ust like anything else, it is temporary goals or actions taken at a certain time, the only difference being that they are done in the awareness of the situation. Meditation and the ascetic life becomes a proxy for achieving the lofty goal of nonexistence or a transcendental existence. It is only coping with the situation but never truly resolving it. — schopenhauer1

However, if asceticism is what floats your boat, then go for it. The unattainable is still worthy of striving for, I'd say. In the end of the day, what matters is whether or not you managed to cope well enough with your situation. If you treat meditation more as an exercise and less of a lifestyle then you'll get my meaning here: people lift weights to get buff, people meditate to relax the mind. Nihilists will say any action is equal in value to another, and this I think is absurd. There are more appropriate responses to certain situations than others, depending on one's beliefs.

It's true that asceticism and meditation and whatnot cannot "resolve" the problem, like you said. It's a pipe dream to think we can achieve anything like nirvana on a long-term basis. But that's the rub of pessimism, that this problem cannot be resolved. It can only be mitigated, repressed. Which is as good as it's going to get.

Here is the idea of instrumentality- the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. — schopenhauer1

I think your definition is too specific in my opinion. I'd broaden the scope of instrumentality to outside sentient minds. Instrumentality becomes any manipulation of another thing by some form of domination (power). A larger planet coalesces the smaller planets into its gravitational maw because it has more mass. A leopard takes down the antelope because it was stronger, faster, and more agile. A tsunami destroys a Somalian village because of its massive force. An object inhabits a certain sector of space: no other object can persist in this sector unless it somehow manipulates it out of its position.

Being is expansionist and absorbent, and it fundamentally needs space. The entire history of the universe can be narrated as a conflict for space, the need to persist, the need to inhabit an ever-growing area.

This of course is a bit poetic but it gets the point across.

What does it mean that we live in an eternal moment? Eternity assumes that there is some kind of relative time definer. Are you thinking of presentism? How does this account for change?

Are you really so sure that there are no such things as necessary evils? — Barry Etheridge

This is part of the Asymmetry: there doesn't seem to be any need to make happy people. But there does seem to be a need in making people happy. The difference is in terms of assistance - in the latter, we are helping those who are suffering become happy. In the former, we are making happy people. The former is concerned with welfare, the latter is concerned with the value of a state of affairs.

And it seems to me that the act of creation should only occur if we want and can be reasonably certain that the result is going to be perfect, i.e. up-to-standards. And it's clear from a cursory look at the human condition that the results fall awfully short most of the time.

That's what I'm saying.

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

Good, you're not a nominalist, phew.

Transcendental or immanent, though?

Paging , he knows a lot about Heidegger.

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

I'm surprised you don't find it at least somewhat compelling. The idea that we have an obligation to bring happy people into existence seems to be a bit too strong.

But don't you routinely extrapolate from the personal to the general in this fashion? It is not the suffering within your own experience that is the issue for you but the impersonal fact that suffering exists. So yes, this is "convoluted". Which is what I thought I had argued. — apokrisis

We do extrapolate from the personal to the impersonal, but only by recognizing that the impersonal value exists in virtue of the fact that personal value exist. We reduce suffering because we care about an abstract cosmic notion but because we care about the individuals themselves who are suffering. The abstract notion becomes a tool to evaluate large states of affairs.

I talked of their right to a choice in the matter. So equally they could decide to make their existence as miserable as they like. — apokrisis

Somehow I doubt that people consciously make their lives as miserable as possible without good reason.

But clearly, if it is admitted that suffering exists due to things that can be changed, then the fact we seem to be doing a poor job - your claim, not mine necessarily - doesn't give us the right to take away that opportunity from future generations. — apokrisis

But this leads to the rather absurd claim that masturbating or abstaining from sex is morally wrong because you are taking the opportunity away from possible future generations to exist. So once again we approach a slippery slope - you want birth to be permissible, but you likely don't want an obligation to bring children into existence. Yet that's exactly what is being debated here - the relative value between misery and joy and our obligations related to them. Antinatalism is not the primary focus here, the Asymmetry is, and antinatalism is just but one possible way of approaching the situation (by removing the situation).

But it could only be a personal choice not to have kids. And should your partner and family, or even society, have no say at all here? It is not clear you automatically would have this right. And indeed, a society in which its population ceased to breed might be within its right to take a more coercive stance. Or if the cult of antinatalism got to widespread, again a society might want to protect itself against such an antisocial threat. — apokrisis

I don't understand what you're getting at here. Nor do I understand why you called antinatalism a cult. But anyway this is getting off topic.

No amount of pleasure could justify even a paper cut or the risk of a horrible death in a fiery car crash, remember? — apokrisis

Correction: no amount of pleasure can justify the pain of another person, and no amount of pleasure can compensate for terminal pains regardless of who is experiencing them. Paper cuts are a strawman.

OK, it gets weird when you talk about personhood as if it could be disembodied. All natural logic breaks down here. — apokrisis

How so? How is it illogical to think that I am somewhat enslaved to my own body, when I am hungry, thirsty, need to use the toilet, or age? Basic Buddhist concept: we are not in control of our own bodies. For if we were, we would be able to stop aging, or stop feeling hungry. Instead we are leashed up by the body and forced to do things regardless of how we feel about it.

But now we are into a position where suicide is taken to be the right choice and so all sufferers should be assisted off the top of the nearest high rise if they can't do it for themselves. — apokrisis

...where did you get that from?

It is eugenics because it shows a fascist intolerance of imperfection. The goal is to eliminate unwanted population traits. And the solution is as final as it gets. — apokrisis

I mean, you can slap the label "fascist" on whatever you like, that doesn't make it fascist. Are you intolerant of illogical arguments? Are you intolerant of cancer, one of the most useless and traumatic biological problems? Are you intolerant of ISIS blowing up children? All of these are imperfections, yet you're not a fascist by opposing them.

In any case I have to wonder why you would be opposed to perfection. Indeed Plato, Aristotle, and others all thought that there were the Forms, or the Telos, or whatnot that we ought to strive to instantiate. They wouldn't have looked too kindly on imperfection. And yet here you are being apologetic for the inherent imperfection of nature...why? Why is imperfection acceptable? Why is mediocrity acceptable? Seems to me that tolerating imperfection is a form of apathy, a weakness of the will. An inherent unjustified affirmation of the normal.

