"The stick is bent in water is false even though the light being refracted by the water makes it appear bent. "

That is just a question of unwrapping the event and attributing truth to the proper parts of the statement. There is nothing false about it, simply misleading to an average perceiver with average expectations. 'The portion of the stick outside of the water will appear, to an average homo sapien, misaligned in relation to the part submerged, because of the effect of refractation of fluids on the trajectory of photons' is a true statement, and the "onus" of it, so to speak, rest both on the shoulders of how the world is and how homo sapiens are.

Colour perception is not us "painting the world" with some palette that, by some miracle, we have access to. Its learning to use something of the world in an almost proto-linguistic fashion, taking pure data and turning it into a language which enriches our relation to the world.

"False, they're the same shade, which I verified with my color picker: RGB( 126,126,126 )."

To be fair, it is relatively easy to train yourself to spot this illusion. At this point my first reflex is just think they are identical before checking the colour code. Start by looking from both top and bottom rather than from the center.

But you are playing my game here. Colour ontology is exactly the best way to realize that Relationalism is The Truth. :heart:

The confusion might be worse than it first seems: — javra

So what you going to do?

This is so because truth, as it’s commonly understood, is a relation between one or more points of view — javra

Drop this. The problem dissolves.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I think I'm talking about a compulsion, along the lines that @John Doe & @Moliere mentioned. Something kinda like a blend of OCD and an addiction. Its probably a confusion, on my part, to identify this with Grand Metaphysics in general. It's probably more likely that Grand Metaphysics can be harmful for certain personalities, myself included. Sam Beckett has a quote somewhere in his Three Novels about a progressively constricting spiral that bends the parts of the soul hungry for the outside and freedom inward. And I think its Schelling (or maybe Zizek on Schelling) who uses the metaphor of some kind of trap or knot that gets tighter the more you struggl against it.

I think this may be more a mentall illness issue than a strictly philosophical one. I just know that I dont get any enjoyment from philosophy anymore. It feels more like a very tense and nervous imperative to organize thought into some arrangement of leakproof compartments.

For me it ties into my issues with procrastination. It's the kind of procrastination borne out of a desire for perfection. If I don't know exactly what is worth doing the most (question of prioritizing values), or if I don't know the best method for achieving what I want to be doing once I finally decided... I naturally start pondering those questions first.

Of course trying to think these things through in the abstract doesn't allways (mostly!) yield good results. But it's difficult to get out of that mindset, one question brings the next etc... and since I allready invested a large amout of time into thinking about it, I'd better come up with something good (sunk-cost fallacy)!

What helps for me is deciding to just start doing things, or allocating a maximum fixed amount of time thinking about higher abstractions. Some eastern practices or meditation can probably also be usefull to quiet the chattering monkey.

Ultimately, it seems, that's a self-defeating position. If you can use illusions to doubt appearance, then why can't you use it to doubt your attempt at verification by colour picker. You've opened the floodgates, have you not? — Sapientia

My point was that we have a distinction between appearance and reality because sometimes they differer. Which means that just looking to see that the snow is white isn't always good enough to determine the truth of the matter.

Otherwise, "The sun rises and sets" would be true just because it appears like the sun is moving through the sky, when we now know it is the Earth turning. As such, sometimes investigation has to go a bit deeper than just looking and seeing that something is the case.

That is just a question of unwrapping the event and attributing truth to the proper parts of the statement. There is nothing false about it, simply misleading to an average perceiver with average expectations. — Akanthinos

Simply misleading could be simply deadly if one sees a mirage in the desert, mistaking it for an oasis. Anyway, my point is that there is a difference (at least sometimes) between how things appear and how they are. If the world looks colored, that doesn't mean it actually is colored, that's just how it appears to us.

If the white snow is actually something else made to look like snow in order to fool me, then "The snow is white" is a false statement.

I think this may be more a mentall illness issue than a strictly philosophical one. I just know that I dont get any enjoyment from philosophy anymore. It feels more like a very tense and nervous imperative to organize thought into some arrangement of leakproof compartments. — csalisbury

:ok:

“I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.”
-Nietzsche

I'm finding it difficult to enjoy philosophy as well. Well, not just philosophy, I think it might be related to general anhedonia. But when I read philosophy, especially analytic philosophy, I get this almost immediate and overwhelming ennui. It's absurd. It's like - yeah, this stuff is neat and all, but what's the point?

