Unpleasant experiences with varying levels of obnoxiousness, I suspect.

Correct. Pleasure has a twisted way of tricking us into existential continuation.

Yep. If God exists, my metaphysics is utterly screwed. — apokrisis

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but how does the existence of God disqualify your system? If anything, God is meant to act as a unifying role, bringing all the pieces of a metaphysical system together.

This is one of the things that tends to bother me about theology and philosophical cosmology: I don't see how we're supposed to be able to know something like this. How on earth (literally) are we to know where the universe came from, or what the nature of the First Cause is (if there is one)?

While other metaphysical debates feel closer to home, so to speak, philosophical cosmology is quite the opposite. I can see how the problem of universals, for example, would be close to home (we encounter similarity every moment of our lives), but what remains to be shown is that the causality that seems to be apparent on the billiards table is identical to that billions of years ago.

It doesn't matter if we're Humeans are Aristotelians or Kantians or whatever: all we have access to is the causality that is apparent right now. This is why the more comfortable debates, like the problem of universals, are perfectly acceptable, since we are talking about something that is immediately perceived. But the origins of the cosmos is not apparent, and this especially becomes problematic when we start to consider more anti-realist conceptions of reality, like transcendental idealism or its realist offshoot, speculative realism. Did everything that happened billions of years before consciousness emerged actually happen? This is what Meillassoux claims to be the correlationist dilemma, and also the correlationist's responsibility to tell the scientists that they are studying something that never actually happened.

And so philosophical cosmological debates become suspect because they tend to implement a metaphysical framework of the here-and-now for the then-and-there, when there doesn't seem to be any real justification for the claim that the metaphysical structure of the here-and-now has been and always will be the same. It may be the case that the metaphysical structure of reality evolves, and that is all we can know: that is evolves, and what was the case before is lost.

Instead of armchair theorizing, the only method capable of producing anything of substance in this debate would be actual, pure empirical observations.

The feeling you get when you start to doubt if you're even suffering, and you start suffering even more (i.e. Tolstoy). Am I myself suffering, or do I simply suffer because I know others are suffering? Am I pessimistic because I myself experience these things, or because I hear about other people experiencing these things?

Human languages, across the board, have significantly more adjectives related to harms than to benefits. The English language, for example, has around three times as many adjectives of harm than of benefit. So it won't be surprising when we can make such a large list of harms. This is due not only because we tend to experience more harm than benefit but also, if not primarily because, we subconsciously focus more on the bad than the good. Bad is, in most cases, psychologically stronger than good - it is an extremely well-founded psychological fact. However I will say that since we experience more bad than good, and yet find ourselves still alive, this means that the human specimen is, all things considered, a rather durable specimen. The sun will rise tomorrow one way or another.

Follow this through to a more speculative destination, and we find ourselves agreeing with Dostoevsky: suffering is the root of consciousness.

Something that struck me lately, is Seneca's recommendation that we choose someone who we admire (presumably someone dead, lol) and imagine them watching over our lives, and think about whether or not that someone would approve of our actions. — anonymous66

I find myself thinking about this all the time, and it has come to my attention that perhaps I hold beliefs not only because I myself agree with the content of the belief but also because I am afraid of what others will think if I don't believe in what they themselves believe in.

I suppose this is why the internet is generally a poor place for serious philosophical discussion. It is much to easy to form a cult surrounding a belief, with aggressive tendencies. You see this a lot in third way feminist movements, for example.

Again I wasn't making an ontological claim, just pointing out the fact that the the reality of causality is not altogether obvious or straightforward.

You seem to be claiming that causality fails in some generic sense. I ask where are the facts that suggest that? — apokrisis

I am saying that what we experience is all we ever actually know, and that causality may or may not be needed in order to understand the world. I consider it to be likely that causality is indeed real (as is the outside world) but it's not straightforward either.

Indeed, it still works, but it might not be an accurate picture of reality. Hume tried to ground all metaphysics in experience. And Russell thought causality was the common man's myth, as did some of the logical positivists.

I'm not saying I agree with them. Causality isn't my best topic. But in any case, just because something works does not mean it actually is the case. A convenient explanation need not always be the correct explanation.

But the problem here is that you have just destroyed causality, and causality is something we would expect to be able to extract from "a better model of time". Causality is what we observe in the world - it is why we believe it to be "time-like" - and so at the very least, an arrow of time ought to be the emergent feature of any good model of time.

