Literalist conceptions of non-existence
Non-existence literally means the lack of existence. If you do not exist, then you cannot be subject to any experiences whatsoever. The only way of talking about you is by use of counterfactuals and hypothetical possible worlds where you might exist.
To me at least, this seems quite obvious. However, this literalist interpretation of non-existence throws a wrench in many of our common beliefs.
For example, if a child is to be born, only to experience a life of horrible, unrelenting suffering, we tend to say that it would be "good" or "better" for this child not to exist. Yet, if this child does not exist, then no personal value can be applied to it. The only value that can be applied to the child is a bad one, in which the child exists and is tortured.
Similarly, if you personally are undergoing unrelenting torture, you may begin to conceptualize suicide as a legitimate course of action. "Anything to get rid of this pain!" However, it seems to me that this reasoning depends on a non-literalist conception of non-existence. From the perspective of a sufferer, non-existence may come across as "peaceful", "tranquil", or "comfortable". Indeed, this seems to be the outlook of at least some Buddhist beliefs, which take nirvana to be equivalent to non-existence, yet peaceful at the same time. Non-existence, despite it's literal interpretation, is given existence-dependent values.
It also seems to me that in order to pursue an action, one must have a goal in mind, or a consequence that one values. But if we take the literalist interpretation of non-existence seriously, then there cannot be a consequence of value in non-existence.
Therefore, many of our actions seem to involve a faulty image of non-existence and a need for a good outcome. We would avoid having the tortured child, not necessarily because torture is bad for the child but because we think there is a better state of affairs for this child. We think it would actually be "good" for this child to not-exist. And we would also think it "good" that we ourselves do not exist, if we're currently being tortured. This faulty reasoning seems irrevocably ingrained.
But I think this can actually lead to a slightly different ethical approach to value, one that places emphasis on the person themselves and not on a need for a good outcome itself. In my opinion, we can, and should, adopt what McMahan calls "non-comparative personal value", in which an experience is of a certain value despite it not having a correlate.
From this, we can see how having a tortured child would be bad for the child, even though the lack of this pain would not be good. We ought not to give this child these experiences. Similarly, it would be bad for a tortured person to continue to experience this torture, thus suicide becomes a legitimate option for this person. However, in the case of suicide, it seems rather impossible to not conceptualize images of peace and comfort from non-existence. Killing yourself without a perceived outcome seems, at least to me, impossible.
The biggest point being made here, though, is that I think we have inherent need for resolution, redemption, or justice. If a bad thing happens, then the avoidance or resolution of this bad must result in a good outcome. But this is entirely irrational. It is the exact same reasoning behind the valuing of recovery - if I recover from cancer, recovery must be a good in itself, right?! This is similar to Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity as advocating the creation of people in order to help them. "Let me create you so I can help you."
The rational position is one that recognizes that the world does not necessarily support "good" outcomes, only "right" action. And that is, I think, a difficult proposition to accept. It results in the realization that "better" states of affairs are not necessarily "good" states of affairs. Because of this, much of our ethical intuitions can be summarized as a need to be satisfied with a consequence. But there is nothing satisfying about non-existence, rationally speaking.
To me at least, this seems quite obvious. However, this literalist interpretation of non-existence throws a wrench in many of our common beliefs.
For example, if a child is to be born, only to experience a life of horrible, unrelenting suffering, we tend to say that it would be "good" or "better" for this child not to exist. Yet, if this child does not exist, then no personal value can be applied to it. The only value that can be applied to the child is a bad one, in which the child exists and is tortured.
Similarly, if you personally are undergoing unrelenting torture, you may begin to conceptualize suicide as a legitimate course of action. "Anything to get rid of this pain!" However, it seems to me that this reasoning depends on a non-literalist conception of non-existence. From the perspective of a sufferer, non-existence may come across as "peaceful", "tranquil", or "comfortable". Indeed, this seems to be the outlook of at least some Buddhist beliefs, which take nirvana to be equivalent to non-existence, yet peaceful at the same time. Non-existence, despite it's literal interpretation, is given existence-dependent values.
It also seems to me that in order to pursue an action, one must have a goal in mind, or a consequence that one values. But if we take the literalist interpretation of non-existence seriously, then there cannot be a consequence of value in non-existence.