I get the same thing when reading stuff on the natural sciences. Neat! Anyway .... these galaxies are billions of light years away. I cannot comprehend that distance. I will never go there. I will never see anything more than vague pictures touched up in Photoshop. So....meh. Dinosaurs used to roam the Earth millions of years ago? Neat! Anyway...I need to pay my utilities. A capacitor discharges in approximately four time constants? Neat! etc, etc, whatever.

I think what's up is that any inquiry that isn't apathetic to a certain degree is inherently silly. It's silly to play dress-up with costumes (suits, dresses, lab coats, robes, etc). It's silly to send rockets to the moon. It's silly to dig up dinosaur bones. It's silly to find things interesting. It's silly to do a lot of things. But we'll still do it but it's with this absurd cultural momentum, this sense of importance. But it's all just silly. We're just passing the time, that's all.

It is no longer possible to take seriously the Socratic formula of reason leading to happiness. It has atrophied. The need for a system is a symptom of being a child, in a spiritual sense. Taking an interest in the world is a sign that one is a young soul.

I think this may be more a mentall illness issue than a strictly philosophical one. I just know that I dont get any enjoyment from philosophy anymore. It feels more like a very tense and nervous imperative to organize thought into some arrangement of leakproof compartments. — csalisbury

I don't see any mental illness here. It just seems to me that philosophy has lost its magic on you. I had it backward for a long time, and thought philosophy was the product of mental illness, but, I am cured now.

"but what's the point?"


Perhaps try to pick a point that you are deeply concerned with in regards to how it effects humanity or the planet in general, and then seek to find a solution to the equation.
Or perhaps try to pick a point that you are deeply concerned with in regards to how it effects you or a loved one, and then seek to find a solution to the equation.

Tldr: It is up to you to pick a point.

My point was that we have a distinction between appearance and reality because sometimes they differer. Which means that just looking to see that the snow is white isn't always good enough to determine the truth of the matter.

Otherwise, "The sun rises and sets" would be true just because it appears like the sun is moving through the sky, when we now know it is the Earth turning. As such, sometimes investigation has to go a bit deeper than just looking and seeing that something is the case. — Marchesk

Yes, I understand your point. I'm raising a problem with it which I don't think you've addressed in your reply. With your colour picker results, you're also looking at something, except this time you're trusting your perception instead of subjecting it to the same level of doubt. Why is that?

You say that sometimes just looking isn't good enough, and I agree. This is a problem with 'naive' realism. But I ask, is looking ever good enough? Can you actually go any deeper, or is what seems to be a deeper layer actually just another illusion? How could you tell?

Can you actually go any deeper, — Sapientia

We can and do go deeper with science, which is a combination of reason, observation and testing. We can't see subatomic particles or radio waves. But we can infer them from instruments that detect them, or theories which form the best explanations we have for explaining the world.

And as far as perceptual illusions go, we have our other senses to help us. If the stick looks bent, we can feel that it's straight. We can then figure out that light is being refracted by the water.

We can also make tools that aid our senses, like microscopes and radios.

With your colour picker results, you're also looking at something, except this time you're trusting your perception instead of subjecting it to the same level of doubt. — Sapientia

I trust the computer to give me accurate color information about what's displayed on the monitor as it's not subject to color illusions.

or is what seems to be a deeper layer actually just another illusion? How could you tell? — Sapientia

That's a possibility that's hard to entirely eliminate. Could we ever tell if we were inside a simulation? Maybe if we discovered some discrepancies, or the nature of simulations is structured in a way that physics tells us the universe is, or something.

But it doesn't even need to be simulation. If our best scientific theories tell us that time doesn't flow, and the universe is a hologram, then the world we perceive is to some extent an illusion. But we already knew that. A solid table isn't solid the way it looks or feels to us. This was a surprise, and there have been plenty of them.

The table is solid.

Is false under the old concept of solidness, in which tables weren't mostly empty space. It's false on the everyday notion of solidness the way "sunset" and "sunrise" are based on appearances and not the Earth's rotation.

And that's why saying that the truth is just a matter of looking when it comes to empirical claims is a bit suspect.