Not to kill off the miserable while producing as great a population of the happy as possible would be a positive crime, if we take this kind of calculation at its face value. — apokrisis

Which is exactly why I said that we have inherent negative-utilitarian dispositions. No amount of pleasure can justify a torture, or a murder, i.e. instrumentality.

Who is this "we"? Personally it strikes me as a PC version of fascist eugenics. Humans are against nature and therefore should be extinguished. Give the planet back to the bugs and fungi. — apokrisis

.....what? Where did you get that from? Also many bugs are speculated to be able to feel pain, in particular the arthropods.

So yes, we can take a compassionate view about the suffering of others. We can wish for a better world. And feeling inadequate to the task of making it a better world, we can then decide the final solution is to remove the problem by removing the sufferers - antinatalism merely seeming to be the kindest approach to this holocaust against folk having a freedom to choose and act on their own accord. — apokrisis

Yes! (without the murder part). Your rights do not extend to the manipulation of other people against their will. This includes birth as well as murder. Typically I'd say we value personal value over impersonal value anyway so the idea that we ought to kill miserable people for the sake of some abstract impersonal value is a bit convoluted. But this is of course another issue that needs to be addressed. Which is why I had previously said this entire problem as a whole tends to keep me up at night: it's a twisting and confusing rabbit hole. One solution brings up other problems and other issues that hadn't been noticed before. Coherentism ftw.

Do you really believe you have the right to deny a future generation to fix what your generation seems to be failing to fix (and I say "seeming" as the evidence being given is so slight that it is routinely talked up to the skies)? — apokrisis

To be quite honest with you I don't understand how you actually can see this as a legitimate view. Do you really believe you have the right to force a future generation to fix what our generation is failing to fix? i.e. instrumentalizing future generations without their consent? All because you think that the culture you live in is somehow more important than the individual liberty of other people?

This is where metaphysical issues of possible people, counterfactuals, rights, and obligations start to take precedence.

This is also where antinatalism can be a potential gamechanger in this debate. We don't need a procreative population ethics because we don't need to procreate nor have a population to begin with. Meanwhile every other affirmative ethical system must struggle with these problems.

Perhaps you can re-describe the asymmetry in a way I can follow its intuitive appeal. I still only see that its natural logic demands we start subtracting the miserable immediately for their own good. — apokrisis

No, it wouldn't be for their own good, it would be for an abstract impersonal good. Which I also find to be repugnant.

That is of course a repugnant idea. But largely of course because you can't create a happy world in that kind of binary fashion. Talk about happiness as an idea, as opposed to adaptive balance - some notion of flow and fit - is where the whole analysis starts to go wrong. It is not even the proper measure of anything here. And so therefore neither is this obsession with pain and suffering. — apokrisis

Again you're replacing the immediacy of phenomenological experience with a holistic behaviorism. Which is just wrong, sorry.

Or to put it another way, it is what it feels like to be pointing towards death instead of life. If you are getting pain that intense, that's your signal you are getting down to your last chance to stay alive. — apokrisis

Agreed, although this signal is extremely painful and ultimately traumatic.

Suffering isn't the end of the world, just a normal aspect of life. — apokrisis

I disagree, suffering is a notification that your world, your experiences are likely to end. Plus it's very painful.

So suffering - in nature - is affirmation that life is in fact valued. It is the fate better than death. And yet you want to take away the gift of life for untold generations of the unborn! Isn't that PC eugenics? — apokrisis

No, suffering in nature is the affirmation of life without the person suffering consenting to life. It's the body's way of forcing a person to do something, i.e. enslavement, i.e. instrumentality.

Clearly a suicidal person who jumps off a building is suffering, and clearly this is not an affirmation of life nor an affirmation of the value of life, rather the complete opposite.

And no, it's not eugenics, because eugenics is all about finding the perfect, ideal organism, and antinatalism is usually focused on the fact that there are no perfect, ideal organisms.

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

Probably the first truly philosophical question.

What does fine art do for you? — Bitter Crank

It acts as a cathartic release of tension and a way of focusing myself when I feel anxious or uneasy. I mostly limit myself to music, however. I listen to rap before I go running. I listen to classical music when I read philosophy. I listen to English indie and electro-synthwave when I'm trying to chill. It all depends on what I'm doing and how I'm feeling - art (in this case music) complements my experiences in the same way a movie score complements its scenes.

I checked out your blog and found a link to some guy whose theory was that irony was maximized in the creation of the world. I like that. There's a humor in Dostoevsky that surpasses just about everything mortal. I call it the laughter of the gods. It haunts all human earnestness. Hesse explores it in Steppenwolf. — Hoo

This aesthetic component, though, is only really helpful when you aren't suffering.

The idea of a Stoic sage sounds sublime and amazing - but we would actually rather just not feel bad in the first place. What doesn't kill you will sometimes make you wish it had.

Is the alternative of filtering and selection supposed to be truth rather than chaos? Much thinking is unconscious. I believe that. But how is this mass of unconscious thinking the truth rather than the background? Repression is used in a sly, pejorative way, as if there were something to recommend the alternative. — Hoo

I can see how it may come across this way. As if Zapffe thinks he is superior by acknowledging the repression. I see two interpretations, neither are mutually exclusive: Zapffe wishes to live existentially authentic (and thus would have a bit of pride for doing so, possibly one of the only things keeping him going), or Zapffe is merely pointing out a facet of life, just as he would be if he said that humans breathe oxygen.

Easy to agree here. And I find it easy to see Zappfe as the salesman of one more anchoring (pessimism), one that I began to resent and finally took pleasure in burying. — Hoo

I'll be honest with you because I think you are being honest, and I think this is a very important point. Pessimists argue their point because of two (conscious) reasons: they want someone to prove them wrong, or they're extremely discontent with the system and want things to change.

