What is it about an ethic being "intra-worldly" that makes it insufficient? — Thorongil

The intra-worldly is morally disqualifying - most if not all of our actions have repercussions that are regrettable, even if they aren't within our control. As such we have to prioritize which morals we find to be the most important, the most appropriate given the situation. For instance, you may come to see that keeping a promise and reimbursing your friend is less important than donating to charity. Prioritizing morals is common, normal, and necessary. What I think gets passed over is how this makes morality irrevocably broken. To go off the previous example: to be a philanthropist and donate to charity requires that you be a bad friend who breaks promises.

That is one of the crucial reasons why I believe the intra-worldly cannot be a satisfactory grounding for morality. The morality of the intra-worldly is contradictory. There are good moral reasons for doing things that cannot be completely reconciled. This is why is makes sense for us to regret breaking a promise to a friend - "in a perfect world" we'd be able to be both philanthropists and good friends.

Having a child with the vision of using them as a means to an end of greater utility only makes sense within an intra-worldly perspective, in this case utilitarianism, where everything gets subsumed under a single banner: utility. What the affirmative utilitarian in this case fails to understand is that moral ambiguity, the tension between competing duties, is a symptom of life itself. It is part of the structure of life. The utilitarian is unable to account for the regret we would obviously feel for using a child in this way - once again, we might be philanthropists, but we'd also be horrible parents. "Being a good parent", for the utilitarian, is something that does not have value independent of the principle of utility. This is nonsense, in my opinion.

In my view, then, there are a plurality of competing moral duties that often contradict each other. Monistic, affirmative theories of morality are an attempt to downplay these contradictions by ascribing "ultimate" value to a single source - for instance, the principle of utility, or the categorical imperative, or whatever. Monism in ethics is a theoretical attempt to simplify something that cannot be simplified. Morality just is pluralistic, and fundamentally "beyond" the world we live in, so that there is always a friction between what is and what should be. There simply is not enough space for what should be.

You were a utilitarian, though, weren't you? — Thorongil

I was a consequentialist for a while, yes. I've come to see consequentialist theories as inherently intra-worldly and incapable of acting as any fundamental ethic. This is primarily because consequentialist theories like utilitarianism are monistic, and I don't think this sort of reductionism is sufficient to cover the plurality of ethical concepts we have.

This means I'm not a Kantian, either.

This isn't facetious? I thought you were a utilitarian of some kind. — Thorongil

NO-no-no-no-no. No.

If I remember correctly, some Buddhists (?) see procreation as a necessary evil that prevents souls from regressing into "lesser" states of being. Paradoxically, if humans do not procreate, they doom everyone to an endless cycle of rebirth in lesser forms of life (which do procreate).

Any reason to have children, in my opinion, must either be religious or intra-wordly, the latter being things like economic stability (such as government incentives to procreate). Intra-wordly reasons seem to me to almost always be selfish and immoral, since they necessarily use a person as a means and not as an end. The only non-selfish, non-religious reason for having children might be from the expectation that your children will be great altruists - unfortunately it's impossible to tell if one's children will have the proper character, let alone survive long enough to provide a positive utility. Yuck, utilitarianism :vomit: In that case, it may not be selfish, but it certainly isn't wise or prudent. And it certainly contradicts everything that goes into being a good parent - try explaining to your child that you had them with the sole intention of grooming them to be providers of utility. That's a shit parent.

So God is beyond words? Makes for a short thread. — Banno

If we are to go the Scholastic route, then God is beyond all human propositions. The most we can manage with are analogies and metaphors, as well as certain metaphysical properties (infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, etc). We can know the existence of God through metaphysics - the essence of God comes from revelation.

How we know something exists without knowing anything about it makes for a puzzle. Perhaps we can get away with saying that God exists, and we all know what this means intuitively but cannot express it in exact words. God is transcendent, radically Other, and the ground and source of Being. That's about as much as we can say.

but I do agree that scientists who think metaphysics should be buried are wrong. — ProcastinationTomorrow

It's not about getting rid of metaphysics. To do science, you must do metaphysics. But the metaphysics scientists need to operate is not something only a metaphysician can figure out. The problem is not that metaphysicians are being ignored - the problem is that some scientists are ignoring metaphysics, and some metaphysicians are ignoring science. The ideal scientist should also be a philosopher, and vice versa. So you have some scientists who think "Science" is a magical, perfect, self-contained intellectual project that can do no wrong and will ultimately figure everything out, "given enough time" - this is a problem.

Typically these sorts of scientists (or science-fanatics) are annoying and not wise. They make grandiose claims about the scope and potential of science, with little to no actual evidence to back it up. There's science, and then there's scientism, and the problem is that the latter is being appropriated into the former, so that science must now necessarily be scientistic. With the development of any kind of monism, such as scientism, comes the threat of dogmatism, so that intellectual progress is no longer open and free but now constrained within the metaphysical parameters that are informed by a select few charismatic individuals and their biases. These people can, upon realizing their position of authority in the public eye, use their platform to push unscientific and sometimes immoral public policies.

