Against All Nihilism and Antinatalism
Life is Good in Itself. True enough, there is pain and suffering; disappointment and aggravation; hard labor and little reward, injustice and inequality, tyranny and worse. But the upsides outweigh the downsides. There are pleasures and joys, loves and sorrows, great music, drama, art, and science, dreams, the fascinating details of life on earth, the vastness of the universe, and all such things.
The goodness of life does not require the gods. Good life doesn't require a heaven for the thankful or a hell for the ungrateful. The goodness of life is present without our perfection. There will be liars, thieves, knaves and scoundrels who will prey upon the kind, loving, innocent, and defenseless (as well as each other), and that has always been the case.
There may not be a purpose for us to fulfill, there may be no unifying pattern which makes all life meaningful. We are lucky to be dynamically alive. However happy or sorrowful each of us may be, we will not be here long before we are gone forever. It is better to seize the day and make the most we can of it.
The goodness of life does not require the gods. Good life doesn't require a heaven for the thankful or a hell for the ungrateful. The goodness of life is present without our perfection. There will be liars, thieves, knaves and scoundrels who will prey upon the kind, loving, innocent, and defenseless (as well as each other), and that has always been the case.
There may not be a purpose for us to fulfill, there may be no unifying pattern which makes all life meaningful. We are lucky to be dynamically alive. However happy or sorrowful each of us may be, we will not be here long before we are gone forever. It is better to seize the day and make the most we can of it.
Comments (396)
I mostly agree, but I don't think that live's pleasures and pains
can be additive, sure there are greater and lesser pleasures and pains but I don't think you can add them up and say yea this life has more pleasure and less pain. To be clear, or at least as clear as I get, I am not saying that one life can't be qualitatively better than another, only it can not be quantitatively better.
I would like to agree, but it makes philosophy redundant. If there is no wisdom to seek, then there is no need to contemplate life’s sorrows, or their amelioration. Not that there’s anything the matter with saying it, and it’s admirable in its own way - but it’s not what gave rise to philosophy in the first place. To put it another way, if philosophy is nothing more than ‘hey ain’t life grand’, then what is philosophy?
(Although hasten to add, perfectly agree with your rejection of nihilism and ant-natalism.)
So yes, we can not treat them mathematically. We can't quantify the pleasure of a terrific orgasm and say it is 37% more pleasurable than a run-of-the-mill orgasm, or that a fantastic orgasm arithmetically balances out the pain of a dental cleaning by the hygienist from hell. If we could, I'd bet that the hygienist from hell would beat the best orgasm all hollow. (I ran into that hygienist 3 years ago and haven't forgotten the experience.)
BTW, I didn't say life was grand, I said it was good. Don't you think life is good?
I strongly think that the upsides do not outweigh the downsides..the downsides are usually the things that affect peoples lives the most; whether it be a trauma, a loss, anxiety, depression etc. People usually remember the bad instead of the good since it affects them more. I may be interpreting you wrong, but are you taking a bit of a hedonistic stance?
If there is pain and suffering, liars, thieves and knaves that prey on the kind, loving an innocent then there will always be purpose; find a way of ending that whether it is within you, within your family or your social circle, even politically. Small or big, we can always improve.
I stopped experiencing sorrow when I stopped playing the victim and began fighting the good fight. I stopped feeling sad and lonely the moment I made the decision that I will not expect anyone to love me but I will work hard to love others. I stopped feeling scared the moment I starting seeing the results of my work with young people, the moment I saw my girls get stronger and happier and my boys become focused and respectful. All the misery in the world can be resolved by the simple act of listening, you don't even have to have the answers, everyone will find it when they are ready.
This does not make me someone special. It does not make me too "kind" or a prude. I am cool, I wear awesome clothes and shoes, have laughs and watch Adam Sandler movies, I pump it at the gym and have killer discussions with friends, but I have girl balls, basically. Being virtuous is not by following an image; it is simply being courageous.
I am not sure if I agree with part of your thread title (antinatalism). Not that I think that giving birth itself is immoral, but giving birth for the wrong reasons are. As one who does not have a family, parenting is not something that just is but there needs to be a mutual desire to procreate and to understand the underlying moral value to 'family' and that is why I personally have made the choice not to have children. Without the right man who will share the same desires make the idea of having children a very remote concept for me that I will return to my original objective and counter the emotions that come with it through adoption.
Quoting Intrigued
I agree that life
Quoting Intrigued
and I earnestly urge you to get on with making something of it.
Quoting Intrigued
I am not sure if this is factually true. It may be, but a lot of memories--both good and bad--are lost. On the other hand, there is a benefit from forgetting bad stuff--especially the bad stuff that one didn't bring about by his or her own actions. People who describe themselves as depressed (I speak from experience here) tend to focus on bad stuff. Depression is an affliction, not a philosophical stance.
Quoting Intrigued
I've never been accused of being a hedonist, but there is evidence that premium ice cream is better than the cheap stuff.
You are interpreting me wrong.
Well, it happens to be, but to be honest only a part of that is due to me. And life is also fleeting. But then, the remark above from ‘Intrigued’ saddens me. Many people feel like that nowadays. Neitszsche predicted that nihilism would become endemic, and I think he was right; actually it’s about the only thing I agree with Nietzsche about.
But there is a malaise of life, and it needs a cure, which is what ‘philosophy’ ought to provide. If you don’t need the cure, then more strength to you.
You said "life is good in itself". Not just that life is good, but that it is inherently good; "the goodness of life is present without our perfection". What i interpreted you saying is that simply living is a good thing and that we should recognize that; that we need to see how life is good in itself, as if the good is already there. What I'm saying is that we need to create the good for ourselves, not find what is already out there.
I wasn't ruling out individuals finding purpose, just that it wasn't an installed feature.
Quoting TimeLine
I don't like antinatalism, but I also don't care for people reproducing willy nilly because they won't practice family planning techniques that are readily available, and which no-one is stopping them from using. Now, disadvantaged, powerless women in some third world countries may not have access to family planning, and may bear many children without wishing too. Their moral situations are quite different from those who could plan pregnancies and don't.
Modern day society is the disease that philosophy was trying to prevent. Being stuck in it propels the nihilism to me
Since I said life is good from the get go, I won't endorse your position that we have to somehow make it good. That life is inherently good is like grace: You don't have to do anything to achieve it. It is yours for the asking.
But... since you want to create the good for your life, then go for it. You can take the materials of your life and enhance or elevate them to a higher better good. I wish you all the success in the world.
If 2500 years of philosophy saved billions of people from nihilism, then it was all worth it.
:-d
Quoting Bitter Crank
What does this mean? What is "Life" with a capital L? What does it mean that it is Good?
Too often is "life" associated with a sunny, cheery afternoon, the greenery of the landscape, the cutesy Hobbit village. But that's not "life". That's only a way of life.
The same can be said of most conceptions of life - they are ways of living, not life itself.
The way I see things is that, after you have met all your basic needs, have worked and strove to maintain a tolerable equilibrium, and aren't horribly suffering...then you might start enjoying some things. The negative is structural, and the positive contingent. This is exactly what the Buddha meant when he said that "life is suffering". Life is suffering, even if there's some good parts to it as well.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Do you mean instead that the stuff that happens within life can be good? If so, then I agree - there are many things in life that are good, great even, and are worth celebrating. But LIFE itself? No, that is not good. We absolutely must make a distinction between the empirical, ontic phenomena within life (love, music, drama, art, science, dreams, etc) and the metaphysical, ontological structure of life itself (suffering, desire, decay, disease, death).
Quoting Bitter Crank
Quoting Bitter Crank
...and will continue to be the case. The problem with affirming life is that you implicitly affirm all of these bad things as well.
Affirming the things within life can be and often is innocent. Affirming life itself is most definitely not, since it entails the affirmation of that which should not be affirmed.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Do they, though? If the upsides outweighed the downsides, why are there pessimists? It puts a dent in the proposition that life is good (TM) when there are many people who cannot seem to recognize this, and in fact when most people live as though it were not good (but rather a burden, a chore, sometimes even a nightmare).
I like you BC, you seem like a nice enough person. Don't waste your time on us pessimists, cause we're not gonna start loving life any time soon. Optimists have a hell of a lot more to lose than we do, which is why I always feel a bit of guilt when I argue my pessimistic point.
Why did Nietzsche think nihilism would become endemic? He lived 1844 to 1900... what had he seen, heard, read in the 19th century that convinced him of the 20th and 21st centuries fate?
Some people feel that "life is like a sewer: What you get out of it depends on what you put into it." I don't suppose these people went far out of their way to become pessimists and or nihilists, but they probably had some hand in it.
Thinking that life is a sewer is the flip side of thinking that life is good. It's a simplified version of a complex matter. One could criticize my view as some sort of nit-witted la la land puff piece, I suppose. I would hope not. I don't deny that "good life" has problems. Life just is problematic, even if it is good. There are bad people in this good life. There are difficult diseases in good life. It isn't perfection of niceness that makes life good, it's existence-at-all that makes life good.
If Nietzsche predicted more nihilism, maybe he predicted more depression as well. There are an awful lot of people who are, or who think they are depressed. Depressed people favor gloom over glam. They see the negative more readily than they see the positive.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Why?
I think this, and the rest of what you said, says more about how you find yourself to be attuned to the world or to "life in itself" than it does about life in itself. I don't know what "life in itself" is, but the way you are towards it is surely a positive way to be.
Seems like it’s a glass half full half empty issue, from what I recall of him. But he did have parables that to me are not indicators of pessimism. That one about the beast of burden as camel that then has its back broken due to carrying too much of a load, then transforming into a predator, a lion, that needs to destroy the monster of thou shalt (and thou shalt not)—the size of this monster being proportional to the weight it once carried—and, after so liberating itself from this body of authoritarian constraints, then is reawoken, or rebirthed, as a baby who sees the world for the very first time. To me, it is a parable of hope; of challenges to be sure, but one that is nevertheless far more optimistic than pessimistic in its underpinning.
Saw that you posted this on another thread and found that interesting and applicable to this conversation. Quite odd, that you would say that, given what you have discussed here:
"Our existence makes us biased in assessing the significance of our existence."
As said above: Quoting bloodninja
Philosophy may greatly enrich our understanding of the grandeur and complexity of life. I don't believe philosophy can have any soteriological function beyond the deflationary; for example, showing "the limitations of knowledge to make way for faith" or helping us realize that our existential dilemma consists in demanding answers to questions that cannot be answered in the way we think we would like them to be; in other words showing us that we are "bewitched by language". These soteriological functions are both deflationary functions of philosophy, but the joy of philosophy which consists in creating ever new concepts to see the world in different lights is not a deflationary, but rather an expansionary, function.
That is a major assignment in a University course on philosophy or intellectual history. Here's a summary by a philosophical theologian, David Bentley Hart:
I suppose it's all a bit fraught, for a casual conversation, but it's what comes to mind.
I don't know what to think about this, the claim that the sheer existence of life makes it good. I mean, I'm familiar with Scholastic attempts to show the existence just is good, since it's the actualization of a potential and this entail more perfection, but that doesn't seem like what you're going for here, and I don't like Scholastic stuff that much either.
What about life makes it good? Why is it life that is good? I've already given my reasons why I think life is not good (not that life has no good within it) - the inevitable suffering, decay, disease, and most importantly death. Life is suffering, life is death. Every cradle is a grave.
So when I hear these claims that "life is good", it always strikes me as more appropriate to say "certain forms of unsustainable ways of living are good". As has said, we have to strive towards and create the good within life, it doesn't come ready-made. And if we don't go for them, we suffer (and probably die eventually).
It's a shabby game, because even if you win, you lose. That's what I see to be the core of the pessimistic point.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Because I think making this distinction between the empirical, contingent aspects of life and the structural necessary aspects of life gives a more accurate picture of human life than the more common view that life is a "see-saw" or "mixed bag", some good, some bad. On my account, the good that happens within life takes place within the context of a broader negative landscape. In my opinion there is hardly anything more absurd than the notion that life is meant to be enjoyed. It's just what it is.
It also helps me and I think some other people to approach life in this way. As Schopenhauer said, life makes sense if we see it as a penitentiary. If we approach life as something we have to struggle against, we can help prepare ourselves against the inevitable and live a more heroic life.
And finally it frees pessimists from the charge that they can't enjoy anything in life, or can't see anything as good at all, and actually thus makes it more digestible to non-pessimists. I don't deny there can be good things in life. I just deny that life viewed outside of the present, subjective moment, can be seen as anything other than bad. And that's probably fairly easy for many people to accept, since they already oftentimes do - see how they affirm things within life in order to "make up for" the structurally negative things in life, like death and disease.
So in the end all I'm saying is, keep living your life if you want to, but don't be fooled into thinking these enjoyable aspects of life constitute life itself, or qualify life as good. And certainly do not procreate or encourage procreation, as abstaining from procreation is far easier than suicide (and the vast majority of the rest of life, at that).
I came into philosophy through spiritual philosophy, and that's where my interests lie.
What does this mean? I don't think you can fairly characterize Nietzsche's philosophy as "pessimistic". So, could it be that you mean that he had a pessimistic temperament? If so, that might be true; but even then, it would not follow that his philosophy must be a pessimistic one.
The mutual love between two people and the desire to build a life together, a real desire and not some superficial one, is this family planning. The motivation or will is amplified by understanding that love is a choice that is mutually shared, whereas most think relationships are solely sexual pleasure and economics rather than love. The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life. As for:
Quoting Bitter Crank
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.” Sartre.
Sure, but philosophy cannot give you what you seek; only faith can; so, at best philosophy can prepare you for faith. For that to happen you need to give up the idea that the kinds of "answers" you are after can be acquired by philosophical thought and also the idea that salvation is dependent on some particular metaphysics or other..
A contradiction...
But again, we can affirm intra-worldly things while denying the context in which they arise.
I've always felt like the one refutation of nihilism was life itself.
Life exists. You exist.
Stereotyping. Exasperating, again.
Not a contradiction, a subtlety.
Where I disagree is that recognition of "the pessimistic point" (by which I take you to mean something like a recognition that there is no overarching meaning to life, no heavenly father to care for us, no afterlife, no salvation in this life that is not based on delusion, and so on) is not itself pessimistic unless this recognition is taken to be a reason for lamentation.
I don't see why you think it is stereotyping. Both Christ and Buddha warned against the snares of philosophy. Philosophy is inevitably a function of the dualistic mind; every position contains the seeds of its own negation. Very few philosophers imagine that philosophy can yield definitive or final answers to any of our questions whether aesthetic, ethical, epistemological, metaphysical, religious or spiritual. At best it can show us that there are no such discursive answers. So, I must say I fail to see what you find exasperating in what I had said.
Is it a subtlety you can, or care to, explain?
Yes, I agree; I don't read Nietzsche as either a nihilist or a pessimist. On the contrary, Nietzsche sees nihilism as inherent in Christianity.
Is it necessarily pessimistic to say that the essence of life is a blind, purposeless will? For some the idea that the essence of life is a conscious will that cares about what we do would be a cause for pessimism. Whether you are an optimist or a pessimist in the face of what you believe to be the essence of life would seem to depend on what you want to be true. Either way it could go either way, it seems to me.
Oh boy, this thread seems to be, (pardon my imagery here) a big circle jerk for PF members.
"Oh, look how great life is..look how great it can be...
"Yes, yes, PF member, do go on so, I love your positive framework, let's all frolic in the flowers."
"Oh, I really like what you said about so-and-so aspect of life being good"..
"Yes, yes, I totally agree, but I would add, it's not just there is an inherent aspect that is good, but what you make of it that is good"
"Oh indubitably sir, thank you for showing me even more how good life can be"
"Of course, sir! I just want to elaborate on the happiness that you expressed!!"
Ok, this stops now :P . I am the evil and scorned antinatalist and pessimist that you all revile.. pleased to see everyone in good form here. I thought I'd make an appearance to add some perspective from the antinatalist side. Carry on with your circle jerking, if you must, but keep in mind several things.
1) There is structural suffering. My particular brand of pessimism equates this with the idea of instrumentality. This is the idea that life presents itself chiefly as a repetitive task of regulating survival, comfort, and boredom. It is the constant Will at the bottom of our egos driving us forward for no purpose. Our personalities via enculturation then create preferences for where to direct certain socially derived survival, comfort, and entertainment activities. You can say as a society, the de facto non-intentional, yet emergent goal is to perpetuate social institutions by using individuals as inadvertent vehicles in which to enact another life of socially derived survival, comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking activities (which in turn strengthens social institutions, and so on).
2) There is contingent suffering. This equates to the classical litany of harms one can encounter living in daily life. It is contingent, because it is intra-worldy and circumstantial. It is based on how circumstances play out, and though not "baked into life" certainly have very high probabilities of occurring. This would include any genetic/environmentally caused illness, disease, disaster, painful circumstance, painful decision, painful experience that one usually encounters by being a certain person with various traits interacting with the environment and other people. Another problem with contingent harms is that it they are unevenly distributed. Some people will have it harder than others due to circumstances of their own or circumstances not of their own. If it is not of their own, nothing can be done. It is a true externality. If it was something that could be done better from learning and not repeating a mistake, it is still a harm that had to be experienced. Why do people need to go through this process in the first place? Yes, people can "improve". Some people don't. Even if they do improve, why is it the job of humans to be born for some major improvement project that they must undergo? Is this not just post-hoc rationalization for bad decision-making? "Oh, well it's a learning experience" doesn't seem to justify why there needs to be this dialectic of learning from mistakes in the first place. So humans need to be born so that they can learn to not make as many mistakes?
There is non-existence before birth and there is death. What is it that really needs to take place for a new human born into the world, considering the repetitive maintenance/upkeep of the structural suffering, and the myriad of contingent circumstantial harms that befall humans? Rather, no one needs to be born to thus maintain and upkeep their life nor experience contingent harms.
The goods one experiences in life- the relationships, the learning, the aesthetic pleasures (including humor), the physical pleasures, the pleasures of engaging in highly stimulating physical/mental activities (or flow activities), and achievement, though they might make life a bit more of a consolation, are not worth the structural and contingent suffering involved. Also, just like contingent harms, these goods are unevenly distributed. Some people will have a better time seeking out, finding, or obtaining these goods than others. Some will struggle more than others. Not all goods in life are guaranteed. Why create the problem of finding goods in the first place, if no problem needs to be given in the first place?
Starting with such a bold claim does not endear readers to take you seriously.
I disagree. I very much appreciate it when someone begins with a bold, clear claim, and then goes on to argue for it.
How do you justify the conclusion that:
How do you make that value call?
I doubt pleasure/pain are additive (utilitarian) experiences for either a person or a population, rather, I think that they are qualitative personal experiences, otherwise how could a woman go through the pain of childbirth and yet be full of joy.
Life cannot be "good in itself". It can only be good in his (the poster) opinion.
It would have been more honest to say "I think life is good."
One reason, stated in previous post: these goods are unevenly distributed. Some people will have a better time seeking out, finding, or obtaining these goods than others. Some will struggle more than others. Not all goods in life are guaranteed. Why create the problem of finding goods in the first place, if no problem needs to be given in the first place?
Another is that, at the bottom of all experiences is an emptiness that must be filled yet again. This is often equated to the suffering described in Buddhism. It is a striving that is never yielding, yet we must find contents to content us and entertain us. Why create this problem of survival on one hand and finding the best way to fill our time on the other in the first place? All this energy running about again and again. How about let sleeping dogs lie? No need to make people put energy forth to maintain themselves.
If there are a need for goods, that means we are lacking those goods to begin with. So we need to find goods as we go about life to fulfill the cup that perpetually needs to be filled, to be emptied yet again (the emptiness at the bottom of endeavors) to be fulfilled yet again. It is an absurdity.
I enjoy solving problems, and the problem of finding goods is a crucial issue, It adds zest to my life, when I succeed it is fantastic, when I fail it's depressing, but I enjoy the striving.
Still working on the others.
Why is "Life is good in itself" a bold claim? Or is it "in itself" that is problematic?
It a value.
Oh no, people are double checking my posts and comparing them.
To assert that "life is good" -- not just my life, your life, or a millipede's life but Life--which has made this discussion and many others possible in the first place--is good seems like a statement which has to stand on its own without proof. People also say that the universe is meaningless. Asserting that the universe is meaningless (and doesn't provide us with any meaning) is another statement that just has to stand on it's own. Life, or the universe, is different than a package of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Saying a statement has to stand on its own doesn't make it true, it's an assertion one can agree with or not.
There may be reasons why one would assert that life is good, or that the universe is meaningless, and that can be analyzed. There is a difference between asserting the universe is meaningless and finding this freedom, and asserting that the universe is meaningless and blowing one's brains out.
I find that "life is good" is a more serviceable POV than the view "life is a living nightmare".
Speaking of which, it's time to leave for a dental appointment. More later.
There is a philosophically technical term for this used in all British universities. It is called bollocks.
Some might say that Ben & Jerry's Ice cream is good in itself and they would be wrong too.
It only take one dissenting voice to prove my case, which is true regardless of that voice.
The problem of finding 'goods' (not merely physical/material goods, but also emotional/spiritual) is inherent to life itself. Without the goods, there is nothingness. Where there is nothingness, there is a void and depression emerges. Life itself is the void and is the possibility. Part of the problem of life is simply the fact that we have too much freedom to think and dream but are physically, financially, emotionally etc constrained on those dreams. If you don't find the goods, you don't survive. I think the problem is a a given to life, not that the problem has the option to be given. It is just there, given to everyone.
I generally agree with you on this. But this lands you in either of two categories. Would you say you're more of a religious skeptic of the likes of Montaigne, Pascal, Kierkegaard, Hamann or a mystic of the likes of Berdyaev, Eckhart, Boheme, etc.?
Both paths affirm the limitation of reason (and philosophy). I think the former emphasises faith much more, while the latter emphasises non-discursive knowledge (or learned ignorance) more.
A very quick answer: I'm not sure about this distinction, because I see the non-discursive knowledge of the mystic to be in the form of intuitive feeling. This experience gets interpreted (obviously quite differently and yet with commonalities across different cultures) to become a form of non-discursive discourse; and that's where the faith comes in.
Yes, I see. However, from this description, you clearly land in the second camp, not in the first.
So, you see the first camp as denying the possibility of mystical knowledge and/or revelation? Is this a denial just of gnostic experience? I've never been really clear on the distinction between gnostic experience and revelation.
Yes. Think of it like a religious David Hume, instead of an atheist David Hume. So they would take Scripture on faith, and would deny that mystical experience can offer knowledge. Basically a religious Pyrrhonist.
Quoting Janus
The mystics would say that mystical experiences reveal knowledge - so it acts as a revelation itself, along with Scripture. The religious skeptic would say that mystical experiences are to be treated with suspicion and cannot be converted to knowledge - we don't gain additional knowledge by means of these experiences.
Would they not then be taking the mystical experiences of others on faith; and yet not having faith in their own mystical experiences (assuming that they have mystical experiences). If they don't have such experiences of their own, then this attitude would seem to be sensible enough.
:-x I should be at work!
This is a discussion that Janus and I have been having for months, on and off, for
example:
Quoting Janus
Quoting Janus
So that exchange included a Biblical quotation, to the effect that the attempt to articulate 'philosophical spirituality' is basically a 'boundary violation' - that any 'mystical experiences' are as it were totally innocent of any philosophical elaboration, and are essentially private and subjective.
Whereas I am seeking to understand classical metaphysics which I think provides a real philosophical argument against materialism, and a genuine alternative conception of knowledge, not simply a 'mystical experience'. It is not only 'a feeling' or 'the intuition of a lived experience', but is an insight based on the fundamental platonist argument that numbers, universals, conventions, scientific laws, logic and language are real, but not material. This has been elaborated through the classical philosophical tradition.
Quoting Agustino
I am reading Jacques Maritain The Degrees of Knowledge - this preserves the ancient sense of the 'hierarchy of knowledge' from the lower level of sensory perception, through scientific and mathematical knowledge, to metaphysical insight, and finally to mystical enlightenment. This is what 'philosophy' used to mean. And I don't think I am at all inclined towards Catholicism, as such - it's simply that this particular philosophical tradition is nearly the only one in which the Western form of the perennial philosophy is preserved, lived and practiced (the other being the Orthodox tradition, of which David Bentley Hart is a contemporary exponent.)
Quoting Joshs
Nobody has ever been able to explain to me why Nietzsche's philosophy of the ubermensch and the Will to Power doesn't culminate in fascism, something for which I think there is ample historical evidence.
Thinking about this. The empty suffering experience that pushes us to continually seek more, novel experiences. Perhaps this is where the animal in us meshes the man in us. The animal seeks more and more experience, the and man in us is never fully satisfied by these experiences.
I think historically having a lot of children was essential due to the high infant mortality rate and the need for these children to care for parents, I took the tour of the Guinness Factory in downtown Dublin a few years ago, along the way they mentioned that the founder's wife had 21 children, but half of them died prior to maturity, those that did live went on to carry the business through the next generation.
Somebody recently did a post with a Buddhist Monk who immolated himself, with no expression of feeling the flames. It is amazing what some can do by sheer force of will.
Imagine if Stephen Hawking's parents known that their son would have a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and they practiced antinatalism, then we would not have one of the brightest minds of our generation
They would be accepting that others, and even themselves, have mystical experiences. What they would deny is that those experiences yield knowledge. Remember the skeptical method as drawn out in Outlines of Pyrrhonism and similar works. It is to set different experiences against each other to show that they are contradictory to each other and hence knowledge in those regards is not possible.
So the skeptic would say that people do have mystical experiences. But an experience can be interpreted in contradictory ways, and therefore knowledge is impossible. For example, the same experience can be interpreted as sent by God to reveal truth, or sent by the devil to deceive. The same mystic can have an experience indicating absorption into God, and another indicating that there is a difference between God's essence and his essence. Etc. Thus no mystical knowledge is possible.
Let's take a look at the ending of Montaigne's chapter "On prognostications" from his Essays. He takes a look at something that is close to a mystical experience, but not quite - namely Socrates' daemon.
So the skeptic may even act on those impulses, and use them in his life, but he will not claim that they yield knowledge. So even while using them, he will remain skeptical that they are things he knows.
The mystic, on the other hand, will claim certainty and knowledge as a result of those experiences.
I do not revile your opinions, but I must say this in advance of my dissection of your argument as I take it that there is a slight stab in my direction that perhaps requires some elucidation. To be 'emotional' is ambiguous, but the ontology of emotions enable existence to have substance and whilst perhaps the state is a neuro-psychological experience, it nevertheless provides us with a unique and intuitive process that coordinates a response to and relationship with the external world; it gives meaning to experience and is foundational to empathy and thus ultimately moral consciousness.
But there is an ambiguity in our understanding of the sentiment. The first and broadly understood - i.e. the boo friggidy hoo my life is shit emotions - is only bad insofar as the individual does not actively engage in making those circumstances better and if they are able to articulate it, then they are able to improve it. I am not fond of this type of emotion, it is too static, defeatist and unchanging for my taste.
The other, however, the this situation is unbearable and it needs to stop emotion is, to me, extremely important. Martha Nussbaum' account of compassion and emotion and her use of her own personal experiences as part of her thesis exemplifies how important such sentiments are, her and another favourite of mine Raimond Gaita' object-directedness through personal experience in books like The Philosophers Dog or Romulus, My Father. It is what makes us humane and to understand love or to be loving. As Nussbaum claims, our lack of emotions or appropriate emotional responses actually show that our response to and actions with the world can be hindered and thus our first and primary focus should be about articulating and correctly understanding ourselves.
When I was studying my PhD, my supervisor was so profoundly controlling in his attempt to dissuade my use of a similar methodology (he was a Marxist) that he referred to mine as being 'too feminine' and claimed that anything without a strict, clear, black and white reality was too 'emotional' and thus lacked legitimacy. I dropped out because at the time I thought he may be right.
He could not have been more wrong. Compassion and the passion for things like human rights, justice, righteousness and where I feel an inherent disdain for crimes against humanity, for the abuse of women and children, the lack of inequality, they are not a weakness but a strength. To use my own personal experience to exemplify this strength is comparatively what makes the OP sensible in his approach. So, you can call it 'circle jerking' but really, you are being the jerk here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Erich Fromm wrote: "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” Our motivation or will to happiness and the experience of euphoria is identified and conditional with external objects or an implicit target to make the experience intelligible. A study of children in Romanian orphanages in the 1990's shows that the inhumane and extremely minimal contact with adults where no affection or emotion had ever been experienced actually alters the brain. We can give food, shelter, all the necessities to 'live' but that is not where 'life' manifests. The cognitive mechanisms that affect emotional expressions is modelled during developmental stages by characterising psychological content and sometimes this content is unconscious and not clearly understood and so projected incorrectly or what we refer to as mental health concerns like hysteria or sociopathy. How we express that needn't be violent or highly visible; a sociopath who has shut-off completely can still appear to live a normal life.