Again these are not mutually exclusive. I'm not content with the system. I think it is a useless, ironic and senseless machination. And yet, pace Nietzsche's dialogue on Schopenhauer, I have an acute desire to affirm existence once again. Just as Nietzsche praised Schopenhauer while simultaneously having a heart that cried out for something more, I tend to be a reluctant pessimist. I don't like being a pessimist. I don't think anyone worthy of being called a pessimist should like being one (i.e. like the fact that the world is shitty): that would go against the entire idea of pessimism. And yet I feel compelled to consider myself a pessimist because all the other positions fall short.

The previous examples show how pessimism can be seen as right and contradict one's own expectations, desires, hopes, dreams, etc. But there's another facet of pessimism that has been growing steadily inside me recently, that of not just discontent but legitimate concern and outrage at the state of the world. I'm becoming more and more angry at the instrumentality of the world. I'm not only saddened by the suffering of others but am also indignant. You could say that I'm becoming a bit more radical in my views, especially in terms of ethics. Things need to change, and they need to change now.

The third step in this pessimistic process, if there is one, seems to be the final disillusionment with the world by means of a complete de-attachment with the previous mournfully comfortable illusions. Perhaps my current state of indignation is merely another illusion. Maybe altruism and humanitarianism is also another illusion, but I kind of doubt it. Certainly it seems that many of the classic pessimistic writers "gave up" on the world. They wanted no part in it, they had no play in politics, altruism or anything like that. The final step is the final smashing of our illusions which can either result in suicide or isolation, assuming there is another step after the second. The gradual, Nietzschean descent into madness.

The object was the goal. Then a new object becomes the goal. So we can posit a goal archetype. But sometimes the goal is the sandwich we can make downstairs. We can also make living on this gradient a goal, aware that permanent satisfaction in a given object is not to be expected. No goal is central (all is vanity) but a life with many goals and attainments is good --or can be good. — Hoo

This is not as elegant as not having problems to begin with. Do we really have to have problems just so they can be solved?

When aren't we posing as heroes in a drama? — Hoo

Practically never. We are all our own white knights in shining armor.

This guy is the anti-Nietzsche, isn't he? — Hoo

Yes, Zapffe is heavily indebted to Nietzsche.

It's (to me) nakedly a grandiose religious conception. It's the sort of thing Nietzsche suspected was hiding in the "great sages," but here it is proclaimed boldly, the religion of anti-life, anti-earth, and not in the name of some better place or better principle. In the name of nothingness, right? And yet it takes a pleasure in speaking itself, a pleasure in the existence of midwives to offend. It needs the very 'problem' it wants to diagnose and cure. Zappfe climbed his mountains. Schop. played his flute. They wore their dark views like a smart new jacket from the local H & M. I won't hypocritically curse them for this. That's just the way it is. It's fun to play dress-up. Life as endless play, however edgy and grim... — Hoo

I think you're right when you say it's a religious conception. I mean it is called The Last Messiah after all. But religion speaks more clear to our emotions than other alternatives. His Last Messiah is a mythic prophecy, a way of imaging how humanity might end (by its own hand, thus fulfilling the naturalistic prophecy of survival-of-the-fittest).

Does this game have an outside? — Hoo

I think that's the legacy of psychoanalytic theory and existentialism. There is no outside that we can reach. But we can glimpse parts and pieces of it, and build an idea of what it's actually like. I suspect that the dread we experience when considering the human condition (in the aesthetic sense) has more to do with confronting the unknown, the void, the infinite limitless possibilities, than any legitimately metaphysically-horrific idea. The only horrific idea is the idea that there are horrific ideas, in the metaphysical sense. Thus aesthetic-led pessimism leads to apathetic nihilism, since dread is only maintained by the presence of illusions that are threatened by whatever is the source of dread. But there's more reasons than just aesthetics to call oneself a pessimist. Indeed the aesthetics of a metaphysical principle seem to completely independent of the nature of the principle itself - thus imo the only defensible pessimism is the one that puts human welfare at front-and-center, because horrifying ideas are inherently self-centered (as they are perceived as a threat to the self), whereas ideas about other people are distinctly less-metaphysically-dependent and more based on basic empathy and duty.

Remind me never to go in battle with you.. I guess this is a segue for dueling antinatalism? Interesting place to put it after I was defending a more general argument we both agree on. — schopenhauer1

Well I mean this thread went exactly as I hoped it wouldn't (veered off topic) so like, what the hell, why not talk about something totally off topic? :s

f you can sustain happy time periods for long periods, or forever, then I'm all for it. — schopenhauer1

Okay, then I misunderstood your position. I was under the impression that you believed that needs and desires were always bad regardless of what impact they have on the individual. The aesthetic of insufficiency.

Sorry, I meant in previous threads. I seem to recall you arguing that you view all desires and needs as though they are bad. When I think there needs to be a distinction between the satisfaction of a concern and the mood that is associated with it.

I realize that my previous post might not have been as clear as I had thought so I'm making another. When we look at our lives, we typically say we have various good and bads, enjoyments and discomforts, joys and sorrows.

What I was trying to say before is that I think most of what we consider to be enjoyable or pleasurable moments are actually just a reaction to a need or a desire: the relief of anxiety, or suffering-in-disguise.

This is why I think that although the Benatar's procreative asymmetry is not logically valid, it really strikes us as intuitive and difficult to immediately reject. The various things we typically call good are not actually really that good, for their absence doesn't seem to be bad at all. If they were truly good then their absence would be worse, but at first glance it doesn't seem as though me not being able to play my favorite video game is actually a bad thing if I had never existed, since the video game is inherently connected to a discomfort which seems to disqualify any good feelings we derive from the satisfaction of this desire. Ice cream, acquaintanceship, walks on the beach, etc - these are all enjoyable but they come with a condition: an unwanted need or a discomfort precedes them. This applies even to our quest for meaning - what meaning we do derive from our lives seems to be fundamentally reactionary. Tragedy leads to meaning.

And this is where I will disagree with your own views Schop1 on deprivation. Certainly we do have some goods that are truly good, whose absence would be bad regardless of whether or not there is already a person around. It's too bad more people can't be authentically eudaimonic (happy), the one pure, good experience we do have; in other words, it's not incoherent to look at an empty universe in sadness, knowing that it's incapable of producing consistently happy people, to value happiness for the sake of happiness.