Therefore, many of our actions seem to involve a faulty image of non-existence and a need for a good outcome. We would avoid having the tortured child, not necessarily because torture is bad for the child but because we think there is a better state of affairs for this child. We think it would actually be "good" for this child to not-exist. And we would also think it "good" that we ourselves do not exist, if we're currently being tortured. This faulty reasoning seems irrevocably ingrained.
But I think this can actually lead to a slightly different ethical approach to value, one that places emphasis on the person themselves and not on a need for a good outcome itself. In my opinion, we can, and should, adopt what McMahan calls "non-comparative personal value", in which an experience is of a certain value despite it not having a correlate.
From this, we can see how having a tortured child would be bad for the child, even though the lack of this pain would not be good. We ought not to give this child these experiences. Similarly, it would be bad for a tortured person to continue to experience this torture, thus suicide becomes a legitimate option for this person. However, in the case of suicide, it seems rather impossible to not conceptualize images of peace and comfort from non-existence. Killing yourself without a perceived outcome seems, at least to me, impossible.
The biggest point being made here, though, is that I think we have inherent need for resolution, redemption, or justice. If a bad thing happens, then the avoidance or resolution of this bad must result in a good outcome. But this is entirely irrational. It is the exact same reasoning behind the valuing of recovery - if I recover from cancer, recovery must be a good in itself, right?! This is similar to Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity as advocating the creation of people in order to help them. "Let me create you so I can help you."
The rational position is one that recognizes that the world does not necessarily support "good" outcomes, only "right" action. And that is, I think, a difficult proposition to accept. It results in the realization that "better" states of affairs are not necessarily "good" states of affairs. Because of this, much of our ethical intuitions can be summarized as a need to be satisfied with a consequence. But there is nothing satisfying about non-existence, rationally speaking.
Comments (44)
Was this from my response to your other post earlier regarding goals?
Quoting darthbarracuda
I remember explaining a while back the difference between a totally ideal world in the preference satisfaction sense, and a totally united world in the Schopenhaurian sense, and I think these two ideas might help with your question..
Preference satisfaction idea world: In an ideal world all preferences would be satisfied at a particular instant of time for the exact outcome one would want at that particular time (even the preference for an unknown amount of pain/misadventure that might enhance one's overall satisfaction). All dials would be adjusted accordingly. The idea of one's life needing to be a tragi-comedy would not even have to be entertained as one is just "satisfied" enough not to default to this coping aesthetic.
Schopenhauerian ideal world All would be stasis and not flux. There is no want or need as one would be completely unified with everything else. Thus a unitary existence where everything is everything is almost equivalent to everything is nothing. It is absolute completeness in the metaphysical sense. Nothing is lacking.
No.
Quoting schopenhauer1
In regards to the preference satisfaction ideal world, this aligns with what I see to be the morality of childbirth - for childbirth to be moral, we must fulfill a certain standard for this child. If we cannot fulfill this standard, then we ought not have the child. Of course, this standard is debatable, and in my opinion cannot be fulfilled in this world. But others might disagree and believe the standard can be met. But that is a different topic.
In regards to the Schopenhauerean ideal world, I find this to be merely equivocating value. Just as certain Buddhist strains of thought make nirvana out to be a peaceful bliss in non-existence, the Schopenhauerean ideal world is one without flux or change. But this additionally means no thinking can occur, because nobody exists to think, since thinking is a process and therefore a kind of change. Thus Schopenhauer's ideal world as you describe it can be seen as the ultimate negation of life, and furthermore falls into the trap of reifying value where there is none - i.e. "grass-is-always-greener" thinking, or a need to anchor oneself in another reality. In this case, though, the other reality is unconceivable.
Schopenhauer may have been a pessimist, but if his ideal world is as you describe then he's still anchoring on to the idea of a redemptive staticity. While a full-going pessimist, in my view, negates any redemption. There's bad and not-bad. Never any good in our case. Equivocating not-bad as good reeks of desperation.
Alternatively, the very notion of "literal non-existence" is illogical, unintelligible, given that something does exist.
So you are arguing it is a problem in a personal sense. The "you" that exists already brings with it the choices that counterfactually define that existence (such as a good life vs a bad life, a happy moment vs a sad moment).
But the same goes for existence as a whole.
Something surely exists (our Universe at least). And that makes non-existence a non-sensical thing to be taking seriously. It is not a valid counter-factual. It is not an actual possibility. We can only have the relative absence of something or other.
