The issue with command type ethics is that you're left with a person who doesn't realize what they're doing is good, or why it should be counted as something good over some other action. This greatly stupifies the whole moral framework. There's no point in telling that some action is good unless they can't rationalize it themselves, and if you follow the news, then most of ethics can't be rationalized at all, it's rather a trait that can only be observed but not modeled. — Posty McPostface

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. I understand how this happens in divine command theories (but why?? BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!), but theories like Kantianism, utilitarianism, or similar find grounding in reason, or intuition, or something.

People generally don't disagree about "fundamental" moral principles, like non-maleficence or fidelity. They disagree about empirical, sometimes metaphysical, views on the world. For instance, the debate surrounding abortion is not whether or not it's moral to kill a human being, because obviously most everyone agrees that it's not. The debate is whether or not a human fetus is a being that can be killed, i.e. whether or not it has moral status.

How does a virtue/care ethic approach this sort of topic? (I left feminist ethics out in this example because it's pretty obvious there's going to be strong views on abortion from the feminist crowd).

Virtue-care-ethics is elegantly simplistic because it puts the emphasis on the individual to extend their sphere of interest to include others than one's self. I'd rather live in a democratic collectivist ethical society than have a benevolent dictator tell me what is good. Ethics of care is inherently democratic and education is focused on not habituating a person to be good but rather giving them the tools to want to be ethical and moral. What's more, a person who is motivated by care or love or other noble traits will always be a better moral actor than one guided by command type prescriptivist ethical theories. And, that get's neglected in philosophy nowadays. The pursuit of moral absolutes or as you say, monistic tendencies are largely a failure in terms of ethics. — Posty McPostface

I don't think an ethical theory would count as an ethical theory if it didn't put emphasis on other people instead of yourself. I'm totally on board with investigating the ethics-before-duty, the phenomenology of the encounter with the Other (Levinas), etc. But I think it's a straw man to say only virtue-care-feminist ethics are ethics concerning other people, because that is certainly false.

Additionally, I think it was Aristotle who said virtue comes with habit. True, you must want to be virtuous, but it's something that needs to be taught as well. I'm not sure if the claim that virtuous people will always be a better moral actor than a prescriptivist person is true - and what are we defining "better moral actor" as apart from a person who does what is right, i.e. what ought to be done, i.e. prescriptions.

Yes, but if doing what is ethical isn't motivated by a sense of care or compassion, then what are we left with? The alternative is worse than having a personal care and go through the process of deliberation about what's best for someone other than one's self to decide what is moral. — Posty McPostface

I mean, sure, it's better to be a good person who does the right thing than a bad person who does the right thing for bad reasons. But I strongly believe what ought to be done stands independent of motives. Because it's certainly the case that a bad person doing the right thing out of bad motivations is still better than a bad person doing the wrong thing.

What ought to be the case stands independently of motives. Motives enhance the act, make it into something truly remarkable and praiseworthy, but it's not a requirement. It should be enough to say "don't rape" without the additional "don't rape because you don't want to rape," because if someone does want to rape, they wouldn't satisfy this condition. You mentioned previously how someone who doesn't "get" an ethical command will never see the rationale behind it. Yet I believe this is merely a case of someone not seeing the whole picture, or of having an impaired set of reasoning skills.

Like, I said, having a person motivated to be ethical through encouraging kindness, care, and love will in almost all regards be better than even the best Kantian. — Posty McPostface

But the Kantian is supposed to be motivated by duty to a categorical imperative. They are noble, serious and dedicated. The utilitarian is motivated chiefly by a recognition of the importance of pain and pleasure in the human experience, and while their compassion may not be situational-dependent, it's abstracted from everyday encounters and put into a hypothetical counterfactual that expunges context in favor of universality and consistency. Some might even go on and say consequentialist theories are an "enlightened morality", one that can work in situations that previous closer social bonds morality can't. (But can it replace this everyday morality? I think not).