So I don't deny that the satisfaction of desires is good, but it seems to only be good on the personal level and not when considering pre-natal conditions. Most experiences we see as positive are thus more akin to a resolution of a problem. It feels good to resolve these problems, but relief doesn't seem to be authentic goodness. It's desperation-in-disguise.

Nietzsche touched on a similar point when he observed that religions, like Christianity, have an idea of sorts that it is good to create people to help them once they are alive; it is good to make problems for no reason other than so we can fix these problems. Similarly, is it good to make people just so they can satisfy a desire? My initial thought is no, but after reflection becomes a "modal-dependent yes". In the world we live in, our desires are accompanied by a level of discomfort. But if we had desires that didn't have unwanted enslavement-like discomfort, but only led to more and more pleasure (with the other problems also resolved of course), then I suspect I would see birth in a much more accepting way.

This is silly. Have you considered that you are deluded? Both of us have our beliefs and questioning the foundations of them is going to have to be through rational discussion and not skepticism of our honesty.

Did I tell you to lie to yourself or did I say stop presuming that you own the truth? — apokrisis

You told me to ask myself if I had considered the possibility that I am wrong, in which case I responded by saying yes, I have, and that no, I will not change my beliefs without good reason, and stupid possible hopeful futures are not a good reason.

Every papercut turns into the Holocaust with you. — apokrisis

No, no they don't. In fact you're the one downplaying Holocausts as if they're papercuts.

So define suffering for me - in a way that doesn't include everything (like being tickled, vaguely bored or uneasy, laughing until it hurts, satiated until its uncomfortable, etc). — apokrisis

Discomfort that is not wanted. An experience that does not match with a person's preferences. Something that must be endured or eliminated because it is self-evidently bad. Useless and meaningless harm.

And also define pain for me - in a way that is different from your usual claim that it represents suffering of the worst kind, and hence the most important suffering to mention (as in torture, being left trapped in a car wreck, etc). — apokrisis

Any sort of discomfort that, in normal circumstances, would promote action and therefore a response. A signal, as you said, or as I say, a way for the body to enslave itself. But pain is not equivalent to suffering as we often undergo pain for the greater good.

However if we had the choice to live without any pain (and instead have an analogous signal that doesn't hurt us) we would all choose this option over the crude apparatus nature has given us.

You should have been a Christian monk. You would have loved the hair shirt and flagellation. God forbid that you might have a positive outlook on life here among all us unholy sinners. — apokrisis

I should have been a Buddhist monk if anything, although any asceticism is wishy-washy pipe dreaming that focuses too much on the self and not enough on other people and their plights.

So the worst that could happen is that you might have hope and that you would end up disappointed all over again?

Yeah. I can understand why that is a risk not to be endured, a fate ten times worse than remaining convinced that a life in a hair shirt, scourge in hand, is best preparation for a likely horrible death. — apokrisis

Are you telling me to lie to myself? What happened to Diogenes' "truth above all else"?

Disgust as virtue. — Hoo

Damn right.

The biological and social context challenges that phenomenology in a basic way. Even pain can be pleasure as any masochist knows. — apokrisis

This is hardly a challenge, as you have ignored the point I made several times about how pain is not equivalent to suffering. A mashochist who enjoys pain is not suffering, because they are enjoying it which makes them a masochist.

Certainly even a masochist would not enjoy being impaled through the stomach. There are levels of pain outside the realm of enjoyment or even endurance.

So the counter-argument is that your pessimism is based on a particular social construction - a negative habit of thought which you have mastered to the extent it seems completely real and undeniable to you. — apokrisis

Instead I would argue that my pessimism is the result of an honest look at the human condition and a compassionate connection to the unfortunate and tragic. The stegosaurus died by being mauled to death by a hoard of velociraptors - what was the use of this? So you could read philosophy or eat ice cream or have sex? That's instrumentality right there and anyone of any moral worth, I think, ought to find it repugnant.

So I think you perceive my pessimism as going about in a rather moat-and-bailey fashion, when I see it as an all-encompassing philosophy that takes into account the gutters of reality that nobody likes to talk about. My pessimism isn't comfortable, nor does it feel natural (it's not in our usual interests to think about death and suffering) - however I consistently see it manifest in the world (even just in possibility) and when I am in a relatively serene state I usually end up wondering what made me forget about all the bad. And yet these bads are real facts of life regardless of how I or anyone else wants them to be. As soon as you realize just how endemic Pollyannism and magical thinking is, you become disillusioned with the concept of happiness and security and realize that they're built on a throne of lies and concealment.

Are you willing even to consider that you are the victim of this kind of self-delusion? How are you going to demonstrate that you are not? — apokrisis

I will need to have a good reason to believe that I am self-deluded, otherwise it's:

1.) irrationally believing in something based on hope
2.) setting oneself up for the inevitable disappointment when you realize you were right after all (happened to me with the various individual-centered philosophies (although Buddhism left a lasting influence because of its kernel pessimism), as well as positive psychology and the transhumanist movement)

So no, I don't doubt myself for no reason.

That's silly because instead I have pointed out that the phenomenology - particular feelings - are shaped or individuated within a socio-cultural, and a biological, context.

So my approach is not just contextual in a way that connects the world and the ideas. It recognises the different levels on which this is happening - the biological and the social - as well as then talking about the further fact of their integration. — apokrisis

AND THAT IS PERFECTLY FINE (in fact what I was originally focused on in the OP)...

...except when you start to argue that the overall holistic context can replace the immediate specificity of immanent objectivity, thus somehow "disproving" my pessimism by ignoring phenomenology entirely. Assessing the origins and constraints imposed on phenomenology is what we would call metaphysics, and yet this does not have much relevance to the pessimistic argument in general, since the pessimistic argument starts from phenomenology, while you are starting with metaphysics.

Alternatively, you actually are parroting childish and exaggerated "philosophy" here. And you talk past any science I mention rather than answering it. — apokrisis

What science, other than the social constructivism that you mentioned in passing and your signal argument that I don't particularly doubt but neither am appreciative of the utter lack of any citation?