Are you implying that love - and again, not that sentiment of a mushy romance but think of 'brotherly love' when I say it or the capacity to give love (emotion/compassion) - as a Will that drives us, are you suggesting the endeavour to reach happiness by regulating and correctly applying our emotions and by being passionate against injustice or bad things happening to others, that contains no 'purpose'? As you say:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Humans don't need to be born at this stage; I openly told a woman at work who said that she spent $50,000 on IVF treatment that she was an idiot. We have more than enough children being born for the wrong reasons that need our attention (love, compassion, empathy, they are emotions that connect us) and why I myself do not wish to give birth but will (in the future) adopt a child. There is no 'black and white, strict, clear' reality here; IVF treatment and anti-natalism are two extremes and what we need is to apply ourselves with more humanity, compassion and knowledge that modifies our recalcitrant emotions and project it correctly to the external world, to direct the implicit and subjective experience to - as Searl said - direction of fit.
I'm really enjoying this thread, although I am getting in late. I have a hard time discussing things with you. Our backgrounds and attitudes are similar. I often find myself wanting to say something only to find you've already said it.
I believe that life is good. Unequivocally. I have been unhappy much of my life, but I never for a second didn't love the world and feel like I belong here. I like to think that the world and I have been evolving together for 3.5 billion years. How could I possibly not belong here.
I have been surprised how many people on this forum are despairing or depressed. Cynical. They'll say something deeply despairing and I'll think they are joking only to figure out as the discussion goes on that they are serious. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. This kind of thinking draws certain kinds of people and they tend toward that affliction. I find myself wanting to hug people and tell them things will be ok.
Pretty arrogant. For you to tell people what their life means. For you to claim that most people's desire for love and acceptance is "solely for sexual pleasure and economics rather than love." Arrogant and wrong.
Can't you see that BC believes it? Are you saying he should hide his thoughts and feelings so you won't be put off?
Pretty arrogant of you not to explain why a relationship based solely on sexual pleasure and economics is morally good.
Do you really believe that discussions of value have no place in philosophy? Pretty much all philosophy talks about is values and opinions. There is no bottom. Any issue can be taken down and down and down. You'll never find the end. Except when you appeal to values.
You may think that the assertion 'life in itself is good' is bollocks or bullshit or whatever term you like. There are many who, for various reasons, don't agree that life is good. I can't tell whether your objection is that "life is not good' or that 'life in itself is good' is poorly stated.
If you would, please clarify your view.
What I said was "Pretty arrogant. For you to tell people what their life means. For you to claim that most people's desire for love and acceptance is "solely for sexual pleasure and economics rather than love." Arrogant and wrong."
I respect the high standards you have set for your own loving relationships. I hope you find what you're looking for. Your arrogance shows when you pontificate about how others should live their lives. And also in how you mischaracterize their motivations. Just because people don't hold out for the things you find important, that doesn't mean they seek love "solely for sexual pleasure and economics."
No doubt she found your assessment quite helpful and refreshingly frank.
The reaction was not as bad as when I said the same to someone who spent that much on a wedding.
Whilst I appreciate that you point out aspects to content that ultimately draw focus away from the overall argument - whether intentional or not - I think it is you projecting what you find 'important' and that since this is contrary to what I said, it is you that is actually being arrogant.
Juicy details, please. Did the bride punch you out?
I might want to make the case that it isn't just a statement of value that life is good. I think it is built into us that we feel life is good. Thinking otherwise goes against human nature. To speak at a crude level, it has evolutionary value.
On the other hand, I might not want to make that argument.
Here, I'll try to say it better without the judgment. In my experience, which is substantial, the claim that most people's desire for love and acceptance is "solely for sexual pleasure and economics rather than love," is wrong. It is certainly uncharitable.
Are you saying that just because you don't believe life is good it isn't? Or are you saying that you don't believe your life is good.
I didn't say that one out loud. But, as you say, an event of conspicuous consumption but also plain and simply mindlessly showing off (sorry @T Clark, being arrogant here) is way too much for me and my expression made that clear. I think the most expensive item at my wedding will be the honeymoon, because, that is where the real celebration will be conducted, no? Me and IVF are buddies. She calls me Dr. Evil.
Indeed, suicide is not the same as never being born.
What other choice do you really have? Embrace it or not. I still think that the problem itself does not have to be given in the first place.
I am glad to be the punching bag. Every silver lining's got a touch of grey.
I don't really like this equivocating. No person should be used as a reason to carry out "X" principle, scientific or otherwise. Anyways, antinatalism is not eugenics. Far from it. Everyone deserves not to be born. It's an equal opportunity non-starter.
I love the fact that you have set such high standards for yourself. I think you're the only person I've ever met who might be able to meet them. It's when you start applying the same standards to others that you run off the tracks. Ms. Smarty Pants.
Again, no one needs to be born to overcome challenges, so this fails to address a main point.
Quoting TimeLine
Well, I didn't mention love at all, so I am not sure where this fits into my pessimism or antinatalism. I guess, if I was to pull out something, it is your use of "purpose" in connection with compassion. If my argument is that no one needs to be born to carry out any X reason. Then no, no one needs to be born to be given the problem of trying to overcome selfishness and show compassion for fellow man in the first place. In other words, though compassion should be something sought once born, it is not a reason to be born.
Quoting TimeLine
Although in theory I agree with the person not having kids, I think that your approach there perhaps lacked the compassion you dwell so much on. Don't get me wrong, I am an ardent antinatlist, but I am not a mean one. I liken it to vegans who may outline their position to those who will listen or in public forums, but are not overly condemning and understand that this currently is on the liminal aspects of ethics. Having a vegan shout at customers in the meat section of a grocery store, would be overly condemning and counter productive, for example.
Okay, that context made a bit of difference, so that makes a bit more sense.
It does not make me wrong in thinking that something is wrong with people or a person where there is an absence of love. You cannot assume your opinion of my arrogance - which is true and I have no qualm being called as such - that somehow that becomes a justification for an erroneous view. The burden is on you to prove why and you have yet to do this. Focus.
It is wrong to spend $50,000 on a wedding, I can even go so far as to call that unethical. To spend $50,000 on IVF - psychologically, I may understand the underlying reasons and have sympathy for those reasons - but it is not justifiable ethically when there are thousands of children in need of care and adoption is available as an alternate. There is something about the concept of a child being 'mine' that I do not appreciate - it reminds me of the concept of the purity of "blood" that I am against - but I understand as a woman and perhaps from an evolutionary perspective vis-a-vis biology and maternal instinct; yet, the proportion of infanticide proves no real solidity in that argument. In addition, that money could be used to save thousands of women from preventable maternal deaths. Many people give birth to children for economic reasons, which returns back to my argument that I gave to Schopenhauer; our brains develop through love, contact, care and the absence of this greatly impacts on a person' emotional and psychological development.
The high rate of divorce and failed relationships that were originally initiated solely for economics and sexual pleasure implies an absence of love and that emptiness impacts on the development of the child whether directly or indirectly. That is why I say that family planning through authentic bond and love between two people - love being a decision - is the only time I will accept having my own child. It is love that enables an emotional connection, it is the foundation of our morals, our feelings. If you think that it is arrogant of me to say that a relationship without this unifying or authentically bonding mechanism is wrong, then yes, I am arrogant.
Such an assertion on my part will always be countered by someone who asserts that his or her own subjective experience of life is replete with sunshine and daisies. I have no way of refuting such a claim except to say that said person is deluded. For some who assert it, this may indeed be the case, for there is such a thing as an optimism bias, but then so too is there a pessimism bias. Life is probably a great deal worse than most of us imagine it to be and a great deal better than what it could be.
I do not reject antinatalism because my life has gone or is going swimmingly. I reject it because the arguments don't work. It is also an ironic position to hold, being self-refuting. That is, to the extent that antinatalism makes people miserable, which it undoubtedly does, then based on the very negative utilitarian principles on which it is based, one is obliged to reject it.
You are looking at the subject in a counterfactual way because it is not grounded in the child, but the parents giving birth to the child. Indeed, there is an absence of compassion/empathy within your argument and the very reasoning behind my involvement of "love" - Schopenhauer' (no pun intended) On the Basis of Morality believed that the application of rational, regulatory behaviour in the absence of compassion lacks moral fibre or that real "kernel" within and so such behaviour is not authentically moral but rather driven by an injurious mechanics that enables immoral conduct. "Whoever is filled with it [compassion] will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness." That aspect to his argument is favourable to me because an absence of it reminiscent of a calculating, cold 'mirroring' that lacks consciousness or a 'will' that ultimately drives a person to behave. The Kantian rationale should only occur after this and our motivation or Will must contain this kernel, it must be driven by this compassion, this love, morality, ethics, whatever label you want to call it (I call it moral consciousness).
What I am trying to get at is that under certain circumstances it is not wrong to give birth and this is dependent on the risks and the capacity of prospective parents to correctly apply themselves - their will or motivation - to act with this 'kernel' or love, empathy, compassion knowing that by decisively or rationally placing concern on the child' well-being, that child will not encounter these issues that you express they will because they will experience the love, support, the contact with two people that will enable them with the right understanding of how to find that Will to compassion. While this may not be a reason to give birth, it is the reason that once given birth.
Many people do not have this 'kernel' and so essentially are not motivated with this empathy, compassion, love and act without feeling and such people create the problem that you take issue with. So, you are drawing focus on the wrong thing - antinatalism - when the real issue is the essential nature of humankind. You are taking that static or fatalistic approach that I take issue with. The only argument you have, really, is about risk but my justification is that two loving parents minimise that risk exponentially.
Forgive me, but are you not pro-celibacy? I should think that to be self-refuting, which just makes the logic of your entire argument problematic.
In any case, the antinatalist, beholden to negative utilitarianism, cannot abide so much as an ounce of suffering if he is to remain consistent. There is a reason schop1 speaks of "structural suffering." Assuming a moral imperative to reduce all suffering, then procreation is immoral, as even the most compassionate parents in the world will not produce a life that does not suffer and thereby add to its sum.
Quoting TimeLine
You should think what to be self-refuting? Being in favor of celibacy? Why would it be?
It really depends on your justification for celibacy, but I assume it attracts in similar vein to your original rejection of anti-natalism the same self-refuting irony (although I believe neither anti-natalism nor celibacy makes people miserable since 'misery' is entirely subjective). My arguments for celibacy are not absolute (very similar to that of anti-natalism where an authenticity in this intimacy between two people must first be established through love before choosing to have children) because what should fundamentally drive us is our will to compassion and love. It is my practical way of confirming how much I believe in this, but there is nothing inherently wrong with sexual intercourse; it is only wrong when it dictates your Will to act above and over compassion and love.
Quoting Thorongil
I like that name, actually. :D But, given that it is small, it returns back to my original argument vis-a-vis purpose, that when there is wrong, we should have the will to make it right. There is always a way in which we can improve and so anti-natalism is incorrect because we are drawing focus on the wrong problem as the real problem is rather this lack of compassion and empathy. That is what we should be changing and not completely stopping the birth of children. It is like putting a bandaid on your hand when the cut is on your leg and under certain circumstances anti-natalism is justified, but not entirely.
Quoting Thorongil
They have some pretty strong arguments when it comes to 'risk' but I do agree with this.
Never mind thousands of children in need! They could put their $50,000 of cash in my hands so that I could complete my education before I drop dead of old age. I haven't been to Paris, have not seen the Mona Lisa, haven't been to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg (Russia, not Florida), haven't toured the 50 (50? maybe 25) Great Cities of Europe, haven't been to Machu Picchu, Brasilia, can't afford a decent high powered microscope, haven't taken my favorite TPF posters out to lunch--for 50K, TimeLine, I'll pick up the tab at whatever fine dining establishment you want, just us two. Well, maybe several others -- depending. We might run out of conversational common ground before the Maitre'd decides at which preferred table to put us.
Life is good, see, and $50,000 in my hands would make it even better.
I might even take Schopenhauer1 along to see if I can't arrange experiences which will be so thrilling he'll change his mind about the downside of nativity. Though, $50,000 isn't all that much when you get down to it. In order to change Schopenhauer1's mind, I might have to also have the $50,000 from the in vitro fertilization operation. Get me $100,000, TimeLine, and I'll throw in a second lunch and several movies. Maybe we could pick up a few philosophers and go bar hopping, or something.
Are you saying that celibacy makes people miserable? I don't see that it does. It's a way of life that can be tested and found wanting or not wanting depending on the individual. Antinatalism is different, for it is not a way of life but a philosophical position that assigns a negative value to perhaps the most common, basic, and accepted acts of human existence, which in turn changes the complexion of one's everyday experience of life considerably, and for the worse. A cheerful antinatalist is a contradiction in terms. If the claim this view makes is taken seriously, then merely to live and interact in the world is to be continually confronted with and reminded of the object of one's moral disapprobation, which cannot but be met with sorrow and dismay (e.g: seeing a pregnant woman or hearing of someone's fervent desire to have children). Sometimes, the ubiquity of natality will be met with outright misanthropy, in addition to resentment at being born and at the decision of one's parents to procreate, even if one's parents are otherwise kind, loving people. I have no firm statistics, but the suicide rate among antinatalists is doubtless very high. Many antinatalist communities and individuals praise and even encourage the act. It is therefore naive to believe it can be genuinely maintained in a theoretical sense without it affecting one's psychological, emotional, and possibly physical state, and again, for the worse. In sum, celibacy isn't defined as a moral judgment, whereas antinatalism is, and because it is, and because of the nature of that which it judges, it leads to almost perpetual anguish and misery.
Quoting TimeLine
For the sake of argument, wouldn't it dictate your will to act above and over compassion and love for the duration of copulation? Otherwise, what does your qualification here mean?
"(That there may be quite a different kind of pessimism, a classical pessimism - this presentiment and vision belongs to me, as something inseparable from me, as my proprium and ipsissimum; only that the word "classical" is repugnant to my ears, it has become far too worn, too indefinite and indistinguishable. I call that pessimism of the future, - for it is coming! I see it coming! - Dionysian pessimism.)"
I need to read more Nietzsche! I think he is using the term differently to our everyday understanding of it. In a Heideggerian sense, pessimism (as an attunement) would disclose the world to be in a certain way. This way would disclose certain truths of our existence. Pessimism, as Nietzsche means it, seems to be this disclosure plus an affirmation of this disclosure.
Indeed what Thorongil says- no reason to create suffering where there was none before. Though, I agree with the sentiment that a two parent household, with loving parents is the optimal arrangement for raising children, there should be no children to raise in the first place. No one needs to be given the problems of life in order to carry out X reason (i.e. achievement, relationships, learning, etc. etc.). No one's life need be a vehicle for more instances of experience, as your post implies. No one needs to be given the premise of survival, comfort-seeking, and boredom-regulation- the constant goal-seeking that is ceaseless- the constant energy put forth for maintenance- the constant impingement of contingent harms. Indeed, no one needs to grow, as no one needs to be born in the first place.
The circular reasoning that without any individuals being born, there are no individuals experiencing growth breaks down in the broken logic of its own circularity. Compassion, the movie, does not have to played out for any new individual. Life is not a movie where one jumps in the air, fist out in triumph at 99 years of age while the scene freezes and then fades out.. Life isn't a movie. Life isn't a play. Life isn't a compassion love story. Life isn't a Nietzschean tragic-comedy. Life is an instrumental affair of survival, comfort and boredom regulation via the milieu of a linguistic-cultural setting, repeated unto death. We survive through economic/institutional means, we seek comfort via our institutional/encultured habits, we seek entertainment due to our restless, linguistically-based, culturally constructed, minds.
At the end of the day it is absurd the energy we put forth to maintain our existence. There is no ending it except through death. As stated earlier- there is the non-existence before birth, there is death. Why the in between? Every time this is answered, a circularity ensues.. Compassion needs to be carried out by individuals who need to experience it is apparently your answer. Why must compassion be carried out in the first place though? Does it add some substance to the universe? Does it please some god? Does it just make you smile as someone who is already born (not taking into account that from the point of view of the universe, there is no one to smile upon such a thing as compassion)?
I'll take the offer, but keeping the antinatalism, I'm afraid.. :D. I mean, life sucks, but antinatalism says nothing about not enjoying a 25 city European tour once born ;) .
No, it may be absolutely necessary to spend that or maybe more if you can afford it on the wedding. If you're worth nothing when you marry a woman, you don't have to. If you're a millionaire, then you sure as hell have to, otherwise she will think that she doesn't mean anything to you. In other words, the marriage must be a material effort it mustn't be easy. If you can easily afford to spend $10,000 on the wedding, then $10,000 is not enough. It's the effort that binds people together - something easily gained is easily lost.
So by spending less than you ought to on your marriage, you are actually undermining it.
Quoting Thorongil
And I responded with:
Quoting TimeLine
So, how you got:
Quoting Thorongil
Is rather awkward. Thus, your cheerful anti-natalist concept is unnecessary; if goodness and evil are not quantifiable because it is subjective, misery and happiness is the same.
Quoting Thorongil
I am not one who is uncomfortable discussing awkward topics like celibacy that rarely get discussed amongst us non-religious, left-wing socialist folk, but surely that is irrelevant. I could say that celibacy is dogmatic and assigns a negative value to perhaps the most common, basic, and accepted acts of human existence - sex - (it is sexual intercourse that enables people to reproduce) but we both know that would be problematic. A person can be dedicated to either a dogmatic/religious position, a philosophical, political, or a social position that could change their everyday experience considerably.
Quoting Thorongil
Please don't use words like 'doubtless' when you are uncertain. You are surely better than that.
Quoting Thorongil
I am not saying that it can be maintained, on the contrary there are compelling arguments against the misanthropic position in particular, but any suggestion that life is not worth living is balanced in an axis that contains compelling arguments both of the benefits of living and procreation that establishes an assymetry and resolves this ethical conflict. The argument that the nature of humanity is inherently evil is not acceptable and if there is conformity, lies, bad things etc., the anti-natalist should be focusing on changing that and not eliminating human existence entirely. It does not, however, mean that arguments against giving birth are incorrect, it just needs to be done without such sharp fatalism where children should cease to exist completely.
My argument is simply this:
People should not be having children for the wrong reasons. It does not mean that people should not be having children. So, what are the wrong reasons? And if they are wrong and if we can articulate why it is wrong, than our attempt should be to make it right. So, how can we make it right? If everyone stopped giving birth, that would not resolve the issue. Giving birth for the right reasons, which would be only when two loving people actively choose and decisively commit themselves to raising the child.
Quoting Thorongil
Are you sure about that?
Quoting Thorongil
Do you think that sexual intercourse' only objective is procreation and if so, would your complete abstinence therefore be anti-natalist? There is good, healthy, morally acceptable sex between two loving people. Our instinctual drives can vehicle us to do contrary to this, to cheat, to do some sexually debauch and even criminal acts, but loving relationships are aligned with our will to act with compassion and love. We can behave rationally and stop ourselves from cheating - from a Kantian perspective - but that requires a great deal of effort, but if we obtain this Schops 'kernel' then the effort ceases and our Will is motivated to act with love that all the wrongs like cheating or sexual crimes etc, become impossible naturally. We become happy without effort.
It's not necessarily morally good, but it can certainly be morally good.
Quoting TimeLine
The high rate of divorce has to do primarily with the lack of moral education. Contributing factors are also wrong social expectations and social relationships. One doesn't need to love the other, once married, in order to respect them, live with them and not divorce them - and act as one team together. That just requires moral discipline once a decision was made (to get married) to stick with it. Most people lack that.
In addition, contributing factors are matrimonial stress which typically comes from the fact that the two partners don't have common goals. If the wife, for example, stays at home all day, while the husband goes to work, it's inevitable that she will, sooner or later, feel neglected and start getting bored. Now boredom will push her, presuming that she lacks moral discipline, to engage in all sorts of actions from not taking good care of children, to not wanting to do her part in the house, to even cheating. So the elimination of "free time" is important. Therefore arrangements must be taken in order to ensure that there is little free time. And so on so forth.
:s - are you living on planet Earth, or Mars? :-d As far as I know, eating, going to the toilet, drinking, sleeping and working are all far more common, basic and accepted than sex.
Earth.
Good! :D
Obviously yes. But the claim that a thing has its own build in judgement is absurd.
I've made the point more than once already.
Value judgements require a valuer. Nothing has inherent value.
Please refer to posts I have already made.
If you want to know if I think life is good or bad; it depends on what sort of criteria you want to bring to the table. Do you mean all life, my life, the lives of others? On earth, elsewhere?
There is no definitive proof considering the question of axiology as there is a balance between the benefits and the harms of procreation and no one can assess the benefits because the experience is personal. It may be assumed that it is for that reason 'harms' is the logical result, but given our capacity for autonomy and our ability to transcend the injunctions of others, we should be permitted by making that choice ourselves. You underestimate our cognitive capacity, our ability to become conscious of and reject blind conformity.
Most of my difficulties were a result of bad parenting; the problem is not that they had me (I am not the problem); the problem is them being bad parents. The risk could have been that I turned into a bad parent, and produced another, and another until you have a tumour of bad people growing in an otherwise healthy body. Cut out the bad parenting and you will have a good enough society and so it is bad parents that should not be allowed to have children, not that children should completely cease to exist.
It should be anti-bad-parentalism. Also, it is not your place to tell people what they may or may not be able to tolerate, our thresholds are different. I may have been through some pretty shitty circumstances, but I am inherently a happy person and embrace my vulnerabilities openly. I love people and I love being loving. Most people would not tolerate what I can rather easily.
Quoting schopenhauer1
How?
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is true, but again, you are not equating the fundamental aspect to our very existence; love. Again, love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence because we are able to identify external objects that enables feeling and makes experience intelligible. It is the human in humanity. Sure, we have all of what you say above, I can eat, drink, survive etc., but like the example of those children in the orphanage or even this, without love, our ability to correctly articulate and interpret the world around us makes us nothing but a species. Like aesthetics and art, our emotions and compassion define us and enable us to transcend those physiological states so that we experience.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There is a 'we' here that you seem to miss. When one experiences love, compassion, empathy they transcend the ego, the 'I' and begin to feel and understand through moral consciousness the external world and the importance of others, of nature and animals. If I love my child and likewise my child loves me, if I die, does that love cease? The continuity is through one another and so it is during our time together that we improve, both in ourselves and through one another. The static fatalism that you offer is not resolving the problems you are articulating as justifications for your argument.
I as well am late to the thread but it is moving fast for a day old. When I find myself wanting to do what you are suggesting you want to do, I do it. It may be dismissed or taken for granted OR it might just be what that person needed and it was within me to give. (L)
The key here is to understand Nietzsche's use of words like power and ubermensch not in the most obvious conventional sense, which is apparently how youre understanding them Not as weapons that individuals wield against others, but as self-overcoming. Power isn't a possession or attribute, its a vehicle of self-transformation and self-negation.
IT completely idssolvees the impetus behind fascistic movements.
Do you think Freudian psychoanalysis culminates in fascism? Because Freud said that Nietzsche's ideas were so uncannily close to his own that he had to stop reading him in order not to plagiarize him.
This Vox piece nicely summarizes my argument:
https://www.vox.com/2017/8/17/16140846/nietzsche-richard-spencer-alt-right-nazism
No, but Freud too was a scientific materialist. I studied his essays as an undergraduate, they are of course brilliant and very profound in their own way, but there’s a reason that Jung abandoned Freud’s world-view, even while respecting his methodology.
I thought belief was for religious Forums?
Hey Wayfarer, where is that David Bentley Hart quotation you gave from? I would be interested to read more. Thanks
The problem with that is that Nietzsche denied the possibility of a reality beyond the self. I read his analysis of Buddhism, which he professed to admire, but completely misunderstood. He seized on the key Buddhist teachings of Nirv??a and ??nyat? to claim that the Buddha's teaching was aimed at annihilation, the cessation of all existence. He said that Buddhism was 'the cry of an exhausted civilization'. And yet he claimed to admire it, because he felt that its honest embrace of non-existence was an acknowledgement of the reality which the sentimental Christians couldn't bring themselves to face. But the problem is, that he was mistaken (if not alone in his mistake, as many Europeans of his day made the same interpretive errors, which is described in The The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha, Roger-Pol Droit. It's true that some schools of Buddhism are fiercely anti-philosophical also. 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!', goes a Rinzai Zen aphorism. Zen doesn't put up with pious illusions and sacred cows. But the transcendental reality of the Buddha is emphatically not 'nothingness' or 'non-existence'. What it is, is something that can only be 'found by doing', by 'realising the Way', which is nothing like what Nietzsche understood.)
So - transformation into what? Negation, for what? There is nothing to be transformed into. It mimics some of the terminology of philosophy but turns it against itself. Nietzsche declared himself an 'anti-philosopher' and ought to be taken at his word.
Quoting Agustino
I agree that mystical experiences do not yield knowledge in any 'ordinary' discursive sense; and that goes for works of revelation also. But I would argue that both mystical experiences and works of revelation may yield knowledge in the "Biblical' sense of familiarity. And I would say this kind of knowledge is affective; we are affected by it, and this affection is the motivator of faith. I mean who would have faith in something they felt nothing for?
I am not convinced that the great mystics believed that their writings presented knowledge in any ordinary discursive sense.
I don't know what you're talking about. I interpreted your post one way, asked if my interpretation was correct, and it seemed it was, only now I guess it's not....
Quoting TimeLine
No it doesn't. You're describing anti-sex-having, let's call it, not celibacy. Celibacy doesn't declare that sex is immoral, it merely designates that a person has chosen to refrain from it. Catholic priests are celibate, for example, but they don't think sex is immoral.
Quoting TimeLine
An overly pedantic and literalistic comment. My use of the word was quite appropriate.
Quoting TimeLine
I agree. But you beg the question at the end. Why ought two loving people choose to have children?
Quoting TimeLine
Yes.
Quoting TimeLine
It is from a biological perspective or from certain metaphysical perspectives I suppose. Abstinence from sex isn't antinatalism, unless one qualifies it as "practical antinatalism" perhaps. I have done so in the past but find the term mostly useless now. Antinatalism is a theoretical position.
I don't follow exactly what you mean here.
Quoting Janus
Yes, I agree that mystical experiences are affective, and sentiment grounds faith - a religious skeptic would agree to that. But I think they'd refuse to agree that this constitutes any kind of knowledge whatsoever, the same way they refuse philosophy's ability to arrive at metaphysical knowledge. So here, for example, Montaigne argues against philosophy and dialectical disputation:
Here are a few passages on right religion that I have underlined in my Kindle. I'd provide more comments but I'm short on time now. So I think that we're dealing with a gradation from mystic to religious skeptic, with people falling somewhere in-between generally.
Having looked through these, I see that at some points even Montaigne allows for some mystical insight (see the underlined and bolded bits at the end).
Quoting Janus
No, but many believed that the deliverances of mystical experiences were affective insights or intuitions that could be conveyed to others through means other than faith (like meditation, prayer, asceticism, etc.)
True. But we might say that it looks like nothingness from the perspective of someone still shackled to samsara, a "relative nothingness" that Kant and Schopenhauer speak about.
That is one reason why Wittgenstein is sometimes compared with Zen - his saying that his words are like a ladder, which can be discarded after being climbed. Nihilism is discarding it, without climbing it. ;-)
Ha! As if it were you who gets to decide.
Your choice.
Alternatively you could embrace rationalism and stop with the myth making.
I'm not sure I understand. Is that what you think I said? Is it what I said? Let me think....I'll say it again differently - When you get to the bottom, all philosophy is about is what I like and what I don't. What I care about and what I don't.
Yes. Your affinity for hugs is well established. Alas, I cannot hug the people on this forum. Also, I'm not sure any would appreciate it or take it in the spirit with which it would be given.
So my view of Buddhism is that the insights of a historical period that contains the original writings of various Buddhist philosophers cannot be understood outside of their expression as the political, artistic and scientific structures of the period. Westerners for the past 200 years or so have taken bits of Buddhism and transformed them into an amalgam that really has much more to do with Western philosophical preoccupations than it does with how Buddhists thought a thousand years ago.