So this notion of "literal non-existence" has to be given up. It is an impossibility. Metaphysics in particular has to start somewhere else if it is to be an exercise in intelligible argument.
What I'm not arguing for is holistic non-existence as a whole. Only what it means to be non-existent at the level of identity.
Alternatively, we can say that non-existence is characterized as the differences between possible worlds. But this places the focus of ethics on states of affairs, when I was distinctly trying to maintain a person-oriented ethics, i.e. something is good/bad for a person.
Exactly. And I'm pointing to the fundamental flaw in such modal reasoning.
It takes for granted that things which exist could also not exist in free fashion. And yet if existence is holistic and contextual, then that is a faulty presumption. It can be only relatively true at best that events or objects can be treated as independent variables.
This matters at the cosmic level. Could you have change except within the context of stasis (or stasis except within the context of change)?
And likewise, anything important one might pick out about the life of a person is going to be similarly contextual. You couldn't have joy without pain, etc?
So you can't talk about the possibility of you having a sibling in any plausible fashion unless it is in fact plausible that such a sibling might exist. And you say such a sibling doesn't exist - but how can you be so sure? Did you check in the basement where your parents have had him locked up all these years?
So sure, modal logic is good for reasoning as often the world is atomistically disjoint to a high degree of approximation. It is close enough to a collection of independent events fixed by a history for us to just argue in that fashion. You could have had a brother. But you don't.
I'm just pointing out that this is not a secure basis for the kind of grandly general argument you want to mount here.
Quoting darthbarracuda
It is of course entirely rational. Bad and good encode a counterfactuality that makes it possible for there to be definitely something. Things can be one way because it is a real possibility they could be the other way.
I realise you find this problematic because it means life being bad means life can be good. But tough. You just have an illogical approach to this issue.
I don't see how this is necessarily of cosmic importance. After all, if we're talking holism here, a little change doesn't alter the overall structure of the universe. Whether or not I exist does not change much cosmically. I've said this before, the ethics I work with is not necessarily of cosmic importance, rather, it's of person-al importance.
When I talk of possible people, then, I'm taking a person-oriented stance that focuses on advantages and disadvantages related to experience. So non-existence initially seems like it might be advantageous to the tortured child - yet clearly if this child does not exist, then there are no advantages to be found.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, sorry, you've just ignored the whole point of my post. Counterfactual reasoning in regards to non-existence only applies to the environment, not to the non-existent thing. The difference between the two possible worlds is measured by the causal importance of the subject thing in question. But personal values can only be derived from existing. Therefore, counterfactual reasoning in regards to personal values is rationally impossible. All other attempts to do so are merely fictions, i.e. a over-liberal use of everyday counterfactual reasoning (existing vs existing) to a quite different situation (existing vs not-existing).
If a red chinaplate does not exist, what color is it? It's an inane and irrational question: the plate isn't even able to even have a color to begin with in virtue of it not existing.
The whole purpose here was to show how we can still do ethics without the need for a counterfactual correlate, and in fact is preferable anyway since it focuses on the needs of a person instead of a dream future.
I agree. Hence I usually label it a "pipe-dream". As far as using "non-existence" as a placeholder for better outcome, I agree that these two have become interchangeable in Buddhist/Schopenhauerean terms.. But if you recognize that, you can simply realize this interpretation of non-existence as a future non-painful state of affairs which you appear to be doing in this post.
To expand the topic a bit, I would say that instrumentality should really be the focus of the existential philosophical inquiry. If we were to prune everything down to one person sitting in a deserted island with enough food to stay alive.. We must move forward and make choices, goals, decisions within a context of our physical/social settings and historical institutions/education.
There would be ways to find some entertainment.. some flights of fancy in imagination and in natural surroundings.. Life is just an expanded version of this scenario..
Society is just this concept multiplied- Upkeep and entertainments in a setting with others who agree to similar upkeep and entertainments doing the same things day in and day out.. Liberal-minded "modern" society perhaps looks up every once in a while to try to find a lofty goal.. say that of space exploration and scientific discoveries.. Or to perhaps discuss the arts and literature.. drugs every once in a while to alter the mind and "expand" its experiences.
The oppression of being is that we must do- our wills move forward in survival/social-physical upkeep, and entertainment-seeking. We long to get caught up in moments so we do not think of the need for need in the first place. To those caught up- perhaps instrumentality makes no sense at all.. Many people might feel it eventually in angst, but do not reflect on it enough to make sense of it and thus is a subtle feeling of discomfort behind the scenes and not seen as something that drives every decision and forces us to move forward.