Your holism ignores the specifics in favor of a global analysis. When in reality phenomenologically consciousness is it's own universe in itself, regardless of what contingency factors exist in the environment in which it presides. You look at the building without looking at its random structural issues, even if the entire structure itself is generally stable. When in fact these random chinks in the structure are sentient, feeling beings that don't take kindly to being brushed aside as if they are irrelevant - for they already know that in the big picture they aren't relevant at all.

What this means is that your metaphysics can stay intact but is ultimately insufficient, just as my phenomenological analysis is insufficient for a global metaphysics. In terms of pessimism we're not talking about metaphysics more than we are talking phenomenology and existentialism. The metaphysics is derived from the phenomenology and existentialism and more often than not looks like a story than a rigorous metaphysics. In any case it's phenomenology and existentialism that is first-and-foremost and the center of attention and is what should be taken as the main argument.

If your unrevealed scientific arguments are good enough to diffuse my own, then you wouldn't have to result to clearly unscientific arguments handwaves like "stop being childish" or "stop exaggerating". Instead you have participated in these handwaves and thus your critique of my argument as being unscientific (which it's not) applies to your own argument as well.

I've answered all this already. So you are simply returning me to your assertions rather than dealing with my arguments against them. — apokrisis

I did not mean that you hadn't, only that we have strayed far away from the original intent of the thread. And your arguments aren't even arguments either. You've mentioned, what, one scientific theory that doesn't even do anything to the phenomenology of my argument. And then you claim that ignoring my arguments, counts as an argument, since you still have not addressed anything I'm saying but merely handwaved it away as childish, as if it's not worth the effort to actually explain to me how anything I listed before is unproblematic.

The question then is what metaphysically is the correct way to respond - responding in terms of notions of souls and other traditional social mythology not being a very naturalistic/scientific way of framing the issues. — apokrisis

Nor did I ever mention souls...? Sellar's manifest image doesn't just dissolve away after looking at the scientific image of man.

What do you mean by "metaphysically correct" way to respond? There is no correct way to respond, that's the rub of pessimism. Not everything can be solved, not everything belongs. Just like bugs in computer software, they must be eliminated, not allowed to continue. They're not meant to be there and yet they are thanks to lucky coincidental conditions.

So again, we are back to the same situation. I defend a naturalistic/scientific ontology. You seem to take the other road - the romantic, dualistic, idealistic path. For you, the organic whole that is the world is divided ontically into brute material objects and sensuous being. And from that broken duality, all kinds of confusion flows. — apokrisis

How you got any of that from what I've written is beyond me. None of what I have written depends on a dualistic notion of anything aside from the identification of powerful phenomenological experiences that cannot be dissolved under investigation, which is more in line with idealism than anything else.

Honestly whenever anyone argues against you you always either pull the science™ card or the dualism card without explaining anything else as if your position is self-evident or as if the authority of science today is an automatic trump card for anything that isn't explicitly empirically pragmatic. It's really annoying and patronizing.

I guess I'm still a bit confused as to how the doctrine of unknowability escapes itself. We could call philosophy (or any inquiry for that matter) a game based on baseless assumptions, but this itself is a philosophical claim based on baseless assumptions. Any meta-philosophical claim results in us doing some sort of reasoning, some sort attempt to make sense of things. That's what I personally see metaphysics as: an attempt (not a discipline per se) to make sense of thing in the most general sense of the term.

The simple answer is, you can't. But I don't think there needs to be any common ground of faculties in order for there to be communication, and the sort of pluralism and skepticism we end up with is one with positive ethical content and not a disappointment that we need to try to circumvent. — The Great Whatever

How does it end up in positive ethical content without going outside the bounds of pathe? Ethics is fundamentally concerned with what choices we should make, and this depends on others around us (what Cabrera calls the FEA - the non-manipulation and non-trangression of other people's interests). Without believing that we are justified in believing in the existence of other people, treating others with respect becomes rather empty, like treating your cardboard box with respect because it may or may not have consciousness. It would mean treating appearances as ethically valuable in themselves, which doesn't seem to have the same kind of obligation as would realist interpretations.

There may be a kind of epistemological solipsism to it, but this is not the kind of solipsism that people generally worry about. — The Great Whatever

But this epistemological solipsism is not pathe-based, or is it? The description of our epistemological and existential condition is necessarily outside of our immediate perceptions. Even if our perceptions gave us some sort of sign (like a divine hallucination that explained how everything works), this perception would still refer to something outside our own experiences - it could be falsely correlated, it could be correlated to fiction, it could be correlated to a half-truth, etc.

It's like saying we can only see colors - we certainly see red, blue, green, yellow, yada-yada but never do we see the concept "color". It's all appearances, and without prior knowlege (pace Meno's Paradox) we have no way of interpreting any of it, unless we're open to accepting radical subjectivism.

It's also worth noting that in general Hellenistic ethics was not as concerned with societal behavior as modern ethics. It taught about the good life of the individual, and thought about society only in relation to this. — The Great Whatever

True. With the development of Macedonia came an emphasis in individuality. Before that time, though, there were the poleis of Greece, and political philosophy was much more prominent.

Of intelligibility, of subject matter, of joints-of-reality, etc

Well, I mean science developed in conjunction with Descartes. Instead of science depending on metaphysics, it would be rather that metaphysics analyzes how science is possible, diagnosing the underlying structure.

Interesting analysis.

I'm curious, if the Cyrenaics thought that the only thing we know of are our pathe, how did they come to know of this general metaphysical principle?

Additionally, if all we can know are our own pathe, how can we know what others pathe are like in principle, i.e. pleasurable, painful, neutral?

How does the Cyrenaic epistemology avoid solipsism, and why does it posit the existence of an external world (one that cannot be arrived at by pathe alone) instead of adopting idealism a la Berkeley?

For the structure of the world of the Cyrenaics seems to be similar to that of the Kantian noumenon/phenomenon - and yet if all we know of are our own pathe, then any overarching principles (such as the principle that all we know are our own pathe, or the existence of an external reality) seems to be excluded from this analysis.