That answer's good enough for me. Just testing you. :wink:

I'm not entirely happy with my response.

It's true that pure snow looks white to humans. But is it true that snow is white in the same way that snow is made up of water crystals?

Some people might naively say "The sky is blue on a clear sunny day" is an unassailable truth, but upon thinking about it for a moment, we realize the sky looks blue to us because we only see visible light and not all the other radiation in the atmosphere.

So when we say it's true that snow is white or the sky is blue, do we mean it's true that's how it appears to us, or it's true that both are colored that way regardless of whether anyone is looking?

But emergent properties, like us experiencing a solid table, are every bit as real as the underlying dynamics. What's the justification for saying that truth is only descriptions of things at their smallest level?

And even more important, it's these emergent properties that matters to us ultimately. Our everyday notion of solidness is that food doesn't fall through the table. We do not live at the subatomic level.

These are not just illusions like a mirage in the desert is, because they don't get us into trouble. That's the whole point of differentiating between illusions and what is real.

The fact that the sun rises and sets was enough for us for several millenia. It is true from our everyday perspective, and for the purposes we have. It's only when we go to space that another description really matters.

The problem is you're trying to get beyond perspective, and the utility truth has for us. Truth for truth sake...

The problem is you're trying to get beyond perspective, and the utility truth has for us. Truth for truth sake... — ChatteringMonkey

What does truth have to do with utility or perspective?

I understand truth to be the way things are, regardless of whether it appears that way to us, we know it, or we care about it.

And that's how we typically use the word. He's not ready to face the truth, the other party is in denial about the environment, you're wrong about the distance Andromeda is from Earth.

Even if we did primarily mean utility or perspective for truth, we would need another word for the way things are.

Yeah the thing in itself… nevermind that there is no way of going beyond our senses, of going beyond appearences. Why do we need a concept for something we don't have access to and so cannot sensibily speak of?

He's not ready to face the truth, implies that there are consequences for him not facing it. Being in denial about the environment also has negative consequences… it ties back to ultility.

Can you actually go any deeper, or is what seems to be a deeper layer actually just another illusion? — Sapientia

It is going to be appearances all the way down. But why talk of it as being just a series of illusions? I find it more accurate to see it as also a hierarchical series of selves.

So there is the everyday biological "me" that sees the colours. I see the same shade of grey because it is useful to make automatic visual compensations that "make sense" of the image as if it were a real set of surfaces of an object placed out in the sun and crossed by shadows. I am at that moment the kind of self who is seeking to understand the world in terms of an intelligible collection of physical objects. So I want to "see through" all accidental features of the occasion - facts about where the sun is and how the shade falls - so as to get right through to the most meaningful state of interpretance, the one where I am acting self-interestedly in a world composed of physical objects.

But then there can be other "me's" layered on top, adding further "world making". Language and culture produce the social me that reads the environment in terms of all its rules and customs. I relate to that structure - and in relating, become that type of self, that kind of point of view. I see that it is true that I am driving on the correct side of the road because there is a dotted white line to my right. I see I have done something wrong because someone is scowling at me. These are all social facts that are "true for me", and in being so, are constructing the "me" that would hold them as truths.

Then we can kick it up another level to the scientific me and the truths at that level of being. Again, the facts of a scientific viewpoint are merely a further configuration of appearances. They boil down to numbers on a dial. The colour picker informs me that the pixels at a set of coordinates is RGB( 126,126,126 ). And my scientifically-minded self accepts the objective truth of that.

So as I replied to @Banno, truth always boils down to a point of view. There is some "us" that informs the relation with the known world. It has its needs and reasons. And then it forms an idea of the shape that facts will take. What it experiences is some "appearance" - or rather less dismissively, an Umwelt.

An Unwelt is more than mere appearance as it is in fact an image of the world with us in it. There is no dualistic "us" that pre-exists its perceptions or truths. It is in coming to this state of interpretance, this particular habit of sense-making, that also forms the "us" that is the anchor for some definite point of view in regard to "a world".

This is the properly deflationary route to a theory of truth. Pragmatism results in Unwelts. We emerge as habits of sense making - which is a positive thing as that constructs an "us" that is acting on the world in some concrete fashion. It is not the negative thing of an endless hall of mirrors, a series of levels of illusion with no ultimate "truth of the world".