That was the problem of Newtonian time, and the reason for recent thermal models. Newtonian time could not build in a direction. As a result you can get insane metaphysical notions like "the block universe", or "eternal recurrence". — apokrisis

Right, again, it was just supposed to be a musing idea. In any case, though, the notion of causality has been attacked, many times. So this muse accordingly would destroy the illusory concepts of causality and persistence. Which does seem implausible, as our minds seem to pick up on these sorts of things.

Interesting argument, I like it. I'll stick around to see what the others have to say on this. However I suspect it is not solid. It seems to depend on the idea that time moves forward in one direction; an intuition that is theoretically refuted from deduction of scientific observation (I can't remember the specificities, perhaps someone like apo will).

Also, can it not be the case that all of time is already set out? It would go as follows:

1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 1 -> ... -> infinite loops. Thus all moments of time are already set in stone, and we just keep looping, like a temporal mobius strip. There was no first cause, because the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously, independent of any sort of tense intra-worldly beings place on them, so there is no progress in the actual sense (only the phenomenal sense). So when we progress forward in time, we are actually just another wakened form of existing. The past self that thinks about the future five seconds ago still exists and is still thinking about the future. And the self existing right "now" will always be thinking of the past self. The feeling that we persist is wholly an illusion, then, but nevertheless an experience that will always be the case in this "moment", and all the other moments of experience. "You" are not "you" five seconds ago - they are separate things entirely, existing in a wholly different temporal (yet static) frame, in no way more or less existing than you are now.

Why a temporal mobius strip would be the way it is, I have no idea. It's just a funny idea I've been toying with.

Interesting ideas. My own working definition of metaphysics comes from A. W. Moore (who is influenced by Deleuze and Wittgenstein): metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things. I will take issue with your definition of ontology, if only because it contradicts what is basically the established norm. Ontology is like an "inventory" of sorts, and is used outside of metaphysics (often in science) in a similar manner as agnosticism is used outside of the philosophy of religion. It's a philosophical term that is not exclusive to philosophy.

But yes, I would agree that much of metaphysics is simply selecting what exists, I would just call this ontology. Meta-analysis of metaphysics, like metaontology, occurs during and outside of the ontology room.

Show me some data, then.

I think people like to think about living like a Stoic sage (or similar) rather than actually living as a Stoic sage. Thinking is one thing, actually implementing this through action is another.

There is certainly an aesthetic element to systems. Having a system helps you believe you have power over reality. That you have understood the essence of existence, or how the world works, or whatever. Systems are sophisticated, complex, and can sometimes be even esoteric - the pop-science you read in the magazines is not the same thing as what actual scientists study. It's a condensed, exoteric generalization of something that happens within a certain framework of rules, regulations, customs and beliefs.

System-thinking is generally good. In fact it's probably better to think in terms of systems instead of hodge-podge conceptual mish-mash. But the downside to system thinking is that it tends to lead to dogmatism, because of the aesthetic component. Believers in a system actually become attached to the system, and go beyond using the system as an explanation to wanting the system to be correct. A system that was good for one scenario gets shoe-horned into other scenarios that it doesn't belong. An entire culture evolves around the system: you see this in medieval Scholasticism, for example.

So the key is to work with systems in an open-ended manner, keeping them open for change or rejection. That is, after all, the final destination for any inquiry related project: it is either changed or entirely thrown out. The "truth" from the eyes of the observers is never static, it is always dynamic and changing.

But the reality is that your hyper-individuation is not reflective of reality. You can visualize someone being happy when they are starving, yet this patently does not happen.

If you want to individuate phenomenal experience that much, then sure, someone "could" be starving but yet still be "happy".

At that level of individuation, though, phenomenology and psychology in general fails, because no system can be made out of a radical presupposition of the uniqueness of an individual.

I'm glad to see that darth has quoted that famous Sartre saying about other people. I quite like Sartre but that is one of the stupidest, most ignorant and dishonest things I have ever known a philosopher to say. I can only hope that, like many sayings attributed to famous people, he never really said it. — andrewk

I think Sartre was focused on how the expectations of others and the need to conform to the group makes acquaintanceship with other people hellish, not that other people literally are devils from Hell.