Maybe the only thing we can know for certain (pace Descartes) are our immediate experiences (I am experiencing a salty taste, I am experiencing heat, I am experiencing the color red, etc), but it would seem to be the case (unless we are idealists) that any epistemology that limits itself to these incorrigible experiences and yet postulates the existence of a structure to the world outside of our experiences is contradictory, or at least an unacceptable speculation.

So the existence of other people who have their own personal pathe, according to Cyrenaic epistemology, can only be seen as a sort of ancient behaviorism: "I am perceiving a person who acts as if they have desires of their own but I cannot know if they indeed have their own desires or are even mentally there to begin with". And so we arrive at Cartesian scepticism.

I think a related (and superior) view imo is that of Wittgenstein's "hinge" concepts, the concepts that cannot be rationally doubted without using these concepts in the first place. They are "extra-rational", providing the basis for rational thought to begin with.

I ask how you can talk about "life" when you don't even seem to believe in life's naturalism in this regard. The logic of your position requires you to argue that life is unnatural in some deep fashion. I'm waiting for you to resolve that paradox. — apokrisis

Indeed this was kind of the point of this thread to begin with. From a phenomenological perspective, we don't seem to belong. We're aliens to the world. We're able to self-reflect. Existentialism 101. How the hell is the universe even capable of hosting something like us?

You can see this applied in psychology by learning about Terror Management Theory and the psychoanalytic/humanistic theories of Rank and Becker.

My argument is that we would be simply replacing one construction with another in switching out your ridiculously negative construction for a more balanced view of existence. — apokrisis

What would this "balanced" view consist of? Certainly we can't just magically think away our pains and fears.

Yes, indeed Descartes was primarily focused on finding a metaphysical basis for science, i.e. a metaphysics in the service of science. The question remains, however, is whether or not science actually needed this basis.

The core issue seems to be that you treat phenomenology as brute fact - we can't help what we feel - whereas I say scientific naturalism supports the position that what we feel is controllable on many levels. So if a feeling is a problem, it is also a problem that can be tackled. Or at least solution seeking becomes the first natural response. — apokrisis

I agree that solution seeking becomes the first natural response. When I get a headache, I take ibuprofen. When I balance my checkbook, I use a calculator to assist me.

But the nature of the pessimistic argument is that some problems are just not solvable. They can be pushed aside, mentally rearranged, or eliminated, but never satisfactorily solved. And in this case, such problems are existential, i.e. structurally unremovable from life, i.e. a necessary condition for life as we know it.

Indeed, when I get a headache, taking a pill seems to only solve a surface problem. The problem may re-surface when the pill wears off, or the pain is a symptom of an underlying problem, or perhaps the ibuprofen isn't enough. In any case, it's worth noting how much of our problem-solving involves a dependency on other things. Thanks to our creativity, we have tools, medicine, and gadgets that help us and keep us in a relatively comfortable state today. But the key point in this case is that we have creativity just because we are inadequate without it.

Some of these existential problems are thus:

• the constant devotion to assessing needs (which causes anxiety and uneasiness) of which we may not want to have to fulfill (i.e. enslavement),
• the automatic and natural elevation of desires to needs (which causes anxiety and uneasiness as well),
• the general experience of dissatisfaction (of which Buddhism focuses the most on which can be minimized but never fully expelled for an extended period of time while conscious),
• the very real and very threatening danger of intense, unrelenting pain of which suffocates our ability to continue life normally (thanks to our environment and our own crude bodies),
• an environment which is prone to accidents (little mishaps are only an indication of what could happen in the future; a far worse catastrophe, i.e. a tragedy),
• the apparent lack of any important cosmic agenda that could explain why bad things happen for no substantial reason,
• the aforementioned intense pain which cannot be made up for by any future accomplishment or paradise (i.e. instrumentality),
• the combination of needs/desire-needs and the metaphysical necessity of scarcity which causes strife and conflict,
• the aesthetically un-appealing dominating and submissive nature of Being (instrumentality),
• the incompatibility of happiness with the prospect of death (a well-established psychological phenomenon),
• the general unremarkability and boring, dull repetition of the world (manifesting in sentients as boredom, apathy, tediousness, and distractions thereof),
• the metaphysical isolation a sentient mind has (its inability to "contact" other minds, forever alone),
• the morally disgusting natural practice of cannibalism in nature manifesting as predation and natural selection,
• the inevitability of destruction (our comfort-bubble of sturdy structures will fall and be replaced by something different, regardless of how we feel about it),
• the realization that history is primarily dictated by might instead of right,
• the incompatibility of the human condition with our own sense of self-worth, dignity, and/or self-esteem,
• the realization that your very existence is indebted to billions of years of trillions of trillions of organisms being selected against (and the subsequent realization that it would be selfish to subjugate all these creatures again just so you could exist, i.e. post hoc regret),
• the realization of how morally disqualified we are (we can hardly ever do anything without somehow crossing into someone else's preferences),
• the realization that we are inherently self-centered (neurotically vane) and clan-centered (thus resulting in family ties, nationalism, and speciesism - other sentients aren't important or worthy of our attention),
• the moral and legal issues of birth,
• the realization that one's culture is primarily the product of a collected subconscious fear of death as well as a reaction to boredom,
• the realization that if I am wrong about all this, then the fact that universe is capable to producing such erroneous and misguided ideas leads to skepticism of the very error of the overarching pessimistic point

So we have two quite different metaphysics in play. And where I lose patience is when you claim that your ontology is also founded on scientific naturalism. Just be honest. It is not. — apokrisis

But just to be clear, you haven't really provided anything of scientific worth. Your scientific background is not sufficient for evidence. Whereas I have explicitly given you more than sufficient data.

Again you keep slapping around the word science as if it's the end-all be-all method of obtaining truth, when in reality there are many things that are more obvious and easy to understand without a specific scientific method.

In any case, all of what I have said is either backed by scientific data or is not inherently in contradiction to the established medium.