To put this another way, emotivism and intuitionalism are superior to other ethical theories because they don't really rely on a yet undiscovered rationale as to what actions are the best, they are just intuitively obvious. — Posty McPostface

Emotivism and intuitionism are meta-ethical theories, not normative theories. At least, that is how I have learned it and I see it distinguished this way practically everywhere I go.

I seriously doubt a calculus of utility could also be imagined to discern what actions are best or worst in some or any predicament or situation. — Posty McPostface

Well, we have to keep in mind that consequentialists (like utilitarians) don't see their principle of utility as a very good decision theory. Utilitarianism is a theory of what we ought to do, not a theory of how we ought to go about doing what we ought to do. For the most part, utilitarianism (and most consequentialists) argue we ought to not use the principle of maximizing utility in our decisions because that's just not how we think. We aren't very good consequentialists, and consequentialists recognize this.

Anyway, was interested in whether other people have studied feminist philosophies and such. What's your take on feelings such as care or love be the guiding force to moral decisions? Is it overly simplistic or elegantly simplistic? — Posty McPostface

I think feminist, virtue and care ethics have a valid point that ethics has largely had a gap in recognition of love, care and sympathy, and that the terrain of human moral reasoning cannot be captured in monistic, commanding doctrines. But it's certainly overly simplistic to claim that this new form of ethical reasoning should be the only guiding force in moral philosophy, because there is a component of moral reasoning that is command-like (even if it's not monistic).

If there's one issue I have with "these sorts" of ethical theories (feminist, care, virtue, etc), it's that they tend to be too timid. They don't offer the opportunity to be radically moral. That, and by themselves they fail to provide a complete analysis of morality. Sometimes proponents will suggest we dispense completely with the notion of "duty", which is entirely unreasonable and unpersuasive, if not only because we are sometimes in situations in which we must make a decision that seems to be unaffected by things like virtue, love or care, and we have moral beliefs about what is right and what is wrong that are founded on principles; that is to say, a "virtuous" person believes murder to be wrong because it is wrong (and not that murder is wrong because a virtuous person believes it to be wrong).

In regards to virtue, I think people are generally stuck to their psychological types and it's only through an immense amount of effort that a person can "change" - yet even this possibility is dependent on the person being of a certain psychological type. If this is true, then not everyone can be "virtuous" - yet certainly there are things people should and should not do even if they are incapable of being "virtuous". In that sense, right action is to be sharply distinguished from good natured-ness (i.e. it cannot be a moral requirement to act from a certain intention or motivation).

In regards to love, I think it is entirely unreasonable to demand people love each other, because love is not something that can be voluntarily made. Love is not a foundation of ethics, at least, not in the romantic or deep friend-like way. Love is sometimes said to be the desire to see the good develop in someone else - yet this is a motivation, and I don't think motivations can ever be morally required (since we have no control over them).

So basically, virtue, care, feminist, (etc) ethics offer a different perspective on things and broaden the moral horizon but I hardly think they offer a complete alternative.

How is 's moral philosophy different from natural law theory?

Just asking this because I have a few issues with natural law theory that would seem to be applicable to Augustino's views if it is indeed the case that Augustino is a natural law theorist.

Sidgwick famously struggled with the dichotomy between agent-centered rationality and rationality used ethically. He thought there were good reasons for being self-centered and also good reasons for being oriented ethically.

What Nietzsche recognized, however, is that the choice to be moral cannot be a decision based on morality - for otherwise this would simply push the explanation back further. Why be moral? is a question not within ethics but outside of ethics.

This is why I think there really is no such thing as "choosing" to be ethical - because you either are or you are not. This works well with Nietzsche's theory of psychological types. Levinas spends tremendous effort explaining the "persecution" and "demand" of the Other - it's not something that we passively recognize and say "hmm, maybe I'll be moral", it's quite literally a non-negotiable pull, a reason that exists before reason.