I don't see Westerners rushing to embrace other aspects of the historical cultures that produced Buddhist thought,such as their political organization, their social class systems , their systems of punishment and law, etc, their technologies and sciences. But these are reveal much about the significance of Buddhism on the self-understanding and functioning of those societies.
So Nietzsche may very well have misread Buddhist thought, but the only western interpreters of Buddhism I identify with are those who don't romanticize Buddhism by seeing it as something that somehow comes after western philosophy rather than as a variant of pre judeo -Christian-Muslim thinking that, via reinterpretation, can be creatively interwoven with recent western philosophies.
As far as Nietzsche not seeing anything beyond the self, keep in mind that the self he understood was one that was really a community of conflicting drives, or as Dennett would say, a collection of memes rather than a self-knowing ego. I don't like the meme concept , but it is an advance over older ideas of a self-knowing autonomous subject.
Darwin and Nietzsche ushered us into a way of looking at humans as adaptive creatures whose truths are not to be found in the clouds but in our messy evolving interactions in the world.
If the Buddhist strains you subscribe to speak of transcending the self, do they also believe one can transcend desire? Because that would be an incoherent notion. Desire is just another way to talk about situatedness, what Heidegger called being in the world,
Contrast, texture, qualitative meaning is the minimal condition of there being any kind of world at all.
Spot on. The 'way of negation' is such an important thing to understand. 'He that knows it, knows it not'.
Quoting Joshs
But if we really aren’t simply and only ‘products of biology’ then it’s not a case of them ‘ushering’ us into anything other than - well, here. ‘Welcome to post-modernity! Nothing means anything, but you can make it mean anything you like, including “nothing”!' So that is what is being discussed here.
I think Darwin (like Nietzsche) is vastly over-rated in today's culture. His theory is a scientific one, accounting for the origin of species, but nowadays it occupies the vacuum left by the collapse of traditional culture. And then it becomes associated with all kinds of beliefs, or anti-beliefs, which mirror the very things that have been rejected. So where the Biblical tradition was traditionally the rationale for beliefs about the nature of the human, now evolutionary biology fills that space. But the problem is, something really crucial has been lost in translation, so to speak. H. sapiens is not simply another species, but a language-using, technology-building, meaning-seeking, rationally intelligent being - and to interpret that in purely Darwinian terms becomes inevitably reductionist. You mentioned Nagel's book Mind and Cosmos - that is exactly what it is about.
Quoting Joshs
In other words, as the product of culture and society, culturally and socially conditioned. And that is quite in line with the attitude of cultural relativism, that religious philosophies (like anything) can only be the product of culture and society, but point to no inherent truth. But at the basis of Buddhism is the assertion of ‘an unconditioned, an unmade, an un-fabricated’. And only one of those two analyses can be right.
I agree that Buddhism is often romanticised and Anglicized in Western culture, and I will even acknowledge that I am probably the kind of person who is prone to that. But even so, I still believe it to be a (or even the) source of transcendent truth.
Let's say for the sake of argument that this is a true belief system. How else can we characterize it besides the fact that it is true? Well, it is also arbitrary. As a guide for the living of our lives, and a guide for making sense of the intentions and behaviors of other people, this explanatory system will give us no choice but to see evil in myriad behaviors of those around us that doesn't fit into the correct one of the black and white boxes we must place them into.
I think there is real truth in all belief systems I have studied. They all offer explanatory systems for people, ways of making sense of each other that mean to improve on what went before.
But I see a progress in the successive belief systems ( science is one of these) that mark cultural history.
The progress I see isn't toward systems that are more
true, except in the sense that over time , we do a better and better job of seeing the relational processes within the world, and especially the relationships of human beings, as being more intimately understandable.
I dont care how transcendent a truth is supposed to be, I want a way to understand the other guy that is insightful enough that I don't need to resort to judging them as arbitrary , and doesn't force me to condemn their actions as evil, pathological, inappropriate.
Do Nietzsche and Darwin help us do this? Well, the psychologies they spawn don't force people into judgemenal conformist norms as did the priests, rabbis and ministers who used to be the source of professional advice for living.
But Darwin, Freud and Nietzsche( and Dennett and his ilk), fall well short of grasping the internal continuity of mental experience. Their forms of adaptationism are themselves somewhat arbitrary, positing forces of conditioning, of external and internal pushes and pulls driving us here and there.
There are more powerful ways of making sense of behavior than adaptationism, but one first has to pass through that era of thought in order to get there.
The notion of continuous innovation and creativity is a key element of what I see as the most enlightening directions today, and that's hard for me to reconcile with any idea of a transcsndent and eternal source of being. Even if that divine source is a Hegel-like source of evolutionary becoming, it's still a black box and as such is arbitrary. Enlightenment and purity just don't make good bedfellows.
You would take it to be fundamentalist. I perfectly understand how the glaring shortcomings of Western religiosity have inoculated millions against anything spiritual. But it might turn out that transcendent truth is simply something which is truly good, which is not simply a matter of opinion or social consensus. You will find, if you scan popular Western culture, that this is considered an impossibility.
Science is not a belief system, it's a method. For that reason, the 'scientific world view' is an oxymoron, because it is precisely where science is treated a religion, albeit without the commitment to fundamental ethics which is part of religion. That's another aspect of the malaise of modern 'culture' (so called).
IF the collapse of traditional culture created a vacuum that sucked in evolution to fill the god-shaped empty space, questions should be asked about why traditional culture failed rather than blaming evolution for getting sucked in.
And evolution certainly accounts for a big hunk of what we can be and what we are. True enough, though, evolution does facilitate the manufacture of sometimes bogus theories. Someone will note that some disorders (or 'features') are inherited and they will explain it by claiming [whatever it was] gave people an evolutionary advantage. It might, or it might not. Genes get inherited all the time which have zero value in reproductive success, like genes that cause familial alzheimer disease or a high susceptibility to breast cancer. Claiming these had survival value is kind of stupid.
Darwin didn't know anything about genetics. Gregory Mendel's research into feature inheritance in plants wasn't available to Darwin (or hardly anyone else at the time), and many deeper discoveries about genetics were a century into the future.
Evolution should not lead us to think of ourselves as soulless creatures of deterministic processes. Our most human features were created and fielded in simpler form in other animals, from which we evolved, or with whom we evolved in tandem, over a long period of time. So we find in dogs, for example, a crude sense of justice. In laboratory situations (where several dogs can see each other during the experiments), it has been found that a dog will stop cooperating, if it sees that the other dogs have received a reward and it has not. INTOLERABLE. The dogs don't care about the quality of the reward, just that they receive something.
Primates, on the other hand, judge rewards by quality. Primates will stop cooperating with researchers if they see that other apes are receiving apple and orange pieces for rewards while it is receiving pieces of cucumber and turnip. NOT FAIR.
The capacity to make judgements of this sort was evolved before we came along. I think of this as expanding what makes us unique, rather than shrinking what makes us unique. Similarly, many animals bond with their offspring in exactly the same way we do. Hormones are released during labor that are calming and pain reducing, while at the same time oxytocin is released to help the bonding occur. When the mother finally pops out the newborn, she is physically ready to respond to the baby/babies.
That we employ animalistic mechanisms at various stages of life doesn't take anything away from our finer features, like debating philosophical questions on line.
You're right, science is not a specific belief system, it's many belief systems. That is to say, it is an evolving historical tradition which has seen one scientific belief system( theoretical framework) replaced by another
There is no consistently distinguishing feature between philosophy and science other than the fact that one discipline chooses a more narrowly pragmatic vocabulary than the other. Methods of science have constantly changed throughout its history, in parallel with the methods of philosophical inquiry. In fact, it was often the philosophers who changed the methods that scientists adopted. It was also in many cases the philosophers who contributed the mathematical descriptions that became the centerpiece of science.
Insufficiently gnostic, in my view.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, that’s my only beef with it. Insofar as it doesn’t do that, I don’t have any issue with it.
Two very good philosophical OP’s on the topic:
Anything but Human, Richard Polt
It Ain’t Necessarily So, Antony Gottleib.
Quoting Joshs
True, that. Science is of course constantly changing, but it’s the ‘scientific worldview’, which is the idea that scientific discovery can be generalised into an overall world story, that I take issue with.
To reiterate, T Clark said:
"Do you really believe that discussions of value have no place in philosophy?"
To which you said:
Quoting charleton
Please go further back and try to understand what we were ACTUALLY talking about.
If you but in half way you are bound to get confused.
Do you know that I typed out this response?
Quoting Agustino
The kinds of knowledge (In the Biblical sense of familiarity captured in the Biblical expression for sexual intercourse: "a man knows his wife") I was referring to just are "affective insights or intutions". But I don't think those operate independently of faith. (i.e. meditation, prayer, ascetism, etc will not work absent affective insight and intuition and the faith they give rise to).
Ah okay, I see what you mean. The term "familiarity" threw me off a bit initially, couldn't quite grasp what you meant. I've written on this in the past but this sort of familiarity can often be cashed out in the form of practical knowledge. And many times we gain practical knowledge about something by doing, and only later translate it into discourse. And in fact, discourse alone can never be sufficient to completely reveal the practical knowledge from which it emerged. Rather discourse offers signposts, but it's up to the listener to creatively appropriate the signposts as he is trying to practically do - he still needs to relate these signposts, the words, to elements from within his own experience.
Say someone teaches you how to play tennis - they may explain scientifically to you what you should do when you hit a forehand, but you have to learn to use and control the appropriate muscles required to execute it yourself. The discourse never translates directly into practice, without that creative and intuitive appropriation of the words.
An analogy to computer vs human action is useful here. When you write computer code for example, this can be frustrating. Because the computer is like a baby. You have to tell it step by step, in a way that you actually would never use to explain to a human being, since the human being can access intuition. The computer can't. So all instructions have to be given in what is actually an absurd way.
To illustrate. If you write a short function to find the largest number in a set of numbers you feed the computer, you have to tell it as follows:
Store a value (zero) as the max. Go through every element of this set. For each element, if the element is greater than max, then set max equal to the value of the element. Return the value of max after going through all elements. This way, you'd have the maximum value.
But if you gave this same task to a human being, they wouldn't actually be solving it like a computer. They'd look at the list of numbers, and very likely quickly spot the biggest number by looking after 9s and the numbers with the most digits. And this is an essential property of consciousness - consciousness has access to this direct intuition in matters that computers can only calculate step by step.
Quoting Janus
Do affective insights and intuition require faith to happen in the first place, or does faith arise as a result of them? I'd think it's a bit of both. You certainly need some faith - or at least openness to the experience - otherwise, it's impossible to have it if you harden your heart against it. But then meditation, prayer, asceticism etc. are preparatory for such affective insights and intuitions - they do not generate them, but they make the participant open to them - they come by grace as it were.
I agree. So, when I said " faith they give rise to" it would have been better to say "the faith they sustain". Faith, affective insight, and intuition are all interdependently co-arising.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
Yes the difference between computers and humans (as well as animals) is the ability to grasp context. An interesting point I noticed in the 'Lions and Grammar' thread is that the grammatical structures of symbolic language allow context to be separated from the world and imported into language itself. However this is still dependent on the original animal ability to grasp context in the 'umwelt' sense; that is common to both humans and animals.
There are people who do think of other humans "as soulless creatures of deterministic processes" (which of course doesn't include themselves). They may employ evolution, but Darwin isn't their source book.
Very large scale centralized, bureaucratic organizations such as GM, [the old AT&T--Bell Telephone], General Electric, military organizations, authoritarian political regimes (like the CP-USSR), Google, Apple, and such like, tend to reduce populations to objects, because dehumanization suits their goals and methodology. The very large scale centralized bureaucratic organizations that we are most familiar with are focused on extracting value from their employees, profits from their customers, projected power as directed (the military), and so on. The high level (and maybe not-so-high managers) tend to instrumentalize people, and manage or manipulate them as objects, not as persons.
Advertisers play this game too. For instance, "the market" to which advertisers address their messages, is as segmented as an ear of corn. Each kernel represents a unique group, sub-group, or sub-sub group which can be targeted (by one means or another). For instance, Midwesternern heterosexual couples between the age of 55 and 75, who live in a affluent, minimally integrated suburban census tracts, own a second home on a lake surrounded by forest, have adult children, and who travel frequently, form a kernel on the cob.
Young single white women who opt for motherhood without a partner (live in or married), reside in a particular kind of urban census tract, are college educated, and employed, are another kernel on the cob. Young college educated gay men who are professionally employed, live in certain urban census tracts, read any of 5 national gay magazines, and buy up-market products are yet another kernel on the cob.
The market doesn't consist of human individuals, it consists of collections of traits with a certain amount of purchasing power...
These various managers, directors, manipulators, and so on are, I think, the most likely to be interested in evolutionary psychology, influence of genes in behavior, and using data mining to identify persons of interest.
Yeah but it is actually. Western culture seized on evolutionary theory as a way to bring human beings within scope for science. That is why the 'new atheists' - Dennett, Dawkins, and others - are all 'Darwinian fundamentalists'. There is only one possible 'creation myth' and that is the one that (surprise!) happens to provide an exact analogy for capitalist free-market economics.
Hey this is not only the province of conservative evangelicals, either. I have discovered that the new left, specifically Adorno and Horkheimer wrote books about the 'instrumentalisation of reason'. Marcuse's One Dimensional Man was based on something similar. (I have a recent book on the New Left awaiting in the Christmas Stocking through which I hope to learn more about them.)
So it's all part and parcel of the scientific-secular mindset, which has to assume that the Universe has no 'logos', that there is no reason for existence other than mindless propagation.
Isn't it the case that capitalist free-market economics proceeded Darwin's book? It seems more like the prevailing zeitgeist more seized on Darwin than had Darwin imposed on it.
And I’m really opposed to the widespread acceptance of the idea that humans are ‘no different’ to animals. Of course it is true that from the perspective of biological science, we’re just another species. But what makes us different to animals, is not only a matter of a biological difference. It’s an existential difference - humans are able to reflect on the nature of existence in a way that animals simply cannot. Yet people seem to delight in debunking that notion and in fact they seem to regard the assertion of a difference is quite offensive; I think it’s actually a very non-PC attitude. So again the view is that you’re either a sensible, educated, rational materialist, or your a science-denying, irrational religious believer who clings to out-dated worldviews.
"Biologically" there is no significant difference among mammals, and we have very strong similarity to the biology of fish, for instance. Not that cold blooded fish and warm blooded mammals are likely to swap parts, but the basic design and operation of fish (many millions of years back) affected our design and operation.
Certainly, the human brain has no equal among all other animals. Our capacities exceed all others. But the operation of our capacities is not fundamentally different than that of a chimpanzee or bonobo, or even your cat or dog. The way neurons perform their functions was worked out a long time ago. A fruit fly neuron and a human neuron are doing many of the same things.
Even a rat brain is very complex, and our brain is much, much larger than a rat's brain and many orders more complex, particularly in the pre-frontal cortex.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, and it's a good thing, too. If our pets and domestic animals could reflect on the nature of their existences, it is quite possible they would become bitter and resentful, and god only knows what they might do while we were asleep. A lot of people would probably have never (literally) woken up.
Quoting Wayfarer
How could the theory of evolution not affect philosophy, ethics, psychology, and culture? Before Darwin there were discoveries in geology (really, the invention of geology) in the late 18th, early 19th centuries, that undermined the received biblical view of history and our place in it. The unseating of the earth as the center of the cosmos was very disruptive. The advances in computers challenges some assumptions (depending how much credit one is willing to extend to one's CPUs).
The whole business of fundamentalism was more than a reaction to just Darwin -- it was also a reaction against scholarship which impugned the authorship and formation of the biblical texts.
The culture wars are tiresome, tedious, and interminable. Stupid too, and I don't blame Darwin for their ill effects. All that is required for a culture war to get going is a significant change in the people's prospects. Since Darwin a lot of coincidental changes in people's prospects have been visited on us: electricity and electronic media; the automobile; world wars; atomic weapons; ICBMs; antibiotics; Black Power; "bra-burning" feminists; militant homosexuals, and so on.
That's a lot, plus there have been pleasant economic booms followed by some really horrible busts; deep changes in manufacturing and trade (globalization) caused, and are causing upheaval across the working class and middle classes too. The baby boom rode an economic wave which peaked by 1970, and they, and their children have been on the economic skids (declining income and deteriorating purchasing power) ever since.
So, a once nice comprehensible model of the world went KABOOM and here we are picking up the pieces.
So the fact that you 'don't feel that way' is not really a philosophical response so much as 'pull up your socks, son. Things aren't so bad'.
Compare these two quotes:
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York, Free Press, 1973), xvii
Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden.
So, given the average reading age and intelligence, and the inability to devote time to pondering such questions, which do you think might be the more likely to give rise to 'nihilism and anti-natalism'?
Life INHERENTLY good, is absurd.
Damn! When I try to see the whole broader cultural issue, nothing happens.
Quoting Wayfarer
You cite many interesting books and articles. I add them to my reading list, which I will (I hope) eventually get through.
On the one hand, there are depression and allied psychological conditions which darken the individual's reality, whatever their preferred intellectual positions. On the other hand, there are philosophical positions which individuals construct over time, drawing on preferences, experience, maybe predisposing genes, and those broader cultural issues. Depression happens to us, nihilism and antinatalism are our creations.
I'm not all that worried about antinatalists. There are more children being born than the world can reasonably support, so antinatalism makes sense from that angle. I know people who have opted to not have children for philosophical reasons, who aren't quite antinatalists. It's an entirely supportable position, at least from some angles. Being a gay guy, I never intended to have children. Not fathering a brood hasn't felt like a loss to me.
I have a larger concern about nihilism. I have no objection to assertions that we live in an essentially meaningless universe. I don't think the universe has built in meaning, either. We, on the other hand, are meaning givers, and if the universe has a meaning, it comes from us, for better or worse. Of greater concern is that nihilism can become a "universal negator", rejecting meaning willy nilly. It can be a pernicious influence. Entertaining the absence of meaning, morals, values, and so forth leads one into "If God is dead, everything is permissible" territory, which is in general not a good place to be.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, life isn't "just grand" it's "just good". I hear a distinct difference between "grand" and "good". The antinatalists are right about suffering: Obviously there is suffering. Life is still "good", not grand. Death is grievous, and comes to us all--quite often in very unpleasant form. Despite that, life is still good, not grand. There are pleasure and joys in life, as well as suffering and death, and if our pleasures and joys are more limited than our miseries, life is still good.
"Life is good" is a starting point. Every philosophical position begins somewhere. "Ain't life grand" is more the starting point of Auntie Mame (a 1950s movie/broadway musical), where "Life is a banquet and these poor suckers are starving".
We're talking past one another at this point, so I'll leave it for another time.
You mentioned our relation with other animals in a previous post. Other animals do not self-reflect. There might be insights and problem solving skills, but probably little to no self-reflection. Maybe the occasional dolphin has a pessimistic thought about its own existence, but I doubt its thought process gets to that level. Other animals have a mix of instinct and learned responses (also based largely on instincts that allow for basic learned responses to easily take place and get passed on). Other animals do their business without a secondary level thinking on top of it. They live an instrumental life- they eat, crap, build nests, avoid predators, mate, clean, preen, repeat, day in and day out. Maybe some have a form of play, bonding, etc. We do the same for the large part, but we have sort of an existential component to it. We know of our instrumental being, yet we need psychological mechanisms to not dwell on this. We have anchoring mechanisms, distracting mechanisms, isolating mechanisms, and sublimation mechanisms. All of these mechanisms being aided by social institutions. The very absurdity of the instrumentality of existence doesn't have an answer. You can live with the knowledge, pushing the boulder like Sisyphus with a smile, true. That is the point of Camus existentialism. You can see your life as a tragi-comedy with all its pains and suffering as seasoning life to make it [your individualized pain. It is your struggle, even if it is a struggle, and apparently, that in itself can make it good.
Of course, being the self-reflective creature we are, we can then ask the why. Breeding all of a sudden is broken asunder in its similarity with other animals. We can reflect as to whether life itself is something to bring forth into the world. We can look back prior to our individual existence and imagine something like "non-existence". We can look past our life and imagine something like "death". But then we can ultimately ask, what is it that we want new humans to "have" or "experience" or "endure" between the non-existence and death, that is to say, the potential 90+ years of human life. What is it about the essentially instrumental nature of life that needs to be expanded to yet more people? Remember, it is the already-living who will make this decision for the new person. So it is a question for the already-living prospective parents as to why that new person being born has to be another individual's perspective on the world, that will experience it. Now, this new perspective may have some uniqueness to it, but it basically will endure the same things- survival, comfort, entertainment seeking. We all know the drill, but why is it that more people should know the drill too? What is it that it is not enough for just the already-living to endure/experience, why must it be expanded. If you say it is because of some experiment, that these new people will bring something novel, it would be using them for the hope of some novel outcome. If you just want new people to "experience" life, then you must ask what it is about enduring life, overcoming challenges, and experiencing harm, that is an imperative to be experienced by yet another person. It is not so easy as other animals, you see.
I haven't checked that thread out (yet), but language functions differently than consciousness. A computer is basically a language processor. All language processing takes time, and it's a cumulative, step-by-step process. There are no "insights". If you give a computer a 100x100 matrix full of 0s with the exception of one non-zero number, the only way it can establish that that matrix has 9,999 zeros is by going through each element one by one and recording how many zeros it finds. That means it essentially must do 10,000 calculations. The computer can also be aware of context, provided it stores it into memory. So if it stores the number of 0s in the matrix in a variable, or it notes the row and column position of the non-zero number as well as its value + the total number of rows and columns, then it could be aware of the context. Then, if it has to multiply that 100x100 matrix by another one it could simplify the process, now being aware of the internal and external structure of the matrix.
But consciousness is not like this, since consciousness has direct insight - it can at once perceive what is the case, in a leap as it were. And self-consciousness can also be aware of itself, also at once.
What you call the computer's "being aware of context" would seem to be merely an algorithm though, not a true awareness, and much less a self-conscious awareness. The first of the latter is what I meant by "the original animal ability to grasp context in the 'umwelt' sense; that is common to both humans and animals".
You just figured out I'm right.
>:O
It took you quite a long time... >:) >:O
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas! Well, I meant the same thing as when I say you are objectively aware of something - ie you can judge it and react appropriately to it. So in this case, the computer would be able to multiply the 100x100 matrix once it has stored its properties in memory by another matrix without doing all the calculations one by one - ie it would be able to do exactly the same thing as you would be able to do from a pragmatic point of view.
I did not mean that the computer has the subjective capacity of awareness that you do or can behave intuitively, devise new methods of solving a problem, etc.
Yeah, OK, I think we are agreeing, but in any case, Merry Christmas to ye!
I do.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I think you are probably right that other animals do not self-reflect--at least most of them. But we can't be 100% sure there is no sense of self, no self-reflection, because they can't answer our questions of them. If you watch people in silence, they don't seem all that self-reflective a good share of the time, either.
Are these people engaged in self reflection? Anything but. Naked apes addicted to the latest distraction.
Our brains have the complexity (we think) to support this higher level of selfhood. I like to point out that our brain structure is genetically governed, and some parts of brain structure have been the same since fish were invented. Since then--a few hundred million years--brains have become more and more complex. It doesn't seem altogether reasonably that only in this last iteration of brain structure did all our capacities spring forth for the first time. Some of them probably did.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not really. The drive to reproduce does not depend on self-reflection. Animals (including us) are wired to become aroused, copulate, and reproduce. Is human reproduction a self-reflective decision? One can hope, but clearly it is not always the result of self-reflection, or reflection on the goodness of the species' prospects, or the prospects of a specific child.
Not broken asunder, because what bonds baby to mama and papa is pretty much the same mechanism across mammals (at least -- not sure about birds). Various stress-suppressing hormones are issued during labor, and then at the critical moment, oxytocin, and that seals the deal. We don't like thinking that our cozy gauzy scenes of maternal bliss are shared with apes, dogs, and god knows what else.
Humans also have instincts. To suppose that all the creatures up to us are governed by instinct, but not us--oh, no!--is absurd. In us, instinct is buried underneath layers of learned behavior more so than among most other animals, but instinct is still operating. And then there is language and culture, which are pretty compelling forces in themselves.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The impulse to keep expanding, to add another generation, was not invented by us bipedal opposable thumbs-bearing homo sapiens sapiens. It has been an installed feature of life from the get go. It is hundreds of millions of years too late to complain. That window was closed... how many hundred million years ago? We are, for better or worse, stuck with it.
If we already-living smart asses were completely language-shaped, philosophizing cultural creatures -- no genes, no instincts, no drives, no hormones, no fit-together-pleasure-producing-baby-hatching parts--then your big WHY? would be of some use: We could rationally decide to pull the plug on one more iteration of our species. We can't.
Children don't have to be planned, they just happen. Yes, I realize they don't just appear like magic--they are the result of fucking. And people like to fuck, and fairly often sperm will meet egg, and another generation will result. To always and everywhere prevent eggs and sperm from meeting, so that no more generations would occur, would require a persistent resolution quite unfamiliar to us. Neither language, culture, genes, habits, biology, nor instincts are in support of such resolution.
it doesn't matter how well reasoned antinatalist objections are. It doesn't matter how much suffering the next generation will have to endure, (or, not incidentally, how much pleasure they would have to forego by not being born). Reproduction isn't the result of culture, language, literature, ideas, philosophy, or anything else that humans have cooked up. When it comes to biological matters (like life) humans are the objects of processes, not the subjects.
That we are the objects of life, and not the subjects, is a singularly inconvenient truth for a smart assed species like ourselves. We are borne aloft, and forward, by mechanisms we have nothing to do with. We are also extinguished by the same biological forces. We are born, flourish for a time, then get old or sick, and die. Sic transit gloria mundi, and all that -- but that's the way it is.
People read statements like mine, and they object that it is all too reductionist, depressing, mechanistic, and so forth. Much the way people (me too) respond to your antinatalist statements. The difference between your view and mine is that you think people can help it, I think people can't help it. Yes, we could cease to reproduce -- but the commitment and prolonged concentration that universal, species-ending non-reproduction requires is not one of our features -- and it isn't going to happen.
But nature isn't reductionist. It's tremendously expansive, inventive, and energetic. We are one of its products, after all.
We probably will become extinct at some point in the future. Our demise will probably owe much to a lack of insight into the consequences of our standard operating procedures. But the capacity to benefit from insight into the medium term and long term consequences of our behavior is something that neither biology or culture has provided. We know we are spoiling the environment on which our existence depends, but... we are what we are -- a reckless resource-gobbling species that can see no further than the short term.
As for the long term, we don't get it. And if we did get it, we wouldn't be able to get ourselves together to do anything about it. We are what we are, after all.
Regardless of your view on life's inherent goodness (which I don't agree with), this forms the very basis of Nihilistic thinking.
I didn't read "life is inherently good" in a tweet from the universe. The universe doesn't hand out meaning or meaninglessness. That's our business.
I'm not following the point of this as is stands within the larger context of your argument. My point is that despite the title of the thread being (in part), Against All Nihilism, stating that life may have no meaning, no pattern, or no purpose is in-itself a Nihilistic statement.
Not at all. Nihilism is inherent in, finds it very inception in, the demand that life must have a ready-made, imposed-from-above meaning; as Nietzsche showed us so eloquently.
An excerpt from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
That is a distortion of Nietzsche's ideas. Nihilism does not consist in a claim, but in a disposition.
You’re typing this from your hermit cave or monastery cot?
Point being, how true is it actually, that you’ve bailed out of Weatern culture?
I’d love the option to bail as well, now that I’m convinced we have the potential for so much better, but I’m completely saturated in my culture as it is. Funnily, it strikes me as somewhat ironically nihilistic to think that we are not saturated in our respective cultures.
I mean sure, you can give an evolutionary explanation (behaviours that lead to human survival/flourishing, etc.), but that just passes the buck (that's a viable explanation for why we've evolved with those preferences, and why religions reflect them, but what's so great about human survival/flourishing?).
It seems to me that the real problem of our civilization and culture now is that we're running on moral fumes, the remnants of moral conditioning left over from Christianity. The last remnant of that seems to be the obsession of the PC cult with egalitarianism and "social justice" - but what's so great about equality in a material universe?
And what happens when even that fades? A machine civilization? A "paperclip maximizing" AI dedicated to solving a socialist economy that eliminates the organic middle man and just creates a pretty egalitiarian pattern out of pure silicon?
