Not forced, that would contradict my libertarianism even if I believe that my opinion is better. I'm not entirely persuaded by the argument that you are harmed when you are born (non-identity problem and whatnot) so not doing anything about birth is not analogous to me not doing anything about my neighbor being murdered.

That being said, I do support abortion with a certain kind of private enthusiasm.

I suppose you could say that. I don't condone childbirth but I don't actively, vehemently oppose it either. Most likely a child born in a first world country will live a decent life but it's still not going to be anything exactly remarkable or worth starting the life in the first place.

There are times though that I really have to question why a person had a child. If you have a bad genetic defect or live in a warzone like Palestine, don't have a kid!

To become rich is not glorious; it's antisocial — Bitter Crank

I love this. Albeit I believe there needs to be some kind of initiative for achievement outside of the collective good (I don't have that kind of faith in humanity).

You can read reviews online before purchasing a textbook. Sometimes the textbooks I buy have primary sources in them as well. But honestly what is it about primary sources that make them always better than a text covering the same thing? Perhaps you get the personalized feel, but at the same rate you also often lose the objectivity as you're reading something by one person.

In then end all of this just seems purely subjective. You like primary sources, great. I like secondary textbooks more as an introduction to ideas. As a matter of fact I usually don't like reading primary sources.

Like I said in the other thread, this is my tentative political stance.

Generalized label: Left-leaning libertarian
Form of government: Democratic anarchism (lol not gonna happen though)
Form of economy: Undecided
Abortion: Pro-abortion in some cases, in all other cases pro-choice
Gay marriage: Who gives a shit?
Death penalty: 100% Opposed
Euthanasia: On pets or on humans?
Campaign finance: Undecided
Surveillance: It hasn't helped, so not exactly supportive
Health care: Undecided but leaning towards universal
Immigration: Allow immigrants but they really do need to go through a process
Education: Pro-education
Environmental policy: Stahp the pollution
Gun policy: Guns are allowed but need to be far more regulated than they are (like a driver's license)
Drug policy: Softer drugs are alright, the harder stuff should be regulated. We already allow alcohol. I'd rather we get rid of all drugs including alcohol instead of being hypocritical and not allowing marijuana or LSD.
Foreign policy: We're not the earth police. Isolationist-esque.

I get most of my initial information from textbooks and then get the primary literature if I feel the need to. In all honesty all this talk of primary literature being better than the other sources of information just sounds snobbish. I mean if I can get a perfectly good introduction to the thought of some guy instead of having to drudge through countless books then I'll take the former route.

Who are you referring to?

Like making sausage and law, some of these things are just not fit to be seen by the public. — Bitter Crank

Otto von Bismarck, eh?

Doing quite fine, thank you. The link provided gives some examples of the future in the face of TMT, such as stronger psychological walls and a more compassionate, liberal, accepting worldview.

For example, religious fundamentalists that were exposed to thoughts of death and then subjected to religious literature that advocated violence were highly likely to advocate suicidal bombings, while religious fundamentalists that were exposed to thoughts of death and then subjected to religious literature advocating compassion and acceptance were far more likely to reject suicidal bombings and go for the peaceful route.

It's actually quite beautiful to think about, everyone working together. I'm sick of this "us vs them" bullshit.

To get a better understanding of Becker and Terror Management Theory (TMT), read this short snippet from a book.

What about all those mirror neurons one hears so much about these days? — Bitter Crank

As far as I know, mirror neurons are meant to help an organism fit into a group of other organisms. "When in Rome", so to speak.

. To my way of thinking, heroes have to be mortals--their lives must be subject to loss. — Bitter Crank

Yes, exactly. There must be a trial. There must be a triumph.