When Aristotle talks about reason leading to the good, he is talking about a different sort of reasoning than simply being a calculated and sensing creature. Virtue ethics, however, has notoriously struggled with defining what the good is by appeal to reason (and virtue). Murder is wrong, according to the virtue ethicist, because a virtuous person would not murder. But that seems to get things backwards. Murder is wrong because it is wrong, and it's because it is wrong that virtuous people do not murder.

Very interesting response, Baden, thanks. As I tried to make clear earlier, I'm not against transgender people, I take issue with the movement. I'm a college student at a fairly liberal university, there's lots of progressive stuff going on here. What I notice a lot is how over the top, in your face, the LGBTQ groups are, as if the world dances to their music. It's very shallow lovey dovey and doesn't seem to be very serious.

The main problem I have is that the transgender movement has made itself a "part" of feminism, when the reality is that some of the things it's advocating threaten core parts of feminism. Feminism is first and foremost women-oriented, it's not about equality but women's issues, oftentimes how women are to be liberated from some form of oppression, which includes gender. It's a very serious movement with very serious issues. The transgender movement ends up ignoring this. In fact the issues the transgender movement bring up are shallow issues - pronouns, dating, clothing, etc, not the real issues transgenders face, like violence and abuse.

As you pointed out, it does seem as though the transgender movement might be demanded "too much". This is my main issue with social justice movements, that they tend to make everything about them. The world is filled with all sorts of differences and it cannot hope to satisfy everyone. It may be unfair, say, to not allow a transwoman to enter a women's restroom, but it is also unfair to put other women at risk of assault.

Of course, if you disallow transwomen from entering women restrooms you are not recognizing them as "real" women. Which is why I think it's killing two birds with one stone when I say we should get rid of gender and maintain natal sex. For the sake of women, we're going to have to make an exception. It's not that we hate transpeople but that we recognize that this is a tricky social issue that cannot satisfy everyone. There is only so much freedom you can give someone until this starts impinging on the freedom of others.

Cool to hear from someone with a partner who is trans. I'm not trying to be rude here, I know it's a delicate issue, but I do see transgender people as wanting to pretend they are someone they are not. I'm not sure how someone can just "choose" this kind of identity for themselves, even if they don't like the one they have. I acknowledge that it can be quite uncomfortable being a man if you don't want to be a man. However I think most liberations come not from a sex surgery but from a way of expressing yourself, how you act, what you wear, etc. To that extent it's more that masculinity and femininity provide outlets for this liberation, but it's not, or at least how I see it, should not be a requirement to have a certain physical body in order to express yourself. A man can be feminine but he cannot be a woman, even if people treat them as if they were a woman.

Do you think a transgender person can ever fully believe themselves to be not of their natal sex?

Without commenting on transgenderism per se, I think it's too narrow to see gender as only oppressive. I think gender itself can be a vector of self-expression, to the extent that one can find joy in the expression of one's masculinity or femininity, to the extent that a gender may be as much as site of bonding, fraternity and empowerment as any other form of identification/differentiation. Which is not to say that gender is only this, but that it is, as it were, ambivalent between it's 'good' and it's 'bad' faces. The trick is in negotiating the concrete circumstances that one finds one's gender in. — StreetlightX

I think in this sense gender is just like race - white people like to be around white people, black people around black people, just as guys like to be around guys, girls around girls, etc. It's human nature to want to be a part of those who are similar. That's not to say that black people necessarily hate being around white people, I'm of course not saying that. I'm saying that I think it is reasonable to believe that, given a choice, most people "feel at home" more around those who are similar to each other. And in some cases this is indeed a rational thing to feel - i.e. when a woman feels comfortable in a women-only restroom knowing that she is safe(r), surrounded by other women who feel the same thing.

We can work on overcoming prejudice and fear and becoming a mutually recognizing society. However I think this means getting rid of certain things, like gender, or at least separating the connection between biological sex and socially-conditioned gender, because of this "feeling of home". A transman will not be accepted as a man because he is not a man. You can go through the "motions" of being a man, get sex reassignment surgery, physically appear "as" a man, but this will not make you a man.