Hell is other people. - Sartre

As I just explained above (a couple posts back), wants and needs (needs hinge on wants in my view) have nothing to do with happiness. — Terrapin Station

I don't understand how this is possible. Surely if you are starving, or dehydrated, or overheating, or lonely, or fearful, you can't honestly consider yourself "happy". It's not sustainable nor is it even possible to instantiate while these needs are not met.

What I mean when I say the self is an illusion is that any conception of myself is a product of my imagination. — MonfortS26

Whose imagination is it of?

The "self" is not an illusion as much as the concept of an unchanging, concrete self is. There is clearly something that perceives, senses, imagines, feels, thinks, and decides. Whether this thing persists over time, or whether this thing is capable of being dissolved does not change the fact that it is still there.

I keep hearing people use the word "illusion" without explaining what it actually means. What is this "illusion" you speak of? A trick? A phantom? A construct that dissolves under analysis?

Being able to identify something means that there is some kind of registration going on. The phenomenal experience of something being so.

In any case, you say that our sense of self is an "illusion", but go on to say that the art industry is morally corrupt because it cripples our sense of individuality. Individuality entails self-hood. You can't have both.

>:O

Following Nietzsche, Sartre, and a plethora of other thinkers, the meaningful life is the one devoted to the aesthetics.

How everyone else who can't paint to save their lives are supposed to live is beyond me.

I realize that digital characters, for all intensive purposes, cannot actually be said to suffer. But these characters are representations of an entire sex. The developers made a choice: should we make women wear normal, modest clothing, or should we make them wear absurdly impractical and sexually arousing clothing?

The quest for enlightenment is a search for one's place in the universe. How the universe works and how one fits in the whole picture.

The rhetoric of "objectification" is completely untenable from a number of angles. And unfortunately, no one seems to be seriously, systematically challenging the untenable rhetoric.

It seems a far bigger problem to me to see a focus on sexual appeal as a problem--and that's what tends to happen. Any focus on sex/sex appeal/sexual attactiveness/etc. is seen as "objectification" (and usually as "misogyny" etc.) It's disheartening how people let rhetoric like that take hold so that it winds up more or less becomes unquestioned and simply accepted as a norm for an entire generation, to an extent where it even starts influencing the opinions of other generations. — Terrapin Station

I think it has more to do with women being unequal or "sex objects" than it has to do with sexuality in general. I'm all for making sexuality a common aspect of the public sphere. But I think there might be some issues with putting sexuality where it isn't needed, i.e. women being used to garner profits.

Holy moly no. No expression should be outlawed. — Terrapin Station

Agreed, only they should be limited to the private spheres, and the private sphere should not affect the public sphere.

I know plenty of women who don't buy into the rhetoric about "objectification." — Terrapin Station

Just playing devil's advocate here, the feminist would argue that these women don't know what's good for them. Indeed a lot of feminism seems to revolve around this aesthetic of the female nature and assuming every other female also wants to be this way. When in fact some females are okay with objectification. Feminists chalk this up to be the result of the Patriarchy, and it is the Patriarchy that is not allowing women to think for themselves.

But surely you know that we are integrated with technology so heavily, there is no way for our species to escape it as something we are working for. Think about it, almost everything you touch involves technology.. In fact, your whole mode of survival relies upon and involves the maintenance and growth of technology, whether you are conscious of what we are doing or not. There's not a day that goes by that you are not affected by technology and not only technology but technology stemming from the last two centuries. — schopenhauer1

True. But I'd say the economic aspect of technology is what makes this so. The reason we have so much technology is because technology is profitable, and it's profitable because we want to live more comfortable lives. I can respect technology that helps us live more comfortable lives.

With the utility that comes with technology, many people will point to this as a summum bonum of modern society. How can one have feelings of ennui and world-weariness when we can master our environment, create new possibilities, and be able to participate in the maintenance of these newfound ways of surviving and living, so people will say. — schopenhauer1

Who are these people that say these things specifically?

With all this being said, do these technologies and scientific discoveries provide some sort of overarching meaning to our species? If our species died out, arguably it would be the loss of scientific knowledge and technological innovations that would be most missed in its absence from the universe (at least from the vantage point of us imagining its non-existence as we stand here as already existing beings that are projecting a future state of affairs). — schopenhauer1

The technology itself? No...or at least it shouldn't. If it was then that would just be technology-worship.