Language is a double-edge sword in this regard because it provides a structure and logic to give shape and form to experience but it also provides us a possible misunderstanding that the lived experience has some reason behind it or salvation behind it instead of just a happenstance of moving forwardness. People think the goals themselves are the solutions, are the reasons. Rather, it is just the need for need. Upkeep/maintenance and entertainment are not options. One must wake up, one must do, one must..
I'm talking about the logic we would apply to anything. And you already agree we are talking about "possible worlds" don't you?
Quoting darthbarracuda
Again, your dualism in this regard is only possible if you reject the holism of natural philosophy.
So yes. You continually claim this kind of atomistic freedom. It appears to validate your logic. I'm just pointing out its deep flaws. It is the reason why you just accept that there is the world, and there is the self.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I've pointed to the flawed logic upon which you have argued your whole point. That's different.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I dunno. Suppressing the potential for tortured lives by addressing their contextual causes seems a lot more logical to me. Doing something about that is what would be actually logical wouldn't you say?
Quoting darthbarracuda
But red china plates can and do exist. So there is both the general possibility and the literal actuality.
What is irrational is to try to base your "logical" position on such nonsense as "this red china plate that does not exist".
Surely you can appreciate the inherent and necessary contextuality of that claim - what it would take to make it a "true statement"?
Different scenarios require us to use different techniques.
Quoting apokrisis
Because phenomenologically that is the case, and that is where ethics resides.
Quoting apokrisis
But again this is not personal value here. Suppressing the potential for tortured lives only benefits those who exist. And then we have the non-identity problem, and the related issue of lives that are inherently shitty - i.e. if they weren't shitty, they wouldn't be the same life.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, sure, but we're talking about an individual china plate, just as we are talking about the advantages a potential, single person can have in non-existence. Does non-existence benefit anyone? I answer in the negative.
Everything else is gibberish, sorry.
A non-painful state of affairs is a bit incoherent in my opinion, as a state of affairs can't feel pain. Instead I would call it a state of affairs that has no individuals who are experiencing pain. Otherwise it seems like we're fantasizing about an impossibility.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Most people I think never go beyond the initial perturbation.
And yet of no evolved creature could this scenario ring less true. Humans are socially and even culturally-constructed beings. We are only complete as functional members of functioning groups. So you are basing an argument on an utter fantasy.
And you're trying to reduce transparent phenomenological experiences to a foreign anthropological structure. As if recognizing the sustaining force of our existence doesn't make it less (or perhaps more?) absurd.
You have to make up your mind whether the world exists then. If it does, then there may be something beyond your person-al phenomenology. :-}
Quoting darthbarracuda
And?
Unless you are going beyond phenomenology to claim ontic idealism or dualism, there is no reason to treat pain as some disembodied quality whose existence can be weighed in Platonic fashion.
Quoting darthbarracuda
How many different abuses of logic can you conjure up just to maintain an argument that doesn't work?
Quoting darthbarracuda
You've got your conclusion. So all you need is any old rubbish that seems to allow you to get to it.
I've pointed out to the contextuality needed to make your statement true. You agree - even going so far as to say the specific context is you and me agreeing verbally about the absence of some currently experienced particular.
If you aren't then willing to deal with the consequences of the acknowledged contextuality of the statement, that's your problem.
I predicted you would say that.. Actually, I was going to say after that statement "Cue Apokrisis generic quote about socially constructed reality and how I couldn't be farther from the truth. Yet, I mentioned linguistics which comes from social construction, and despite being social animals.. we are still in the same place. It does not change the scenario. You make a strawman because you think I deny that we are social animals. I do not deny this at all. That would be a tangent from the argument which is the fact that we are maintaining upkeep/survival and finding entertainment goals trying to get caught up in something so as to avoid instrumentality.. Again focusing on the tangent rather than the heart of the argument. Social construction is not some weird cure all that dissolves the problem of being a person albeit one who is in the context of a society and a historical development. This is all acknowledged by me.. To say I don't is to ignore some things I say to make a your argument stronger. It is not acknowledging that your interlocutor already thought of it, acknowledges it, and is still making a certain point that incorporates those things which are supposedly overlooked.