My view on this is that a woman should be able to "dress as a man", that is, be "masculine", without having to get a sex change or hormonal treatment, or calling themselves a man. I am not opposed to gender non-conforming behavior, I'm opposed to the activism behind transgenderism, because it is vocally cementing this connection between biological sex and gender.

If we are going to call gender norms oppressive then to be consistent we would have to call all norms oppressive. We would have to call anything that demands that anybody conform to any norm oppressive. For example, we are socialized to believe that we are biologically wired to be "sexual beings". There are probably people who do not think of themselves as "sexual beings". If telling somebody based on biology that he is a man is oppressive then telling somebody that due to his biology he is a "sexual being" is oppressive. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yes, I mean, I recognize myself when you mentioned the socialization of us as sexual beings, since I've never had an intimate relationship nor do I particularly want to, let alone have sex with another person. It's oppressive to me when other people shockingly ask why I haven't gotten laid yet or have a girlfriend or whatever. It doesn't impact anyone else so what's the big deal?

In the case of gender (and sex), I think it's important to leave sex as an identity because of how useful it is. A gender dysphoric man may feel uncomfortable in a men's restroom, but think how uncomfortable women would feel if he were to transition and go into their restroom. Their sex may be oppressive to themselves but mitigating this oppression ends up coming at the cost of a great many more's rights.

If a gender dysphoric man dresses "as a woman" and enters a women's restroom there will be a panic, because this man is a man even if he dresses "as a woman". If this gender dysphoric man gets sex reassignment surgery and enters a women's restroom there will be still be a feeling of discomfort since this is, in fact, a man who has had his physical traits changed.

I wonder if perhaps this issue might go away if technology progresses to such a degree that hormone therapy and sex surgery can make someone of one sex indistinguishable to another sex. But unfortunately this probably is not the case since, for example, a transwoman cannot be a "lesbian" - they are heterosexual but gender non-conforming. And it still does not address the other main point in the OP, that we ought to sever the link between gender and sex, so people can be free to express themselves without feeling the need to actually alter their bodies - I think transgender activism is not helping people feel at home in their bodies but rather reinforcing the idea that you need to change who you are in order to feel at home.

^

We need a movement that addresses men's issues that isn't tainted by a poorly-hidden hatred for feminism. Feminism isn't about men, it's about women. If this pisses men off then it's time they start addressing men's issues themselves. Men aren't being forgotten, they're just not the focus of feminism. But this pisses many men off because it means the spotlight is no longer on them.

I seriously recommend reading the literature surrounding phenomenology. At times it honestly has made me despair at just how in the dark analytic philosophy is. Analytic philosophy has its strengths but historicity is not one of them, it insists on re-inventing the wheel for everything. It's like two separate groups all talking about the same thing but ignoring what the other group has to say. Except in this case, and philosophy of mind in general, analytics should really take a break and read some Kant, Husserl and Heidegger.

What it would take to convince academia that they've gotten something wrong? Specifically, I'm inclined to believe that academia, the whole of philosophy as far as I can tell at least, has gotten thought and belief wrong. I mean, convention has 'defined' thought and belief in terms of it's having propositional content, which has it's own unbearable burden on my view(either there is no such thing as thought and belief prior to language, or propositions exist prior to language and neither is acceptable). — creativesoul

To be sure, this is mostly an analytic thing. Desires, beliefs, propositional attitudes, they all are analyzed in terms of language, sometimes to the extreme of claiming that minds cannot exist unless there is a language.

However such a view would be incomprehensible to continental thinkers, specifically those in the phenomenological tradition. There is a vast amount of literature that covers how things are given to us through experience that is pre-linguistic. When I grasp a coffee mug, for instance, I don't have the actual belief that the coffee mug "exists" in such-and-such way. Such attitudes are theoretical when in reality I live most of my life in a pre-theoretical attunement to the world.