Technology itself is a symptom of something deeper that we hold seem to hold dear: the future. That is what technology is, the manipulation of the environment to suit some future goal. Remove the possibility and desire for a future, and there's not much reason to progress technologically.

But as soon as you get the economy involved, the techno-craze is impossible to stop. Instead of being purely an instantiation of our desire for a future, technology becomes intertwined with profit.

Of course, there are other purposes to technology, but in the end it's all about the future. Medical technology is invented so help people have a better future. Military technology is invented to help maintain the futural prospects of a country.

Is technology the reason why one should not be an antinatalist.. If our species can produce such things with our minds.. how can the Human Project be bad (and even more extreme discontinued) when new humans can contribute to and experience this technology? — schopenhauer1

We tend to like to comfort ourselves by appealing to the past: look how far we have come! Surely we can't turn back now!

But that's just the sunk cost fallacy. There's no point in continuing to work at a job you hate just because you've worked at it for a long time.

And appealing to how far we have come as a species requires one to ignore two possibilities:

1.) We will never progress further, because the universe is not capable of progressing any further artificially. If this is the case, then the universe must be quite a boring place for us to live in - infinitely wide but absurdly shallow. This is an aesthetic failure of the universe as a whole.

2.) We will never scratch the surface of what the universe has to offer, because there isn't enough time or energy to do so, similar to dipping our toe in the water but never being able to jump in. This is an aesthetic failure of our species as a whole.

In any case appealing to technology can end up being an unjustifiable forecast for the future.

Is the antinatalist ungrateful to the technology that has been the outgrowth of various industrial revolutions and discoveries? Should the mastery of various fields of knowledge that contribute to the maintenance and growth of discoveries and technologies be exalted? — schopenhauer1

We surely benefit from technology, no doubt about that. But at what cost? Was it all really worth it in the end? Or are we just massaging our egos?

Making my way through my first play through of the Witcher 3. Out of all the locations, Velen has got to be my favorite. The music especially is just amazing. Matches the atmosphere of a war-ravaged land perfectly.

That is simply false. — Sapientia

Really? Do explain.

That argument doesn't support your claim. It only supports a weaker revised version which mirrors your use of "it seems to make sense". Although that reduces to the even weaker "it seems to make sense to some people, but not others". — Sapientia

You're going to have to argue, then, that infinite regresses or spontaneous creation acts are reasonable. Because if we are arguing from with a certain metaphysical framework, then they are, from what I and many others can tell, are not coherent.

Easy. Infinite regress or a first cause without the inappropriate labels of "Prime Mover" or "God". — Sapientia

Infinite regress is incoherent, and labeling something with a different name doesn't change the ontological role it plays.

You might be right, but I find that doubtful, and you'll need more than a reference to the Neo-Platonists and "their neighbours" to back up your claim that this is typical. — Sapientia

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plotinus/#2

Alvin Plantinga is a theistic personalist, not a classical theist.

In any case these books by those pop-science superstars are not very well accepted in the philosophical community at large. Krauss's "nothing" is actually "something", despite his pretentious douchebaggery. Hitchens and Harris attack straw-men. None of them seem capable, or willing, to understand religious belief, or theist belief for that matter. It's just a publicity stunt.

Why shouldn't the New Atheists grapple with beliefs "touted around the world"? Because you find such beliefs to be shallow or puerile? Even if they are, that would seem to only make it that much more imperative that they be critiqued, wouldn't you say? — Arkady

Oh, sure, they can, I don't have a problem with them attacking organized religion. It's when they start claiming that their arguments address all conceptions of God that I have issues with them. That's when they become dogmatic themselves.

The new atheist critiques work well against the common conception of God as some kind of intervening sky father, touted around by evangelicals across the world. But they shouldn't be compared to the arguments used to argue for the classical conception.

That's where the conflict lies. You have religious people trying to justify their beliefs by appealing to theistic arguments that argue for a different conception of God than they believe in, and then you have atheists trying to argue against all conceptions of God by appealing to only one particular, and rather shallow, conception of God. The whole thing is mixed up and contradictory.

I understand, but you said "classical theistic God," not "the God of the philosophers" or something. — Arkady

That's what the God of the philosophers is.

Regardless, focusing only on the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is mostly definitely not a caricature to assert that Jews and Christians predicate certain personality characteristics of their God as judged from their holy scriptures (Christians in particular, insofar as Christians qua Christians are committed to the incarnation). — Arkady

Hence why I think it is shallow to try to combine this concept with the philosophical conception of God.