Well, it was a throw- away line, as they say in comedy, but it has a grain of truth. As I'm a Boomer, who grew up in the 60's, I identified with the Counter Culture. This didn't really yield a lot, as I soon learned that by *not* following my appointed middle-class path that surviving turned out to involve fairly large amounts of drudgery. But I did conscientiously try and follow the path of alternative philosophy by the choice of subjects I studied at University, when I finally got around to going there (as a so-called 'mature age student', all of about 25).
And I indeed found that Western philosophy, the way it was being taught in those days (1970's) was a wasteland with post-modernism and [s]the New Left[/s] cultural Marxism at one pole, and Oxbridge scientific materialism on the other. So after two years of philosophy I decamped to Comparative Religion, and also studied anthropology, history, psychology. Eventually - only a few years' ago - I also did a Master's in Buddhist Studies from the same Uni.
Now, as I say, it hasn't yielded any obvious fruits, in that I've never had a publishing or academic career, although it has helped indirectly in the living I've cobbled together (as a technical writer). But it has borne fruit in other ways and certainly as an antidote to nihilism. (Actually one of the influential books I read along the way was called Where the Wasteland Ends by Theodore Roszak. That was the kind of material I studied and still am.)
Quoting gurugeorge
Pretty well as per what Nietzsche said, although he was part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
I'm not reading multiple paragraphs from the IEP. Sum up whatever it is you are attempting to say.
No, nihilism results in those who demand that life must have a ready-made meaning and who are no longer able to believe the master narratives that supplied that purportedly ready-made meaning.
Nietzsche was not himself a nihilist, but saw nihilism as being inherent in the Christianity of his day.
As I said earlier nihilism is not a claim, but a disposition.
It's our culture that promotes this kind of way of life.
Quoting Wayfarer
I disagree, since Nietzsche set it up as his task to find a way to overcome nihilism.
Sure, here is an example of why we need to create more people at all though. Our brains need to be occupied, lest the mind gets bored. Take away all distractions, you contend with your pure striving willful nature. An animal's being is the churning of its willful nature. If it can't churn towards something it turns in on itself. More willful beings should be expanded? This is structural. How about the harms of contingent suffering? What if someone has a pervasive mental illness? This has to be overcome or dealt with right? Why put more people into those circumstances? How about disease, disaster, circumstances, etc. etc. etc.
Quoting Bitter Crank
No, but we are discussing philosophy and ethics. Is your descriptive measures going to be your normative measures? Is the "is" going to be an "ought" because people tend to not reflect much? It's not totally out of their control. We are not talking about preventing someone from eating or going to the bathroom here. We are not even talking about refraining from sex.
I have more for you, but I have to go.. I'll try to reply to rest of post. Thanks for thoughtful response!
Yeah, that ought to be the concern of every really serious thinking person. If thinking about this stuff doesn't put you into a cold sweat, then you're probably not thinking very clearly.
The last outpost, the last fading tatter of Christian morality in the West, is the unquestioning, hysterical attachment to egalitarianism über alles that characterizes modern liberalism. But that's already starting to fade. It's becoming nothing more than just another tool to kafkatrap those you disagree with.
Everything is devolving to "might makes right," everything is coming to be understood as a pure power struggle, with things like morality being masks and rhetorical tricks to mobilize the masses to serve one's agenda - and nobody's agenda has any more moral legitimacy than anyone else's. It's like the last bit of the stern of the Titanic poking above the water - the last few survivors trying to keep their head above water, scrabbling over each other, pushing each other down, to get just an extra little bit of time.
But there doesn't seem to be any solution. It's impossible for a sceptical, materialist-minded person to go back to a religious point of view, and yet it's also psychologically impossible to face nihilism naked and unadorned.
Quoting gurugeorge
Quoting gurugeorge
Christian morality is intact (it's a system; it's based on certain documents and models; these sorts of things, whether it be Christian or Égalité über allies (to mix language and slogans) isn't that tied to Christian morality. There is a connection, sure. "Might makes right" is hardly a new idea.
Adherence to Christian morality, or Confucianism, or Sufism or socialism or democracy--pick an ism, any ism--is what makes it vital, Neglect it, and it is the practitioners morality that is in tatters. Practice it, and it is as solid as ever.
There is a lot about any moral system to which one can object, certainly, but billions--not just millions--of people, including people in the West--are practicing workable moral systems that serve them well. There is, most likely, a strata of people within the 7.3 billion humans, who have lapsed into nihilistic, dead-end a-morality. My guess is that a lot of them are occupying corporate suites and high government positions and social elites. These people's influence is outsized. They have real power, but they also have symbolic power, and it is possible to get confused and suppose that everybody is like them.
The ordinary folk that I rub shoulders with every day don't seem to have lapsed into a nihilistic funk (not that they are all happy, robustly and athletically moral, or anything like that).
It isn't necessary to face nihilism stark naked and "unadorned". (Did you mistype "unarmored" but auto-correction decided it liked "unadorned" better?)
First, it isn't impossible for a skeptical materialist-minded person to go back to a religious point of view. I'm not suggesting that a skeptical materialist should, but it clearly isn't impossible. Difficult yes -- very conflictual, for sure.
All you need is the willingness to affirm some basic humanist principles, like #8 of the Humanist Manifesto:
EIGHTH: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist’s social passion.
The Humanists strive to be "good without god". ADVOCATING PROGRESSIVE VALUES AND EQUALITY FOR HUMANISTS, ATHEISTS, AND FREETHINKERS is their motto.
Secular Humanist has the same kind of chilly quality that Unitarianism has, as far as I am concerned, but that's just me. It could do with a little smoke and bells. Check it out.
You are wrong because Christianity is both the cause and the solution to nihilism. Only a false Christianity was displaced. Refer to the post linked.
I think, in such a case, one should first 'define' [goodness]. My idea is that there are different experiences and lots of challenges. What makes you happy may make another person sad.. It's just about the feelings and life goal. And in comparison with this, one comes to define everything as "good" or "bad". Nothing is essentially and definitely good or bad.
Nihilism is just a phase of development, don't be so dramatic.
Meaning comes in many forms. It doesn't necessarily need to come in a tidy religious package and from an authority figure.
Rationalisation is a problem with no solution in sight, as far as I know, but that doesn't mean no solution is possible.
One of the interesting essays of 2017, The Strange Persistence of Guilt, Wilfred McClay, touches on this.
I think it originates with the Christian principle of the sanctity of the individual. This became elevated in Protestantism to the supremacy of the individual conscience ‘before God’. But with the fading of religion, the individual is retained, but without the relationship with the Divine. So the individual conscience is now the de facto source of moral authority. (This is the subject of McIntyre’s book, After Virtue.)
individual conscience does not operate in a vaccuum; it consists in responding to others fairly and reasonably. Those who have been adequately socialised have a conscience. We don't need any threat of divine punishment for that.
Spiritual principles don’t have to rely on ‘threats of divine punishment’.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The Renaissance humanists, whom the term ‘humanism’ was named after, were indeed free-thinkers, but none of them were materialists. They were Platonists or theistic humanists. who skirted heresy but had a universalist outlook - indeed I think it was amongst them that the idea of the ‘perennial philosophy’ took root.
But today’s secular humanism is vastly different, because it lacks what used to be known as ‘sapience’, and after which the species is supposedly named.
There’s a quote from E F Schumacher which I think is relevant here. As you may recall, Schumacher was a British economist whose book Small is Beautiful became a classic of alternative economics. He spoke of how he was affected by his encounters with what he called ‘Buddhist economics’ in SE Asia which became formative for his book.
Anyway Schumacher gave a BBC radio interview in which he reflected critically on a then well-known book about liberal economics, The Case for Modern Man, by Charles Frankel. The talk was called ‘the insufficiency of liberalism’ in which he spoke about ‘the three stages of development’.
In point of fact, Schumacher eventually converted to Catholicism, but I think his ‘stage three’ idea anticipates the kind of universalist spirituality that characterises the counterculture and New Age movements. As David Brooks said, in a prescient column called The Neural Buddhists:
Which pretty well describes many who see themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’, who feel it imperative to transcend the inevitable nihilism that flows from the ‘death of God’ but who refuse the dogmas of ecclesiastical religion. (No hard feelings to any Catholics reading ;-) ).
What need for the supernatural or an afterlife then?
Quoting Janus
What's wrong with threats of divine punishment? Threats of divine punishment are useful for those who cannot see the negative effects of immoral actions.
It seems to me you so readily associate anything about spiritual values with 'the supernatural and the afterlife'. Here's my diagnosis of what is behind this, and I really do hope you're open to it.
The point of spiritual philosophies - of the kind that Nietzsche declared dead or 'the barest and thinnest', or whatever phrase he used - is precisely that they concern 'realising an identity which is not subject to death'. That belief is presented in mythological form as 'belief in heaven' and made subject to particular, dogmatic ways of understanding. And those you either accept/believe, or reject/disbelieve.
My feeling is that there is a shadow in Western culture which is the consequence of the development of Western philosophy and religion. It has to do with the development and the imposition of orthodoxy, meaning 'right belief'. For much of history 'right belief' was strictly imposed- you had to believe particular things in particular ways. There were centuries of conflict and turmoil in Western history around these questions.
As I mentioned to @Praxis earlier in this thread, my approach is countercultural. I mention all of this, because the point of the counterculture was to escape from the Western dichotomy of belief versus unbelief. I really don't know if I am succeeding - I am probably much nearer a believer. But 'a believer' is not what I wanted to be - I wanted to know, to understand. That’s what drew me to philosophy although I’m quite ready to acknowledge I’m no good at it.
Why is this of relevance? This cannot be the core of spiritual practice since it is not valuable in and of itself. It seems quite self-concerned in many ways.
Authority and dogma are not opposed to mysticism, they can and often do go hand in hand.
If that isn’t the meaning of ‘life eternal’ then what is?
And the mystics were frequently at odds with the ecclesiastical authorities.
It may be true that the 'ignorant masses' need and will respond to threats of divine punishment, or else they will not behave morally; and even then, perhaps they will not...
Sociopaths and psychopaths...? I don't know what to do about them; they are often highly intelligent.
So, threats of divine punishment could be seen as a form of "noble lie". I don't know how wide their effectiveness is these days, in any case. On the other hand, perhaps if education, and if necessary medication, were adequately improved, there would be far fewer people who required such threats in order to behave well towards their fellow humans.
First the politicians need to improve; they have become such a pathetic lot. :-}
In cases where their experiences and insights were expressed in unorthodox terms. And this is by no means only the case with religious authorities; give people too much power and what happens?
People read into their happy emotions too easily. Sex happens at a time of optimal contentment. Feelings of oxytocin start pouring in and dopamine and all of a sudden every care in the world is washed away in ideas of future ideals of two parents and babies in household, etc.
Let's back up though. What does my term of instrumentality really mean? It means that the world keeps turning, the universe keeps expanding, that energy keeps on transferring, and entropy keeps on its steady path. That is to say, that happiness is always on the horizon (hope swinging I mentioned in other posts). When goals are "obtained" are often not as good or too fleeting compared to the effort to get it (yes yes, eye roll eye roll... it's not the goal but the process to get there BS., not buying it..just slogans to make people not think about it).. we still need to maintain ourselves, our bodies, our minds, our comforts, our anxieties, our neuroses, our social lives, our intellectual minds, etc. etc. etc. It's all just energy put forth to keep maintaining ourselves, that does not stop until death. Why ALL of THIS WORK AND ENERGY? Does it really need to be started anew for a next generation?
We really are living in the eternal twilight of Christian sentiments. There is "something" special that we are DOING here.. It all MEANS something to "FEEL" to "ACHIEVE" to "INTELLECTUALIZE" to "CONNECT".. all buzzwords of anchoring mechanisms to latch onto as our WILLFUL nature rushes forward, putting forth more energy but for to stay alive, keep occupied, and stay comfortable.. All the while being exposed to depridations, sickness, annoyances, and painful circumstances that inevitably befall us.. It doesn't NEED to be expanded to more people.
Of course, it doesn't NEED to be expanded to more people. I thought we agreed on that. Is our main difference that I think more people get added the same way more squirrels keep getting added, and you think people are going out of their way to reproduce for some sort of reason?
The reproductive urge operates whether anybody (squirrel or human) wants it to operate or not. It just does.
I disagree, people in my experience are either 9-5 zombies on a treadmill that's increasingly delivering less real prosperity for the average person, or they're retreating into fantasy worlds of various sorts (sucking the teat of various kinds of consumerism).
We are tremendously advanced in terms of technology, and that's keeping our heads above water, but the morale situation is pretty dire - consider suicide rates (particularly among men).
Yeah, that's just sublimated Christianity - but what's the basis for it in a world of inane matter that's basically one damn thing after another?
I don't understand how you can say it's a phase, there's no escape from it if the world is as science describes it.
It's rather analogous to various forms of Idealism being nothing more than ultimately inconsistent ad hoc stopping points, a staggered series of refusals to face the ineluctability of solipsism given the methodologically solipsistic starting point of Cartesianism.
We are (most of us) "designed" to believe in a religion - once any reason to believe is knocked away, there's no possible over-arching narrative that makes any sense of a material universe, all we can do is clutch at twigs as we swirl down the rushing torrent to oblivion (how's that for drama :) ).
You make some valid observations here.
I don't know how old you are, but age makes a difference. I'm over 70 and a lot of the people I interact with are also. Somewhere along the line, age tends to change the way one looks at things. It isn't a choice, it's a given. Going into old age with a really negative attitude is likely to lead to one dying sooner, rather than later.
I know that for many younger people, the satisfactions obtainable in whatever jobs are available are likely to be few and far between. A lot of the jobs I had were shit holes, and working in them did not contribute to a positive disposition.
Excessive technology is not helping anyone. The fact is, smart phones, smart tablets, sites like Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest, quickly train people to expect frequent stimulation and satisfaction. People thus get sort of addicted to their media and gadgets, and end up interacting with the real world through virtual contact. Bad idea.
I'm not against good gadgets and nice sites, but we need to realize that these things are benefitting Apple, Samsung, FaceBook, Twitter, et al far more than you and me.
I am afraid you are right -- a lot of people are escaping into fantasies, or (in the case of middle-aged men in the rust belt, killing themselves). A lot of male farmers in India are killing themselves too for similar reasons -- they just don't see a future for themselves or their families.
Sociopaths and psychopaths aren't all bad or immoral though. For example, about 1/100 persons is a psychopath. You've quite probably met some of them, lived with them, been friends with them, etc.
So not all psychopaths are the cold-blooded rapists and murderous, scheming serial-killers you hear about on the news. Most of these people live relatively normal lives. In fact, some of the dangerous psychopaths score relatively low on corresponding medical assessments - though it is true that most of the dangerous ones tend to be around those who score very high. Psychopathy tends to be more of a personality than anything else - it's true that having this sort of personality does predispose you to certain immoral behaviour, which becomes more tempting than it would be otherwise.
Some prime psychopathic traits:
• Low fear and high pain tolerance.
• High self-confidence and assertiveness in social settings.
• Impulsivity.
• Defiance of authority.
• Difficulty with empathy.
Psychopathy itself seems to be a gradation from less psychopathic to more psychopathic. Take someone like Elon Musk - it's very likely that Elon is a psychopath. In fact, many in positions of leadership will have at least some psychopathic traits. If you think about it, many Presidents will come to mind, both current and past.
Now I would imagine that most criminals who commit crimes don't have something mentally wrong with themselves per say. They're just immoral.
Quoting Janus
It's not a lie at all, threats of divine punishment are absolutely true. Someone who commits an immorality will get punished by the action itself, the punishment actually is inescapable. But failing to be aware of the punishment, many expect to encounter it in the future.
Quoting Janus
I think it's a fantasy to think medication can make people more moral.
I would say that for most people the existentially salvific aspect of religious belief consists predominately in social involvement, in communion; otherwise it is no better than the consumerist fantasies you mention.
Materialism as a worldview is only debilitating and dehumanizing if it is taken to be a repudiation of what I would want to claim are natural human values.
Why would social involvement or communion be salvific? I think that's not what salvation is taken to mean. Social involvement or communion MAY (depending on personality type & circumstance) be helpful in getting you to feel good and positive about your life. But salvific? I think not.
I think it's much the other way around, that a change in consciousness usually leads one to engage more in their society, be more loving, etc.
Sociopaths and psychopaths characteristically lack empathy and are thus more likely to be lacking conscience and moral intuition. I wasn't referring to extreme cases, but to the garden variety.
I agree with you that people are "punished" by, in the sense that they suffer on account of, their immoral actions, (or more accurately they suffer because of the dispositions that give rise to those actions) but I don't think that can be considered a "threat of divine punishment" or even a divine punishment; it is an outcome of human nature; a natural suffering.
In cases where people do immoral things because of irresistible impulses that are due to imbalances in brain chemistry that are correlated with some psychiatric conditions then medication may indeed cause them to abstain from performing immoral acts they otherwise would have.
What does salvation consist in then, other than loving your neighbour as yourself? it is the removal of focus from the self that saves, as I see it.
I don't think hermits are even as close to salvation as properly socially engaged people, unless they are of the rare breed of human that genuinely have no need of human society.
In any case, note I did say "for most people". Most people cannot become hermits.
Sure, they have decreased empathy but they don't lack it completely. Having even a shred of empathy is sufficient to then imagine the rest. For example, if one feels bad when they see a man tortured, but not when they see him get kicked in the leg, then they can imagine feeling bad in the latter case too - or at least imagine that they ought to feel bad, even if they don't.
Quoting Janus
But who made human nature such that you suffer when you do evil? This is a structural occurence - in that sense it is of divine origin.
Quoting Janus
Hmmm - I'm not so sure they are truly irresistable. I think regardless of imbalance, there is always a degree of self-control that can be exerted if one learns how to exert it. The thing is, the brain isn't necessarily "one person". So one part of the brain may give whatever directions it wants to, there will always be, so long as the person retains consciousness, another part of the brain that can oppose it.
Quoting Janus
Well, loving God with your heart, mind, and body is more important than loving your neighbour as yourself, but, salvation consists in none of those I would say. Salvation consists in being at peace (deep inside) regardless of external circumstances.
Quoting Janus
Why is social engagement a good thing? Most people share this belief, but in my opinion, it's simply because they are afraid of themselves. They cannot stand even a little while with themselves, they get bored, and they're willing to do most of anything to escape that feeling. Just because you're not feeling any pain/discomfort doesn't mean that you're necessarily doing a good thing. You have to think in context. Social engagement is a distraction for most.
There are, for example, many millionaires who made a lot of money, quit working, and then suddenly found that they are depressed, bored, and all the rest. Some of them even went as far as committing suicide. So when such people are taken out, whether by their own choice, or by another's choice, from society, they break apart. Why? Because they don't know how to be with themselves. That's a weakness, not a good thing in my opinion - it makes you into a slave.
Few are the people who, like Pascal, or Montaigne, learned to spend large amounts of time by themselves without much social interaction, without breaking apart, going mad, etc. It's a skill, and I think one that it's very important to learn.
Quoting Agustino
I said that salvation (and I would add here, in it's fullest expression) consists in loving your neighbour as yourself. You say it consists in loving God and possessing inner peace under all circumstances. As I see it, loving God just is loving your neighbour as yourself. What else could it be? It is not loving an abstract principle of eternity or the infinite. Although we may be intellectually or poetically inspired by contemplating such things I can't see how they can inspire love; which for me consists in fellow feeling. If you can love your neighbour as yourself, then you will necessarily possess inner peace under all circumstances, which is salvation.
The Bible gives them as two separate "rules" - since I'm going to sleep I don't have time to go in more depth than that now.
Quoting Janus
So what does this have to do with social engagement? You can love your neighbour as yourself and have fellow feeling without actually being engaged in society. If you disagree, then it follows that someone locked in prison and away from all contact with other people cannot possess inner peace under all circumstances, and hence cannot attain to salvation. Nor can a hermit on Mt. Athos for that matter.
For me it is obvious that to the degree that one lacks empathy for others one will be more likely to commit immoral acts.
Quoting Agustino
Sure, on the presumption that God is nature, then what is natural is also divine; but that is a point unrelated to the argument as far as I can tell.
We can understand what is natural to human beings and necessary for their flourishing, if we can understand it at all, without presuming that it is of divine origin, in other words. I don't believe religion is the ground of ethics, the ground of ethics is empathy and phronesis.
Quoting Agustino
For you maybe not; but then perhaps you are not possessed by such urges that are due to neurochemical imbalances, as some others are. You really have no way of knowing what it is like.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
By 'social engagement' I am not necessarily speaking about bodily interaction, and much less about frivolous bodily interaction like going to parties and the like. If someone has a rich creative and/or intellectual life, then they will be profoundly socially engaged, even if they do not bodily interact with people much.
I already answered your question about social engagement and loving your neighbour below. You were presuming a meaning I didn't intend is all.
That's a staggeringly egregious over-simplification.
Quoting gurugeorge
It seems more like senseless hyperbole. >:O
What do you mean by social engagement without bodily interaction?
Well for one thing if a solitary artist or thinker produces work that is read by others, that is a form of engagement. On the other hand if we think and feel creatively we interact with a whole society in our thought and feelings, even if we never leave the house. And what we do on here' would that count as "bodily interaction"?
Alright, but at some point one must engage, or had to have engaged, in bodily interaction, no?
Quoting Janus
I wouldn't say so. Certainly not literally.
Absolutely! All those meditating, praying hermits were raised by mothers and fathers or in orphanages or whatever...by others in any case... and schooled by others as well, and all that involves. in fact actually is, bodily engagement and socialization. I believe all this gets internalized. so it is possible that some people can thrive with little actual social contact later in their lives. My argument was that if their lives are rich and creative, then they are still engaging with their internalized society, through ideas, feelings and memory. They are still very much socially mediated humans, in other words, even if they choose to live solitary lives.
Hmm, arguably I was possessed by such urges at one point, when I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and OCD. But over time the compulsions disappeared - at first they didn't disappear, but I stopped giving in to them even though I felt them. And over time I stopped feeling them completely. That's why I say that it's one of the things you have to learn to manage. Mindfulness and meditation were very helpful for me.
These issues are interesting. I think most doctors do not spend sufficient time with their patients (due to the way this work is bureaucratically structured) to be able to help them really change. The brain has neuroplasticity, which basically allows old habits to change into new habits. So, as long as someone has consciousness, there will always be a gap between impulse and response, which can allow the brain to use its neuroplasticity to change.
For example - you may not be able to get significant results in whatever mental illness you're facing by going 1-2hours/week to a doctor or professional. But if you lived with that professional 24/7 and you were the only patient in his or her care, then I'm quite certain that we'd see very different results.
So, from the inside, a mental illness of the likes of GAD or OCD feels like the whole world is different than in its absence. So curing it feels like looking out the window and seeing the tree red, and suddenly you don't see it red anymore, you see it normally. That's the kind of difference we're talking about.
And I think really these problems are often entrenched habits of mind, and the patient has to break out of the habit as it were, which is often very difficult. Bringing this into awareness though, that takes effort, and mindfulness is very helpful for that.
Quoting Janus
Well, neither am I. I consider things like this forum, talking over the phone, etc. as equally social interaction. But you must actually interact with another person in real-time. So I would not consider reading a book social interaction, or painting in your home, etc.
Quoting Janus
It's hard to think of a situation since we usually do need the rest of society to survive. But suppose someone was living alone in a hut in the jungle, and they were also a poet. Would they be actively socially engaged? And how?
I have a feeling you consider things like reading and writing poetry to be social engagement, even if you do them entirely alone, without input from others. Why is that?
Well, there are plenty of much used methods of preventing birth, so any deviation from that would be more likely intentional. There are the rare "accidents", but is that the norm anymore for how people are born? Not in the first world at least. In the third world, with less access to health care, it is at least implicit that it will happen, and thus desirable by at least one of the parties. So, new people being born seems to be something people want. So again, why is it that it needs to be expanded?
How could it not be a phase, people regularly work through it. Why should it be any different on a societal level? In any case, I don't know if it's a necessary phase or just something that a particular route of development requires.
Science, by the way, is just one method of examining the world. There are other methods and perspectives. I don't know what you mean when you suggest that 'the world could be as science describes it'.
Quoting gurugeorge
Assuming you're referring to cultural conditioning rather than intelligent design or something, I would hesitate to claim 'design' as that implies conscious intent. I'm sure it is conscious intent on the part of some individuals, but most are followers who don't question tradition and cultural norms.
Quoting gurugeorge
Of course there is, the ONLY difference is that we are free, or freer, to find/construct our own narratives because there is no longer a reliance on an external authority. And to be clear, any such narratives don't need to be based on a "material universe."
Quoting gurugeorge
Part of a silly narrative, sounds like.
My point was that when you do such solitary things it is experienced as an interaction with others. We also interact with others when dreaming. I'm not claiming that this is the same as bodily interacting; but I'm emphasizing that these are not solitary activities in the 'lived' sense, but only in the ostensible sense.
When you read you are partaking of input from others. When you write poetry you are addressing the reader. They are thus forms of social engagement. It is not an 'all or nothing' matter.
Well... if you push the definition so far, then anything is interacting with things that are not you - even your body, to a certain extent, is not you, since you don't control everything that happens by sheer will. But how do dreams count as interacting with another PERSON as opposed to thing?
To me, bodily interacting, or interacting by forum, or by voice, or by playing a game (chess, etc.) are all quite similar. I do count those as social in nature.
I would say yes; your imagination and memories of a person or thing are part of that person or thing. That is part of the point of the Manzotti article.
It is more a matter of degrees on a continuum, than a polarity.
No, they evade it. Much of modern philosophy is a grand evasion of the abyssal horror of a godless, mechanistic universe. For ordinary people, the business of everyday living and the juicy qualities of interpersonal relationships (family, friends, work) prevent them from thinking these things through, of course; but intellectuals tend to turn to shiny toys like idealism, relativism, social justice, social constructionism, analytic philosophy, postmodernism, etc., etc. - little fantasy worlds that have the dual purpose of distracting them from nihilism and serving as affordances for purity spiraling in social-status-seeking games.
Quoting praxis
Are you sure?
Quoting praxis
The quotation marks signify the use of the concept of design as a metaphor. "Constructed by natural processes so as to ..." would be a slightly more neutral way of saying it. What I'm referring to is religion as a natural outgrowth of biology (as all culture is) - for example, traditional rules around gender roles, as enforced by a religion, might serve to ensure a certain reproductive rate for a group, relative to the environmental pressures on the group that would tend to diminish its numbers.
Quoting praxis
There's a certain amount of freedom yes, but it's analogous to a tether - the goat has a fair amount of room to move around, but there are limits. Similarly, the biological base forms a "tether" for the cultural superstructure; there's some leeway, but there's no untrammeled freedom to explore all possible cultural space (for example, at one type of extreme, the social rule "kill everyone you meet" would obviously be unworkable).
I should add that I don't know the answer to any of this, I'm just posing the problem in a stark form. Whether God exists or not, the "death" of God (as something believed in) and the concomitant vision of a mechanistic universe, resolves to a future in which the traditional social mores (which support reproduction) will gradually dwindle, resulting in a kind of drawn-out species suicide, and our replacement by artificial intelligence. Some possible forms of this future are cheerier than others (e.g. a few humans cherished and preserved as sort of the "parents" of our artificial children, i.e. humans as a "protected species"), but most possibilities seem pretty dire. The only possible ways to escape this fate, so far as I can see, are: 1) God exists and things sort themselves out in a way we can't foresee, or 2) God doesn't exist, but there is a way of discovering meaning in the universe that we just haven't been smart enough to figure out yet, that will eventually raise our spirits and give us a foundation for morality that enables us to sustain it through time, going forward.
Sure, and similarly we evade hunger. That doesn’t mean there’s no food to eat, only that our desire is naturally incessant. In a rapidly changing world no one static source of meaning will last for long.
Quoting gurugeorge
Aesthetic, to name one.
Quoting gurugeorge
We are entirely free to develop an overarching narrative that includes the practice of killing everyone we meet. But by its very nature it’s unlikely to catch on. Memes require living hosts.
Quoting gurugeorge
Couple of things about this. For one, you appear to be implying that no religion to date has met your criteria, yet you seem to promote religion as the only possible solution. Secondly, as I meantioned, in an ever changing world there cannot be one static form of meaning. Conditions and values change. Fringe elements in society take advantage of the cooperative body for selfish gain. Corruption leads to reform, and the evolution goes on.