What you propose to do is something that should have been done a long time ago and it currently happening right now, the "gap bridging" between analytics and continentals. It's not easy, especially when certain analytics insist on being twats and strawmanning the continentals.

I appreciate it this way: nature is getting a good night's sleep. It is a refreshingly quiet and peaceful time. And the landscape is awesome and humbling a lot of the time. When things are white and bright it makes the landscape feel bigger and more awesome, just like how white walls make a room bigger. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Yes, I agree, I enjoy it when it's winter time because it's cozy indoors yet peaceful and quiet outside (unless you're holiday shopping). I'm more melancholic but that's probably just a seasonal thing. I dislike being super energetic and enthusiastic because I always feel like a fool afterwards. Colder months make things more serious and sober.

Edward Feser: Scholastic Metaphysics

https://isidore.co/calibre/get/pdf/Scholastic%20Metaphysics_%20A%20Contemporary%20Introduction%20-%20Feser%2C%20Edward_5458.pdf

Happened to stumble upon this one, been wanting to read it for a while.

you might like this.

If you can't give me a competing definition that's as clear and direct as the one I've given, the result is that "science" doesn't mean anything. — T Clark

Right. I don't think science really means anything, aside of a vague and mysterious group of smart people using instruments to get data about something, usually accompanied with a romantic image of spiritual purpose or whatever. Words unify people and make it easier to communicate.

If I had to decide on a criterion of science, it would be that it has some agreed upon set of measurements and field-specific methodology. Not that there is some specific methodology that science has that not-science doesn't.

Of course that's true. The scientific method was not created out of thin air. It's not magic. It is a systemization of the ways that people have always solved problems and looked for knowledge. — T Clark

But if it's not exclusive to, not originating with science, then why call it the scientific method?

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence is a phenomenon whereby larger entities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities such that the larger entities exhibit properties the smaller/simpler entities do not exhibit. — schopenhauer1

The problem I immediately see with this, when applied to philosophy of mind, is that we see emergentism in physical-to-physical systems. It's quite a different thing to say there is emergentism in physical-to-mental systems due to them being two different kinds of things. Which is why the materialist has to hold that the mental, just kidding!, isn't actually really mental but simply a physical state.

Indeed, but it only asks you to do so temporarily until science has caught up to how to explain it. — Frank Barroso

Read the rest of my claim. If we have no reason to trust our first-hand experiences of consciousness then we have absolutely no reason to trust materialism as a theory of mind. Science is given an epistemic free-bee as an unexplained explainer. My experiences are of higher epistemic certainty than a more distant scientific theory. If a scientific theory threatens something of higher epistemic certainty then the wise choice is to reject the scientific theory.

But they disagree about what they think actually happened in the past, implying they assume there is actually a fact about what happened. It's not just a game where they pretend there's facts just so they can have a job.

But historians go about business with the assumption that there is, actually, a fact of the matter as to what happened. Things can't be evidence if there aren't any facts.

The more I study philosophy of mind and phenomenology the more I'm amazed materialism is as popular as it is. It's pretty obvious my mind, my experiences, my intentional, propositional, qualitative states, are not identical nor reducible to a neurological tissue state as it exists as a neurological tissue state. It is far more likely, given what we know from the self-evident and obvious, that the mind and the body are separate, or, as I see it, that the mind has definitive priority over the body in the sense that the world is intrinsically "minded" rather than intrinsically an unconscious lump of "material".

Materialism requires that we jump across an epistemic chasm, unwarranted. If we have no reason to trust our first-hand experiences of consciousness then we have absolutely no reason to trust materialism as a theory of mind.

The are no facts about the past. Just what is remembered in individual memory. — Rich

Then how can we say anything true about the past?

The present cannot be negated or undone. We cannot ever alter the past or the future, only create new and/or different moments-- this mission to kill Hitler is literally pointless by these terms. It will not change anything about our past.