How so? At least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Bible very clearly speaks of God having likes, dislikes, emotions, etc, and engaging with humans (e.g. Moses) in a personal manner.
Indeed, if the Christian story is to be believed, Jesus was God incarnate, and Jesus clearly had emotions, preferences, etc. — Arkady

Right, but the Prime Mover hypothesis was postulated before these religions took off. Aristotle wasn't a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim, for example.

So indeed the "intelligent designer" advocates are philosophically shallow. And I would go on to say that Christianity in general has adopted a metaphysics to justify its rather silly beliefs.

Notice the assumption that curiosity is a product of, or form of, anxiety. Don't you think it's possible that you're generalizing on the basis of your own motivation? — Wayfarer

No, I don't think so. I am curious about a lot of things - and if I don't get answers or discussion about things, I end up thinking about them on my own. I can't just let them go, and I highly suspect this is the same experience that made people discover new things. Not-knowing is unbearable, it's just that in curiosity, the desire to know coincides with the anxiety of not-knowing.

Yet that's just not empirically true. My computer, a complex entity, was created by many thousands of people, each extremely more complex than the computer. — Hanover

True, but these complex people were not derived from even more complex entities. They exist thanks to a very long process of evolution, which started with simple biochemicals.

Creativity, following Whitehead, is an intrinsic aspect of reality. New and improved things follow naturally from a simple starting block.

One would not conclude that a piece of driftwood found on the beach had a designer, but one would conclude that a watch would. — Hanover

The difference is in agency. Clearly we see the watch seemed to be made by an agent. But the piece of driftwood was not, it arose due to natural processes.

Yet were these natural processes, in some sense, "designed"? Or if they evolved from a simpler state, what was this simpler state? Hence why classical theists sometimes called God the One.

IF the complexity of the universe entails a designer,as the theist asserts, then the designer's understanding, intentions, and abilities to actually implement his design surely are more complex than the level of complexity apprehended by the theist who asserts that such complexity entails a designer. — Brainglitch

But this is misunderstanding the argument. The argument is that God is simple, out of necessity. Complexity does not explain complexity. Indeed, if there was a person who designed the universe as it is, then it would also need an explanation. But this doesn't lead to atheism immediately; it merely pushes the explanation back more. It's a caricature to see the classical theistic God as akin to a mega-human with a personality, likes and dislikes, etc. God is theorized out of necessity, a byproduct of the PSR and a certain view of causality.

Reject the PSR and you're left with an irrational universe. We can bite this bullet, for sure. But if we don't bite this bullet, then God becomes a plausible explanation for why things exist. There is reason all the big rationalists in the past have been theists. God helps explain why things are intelligible and reasonable.

If every event has a cause, it's impossible to have had a first cause just by definition. If every complex entity had a more complex designer, then it's impossible for there to have been a first designer by definition — Hanover

Contrary to this, the fact that every event must have a cause necessitates the existence of an uncaused Prime Mover of pure actuality. The trouble with asking "who created God" is that it applies an intra-wordly phenomenon to something that is, by definition, outside of this phenomenon. And the hypothesis that there is something "outside" of this cause and effect chain put forward out of metaphysical necessity. Indeed, infinite regresses and spontaneous creation acts do not seem to make sense, so it is conceptually necessary to postulate the existence of something that is not affected by the normal cause and effect we see every day.

So within our metaphysical framework, we seem to be required to postulate the existence of a Prime Mover, or God. Otherwise we must provide a different framework, or show how God is not necessary in our original framework.

Additionally, God is typically not seen as "complex", but rather necessarily "simple". The Neo-Platonists and their neighbors taught that complexity cannot explain complexity. Simplicity is what does all the explanatory work, for all complex structures can be reduced to their components.

So it is not that every complex entity has a complex designer, but rather every complex entity has a prior simplicity.

You of course. If positive psychology has anything to offer, it is empowering you with the skills to discover what is your fault, what is the world's fault.

One already presumes it is going to be a mix of both (although you may be without personal flaw?). — apokrisis

Ah, but aren't we fundamentally a part of the world? Is it the fault of myself for thinking wrong, or is it the fault of the universe for having the capability of producing such wrongness? Should we blame the victims or blame the machine that creates victims?

Positive psychology tends to depend on the manifest image of man and is philosophically shallow.