There is no one solution to figure out.
That depends on what you mean by "rapidly" human nature and the nature of the world change over time, sure, but rapidly? That's an attempt at persuasive redefinition. Rapidly relative to the timescale of stars and the formation of galaxies, glacially relative to the life of a human being, a family or the formation and dissolution of human cultures.
Quoting praxis
Is the aesthetic way of looking at the world a way of "examining" the world? And is it a "method"? It's a way of looking at the world, but it's not a way of looking at the world in which true and false enter into the discussion, it's not an alternative way of being right or wrong about things.
Quoting praxis
Right, and that's a form of limit, an example of the "tethering" I'm talking about, an example of biology limiting what's possible culturally. It wouldn't apply to invulnerable creature for example (because then "kill everyone you meet" would be logically impossible), or creatures that can regenerate from a few remaining cells (because then "kill everyone you meet" would be a trivial bump in the road for such creatures, therefore a possible social rule).
Quoting praxis
That's partly true. I'd rather say that there is a basket of closely related solutions (the "tether" idea again). IOW, I think you're opening up the space of possibility (possible social rules) to make it infinite, but that's arbitrary and doesn't conform with observable fact (the facts of biology, the fact that human cultures do in fact broadly share many norms, despite occasional outliers, etc.)
I don't think religion is the only possible solution - I've already given a possible non-religious solution! All I'm saying is that it's harder than rationalists/naturalists/materialists tend to think. A certain kind of cheesy, self-serving mythology has developed around naturalism over the past few hundred years; but the confidence is a) premature, and b) not as clever as it thinks it is, because it's suffering from cognitive dissonance (not usually following its own premises through to their logical - nihilistic - conclusion).
Rapidly in relation to the enlightenment, naturally.
Prior to the enlightenment cultures like ancient Egypt were, by our standard, almost inconceivably stagnant. Of course it wasn't perceived as stagnant to them. Imagine visiting a modern art gallery, and then going back to the same gallery a century later and seeing the same style of art on the walls, and it is still considered a modern art gallery. Practically inconceivable to me.
Quoting gurugeorge
Of course it is. I imagine you did not do well in art class.
Of course it is, something can be 'wrong' but beautiful (good). We can choose beauty, spontaneity, and meaningfulness, over efficiency, predictability, and fucking profit.
If you went to an art exhibit in 1817, 1917, and 2017, you would have seen huge changes in artistic production between 1817 and 1917; between 1917 and 2017, it's quite possible (depending on the selections, that you would think things hadn't changed very much at all in the previous century.
Besides, is constant change inherent to art? Is there something wrong with art if doesn't change faster than women's wear fashion? What makes art change rapidly? It could be that it is driven, or pulled along, by a very strong demand by art buyers for novelty. Should we hand out awards to cultures that maintain a style for a long time, or only reward cultures that are always changing?
Personally, Praxis, I'd probably find Egyptian stability stultifying, but there is something to say for less hectic change.
Art is quite stagnant now, it's the been the same stuff on the walls now for 100 years or so, ever since Duchamp told us that art is something to piss on. ;)
Quoting praxis
Yes, as I said, the aesthetic way of looking at the world isn't one in which right or wrong enter into the picture, it's not an alternative way of parsing right and wrong, true and false, etc.
Clearly there's a huge difference between the art world of 1917 and the art world today. Judging by your disclaimer of "depending on the selections," I'm inclined to think you wouldn't hesitate to agree.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Interesting points but it's all beside the point I was attempting to make, which is simply that in a rapidly changing society a source of meaning (religion, ideology, movement, or maybe even a brand) will not last for long because conditions and values change. I'm not suggesting that rapid (as compared to ancient Egypt, for example) change is good or bad. I'm suggesting that rapid change may make a society more prone to nihilism, or rather that what allows this rapid change can lead to nihilism.
So yes, there is indeed something to say for less hectic change, and I believe conservatives are generally saying it.
Right and wrong are based on values, and so is aesthetics.
For instance, we can buy a work of art as an investment (rational) or we can buy a piece of art because we find it beautiful or meaningful (aesthetic). A communities resources could be pooled to design and build an aesthetically beautiful bridge, or one could be built from a pre-existing template and built cheaply and efficiently. In the former case, some people in the community may say it's a crime to waste their money on aesthetics. In the latter, some may say it's a crime to use their money to build such a stark bridge that is devoid of any meaning beyond its utility.
On the other hand, nihilism seems to have gotten an early start in Russia which in the 19th century was not on the cutting edge of progress. And that, could it be, is because the absolute (and sometimes stupid) despotism of the Romanovs, and the social system in Russia, left little room for philosophical dissidents to maneuver? The church, the state (in the person of the Tsar), and the landowning class were a smothering layer?
Or was nihilism a broader, earlier development throughout Europe? I guess I'll have to turn to the Internet to get some background. Unless you happen to have a nice capsule history...
@Wayfarer recently opened my eyes to the compelling ideas of Max Weber and his work in understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularisation, and "disenchantment" that he associated with the rise of capitalism and modernity. It may help to explain how the shift in values came about.
Dark, man. I like it. I think that way too. There's a dark ecstasy in it, but it's a rough ride at times. The spiritual dream comes in at least 50 flavors, some of them more academic than others. This or that finally gives the world substance and the individual a purpose beyond hunger, lust, and status-seeking. Call this dog a cynic, but I see status-seeking blended in with these grand evasions. On the other hand, even the metaphor 'evasion' is plugged in (arguably) to the nuclear option of the status seeking olympics. A grim version of the real is still being offered. I 'believe' in the abyss, but I suspect that I am only capable of doing so because even here the game functions at a self-questioning or self-recognizing extreme.
If I say that we are all sinners and fools in some sense (dogs on the prowl), then I am arrogant and humble in the same breath. This dark view reminds me of the ace of spades. Our romantic hero faces the void.
https://youtu.be/1iwC2QljLn4
If memory serves, those guys were politically religious. As I understand it, there was basically a secularization of Christianity. Heaven would be built here down here. The poet Shelley got in trouble as a wee lad by spreading atheism via hot air balloons. If everyone could just get rid of God, we'd have utopia. In short, it was just a revolution within religion, not the death of a sense of mission.
What is meaningful has nothing to do with right and wrong?
What does it mean to say that the world is the way science describes it? I'll point out the fact that science is not able to describe it all. It's not even a simple question of how much it's able to describe.
Awesome. What did you do in the band? Since you're a thinker, I'd guess vocals. I've done some music myself, but unfortunately have no comparable anecdotes.
I generally side with Peterson here.
No. You can have linguistic meaning in a material world, and science can be based on that, but you can't have meaning (with a capital 'M' as it were) in the sense of a kind of meaning that could counter nihilism - that is, the meaning of something's having a place in an over-arching narrative, or a telos, a purpose.
Science leave out all questions of telos by design - that was the whole point of the Baconian revolution, you bracket questions of meaning, telos, purpose, place in the universe, "what's it all about?", etc., etc., and you see what can be said about the world purely in terms of material and efficient causes, clickety-clack, one damn thing after another.
(I should note that there's another important sense of Meaning, which is more related to mysticism - a sort of aesthetic arrest, suspension in the moment, nonduality, silence, "peace that passeth understanding" - although it can occur even in the midst of stress and action - etc., and that's a very important "thing" in this world, but it's non-conceptual.)
It's interesting, the process of songwriting: it happens in all sorts of ways, but I'd say 6 or 7 times out of 10, how it happens is that someone has a kernel idea, a sort of nugget that's a fusion of a snippet of lyric conjoined with a snippet of melody, rhythm and harmony, even a tone sometimes, and the song sort of "unfolds" from that nugget - you follow the internal logic of the thing wherever it leads from that initial nugget. Usually, with this method, the lyrics start off as open syllables and vowels that work well with the melody, but you're playing around with them with the background meaning of the song in mind, and with the "nugget" as the thing you're eventually going to "land on" (as it were), and precise words, and other sections of the song, gradually coalesce out of that. And you generally tend to have (for pop music at least) 2 or 3 "main" sections (verse and chorus, or verse, bridge and chorus) that get repeated a lot, and one extra section ("middle 8") that provides a break, and a little excursion away from the main themes for a while.
Damn, giving away the secrets here :)
I forgot about keyboards. In my little scene that was an underplayed instrument. I was the vocalist and managed to steer the concept via the lyrics (and by doing the recording and artwork.) I always wanted to play the keys or the piano. Great instrument. I love McCoy Tyner. Also always wanted to play Satie's pieces. In another life perhaps.
I did a Satie piece for my entrance exam to music college (many decades ago).
Those are very doable in this life.
Yeah. If I can find the time. I put my creative ambitions on the back burner to climb the big boy ladder. I did just spend a month getting high and pecking away on an Olympia SM3. But vacation is over, so it's back to sciency stuff.
All I'm saying is start with Satie, not McCoy.
Most definitely. To quote Cornel West: time is real. Perhaps others can relate. A person can be young enough to still dream of a reinvention or two and old enough to really see the finitude of that ultimate resource.
As I get older, I also see the jack of all trades versus master of one dilemma. Of course it's good to keep the brain lit up as a whole, but our culture rewards specialization professionally. In private life, at least, wellroundedness is rewarded. One can relate to more types of people, etc.
Aim for the wellroundedness.
I agree. I put up with a certain amount regimentation to afford a lifestyle free enough of worry, etc. There's a foggy calculation involved. This one particular life feels almost randomly plucked from a thousands lives I could enjoy. A man has a good wife, a particular woman with her particular quirks. But he sees here and there other women with whom a different and at least equally interesting adventure could be had. Same with careers or artistic paths.
But relationships, careers, and media are structured like ladders. They increase in value as one puts time in. I'd suggest that an innate wellroundedness opens up a perception of the problem in the first place. If you think you could be good at a lot of things (or with a lot of different types of women), then you a certain ineradicable buyer's remorse. That's probably where dreams and fiction come in. Metaphorically we can think of a splintered blob-human whose splinters we are in our individual lives. Then one version of God is just this infinite species blob, transcending any particular voice and including them all.
I recognize that process. For me the instrumental players would offer up some riffs they had written. I'd improvise some lyrics over the music, suggest changes in the structure perhaps that facilitated the vocals. Sometimes we'd play the songs for months and I'd find a better lyric to replace something that wasn't quite right but the best I could do. Some of our best stuff was completely improvised, though. And sometimes we could never quite capture the magic of that first recording (I tried to record all 'pratices' that were just as much parties). Unfortunately, we had a little too much fun, and the recordings aren't generally studio quality. We weren't responsible or worldly enough to really even try to make a living that way. This didn't mean we weren't full of ourselves.
I also play guitar, and I have written a few songs completely myself. But I worked with two great guitarists (to my taste), so I tended to do it the aforementioned way. Of course this was also good for morale. We were great friends, and we all wanted to be songwriters on our instrument.
*For what it's worth, I like that album you linked to in one of your older posts.
Quoting Thorongil
You Americans and Peterson >:O ...
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/6n6rhg/why_are_jordan_petersons_philosophical_opinions/
But actually, Pete was quite reasonable as I listened to him at 2x the speed here, unlike on some other occasions.
Anyway, I thought Benatar was quite poor in this debate, despite the consensus from the comments that he "destroyed" Peterson.
I think it was evident that Benatar was trained in philosophy, he WAS more thorough, step-by-step and analytic than Peterson. However, Peterson was significantly more insightful than Benatar.
Humans are only just on the scene compared to the rest of creation. Civilization has progressed over the last 3000 years of recorded history, for both good and bad. However, over the last 200 or so years we have made great strides in mediating actual pain and suffering. Not eliminating it, but moving in the right direction IMHO.
We can now avoid many debilitating diseases, and other calamities. Medicine and modern technology seem to be making great strides with no sign of let up, only giving us more hope. If the history of the world as we understand it is correct then this is only the beginning. Give the species a chance, maybe someday chronic pain will be a thing of the past.
Our species has a history of betterment. Sure there were/are wars and are terrible events, but there has also been considerable progress and improvement.
Children are our future X-)
What you continue to not acknowledge is that aesthetics, "linguistic meaning," and capital M meaning is all based on our values. Values are expressed in 'right or wrong' evaluations, aesthetics, and in religious traditions. There's no vast gulf between these modes.
Quoting gurugeorge
We're free to ask teleological questions, form hypothesizes, test, and so on. I don't know why you feel constrained in this way.
Quoting gurugeorge
You appear to have formed a concept of it okay, even going so far as calling it a "thing."
Linguistic meaning isn't "based on values" it's a natural phenomenon that just grows. Although on another level I suppose you could say it's "based on values" in a particular sense - in the sense that language is a means of co-ordination, therefore of survival and flourishing, for us as social animals, which means it's ultimately subservient to the the value of reproductive fitness (the "tether" idea again) but I doubt that's the kind of "value" you mean - or is it? (I think you're probably alluding to a Marxist type of analysis of values in relation to social hierarchies? I would say there's probably some validity to that type of analysis when it comes to aesthetics and religion, but not to language as such, and not to science.)
Quoting praxis
No, you can't ask teleological questions in science. The nearest thing would be the kind of reverse-engineering you get in evolutionary explanations, but of course that's just convenient shorthand for a bunch of complex mechanistic processes analyzed in other sciences. It's "as if" teleology.
For science, everything must necessarily be clickety-clack, from top to bottom, because that's all science looks for (material/efficient causes).
Try it. See what happens. It's safe, I promise.
Non-responsive. I explained why teleology isn't and can't possibly be a thing in science, if you think my explanation is wrong, have at it.
Frankly, I'm skeptical if your 'clickety-clack, as if' explanation is worth deciphering.
Teleology, as I expect you know, is a reason or explanation for the purpose or goal of something. Clearly, science can give reasons and explanations for the purpose or goal of something. So what purposes or goals are you curious about? If you define a goal or goals we can go from there.
Well, you'll never know until you try :)
Quoting gurugeorge
Whether or not meaning is a natural phenomenon that just grows, this says nothing about your claim that meaning isn't based on values. Are you assuming that values are unnatural and don't "grow"? Is it that you consider the interpretation that meaning is based on values, the analysis itself, unnatural? and that having made this analysis there's no longer room for growth? In any case, in the very next breath you accept my claim, stating "I suppose you could say it's "based on values" in a particular sense."
This is a big nothingburger so far, but thanks for the opportunity to use the word nothingburger. I've been so wanting to try it.
Quoting gurugeorge
Of course it's metaphorical in biology. How could it not be?
Quoting gurugeorge
I don't know what you mean by "clickety-clack" or "from top to bottom." Rhythmic, and thorough or hierarchical?
If you're saying that science requires evidence, why does that prevent it from asking teleological questions?
"What you continue to not acknowledge is that aesthetics, "linguistic meaning," and capital M meaning is all based on our values."
I took this to mean that you think linguistic meaning is based either on our consciously held-values, or on values derived from the "base" (relations of production) in a Marxist sense, or on values derived from "power" relations in the modern-day pseudo-Marxist sense (e.g. "patriarchy", etc.). I disagree on all three counts: linguistic meaning is something that develops spontaneously over generations, and to the extent that any values are involved at all, they're unconscious and derived from things like differential reproductive fitness, status seeking, etc.
"Our values," as consciously held and expressed, or as products of social relations, sometimes align with those biologically-based values, sometimes not. Because the division of labour largely cushions us, as individuals and sub-groups, from the tribunal of nature, "our values" can freewheel away from those biological values to some extent (although ultimately they are a "tether" as I said above).
Quoting praxis
Metaphorical teleology isn't teleology. All uses of teleological concepts in science are necessarily metaphorical, or shorthand, because science cannot possibly deal with teleology, only material or efficient causes and mechanistic explanations.
As I keep telling you, that's built in to the very idea of science as a way of looking at the world, as distinct from religious or mythological explanations (which are all about teleology). That's how science distinguished itself and split off from Scholastic natural philosophy in the period of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. That's how the great early scientists could still be believing Christians at the same time as they were scientists - because the very meat of science as a distinct enterprise WAS the bracketing, the methodological shelving, of teleological questions. (There's an often-used metaphor that's relevant here, of looking for the lost keys in the dark under the lamppost.)
You're getting closer to accepting that "linguistic meaning" is based in values, it appears.
Quoting gurugeorge
Maybe try to think of it this way. If there were evidence of God's existence, like if he started appearing around the world and doing things that only a God could do, then his goals could be speculated on and studied scientifically, right? Indeed some claim that science was first developed to for this purpose, essentially to study God.
A more practical example is AGI (artificial general intelligence). AGI will likely present the most serious teleological questions our species will ever know, because within a couple of decades our survival could depend on it.
Quoting gurugeorge
Using my magic decoder ring translated this to: the substance of science was the methodical abandonment of teleological questions.
Hmm.
Not unless you think reproductive fitness is one of "our values." It may be a value for some to pump out as many babies as they possibly can, but I don't think it's what most people would think of as "our values."
Quoting praxis
But we can only ask teleological questions about AI because it's something we're creating, and the thing we're creating can have as much purpose as we give it. The question at issue was teleology in nature - that can't be found (except in the "as if" sense, as I said). And if you pursue the naturalistic view to its logical conclusion, it can't even be found in us (we literally are P-zombies and it's "as if" teleology all the way down).
Quoting praxis
It's not usually considered a sign that you're winning an argument when you twit people for their manner of expression ;)
I never said "abandoned," I said "bracketed/shelved." The first scientists were believing Christians, they didn't abandon teleology (obviously, since they were Christians, they believed that the world has purpose, the purpose God imbues it with), they simply set aside questions of Aristotelian final cause and formal cause in order to concentrate on questions of material and efficient cause. Many modern-day scientists are also religious believers.
Later, modern philosophy started to play with the literal abandonment of teleology, and naturalism/materialism became a distinct philosophy. And that's where nihilism and the "death of God" come in. (To the extent that many naturalists/materalists think that teleology has been disproven - actually that never happened, it's just another bit of rationalist boosterism.)
To have everything forgotten. Every accomplishment you've worked so hard to achieve. Everything gone forever. Well, unless it turns out the afterlife is a legitimate thing, but until there is some sort of scientific evidence I won't believe in that fully.
Of course, the joys of life are enough to continue living, but as a human being the only thing we live for is to reproduce and to aid our species. As Ender's Game says, humans are ultimately just tools, and the entire life we live is just to further our species. It's sad when I think about it that way.
I'm not interested in winning an argument. I'm interested in what you're trying to say and your language is getting in the way of that. Perhaps you obfuscate by design? That you persist in it despite my teasing is a sign, of something.
Quoting gurugeorge
No one can currently disprove the existence of an intelligent designer or whatever.
As far as I can tell we haven't had any movement in this discussion, which to my mind centers around your claim that once religious belief erodes, due to scientific discoveries that contradict religious doctrine, like evolution, for example, there's no possible over-arching narrative that makes any sense of a material universe.
My position is that the ONLY difference is that we are free, or freer, in modernity to find/construct our own narratives because there is no longer a reliance on an external authority. And to be clear, any such narratives don't need to be based on a "material universe."
We are free to adopt an over-arching narrative from popular science fiction, as Open-minded Opossum describes in the post above. Depressing but cheeriness is not a requirement.
At this point, you might try to form a convincing argument that shows why we can't discover or construct an 'over-arching narrative' for ourselves.
Wouldn't you agree that whether the good or bad aspects of life predominate depends on whose life it is, and what their circumstances are, and what happens to/for them?
But we don't have a choice about being in our life anyway.
If there's reincarnation, then most likely the good and bad lives average-out.
(...and it seems to me that reincarnation is metaphysically-supported.)
If there isn't reincarnation, then you're just out-of-luck if your life is primarily one of suffering, disadvantage, adversity, loss.
But, even then, you have the considerable consolation that life isn't everything, and that this life will end with well-deserved rest and sleep.
So, overall, I'd say that metaphysical reality, and Reality itself, are good.
Michael Ossipoff
Perhaps you're just deliberately being a dick? The possibilities are endless. That's why civilized discourse normally proceeds under the assumption of charity of interpretation.
Quoting praxis
That wouldn't be necessary to disprove teleology, it's independent of the idea of an intelligent designer. Aristotelian teleology is naturalistic - or to put it another way, you don't have to subscribe to intelligent design in order to understand examples of what must necessarily be construed as "as if" teleology on the basis of a materialistic/mechanistic understanding of nature, as examples of real teleology.
Quoting praxis
What I'm saying is that if you are thoroughly consistent in following a mechanistic/materialistic understanding of the world, then nihilism is the logically necessary conclusion. There's no other option. That doesn't mean a specifically religious stance is the only counter, it just means that as the religious basis for viewing the world fades, and so long as nothing else (e.g. no other religious type, or no alternative naturalistic understanding of the world) replaces it, then we're going to drift into nihilism.
And then, as I said, I don't think you can "freely construct" any old alternative over-arching narrative and have it take hold. Of course you can "freely construct" any old story about the universe, but the fact that you've constructed it doesn't make it true. People want to believe an over-arching story that they think is true - in fact, people thinking the materialistic/mechanistic view of the universe is true is precisely what's driving the drift to nihilism.
I agree with you on the positive aspect of not relying on external authority, if by that you mean unquestioning reliance on authority. That's definitely a gain, but it's not really relevant to the main point. Certainly people in the past believed authority - but again, they believed authority because they trusted the authority was telling them the truth. (It was just a form of reliance on expertise.) Now that science is the authority that's replaced religion, science is telling us the world is intrinsically meaningless. But perhaps the new authority is just as mistaken as the old.
Who says that you're supposed to be doing all that for some future advantage? What if it's just for itself?
It is.
It needn't and doesn't have other purpose or meaning.
This notion of living for the future is, of course, a big cause of much unhappiness and dis-satisfaction.
What's wrong with that, if it was just for itself, for play, or Lila, as the Hindus say?
"Legitimate" vs "Illegitimate" isn't the distinction, Your temporary life is legitimate too.
But I've been saying the sleep at the end of lives is our usual, normal and natural state of affairs, because it's life's final outcome, and because it's timeless.
I assure you that there will never be scientific evidence of anything other than the interactions of the objects in this physical world--a subject that has nothing to do with what we're talking about.
No, that's just from natural-selection's point-of-view. From your own point of view, you do what you do because you like to. There' s no other reason, justification, purpose or meaning--nor need or should there be.
And sure it's temporary, but so what? Then enjoy it while you're in it. The fact that it will eventually be over, why should that be a problem? When the time for the peaceful rest and sleep at the end of lives arrives, what's wrong with that?
That's a sad, unhappy and unrealistic way to regard life. See above.
Michael Ossipoff
I do not agree that "life is good in itself". I think that that statement is either false or meaningless. It certainly does not accord with my own reflections on the matter, nor with typical thinking on the matter, which tends to accept without objection that there is, or are, or at least can be, x, y, z, and so on, which are good in life, and which can, under the right circumstances, make life good. It is this context or relation which provides meaning.
I also do not agree with your assertion that "the upsides outweigh the downsides". I certainly wouldn't make that claim worded as strongly as you have worded it, as though it is a matter of fact. That isn't the kind of thing that should just be asserted without any accompanying details of how you have reached such a conclusion. This was noticeably absent from your opening post, yet you should have known that it would need addressing and would be questioned. Or, if it is more a matter of opinion, then you should have taken more care with your wording. One might say, for instance, that for me, the upsides outweigh the downsides - and I would find that perfectly acceptable.
I stated quite clearly that my interest is in trying to understand what you're saying and your unusual language interferes with that aim. I've given no reason for you to doubt this.
Quoting gurugeorge
I've demonstrated generous effort in my attempts to decipher your unique phrasings.
Quoting gurugeorge
You seem to distinguish 'real' teleology from 'as if' teleology by whether or not there exists an intelligent designer, yes? An intelligent designer is real teleology and 'as if' is merely the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes. If so, the problem here is that this leads to an eternal regress. If there is an intelligent designer, where did they come from? Were they designed or did they come to exist through some natural mechanistic process? If the designer was designed, who designed the designer of the designer...
It seems to me these are just different ways of looking at causal relationships: one with conscious intention and the other without, neither is more real than the other.
Quoting gurugeorge
You appear to contradict yourself within this paragraph by claiming that a mechanistic/materialistic understanding of the world necessarily results in nihilism and then saying that some sort of naturalistic understanding of the world could replace a "specifically religious stance." Naturalistic and mechanistic/materialistic are pretty much synonymous in this context, are they not?
Quoting gurugeorge
Have you by chance heard of Scientology?
Quoting gurugeorge
It doesn't need to be true. It only needs to be meaningful.
Quoting gurugeorge
That's a simplistic theory, not a fact.
Quoting gurugeorge
The freedom to discover or construct our own narratives and meaning in life is irrelevant to your main point? If I'm not mistaken, your main point centers around your claim that once religious belief erodes, due to scientific discoveries that contradict religious doctrine, like evolution, for example, there's no possible over-arching narrative that makes any sense of a material universe.
You mentioned yourself that some sort of naturalistic understanding of the world could replace a "specifically religious stance" and avert a drift into nihilism.
No, I just said no in the very passage you quote. But perhaps the "phrasing" was too "unique" for you ;) (I'm beginning to wonder if you think I'm a religious believer? It seems like you're arguing as one might argue against a religious believer. Just because I have some kind, positive things to say about religion, and I don't think the standard rationalist counter-arguments to the classical arguments for God are as slam-dunk as rationalists tend to think they are, doesn't mean that I am myself a believer :) )
Quoting praxis
No, as implied by the word "alternative."
Quoting praxis
Well that's just where we disagree. People trust that science is true. Science says the universe is intrinsically meaningless. No amount of ginned-up "meaningfulness" is going to override that, it's just whistling in the dark.
Quoting praxis
Yes I think that's possible, but it couldn't be the current mechanistic/materialistic version of naturalism. It would have to be something like the Aristotelian/Stoic naturalistic understanding (which gives context and meaning to material/efficient causes as something like "phases" or "moments" of final cause, which could be something intrinsic to the universe whether it's intelligently designed or not). That would put science in a broader context, so the intrinsic meaninglessness of the universe from science's point of view would be understood simply as an artifact of its self-imposed methodological limitations (sc. its specific focus on quantity and measurability).
Another possibility is some kind of "non-duality" as in Advaita Vedanta, some forms of Buddhism, Daoism, etc. I've toyed with that a lot from time to time over the years and I think it's a live option, particularly in the context of some kind of Externalism re. mind. It might even be possible to blend aspects of the Aristotelian understanding with it.
BUT, again, these kinds of alternatives would only be a viable counterweight to nihilism if they were true.
Where does 'science' say that? I've scanned through my Encyclopaedia of Science, can't find any pronouncements to that effect. Is it in a paper I've missed?
Your argument doesn't follow at all.
For a start you need to review your understanding of the scientific method (or stop misrepresenting it, whichever is the case). Science does not profess to 'know' anything, it is a set of theories which are tested for their utility by their ability to make accurate predictions with the least consideration of conflicting or invented phenomenon.
The 'meaning' of life is widely construed as the purpose for which one lives (certainly in the context of this thread, that is exactly what it is - the question "why do anything?", and "why have children?").
So a scientific approach to this question would be to propose a theory about what our proximate reasons might be based on, and most congruent with, phenomenon that we already have useful theories about.
The theory scientists have come up with that meets those criteria is that of reason having been written into our neurons by our DNA because it provided an advantage which meant that particular chemical was propagated in favour of any other.
You might not like that theory, but it's a theory nonetheless. It's simply not true to say that science says there's no meaning to life.
I fail to see how any other approach - religion, in the case GG was referring to - gets any closer. Religion might say that the purpose of the universe is God's purpose, but then you'd just have to ask why God came into being, why he chose that purpose and not any other purpose, why the universe is God's purpose and not just left purposeless.
All we can ever produce a proximate causes because we can infinitely ask why. Science has a perfectly good theory as to the proximate objective to life - do what seems to make you happy because we seem to like happiness.
That the Universe is intrinsically meaningless is a logically necessary implication of the materialist/mechanistic worldview, i.e. the view that the Universe is comprised exclusively of observable regularities, sequences of efficient causation ("laws of nature") with no necessary connection. It's true that not all scientists believe that idea, and simply use it as a heuristic (some are religious, for example); it's also true that most scientists don't think about it all that much and just get on with doing science. But it is, so to speak, the elephant in the room for a materialist/mechanistic metaphysical position, and it comes out particularly when philosophers try to consistently follow the implications of the mechanistic worldview - e.g. in debates about Free Will, Philosophy of Mind, etc.