First, in Tolkien's view, heroism is not a flight from death, not a triumph of the ego. It's the triumph of sacrifice over ego, and the offer of death for victory. The military and the Church both look at heroism the same way: Military heroes and religious martyrs give up their lives (and not by blowing themselves up in a concert hall). Saints spend their lives devoted to the homeless, the hungry, the dying, the sorrowing, the imprisoned; they give up the comfortable lives they could have led. Soldiers get medals -- often posthumously -- for leading the charge against the enemy, or for selflessly covering a grenade with their body and dying, but saving their comrades. — Bitter Crank

I believe Becker would respond that these individuals have found something that they want to survive after their death. It doesn't need to be a calculated endeavor. It just needs to be enough.

A hero is a type in a narrative. — mcdoodle

Exactly. The hero that Becker is referring to is a psychological narrative (a la culture) that society has constructed. Those who cannot conform to the narrative (the homeless, the destitute, the mentally insane, the un-conformers, the ones who "see through the bullshit") are cast out because they threaten the balance and transparency of the heroic narrative. Progress, progress, progress! Achieve, achieve, achieve! Conquer, conquer, conquer! Hero, hero, hero!...until you finally die.

There seems to be a reason why so many people are so resistant to exposing themselves to death and looking it straight in the face. No, instead, we have to have a heroic narrative behind it. Sometimes it's a knight in shining armor facing a dragon. Other times it's a young man on the hero's journey, accompanied by inspiring dramatic music. Never do we see the reality of death unless it is for shock value. We never enjoy watching people die in real life, but we sure do like watching people face death and survive while others perish around them.

Someone who does something important for others can be a hero. Scientists who have made the World a better place and heck, even smart philosophers that have wisdom in their writings are heroes to me. Yet with their actions they haven't put their life to risk at all. So what gives? They aren't the correct heroes for Becker? — ssu

One could ask why the world is such a way (culture) that we consider scientists heroes and writers heroes. Perhaps they take away pain and suffering. Perhaps they give us entertainment. It's all a game, a facade to push away the thought of death.

So, was he some rural Galilean preacher rambling on about the end of the world? Who knows! But who cares! — Thorongil

I am not arguing about the historical background of Jesus: I am presenting the case originally presented by Becker that Jesus is one of many figures (often religious in nature) that are existential heroes in that they face death and survive and act as an icon for followers to attach themselves to and to seek reassurance in the face of annihilation. Regardless of what he taught, the heroic figurehead is present in Jesus and is, according to Becker, helpful for the subconscious to soothe the fear of death.

I think that we can definitely try to mitigate the conscious occurrences of fear of death; we have been attempting to do so for thousands of years. But Becker is arguing that much, if not all, of culture is derived from the subconscious fear of death, and that no matter what kind of facade we put up, no matter how hard we try to pretend we don't care about death, the fear is always there. It's a constant awareness of the train approaching, of our inevitable demise, and all culture is a distraction from this truth.

Finally, Jesus conquers death not so much by physically dying (though he does do that and come back to life) but by showing us how to die to the world. — Thorongil

I'm not so sure about this analysis. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. He had some nice things to say, but after he died his followers needed an image, a token, to hold on to. Thus the resurrection, and the creation of Jesus as a subconscious existential hero. He symbolizes hope, a future, in the face of annihilation, because of his resurrection.

If Jesus' philosophy was so bent on the elimination of the ego, then why did his followers believe that he continued after death, that is ego continued?

This entirely depends on what is entailed by "repression." — Thorongil

That is, acting despite the fact.

But the whole narrative of Jesus is meant to show the annihilation of the ego. If the ego is destroyed, what then is death? Nothing. The fear of death is contingent upon the perceived inability to perpetuate one's ego into the future. If one gives up the ego and trusts in God completely, death is no longer something to fear. — Thorongil

I don't know where you are getting this idea that Jesus' story is to show the annihilation of the ego. Clearly, Jesus is portrayed to have risen from the grave, as an entity with an ego.