There is something unsettling to me about power-structures, and science isn't exempt. In my opinion, scientific realism might be justified, but anti-realism certainly provides a solid foundation for healthy relationship between science and the rest of society. It keeps scientists from getting too arrogant and presumptuous, and it helps secure the freedom of individuals to choose a worldview that fits their way of life.

The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith

An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent by John Hick

Doesn't seem correct to me - I've met a few physicists in my time and they tend to think that what they are doing commits them to nothing other than constructing models. Are they wrong about that? — ProcastinationTomorrow

Seems to me that constructing models requires background assumptions - that's all metaphysics is, at least in the sense philosophy of science tends to use. Fundamentally, to construct models about reality presupposes that reality has some kind of formal, rational structure that can be modeled, typically with the use of numbers and logic.

Generally scientists are at least methodological, if not metaphysical naturalists, and work on science within this naturalistic framework. When approaching a question about the world, the explanation sought is one that is naturalistic and has no reference to something that cannot, in principle, be studied by science. Note that this does not entail circular scientism but rather is merely a methodological bracketing-off of anything not within the parameters of science.

Then, of course, there are the assumptions that other people do in fact exist, that there is actually a real, external world that continues to exist without our participation, that there are "laws" that are explicable mathematically, etc. Sometimes assumptions are proven false, or have to be revised: we call these paradigm shifts. Look at special relativity, biological evolution, quantum mechanics, etc.

Basically, then, if science is the study of the ontic, phenomenal, natural world, then there must be some basic assumptions ("metaphysical" ones), that are required for science to even get off the ground. These don't need to be complex, necessarily, and I hardly think scientists "need" metaphysicians to help them out. What's important to remember is that these are metaphysical, and not scientific, and that they can be up for debate, and, historically, have been. What's dangerous and incorrect is the ahistorical belief that science has operated under one continuous framework since its "inception", whenever that is claimed to be.

And what is this idly looping? What is the nature behind all the looping? What does this tell us about what it means to be human, about life, about humanity as whole? Are the projects/programs something to quickly queue up in memory so to execute post haste or does the idling have any merit? — schopenhauer1

Julio Cabrera sees this idle behavior as ultimately negative - the authentic decision to commit to projects and whatnot is an onerous reaction of disgust. Every sequences of positive instance that comes from our own initiative is preceded by this gathering-of-oneself:

"In the slaughterhouse that morning, I watched the cattle being led to their death. Almost every animal, at the last moment, refused to move forward. To make them do so, a man hit them on the hind legs. This scene often comes to mind when, ejected from sleep, I lack the strength to confront the daily torture of Time." — Emil Cioran,

Also, I know you don't like the idea of a mind as a computer- but what is your best analogy if there is one? If not neural networks, what would you use? Is there any appropriate analogy or is the brain's mechanism of a category original and ontologically different? — schopenhauer1

A window would be a better analogy, in my opinion. Dasein is the "opening" from which Being is understood, including its value.

Thanks for sharing your experiences here. Good point. Maybe kinda like not wanting to see sausage being made. And it’s probably better not to think about airline cost-cutting affecting safety as one is about to get on a flight. — 0 thru 9

I think, for me at least, it's like going through disillusionment about technology. When I was a child I thought technology was magic and that scientists and engineers were basically gods for knowing all they know. I wanted to become one of the people who "knows things".

Well, now I know some things and I can tell you now that technology is by no means magic, nor are scientists and engineers gods. I have become more and more attracted to instrumentalist and anti-realist philosophies of science. The attitude I've sort of come to adopt to all of this is that a piece of tech will fail one day, because it is made by humans. People will die, devices will be recalled, updated versions with hastily-added patches will be made available ... rinse and repeat.

Yes, the A.I. hype is in full swing, and full funding mode. Lots of promises here, more than a presidential campaign, which is hard to top. Even daring to critique a specific “technology” is a tricky position for one to take because it is at the risk of appearing to be a fud-dud or an eco-extremist or something. However, i must concede that the advances in driverless vehicle tech is impressive imho, despite some recent tragic accidents. — 0 thru 9

Artificial intelligence is being over-hyped, in my opinion. The science behind it is still developing. The paradigms still seem to be overly-reductionistic and materialistic. The same old metaphor of the brain as a computer, the mind as the software, is just wrong but it keeps on being presented in the media as though it were fact.

I'm hoping to go into research and development after my undergrad, perhaps in artificial intelligence. I've been trying to see if we can't integrate philosophy of mind into some of the upper level courses at my university but I haven't had much success. The current paradigm is still in full swing, it seems.