I don't understand your logic here. What is the thing you're looking for like? What properties would a 'meaning' have that you're finding absent in materialism?
Purpose, teleology, intelligibility (in the classical sense): something that doesn't ultimately terminate at "shit happens." After all, "shit happens" is hardly an explanation, is it?
So how does doing what makes you happy because we seem to like being happy miss that criteria? Are you specifically looking for meaning outside of the human experience?
No, you didn't just say no, you said something about "real" teleology. I was attempting to determine what you mean by that. This would be the part, in the civilized discourse that you profess to value, where you see my misapprehension and, in the good faith that civil discourse demands, correct my mistaken interpretation by explaining your meaning.
Quoting gurugeorge
How does one argue against a religious believer? If you're suggesting that your arguments are irrational I will not argue against that claim. But seriously, your primary position is apparently anti-materialist.
By the way, I'm not religious and I don't subscribe to the philosophy of materialism, should I assume that I'm a believer?
Quoting gurugeorge
Oh, you mean like 'alternative facts'. Metaphysical naturalism is synonymous with scientific materialism.
Quoting gurugeorge
If you're trying to say that people trust the scientific method, sure, it proves to be a generally reliable method.
Quoting gurugeorge
How do you believe that metaphysical naturalism differs from materialism?
Quoting gurugeorge
Religious or metaphysical beliefs don't need to be true to be meaningful. For a simple example, a work of fiction, that we know is fiction, doesn't need to be true to be meaningful.
According to the google search I just did there are 4, 200 religions in the world. Many of them have vastly different and irreconcilable metaphysics. If truth were essential how could there be so many and how could they exist side by side? If one were true then others must be false.
Today evolution is generally regarded as fact and even though it contradicts at least one of the major religions many choose to simply not believe it. They don't care what the actual truth is, or rather they don't value truth as much as they value the meaning derived from their belief system.
Quoting Pseudonym
In a word: values. For some strange reason, he doesn't seem to believe that values exist once a materialist/mechanistic worldview is adopted. They just magically disappear.
Are people made happy by modern life? Reports and statistics seem to give a mixed impression. It's often remarked that poor people seem happier than people in rich countries - they suffer more from the kinds of things that rich people don't suffer from (disease, accident, etc.), but there's often the impression that they're psychologically happier, or that their happiness is independent of circumstances. Or maybe it's just a case of "hunger being the best sauce," type thing. Or maybe it's the more intimate forms of social life they have, as contrasted to our atomized alienation from each other, our life as mere individuals.
Of course happiness has several possible meanings. There's the momentary happiness of consumption (in all its forms), and we certainly have lots of that, but that's different from what one might call happiness as satisfaction, or fulfillment - the deep, profound satisfaction of a life well-lived, a life of creativity, of goals fulfilled; which is different again from the happiness of _ataraxia_ or a Buddhist sort of desireless state. All these latter kinds of happiness might even require momentary unhappiness in the former sense, or perhaps better to say discomfort, but they seem to be worth it. Generally, the satisfaction of long-term goals seems to give that deeper sense of fulfillment - perhaps even long-term goals beyond one's individual span, the happiness of raising kids, or of contributing to society, planting trees, etc.
But the further you go from the kind of happiness that depends on the satisfaction of range-of-the-moment whim, the less there seems to be any point, unless there's a point to the over-arching context of existence. It's almost as if a life of whim-satisfaction serves as a distraction from the emptiness and meaninglessness of a mechanistic universe - if you skip from one act of consumption to next fast enough, maybe you don't have to think about it, maybe you don't have to notice it. But the biggest problem with happiness as whim satisfaction, as de Sade told us long ago, is that it escalates - more and more extreme forms of stimulation have to be found.
I wouldn't say that meaning has to be found exclusively outside human experience - discovering one's own meaning does seem to be part of a fulfilled life - but I'd say that there does have to ALSO be meaning outside the human experience, some meaning or significance to the fact that anything exists at all, some over-arching context that gives our individual stories a meaningful place, to get the full spectrum of the best possible life.
Yes, as contrasted with the "as if" teleology I was talking about several posts back when we were talking about teleology.
Quoting praxis
No it's not, and I just explained how it's not. Scientific materialism is one form of naturalistic thinking. Other forms are e.g. Daoism, Stoicism, Aristotelianism, Spinozism, some forms of Idealism, Peirce's Pragmatism, Robert Pirsig's metaphysics of "Quality" - where there's no supernatural entity or designer in charge, but there is an intelligible quality to the Universe as a whole that's also external the individual (as well as internal). For non-mechanistic forms of naturalism, meaning and value are intrinsic to the Universe, such that nature doesn't just happen to be the way it is, it's the way it is for a reason (a reason that's ultimately self-explanatory or self-evident in a deep way, thus making the whole intelligible through and through). Another way of putting this might be to say that, for these kinds of systems, the big "why" questions can have rational answers without having to invoke a supernatural being - at most, they might invoke a "God of the Philosophers" or a "Deus sive Natura" type of concept, but that's conceived of as integral to nature, or immanent, not necessarily transcendent (not having to be transcendent to do its job of making the Universe intelligible).
Quoting praxis
They have to be believed to be true for people to think of them as meaningful (in the sense of profound, not just in the sense of linguistic meaning). Obviously religious people don't believe their religions are works of fiction.
Quoting praxis
They don't magically disappear, rather it's that they don't have any roots in the way reality is. For a religious worldview, or a non-mechanistic type of naturalism, "is" and "ought" are very much linked, you ought to precisely because the world is a certain way. But a mechanistic worldview necessarily divorces the two.
So if you take the mechanistic picture seriously, you can still have values - for a while. But as I said when we started this conversation, beyond a certain point they're running on fumes, there's no way to generate them out of the "is" of the mechanistic worldview, so eventually they'll fade out of use because there's no reason to hold to them.
I agree with your separation of the different types of happiness, but I'm still not getting the connection with materialism. You mention raising kids as an example of just that kind of long term selfless sense of deeper fulfillment and I'd agree entirely, but you can't get much more materialistically hard-wired into our DNA, than the desire to raise kids. It's a direct result of a chemicals pre-priming neurons to fire in a particular way, but it creates on hell of a powerful meaning to life.
Quoting gurugeorge
This is the bit where you're losing me. Given the examples you've provided above. The long-term investment in teaching, landscaping, learning are all things that people seem to have no trouble committing to, but more significantly for this discussion, evolutionary biologist have no trouble finding material purpose for. Some (such as the urge to learn) have even been fairly clearly identified by neuroscience. So I'm not seeing how any of this gets lost in materialism.
Quoting gurugeorge
Again this comes back to my first question. What would such a meaning look like? What would be an example of a meaning or significance to the fact that anything exists at all?
And yet as we see, people are less interested in having families in the "advanced" countries. And this is because DNA has no sense of time-binding, it's "blind," mechanistic. Consider tendencies towards r selection or K selection. Some people (both male and female) are interested in sexual pleasure, certainly, but aren't all that interested in investing in kids. Or again consider the prevalence of infanticide in times past, or abortion now.
The natural drives alone can be quite heartless and cruel; nature is impartial, if it fits the environment there will be parental investment, if not, not.
The evolutionary biology/psychology explanations explain why some things have come to be the way they are, but they don't give any rationale for continuing them - I'd remind you of how, notoriously, Darwinians, Racialists and Eugenicists and the like in the past were twitted by rationalists for mixing up theirs "oughts" and their "ises." ;)
As per my conversation with Praxis above, it's not that people don't currently find meaning, it's that in terms of the mechanistic worldview, there's no reason for them to do so. We're still fairly close to a time when people had over-arching meaningful contexts, so there's still the habit of it in society. But eventually, over time, that habit will fade (so long as that worldview is believed to be true). Already, one has the sense that talk about meaning is fading into pious nostrums that glide off one's mind, commodified in books, chatted about by Oprah for 5 minutes, and forgotten.
Quoting Pseudonym
One is obviously the religious one we're familiar with (there's a purpose to things, even if we don't understand it fully, we can trust that God's on the case), but there are other possibilities (e.g. non-dual mystical, Aristotelian final cause, Daoist "grain," or "Way of things," Hermetic microcosm/macrocosm, etc.) Generally speaking, there are outside-in positions, inside-out positions, or both - either the meaningful element is something that expresses itself from within, or it's something that impinges on the individual from without, or both (either in parallel or in a mutually-shaping interaction).
These possibilities are all foreclosed by materialism/mechanism - which boils down to sequences of quantifiable efficient causes without any sort of over-arching context (i.e. stuff just happens to happen the way it happens, the Universe is a stupendous accident, destined for an ignominious end).
Quoting gurugeorge
Indeed, you hit upon a major difference in modern and post-modern outlooks. Modernists may have left an over-arching theme of religion behind, but they replaced it with the over-arching theme that science, technology, and social engineering can bring us to a more ideal state (i.e. Marxism, Hegelianism, Secular Humanism, Liberalism, etc.). The post-modern outlook rejects meta-narratives and over-arching themes of human life. With this outlook, it insists we are all telling narratives and there is only meaning in relation to the context of that story. Or at least that is one view of the split between the two. There is never an overriding narrative to bind them all.
My take is that life is simply an instrumental affair. I call this concept instrumentality. We survive, maintain our comfort levels that are acceptable to our own and society's standards, and we flee from boredom. We do this repetitiously, day in and day out. Hope keeps us rushing through it trying not to dwell on it. However, we are striving for nothing in particular, but that death/dying seems painful or scary and we know nothing else except to live another day, the way we are used to doing it. It is a grinding, slow march to oblivion for the individual, choosing our ways to "work" "maintain our environment" and "entertain ourselves". That is it, not much more than that.
Maybe it will clarify if you can explain why your apparent view that Aristotelian teleology is "real" rather than "as if." Or should I just assume that you subscribe to Aristotelian teleology and therefore it is real for you?
Quoting gurugeorge
Right, the metaphysical form of naturalism is synonymous with scientific materialism.
Quoting gurugeorge
But the whole isn't intelligible through and through, in any narrative. This is anthropomorphism. Meaning can't be intrinsic to the universe without an intelligence or subjective experience.
Quoting gurugeorge
Also obvious that they don't know if their religion is true. That's why faith is required.
Quoting gurugeorge
Even many of Hume's contemporaries didn't think this problem was much of a problem.
Quoting gurugeorge
Why is an overarching narrative necessary to ground our values?
You're repeatedly using terms without agreed meanings and it makes it extremely difficult to understand what you're saying. Rather than try and second guess what you might mean, I will try to explain myself better and see if you can specify where you disagree, apologies if it sounds like repetition.
Firstly we need to establish what you mean by meaning. I understood it to mean purpose, but you seemed not to be happy with the proximate purpose evolution gave us (to propagate our DNA). It seems you want there to be some other purpose, but I'm not sure why.
Part of your post above changes from talking about meaning, to talking about reasons "why?" but these are two different questions. Purpose, values, meaning, reason,... these are all very different issues but you seem to be using them interchangeably.
The purpose of our lives, according to materialism is to secure the survival of our DNA.
Our values are in tilled in us by our DNA and by our culture (the result of years of interaction between brains and environment, and they primarily serves as learnt techniques for achieving our purpose above.
Meaning is an extremely subjective term. Fundamentally, meaning is just a picking apart of an thing into it components. When we ask what a word means, we expect the answer to simply be in the form of other words, we could continue asking forever and continue answering in other words. So when you say that life doesn't have meaning under materialism, that cannot possibly be true. The fact that we can disassemble aspects of our experience automatically entails meaning.
Reason is the same as cause and effect. One thing happens in order to bring about another. Here you seem to be saying that because, under materialism, things happen simply because prior things caused them (rather than because of the thing they cause). But this is the problem with any overarching story, none of they can give an ultimate reason because we can always ask why. If God made the world, then why?
We all have to stop asking "why?" at some point, even the religious.
That sentence doesn't make sense as it stands. I'll presume you're asking me to explain why I think Aristotelian teleology (if true) would be a form of real teleology rather than an "as if" teleology?
The reason would be that Aristotelian teleology understands final cause, purpose, function, as intrinsic to nature, whereas when teleological concepts are used in biology, for example, it's just a manner of speaking (that's what I mean by "as if"). The true story according to science would be the full explanation of the biological concept in question in terms of chemistry, and ultimately physics; the use of "function" or "purpose" in biology is therefore just shorthand for that bigger explanation - or another way of looking at it might be that the ordinary teleological concepts we use are the explanandum of science, which tries to explain what's really going on under the hood that gives the appearance of function and purpose, when actually there is no function or purpose to anything.
Quoting praxis
No, scientific materialism is one form of metaphysical naturalism, it's not "synonymous" with it, it's a subset or sub-type of it, one form of it.
Quoting praxis
Intelligence yes, subjective experience not necessarily (that's what would distinguish these alternative forms of naturalism from supernaturalistic religion, the idea that this ... thing ... has an inner life of its own). So the idea would be (for all these non-nihilistic variants) that our own intelligence is a miniature, somewhat degraded version of the intelligence that infuses and structures the Universe, analogously to the way a broken piece of a hologram has the same image as the whole hologram, just slightly degraded. At any rate, that's not what I was talking about: I meant that a fully satisfactory story about the Universe has to be complete, and ultimately grounded in self-evidence. (i.e. as I said earlier, it should have the self-evident, unarguable quality of something like the cogito).
Quoting praxis
Because values partly pertain to the world around you that's not-you, yet values you merely create for yourself have no necessary connection to the world that's not-you. For all you know, you might be imposing values on the world that are alien to it. IOW values, to be truly values as distinct from whims or preferences, have to be grounded in the way the world is, not just the way you are, or the way you feel. (It makes no difference if we shift up to "our values", they would still be at risk of being subjective.)
It's not that, it's that the DNA "purpose" isn't actually a purpose. What work is "proximate" doing in your sentence there? How can there be "proximate purpose" at the level of the DNA mandate, if there's no distal purpose in the Universe as a whole? It seems like the "proximate purpose" is either just the seeming of purpose in something that is actually purposeless (which would be the materialistic/mechanistic idea, pursued to its logical conclusion) or it's the appearance of real purpose for the first time ever in the Universe, just at that biological level (for some reason).
Quoting Pseudonym
No, from a strictly materialistic perspective there's no purpose at the level of DNA, it's just a bunch of things that happen to be the way they are. Proteins fold and click together like lego or not, organisms "fit" with their environment or not. The purpose is only apparent, there only seems to be purpose, and the appearance of it is explainable in terms of the lower-level sciences.
There isn't even any function at that level, far less purpose. Recall Conway's "Game of Life." A few simple rules about contiguous squares flashing on and off create a vast ecosystem of complex patterns that do things like appearing to "eat" other patterns, that appear to move purposefully in particular directions, etc. But that's illusion, or rather just a manner of speaking that makes it easy to talk about the patterns.
Quoting Pseudonym
Yeah but the question is, do you stop because you've finally gotten a satisfactory answer, or just because you've given up, or are too tired to go on? You say:-
Quoting Pseudonym
That's a common misunderstanding of the classical argument for God. "God" closes the series of "why" questions because (speaking crudely, to get the point across quickly) it divides reality into two parts, creator and created (or at a more sophisticated level, necessary and contingent, act and potential, etc.). About the created part you can ask "why" questions, right up to the question of "why the whole thing?" The God part is the answer to that and the classical arguments explain why God must necessarily be something about which any "why?" question is unintelligible, IOW the God part is self-evident. That's a perfectly reasonable argument that gives full closure (if it's sound - of course the devil is in the details :) ).
I guess what I'm saying in a nutshell is that I think rationalists fool themselves into thinking that we can keep our cake and eat it, but the logic of materialism/mechanism is un-get-overable, and will eventually permeate society, if unchecked. The habits from DNA's mandate alone are not enough to create civilization, they only lead to a tribal society. It's only the classical philosophical views, or religious views, that trained us into being more than tribal beings, into building the vast, crystalline empires of thought and matter that we inhabit. But if there's no longer any reason to believe in the classical philosophical or religious views, and all we have as our basic metaphysics is materialism/mechanism, then we will inevitably return to a tribal way of life - only with nuclear toys.
This is all the case regardless of whether the over-arching philosophical/religious worldviews are true or false. If materialism is false and the grand, over-arching philosophical/religious meanings of old are true, then we're on a hiding to nothing for no good reason. If materialism is true, and the philosophical/religious meanings of old are false, then, ironically, we've rendered ourselves unfit by destroying our illusions.
You seem to have some meaning of the word purpose, which you are not making clear, which the apparent goal of DNA does not fit, but which the apparent goal of a God would fit. Both goals are apparent, I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this distinction. The goal of successful replication simply derives mechanistically from the chemical properties of DNA. The goal that God has in mind simply derives mechanistically from the properties of God, I'm not seeing the difference. You seem inexplicably more happy that a magical being dictates purpose than that a chemical structure does, but I'm in the dark as to why that makes any difference. Both are purpose.
In essence I think what you're saying is that you don't like the fact that apparent purpose is derived mechanistically from chemical structures, and you'd rather it was derived emotively from an anthropomorphic entity.
It seems your argument is that if we believe it is derived mechanistically, we might as well not bother doing anything because it's all ultimately pointless, whereas if it's derived emotively we can all get behind that and feel good about being a part of it.
I can see your point, but personally, I dwell more on the other side of the coin. If purpose is derived mechanistically, then it is impossible to avoid. we might talk esoterically about nihilism, and some might convince themselves that it's the best way to satisfy the many competing desires their DNA has mechanistically instilled in them, but by-and-large the population will have purpose whether they like it or not because it is as unavoidable as gravity.
To place purpose in the mind of an anthropomorphic God, however, is to create a purpose that can instantly be questioned. What if we've misunderstood what the purpose is, what if we've not been listening properly and are actually working against it. We end up with all this paranoia and guilt that has dogged the religious since religions began. The power of the 'interpreters', the fear of transgression, the confusion and doubt over the 'true' purpose etc. A minefield of psychological trauma.
Personally, I'd rather have a mechanistic, inescapable purpose, that is unavoidably instilled in every person from birth than one which is vague, unknowable, open to interpretation and largely in the hands of an elite few.
My perpetual question is why do we make new people experience life. I have not heard great answers thus far and each presupposes an unnecessary teleology (i.e. progress, goods of life, experience is rewarding in itself, personal achievement, relationships, etc.). I have not yet heard a compelling argument why making another existence is better than refraining from making a new existence.
Because we are compelled to either make a new being or assist in the raising of one relatively related to us, by the very chemicals which run our brains and bodies.
Given the complexities of the environment and the multitude of effects it may have on us, what some people deduce is the best way to assist in the raising of young can be quite varied to say the least, but I'm convinced that remains the driving force.
The problem is you're starting out presuming it's a choice we make, to have these desires which is really ironic considering your moniker.
“Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills”
Odd you use the quote from Schopenhauer, who though not explicitly an antinatalist, said "“If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
But, I think it is indeed a choice we can make. How is it not so? Besides which, you aren't really getting the point. It is not necessarily to try to get everyone to stop procreating, but to stop and ask themselves why is it better to make another existence rather than to refrain from creating another existence? Again, I have not heard a compelling argument. Your idea that it is simply instinctual drive doesn't really answer much. A) We can choose not to. B) People have chosen not to. C) People can go against "natural" instincts. D) How do you answer the "is" "ought" problem- just because its instinctual (if that is even the case) why should one ought to follow the instincts?
No, no, it's not got anything to do with the traditional Abrahamic conception of God specifically, or even with what might be derived "emotively"; God is just one way of having purpose, function, teleology, goal-directedness, meaning, etc., be intrinsic to the Universe (I pointed out several other options a few posts ago - the classic examples in Western philosophy are Aristotelianism's Final Cause and Stoicism's Logos, both of which are non-supernatural, naturalistic ideas. Spinoza's Conatus is another variant, in a Universe that is conceived of as Deus sive Natura, IOW in a Universe in which God is not conceived in traditional terms, but is synonymous with Nature.)
From any naturalistic or religious point of view that accepts purpose, meaning, etc., as intrinsic to the Universe, things have natures, and their behaviour follows with logical necessity from their nature. Consider: it's "logically possible" that if I walk out the door the floor will turn into jelly. But it's not actually possible - the materials of which the ground is constructed have a limited range of possible things they can do, and turning into jelly isn't one of them.
But the mechanistic view can't allow any of that cluster of ideas to be part of the explanation of the Universe in any real way. From that point of view, it just happens to be the case that the ground doesn't turn into jelly, that's simply a regularity that we observe, and nothing more can be said about it. In terms of materialistic/mechanistic metaphysics, it's forbidden to say that things have specific natures, essences, powers, potentialities, etc. That's precisely what was gotten rid of as science divorced itself from Aristotelian metaphysics, that's precisely what defines science as a distinct modern enterprise. (In fact, at first such talk was merely bracketed, set aside, to see what could be said in terms of efficient causes and quantifiable regularities alone - that's why scientists could still be, and if they look at it this way, still can be, religious believers - but as science developed, people gradually came to accept a metaphysics which didn't just set aside teleological talk as a matter of methodology, rather it said that the Aristotelian view had been "defeated" and that there is no teleology.) From this point of view anything that's logically possible is materially possible, we must simply observe and note whatever causal regularities exist, and talk in terms of probabilities (i.e. the floor turning to jelly cannot be ruled out entirely, it just has a vanishingly small probability of occurring, based on the mass of other observed regularities).
Whenever science (science that takes this metaphysical stance) talks in teleological terms, it's necessarily just a manner of speaking, a way of chunking or compressing the full scientific story for convenience, and casting it in terms with which the layman is familiar. (Or rather, it would be that, except for the suspicious fact that teleological talk seems to be unavoidable in science - which might be a clue as to why the materialist/mechanistic metaphysics is in fact inadequate.)
Quoting Pseudonym
There is no goal of successful replication. Just as Free Will must necessarily be illusory in a mechanistic universe, so must goal-directedness necessarily be merely apparent. DNA is simply chemical lego that clicks together in such a way as to produce via deterministic biochemical processes, bodies with characterstics that either fit or don't fit with their environment in a way that gives organisms a chance to replicate. From this point of view, whatever goal-directedness we as humans have in our minds and emotions must necessarily be as illusory as Free Will must necessarily be in terms of the same metaphysics. We just happen to be made in such a way as to have particular kinds of emotions in certain circumstances (e.g. some people have a feeling for their offspring and their future). In terms of this metaphysics there can be no more real goal-directedness in the human mind than there is in the Sphex wasp, or the rock cycle.
From the mechanistic/materialistic point of view, things just happen to behave in the same way that things that were actually goal-directed would behave, it's just that they're not, they're just constructed in such a way that that's how they happen to behave. Again, the "laws of nature" are simply observable regularities.
Now, while this is a hurrah fact to some (to those who are nihilists by nature or temperament, so to speak), it's a boo fact to most people (people who quite like having meaning, purpose and and virtue around), and naturally many reasonable people try to cover the stark brutalism of the materialistic worldview over with the fig-leaf of "emergent properties" or "proximate" causes. But those are flimsy rationalizations for trying to keep one's cake and eat it, as I said - and (so long as the materialistic metaphysics is the reigning idea) eventually the truth will seep out through society and permeate it. Which is what we see happening around us now.
Your theory begs the question. Your arguments only work if you've already presumed (unlike Schopenhauer) that we have a choice about what it is we will. I do not believe that, and you evidently do. You're asking for a compelling argument but only accepting ones from a set of premises in which you believe, which include, it would seem, free-will.
I entirely agree with you that there is no logic whatsoever to creating new life under an assumption of both utilitarianism and free-will, which seem to be the assumptions you're working under. Entirely for the arguments you've put forward, there cannot be argued to be any net utility gain, which is exactly what Schopenhauer said. But the entire reason he wasn't explicitly an antinatalist is because of his position on free-will, which, though weaker than mine, lead him to believe that continued procreation was inevitable.
So the idea that it is an instinctive drive answers the question completely, if you do not hold onto the notion of free-will.
A) We cannot choose not to, what some people choose is a lifestyle which (at an instinctive level) some part of their brain is telling them will support other people who are raising new life and whose DNA will be similar to theirs.
B) See above - You might want to look at people like Edward Wilson for some ideas as to how non-breeders could have evolved despite the disadvantage of not passing on their DNA, but it's basically to do with increasing the life chances of closely related people.
C) Only if you already believe that's what they're doing. Otherwise, this is a non sequitur. How do you know they're going against their 'natural' instincts? Have desires got little labels on them that we can check? Do 'natural', ones show up in a different colour on fMRI scans?
D)The 'is' 'ought' problem is only a problem for those who believe in free-will. abandon free-will and there is only 'is'.
I'm baffled as to what the distinction you're trying to make is here. The fact that things have 'natures' is entirely what science, and therefore by extension materialist philosophy, has confirmed. Physical things are bound by the laws of physics to behave the way they do, living things are guided by the interaction of their DNA with the environment. It's sounding increasingly like all you want is for the purpose to be 'a bit magic' and you just don't like science having found it out.
Quoting gurugeorge
How does a thing's Aristotelian 'nature' not just happen to be the case? Why are you allowing philosophical ideas to just 'be the case' for no reason, but when scientific ideas try to just 'be the case' for no reason, you think they've somehow lost something?
Quoting gurugeorge
It sounds to me from this that you're actually having trouble, not with science per se, but with the loss of idoloatry. I will try to explain using your example;
Science and Aristotle have both reached the same conclusion about the basic idea of the floor turning to jelly - that it won't do that because it goes against the floor's nature/laws of physics.
The difference is that science goes on to say that this is just our best current theory and if a better theory turns up or if something unexpected happens then the floor might well turn to jelly. It's just that our best current theory is that it won't.
So what you're really looking for is a return to idolatry, which is what belief-based philosophies are really all about. You want to simply believe someone without having to use your own critical thinking, whether that someone is Aristotle, Spinoza, St Paul, doesn't matter, just someone other than yourself. Scientists admit they might be wrong (there is only a high probability), belief in what Aristotle said does not entail an admission that it might be wrong, you've eliminated that nasty doubt, that 'probability' simply by uncritically accepting someone else's view of 'what is the case'
Look at all the alternatives you've mentioned. Did you come up with any? Why not? None of them rely in any way on evidence which is not also accessible by you. It's because you want to absolve the responsibility for your own decisions to an outside agency. Sorry for the pop-psychology, but it's crucial to understanding where I'm coming from.
Just try to rationalise your distinction between 'apparent' goals and 'actual' goals. In what way do they really differ, other than that your 'actual' goals are the certain pronouncements of an authority? How would Science and these other philosophical ideas differ if you just said right now that you were going to believe that all our current scientific theories are definitely and permanently true?
Deary me, no. Or at least not officially - increasingly there are some noises from philosophy of science (e.g. Nancy Cartwright) that a strictly materialistic/mechanistic metaphysics is in fact inadequate and that we do need to go, if not exactly back to Aristotle, at least back to something like Aristotle, in the sense that it's becoming clear that efficient cause on its own is senseless without a deeper metaphysical background involving final cause, or at the very least an understanding of things as having natures, essences and intrinsic powers. But for ever such a long time, since the break with scholasticism, through Hume, through the positivism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the position has been that things don't have specific natures that make them (of necessity) behave a certain way and not another way, they just observably happen to behave a certain way and not another way, and the observed patterns are called "laws of nature." They are, simply, regularities.
Again, think of the example I used: the difference is between a point of view which thinks there's a prior constraint on logical possibility (as to "what will happen next", for example) coming from the side of the object itself, and a view which doesn't think there's any such prior constraint inherent in the nature of the thing, a view which thinks only in terms of probabilities based on statistical regularities, with (e.g.) the floor turning to jelly as a live option (because it is a logical possibility and involves no contradiction) but just highly, highly improbable based on the other, contextual consistent patterns we've observed up till now. Modern science is all about probability (ostensibly - as I said, things might be changing).
Quoting Pseudonym
You do realize that "law" is just a metaphor right? There is no "binding." It's simply an observed regularity. There is no form of necessity binding this and that together from the mechanistic point of view, that was the whole point of ditching Aristotle, that was the whole point of Hume's discoveries about induction, and the impossibility of experiencing or observing necessity in nature.