Sam Beckett has a quote about a progressively constricting spiral ... Schelling (or maybe Zizek) uses the metaphor of some kind of trap or knot that gets tighter the more you struggle against it.

It feels more like a very tense and nervous imperative to organize thought into some arrangement of leakproof compartments. — csalisbury

I get this. But as I am arguing, I understand the situation to be that we humans are now complex creatures composed of multiple levels of selfhood. We have as a minimum the three levels of being biological creatures with animal needs, social creatures dependent on a co-operative social structure, and rational creatures with a recently-developed interest in living a mechanistic, quantified, technological and mathematically-encoded lifestyle.

So there are levels of self produced by each of these levels of world-making. And the fit can be a little rough, especially given the accelerating pace of development. Thus we have to work a bit to create any sensible kind of balance when we are all projects in rapid progress, maybe never to be finished.

Is this where your meta-model of philosophy goes wrong, or goes right?

My argument is that how we see the world makes us the person who we are. And I grant that I have to be three kinds of person, in effect. So I would argue against your demands that metaphysics, in particular, should be so totalising as to include the kind of selves that are "feeling" or "poetic". Those kinds of selves are more about the cultural and animal creatures that we are. And even then, my complaint is Romanticism over-entangled the cultural and the animal. There is an advantage in being able to compartmentalise a lived life so that we can express our animal, social and rational selves in a more separated fashion.

The levels of selfhood that need to be constructed to be a complete modern person do have overlap. They do wash into each other. But also, paying attention to keeping them separate, defining their spheres of influence and their appropriate times of expression, can help create a balancing structure.

The totalising mistake would be to expect some kind of perfect integration of the psyche - the kind that would express itself fully in philosophy by elevating the affective and the poetic to the sphere of the rational. Or as is more the case, attempt to pull the rational back down to "their level".

It seems healthier to me to be able to compartmentalise to a degree. Balance is being able to switch between broad modes of self - animal, social and rational by turns, depending on the setting. The difficulties would arise when we try to identify as just the one self - the beast, the poet, the thinker - as if we ought be so centred and simple.

It doesn't have to be easy or perfect. But it is our reality as modern humans. We have unleashed the scientific and technological forces that are constructing a new level of human selfhood and the world that self sees. And that does create a lived polarity, a structural conflict, between the subjective self (that sits nearest the animal pole) and the objective self (that is way over the end of rationality).

But do we have to feel torn if we can construct the further super-self that sees that this is the game and the combination of selfhoods/world-makings that needs to be balanced within our psychologies?

The first step would have to be accepting that levels of selfhood is not a bad thing. It is not a failure to be hierarchically organised or stratified in this fashion. We can escape the strangling grip of rationality by making it one of the three things we can do well, in the appropriate context.

The mistake, in my view, is trying to identify yourself with just one of the three levels on which it has now become natural to live as a modern human. I like the idea of being able to exist as all three kinds of selves in a fairly full sense, while not getting too hung up on achieving a (rational, mechanical) degree of perfection on that score.

Yeah I have a general anhedonia as well. Or at least the inability to sustain enjoyment of anything for more than a few days. I have some kind of inner (thought/mood) record and there's a big old scratch and inevitably it starts skipping and the song is lost.

But the world - the world! - that's what's worth being interested in. I don't think its silly. I think its the way in which you relate to the world. I think it comes down to control, to trying to control the way the world affects you. If truth is a woman (#problematic) then im talking about the tradition of consigning it to the home and monitoring its relations with variables youre not open to considering.

& control stems from fear. and fear is of the world.

Yeah the thing in itself… nevermind that there is no way of going beyond our senses, of going beyond appearences. — ChatteringMonkey

But that isn't true. We have the ability to infer what we can't sense by how it interacts with what we can perceive. We can also figure out which properties are perceiver-independent, because they don't vary and are not contingent upon being perceived.

Science, math and technology take us way beyond the senses.

No it doesn't take us beyond the senses. Scientific instruments are extentions of the senses. And math, like logic, doesn't directly inform us about the world. It serves to figure out the implication of certain theories.

