schopenhauer1

This is getting close to panpsychic ideas. Although, sensation itself is not explained without being self-referential or just saying as a brute matter...

I don't disagree with you here. Again, no reason to get upset or overreact. Again, I do not disagree, and again your implications with the word "fail"...

I think you are building a strawman against the "hard problemers". They are not saying knowledge of models are useless. They clearly predict things th...

You can feel intense physical pain in the background and laugh at someone's joke, so I tend to agree with this claim.

What is nothing-ness in this case? Suicide or simply lack of any concern/pain?

Who is them in this case? I can't tell if we agree or disagree.

Those who believe the hard question to be legitimate would then ask how it is that sense exists without committing a category error of replacing the p...

It's when models cannot be made near the fringes of thought that the models break down.

We can rail against philosophy's tendency to reduce everything to some very basic "X" substance. But just as mistakenly, philosophy has a tendency to ...

I edited the quote above so it has a bit more explanation. Don't take the analogy too literally. It is just an introduction to a larger point. The act...

Not a bad little rant against reductionism. How do you solve the problem I posed earlier in thread regarding the hardware and the software? Hardware o...

It seems like some models of materialism posit that the brain secretes consciousness, but into "what" I don't know. It is as if people have a hidden d...

I'm not sure anything fits so nicely into good or bad desires. How is reading Nietzsche happier, because it satisfies or quells some "spiritual" desir...

I guess social technology might count too, eh? But even if we don't stretch that to fit my criticism, the main point of the criticism still stands wit...

I guess I took that to mean better technology to correct the problem.

It's kind of like the Buddhist's 2nd Noble Truth, right? I think all desires are under the first type you described. Some might lead to some sort of t...

I'd say suffering is more "immanent" to the human condition than sustainability. This is not to say that sustainability is not important for a society...

I see, philosophizing about pragmatic logic of metaphysics and ethics isn't though...That takes true poverty. This is hollow, as "what it means to ach...

I see. The warrior again.

There is no making progress. As I said earlier:

Being completely detached from suffering? Yep.

All, baby!

Yeeah I don't believe it, unless a serious mental/physical handicap/disability befalls us. I agree this can happen some of the time. I don't disagree ...

Yeah, I'm well aware. I just do not think it's really sustainable. Shoot me.

That is a good analysis of how the "supra-human" ideal teacher remains as the reality is forgotten. I completely agree. Negative outlooks are dismisse...

You disagree with me? Never. I can agree that they attempt attempts to avoid pain. I just don't think it happens to the extent of creating Sages or Bu...

Nope. I don't believe Buddha achieved some ego-death/Nirvana. I don't believe any Sage achieved some eternal equanimity. Pain sucks for everyone. The ...

I'm not much for pipe dreams. Sisyphus is like the instrumentality of existence. We do to do to do. Our restless nature- keeping ourselves going. The ...

Yes for the potential future suffering. Of course it does not address the suffering of now (i.e. the instrumentality of existence, unwanted pain, goal...

Right, suffering exists period. That is the problem. What we try to do about it is one thing. But Pessimists keep in mind that it exists and that the ...

Preventing it is not coping, it is stopping it from ever happening (antinatalism). As for bitching at it and resenting it, this is not seeking to work...

This thread was started to be originally an open forum regarding the major questions on the OP. It came about through people providing the stock answe...

I don't see how this addresses the point of the FACT of human suffering.

That was not meant for you but for Stoicism :).

I guess any group can believe this, right? Christianity, Epicureanism, Buddhism, etc. If everyone just becomes the exemplary of whatever belief-system...

One of the reasons for the thread was that Stoicism could be used to deny that we have to "deal" with suffering in the first place by being born at al...

Yes, allowing may be a good word there. Providing for a climate where diverse points of view are protected from government censorship would be getting...

Once a person "takes to heart" a fundamentalist religious doctrine, it becomes incumbent upon that person to also follow the restrictions of the thoug...

If a change in language matters here, I am willing to say he "took to the teachings and beliefs of a brand of Christianity as he saw it and thus philo...

Being a belief-system that focuses on proper belief, taking on the Christian system strait-jacketed his thought to then only view things in the prism ...

Yes, Augustine and his guilt..I never claimed he did not know or initially participate in other views of thought. In fact, I acknowledge that, and hen...

Astute summary.

I'm not sure if that is sarcastic which, if so, is kind of funny. But what I meant is he could have put his theological tendencies energies into Neopl...

It's too bad he didn't use his intellect to pursue more "pagan" philosophies.

@"andrewk" The capacity to break the world down into conceptual units might be considered a radical break from other animals. The generative capacity ...

I agree that "natural" here may be the feeling rather than an actual metaphysical position. It is more of a poetic idiom. The closest we may get to "f...

This goes back to my idea of instrumentality- especially when you describe "create, create, create". We do, we do, we do... But for no other reason th...

Not to take this away from this universals topic, but I just wanted to see your reply to the idea that semiotics has an already-baked-in observer whic...

Pace Schopenhauer (and the later existentialists)- our wills force us to have make choices about actions. Choices about actions are traditionally cons...

By mere fact that we are conceived, raised, and survive through social means- how it can it be otherwise that we do not take into account the other? H...