Well, sure, if we're speaking about the instinctual fear of death, which has an evolutionary basis (carcasses carry disease, for example), then there's no getting rid of that. We are biologically determined to fear death. However, as you say, I still think one can utterly banish this fear from one's mind, such that however one's body may react, one cannot be internally disturbed. — Thorongil

Is it that you are not bothered by death, or rather that you have repressed the image of death and built up a tolerance to your impeding doom?

However, I wonder how well Becker's ideas cash out in practice. The general impression I get is that he has a lot of valuable things to say about what humans think is important and why, but I think that you can only take that so far in terms of explaining the behavior of individual humans. — Pneumenon

I definitely have by doubts about psychoanalysis. There is a broad literature criticizing it. However, much of what Becker has to say rings very true, to me at least. It's at least worthy of philosophical discussion.

Did Becker declare that humans are hopelessly narcissistic, or is that your spin? — Bitter Crank

Becker literally did say that humans are "hopelessly narcissistic". These are not my words.

Most people, parents, working people, etc. forego the pleasures of narcissistic gratification to fulfill the needs and wishes of spouses, children, employers, communities, etc. When they get done doing that at the end of the day, they are tired and go to bed and sleep soundly. — Bitter Crank

Such activity guarantees the sustainability of something after an agent's death.

When Becker says humans are narcissistic, I don't think he means that we are inevitably selfish pricks. He means that every single action we do is processed in the first-person perspective. Things in the environment around an agent are seen as tools or nutrients for the person, for the self. The self is one of those ever-present phenomenons that we are so fearful to letting go of (death).

It's reductionistic -- it tries to boil human behavior down to one simple syrup: heroism. — Bitter Crank

Becker is theorizing that one of the major motivators of human action is heroism, not the only one.

I don't wish to be rude, but would you kindly name the mystery religions with whom Christianity was allegedly completing, and reveal something about the lives of their demigods. — Bitter Crank

Not necessarily at the exact same time, but the fact that there were widespread religions and cults surrounding gods that went into the underworld and returned. Orpheus, Herakles, Jesus, Mithras, Gilgamesh, etc all went into the underworld or had experiences that made them face death and survive and become immortal (except Gilgamesh I believe).

He doesn't represent the triumph of the ego, though. It's rather more the opposite. He's an anti-hero, in that he does and says the opposite of what the Jews had expected of the Messiah, who had expected a great king like David; a strong man more or less in the mold of the men you mention in the parenthesis above. — Thorongil

You misunderstand the point here. He was, is a legendary hero character who went into the realm of the dead and returned. The ultimate triumph, the defeat of annihilation (which is the ultimate fear according to Becker).

I don't get this impression at all and I wonder why he does. The Buddhist and the Hindu already feels trapped in eternal life, called samsara: the cycle of birth, death, rebirth, and redeath. Eternal life is therefore precisely what they want to escape from. — Thorongil

I think the rational, conscious level of the human can come to such a conclusion as the Buddhists and the Hindus did. But the irrational, subconscious side is always fearful of death. Death is always repressed.

Same ;)

The fact that different languages can represent the same thing. The languages are the tokens while the object in question is the type.

Is this not the type-token distinction?

I understand what a feeling is better than what a symbol is. We think other people feel because we relate to them in certain ways, and we don't relate in those ways to computers.

Are you seriously claiming computers feel? — The Great Whatever

First of all, let's try to keep the inflammatory commentary to a minimum.

Second, simply because we do not relate to a computer as well as we do to other humans doesn't mean a computer doesn't feel. The recent movie Ex Machina explores this. To treat humans above computers simply because we don't have an emotional attachment to the latter is to have an anthropic bias.

Furthermore, consciousness could be an emergent property of a system.

I am going to go on a hunch here and concur that if a person is ignorant of a specific topic (such as the morality/rationality of child birth), insofar as they don't even recognize that it is an issue, then I don't think a position can be applied to this person. Perhaps in a post hoc attitude, they could realize that their actions categorized them into a certain position, but truly what difference does it make if you hold a position and yet not act upon it? What you are arguing for, , is that actions precede a person's position, when it should be the opposite. A person's position (assuming they are not disingenuous) should precede their actions.