Quoting Pseudonym
There is a reason in classical metaphysics for things having natures or essences, it's a necessary outcome of deeper metaphysical principles (actuality vs. potentiality, final cause, things like that - it's a whole number, don't ask me to get into it because I'm not familiar enough with it to generate it for you on the spot, I'd have to dig it up from the literature - and no, that's not an appeal to "authority"). There are analogous ideas in the other systems I mentioned, they all attempt to get down to some basic principles that are SELF-EVIDENT and don't just happen to be the way they are. Again, this goes back to the point about intelligibility. The philosophy that Christianity had inherited from antiquity was an attempt to develop a completely coherent picture of the Universe, with no dangly bits left over, no bits of "shit just happens." Part of that coherent picture was the idea of efficient cause, which was, in terms of the older metaphysics, an aspect of nature, essence and final cause. Science developed by focusing on efficient cause and (at first) setting aside those larger metaphysical ideas. Then it forgot that it had only set them aside, and denied their truth altogether.
Quoting Pseudonym
That is not a difference from earlier science, Aristotle was an empiricist too, he didn't claim his scientific findings were set in stone. Nor did the Schoolmen, the Church, Aquinas. They all understood the idea of "best current theory," it wasn't an idea that some bright spark discovered for the first time ever in the 16th century.
Quoting Pseudonym
Yes, we can do without it. You're ridiculously off-base in your surmises.
The point isn't to appeal to "authority", the point is to have a convincing picture of reality that's grounded in self-evident metaphysical principles on the one hand, combined with empirical observation on the other. The thing that's missing from the materialist/mechanist wordview is any attempt at the former - and as I've said now several times, that was by design, that was the essence of the Baconian revolution in science, to set aside discussion of the deeper background metaphysics. At first it was a methodological adventure (let's see how far we can get just by thinking about things in terms of mathematically quantifiable efficient cause), then later the methodological bracketing became a metaphysical ditching (for no good reason, it tuns out - people just believed the older metaphysics had been refuted).
Ok, so we agree that it is better never to have been but not that it is a possibility to not have children for some people.
Quoting Pseudonym
This is nonsense. First off, you have to believe in the premise that the concept of "having and raising a child" is an instinct. I think it is a linguistically/culturally created concept that may be pushed along with chemicals like oxcytocin, but certainly not to the "must do" urge you claim, like say, going to the bathroom, or even the sexual urge (which is not the same as the "urge" to have a child, just something that may lead to it).
But even if one assumed your premise that "having and raising a child is an instinct", then one can refrain from it like one would any instinct. Say humans have an instinct to take pleasure in sweet tasting foods. However, an individual is on a diet, this individual refrains from all sorts of sweet tasting foods on the diet. Say humans have an instinct for aggression when angry, but instead of giving into the aggression instinct an individual learns to control it and channel it in ways other than violence or conflict. Thus, I don't see the "inevitability" of your argument. All I see is a cultural preference that people choose to follow.
I think you are taking evolutionary psychology too far. Human behavior is far more complex than instinctual drives. When you add in linguistics/culture the picture is more than "what behavior is related to what evolutionary advantage". In fact, much of what we do has nothing to do with evolutionary advantage. You may have a stronger argument for sexual fitness, but humans can divorce sex from birth and often do. So do not conflate sexual activity or sexual fitness or sexual advantage with birth as humans can and do divorce the two all the time.
I don't know, you were the one who says that humans cannot do otherwise except breed. This leads me to believe you meant that we have instincts to breed that we cannot bypass, and I have demonstrated otherwise by both a) undermining that we necessarily have instincts to breed (as opposed to sexual pleasure urges), and b) if we did have instincts to breed, we do deny our instincts all the time.
True, people have preferences that may be tied to their environmental interaction/upbringing/social forces/genetics/biology/epigenetics, etc. etc. but nonetheless, people can choose to do otherwise than what one would expect them to do based on factors that have shaped their preferences. It happens. Even in a deterministic universe, what choice will be made is not known until it is made. You must not confuse determinism with self-fulfilling prophecy (he/we/they are always like this so he/we/they will always be like this).
Also, as I've stated, similar to your observation on Schopenhauer, I recognize that procreation will not stop any time soon. My goal is not that quixotic. Rather, it is to simply have more people question the fact of why they are bringing new people into the world in the first place. What are they trying to accomplish? What is the teleological assumption people hold for why a new person needs to be created? Why is creating a new person better than refraining from making a new existence? Again, I haven't heard a compelling argument as to why more people need to be born. You seem to agree.
You've just restated the argument in exactly the terms I put it without addressing the problems.
Basically your position boils down to the fact that the scientific explanation for why things are as they are is insufficient because it cannot (does not even attempt to) demonstrate that they necessarily are that way, just that that is they way they seem to be. I'm with you so far, that's a perfectly sound definition of science.
But then you go on to say that various metaphysical positions do give reasons why things are the way they are necessarily because of some metaphysical mumbo-jumbo, which you can't quite remember but nonetheless believe profoundly is the case.
Quoting gurugeorge
Really? Because it sounds an awful lot like an appeal to authority.
This is essentially the problem. What if things just do happen to be the way they are? What if that is why all the metaphysical attempts to show otherwise have failed? You seem to be convinced that we cannot continue fulfilling lives with this being the case, I've not heard any evidence for that conclusion. Things don't seem to be significantly worse now (with half the population atheist) than they were 200 years ago when most of the population had this over-arching meaning you opine.
You keep stating that I believe "having and raising a child" is an unavoidable instinct, yet I have nowhere stated this to be the case. What I've said is that either having a child or contributing to society's ability to raise children, is an unavoidable instinct, and that what people feel is the best way for them to achieve the latter is quite varied because the environments in which they have to make that calculation are quite varied. I never said that instincts were simple, only that it is a reasonable theory that they unavoidably drive us to act.
All of the examples you give make the same question begging fallacy. You presume a) that instincts are going to give one single desire so any alternative must not be an instinct, or b) that you somehow know which desires are instincts. How do you know that the desire to diet doesn't result from an instinct? How do you know that peaceful conflict resolution isn't an instinct?
As I said, I agree that there is not a logical argument for continuing life from Utilitarianism and accepting free will, but I don't accept either of those premises, so it's not an issue for me.
From Google search of "instinct"
Instinct: an innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli.
So, I don't know what definition you are using, but if its not a fixed (innate) pattern than I do not consider an instinct. So the pleasure instincts, aggression instincts, things like that may be considered instinctual, but more complex behavior would be more than a stretch to include under the category of "instinctual". Raising a child is conceptual. It is something you learn, not something you know or feel right off the bat. It is something you need to be enculturated for. So what you seem to be doing is saying any behavior belongs under the categorical concept of "instinct". This is overmining the concept of instinct. Instinct means something that is innate. Concepts learned through culture do not seem to be innate but learned through the process of enculturation.
As far as utilitarianism, how are you using the term? Usually it means something like trying to maximize happiness for the greatest number as a guiding principle. So what principle are you using to justify why having more life is better than refraining from having more life? What is your justification or teleology that you think justifies it? As I've said, I haven't heard a compelling argument.
Presumably I'm not explaining myself clearly enough. Despite two attempts to explain otherwise, you still seem to be working on the idea that I'm saying all activities related to having children are directly the result of instinct without any other input.
I've said twice now that behaviour is the result of a reaction between instinct and the environment (culture/nature). No matter how much cultural /environmental involvement you posit, desire has to ultimately be innate otherwise we would never do anything. How do you think a culture creates a desire?
So, knowing that all of our behaviour ultimately comes from natural instinct, the question to ask of any apparent desire we find is "what natural instinct is this trying to satisfy?"
What I'm saying with regards to antinatalism is that all of our actions related to having children are based-on the natural instinct to reproduce and so are not behaviours we even consider justifying by their ultimate objective.
People who choose not to have children must still make such a choice ultimately motivated to satisfy some natural instinct, otherwise where did the desire come from? It sounds very much to me like you'd like to reject free-will, but aren't prepared to accept the consequences.
Yep, you are not explaining clearly enough I guess. You don't need the whole dramatics of the "despite two attempts".. just say what you are going to say without the unnecessary attacks. At the least I can have more sympathy with your style if not the substance.
Quoting Pseudonym
Again.. don't need the "I've said twice now..". Do you want to have a pleasant disagreement or a brawl? Your choice. Anyways, now you are changing your terms from instinct to desire. Most desires are not innate but shaped by culture. For example, the desire for eating or pleasure may be innate (very basic desires) but other preferences (which may be built on more basic desires) are shaped by social interaction. Thus, a culture that values anti-natalism might create a more weighted preference for such, and a culture that values natalism (which are most) might have that preference more weighted. Where does society get this from? They are simply preferences that have been passed down. Basketball is another preference that has been passed down. People like playing games. Is basketball innate? There may be some more primary motivations (like for example, survival, boredom, seeking comfort) but how this is channeled is very contingent on cultural institutions.
Teleology is the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by assumed causes. In the field of biology, an example of an intrinsic teleological claim might be that the purpose of a birds wings is for flying. This is "real" or valid teleology. An example of invalid or nonsensical teleology might be something like claiming that mountains exist for the purpose of sking because we know that mountains didn't come to exist for that purpose.
Quoting gurugeorge
The other types of naturalism that you've mentioned, if I recall correctly, are of their own type, not subtypes of metaphysical naturalism.
Quoting gurugeorge
Religious narratives are far from offering a complete account for everything in the universe. They don't need to. They just need to be meaningful.
Quoting gurugeorge
You're not explaining why an overarching narrative is necessary to retain values. You're only saying that an individual's values may not jive well with the world around them. That is obvious and unenlightening.
I apologise if my tone had offended you, it was not my intention.
I just don't think you can suggest with any authority that the desire to raise children is not a natural instinct. Any creature which did not have the desire to both have, and successfully raise, young hard-wired into their DNA would simply have become extinct long ago. It is absolutely without doubt that if anything at all is a natural instinct then raising children is.
Then what's been your problem all through our conversation? You've professed to be baffled by the difference between the two positions, you've furrowed your brow in puzzlement, you don't understand, etc., etc. So now you're telling me you do understand after all? Huh. So what was all that rigmarole about then?
And in this context of your newly revealed understanding, what was all that stuff about seeking "external authority" a few posts back? You do understand there's a difference between a system's attempt to demonstrate logical necessity and give a complete picture grounded in self-evident, necessary truths, on the one hand, and the kind of reliance on "external authority" that you were bloviating about in your bit of junior psychoanalysis back there, right?
Quoting Pseudonym
All I was required to do for you was to point out the difference, that's what you were asking for, that's what you professed to be so puzzled about.
I don't "believe profoundly" in the classical philosophy (or any of the other analogues I've offered that form alternatives to the materialist worldview), I simply understand that there is an alternative understanding of the world available, and roughly what the difference consists in. And I also understand that if it's true, if the arguments are sound, then the classical philosophy (and the analogues from other systems) would certainly counter the alienation and nihilism that's been a direct result of the materialist/mechanistic philosophy, and do so on a rational basis. If you're interested, you can pursue the topic yourself instead of second-guessing that it's "metaphysical mumbo-jumbo."
I've only recently started getting into the classical/scholastic philosophy myself, that's why, while I've read some arguments, and I find the difference between the classical philosophy and the modern philosophy fascinating, I'm not confident enough to be sure I understand the classical philosophy well enough to even reproduce it, let alone defend it. It's not as firm in my mind as the general line of modern philosophical arguments - it's actually (for most of us in today) a new topic with its own concepts that you have to learn on its own terms.
Not for science it isn't, there is no real or valid teleology for science at all. I've just explained to you, teleological talk in science as it stands today is just a convenience, a manner of speaking, a compressed explanation, etc. Since I've been through this several times already with you, and more recently with Pseudonym, I'm not going to repeat myself.
Quoting praxis
Invalid or nonsensical is not the opposite of real in this context.
Quoting praxis
They generally do try to, that's the whole point of them. People seek a complete, satisfying sense of reality and their place in it. As you said yourself, fiction is meaningful, but it's not usually held to be a true picture of reality.
Quoting praxis
No that's not it, it's not that the individual's values may not fit with the world around them - obviously the individual is free to hold whatever values they wish. It's that people generally (as evidenced by religious systems and the classical philosophical systems) want the same values to be an integral part of reality AND an integral part of themselves, so that they are bound to, at home in, the world around them. What's wanted is values that are mirrored in the individual and in the external reality surrounding them. That's why subjectivity of value is unsatisfactory - even shared subjective value for a community. That's the difference between values and whims, or shared whims.
Thank you for toning it down a bit!Quoting Pseudonym
I don’t see how this necessarily must be the case in humans. All that needs to take place for procreation is any functional process that creates more humans. The avenue can be instinctual (I.e. innate like other animals) or it can be cultural (like humans). If institutions in society perpetuate certain preferences for procreation then these preferences will work their way into individual preferences. The goal being people channel their activities towards the preferred social preferences. The thing is “raising a child” and “birth” are conceptual. That is these are linguistically-based. That is, they are derived socially through more complex learning. They are not innate. In fact, very few behaviors or cognitive processes (like concepts) are innate. There maybe predispositions for certain moods, dispositions, tendencies, etc, but no one is born with full blown complex conceptual notions.
I never professed to be baffled by the suggestion that there was any difference at all. What I'm baffled by is your difference. Your suggestion that one provides a utility to humanity that the other does not.
Youve demonstrated that one approach is different to the other. Nobody has disputed there exist some differences between scientific explanations and aristolelian ones, it would be near miraculous if there weren't. What you've yet to demonstrate is that the differences actually result in a loss of utility.
Youve jumped from some epistemological difference (namely that aristolelian 'natures' are necessarily the case whereas scientific descriptions only 'appear' to be the case, to talk about 'meaning' and I've yet to understand how you got from one to the other.
How exactly does a thing 'necessarily' being the way it is rather than merely 'appearing' to be the way it is have a negative impact on the meaning we assign it, and what evidence do you have that this is happening?
No, because we are in competition with other humans and animals, that's the nature of evolution. If all we did was produce children, but another tribe produced them, taught and kept them healthy and generally well cared for, the latter tribe would soon out-breed the former.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, but it's a vastly more likely and a simpler explanation to say that humans have the same instinct to successfully raise young adults any other animal, why would we invent a new reason for our own apparent desire?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I just don't understand how you can say this in the face of the overwhelming evidence from evolution that this is not the case. Am I missing something? It sounds like you're trying to make an argument that despite the urge to successfully raise young being evident in literally every living thing that has ever been, and it being an absolute necessity for a species to survive, the human version of it is entirely cultural, that we're the only animal to have ever lived that doesn't have an instinctive desire to raise children but luckily (for our survival thus far) we just happen to have replaced our missing instinctive desire with a culturally imposed one. You realise that sounds crazy.
But you pouted, for example, that science does too show that things have natures, etc., etc., so why was I making a fuss? I know it was a few posts back, but come on, your mind can't be that much of a drawing on water.
Quoting Pseudonym
"meaning we assign."
If a thing (up to the Universe as a whole) necessarily is the way it is then WE DON'T ASSIGN THE MEANING. That's the difference - in that case the Universe is FOUND to be meaningful, not ASSIGNED meaning. On the other hand, if the Universe is just a stupendous case of "shit happens" then any meaning we "assign" is just lipstick on a pig.
We're going round in circles now. I give up.
I just meant that all that needs to take place for procreation is for a functional process to be in place. Competition can be part of that process if you like. I don't see how competition negates what I meant, and is sort of a non-sequitor.
Quoting Pseudonym
It's not about simpler or not simpler, it is simply about what is occurring. You have to see how you are using these phrases. What do you mean by "desire"? Desires in humans, manifest in language. Now, there are basic drives like hunger, warmth, pleasure, fear, etc. but beyond these basic emotions and physical necessities, desires have a linguistic nature to them. "I desire to do x" is a linguistic event. What evidence have you that "I desire to raise a child" is anything but a linguistic notion where first you have to have a notion of self, world, other, caring for, reproduction, etc. etc. These are all complex concepts, and are not innate. These are not primal emotions like fear, hunger, etc. In other words, they are not things which you can say are pre-linguistic or at the least, pre-conceptual (if you want to divorce the two).
Rather what probably happens is, reproduction, caring for, etc. is considered valuable by the community. This becomes encultrated by the individual and desirous to them. It's like if there is a family that puts a lot of emphasis on sports, I bet you the children in that family will also take on sports as something that is desirable as they grew up with this being valuable to their close-knit family community. Thus, why would this work any different? Just because reproduction is important to the propagation of the species, does not mean that it is innate. As long as there is something that functionally perpetuates the species (like encultration of values), it will keep going.
Quoting Pseudonym
Well, evolution comes in the picture in that humans evolved language/conceptual abilities (along with other cognitive tools that bolstered this). This separated behavior that is purely motivated by innate instinct with cultural transmission to a very high degree. Then, survival becomes a "virtual world" of cultural integration mediated through the primary language of the community. Thus, biological evolution does play a role in this in shaping our cognitive faculties to have a conceptually-wired brain. This same brain being the one that helps produce cultural practices that maintain the tribe, etc. A more interesting question perhaps is why is it that reproduction/procreation became so important for the tribe. Clearly, children were a utility and perhaps a source of pride, but again, that all circles back tot he fact that it is still conceptual and based on the communities values in the first place. What we can say is it is a strong preference for human communities that gets enculturated as the values of the individuals of the community and then gets passed down the generations.
Please don't repeat yourself again. Try explaining what you're trying to communicate with sufficient reasoning. A flat denial doesn't explain anything.
You say teleology in science is a "compressed" explanation. Yet another one of your idiosyncratic terms that makes it difficult to communicate with you. Are you doing this on purpose? Anyway, technically all explanations are compressed as no explanation can account for everything, so it's only a matter of how compressed. Any teleological explanation is going to be "compressed." Compression, or the lack thereof, is not what distinguishes a teleological explanation. What distinguishes a teleological explanation is that it explains phenomena by the purpose it serves rather than by assumed causes. Any explanation that does this is a "real" teleological explanation. It may or may not be a valid explanation but it will nevertheless be an actual teleological explanation.
Quoting gurugeorge
You're the only one who knows what you mean by "real" in this context. Though given your inability to explain what you mean, maybe even you don't know. You did just write, "there is no real or valid teleology for science at all," which suggests that the terms 'real' and 'valid' are commensurate in your mind.
Quoting gurugeorge
You're right about the binding aspect, indeed the etymology of the word 'religion' goes back to religare (to bind), but you appear rather confused about what is being bound. The function is to bind the group or tribe in common values and goals through rituals, icons, etc, and a coherent narrative. In the vast majority of human history being part of a group was a matter of life and death. Being an integral part of a group increased the odds of gene propagation, so in terms of evolutionary psychology, it's a successful adaptation. Ultimately, the goal of our desire for meaning and the grand narratives it inspires is gene propagation.
That literally all other animals raise young - some in quite complex and long-term ways. How on earth do you think they do this without a desire to do it motivating them. Are you suggesting that Elephants spend 16 years nurturing, feeding and protecting their young entirely by accident?
Yes, it is an instinct for the elephant parent. For the human it is cultural to raise a child. Again, for the human (which is redundant as other animals do not even have the capacity for language), how is "I desire to raise a child" anything but a linguistic notion? Does the concepts of "child" or "taking care of" happen pre-linguistically? I do not think so. These concepts are picked up through interaction with other linguistic users in a cultural environment. Other animals do not need to pick up concepts through interaction with their cultural environment as much of their parenting behaviors and "desires" are innate.
Why? For what sound logical reason are you proposing (insisting, in fact) that humans, despite having evolved in exactly the same way as all other animals, mysteriously lack an instinct present in all other animals, even though the evidence for it is so clearly present that you've had to come up with some other explanation for it.
You keep insisting that the desire to raise children is cultural in humans but instinctive in all other animals without providing any reason at all why that should be the case.
I explained it here: Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Pseudonym
Again, how do concepts like "child" or "taking care of" occur before pre-linguistically? What does a desire for any X thing look like prior to language? I cannot conceive of such complex ideas being "desired" prior to language in humans. Basic things like hunger, thirst, warmth, pleasure, fear, etc. I can see being pre-linguistic, but how is something as complex as "I desire to raise a child" anything but linguistically-based? How does that kind of complex statement work prior to language? You need a conception of self, other, the idea of raising something, etc. These are all linguistically derived. I don't see how it is otherwise.
We're just going round in circles here.
Does an elephant desire to raise a child? Yes. If it did not desire to raise a child it would not raise a child. They clearly do, so such a desire must be present.
Do elephants have complex language? No, probably not.
It must therefore be possible for a species without complex language to have a desire to raise young.
We don't have to be going around in circles if you understood the difference between instinct (i.e. innate behaviors) vs. culture (i.e. socially learned behaviors mediated through language transmission).
Your argument there is a classic false equivalence and strawman. I never said that the elephant doesn't desire to have children in its own way. What I did was make a distinction in how these desires manifest.
The elephant's "desire" to raise a child is instinctual. The desire is present due to instinctual origins. The human's desire to raise a child is cultural. The desire is present due to cultural origins. What I also said was for humans, desire for raising children, being that it is not instinctual, does not have a pre-linguistic origin. The cognitive process for humans works through linguistic mediation where the cognitive process for other animals works through pre-set instinctual mechanisms that happen non-linguistically.
I understand the distinction you're making I don't understand why. It doesn't matter how many times you keep repeating it it doesn't magically make it true.
I'm not sure why you think it's untrue. I am trying to understand where you think that humans have an "innate" desire to raise children by asking Quoting schopenhauer1
This is exactly what I mean by going round in circles. I'm not sure why you think it's true and I'm trying to understand why you think humans don't have an innate desire to raise children.
My argument is simple - all animals must have an innate desire to raise children otherwise they would have become extinct, humans are animals, therefore humans have an innate desire to raise children.
All I've gleaned from your posts is an assertion that the desire to raise children is not innate in humans, that it is language-based and culturally inherited. You've argued succinctly how it would be possible for this to be the case (evolution acting on culture), but something being theoretically possible does not make it true. Its obviously theoretically possible for the desire to be innate too (after all, we've just established it is exactly that in elephants). What you still haven't explained is why you've chosen your new possibility, when the existing one already explains everything.
I was trying to get at that by asking: What does a desire for any X thing look like prior to language? You still have not answered this question fully but seem to avoid it. I say that there is nothing for how it looks like, because it does not exist for humans. I have never seen a human have a pre-linguistic thought as such. How are we to tell? Language is already encoded by the time we are 2 years old, so it's pretty hard to judge a pre-linguistic desire. Also, what empirical evidence is there that "I want to raise a child" is hard-wired? Rather there is much more evidence that one sees other people have babies, the media, friends, family, and just the desire to experience something one has not experienced, or do something that gives more meaning to a life, to have a child. But all these reasons are linguistically and culturally mediated. In other words they come from interactions with society and mediated through language. They are not standalone innate thoughts. Almost all thoughts that are linguistic have a culturally inherited element. Due to our shared cultural nature, much of who we are, the very linguistic adaptation of our brains, and the preferences that we strive for are mediated through interaction with society. Clearly procreation is a very valued preference of society that people take on as something worth pursuing.
It looks like someone acting in such a way as to bring the object of that desire about. If someone acts in such a way as to eat cake, we can can presume they desire to eat cake, if someone books a holiday in the Algarve, we can presume they desire a holiday in the Algarve. We might need to do some work to get at what the underlying desires might be, but that's not scientifically unusual. Evolutionary biologists make completely unremarkable educated guesses as to what a particular limb or organ is 'for' in evolutionary terms. It's really no big deal to do the same with apparent desires.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You realise this is self-immunising don't you? If you can't tell whether someone is having a pre-linguistic thought, then how do you know they're not?
Quoting schopenhauer1
I've already given you the evidence (out of respect for your preferred tone I'm not going to tell you how many times). It is that every single other animal on earth has such a desire hard-wired. How much more evidence do you need than it being the case for literally every other example in existence?
If you have some religious conviction that humans are special, that's fine, but it makes it easier to discuss if you make that clear from the outset.
Right, but the desire for a holiday in Algrave is not innate. It is exactly something that would only be known through cultural mediation and a linguistically-wired brain. The preference for a holiday, let alone a "holiday at Algrave" is not something that just wells inside of us like some primal desire.
Quoting Pseudonym
I've had vague longings perhaps, maybe over hunger, maybe other vague urges, but nothing as complex as "wanting such and such specific thing" has welled up inside me without some linguistic label attached to it. "I have a desire to sit on the couch and eat potato chips" for example, is not something waiting inside me that just comes out de novo. I needed a) language b) a culture with couches, potato chips c) a preference for such things. Now, you can say, that there is a primal desire to have fatty foods. Fine, I'll accept that, but the higher level aspect of exactly what kind, in what place, is mediated through higher levels of cognitive processes- like language/conceptual integration, etc.
Quoting Pseudonym
This is a bit ridiculous to me. I can easily reverse this. Can animals paint the Sistine Chapel? So, does that mean that humans don't have this ability because they are the only animal to do this? So you seem to like studying evolution. I do as well. Have you ever heard of convergent evolution? Two types of similar evolutionary adaptations (wings on a bat, wings on a bird) that came about through completely different evolutionary trajectories. No doubt, our ancestors had a more or less, instinctual/innate instinct to raise young. It literally came from a hard-wired programming. However, somewhere along the way, procreation continued but through cultural means. Why? Because humans by-and-large survive through cultural learning. The concept of raising a child that is one's own progeny, looks like other animals having instinctual behaviors to take care of children, but it is learned from childhood onwards what this practice of raising a child is, how it is done, why it is important, etc.
So do you or do you not understand what I mean by "compressed explanation?" If you do, then it's not so "idiosyncratic" after all, is it? ;)
Quoting praxis
Yes, so that can't be a scientific explanation; a scientific explanation JUST IS an explanation in terms of causes, NOT purposes.
There are increasingly, as I said to Pseudonym, some philosophers who are prepared to re-think all this, precisely because teleological explanations seem so unavoidable in biology (in particular, but also with non-living systems, like the rock cycle and the water cycle). But the point is, so long as one is strictly following the materialist/mechanistic metaphysical point of view that distinguishes modern science from the older scientific understanding that was based on classical philosophy, there can be no real purpose.
Thanks for the heads-up. Yeah, I used to be a strong Atheist in my youth, and I disliked all religions; but now at 58, I've become more of a Spencerian Agnostic, and I'm much more ... tolerant of religion :D
A small detail question first;
Quoting schopenhauer1
So how do birds migrate then, if nothing as complex as the desire to journey to a specific other place on the earth for a set period of time before journeying back again could never evolve without language?
Regarding your main argument.
So humans, like all other animals, at one time had a set of genes that coded for the innate desire to raise young, if we hadn't have had we would have become extinct. You're suggesting that at some point in our evolutionary history, we lost that set of genomes entirely but immediately (it must have been immediate otherwise we would have become extinct within one generation) it was replaced with a convergently evolved set of genomes coding for complex language functions which allowed us to develop cultural preferences for raising children, just in time to save the human race from extinction.
So a few questions arise.
1. What would have been the competitive advantage of the mutation that replaced our genetic sequences coding for an innate desire to raise young? Presumably, not having answered my religion question, you believe in evolution by natural selection. Whatever it was must have been an incredibly strong influence for the new mutation to have swept through the entire species, but I can't quite see how it would have given anyone a competitive edge over those naturally invested in raising young.
2. If there was a competitive advantage to not having a desire to raise children, how come it was immediately replaced with a cultural desire to have children, wouldn't those cultures have faded away almost immediately as a result of whatever competitive force was driving this massive shift in genetics?
3. When did this sea change in our genetic coding take place. It must have been after complex language and culture because it needed to be replaced immediately with the cultural urge to have children in order to avoid extinction, yet paleobiology has yet to turn up any significant change in the human genome since then. Is this something you predict we're gong to find out in the next few years of genetic research?
4. You mention convergent evolution, but this refers to the novel arrival of features via two evolutionary paths, what you're proposing here would not be an example of this. We've established that it is a biological necessity that humans had a genetically innate desire to raise young at some point in their evolutionary history. What you're proposing here would be the the novel emergence of a trait already present in the organism, but emerging as a result of a different force and then entirely supplanting the original gene(s). This is, to my knowledge, completely unprecedented. Are there other examples of this happening in the animal kingdom you're working from, or is this the first time this has happened in evolutionary history?
This is frustrating but I will stay with it. The birds' innate behavior is nothing like how we use language but is nevertheless the way their behaviors manifest. Just as language is the way our behaviors manifest.