If the A.I. really is intelligent, when you tell the A.I. robot to do something no warm blooded animal would want to do, what you are going to hear is "You must be out of your fucking mind if you think I am going to sit there and sort all that crap out." — Bitter Crank

The logic here seems to be that, in order to do everything we humans don't want to do, the A.I. needs to be as intelligent or as self-conscious as humans. If that were the case, A.I. wouldn't even be needed - we'd just make more babies, like the capitalists want us to.

An alternative look on this is that the A.I. needs to be just smart enough to get the job done, nothing more. There is no need to make the A.I. a "person", or give them the burden of self-reflection. This is all assuming strong A.I. is more than just a fantasy.

Bingo.. what ARE we doing. What is humanity's point? The error written in our code is that self-awareness leads to understanding of systemic futility. If projects work with functions, the fully self-aware human has to trick himself into constantly being "driven" by these programs.. Every once in a while the baseline futility seeps in; the eternal WHY creeps in and haunts us. It's as if the software has run out of programs to execute. — schopenhauer1

Yes. Holocaust survivor Jean Amery, in his book On Suicide, wrote about what he called the "logic of life". The logic of life is what makes living "make sense" - everything we do "makes sense" because it's "part of life", it's what people do and what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have projects, we're supposed to have jobs, relationships, progeny, etc. "Edge of life" issues, like suicide, are swept under the carpet because they are outside of the logic of life. Suicide does not make sense, from that perspective.

I don't like to use the brain-computer, mind-software metaphor too much, but it does seem to be as you say - the software ("us") is fundamentally an infinite loop that only breaks when it is interrupted by some priority. When there is no queue, we are simply idly looping, waiting for something to happen.

That's funny actually.. any product types in particular? I've had TVs with shitty speakers and hard drives that break real easily, but I'm not sure if that is much resistors as other technology.. hard drives that aren't solid state can break easily due to their physical movement of parts. — schopenhauer1

New products tend to break because they were rushed, always wait for future versions. With a little bit of technical background you can fix a lot of things on your own. My point was more about the "phenomenology" of technology. For many people, myself included at times, learning how something works is cool. Oftentimes, however, I find myself struck by how kludge-like things are. The documentation isn't always great, sometimes non-existent. When you ask professional engineers for help with some device and they tell you "I don't know", that doesn't always instill confidence. It's also scary how many people are desperate to get through error checking, testing, etc.

What's super sketchy are unregulated products. Literally, use at your own risk. A lot of things aren't regulated, and even if they are, the standards aren't always satisfactory.

Going back to how technology replaces meaning- what do you think humans' relationship with technology is? Are tools one and the same with what it means to be a fully functioning Homo sapien? Some posters on here seem to place technology as the be all and end all it seems. Our very brains are said to work similar to specific kinds of computer- connectionist programming networks with neurons acting like transistors or circuits of sorts. What's funny is that if robots became fully sentient, I don't think it would end up like a Terminator scenario, but more like a Douglas Adams book. That is to say, the computers would have existential angst like us humans, and not be able to compute the systemic futility of existence. That would be truly horrifying for the poor little machine bastard. — schopenhauer1

I've always been amused by the niche cult surrounding artificial intelligence, because as much as it's "transhumanist" and "futurist", the hype fundamentally is related to our own insecurities. Those touting A.I. do so because they seem to think A.I. will do everything we don't want to. They will work - we won't have to. But what will we do instead? We'll still have the existential angst, and even more so when we realize that the A.I. is, in that respect, superior to us by being able to work without burden. Artificial intelligence might make some people question the value of human existence qua human existence, as A.I. presumably would do most of the work while we sit around idly, twiddling our fingers.

If the creation is "better" than the creator ... what will motivate people to reproduce? Why make humans, when artificial intelligence is even better? But without humans, what's the point of artificial intelligence? Hold on, back up a moment - what's the point of humanity in general?

Perhaps this is one manifestation of Heidegger's fear of technology - eventually we won't need humans, and if humans lack the understanding of Being, they won't see the value of being dasein. Or something.

The processes and those who get the "privilege" of making the complex technology lives in large labs in corporations and universities. The rest get to run the cogs.. I don't mean computer programmers- they are modern bricklayers.. It's the Intels, Apples, IBMs, Ciscos, etc. etc. and the Harvards, and Oxfords, and MITs, etc.etc . Sure, some might get to be a part of it, but most will be simply the ones who get the final products in consumption form or nicely printed "How things work" books to ease the mind enough to not "really" want to know the complexities and minutia. Essentially there are those who make the cogs, and those who run the cogs. Probably 98% run the cogs. — schopenhauer1

Hahaha, this is somewhat ironic in my case since I just recently switched majors from engineering to computer science. One thing I realized in my experience with engineering is how janky things tend to be. It actually sort of lowered my confidence in many pieces of technology that I regularly use. When the only thing that keeps something running is a single resistor, and the rate of failure of this resistor is relatively high, suddenly the whole thing looks as if it's already broken.