But anthropology has no trouble explaining the phenomenology. It is obvious that modern folk live such insulated lives that they develop a magnified fear of the real world. Every papercut becomes the Holocaust because life has lost its normal calibration.
If you grow up dressed in silk, even the manufacturer's tag may seem like an unbearable annoyance.
So this kind of complaining about the unendurability of life is simply a symptom of something you need to fix. It has none of the grandeur of a fundamental philosophical problem or even a Shakespearian tragedy. It is just simply a practical issue - how can we design modern society better in a way that might be more natural to what makes the human animal most content?
That would be more convincing if you just hadn't begun by presuming the opposite - that society is a bunch of people who for some reason wandered off their desert islands, with their abundant food supplies, to go live collectively and dependently in the name of a little light entertainment and big city distraction.
You are completely off-base with your interpretation. That was meant to convey that LIKE being a on a desert island where we are solely focused on upkeep/entertainment- where there are less complex versions of said upkeep/entertainment SOCIAL reality that we actually DO live in, is the same except DUE to the social nature of it and more complex environmental/historical situatedness of it, we may THINK that it is otherwise. This has nothing to do with us being isolated beings or having an origination outside of a social context. You are making it a strawman by turning it into a different argument.
Where is your evidence that anyone living on a desert island would think about their existence in this fashion? In what sense are you describing a natural state of being for humans?
Quoting schopenhauer1
You can't scale up from an unnatural state to explain the natural state. Complexity is different (as the slogan goes).
Anthropology also can help explain as to why humans have to make culture to begin with. Done unbiased it shows how humans have developed civilization as a hodgepodge method of postponing/procrastinating death.
No amount of social institutions are going to fix the structural aspects of the human condition, only make them more or less bearable.
Quoting apokrisis
Oh, it exists sure, but we're not focused on the World, are we? We're focused on the inhabitants of the World! The basic focus of ethics! People! Not the relations they have to the environment or how they are part of the great cosmic plan of entropification.
Quoting apokrisis
And neither did I claim so. You're making this impossibly difficult. Pain exists where people exist. If people do not exist, then pain does not exist. If we identity pleasure as the only good, then the lack of pain is actually not a good thing at all, rather, it's merely comparative betterness in an impersonal sense. Non-existence cannot be good or bad for anyone. I'm not sure why this is so difficult.
Quoting apokrisis
Oh, my god, you're hilarious. Insulting, but hilarious.
Quoting apokrisis
We're not just talking about things that already exist, we're talking about potential existants. Just because the lack of pain would be good for us, doesn't mean the lack of pain would be good for potential, unborn people. Because we already exist, and they do not. This is not that hard.
What? What is more realistic is that society developed initially to support our needs to survive, but later began to develop as a means of keeping ourselves entertained. Civilization is OP in comparison to what nature throws at us generally. Yet we have the brainpower and time left over...what to do, as we twiddle our fingers?
What, indeed? Perhaps we'll argue on an internet forum!
Let's not be ridiculous.
Quoting darthbarracuda
What level of natural selection do you want to talk about then? Merely the cultural? Not the social or the ecological?
Quoting darthbarracuda
Is there a reason you skipped my actual point? Pain can only exist in counterfactuality to its phenomenological "other" - pleasure. So if the existence of pain is your big ethical concern, then that is the counterfactual that is actually relevant.
It's not me who launched into the great red herring of literal non-existence. I just reminded you of the rational basis for any counterfactual state of existence - the one which naturally relies on the further notion of striking a balance.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Yet you state that the red plate, along with your sibling, is literally non-existent. And it sounds like you want to talk about potentiality as though it "exists" now.
So yes, this kind of logical talk is very familiar. It works well for reasoning about states of affairs. It is very pragmatic.
But it is all at sea when it comes to addressing deep metaphysical questions.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Well, it would seem to remove what is in your eyes a major constraint on their existing. What would they say if you indeed allowed them to exist having created such living conditions? Thank-you?
It's actually pretty rare for people to wish they have never been born even in this imperfect world. So it seem presumptuous of you to talk for the unborn billions.
So modern society exists primarily for mass entertainment.
Are you for real?