In this respect, concern for a present is all ethics require, for any past or future, any possible world with a (im)moral outcome, is defined in a present event. To care for any past or future, is to be concerned about a present. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I will agree that ethics presides in the present. It is difficult to put into words but I think you and I might be touching on the same thing.

Basically, say the world is a four-dimensional worm, and God resides outside of it peering over approvingly for whatever bad reason. He sees the Holocaust, and turns his gaze slightly to the right and sees a few 22nd century time travelers going back to the Holocaust. They shoot Hitler and stop the Holocaust from happening, that is, the Holocaust disappears from the four-dimensional worm.

But now it seems like, even though they removed the Holocaust from history, it still had to go somewhere. Things can't just disappear without a trace, that's magic (of course, time travel is also magic). What happened to all that pain, suffering, violence?, did it just suddenly POOF! disappear?

The past and future do not exist, but they did exist and they will exist respectively. If you believe that there are facts about what happened then I don't see why you can't base your moral judgements on that. — Mr Bee

Yes, this is one solution I was thinking about. The past (and future) may not exist but the facts about the past (and future) exist (in some way). Therefore we can say that, what grounds historical claims are the facts about the past that transcend the material present.

I still contend, however, that the phenomenology surrounding the ethics of past events is that these past events are still "real" in some sense, and aren't only a transcendent fact. Somewhere, deep in the past, victims of the Holocaust are still "hurting". Whether this is actually true is another matter but it would seem to have some plausibility when we consider the B-theory of time, or eternalism. Facts, by themselves, do not "hurt".

If something progresses by using "whatever works" then on of too things are true. 1) Whatever works is part of the scientific method, or 2) it's not science. — T Clark

This is most definitely question begging. Just because I make a really good burrito doesn't mean I use the "scientific method" to make it. Just because a fisherman catches many fish doesn't mean she uses the "scientific method" to catch them.

Furthermore, by ascribing whatever works to a scientific method that is exclusively scientific then we're left with no way to actually criticize science. Science becomes this infallible source of knowledge, where whatever doesn't work apparently isn't science. Yet clearly this is false. There can be bad, poor, shitty science just as much as good science. Actually most science is bad science, with faulty assumptions, poor methodology or whatever.

A lot of the ways "Science" goes about "sciencing" is not very different from other activities. It's just that these scientific fields have special equipment and have the public image of being a dispassionate search for truth.

To summarize the question, then:

How does presentism ground ethical claims rooted in the past (and future) if the past and future do not exist?

But there is no singular scientific method, nor is it used all the time in science, and nor is it unique to science. Science progresses by using whatever works, not by leaning on a methodological crutch.

Mostly the name "science" is an honorific term. Whatever discipline has high social favor is a science. Consensus and practical consequences are what really end up mattering, because they give you confidence that you're right without actually seeing yourself.

o past trauma might cause me to believe (subconsciously) that I'll never be professionally successful; the past exists not only in my present beliefs, but in my real, present circumstances, thanks to how belief mediates the past with the present. The belief maketh it so. Lemme know if that makes sense. — Noble Dust

I'm not sure how this is different from saying the past is an "echo" or a "footprint". What I'm saying is that if the past does not actually exist then what we see as residue from the past is like a fossil of an animal that never actually existed. If the past does not exist then it no longer mattered if it happened - it doesn't even make sense to say it happened.

Sort of how we perceive the world around us in a naive realist fashion, but that's just the way in which our experience is structured, and not that the world around us is actually there materially and we are directly accessing this independent world. Experientially the holocaust happened in an independently existing past, but materially there's no reality somewhere that contains the facts about the past (that could hypothetically be accessed). — antinatalautist

So I think you get what I'm saying, but I insist that this has very problematic ethical consequences. There are people who have devoted their entire lives to making sure other people do not forget the Holocaust happened. Yet, what you are saying and what I have been suggesting is that there is no difference between a present world that "has a past" with a Holocaust and a present world that instantaneously came into existence with no past Holocaust but is in every way shape and form identical to the world that has a past with a Holocaust.