Just as there are only a few that actually design the products we use and consume, there are also a very, very small amount of researchers and explorers who actually get to take the pictures you see in Nat Geo. The hope is to be one of these few, but the chances are small. But it's better than working as a desk-slave, designing products that will be replicated ad infinitum and ad nauseum.

Work will continue to be alienating so long as capitalism is instituted. If capitalism is to go, then there has to be something to replace it with, and socialism isn't going to work with the massive human population. Seizing the means of production (of new workers) by the workers themselves and the subsequent abstaining from producing new workers will deprive capitalists of their labor force.

In that sense, condoms and other forms of birth control are symbols of liberation. No political philosophy will ever be satisfactory, and a contributing reason why this is so is because it just is not possible to get along with as many people as there are. Less people = less potential for conflict.

As Epicurus illustrated, if atheism is true, death is nothing to us. So why would there be any kind of existential crisis surrounding death whatsoever? I think that quite the contrary, death anxiety is a manifestation of theism - namely you are afraid of what comes after death, as Hamlet put it in his soliloquy. — Agustino

But we need not be Epicureans if we are atheists, and in fact this Epicureanism is the same sort of thing that Hume is complaining about - it doesn't actually help in reality. Perhaps because it attempts to rationalize an irrational scenario. Epicurus' principle does not explain why people so desperately cling to life, nor does it help alleviate their suffering. It is just another mantra.

The Epicurean principle that death is not a harm is very counterintuitive. Most people, even if they are swayed by it, nevertheless will believe that it's not ideal. Death may not harm us in any empirical sort of way, but it surely does still hurt us in the form of annihilation. Losing one's identity, having one's projects foiled by the inevitable échec, our downfall, that is bad. We cannot stand thinking about a world that is not illuminated by our lights.

The charge that the fear of death is theistic is thus false, however I could retort that the continuation of existence is atheistic in that the person does not have enough trust or faith in God to expect deliverance after death. God, predictably, has commanded everyone to live and breed, so maybe that criticism doesn't work. But you get the idea.

I'm agnostic, by the way. Perhaps there is a redemption to be found, somehow. Philosophers have proven time and time again that just about anything can be presented in a manner so as to make it seem plausible. I have yet to find a theodicy that adequately explains evil to me, and if the current trend in theology and philosophy of religion is to be followed, then it's decidedly anti-theodicy and more and more based on a pure leap of faith. The failure of theodicy forms a key aspect of God's mysterious ways.

GPA seems to be more relevant for larger companies who can afford employee training; they use GPA as a simple way of sorting through applicants, just as they do with drug tests. Seems to me that often (but not always), having a high GPA is correlated to following the rules and doing what people tell you to do - large corporations prefer these kinds of people because they don't ask very many questions.

How is this a repression? — Agustino

I am speculating is that theism is a form of psychological repression that has origins not only in the economic structure of society but also existential crises surrounding death and annihilation.

No, this would be an argument from desire. — Agustino

Can you spell this out?

What are you talking about? Dostoevsky was a religious man, he died with the Bible in his lap. And Levinas wasn't exactly an atheist either. Don't know about Jean Amery. — Agustino

Right, but all three struggled with their faith. Dostoevsky's characters reflect a man with many contradictory perspectives, such as the duality between the nihilism of Ivan Karamazov and his religious brother Alyosha. Levinas explicitly rejects theodicy for being indecent, as does Jean Amery in his defense of suicide as a basic human right.

Just a minority though. — Agustino

Sure, if the majority was unable to repress, the human race wouldn't exist.

There would be no desire if there was nothing that could fulfil that desire... — Agustino

Are you trying to pull an ontological argument here?

So Hume is simply factually wrong if he wants to claim that theodicy does not provide psychological comfort to those who are suffering. He is right merely if we restrict what he says to mean simply that theodicy does not take the pain of those who are suffering away. — Agustino

Yet there are also many, many people who were believers, and who went through all sorts of awful experiences and came out stripped of their religious beliefs, or at least very unstable about them. Jean Amery, Dostoevsky, Levinas, to name three I am reading right now.

I think you are trying to derive some kind of objective legitimacy to theodicy and religious belief based on how powerful their psychological effects can be. I'm willing to argue that it has nothing to do with religion being true and everything to do with a person's psychological and physiological type. Some people are more robust than others and can run marathons while most of us struggle to finish a 5K, just as some people find an outlet in the search for God while many struggle with the pervasive emptiness. This emptiness is mostly humans wanting God to be real when he is not. And some people have very good imaginations.