So, we don't go from upkeep/survival to entertainment in a social setting?Quoting apokrisis
If you don't like the analogy, then we can use one more to your liking. What you are definitely doing is ignoring the argument for an analogy that you deem to be false. Even if I was to let the analogy go to move the debate forward, that does not lessen the argument, only provide more room discuss the actual matter at hand. So, you can continue trying to shoot the dead horse in order to try to get as much as you can about the analogy or your can actually discuss the argument which is that of the idea of instrumentality. By the way, it is not about being an unnatural state.. It is actually THE natural state.. upkeep/survival and entertainment for big-brained social animals. Sounds about right for the big picture. All the "complexity" which you want to use as leverage for trying to "seem" more sophisiticated in your argument, comes out of the fact that we must do to do to do.. instrumentality.
Again, here is one way I described it:
Language is a double-edge sword in this regard because it provides a structure and logic to give shape and form to experience but it also provides us a possible misunderstanding that the lived experience has some reason behind it or salvation behind it instead of just a happenstance of moving forwardness. People think the goals themselves are the solutions, are the reasons. Rather, it is just the need for need. Upkeep/maintenance and entertainment are not options. One must wake up, one must do, one must..
Well, what other purpose is there for society other than to help people survive and the sedate them from their fears? Hints of instrumentalism can be seen here...
Quoting apokrisis
Bring an argument, then, cause you're not an authority.
Quoting apokrisis
The ones that put people as ethical priority, as any ethical theory should.
Quoting apokrisis
I doubt this. Surely we can feel pain without feeling pleasure. Surely we don't need black to see white. We just see white.
Quoting apokrisis
Because it is.
Quoting apokrisis
I thought you were all about pragmatism.
Quoting apokrisis
THIS WAS MY POINT, APO. We should focus on what IS/COULD BE the case FOR an individual. A bad psychological state doesn't need a redemptive opposite for it to be bad. We don't need a good state of affairs to act ethically.
Quoting apokrisis
Right, cause the majority can't at all be wrong, or because the majority wins by sheer might. huh
You might not have noticed it, but entertainment is an industry. And being reduced to being a consumer of a product - a packaged experience - is where much of modern life loses its meaning.
Wrong.
Quoting darthbarracuda
That's why I say there is nothing wrong with modal logic per se. But you don't try to do heart surgery with a hammer and chisel.
Quoting darthbarracuda
You are forgetting that it is the preferences of others that you are judging. And your excuse for advocating anti-natalist genocide is that the common herd are all self-deluding fools who don't realise how unhappy they ought to be.
The technical term for that is projection.
Please explain.
Quoting apokrisis
False.
Quoting apokrisis
Quite the opposite, I realize that nobody wants to die, nobody wants to suffer, nobody wants to lead a tedious life, all structural parts of life.
So you really think I am using entertainment in the very narrow sense of the entertainment industry rather than as shorthand for how we are pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice?
God forbid that we might narrow our definitions to the point where they would make a meaningful commitment to anything. How could we simply presume our conclusions if we had to start doing that?
Along with being born, having fun, being royally entertained.
We are back to your one-side view of existence as usual. Are you trying to prove that one can indeed see black without ever seeing white? ;)
Again, you miss the point of instrumentality to make rhetorical ones. Not cool man. I'd first like to see you define instrumentality in your own words, grapple with the concept before going on tangents about definitions being too broad.
But it already has a philosophical definition - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism
You might need to coin a different word. What's Greek for "pointlessly eating free time"?
I tried to avoid that term due to the fact that it has a different meaning otherwise- the pragmatist one you decided to divert the debate towards. I am asking you to define the neologism that I am using- just so I know we describing the same thing, before we start going down rabbit holes. I want to know you even understand the proposition.
You want me to define a term you invented....
Yep, otherwise we are just talking past each other.
Quoting darthbarracuda
At first I read that as if you must be talking about actions in general--like, for example, me getting myself a glass of orange juice, or taking a bike ride, say. But then I thought, "What the heck would getting myself a glass of orange juice have to do with an 'image of nonexistence'?"
Then I figured you must only be talking about the situations you're describing in some detail--where we'd be making decisions based on the idea of it being better to not be alive in particular scenarios. But then I was confused by you saying "many of our actions." People making decisions based on the idea of it being better to not be alive in particular scenarios is a very, very small fraction of the total number of actions that people take. Heck, I've lived over half a century and I've never taken action on anything based on a "better to not be alive" idea. But I've engaged in millions of actions of course.
Aside from that, a lot of your opening essay reads oddly to me because all that value is in the first place is a subjective assignment based on how individuals feel about the thing in question, and any individual might feel any imaginable way about the same thing.