A good time was had by all. Such is philosophy. — Bitter Crank

And that's all that matters! :D

Firstly, to state that it is "quite nihilistic and useless" doesn't make much sense to me, except in relation to a particular context, so I would like to know what context you have in mind here. — Sapientia

The context would be life. What goal is life itself, the chemical reactions itself, leading towards? There is no goal. Life is without a goal and without a direction; it is therefore unnecessary.

And secondly, isn't whether or not such acts are "empty" a subjective matter, and hence will depend on the subject, and, more specifically, his or her values? — Sapientia

I suppose it depends on how versatile one's mind is and how able they are to compartmentalize aspects of their life so that they can maintain meaning and purpose in a thoroughly nihilistic world.

I think the issue that Schopenhauer1 is bringing up is not necessarily that life is always a burden, but rather when analyzed from an objective third person perspective, it could easily be said that each and every one of us live our lives "chasing the cheese", so to speak. It is quite nihilistic and useless. When we take a look at what our lives are constituted by and see just how much time we spend pursuing empty pleasures and needs, it really does drive a nail through our appreciation of life.

The lack of contentedness seems to be more of a problem of modern day society rather than an unsolvable paradox.

This is a good point. I have never understood how the ascetic is supposed to forget the reason they are being an ascetic in the first place. Case in point: celibacy, if you are celibate, chances are you will have pent-up sexual urges and desires which will only remind you of the very thing you are trying to evade. It seems that asceticism is a reaction to a distasteful environment rather than a genuine sustainable way of life.

They represent Depression, Aspergers, and Loneliness. ;)

I was a weird kid.

Hell yeah it is.

Greenland

Yeah, I don't know about the Falkland Island flag. Very strange.

Interesting thoughts about thieves hiding behind national flags.

When I was younger and weirder, I made my own little micronation. You can see the flag here.

:P

Causation already is a contentious subject in metaphysics, even though it is taken for granted in much of science.

Aristotle thought that objects (not artifacts though) have a telos, or an end goal, that they strive for. It's actually rather similar to Schopenhauer's conception of a Will, except the Will is universalized while the telos is apparent in only the kind of object. So, for example, a penis' telos is to enter a vagina. An acorn's telos is to grow into a tree.

Obviously, Aristotle did not know about DNA, or he would have understood that this is why every acorn grows into a tree, and not a camel.

Aristotle's thought got taken up by Aquinas, who thought that since the universe seems to operate under this notion of a telos, or a pulling-causation, that to frustrate such notions is immoral. Thus, it is immoral to have gay sexual relations because the act goes against the "natural law" of the universe, or the telos of the penis. Thus, it is immoral to have an abortion, because the act of aborting goes against the telos of the fetus to develop.

Personally, I find all this talk of telos and natural law to be a bit unscientific and definitely problematic in terms of the is-ought gap. The Catholic Church tries to defend natural law by saying that natural, male-female sex during marriage is the only way to achieve human flourishing - a doctrine that I find blatantly absurd.

This is basically the idea of the Aristotelian telos, which I don't really find convincing. It asks us to think of causation as "pulling" versus "pushing".

Yeah, I've seen a few Gary videos, for example. At times he seems to make some good points. At other times, he seems woefully ignorant of what he's talking about. — Thorongil

Gary pisses me off. He makes good points, though, and that's why he pisses me off even more because he makes far more idiotic points than decent ones, and he's the name that gets circulated around the community. Not to mention his personality and attitude is atrocious.

The fetus, like anything living, desires to live, whether it is conscious of this fact or not. — Thorongil

How can an unconscious entity have any desires?

Haha, this was more or less my impression as well, from what little I've visited of it. — Thorongil

YouTube isn't much better, haha.