Some animals eat plants, some animals eat other animals. There is nothing superior or inferior about either group, and choosing to be a plant eating animal isn't more moral than being a meat eating animal. — Bitter Crank

So says an animal who has survived by eating other animals. What might the prey think, though?

so what is Hume's point? — Agustino

Hume's point seems to be that talk of cosmic harmony and theistic benevolence only comforts those who aren't suffering. As such, theodicies fail to provide anything useful for those in great pain. The implication seems to be that those who continue to assert the goodness of the whole, despite its implausibility from the perspective of those most acquainted with evil, must not truly understand what suffering or moral injustice is like.

Basically it seems as though Hume, being Hume, is pointing out philosophers' bullshit, and accusing them of not working with the real world. Rather akin to Voltaire's parody of Leibniz. Having suffered greatly puts things into a perspective that has not been entertained by those who wish to assert the overall goodness of the whole. It might be like a politician telling a Vietnam war veteran that the war was worth it. Bullshit.

Philosophy is thinking that puts the thinker into question. It is not merely an intellectual endeavor but an ethical one as well - a person must be responsible for holding true and justified beliefs. It is not acceptable to be a bumbling fool, believing only what other people tell you to without thinking about it yourself.

As far as "methodology" is concerned, when thinking philosophically, one seems to tend to "jump" to conclusions, and then go back and see if this leap was justified. Something in the pre-theoretical reality "breaks", and you make a connection, a brief moment of clarity. It is a rational "what if...?" I think it's an ethical duty for us to continue to ask these hypotheticals and question what seems to be indubitable.

If the act does not harm or affect anyone, and no one knows that it has been committed, and will never find out, how harmful can it be? If it isn't harmful, can it be immoral? — Bitter Crank

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to bear witness, does is make a sound? Does it even fall at all?

Often a contributing aspect of an act's morality is precisely whether or not another person(s) is aware of the act. Being aware of the act makes it available for legal prosecution. But I don't think the legal system exhausts the scope of morality.

On Suicide - A Discourse on Voluntary Death by Jean Amery.

Have been intrigued by Amery for a while now. He writes gently and without an air of pomposity, which I thoroughly appreciate. From the introduction:

"The essays of On Suicide explore the subject in a rambling, frankly subjective, and openly hesitant effort to provide illumination, their aim being "not to make a bold description of the act," as Amery writes, "but rather to strive for a gentle and cautious approach to it."

[...]

Amery's style of argument has been described by Lothar Baier as a "doubting generosity" that seeks to avoid the attitude of one who is convinced he must be right.

[...]

These characteristics [of Mann and Bernhard] mark Amery's style and method: the 'gentle posture,' the language of doubt and skepticism without relativism, the inclusion of emotion in thinking, the urge to pursue problems outside of their social existence, and the attempt to be as honest as possible."

We are social creatures and so the potential has to be socially constructed. It has to come from us collectively and pragmatically. — apokrisis

I agree that it's not just from ourselves by ourselves and that potential is constructed socially. Even the proud hermit is only proud and only a hermit in relation to the rest of the so-called rabble. Even our selves, as Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and now cognitive science shows, find its origins in the social setting, a reflection off of other apparent selves.

What I mean to say is that in certain circumstances - as Heidegger has shown - a person themselves is struck by the fact that they are an individual and have the freedom to choose within the horizon of our mortality. Angst comes with the understanding of the "Nothing", where there is no significance and no given purpose - and Heidegger advises that we pull-ourselves-up-from-our-bootstraps, so to speak, take charge of our lives, and live authentically as purpose-driven choosers within a society of other purpose-driven choosers.

The application of one's will to one's world is, fundamentally and originatively, a trauma. The angst comes when dasein "forgets" (obscures) mortality and the Nothing but is then suddenly and violently confronted with it unaware. Each subsequent act of "authenticity" comes from a feeling of revulsion to the Nothing. This is clearly and convincingly stated in the work of the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, who argued that human culture is rooted in the fear of death. Culture, as Becker argues, is a "cult of heroism" in which demigod protagonists defeat death. The fear of death is also a primary motivator for procreation, as offspring are the best alternative to actual immortality.

What Schop1 here seems to be getting at here, in my opinion, is that same angst, that same Nothing. The "world" we live in is filled with different significations for tool-using, jouissance, and other pre-theoretical modes. But without dasein (for now, us), there is no signification. A tool no longer has a purpose and loses its tool identity. Not just nuts and bolts but in the big scheme of things. This lack of purpose lies in the background of our purpose-driven lives. Levinas alludes to something similar with the il y a - the "there is" - sometimes felt clearly while outside at night, the understanding that "there is" without any discernible thing seeming to be. A probing, content-less awareness. As of now, to describe it I would say it's something like feeling left-out of something. Like your friends had a great time and didn't invite you. The feeling of dread that you are not important and have been forgotten. Or perhaps even mocked.

Coincidentally, just after posting I came across a picture that reveals the il y a to me:


If we are to act, we must act as if we have the strength of gods - we must be gods, or rather, we must be possessed by gods and their beauty. We own the world, we manipulate and enjoy it. And when we can't own the world, when we can't enjoy it and when the world actually seems to be manipulating us, we look beyond the world for help. Prayer is supplication.