Well I can only really talk about your instrumentalism in a fashion that fits my point of view. And the interesting idea to me is how the modern fossil fuel burning phase of humanity is having to construct its own heat sink in terms of "pointless activity".
So life in a general naturalistic sense is all about the negentropy that arises to dissipate entropic gradients - the organisation that forms to liberate energy stores. But life normally is stuck with a rate of burn defined by environmental accidents - like the actual amount of sunshine hitting the Earth and being available for re-radiation at a lowered temperature having done organic work. Life normally has to find its equilbrium balance with the daily solar flux.
Humanity, through its technological development, stumbled on the entropic bonanza of coal and oil - fossilised geo-distilled plankton. And that took the lid off human development. There was suddenly enough fuel to do anything.
The problem then was finding something to do with this fuel. Humanity had to evolve a mentality to match - one adapted to a new energy environment. And humanity also needed a heat sink - some activity that could dispose of all this potential work in terms of, ultimately, waste heat. So a reason for action had to be invented to complete the cycle. Humans had to invent the outcome that would allow fossil fuel to be burnt in exponential fashion in a way that "made sense".
A lot of this "making sense" of the fossil fuel bonanza has happened in normal biological fashion - a population explosion in which we are headed towards 10 billion people by mid-century.
But then you can argue that a lot about the modern fossil fuel based mentality is "instrumental" in being fundamentally pointless activity. This seems right because we can see that psychological flourishing does not seem high on the entropic agenda. Instead, life is driven by a blind consumption imperative - an over-riding need to generate as much waste as possible because more ordinary rates of fossil fuel burn aren't enough to satisfy its entropic imperative.
So Rolex watches, and Instagram, and McDonalds, are all symptoms of the need to create heat sinks beyond what nature makes readily available. Humans have to consume products in ways that keep cranking up the global rate of burn. Our part of the bargain is using our creativity to invent these pointless - from the point of view of psychological flourishing - activities. And it would be this aspect of modern existence that I would call "instrumental" - in as far as you can clearly define your neologism in a way I might respond to it.
But then this thermodynamic view of nature does not really justify pessimism or anti-natalism or other recent incarnations of Existentialism and Romanticism.
There still remains the possibility of psychological flourishing. There is a goal at the heart of human activity that we can still shoot at.
And then there is the question of exactly how much of the apparently wasteful side of modern consumerism is merely heat sink creation for the sake of heat sink creation. Clearly there is a worryingly large amount. But once you look at everything we expend resources on - which includes public health, universal education, national security (including natural hazard defences) - then quite a lot goes to propping up the various levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It is useful activity, rather than useless activity, in terms of a standard model of psychological flourishing.
So an actual examination of the human condition will certainly say there is a fundamental problem which humanity faces. We are being rather mindlessly driven by the entropic imperative of fossil fuel, and we already know that is going to end unhappily.
But that nuanced story - in which the future is an open question, given we are so involved in how it works out - is a far cry from the monotone droning of pessimism and anti-natalism.
The Otaku/gamers version of Romanticism lacks any entropic/organic realism and so its criticisms of modern life have no penetration. It is just a pathetic bleat from the sidelines. It says "I wish I wasn't here" without having any philosopical means to analyse why it is where it is, and where else it might more fruitfully be.
So where is this justified that we should/can "shoot" at flourishing? What is true is that we must survive/upkeep and entertain ourselves at all times. Instrumentality is the absurd feeling that can be experienced from apprehension of the constant need to put forth energy to pursue goals and actions in waking life. This feeling can make us question the whole human enterprise itself of maintaining mundane repetitive upkeep, maintaining institutions, and pursuing any action that eats up free time simply for the sake of being alive and having no other choice. There is also a feeling of futility as, the linguistic- general processor brain cannot get out of its own circular loop of awareness of this. Another part of the feeling of futility is the idea that there is no ultimate completion from any goal or action. It is that idea that there is nothing truly fulfilling. Time moves forward and we must make more goals and actions.
Quoting apokrisis
Ad hominem. Not that this has bearing on anything, but I do not play video games and I had to look up what Otaku is. The criticisms of modern life, already frame the debate in terms of "modern" vs. "non-modern", when instrumentality is an idea about life in general- fossil fuel burning or not.