And science is also about utility. It's about predictability, not truth. Any decent scientist will say that he is only trying to come up with models that can predict things, not models of how things really are. Of course some may derive metaphysics from that, but that is not science. Science needs to be falsifiable, i.e. being measurable, i.e being possibile to be sensed.

I understand what you're saying. But the bone in the throat is that its one of the selves - the superself? - that is neatly setting things in triadic harmony (or harmonically understood disharmony). And that self thrives - gorges itself - on word and concepts arranged neatly. It appeals to itself until it finds satisfaction. But the catch is it doesn't find satisfaction. It finds something that it recognizes as checking the boxes (its own boxes) for 'satisfying' and, unsatisfied itself, appeals endlessly to others, asking it to recognize the detente as satisfactory.

I'm not advocating romanticism, which, in its canonical, exemplary figures, is so self-conscious you could choke.

I'm not even advocating something else. I'm just fucking sad man, I'm unhappy, I'm lonely. If your thing makes you happy all the more power.

But I have the suspicion that what makes me unhappy is this drive to harmony, even if its a weird syncopated harmony in disharmony. Im bored and tired of my thoughts. I'm especially bored of dialectics. Have you seen 'get out'? I feel like im half-anaesthetized in the 'sunken place' with some weird dialectical sidekick who argues on my behalf, while i lay unconscious and hurt. Sad & mad.

And science is also about utility. It's about predictability, not truth. Any decent scientist will say that he is only trying to come up with models that can predict things, not models of how things really are — ChatteringMonkey

According to whom? Prediction is only one part of science. Understanding the way things are is another.

I'm just fucking sad man, I'm unhappy, I'm lonely. — csalisbury

I hear that and I'm sorry for it. And I don't expect to cure that with words here. The only insight I am offering is that the relief of that state has to recognise the complex situation we have collectively got ourselves into. I resolve it by compartmentalising life and not expecting to find myself in some kind of unified perfection.

If your thing makes you happy all the more power. — csalisbury

I would question "happy" as a useful goal. Challenge, thrill, intensity, seem more at the heart of it. But all that against a backdrop of rest and control. We seek discomfort because we are too comfortable and comfort because we are too uncomfortable. As always, I would talk about what we can dynamically balance in practice. The natural goal of the mind is not to arrive at some fixed state but to maintain a state of adaptation in regards to the world.

Again, that is picking up on the argument that the self is what emerges as contrast to "the world".

But I have the suspicion that what makes me unhappy is this drive to harmony, even if its a weird syncopated harmony in disharmony. Im bored and tired of my thoughts. I'm especially bored of dialectics. Have you seen 'get out'? I feel like im half-anaesthetized in the 'sunken place' with some weird dialectical sidekick who argues on my behalf, while i lay unconscious and hurt. Sad & mad. — csalisbury

Again, no words will just fix you if they are just more rationalisation. But my view is that the psychology of this is that we are formed by our habits. And habits can be changed just as they can be learned.

It sounds like you have clinical-strength depression. So as an established habit, this would be a neurobiological depth issue. And the conventional advice would be to start addressing the structure of your life to which it would be a state of adaptation. Positive psychology and other therapies can give you the tools for examining "the world" as you have imagined it, and to which your state would be an "adaptive" response.

So again, I couldn't possibly diagnose you from a few posts. But the primary symptom we are discussing here is the habit of rationalising - imposing dialectical structure on "the world". There is this other self within you that isn't shutting off when you find all its efforts pretty meaningless.

So what do you do? Do you stand back from that trained and educated aspect of your own personal history and label it as "not me". Just despise it as a wizened siamese twin. Or do you give it something to do, get it involved in some activities that seems useful and productive in a long-run fashion?

Maybe you should unlearn the habit? Maybe you should find it useful employment? These do seem the two contrasting ways to go. And both would seem valid.

What do you really think your situation is? That you can't be fixed or that you resist being fixed? Once you take on the identity of "the broken" then of course you don't actually desire the change that would be a change to that state of habit. And to the degree that you view a life to be perfectable - just happy in some untroubled and thoughtless fashion - you are going to argue that the goal is impossible anyway.

Habits are learnt by the accumulation of many tiny barely noticed steps. Habits can only be changed by the same thing. So a question is: do you know from experience the skill of changing a habit? Is that where you could use help and techniques.

