I can relate. I connect this to the future-orientedness of human beings. We can imagine ourselves so far ahead in the future that all becomes absurd a...
To me that's a totally plausible and intuitive hypothesis or reported experience. I guess I lean toward the identification of thought and language. Si...
You make some good points. Let's recall that Socrates was an old man with a fixed self-image. Dying the way he did was one of the most interesting thi...
I relate to the experience of looking for the right words or deciding that a previous phrase wasn't quite right. 'How can I know what I think till I s...
I really like this. This is also in Blake, who talked of mental states. An ego can move from state to state. In a way the states are realler than the ...
I'm glad you liked it. I like sharing fascinating quotes. This part stands out for me, despite its arguably awkward English translation. The theoretic...
In a way it's not surprising. Wittgenstein hurts. Or rather his insights are threatening to those invested in a certain game and self-image. I suspect...
I hear you, and I guess I think something like that too. I emphasize the other stuff because that's what's counter-intuitive, what surprised me in my ...
I think I know what you mean, more or less, and I agree. Let me put it in my words. Perhaps you'll relate. The intelligible order of the world (the sy...
I like this idea too, and I find it taking different forms throughout the history of philosophy. Personally I wouldn't claim so definite and radical. ...
To be frank, I relate our disagreement to theism/atheism disagreements. IMV certain philosophers have made strong cases against traditional metaphysic...
Even as a non-parent the reasons for the child's sake are obvious. If one sees existence as likely to be a net good, then the parent is giving the gif...
I'm guessing this is about boredom, but many of us don't count boredom as a big issue. To me it's aging, disease, accidents, and crime/injustice that ...
I meet you half way. I talked about 'poor people' reproducing, the prolific proles. Their children are cast into the world in an inferior position, ow...
Exactly. I just say that 'thinking they are insane' is pretty much just having certain chains of signs in our internal monologue. Or we say it out lou...
I think that inference only makes sense if one clings to consciousness-grounded paradigm that is exploded by the beetle-in-the-box example. The whole ...
IMV the story of philosophy demonstrates discontinuity. Compare Dewey and Plotinus. Philosophy looks roughly like big-picture thinking. Just as humans...
I hear you, but I guess my point is that the strong philosophical dream of rationally justifying everything seems dead to me. I'm also invested in uni...
I agree. I could be lying to myself, but I feel something like an internal equilibrium. I'm more or less at peace with myself despite certain eccentri...
I understand myself to understand myself as suffering/enjoying a wider band of consciousness than the average person. This is the listening to the int...
Perhaps you are missing the subtle machismo in pessimism. It's all about gazing at the abyss, the terrible truth. The pessimist faces the black dragon...
Nice. I'll just add that for me, in a certain dark mood, that there's maybe a sick love affair with 'The Dark Truth.' It's like self-Crucifixion, self...
In case you find it useful, I think B&T Heidegger is not so young. We can go back much farther. He started as a Catholic philosopher. But eventually L...
I agree with this. Life is justified or rejected on the level of feeling. We always speak from some mood. And I know what you mean (I think) by 'mysti...
I agree, but then the system is also just relatively happy people protecting their relative happiness. IMV we are a fairly selfish species. We don't w...
So you exclude the quasi-religious function from philosophy? I take a more holist view. To me a person's philosophy is tied up with their self-image a...
I guess I'm saying that those 'obvious good reasons' are not explicit reasons. You seem to suggest that arguments have been made, and they need only b...
We can never know if we see the same colors. It's intuitively plausible, and an argument can be made for it, but it's unnecessary. Generations come an...
To me this is a default view that some of the more recent philosophers have successfully challenged. Our so-called 'rigorous logical principles' are p...
I like that, but I should have been clearer. I'm suggesting that being civilized or sane means that lots of issues are and must be 'dead' for us. They...
We agree, and I think most people would agree. That's the genius and mischief of drugs. Just push that button directly and the rest of the world falls...
This is interesting. I agree that people have various obsolete traumatic-childhood-induced strategies that they'd be better off letting go of. They co...
I'm enjoying this conversation and think I mostly understand you. But this stuff is complex, so please forgive any misunderstanding. Correct me if I a...
OK, but what's the problem with repetition? Heaven sounds repetitive. I think I'd be pretty if I lived in an almost ideal world and never aged or got ...
I know what you mean. I can only talk about the black dragon when he's not around. When he's around, the futility and obscenity of talk is palpable an...
Ah yes, I understand that view. I've playfully summarized it as a system of cub-petting. Life is justified by the joys of parenting, but parenting gen...
I think we probably do see the same colors, etc., for reasons you've mentioned. But I think it misses the point of Wittgenstein in the passage quoted....
To me some of Marx's writings are great. If you ignore the neo-religious element, you get a powerful kind of anti-philosophy that calls out the battle...
I like this line. Perhaps you'll agree that it itself is a landline. The state of truth is an abyss, but the abyss recognized as such functions as a f...
Ah yes, I'm well aware. But what's that got to do with issue at hand? I realize that we are antipodes on some vague attitude level. I find the theme o...
I agree that there has been progress in many ways. What's strange is perhaps the sense of the finitude of the world. We're all trapped down here with ...
To some degree, yes, but with Rorty, for instance, that's not so clear. A certain grand role for philosophy is abandoned. I'm pro-philosophy, by the w...
That seems to be the essence of Hegel, and the critics find it Panglossian. The 'religion' of progress seems to be our secular replacement for a relig...
I hear you, and I feel a certain relief in not having forced someone into this maze. A different personality might feel guilty for not giving a new so...
Absurd in relation to what, though? Do you see the self-eating snake? For some it's aesthetically justified. For these the extinction is the ultimate ...
I really have and continue to endure this vision. It's one lens on reality among others. I'd just add that 'meaningless' only makes sense if 'meaning'...
Rorty mentions this thinker as he discusses the shift from a concern with afterlife to a concern with the world our grandchildren will inherit. I want...
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