Pain is a bad thing because it can grow to any scale and become the worst thing in existence. So even the most marginal forms of pain - like unease or boredom - need to be banished too. Hence your continual resort to slippery slope argumentation. One minute we are suffering a papercut or aching neck, the next thing we know, it is going to be genital electrodes and the Holocaust. — apokrisis

The extreme pain is the practical argument, the one that is most pressing and striking. Yet you still ignore it as if there is a justification for it happening (because you're not experiencing it right now?) The tediousness and uneasiness is also uncomfortable, but it draws more from the aesthetic. It's disillusioning to see ourselves naked and afraid. It's something that I think we aren't able to completely get over. Underneath all our actions is this ever-present rumbling of need, desire, dissatisfaction, concern, fear, anxiety. It's what is there if nothing else is, what everything else is built on. So like I said before, life is not meant to be comfortable.

You have avoided dealing with my arguments against your simple-minded phenomenalism. It is basic to my position that phenomenology - as an introspective level of awareness - is a socially constructed linguistic habit. And all you say in reply is that you can't see the point in talking about social constructionism (as it is indeed "pointless" in within your mind-stuff paradigm). — apokrisis

Because it doesn't change the fact that we still suffer. Deconstructing our experiences doesn't just dissolve them away. Such is the conviction of a lucky person.

So your position relies on a number of socially constructed delusions. The obviousness of that is why one would ask what it is exactly that you are psychologically shielding yourself from? — apokrisis

Just like anyone else, I'm shielding myself from the above ideas. What makes me a pessimist is that I'm not too good at it.

Only if you change torture's definition. — apokrisis

But not its immanent objectivity.

Let me know when you are ready to deal with nature in terms of what is natural rather than imagining yourself sitting at God's right hand, tugging his sleeve as He is doing his creating, and murmuring: "Do you really think this last little DNA thing is wise?". — apokrisis

What is natural is not what is good per se.

Could it get any more laughable? — apokrisis

I don't know, you're setting the precedent here. I mean, we can a more cordial discussion, or we can descend into useless name-calling.

But treating torture as an issue that can be tackled via social institutions is pragmatic - of much more use in real life than telling the same torture victim that "yes, you are right, life is shit for everyone from the get-go, so don't think you are anything special in the fact you have electrodes attached to your gonads right at this moment."

So stop straw-manning my position. — apokrisis

This does not change the fact that torture can occur beyond human interaction. The point is that there is a contingency factor here, in that we have the possibility that life can become unbearable. A risk factor of proportion that cannot be ignored.

Or instead, it means you don't understand psychology well enough to understand what is meant by social constructionism. — apokrisis

Or it means that I don't see the usefulness of applying social constructionism to this debate as it is not relevant. Regardless of what causes us to feel a certain way, we nevertheless do feel. Deconstructing our experiences does nothing to them, and may even disillusion us.

The only kind of universe that can produce these kinds of ideas is one where life has become so generally safe and easy on the whole that the self-indulgent have to pathologise the very fact of their own existence. — apokrisis

Or it's the life of the contemplative who are able to reflect upon the condition of humanity, the conditions that other people are too busy trying to survive to even reflect upon them. This life would be one that isn't entirely focused on mitigating anxiety and avoiding things we fear.

Even if you want to be supremely simplistic in this fashion, that still makes it a problem to solve. — apokrisis

Or to be less naively optimistic, it's a problem that cannot be solved and thus must be eliminated. A conspiracy.

But generally, solving the problem involves getting a life and learning to stop whining. — apokrisis

Ad hominem. Nobody is forcing you to participate in this debate. Nobody is on your lawn or front porch. It never ceases to amaze me how pessimism rustles people's jimmies so much if it is indeed wrong. Nobody reacts like this unless it's to an uncomfortable truth.

Pessimism is so histrionic that nothing can fix its psychic state. Time would have to be wound back to its beginning and existence itself annihilated to make things right. — apokrisis

Yes, indeed if I had the choice I don't think I would condone abiogenesis. Too much suffering for no net gain.

If an anticipated personal future is conceived of as a bunch of useless suffering, then euthanasia/suicide is a rational solution. — Hoo

Yes from the personal view, but from the metaphysical side nothing is solved.

Metaphysically speaking I doubt the universe has any moral compass whatsoever. But this also means that catastrophes can happen, i.e. a tragedy. So from the perspective of a sentient being, the universe can come across as malignant. Metaphysically speaking the entire cosmos is not good or bad, but it is the case, metaphysically speaking, that sentients exists in such a way as to be affected by the arbitrary whims of the universe. Sentients are thus metaphysical captives.

But I think most people (these days, in wealthy countries) would say yes to being born again as the same person (memory wiped) and living it all again. — Hoo

This is a major point that I had forgotten to bring up. Think about what you are experiencing right now, at this very moment. Can you honestly and indubitably tell yourself that you are happy, or that you are not suffering? Chance are that you will find that you have a general sense of unease. As soon as your tool-using brains stops using tools you start to fumble.

Apply this reasoning to pre-natal conditions. Are what you are experiencing right now worth being born for? People like to look in the future or the past contemplating what they have or might experience (part of my argument itself rests on this fact) - but in the case of birth it always tends to be about the good and never the bad, especially not the mediocrity currently being experienced in the present. It is a common and well-established psychological phenomenon (Pollyannism and magical thinking) that people's judgement of their own lives is skewed: from a pre-natal perspective, their lives would not be worth starting, and from a currently-living perspective they probably aren't worth living either but are maintained by the neurotic sense of vanity. If it is good to continue to exist, then it must be good to bring people into existence. If it's not good to bring people into existence, then it must be bad to continue to exist (for one's own sake). I accept this and the contradiction it is for me to continue to exist.

As I said, show me that the brain isn't evolved for problem-solving. And that being so, it then follows we have to evaluate biological signals of pleasure and pain in that light. — apokrisis

Or, we can also look at what it's like to experience pleasure and pain. Telling a person who is being tortured that it's just a bunch of signals in their brain meant to solve problems does nothing to help them. This is quite literally Zapffe's claim: we are both over and under evolved. We have an over-developed intellect and an under-developed signal mechanism. We are held down by a crude hedonic treadmill (a very well-established scientific fact) and are inherently slaves to our needs. The mind is filled with possibilities and wishes to be free, and yet the body and environment consistently disappoint and repress.

Well hardly. My point is that phenomenology at the level we are discussing it is socially constructed and linguistic. That is the human condition. — apokrisis

There is nothing socially constructed or linguistic about torture. There is nothing socially constructed or linguistic about boredom or repetition. Telling someone that they aren't actually experiencing any "qualitative" experience a la qualia is not only asinine but insulting.