Then the other question is what is the best we can expect? I think feeling adapted - properly embedded in a context, but also with sufficient creative freedoms - does it for most people for natural reasons. I think it helped me that I did compartmentalise my selves to a fair extent into their physical, social and rational modes. I pay enough attention to keep all three plates spinning.

As I am arguing, they can't be "well-integrated" because they are three spheres of being. They each need to be lived by their own lights to a reasonable extent.

But if the OP is about the particular symptom of an over-powering habit of rationalisation, which seems mired in meaningless rumination, then you do stand at a crossroads from which you need to shift. Either unlearn the habit as it exists for you, or give it something meaningful to do. Those seem the obvious answers.

So how would your day-to-day be different doing either of those things? What have other people actually done? That seems a useful conversation to have.

I have some kind of inner (thought/mood) record and there's a big old scratch and inevitably it starts skipping and the song is lost. — csalisbury

Yeah, I get it. Feels like your mind is bruised.

We seek discomfort because we are too comfortable and comfort because we are too uncomfortable. — apokrisis

Apo, this doesn't make sense. To seek discomfort because things are "too comfortable" simply means to no longer be comfortable with your comfort. You seek discomfort (adventure) to escape the discomfort of excess comfort (boredom). So the pendulum swings between painful discomfort to boredom discomfort. Just as Schopenhauer observed.

The natural goal of the mind is not to arrive at some fixed state but to maintain a state of adaptation in regards to the world. — apokrisis

I do not disagree with this, but we have to speak plainly here: the natural state of mind is not of comfort. That is not conducive to survival. The creatures that survive are those who are in a near-perpetual state of controlled anxiety.

The Bene-Gesserit of Frank Herbert's Dune call fear the "mind-killer". I think this is true in a very literal sense. Fear/anxiety/panic literally suffocates the mind and prevents it from thinking. This is helpful to an organism's survival, such as during fight-or-flight situations where thinking is only going to slow the organism down. However I think this also extends into the realm of abstract thinking. A human that thinks too much or too far is confronted with the strangulating hands of anxiety. Epicurus has already shown that death is not to be feared, and yet we continue to fear it anyway. We are quite literally not allowed to think beyond a certain perimeter without anxiety immediately slamming us down and choking the thoughts out of us.

I agree that a balanced lifestyle is recommended. But this also means a balance in terms of thinking. Too much thinking, too much seeing, will either kill or cripple you.

So the pendulum swings between painful discomfort to boredom discomfort. — darthbarracuda

Always one to look on the bright side, hey? :grin:

I do a lot of strenuous and challenging things. If they actually hurt, I tend to stop. Likewise I enjoy the contrast of doing bugger all for extended periods. If that starts to feel uncomfortable, I tend to stop and find something challenging and strenuous.

So my pendulum swings, as much as I can manage it, away from what I am ceasing to enjoy. Then because I accept that life has to be lived - hedonism is an illusion - the focus would be on structuring my life so that it gives me the right general mix of the two on a habitual basis.

Fear/anxiety/panic literally suffocates the mind and prevents it from thinking. This is helpful to an organism's survival, such as during fight-or-flight situations where thinking is only going to slow the organism down. — darthbarracuda

Such rubbish neuroscience. What kind of thinking - rationalisation - do animals do? What is the difference between anxiety and excitement exactly? What is the point of confusing the confusion of the unprepared with the clarity of acting on well-developed habit?

We are quite literally not allowed to think beyond a certain perimeter without anxiety immediately slamming us down and choking the thoughts out of us. — darthbarracuda

The brain is just so much more complicated and well-adapted than that. The response to moments of stress is not automatically a generalised panic attack. You are talking about what might be the eventual result of prolonged stress, not a normal healthy neurobiology as it was designed to function.

I agree that a balanced lifestyle is recommended. But this also means a balance in terms of thinking. Too much thinking, too much seeing, will either kill or cripple you. — darthbarracuda

Yes. I was advocating a balance when it came to thinking. I think compartmentalisation in that regard - often seen as an unhealthy trait - is a useful trick to learn.

Start by stopping those negative thoughts. What good does Pessimism actually do you except as a comforting rationalisation for remaining in "a near-perpetual state of controlled anxiety"?