Schop1's thread might be interpreted as a prayer of sorts. A theological plea to be remembered and cared for and not left alone to fend for themselves. Of course, Schop1 doesn't believe in God as far as I am aware, and isn't insomuch praying but demanding we - secular society, progress, science, the new gods - offer a new eschatology, a new teleology. And one that is not only personally satisfying but also morally appropriate, so it must also be a secular theodicy.

You are still speaking as if it can only - Romantically - come from within each of us in a personal and individual fashion. But this is about us as social creatures and what that means in terms of flourishing. — apokrisis

The denial that we have individuality is, in my opinion, a way of obscuring mortality and our freedom. It's inauthentic and doesn't solve the problem as much as it simply dismisses it.

Respectfully, the idea of "human potential" is so tainted with economic ideology that there's hardly any way of conceiving of what human potential might actually be independent of it.

It seems to me that there is such a thing as a "waste of potential" - a person, or a group of people, might be able to do something we consider great, but for some reason or another fail to. At any rate this potential seems to inherently depend on contingent circumstances, including a person or a group of people thinking there is some worth to what they are doing, i.e. their world has significance. Which is not to say it's all pointless. If you've ever been part of a group with a common goal, the world has immense significance. Being part of the crew for a theatrical production is a good example, since Camus has already been mentioned in this thread. But it seems to me that the potential is contingent upon the person choosing a project or goal.

So it seems to me that the question is not that human potential is a spook or whatever, but that there isn't any transcendent, ultimate potential to be fulfilled when a person chooses a project that gives them potential. It is as if the potential comes from nowhere but our own will, a deus ex nihilo.

Actually, the way you approach this seems to be a rather modern way of looking at things: God must be a "thing", existing in the "real world", which typically is the physical world of space-time. God is quantitatively different from everything else in that he exists as a limitless and eternal being - but still as a being within Being. God may be infinite in time and space, but he still is within time and space. God is of the same qualitative order as the rest of the world.

A different take on God, whether that be an ancient, Scholastic or post-modern view (if we are limiting ourselves to Western philosophy) would say that God exists but not as something that can be referred to using exact and precise propositions. God is transcendent upon Being, the ground for existence that can only be analogically described as being "outside" of existence. From this perspective, God can hardly be described in any "scientific" sort of way, as if God were qualitatively similar to concrete objects.

This is partly an explanation and justification for the "mystery" surrounding divinity. If God cannot be described using precise propositional language, but rather can only be grasped negatively and analogically (or through revelation), then there will always be a gap between human reason and God. (This may help bolster religion's status but simultaneously throws into doubt the legitimacy of dogmatic, organized religion - if the divine is mysterious, and revelation personal, what could be right about proselytizing?)

Please explain how I am committing the fallacy of begging the question? I fail to see it. — NKBJ

When you say:

But since I presuppose one reality, one universe, I'll stick to all things that are in existence are "natural" in the sense that they obey the laws of nature. — NKBJ

The (serious) arguments for supernatural "entities" call this into question. Of course anything and everything is natural if you already assume everything that exists must obey the "laws of nature" (whatever those actually are).

Supernatural, transcendent things are not bound by these "laws" precisely because they are transcendent. You seem to be getting stuck with the idea that supernatural things are still immanent in the "physical", "natural" world. They're not, at least not the serious ones. Serious attempts at demonstrating the existence of a supernatural being (such as God) basically always aim to show that God is transcendent upon the immanent material reality. Or at least is not bound by the so-called "laws of nature".

Everything that exists is natural. — NKBJ

But that's just question-begging. The whole point of supernatural hypotheses is to explain something about the world that seemingly cannot be explained through a naturalistic theory.

Typically the more serious and respectable philosophical theories about the supernatural are not about ghosts, unicorns, or any childhood fantasy but rather something totally and wholly other-than-Being. Something above-and-beyond the normal, physical, "natural" state of affairs. A transcendence beyond the immanent reality we live in.

The point of of this thought experiment is to determine whether or not positive and negative feelings such as pain and pleasure are essential in our conception of morality. — Purple Pond

According to (my understanding of) Kant, no: morality is the manifestation of a categorical imperative that is intellectually grasped by the rational faculties of human beings, and is grounded on their innate "dignity". An act cannot be morally "pure" (according to [...] Kant) unless it is done entirely out of a sense of duty (a slightly different view, that an act cannot be moral tout court unless it is done purely out of a sense of duty, is often misattributed to Kant).

Of course, if some beings lacked the capacity to "feel", the content of morality would be different with respect to these beings. This is perhaps one avenue for explaining why God (if "he" exists), "allows" gratuitous suffering. If God is not a "being", nor an agent that can feel as we do, then it may be inappropriate to expect him and human morality to coincide perfectly.