It is natural to have some fear of heights if you don't want to fall. What is pathological in problem-solving terms is to become so overcome by the very idea of the possibility of falling that it takes over your entire life. — apokrisis

And once again we have you diagnosing pessimists as being "unnatural" or "pathological", as if they are some sort of oddity in the universe. No, we are part of the universe, and therefore it stands that the universe is capable of producing these kinds of ideas.

Or what would be ridiculous as a philosophy would be to construct a whole ethics around the possibility that someone somewhere may fall in a really bad way, while ignoring the converse fact that mostly people manage to stand in a world that is well-organised - by a problem-solving attitude. — apokrisis

Why would this be ridiculous? Certainly if you fell in a really bad way, no previous pleasures will help you out. When experiencing intense pain, you are literally suffocated by the experience. Nothing else matters.

To brush this aside and claim that the suffering of others is not important is highly suspicious. As Zapffe said, no future great triumph can justify the plight of an innocent against his will.

Your whole position is built on catastrophising. I'm just waiting for you to make an argument that brains are not meant for problem-solving and so require some way to tell whether they are getting hotter or colder on that score. — apokrisis

I'm waiting for you to tell me how problem-solving has anything to do with what I'm talking about. The function of pleasure and pain differs from how they are experienced.

How can it make sense for suffering not to exist for a mind that has to be able to make its mind up? — apokrisis

Why is there a need for problem-solving in the first place? What is so great and special about life, other than the pleasure you experience? If you accept that it's pleasure that makes a life good, then you have to, on pain of contradiction, accept that it is pain that makes a life bad.

And sure, if such a mind decides the solution to its problems is suicide, that makes sense. A rational society supports voluntary euthanasia for terminal illness. — apokrisis

Yes, or for anyone who views life itself as a terminal illness.

Problem solving is meant to consider all its options. So show me the bit where your philosophy is doing that. In what way is it constuctive to become so obsessed by the very worst things that can happen - especially when you personally claim your life is quite content. — apokrisis

The rub of pessimism is that there is no way to solve this problem. Suicide doesn't solve the problem, it just eliminates it.

So please explain to me how you can simultaneously accept that the worst possible can actually happen (a tragic catastrophe) and yet somehow twist the responsibility onto me to find a solution. All you're doing is ignoring it.

Nope. Not getting much sense of science there. Lovecraft? — apokrisis

Yes, Lovecraft. He's incredibly revealing in his phenomenology. You throw around the term "science" as if it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. "nuh-uh, Lovecraft wasn't a real scientist, so none of this matters". Absurd, the reason Lovecraft is so famous is because he made such provocative observations.

I've read him. I don't find him particularly insightful as he conflates the issues of biologically evolved consciousness and culturally evolved self-regulatory awareness. — apokrisis

In any case this does not matter very much considering the main focal point - phenomenology - is still being pushed aside. Your argument is akin to telling a person who is afraid of heights that "it's just a chemical reaction" - that doesn't change anything. You're completely ignoring the phenomenon of extreme pain as well as tediousness and repetition in favor of an impersonal explanation that does nothing but ignore what I'm actually arguing about.

People like to live through other people. They like to see others persevere. They like to have children so they can re-live their own childhood (babies are aesthetic objects). They like to witness heroism. They like to escape their own lives. But they like to do this in the comfort of their own homes. They don't particularly enjoy going through hardship and pain, but they enjoy it when others do and when they "rise above", but interestingly enough they tend to forget about those who didn't and succumbed. So it's easy to dismiss all of what I'm saying here by telling me to "grow up" or "man up" but that's all it is - easy. And short-sighted as well.

Specifically read this, it's an introduction to his theories.

Good lordy. What did you say about bubbles and psychological science? Do you believe animals have to be protected in some way from their existential dread and the constant temptation of suicide? — apokrisis

Well, I mean I doubt most other animals have existential crises like we do. But certainly they have instincts that keep them from doing things that would destroy them. Like Lovecraft said, the first experience was fear. We don't get to decide whether or not life is to be continued - we are forced by our more primal instincts to continue whether we like it or not.

Get back to me when you can link such lurid claims to real neuroscience. — apokrisis

LOL, go read the neurophilosopher Thomas Metzinger and his associates over at the ASSC.

For instance, a smart brain must be able to trade-off the short-term pain vs the long-term gain, and vice versa. Hence stuff like endorphins to help you keep climbing through the suffering. — apokrisis

And my argument is that this smart brain evolved this tendency in order to trick its captive self-model into continuing to exist. You seem to be implicitly favoring smartness as goodness (because survival is "obviously" good) when I'm arguing that our hyper-intellectual ability is what pins us to the ground more often than not. Our level of sophistication of consciousness does not "belong" in the environment; it has to support itself by its own flexibility. The phenomenal self-model is the brain's way of enslaving itself.

“No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little”
- Edmund Burke

Right. It is instead a goal that has to be worked at. — apokrisis

Not sure what you mean by this. Why does anything need to be worked out at all? Why do we need to give people problems?

But we seem a long way now from your original thesis that the very possibility of a nasty paper cut is sufficient reason to unwish the entirety of existence. — apokrisis

That's a strawman.

And yet pain, stress and suffering can cause the release of endorphins, serotonin and adrenaline - which feel pretty good. So you are not respecting the complexity of the neuroscience. — apokrisis

Yet we don't go around breaking people's arms so they can feel a pulse of endorphins. Sure, maybe your emo cousin cuts herself to feel better, but is that seriously good behavior that ought to be condoned? Not all pain, in fact most pain, is not accompanied by any sort of endorphin balancing-act. It is clear that these endorphins are being used by you as an excuse for pain - i.e. the opposite (that the release of endorphins is accompanied by pain) is not how we would describe the situation.

The UN banned torture because torture is a human rights violation. It wouldn't be a violation if the endorphins released during these traumatic episodes "made up" for the pain experienced.

Eventually I think you will come to the same conclusion that I have and realize that life is not meant to be fair, balanced, or comfortable.