You are close to certain ideas when you discuss the instrumentality of using fossil fuels, but the instrumentality is more pervasive than the specific focus on fossil fuels and its impact on culture. You make a pipe dream out of this "flourishing" rather than see the instrumentality that is inherent in all actions, situations, decisions, motivations.
This is a false although widespread conception of Nirvana. Indeed when the first Mahayana Buddhist scriptures were translated into European languages, many scholars and philosophers (including Nietszche) interpreted the Buddhist 'sunyata' and 'nirvana' as nothingness or non-existence. And 'nirvana' literally means 'extinction' or 'blowing-out', and it is often depicted in negative terms, so it is an understandable error.
Nevertheless I think it's a mistake to depict Nirvana as non-existence. It would be more accurate to describe it as 'beyond conception' - that also has doctrinal foundation, as Nirvana is often described in the texts as being 'subtle, difficult to see, perceivable only by the wise'. So it is an essentially religious conception, albeit conceived in a different way to Western religious conceptions. But it is more like a state 'beyond existence' than 'non-existent'. (This is symbolised iconographically in Tangka paintings of the 'wheel of birth and death', which depict the six realms (heaven, hell, earth, etc). In those depictions the Buddha (and the Bodhisattvas) are drawn outside the wheel.)
How is it not justified exactly? You are arguing the minority position here.
Quoting schopenhauer1
It's only absurd to you because you choose to frame it that way using antiquated notions about scientific determinism and cosmic meaninglessness.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You say it is a pipe dream. I've yet to see your evidence.
And you don't seem to appreciate the monotonic nature of your argument that makes it invalid as any kind of theory. In claiming to explain everything, it can't in fact explain anything.
So start again and explain to me what a life would be like if lived in a non-instrumental fashion? Let's see if that sounds appealing as a counterfactual option.
But I don't have to claim something- we live out instrumentality even if the absurd feeling of it does not dawn at all moments for everyone. Shooting for flourishing is not a fact like instrumentality, but a value statement that must be justified with something other than "that's what the majority want". Flourishing is a pretty tawdry trope anyways. That's what some Greek philosophers said back in the day, and may have become the current trope for dialectic in modern ethical discourse, but besides the obvious that people survive to survive, and that time moves forward and there is no rest from the organism's need for need (which is essentially instrumentality but sans self-awareness of it), there is no basis for this or that principle (flourishing) being any inherent goal we are trying for or should try for.
It is easy to take a position with the word "flourishing" but, to just take some idea for granted because it sounds pleasant or is the recognized established trope among some schools of thought, or is recognized by a mass audience says little. It's simply catering to an established preference for what people are conditioned to hear as reasonable and thus another way for your argument to gain leverage through being the "sophisticated" understanding of way things are and how things got to where they are. It's like being at a Sunday cocktail party in a middle class suburb and discussing sports, mortgages, and school districts- it "seems" like the most responsible and sophisticated topic that everyone can agree on.
The problem with the way you argue is that you give little credit to the interlocutor. Just because I have a fundamental argument that describes the situatedness of the human being, does not mean I have not considered other arguments and the nuances of history/linguistics/neuroscience/anthropology/contingency/hard sciences/social sciences/actuality/potentiality/entropy and the like.. However, understanding the hows and whys of the world described via empirical apprehension and modeling does not nullify the human condition itself.
Quoting apokrisis
Life could not live in an otherwise fashion. The closest thing to describing non-instrumentality is perhaps (and a big perhaps) something like what I described in the first response to the OP which sort of kicked this whole debate off: Schopenhauerian ideal world All would be stasis and not flux. There is no want or need as one would be completely unified with everything else. Thus a unitary existence where everything is everything is almost equivalent to everything is nothing. It is absolute completeness in the metaphysical sense. Nothing is lacking.
However, the above situation is not possible (and never was/is.. hence the discussion of the whole transcendental nirvana thing being a pipe dream). To strive for flourishing is not only not justified, it is actually the process of instrumentality sentimentalized... To flourish to flourish to flourish is not much different than to do to do to do.. It is just deciding certain things are valued more than others.. for some instrumental reason (keeping such and such going to keep it going to keep it going). I've discussed Maslow's hierarchy before and I can do it again if you so wish (as for some reason I predict you moving in that direction).. The idea if humans had a certain set of needs met, some sort of completeness or "full potential" is reached.. Please, let us hash that out.
Desert-dwellers think the ocean a fantasy.