The reason we shouldn't forget the Holocaust isn't just that we don't want it to happen "again". It's that it's shameful and wrong to forget what happened. In this sense, the past is a very real thing, shrouded in darkness and inaccessible, but still very real. The inmates at Auschwitz really did get tossed into gas chambers and cremented. Their suffering is "stored somewhere in temporal memory", for lack of a better way of describing it. It's Read-Only Memory, 6 million Jews suffered and died in the concentration camps. That is a fact and it continues to be a fact even if these 6 million Jews no longer exist. Their suffering, although not in the present, is still "real".

The B-theory of time makes the most sense, ethically, since it holds that at least the past is held tight and is "real". In this way, the universe is literally "growing" 4 dimensionally. It's not just an unreal blip.

The past exists in the present. Your post, made an hour ago, exists for me now as I respond. The deed you did, posting the topic, exists in the present in the form it takes on the internet. Likewise the mass murder of Jews exists in the present in the form of family lines broken or altered, cultural values strengthened and weakened, generational suffering, immigration patterns, population numbers... — Noble Dust

I think that the past exists as more than just a footprint. At least I think we approach the past as if it still somewhat exists. Soldiers with PTSD are traumatized by what they saw - they re-live the moments over and over again. Their PTSD is a footprint left behind by the past - but these soldiers have PTSD precisely because they think the past is more than an unreal footprint. People can't just shrug off the past because it no longer exists. Things continue to bother people even if they're "long gone" because they think it still matters that they happened. But it can only really make sense for it to matter if the past is somehow cemented in place and really exists, and isn't just an unreal phantom, an illusion or whatever.

A world with a present identical to ours but which had no Holocaust in its past would be vastly superior to ours. It also does not make sense to say, "you murdered this person but since this person is dead and in the past, it no longer matters and you're free to go." We wouldn't be able to ascribe responsibility at all. History would literally be a lie. The present would be a foundation-less moment and nothing more.

Basically the goodness of whatever final metamorphic state is put into question when we reflect on the evil that came before. It's hard to see how something really could be good if it necessitates this much evil. Doing so requires us to seriously become numb to this evil to the point of forgetting it even is evil.

lmao it's not hard to pick him out. He should get a life.

If I remember correctly a Catholic, or maybe just Thomistic (idk) perspective on this is to withhold judgement on this and to basically accept that God "works in mysterious ways".

Oh, now I seem to have remembered encountering him on the old PF when I called him out on some bullshit. Guess that's when he decided to leech on my blog. Hahaha

Mosesquine? From what I've seen he has been terrorizing the blog of darthbarracuda for some time >:O — Agustino

I'm not sure who you are referring to? The guy who insists on making a logical syllogism proving I am the most disgusting hot dog on the sidewalk in South Africa or something?

It's what we do when we make certain claims like science being the asymptote of truth. Philosophy basically deals with framing questions, not certain facts about the world. We're trying to figure out how it all fits together - because we appreciate the distinction between appearance and reality and wish to see the relationship between the two. We want to know what it is that we are asymptotically approaching (truth), why science is the curve that does so (is it always?), and whether or not its asymptote is anything even meaningful at all, or simply the end of scientific inquiry.

Part of what makes philosophy so interesting is how self-reflexive and indeterminate it is. You can't pin it down but philosophers nevertheless keep trying to. It's certainly the case that philosophy deals with legitimate things but it's also a philosophical question to figure out what these things are.

1) Nietzschean- Live life like its your work of art. All the suffering one experiences just adds to the art to make life its own special thing for that individual. It is what makes life more challenging, and challenges are somehow transcendentally good (for some reason). I guess the reasoning is that it gives life its flavor and stories to tell about oneself? People can post-facto embrace life because of the challenges it affords them to overcome and make into their life story. — schopenhauer1

Nietzsche's overman applies to a minority of people. He basically denies that the majority of people can ever achieve such a form of existence, and that because of this their lives suck. If we're being charitable then living your life as though it were a story or a work of art is a good thing because it is self-evidently a good thing. In the same sense that it is self-evident that gratuitous and pointless suffering is a very bad thing. There's no "for some reason" here. If you have to apply "for some reason" then either it's not self-evident, or you aren't the person who can tell that it is self-evident. And clearly this has connections to Nietzsche's "perspectivism" theory of truth. It's not self-evident to you, I'm not sure if it's self-evident to myself, and Nietzsche would have thought both of us aren't qualified right now to become an overman.

