilemma than, say, the trolley problem, since it's actually real and happening right now, and it also seems to grab you by the collar and force you to make a decision, thus forcing you to evaluate and refine your own ethical views, which end up being quite complicated and more nuanced than you originally had thought. — darthbarracuda

What dilemma? Asymmetry, at least as you've summed it up, is not at all compelling or intuitive for me. But symmetry is. Who is it that finds it so? Has there been a survey or something?

So that's my general list of philosophical obsessions. What are yours? — darthbarracuda

On the forum, I go from here to there, engaging with whatever catches my interest. But the basic, key questions have not yet been resolved to my satisfaction. One of the most fundamental for me, if not the most fundamental, is: what do I really know, and how do I know it? Whatever else I ponder or opine about, it comes back to that.

For me, it's going back to basics. Ethics, metaphysics, epistemology. Also politics, and, to some extent, I share your focus on meta-philosophical problems pertaining to the nature, scope, and legitimacy of philosophy as a source of information.

Agustino

I think we all tend to have one idea, a la Bergson, that we consistently keep on coming back to. The problem that we keep on thinking about when we're in bed and staring at the ceiling, or what keeps us entertained in the long transits between work and home. — darthbarracuda

The good life. Virtue and morality. Order. Love. How to help bring order in one's own soul, as well as in those who are surrounding me? How to become more virtuous and how to teach virtue? How to get more people interested in living a good life? These are the matters/questions I always come back to.

anonymous66

I'd like to become more like Socrates. I'd like to be able to engage in philosophical discussion with equanimity, and to truly engage in honest dialogue...

I'd like to show and experience the quality of psychagogy.

I'd like to experience progress towards Eudaimonia.

Baden

Can we kill Hyde without destroying Jekyll? (Or "How to play with the animal without biting your own face off?")

Agustino

Can we kill Hyde without destroying Jekyll? (Or "How to play with the animal without biting your own face off?") — Baden

So you want to have one foot in heaven and the other in hell? :-*

Baden

↪Agustino

Maybe heaven is stretching your legs. O:) >:)

Terrapin Station

Probably the fact that so much confusion arises due to people not realizing that some things are only the result of individuals thinking about things in particular ways, and on the flipside of that, that some people think that everything is only individuals thinking about things in particular ways. Or to make that a bit more succinct: the role of individuals thinking about things as they interact with each other and the rest of the world.

If not that, I suppose I'd say combating folks' tendencies to posit nonphysical existents, real abstracts, the reification of concepts and so on.

The third candidate would be a general relativism, perspectivalism, etc.

Ciceronianus

Mine is: Why do we concern ourselves so much with (1) what cannot be known and (2) what makes no difference to how we or others live our lives?

So, I'm obsessed with our obsession with the inconsequential--that which has no consequence.

Agustino

Why do we concern ourselves so much with (1) what cannot be known and (2) what makes no difference to how we or others live our lives? — Ciceronianus the White

Sounds like a rehash of Pragmatism :D

Ciceronianus

Sounds like a rehash of Pragmatism :D — Agustino

I'm not sure. The Pragmatists as far as I know didn't inquire much into why, for example, we ponder or debate why we exist, or do so regarding whether we're brains in a vat, or why we do the same regarding the existence of God. It's true, though, that Dewey felt that many philosophical problems and prejudices resulted from a misguided "quest for certainty" and that certain philosophers' proclivity to believe what is true or good has its basis in something transcendent was caused at least in part by a sort of aristocratic disdain towards or contempt for the world which encompasses such things as trade, manual labor, unwashed bodies and ugly, ignorant, inferior people, change and death.

I think something different is involved, though. Maybe it's a kind of self-serving "quest for profound significance."

mcdoodle

My obsession: what's the relation between all our talking, and the way events happen in, to and around us?

Pneumenon

The existence of abstracta. Are numbers real? How about universals like green and scarlet? Are tokens fundamental, or is there such a thing as a type?

More importantly: if abstracta do exist (and I think they do), what does this mean for us? What does it mean that they exist?

Seems like an airy fairy question, but I find that it lies beneath nearly every philosophical position I have.

Hoo

↪Pneumenon

More importantly: if abstracta do exist (and I think they do), what does this mean for us? What does it mean that they exist? — Pneumenon

I think they're real, too, or that it's a bit silly to deny them this description. We live so much in the realm of ideas.

_db

More importantly: if abstracta do exist (and I think they do), what does this mean for us? What does it mean that they exist? — Pneumenon

Good, you're not a nominalist, phew.

Transcendental or immanent, though?

Agustino

or do so regarding whether we're brains in a vat — Ciceronianus the White

Peirce did criticise Descartes's method of doubt involving the evil demon though. If that criticism applies to Descartes, it certainly applies to the brain in a vat hypothesis too.

It's true, though, that Dewey felt that many philosophical problems and prejudices resulted from a misguided "quest for certainty" and that certain philosophers' proclivity to believe what is true or good has its basis in something transcendent was caused at least in part by a sort of aristocratic disdain towards or contempt for the world which encompasses such things as trade, manual labor, unwashed bodies and ugly, ignorant, inferior people, change and death. — Ciceronianus the White

Yes true. Peirce also had this concern about criticising the possibility/usefulness of Cartesian certainty.