I think so, at least as far as I understand your question. A human fetus has the same natural right to live as its mother or any other sentient being. To abort it is to commit wrongdoing because to do so expressly denies the will of the fetus to live. Once a woman becomes pregnant, it is too late to bring up arguments about preventing suffering. The salient deed to which I would object has already been done. — Thorongil

The way I look at it, you can't lose something if you don't have it. A fetus does not have a "will", a "telos", to live. I find this entire conception to be anthropomorphization gone wild. Aborting a fetus does nothing unethical because there is nothing to feel saddened or disappointed, and since there is no god, there is no retribution for such an act if natural law theory even was true.

You argued that the fetus has a will to live that should be respected, but what if this fetus grows up to be a suicidal person who hates living?

Yes, I'm aware of those guys and find them very far from the position I would want to identify with. I started visiting the AN subreddit recently as well and found the community there not that great overall. In fact, pretty much the whole AN community, at least as it exists on the internet, I find to be irritating and disagreeable. And as for its manifestation in print, I'm not a fan of Benatar (since I'm not a utilitarian and have moral qualms about his advocacy of abortion) and find Ligotti, Crawford, and their ilk rather unsophisticated and pretentious. — Thorongil

Stay the hell away from some of those subreddits. They are toxic and filled with extraordinarily narrow-sighted people. I think I had maybe one or two "decent" discussions over on them; the rest were all a bunch of pretentious teenagers bitching about how much they hate their mothers or how they don't like having to wake up for school.

I have a weird position on Benatar. I don't know if his analysis works, for one (I expect considerable debate in the future). I think it is far, far easier to just say that it is wrong to inflict suffering on someone, even by proxy. Period. End of topic, moving on, no need of an asymmetry.

Also, is your problem with his promotion of abortion that of natural law?

Granted, though, I still find birth in most cases to be merely unnecessary instead of blatantly immoral.

Ligotti definitely has writing talent, I'll give him that. But he would get destroyed in any professional philosophical debate. Too much of his writing is unsophisticated nihilism born out of unrealistic expectations.

This guy is perhaps the only one I find tolerable and even enjoyable. — Thorongil

I'll have to check him out. From a quick overview, he seems likeable. I can't stand those petty debates over at YouTube (just a bunch of yelling and cursing, kind of pitiful imho); perhaps this will be a better alternative.

I don't know about that. It seems to me that Catholic priests and monks, Buddhist monks, and Hindu ascetics are pretty fit, free of many illnesses common to the general public, and usually live extremely long lives. So it seems rather a boon than a detriment to one's health. — Thorongil

Yeah, except the ones that rape the alter boys ;)

Is it the rejection of all pleasure or only of a certain kind of pleasure? Asceticism need not lead to stoicism, in the common sense of that word. It certainly rejects the pleasures of the flesh, otherwise known as the "hedonic treadmill," so if you define pleasure only in this sense, then I suppose you are right to assert that asceticism involves the rejection of pleasure. But it still involves something positive, that of becoming closer to or reaching the goal for which one practices asceticism in the first place. The Greek roots of the word tell us that it is a form of exercise or self-discipline. If one has no self-discipline, one is effectively a slave. — Thorongil

I respect your lifestyle and I guess I might even be classified as somewhat of an ascetic in some regards in that I do try to limit my sensual pleasures (too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing), and I think you are spot on when you say that sensual pleasures make you a "slave", but I would say only insofar that you allow them to enslave you.

Without being too personal and graphic, I do release sexual tension occasionally, and afterwards I feel very relieved and relaxed. From my perspective, having all those (natural) pent-up urges and hormones makes me very unfocused and stressed. Now you could definitely make the argument that this is exactly what enslavement is, but is it enslavement if we are comfortable with it? The Buddha taught the middle path between extreme hedonism and excessive asceticism, and I think this might be a good time to invoke his teachings.

Yep. Cool.