It seems healthier to me to be able to compartmentalise to a degree. Balance is being able to switch between broad modes of self - animal, social and rational by turns, depending on the setting. The difficulties would arise when we try to identify as just the one self - the beast, the poet, the thinker - as if we ought be so centred and simple. — apokrisis

The other question is what is the best we can expect? I think feeling adapted - properly embedded in a context, but also with sufficient creative freedoms - does it for most people for natural reasons. I think it helped me that I did compartmentalise my selves to a fair extent into their physical, social and rational modes. I pay enough attention to keep all three plates spinning. — apokrisis

As I am arguing, they can't be "well-integrated" because they are three spheres of being. They each need to be lived by their own lights to a reasonable extent. — apokrisis

Again, no words will just fix you if they are just more rationalisation. But my view is that the psychology of this is that we are formed by our habits. And habits can be changed just as they can be learned. — apokrisis

@csalisbury The thrust of what apo is saying is how I see it too. I tend to posit it in terms of irreconcilable drives, but his divisions are neat enough. We're not one "self" as in some kind of unified internal flow that deals in one particular way with the external environment, and the narrative that we are is just a necessary illusion that allows coherent functioning in each of the contexts mentioned above. So, there isn't an overarching harmony except in an acceptance of disharmony and no solution except a recognition of paradox. And then if you get that in the background, you can foster a kind of transient harmony moment to moment. But yes, you're framing philosophy and truth through a mood that probably has little or nothing to do with philosophy and everything to do with your apparent depression, the cure for which (in so far as there is one) can't be thought through, and the trying to think through is more likely a symptom than any kind of route to a solution. Anyway, I've been through a lot of depression and obsessiveness and other lasting uncomfortable states of mind myself, and sustained relief has come only from disciplined cultivation of habit, as per apo's comments, and in particular a push towards being creative.

Given what you've said though, I'm interested in your answer to where do you see the boundary between philosophy and art. How do we distinguish between the two?

So my pendulum swings, as much as I can manage it, away from what I am ceasing to enjoy. Then because I accept that life has to be lived - hedonism is an illusion - the focus would be on structuring my life so that it gives me the right general mix of the two on a habitual basis. — apokrisis

Why did you say that hedonism is an illusion, but then suggest that structuring life in such-and-such manner gives the "right general mix" (presumably for living an enjoyable life)? What is the point of your life? What does the general mix support that makes it right?

Epicurus et al have made it clear that directing one's efforts at obtaining pleasure is counter-productive. The seed of the pessimistic evaluation is already in this. Happiness is a byproduct of a struggle. Paradoxically we are most happy when we are not thinking about how happy we are.

Such rubbish neuroscience. What kind of thinking - rationalisation - do animals do? What is the difference between anxiety and excitement exactly? What is the point of confusing the confusion of the unprepared with the clarity of acting on well-developed habit? — apokrisis

Excitement isn't a fearful state of mind. The fight-or-flight response can only work if higher-level thinking is temporarily put on hold. You are not thinking about philosophy when running from a bear. It is fear that fuels the escape.

The brain is just so much more complicated and well-adapted than that. The response to moments of stress is not automatically a generalised panic attack. You are talking about what might be the eventual result of prolonged stress, not a normal healthy neurobiology as it was designed to function. — apokrisis

Yes, I agree that the response to irritation is not usually a generalized panic attack. My overall point was that anxiety/fear/panic is a very basic and very crude motivational scheme. It's old and it works. It's not intelligent. People fear stupid stuff all the time - for example, I have a fear of miller moths. They are harmless creatures and I rationally understand this, but I nevertheless have an intense fear of them.

It's not unreasonable, I think, to suggest that an organism in extreme situations will not react as gracefully as it may in normal situations. It becomes clunky, clumsy, awkward. One of these extreme situations is when an organism thinks about its mortality, or its capacity to suffer, or its fundamental identity, etc. It begins to have certain thoughts which I think can be appropriately called lethal. An organism with lethal thoughts is in a critical condition that jeopardizes its own survival. Fear sweeps in and suffocates the mind (ssshhhh), coaxing it into submission and back into the perimeter of "safe thoughts" where the organism is no longer a threat to itself. The mind is not the master here.