"quest for certainty" and that certain philosophers' proclivity to believe what is true or good has its basis in something transcendent was caused at least in part by a sort of aristocratic disdain towards or contempt for the world which encompasses such things as trade, manual labor, unwashed bodies and ugly, ignorant, inferior people, change and death. — Ciceronianus the White

I think something different is involved, though. Maybe it's a kind of self-serving "quest for profound significance." — Ciceronianus the White

I think that the transcendent has its basis in the experience of the transcendent, which isn't altogether uncommon. A beautiful piece of art, falling and being in love, prayer/meditation, values, meaning, etc. - there's lots of possibilities out there for encountering the transcendent. As for why we are attracted to the transcendent - I think Plato was right, and we are a sort of a metaxy - an in-between the world and the transcendent - we have one foot in this world, and another in the world of spirit. So you are right - we can never know the transcendent. But we are still attracted to it, we want to experience it, and be around it. It's part of our nature. Hence we desire to know it, even though we can't ever know it - we are always attached to the Earth. "Significance" that you are talking about, that is merely a feeling, I don't think it's such a thing as a fact. So I'm not sure about the quest for profound significance underlying an intellectual movement - maybe it is the opposite in fact - in front of the transcendent, man is indeed like nothing.

Pneumenon

↪darthbarracuda

Transcendental, beeyotch.

_db

↪Pneumenon

That's what I'm saying.

Janus

↪Hoo

Must 'real' be coterminous with 'concrete'?

Janus

beeyotch — Pneumenon

That's an odd way to spell 'beyond'...
:s

Hoo

↪John

I'd say look to context. You've maybe heard my spiel about "meaning by fiat." The unit of meaning is at least as big as a conversation. But maybe the unit of meaning is a personality, etc. We have to get a sense a person's basic self-image. In this context, abstracta are real because we live for them and die for them. They are a thick layer on the merely sensual, itself disclosed by concept.

Janus

↪Hoo

I think I can see where you're going with this, but I can't see how it relates to my silly comment and in any case, I cannot wholeheartedly agree. Firstly I'm not sure that a person's self image, whatever that might be taken, as a generality, to consist in, could determine, let alone exhaustively determine, what the things a person says mean. Are you thinking along the lines of "meaning as intention" (as distinct form the more impersonal intension) here. If you so, is conscious intention (self image?) fully determinative or are you proposing the wider operation of unconscious intention ( and thus unconscious self image) as well? But, even then, what about the even wider, more general sematic context of intersubjectivity (intension)?

Also, I would put it differently than you have and say that concepts (although in their concrete, and not in their abstract, guise) are not a layer over the sensual, but are constitutive of it. I don't think we live and die for abstracta at all, but for concreta. The abstract is too thin and unfelt to motivate much interest.

Hoo

↪John

I find that if I can feel my way into a thinker's worldview --itself largely shaped by the heroic role that requires this worldview as a stage -- then I can interpret individual statements more confidently.

I do think men die for abstractions. Men sometimes volunteer for war when they don't have to --when they're own families and property are not in immediate danger. Off to the heroic adventure, in the name of justice and freedom and courage, etc.! They once fought duels over honor. Men still get into stupid fights in bars over the their identification with some particular heroic notion of being a Man. Our self-esteem looks to me to be largely about a sensed proximity to valorized concepts.

Yes, concepts structure the sensuous, but it is still there is an "primordial" way as a non-it. Intense pain, intense pleasure, the howl of an ambulance siren. Whatever concept structures them, they exceed this concept. Reading about heartbreak or remembering and old heartbreak is different from experiencing heartbreak. I'm pretty sure men have slaved away and passed up material advantage for the glamor of pursuing universal truth.

Janus

↪Hoo

I think what you are really talking about is intensity of feeling. For sure people may die for their convictions, that is they may be feel ready to die on account of their feelings of belief in what you might, but they surely would not, think of as 'abstractions'.

The same in the case of the different examples of heartbreak. We can read about it and may be able to associate what we read with a feeling we have experienced, but now maybe only dimly remember. How much more intense and poignant will be our feelings on reading about heartbreak when we are presently heartbroken. But the reading, on account of its likeness to our own experience, may sweeten the feeling of being heartbroken; and instead of feeling alone in our bitterness we may feel what it is to join in living the human experience.

Regarding the sensuous, I don't believe anything is non-conceptually "there"; primordially or otherwise. As far as I can see it can be 'there' only in that good old empty formal way of the noumenal.

You and I apparently see things very differently when it comes to the pursuit of truth. I think it is a deadly serious matter; whereas you seem to understand it only in terms of the self-images of heroism and the mirage of glamour. A kind of celebrity view of the spiritual quest; it seems to me to be.

Anywho, disagreement is generally more interesting and fruitful than agreement....
:)

What is your philosophical obsession?

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