I'm not personally fully invested in Kantian ethics. Instead I think ethics (a system of prescriptive imperatives) derives from the ethical (the asymmetrical encounter between the self and the transcendent Other). This ethical encounters, as Levinas envisions it, is fundamentally a dramatic nausea of shame and responsibility. So while beings who do not feel may have ethics, they would not have the ethical, which is where the real essence of morality lies. Or so I think.

Recently finished:

A Short History of Atheism by Gavin Hyman (very good, recommended).

Ethical Intuitionism by Michael Huemer

The Birth and Death of Meaning by Ernest Becker (re-read).

Currently reading:

The Body in Pain - The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry

Dune by Frank Herbert (re-read).

God Without Being by Jean-Luc Marion

Anxious to begin reading:

The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump

Emmanuel Levinas - The Genealogy of Ethics by John Llewelyn

The Winds of Winter by George R. R. Martin (come on, man, finish the book!)

Just because we can't put in words the "essence" of a male or female doesn't mean there aren't specific characteristics that the constitute them. — Purple Pond

But the fact that we find it difficult to express the essence of many things, sex and gender included, can also mean that there are not specific, essential features of these things. Rather they may be labels applied to sets whose elements have a family resemblance that is not necessarily transitive to each other.

Because of this, these labels are inherently vague. There will always be ambiguities and exceptions to the general "rule of thumb" - as you said, there are some women who cannot give birth. There are also men who lack a penis. What is the defining feature? Is it the biological organs? Is it the behavior? Is it the genetic chromosomes? Is it the appearance?

I think it is important to also remember that many of these labels are historical. What defines "womanhood" comes from the previous usage of the word. Sometimes these labels are very useful - for instance, I think the labels "male" and "female" are useful in medicine, psychology and sociology. The ethical question seems to be whether the inevitable marginalization of the ambiguity and exception is justified by the utility of these labels. I'm not sure what the answer is, if there is a satisfactory answer. Sometimes I think this issue will never be resolved because there is no way to resolve it. Hence why people who choose to support one side of the issue tend to shout a lot.

Again, pain on the Platonic account would be a privation of some good thing, like health. Pain is the lack of a good that otherwise would exist. — Thorongil

Yeah, the privation theory, also prevalent in Scholastic doctrines of good and evil. With respect to that, then:

I do not understand how we are to identify being with goodness with Being, yet acknowledge the existence of evil. If goodness is lacking somewhere, what is there?

I also do not understand what Being actually amounts to. I am sure you know this much about Heidegger to see that the notion of Being is ambiguous, vague, and difficult to communicate.

Finally, I remain unconvinced that something such as extreme agony is "merely" a privation of being. In fact I would more inclined to say that agony is an excess of being. We cannot escape it, it keeps us locked in consciousness, trapped and overwhelmed. The privation theory seems to me to downplay the significance, the positive existence, of unconditional evils like torturous pain.

But doesn't that shift the "evil" to whatever it is that makes escape impossible. So it is not the pain as such. It is the torturer - and the degree to which you would assign moral agency to that entity. — apokrisis

Sure, and I've mentioned before elsewhere that sometimes the word "evil" is used only as a description of a person's character or actions, and sometimes as something broader that includes things we otherwise would call "bad". That the torturer is evil depends on the fact that they inflict something on the victim that is bad for them - unimaginable pain.

Can we do something about Holocausts and antelope being hunted for sport? Of course. So is the evil an irredeemable aspect of existence itself? You are not showing that. — apokrisis

No, we can't do anything about the Holocaust (because it already happened), and there's probably no way of eliminating poaching and hunting either. Even if we did, there would still be all the times in the past where animals were murdered for fun by humans.

This is what I'm complaining about. You don't seem prepared to make a proper argument. You talk about the effect as if it has no cause - no reasons. You attempt to close down a proper discussion by calling the pain itself an irredeemable evil. And then from that faulty premise, you will draw the familiar anti-natalist truths. — apokrisis

There are many cases in which people go through some horribly traumatic experience and live to tell the tale. Perhaps they've changed and grown, became more mature and compassionate. But they still insist that they would never go through such an experience again. There are some experiences of physical (or emotional, "mental" etc) pain that are just so awful that nothing can redeem them in the eyes of the person themselves. They survived to tell the tale, but wish they never had to go through the experience in the first place.

As I said before I'm focusing mostly on torturous physical pain because I felt it was the most obvious candidate for an "irredeemable" bad / evil. But there's others as well, which I've mentioned: being wrongly accused, one's property being stolen and not returned, being deprived of deserved recognition, being ridiculed without a chance to defend oneself, etc. All of these go down in time and are part of the bedrock of history. There are all these loose ends, unfinished projects, un-redeemed evils. The "healthy" way of approaching this is to habitually look to the future for salvation - each day is a new journey towards salvation as we hope tomorrow will somehow be different than today (and redeem all that has gone wrong in the past - I suspect this contributes to the decision of many to have children). Psychologically "healthy" people must have the capacity to forget what has happened, otherwise the future would have no charm.