Saying "I don't see the value of art" doesn't change the fact that some people do see the value of art. The Nietzschean perspective is that the value of life is objectively indeterminate, and can only be given its value by a projecting subject. In an almost Freudian way, if you disagree with Nietzsche that a life can be a work of art then you're probably not going to be a Nietzschean, or an overman or whatever.

Whether or not anyone can actually be an overman is a different issue altogether. A better argument here would be to accept Nietzsche's concepts but show they fail to be plausible in real life. People are too decadent, too selfish, too full of shit, too whiny, too weak, too mortal, too wasteful, too stupid, etc for Nietzsche's concepts to have any practical application to reality. The overman, amor fati, eternal return, all of these concepts are great but in the end only go to show how unqualified humans are.

Probably criticizing the coherency of authenticity is a form of authenticity.

Metzinger is okay - I mean, his work on the "non-self", the "phenomenal self-model", was sensationalized in pessimistic literature like Ligotti's Conspiracy (which I'm sure you're familiar with given your user name), but philosophically his ideas are too reductionistic, too scientistic, and too oblivious to the work of 20th century phenomenology. Graham Harman has a great piece criticizing Metzinger's position as being overly verbose and in many cases incoherent. In many cases Metzinger hits the nail on the head, but in many other cases he misses the mark. I don't see him as a "perennial" thinker but more of a product of the current philosophical-metaphysical paradigm (reductionist materialism).

Thanks for the reading suggestion. I haven't read much Deleuze but he's on my list, maybe even the next one I read.

Not sure how this went under the radar, but I'll leave this here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_conflict

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_insemination

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_coercion

Basically for many species, there has been and continues to be an evolutionary arms race between the male and female sexes due to conflicting strategies of reproduction.

Reality, Existence, Being, World and Actuality. — Marty

Reality: whatever "is the case". The actual state of affairs, how things really are independent of our beliefs. That which can kill you if you're not careful. Political.

Existence: what something that exists has that makes it the case that it exists and differentiates it from non-existence.

Being: ???????, basically existence, but not? Existence vs existants, Being vs beings...A mode of presentation of objects by intentional consciousness?

Actuality: that which is the effect of some cause, the manifestation of a possibility in reality. I guess actuality would basically be the same thing as reality, but more so in the sense of that which is the culmination of some process, the final metamorphosis to "perfection". Also whatever is "illuminated", an actor with a name and a lead role surrounded by the forgettable and dispensable supporting cast.

All of these come across as fairly circular. Or co-dependent on something else. Being is what distinguishes that which is from that which isn't. Non-Being is what distinguishes that which is not from that which is.

The 'materialist' view of time does render out of time an entirely relative phenomenon. There exists no absolute time, time itself is immanent within the world. I am reminded of 180 Proof asking rhetorically "what is north of the North Pole?" when asked "what happened before time began during the Big Bang?". — Agustino

This is one of the questions I have regarding cosmological arguments. In what sense are we to understand God "causing" the universe (and time) to exist, if there was no time before hand? Our concept of causality seems to me to be intrinsically tied to time. Things change because of certain causes, and this takes time to happen. So if time did not exist "before" (what does that even mean, though, "before time" - was there a time before time?), in what sense is God "causing" the world to exist?

I guess we should be asking what anything being morally respectable is based on and whether it's justified to demand us to respect the dead to find the answer. — BlueBanana

I think morality is based on intersubjectivity. There needs to be at least two different subjective beings in existence for morality to have any worldly form.