Quoting Pseudonym
Well, it wasn't immediate. I couldn't tell you the details that occurred between Australeopithicus and Homo Sapiens, but certainly there was a decoupling of innate behavior as brains wired for language and cultural transmission were the way in which humans started to survive. Look at a baby human versus that of many other mammals. The baby human is the most defenseless. Why? Very few innate behaviors. Also, the epigenetics and the learned behaviors of other animals also have an instinctual component that is not driven by the much more generalized learning process that humans posses via linguistic/conceptual brains.
Quoting Pseudonym
Not everything works in a 1-1 ratio in regards to competitive advantage. It was very advantageous to have generalized learning brains. The kind of plasticity this allowed in behavior, created a situation where humans could create tools and other cultural artifacts that would help bolster survival.
Quoting Pseudonym
It was not an all at once massive shift. It probably took millions of years and branches of humans of variations of plasticity and innate instinctual behaviors.
Quoting Pseudonym
Again more slowly, and genes did change between various human species.
Quoting Pseudonym
I'll actually agree with you on this. I was thinking that as I wrote it, so good job pointing out that this is not quite convergent evolution. However, over time, cultural evolution took over much of the functions of the innate behaviors of instinct. So, this shift did happen, though slowly.
My question to you is how do you not fall into the erroneous notion that any desire is innate? My desire to pick up the phone, my desire to go out in the yard and rake, my desire to watch a movie. Where do truly "innate" desires come into play vs. cultural-linguistic ones? So yes, humans happen to have unique traits of cultural transmission, high neural plasticity, and a linguistic-conceptual mechanism that does make us unique in the animal kingdom.
I'm only going to try this one more time, it's been an interesting excersice and I thank you for the challenge but I cannot see the sense in us just repeatedly talking past on another.
So, last time - I completely and utterly agree with you that your theory about humans somehow losing their innate desire to raise children and having it replaced by a cultural desire is possible. You do not need to provide me with any more stories about how things might have been, I am convinced, and have been from the start.
What I am lacking is any evidence that this actually is the case, not further means by which it could be. I'm asking, not for any further explication of you theory, but for the reason why you have rejected the far more simple, almost universally held theory that our desire to have children simply arises from the same place as all other animals.
You seem to have an odd notion of what science is. It's merely a structured way of studying the natural world. A scientific investigation could begin with the hypothesis that the purpose of a birds wings is flight, for example, and the scientific method could be applied to this teleological supposition.
Quoting gurugeorge
The way you say "real purpose" tells me that what you mean by "real teleology" is having an meaningful ("real") goal as opposed to a meaningless ("as if") goal.
From the beginning, philosophy has sought truth and not meaning. Adhering uncritically to some grand narrative, no matter how meaningful it might be to you, is not what philosophy is about. Indeed philosophy can be an unpleasant undertaking when it unravels cherished narratives. It can lead to nihilism, in this way. But as I've said from the beginning, nihilism is just a phase that can be worked through. We can for ourselves find purpose that aligns with our values, join with others to be part of something greater than ourselves, and develop a coherent narrative. It was never God who died, it was the Authority Figure who died. The guru is dead.
Since you asked, Schop, I agree with Pseudonym that you seem to be trying to draw too sharp a line here. It doesn't make sense to argue that Homo sapiens abandoned neurobiological instinct for socially-constructed desires. Sure, socially-constructed desires radically change things for humans. Yet the underlying biology continuity still exists and we can argue that linguistic culture largely serves to amplify that evolved instinctual basis rather than to somehow completely replace it.
Yes, it is possible that humans evolved to be less instinctual so as to be more open to cultural shaping. But I don't think there is much actual evidence of that being the case.
Humans are born more helpless - their brains a mass of still unwired connections - because we happened to become bipeds with narrow birth canals trying to give birth to babies with large skulls. The big brains were being evolved for sociality and a tool-using culture. So babies had to be squeezed out helpless and half developed, completing their neuro-development outside the womb - a risky and unique evolutionary step. But also then one with an exaptive advantage. In being half-formed, this then paved the way for the very possibility of complex symbolic speech as a communal activity structuring young minds from the get-go. It made it possible for culture to get its hooks in very early on.
Of course this evolutionary account is disputable. But it seems the best causal view to me. And while it says that there was undoubtedly some evolutionary tinkering with the instinctual basis of human cognition - we know babies have added instincts for gaze-following and turn-taking, stuff that is pre-adaptive for language learning and enculturation - you would have to be arguing for a more basic erasure of instincts that are pretty fundamental for the obvious evolutionary reasons that Pseudonym outlined.
It is natural that animals would have an innate desire to procreate - have sex. And it is natural that animals would have innate behaviours that are particular to whatever parental nurturing style is their ecological recipe for species success.
These in turn might be highly varied. There are many possible procreative strategies - as you know from discussions of r vs K selection.
http://www.bio.miami.edu/tom/courses/bil160/bil160goods/16_rKselection.html
However we can make reasonable guesses about what the human instinctual basis was, and remains. Certainly a desire to have sex and an instinct for nurturing are pretty basic and hormonal. Which is enough to keep the show on the road so far as nature is concerned.
Now arguing in the other direction, I would agree that this hardwired biology is not of the "overpowering" kind popularly imagined. Culture probably does have a big say. As society becomes a level of organismic concern of its own, it can start to form views about what should be the case concerning procreation. The drivers might become economic, religious and political - these terms being a way of recognising that society expresses its being as economic, religious and political strategies.
And likewise, society might wind up turning individual humans into largely economic, religious or political creatures. We might really become incentivised to over-ride our biological urges as a result of the direction that cultural evolution is taking. This may get expressed in terms of the full variety of r vs K strategies. We might get the range of behaviour from Mormons or other cultures of "strength through big families" vs the economic individualism which turns supporting a family into a financial and personal drag (with the individual now becoming, in effect, a permanent child themselves - never wanting to grow up and so creating a new dilemma for the perpetuation of that society, as is big news in Japan).
So, in my view, it is too simplistic to draw a sharp line between biological instinct and linguistic culture in humans - especially when it comes to any hardline anti-natal agenda. Although there is certainly this added level of evolutionary complexity in play with Homo sapiens.
We are at an interesting time for humans. Society has shifted from an agricultural basis to an industrial one, and now believes it is entering an information age that really cuts itself off from its biological roots. So culture is churning out individuals with psychological structures that express that current stage in its development.
Can that mindset flourish and last? Is it realistic or out of touch? Can a society predicated on life-long infantilism survive?
It might, if we can all afford robot slaves and crack the fusion free energy problem, etc. Anything remains possible - that is, if you don't pay any attention to the underlying economics of biological existence itself. The bottom is surely about to fall out of that dream - that we aren't simply a species gorging on a short-lived windfall of fossil fuels. But that's another thread.
And if it is applied, it will necessarily cancel out the teleological "supposition" and replace it with an explanation based wholly on efficient causes. We certainly use teleological talk in everyday language and in common sense, but that is the explanandum for science, and science talks (or aims to talk) in terms of observable regularities ("laws") and causal chains, nothing else. If it still uses the language of common sense, that is, as I said, a way of explaining the science in a way that people can relate to.
Quoting praxis
Yes, and "real" has nothing to do with "authority." Pseudonym thought the same thing - but it's a strawman (historically, for most religions and philosophies, most of the time, though not of course all).
The point isn't to get your meaning from some "external authority," the point is to get your meaning from a story about the Universe that's true, that shows that and how you are knit into the Universe's fabric, so that you feel at home and are justified in feeling at home, not just pretending or putting on a brave face and a brittle smile.
The leading metaphysics of the day doesn't offer that comfort. So all that's left is either accepting the moral nihilism that goes with that metaphysics, or pretending and putting on a brave face and a brittle smile.
Or, as I've been saying, finding an alternative metaphysics that does do the job (tells a true and meaningful story about the Universe) and also accepts scientific method. Maybe there is one, that possibility is not ruled out by scientific method alone, since as I've said, science can be understood either as denying any over-arching metaphysics (as it's come to be understood) or simply as bracketing questions of over-arching metaphysics (as it was originally understood by the early scientists, who were mostly believing Christians).
I really think it's time to knock this on the head, we both seem to have exhausted our quivers.
I brought in apokrisis because sometimes when there is an argument with the same two people, another perspective is good. Though I've had many disagreements with apokrisis over his metaphysics, he seems pretty knowledgeable about evolutionary biological concepts.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay, you say you disagree with my view and that you side with opposing view, but almost all your evidence is pro-cultural basis for raising children and betrays a contrary point of view to what you claim. Let's look at the score:
Quoting apokrisis
Cultural learning- 1
Quoting apokrisis
Cultural learning- 2. Now, this was a tricky one, because you did mention instincts, but as they are utilized for cultural learning
Quoting apokrisis
I already agreed that sex is the "basic" instinct via the general tendency to prefer physical pleasure, but that is not the same as literally the conceptual idea of "I prefer to raise a child" which involves much higher cognitive understanding and cultural ques than mere physical pleasure.
Quoting apokrisis
Instinctual- 1. Though your evidence for this is weak other than vague guesses about hormones. However, I know you are more rigorous than to resort to pop-evolutionary psychology regarding how a certain sex may be prone to such and such moods and preferences based on such and such monthly cycles. Even the tenuous "just so" stories from popular evo-psych literature/journals might be suspect to trying to perpetuate a pre-conceived cultural norm/trope more than anything else.
Quoting apokrisis
Cultural learning- 3
Quoting apokrisis
Cultural learning- 4
Based on your own response, the score is:
Cultural learning- 4
Instinct- 1
So, despite your protestations to the contrary, your very evidence indicates you believe cultural learning is largely the vehicle for which humans procreate and follow a preference to raise children.
Err, no.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well when you shift the goalposts that way, then claiming that there is an "I" that has an innate preference is of course what would be countered by a social constructionist point of view on the subject.
You are now framing it as a personal choice. Which in turn demands a Cartesian model of a choosing self.
The argument was about this "self" being unwillingly forced to procreate due to evolved instinct vs being unwilling forced to procreate by some social necessity. And your emphasis either way is on the unwilling. Yet either way, it might be a willing inclination in being an intrinsically rewarding or pleasurable action - the rewards of having sex and then raising a family being something that both biology and sociology would have reason to celebrate.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You mean based on your own spurious marking system.
If you want a score, clearly you are flat wrong in suggesting that Homo sapiens abruptly left behind biological instinct when it became a linguistic species.
And you would be right to the extent that you might then make some more nuanced case for the cultural malleability of our procreational habits.
I mean everyone knows that we respond to social economics. You either have a lot of kids, or try to avoid having kids, depending on the economic equation as you see it.
And even my pet fish - dwarf cichlids - can make that kind of decision. They lay eggs and then either eat them or protect them, depending on some instinctive judgement about the situation in their tank.
So really, the same evolutionary logic is at work, just at a higher level of sophistication.
Anti-natalism depends for its grounding on some kind of anti-naturalistic metaphysics. It arises from being disappointed by the Romantic promise that being alive has transcendent meaning, and then Enlightenment physics saying no, life is transcendently meaningless.
Well as you know, I just reject that metaphysical framing. I take the natural philosophy route on all questions. And that accounts for the issues here with ease.
I don't know, looked pretty much like you unwittingly agree, but I'll address the rest of your response below.
Quoting apokrisis
I can agree with you on the social constructionist point of view- the "I" is a placeholder, shorthand in this case. The "I" is largely socially constructed, agreed then.
However, what you cannot do is a sleight of hand where something that is "intrinsically rewarding" now counts as instinctual. Achieving at a sport is intrinsically rewarding, learning a new language is intrinsically rewarding, laughing at funny joke is intrinsically rewarding. Where does it end? Is it all instinct? The "intrinsically rewarding" part is created via the socially constructed "I" you told me to take into account in the first place.
Quoting apokrisis
I would say this is a false analogy. The decision to have less kids due to hard times, is a calculus based on the very linguistic-cultural brain that can do this sort of rationale. The fish is following an uncompromising programming. Two very different things in terms of what is going on.
Quoting apokrisis
As for my own antinatalist metaphysics, I do not follow an anti-naturalistic metaphysics. What I am trying to do is show that raising a child is a preference like any other preference- it just happens to be a popular one because of cultural pressures. Sports is also popular due to similar social pressures. The point is people can "like" something, and give "reasons" for why they like it. There is no compulsion outside of people's preferences and likes. Beyond the obvious physical pleasure involved in sex, the preference for actually procreating is simply in the imagination, hopes, preferences, of the individual just like any other goal that is imagined, hoped for, preferred, etc.
That's what you get for trying to be precise I guess. Folk still don't take any notice. :)
Quoting schopenhauer1
And largely biologically constructed as well. Don't now just ignore that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I said both the biology and the sociology can bring their intrinsic rewards. I was disputing your sub-premiss that having a family is intrinsically unrewarding on either account.
So you are now really mangling my reply.
Why have I enjoyed raising a family? I can see both social and biological reasons. It feels very instinctive to nurture. And also being a good dad is a socially approved activity.
You can say - in anti-natalist fashion - that both reasons are bogus. I am a fool for taking them at face value. But if we then take the debate to that level of general metaphysics, as we have before, then I still prefer my naturalistic account to your old-hat clash of Romantic idealism vs Enlightenment realism.
You are stuck in a discontented bind because of your incoherent metaphysics. But I don't find your problems to be my problems.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You might also decide to have more kids as - if you are a subsistence farmer - more helping hands is a worthwhile capital investment.
It is situational. The point is that we are good at making choices given a situation. But what troubles us is when we have no particular influence over the situation itself.
So if there is "philosophy" to be done, it ought to be aimed at creating better situations if there is indeed something not to like about the ones we are in.
Of course, your pessimism is predicated on the impossibility of situations ever being good. And stubbornness will turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy very quick.
This is a live issue. My daughters are in their 20s. I see many in their circle of friends going into self-destructing spirals because they turn in the wrong direction when faced with any challenge.
Now certainly modern society can be blamed for the kind of challenges that the young face. But also, it is obvious that many of them have faced so little actual challenge in their growing up that absolutely everything becomes a challenge as soon as they want to start standing on their own feet.
So it is a complex story. Yet also very simple. Bad metaphysics can really screw your life up. :)
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. You need it to be axiomatic that it has to be an external pressure rather than an intrinsic desire. Yet with a straight face you then also say you are a social constructionist and a naturalist. But if we are socially constructed as selves, then that "pressure" is simply our true being finding its expression. It comes from the self - as much as there is a self for it to come from.
The confusion kicks in because we are then both biological selves and social selves. The communal self we share at pretty basic level. The phenomenological self we share at an even deeper biological level, but also we don't really share at all beyond our capacities for empathy and mirroring.
So there is complexity here again. But don't let it confuse the argument. If you are focused now on the socially constructed self, then you yourself removed the very grounds to complain about any individual preferences being socially constructed.
There is a basic logical flaw in your argument. It shows that you are operating from the incoherent and dualistic paradigm which is Romantic idealism vs Enlightenment realism.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No. You just said that the psychology of that individual is largely a social construction. Indeed, you have been arguing that Homo sapiens represents a complete rupture with nature in this regard. Instinct was set aside and we became totally cultural creatures.
Anyway, having said the pressures were social and external, now you are switching to talk of them being internal and individual. The next step in your faulty argument is to then say that is why these individual preferences are falsehoods imposed on people unwillingly. As if they had some other more legitimate self - an inalienable soul. Which you will then say they can't have - as Newtonian physics and Darwinian evolution proved God is dead and life can have no purpose or value.
You have trapped yourself in a bind - even if not one of your own making, but one that simply recapitulates some bad socially-constructed metaphysics.
So how will you react to that realisation? Will you again go through each point and find that I unwittingly agree with you despite whatever I might have actually said?
We can look for the final cause or the efficient cause. For a seed, the final cause might be a tree. The efficient cause of a tree might be a seed.
The only thing being canceled out here is your nonsense.
Quoting gurugeorge
A charismatic leader doesn't even need to be an authority, they can merely appear as one to fool the gullible into swallowing their oh so "real" narratives.
Quoting gurugeorge
You expect me to read your discussion with Pseudonym to figure out how claiming an authority figure is related to the meaningfulness of an overarching narrative is somehow a logical fallacy?
Quoting gurugeorge
Metaphysics doesn't offer this. Meaning in life is comprised of much more than metaphysics. Maybe that's your primary misunderstanding.
"We" can in the language of common sense, but science can't, it acknowledges only efficient cause as real. (Although as I said, there are some noises to reintroduce quasi-Aristotelian concepts back into science, but it's a fairly recent development.)
Quoting praxis
Wow, who'd've thought. Any more stunningly original observations where that came from?
So, I think you are creating a strawman here of the internal/external thing. It is a preference/pressure we internalize from social means. What you cannot do is prove what is an innate instinct and what is socially constructed. Do you think "nurturing" is just an instinct or a tendency or preference that an individual may have towards something that originates by being provided the tools of personality/ego/introspection/environmental interaction that comes from a socially constructed mind? Again, my desire to watch a movie- is that an innate desire? No its generated via a linguistic-brain that integrates concepts. As you know, I believe there to be an internal "angst" of sorts in all animals- a Will as Schop might call it to strive (but for no reason except we are alive). This manifests generally in some angst-drive for survival, angst-drive for maintenance/comfort, angst-drive to flee-boredom/entertain. However, none of this "angst" is driven towards any goal-directed behavior without that socially-constructed brain.
Now you accuse me of overromanticizing meaning. However, you overmine the concept of social construction and the group-self dynamic to the point of making a sort of "teleology of balance". Any overriding metaphysics (like your peculiar brand of Peircian triadic semiotics) can be considered romantic. So, I don't think it does much to throw out this label. You are just creating a false dichotomy and then pitting one romantic vision (the interlocutor's) with your own.
It’s Aristotle’s language, not the language of common sense. Are you trying to say that Aristotle had common sense? I’m sure he did.
Review the example that I offered to help you understand. Claiming that a seed causes a tree is no more real (or in your language ‘meaninful’) than it is to claim that a tree is the final cause of a seed.
It's the very essence of real for science, whereas the tree being the final cause of the seed is not real for science, final cause is simply not a thing as far as science is concerned. (Again, as science has been understood since about the 18th/19th century until very recently.)
Are you able to explain why? beyond claiming that a purpose or goal isn't a thing in science.
I’ve already said there isn’t a sharp line as the two things are blended in development. The self is a mix of nature and nurture. It’s the same story as when we are talking about IQ or whatever.
The view being contested was your contention that instinct no longer played a role in humans after language came along.
So you are simply creating a straw man to attack now.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Peirce would be a good metaphysics to oppose a bad metaphysics like Romanticism or reductionism. But ordinary science is quite good enough to argue against your claim concerning a lack of biological instinct in modern humans.
But what you and Pseudonym have both avoided now, is what the innate part "looks like". What does the instinct to watch a movie look like, for example?
But do these preferences come innate or only after being enculturated in a social setting?
Not sure if you saw the last question.
Given that the individuation of a psychology is a blend of both influences from birth - as I said - then you can see why this is a silly question.
The default answer on any aspect of psychological being is going to be "both, together, resulting in an integrated whole".
But how is saying "interest in stories of love, hurt, power and status? Stories that really engage their emotions?" not stepping more than a smidge into pop-psychology. How is it that love, hurt, power, status (concepts of linguistic origin) something innate? The human brain works more like generalized processor, with the vehicle of linguistic conceptualization as a way of integrating memories, thoughts, images, etc. How can these concepts said to be pre-linguistic (i.e. innate)? What is innate is conceptual formation, not the concepts themselves.
Well no, the brain don’t work that way at all.
Oh yeah.. please go on.. please explain how concepts are innate.
But it is your contention that there is a decoupling rather than an integration. So frankly I have no idea what you are on about. Just as I don’t know where you are getting this general processing notion from.
But if you can provide the references, that would be sweet.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?url=http://www.academia.edu/download/37133243/Moro_Syntax_without_language.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm210BRby4ji6XE6q3EVp86UNC-CZA&nossl=1&oi=scholarr&ved=0ahUKEwjPh5_YpZPZAhXCtBQKHZJFDHUQgAMILSgAMAA
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4737615/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9036851
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280961
Ruth Feldman - From a "neurobiology of parenting" talk "Based on neuroimaging research of parents' brain response to infant cues, this talk will chart a global ”human parental caregiving” network, which consists of several interconnected cortical networks superimposed upon an ancient limbic network that has shown in animal studies to underpin the expression of maternal care in female rodents."
from the same talk "the ”maternal pathway”, is triggered by hormones of pregnancy and childbirth and relying to a great extent on the subcortical mammalian network, and the ”paternal pathway”,
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0001664
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/45/E9465
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157077/
Will that do?
Hormones influencing behavior, I don't buy as instinct. Instinct, is more of an "if/then" innate behavioral programming. A bird cannot help but build the nest. A bird with chicks may defend the next, a bird without chicks may flee the nest at danger. It cannot help but do this behavior.
Hormones like adrenaline, oxytocin, etc. are globalized chemicals that perhaps influence behavior. That does not count as an "instinct' though it might originate in the limbic system and other older parts of the brain related to instinctual responses. So yes, indeed we inherit those parts of the brain, but the outcome has very little in producing innate behaviors which as I am using the term, is much more specific behavior than globalized emotional responses.
Our directed behavior, however, is linguistic-cultural based. I want to do X because of X reasons. Some reasons are unknown, but is that "instinct"? That could just be as a child there were people who influenced the decision through subtle cues. The unconscious has been discussed and written about. There are things we do that may not have reasons, but are done none the less. Perhaps we make post-facto reasons even for the case. However, these decisions are mediated through linguistic-cultural means.
(Birds have brains that evolved as elaborations of the basal ganglia rather than of the primitive olfactory association cortex as in mammals. There is a reason why they might have more stereotyped inherited action patterns.)
Thus there is an innate raising a child instinct along with a learned aspect of how to raise the young, but still seems to not be a choice.
That's a good example. And one that I was going to mention as an argument in the other direction.
It is theorised that the human shift towards the extreme K strategy end of the mating spectrum - the heavy investment required to being able to raise babies born neurally half-baked and utterly helpless - meant that something had to change to foster strong pair-bondings. Dads had to be given a biological incentive to stick around with the mum.
So the suppression of fertility signals was a neat trick. A male wouldn't know when a female was in heat. There wouldn't be the fighting over the right to mate, and instead the strategy would be to stick close with a female and bond by mating continuously. Females of course still might feel sexier at certain times of the month and go do a little cheating - playing the evolutionary game to their own advantage.
So yeah. Check the literature and all these kinds of things have been well debated.
In this case, it says dads can't help getting roped into being dads, even if the babies may frequently be secretly someone else's. The biology has been set up to nudge behaviour in that direction.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It is good that you are steadily backing away from your original claim of some abrupt evolutionary leap from instinctive to linguistic behaviour.
But in your determination to make anti-natalism a valid philosophical viewpoint, you will still pretend that the desire to have children, the positive joy it can bring to lives, is somehow unnatural.
So far you are not producing the evidence.
The simple logic of Darwinian selection says that producing the next generation has to be the game, whether we are talking of that selection applying at a biological level or a socio-cultural level of evolution.
Sure, there is a sense in which society has become a super-organism with its own existential desires now. You can make that argument - as I do. So as individuals, we are being swept along by forces beyond our control.
But then the other side of that is that this aways was the case. We always were being swept along by evolved and successful cultural structures. And the idea that we have an individual choice is a new feature of the contemporary social order. It is an extra wee trick inserted into the game to increase the possibilities of cultural control while also increasing the requisite variety that evolution itself needs to feed off.
We are culturally evolving to become more culturally evolvable. And that could be a rewarding or unpleasant thing - largely depending on how well it integrates or conflicts with our biological heritage.
The other point I always make is that we can only understand this current phase of our cultural evolution of a species in terms of the exceptionalism of being in a period of exponential, fossil-fuel enabled, species growth.
If there are stresses and strains, it is hardly surprising as this is - right now - a historical rupture in the evolutionary trajectory. In about the space of a century, we are deeply changing what it means to be Homo sapiens.
I'm dubious about the Singulatarian argument. But we can see how one thing follows another with accelerating pace. Social media is producing a world of people with a different mentality.
I guess this is what particularly annoys me about anti-natalism. There is this furious change going on right now before all our eyes. It should be fascinating as well as scary. And then we have all this whiney self-absorbed pessimism.
I understand why there might be an actual epidemic of depressive illness. I understand why there might be a feeling of existential helplessness. But those are symptoms of the more general rupture. And philosophy ought to be focused on where that is all heading. We don't know how to judge it because it is still happening. Meanwhile if you are depressed and helpless, seek treatment. Learn how to dig yourself out of your hole as best you can. Don't use philosophy as your excuse for inaction. Don't use it to block the possibility of making your own life better.
Correct in terms of being well-debated. The version you give is one version, but as you know there are multiple versions for the origins of the suppression of fertility signals. You (I'd assume) want to avoid as much as I a "just so" story because it sounds plausible. It might be probable given some creative abductive reasoning, but it is not necessarily the factor you describe. It could also be a case of multiple causation as well.
Quoting apokrisis
Okay, so you recognize that the ability to have more possibilities of thought (due to our lingusitic-cultural architecture) has provided us the ability to reflect on existence itself. Something no other species can do. The exaptation that comes from this is we can also see the absurd nature of living. We can have those existential angst moments and see things as repetitious, meaningless, etc. These are things which evolution did not necessarily provide for, but which is a result nonetheless.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, this is the assumption you make that annoys me about your self-group argument. You have an assumed (or hidden) underlying teleology in your theory. The group through dynamics is not just "doing" but somehow "progressing" and this is a value judgement that is inserted in the story you present. Though, I understand you do think that "progress" may lead to "extinction" due to fossil fuel overload (and it is almost too late).
Quoting apokrisis
Thank you for your concern (or what looks like concern). However, existential thinking is squarely what is most important as it is our day-to-day lives and evaluations of our lives. That to me, fits squarely in philosophy as much as it does in other fields. I am not providing anything groundbreaking in that respect. Everything from ancients until now had some existential component to it. It can share the shelf with logic, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the other areas of philosophy.
But then any version exhibits a belief that the biology counts. Biological evolution suppressed it. Not culture and its impact on cognition.
It's like plastic tits, fake bums and trout pouts. You can blame modern culture for amplifying instinctual signals, but not for creating them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And then to the degree that there is cultural evolution - a continuation of the Darwinian game - a failure to successfully reproduce will lead to elimination from the meme pool.
If only anti-natalism could have some meaningful braking effect as 7 billion people become 10 billion by 2050 (give or take a few planetary catastrophes along the way).
Quoting schopenhauer1
Huh? I am always explicit on the telos.
What we are doing is the unthinking expression of the thermodynamic imperative. We find all this fossil fuel just sitting in the dirt. We can't help just building a great big bonfire out of it.
If we were thinking - and hoping to progress - we would realise that the fossil fuels are driving us. We are blindly responding to their open invitation. If we had any real utopian dreams, we would get back to living off the solar flux. Or waiting until we had the technical means for something actually long-term sustainable, like perhaps fusion power.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well I am saying being passive is another choice. And one that relies on a faulty understanding of human nature.
If you complained quietly to yourself, you of course would get no reaction. But instead you post thread after thread with the same self-pitying lament.
To the degree you have some biological depression (brought on by a social situation), then sure you may get sympathy. And advice.
But a few of us may be here just to discuss actual philosophy. So a BS argument then deserves a good kicking. No apologies or excuses required.
Quoting apokrisis
Yet some of what may be considered sexually appealing, may vary based on time period and culture.
Quoting apokrisis
Ok, so extinction probably. What I mean to say about your telos, is that you deem the group-dynamic at play as good. You are essentially Hegelian via Peirce- instead of the State as the Absolute, it is some technological utopia (again, according to you, if we fix our energy dependence problems).
Quoting apokrisis
Hey you can be an ahole even if I extend an olive branch, no skin off my back. That's pretty much what I expect from you. I'm just saying the repetitive, absurd nature is there to be discovered. The contingent suffering of being born with this or that disease, or encountering this or that situation, also befalls everyone. Is there a reason why we need to bring more people into the world? What reason you provide never finds an settling answer. So you will appeal to biology and make the false analogy to other animals who cannot help but reproduce and have no existential valuations. Thus, the trope about instinctual to reproduce, while not being the reason for reproduction, becomes one through cultural bolstering. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.