Prima facie? Sure, but I'm not willing to go as far as to say that they are unredeemable. How could one possibly know that? — Thorongil

The point of it being prima facie is that it initially appears to be unredeemable. The epistemological approach I take to a lot of philosophical things is that unless we have a good reason not to, we should take things at face value (phenomenal conservatism). I also mentioned that the prima facie recognition that torturous physical pain is, in fact, irredeemable, is an essential contribution to the motivation we have to prevent or eliminate it. If we honestly did believe God, say, would "make everything right", we might have far less motivation to do anything about torturous pain because the deity would redeem it in the end.

Good in what sense? I'm sure you're aware of the long Platonic tradition that equates being with goodness, so that inasmuch as something merely exists, it is good. — Thorongil

I was under the impression that the Platonic notion of the good was that it transcends Being, that what exists are mere imitations, or copies, of the perfect Forms. The transcendence of the Good is also a common notion in phenomenology, viz. Levinas' excendance, or escape from Being.

If we equate Being with Goodness then, in my opinion, we're taking on a picture of Goodness that is something other than a moral Goodness. How am I do understand the existence of torturous pain as a "good" thing, when by all accounts it seems to me to be a purely bad thing?

Sure, I don't blame the lion for eating the gazelle, it's only in its programming and it would starve if it didn't. I'm disapproving of "Life" as a general category of being. Life operates in a way that, if it were a human, you probably wouldn't have a problem with calling it barbaric.

What goes on in the animal kingdom isn't barbaric -- it is life. — Bitter Crank

Why can't life itself be barbaric?

I agree that not all pain and "suffering" is bad. You climb a mountain and endure the struggle to get to the vista, you grind in university for that little piece of paper, etc etc.

But I made sure to label the pain I am concerned with as "torturous" pain. Irredeemable pain, the likes of which are not beneficial in any way and cannot be said to be for a greater purpose. I find it impossible to not see something like, say, the Holocaust, or an antelope being hunted for sport, as anything but evil.

One positive conclusion would be to focus more on preventing this kind of stuff from happening. But really I think on the personal level it comes down to what psychological "type" you are, which influences your ability to push certain things out of your awareness. I think if most people were aware of how much torturous suffering there has been, is and will be and the prima facie impossibility of theodicy, the consequences would be quite drastic.

I'm reminded of Cioran's quote from On the Heights of Despair: "Bring every man to the agony of life's last moments by whip, fire, or injections, and through terrible torture he will undergo the great purification afforded by a vision of death. Then free him and let him run in a fright until he falls exhausted. I warrant you that the effect is incomparably greater than any obtained through normal means. If I could, I would drive the entire world to agony to achieve a radical purification of life; I would set a fire burning insidiously at the roots of life, not to destroy them but to give them a new and different sap, a new heat. The fire I would set to the world would not bring ruin but cosmic transfiguration. In this way life would adjust to higher temperatures and would cease to be an environment propitious to mediocrity. And maybe in this dream, death too would cease to be immanent in life."

We need not subjugate people to the horror of torturous pain but merely make them acutely aware of its existence elsewhere to alter the perspectives people have on life and the world in general. I think a lot of people already have these perspectives but keep them in check.

It looks like you are saying that the goods of life are only had at the expense of the possibility of something very bad. Is that the main idea? I know that sounds simplistic, but that's all I can get when I put the main points together. But maybe I am not getting the idea of conditional goods and absolute bads here. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, that's the "basic" idea. Though I would say we tend to recognize that goods at the expense of evils are not acceptable in the future, but tend to ignore evils that have already occurred and which provide the historical bedrock on which the present rests. Nietzsche's eternal return must entail a profound disrespect to those who suffered without reason - I often wonder if he would have said the same thing had he lived in post-World War II Europe.

The length of my OP probably could have been shortened or simplified, but I find it difficult to express in words how barbaric, childish and empty bourgeoisie entertainment seems when the reality of extreme suffering is understood. This is what I found to be a solace in Scarry's thesis about the "unmaking" of the world. Recognizing that extreme suffering exists - and I mean really recognizing it and not simply paying lip-service - makes almost everything else seem like a self-absorbed charade, especially theodicies. It's really very simple, and because of that it's "overwhelmingly underwhelming". The value of the world is stripped away as the reality of pain pushes everything else aside.

Almost always is pain represented by that which it is not. Pain is without intentionality so when it is communicated with words (and not shrieks, howls and moans), part of the essence of pain is lost and replaced with something that ultimately makes it seem less bad. It becomes "aestheticized", or transformed into a symbol of power, or forgotten about shortly after thanks to our brains' selective memory.