This idea of the mind being the way the body enslaves itself features prominently in the work of Metzinger (meh), the horror of Lovecraft and Ligotti and the philosophy of Zapffe.

Taking an interest in the world is a sign that one is a young soul. — darthbarracuda

I think it's the obverse: not taking an interest in the world is a sign that one is a jaded soul; disillusioned on account of entertaining naively unreasonable expectations or demands of trouble-free life.

And I just want to add that I base that conclusion on my own experience of depression and anxiety.

Why did you say that hedonism is an illusion, but then suggest that structuring life in such-and-such manner gives the "right general mix" (presumably for living an enjoyable life)? — darthbarracuda

You can't just expect a "life of pleasure". It is personal growth and social connectedness that is what most folk actually report as rewarding. So right there, that includes meeting personal challenges and making various social sacrifices - the kinds of things you regard as part of the intolerable burden of existence.

Epicurus et al have made it clear that directing one's efforts at obtaining pleasure is counter-productive. The seed of the pessimistic evaluation is already in this. Happiness is a byproduct of a struggle. Paradoxically we are most happy when we are not thinking about how happy we are. — darthbarracuda

Pfft. Hedonism is wrong minded as I said. You bloody well ought to be disappointed if you aim at it.

As for byproducts and paradoxes, this is all still just your choice of framing - your resistance to the notion that reality might be in fact complex and not simple.

Excitement isn't a fearful state of mind. The fight-or-flight response can only work if higher-level thinking is temporarily put on hold. You are not thinking about philosophy when running from a bear. It is fear that fuels the escape. — darthbarracuda

Check out the neurobiology of the sympathetic nervous system some time. Arousal is arousal. Why do you think people pay so much to ride roller coasters or bungee off bridges?

And try giving a public lecture or doing a TV interview. Or playing a sports match in front of a crowd. You need to be shitting yourself with adrenaline to give a top performance - intellectually as well.

The research of course shows a U curve of arousal. There is a case of too much as well as too little. But peak performance requires excitement/fear. Step on to the stage and your heart ought to be pounding as if you were running from that bear.

People fear stupid stuff all the time - for example, I have a fear of miller moths. They are harmless creatures and I rationally understand this, but I nevertheless have an intense fear of them. — darthbarracuda

Have you ever tried to unlearn the reaction? Do you believe people simply can't?

An organism with lethal thoughts is in a critical condition that jeopardizes its own survival. Fear sweeps in and suffocates the mind (ssshhhh), coaxing it into submission and back into the perimeter of "safe thoughts" where the organism is no longer a threat to itself. The mind is not the master here. — darthbarracuda

The fight/flight reflex is certainly usefully complex. It even includes a freeze mode. Just stopping paralysed can sometimes work as a last resort when an animal risks attack. So the circuitry to switch between modes of response exists.

But why are we discussing the wild extremes of life threatening moments? How much do they have to do with the everyday routine? Why can't you frame your arguments in the neurobiology of the normal? What is wrong with taking the typical rather than the atypical as the ground of the discussion?

You are pathologising your philosophy in short. You ought to examine why you have established that as your constant habit.

This idea of the mind being the way the body enslaves itself features prominently in the work of Metzinger (meh), the horror of Lovecraft and Ligotti and the philosophy of Zapffe — darthbarracuda

Gawd, it must be true then. :roll:

There's a lot of stuff that philosophers do and and a lot of stuff that can be done with philosophy.

But one of the big appeals - one of the temptations you see thinker after thinker succumbing to - is the possibility of pronouncing the Truth. Of being the one who pronounces.

Truth, capital T, gets eviscerated by the postmoderns, but the gesture and drive lives on nontheless in their works. Derrida is emblematic here. More truth-shaking than anyone AND ALSO the most pronouncy person who ever lived.


Capital T truth is pronounced synoptically. Anything else that might be said will, inevitably, fall within the ambit of the truth pronounced - and so can be given its proper place.

Nietzsche already more or less said that but kept doing it anyway.

So what's going on here? What is happening? Why can't we stop? — csalisbury

Because truth is presupposed in all thought, belief, and the statements which follow. The presupposition of truth is an elemental constituent of all thought and belief itself. It's necessary in order to even have thought and belief, and philosophy hasn't ever quite gotten thought and belief right to begin with.

That's why.