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I guess I'm still a bit confused as to how the doctrine of unknowability escapes itself. We could call philosophy (or any inquiry for that matter) a g...

Of intelligibility, of subject matter, of joints-of-reality, etc

Well, I mean science developed in conjunction with Descartes. Instead of science depending on metaphysics, it would be rather that metaphysics analyze...

Interesting analysis. I'm curious, if the Cyrenaics thought that the only thing we know of are our pathe, how did they come to know of this general me...

Indeed this was kind of the point of this thread to begin with. From a phenomenological perspective, we don't seem to belong. We're aliens to the worl...

Yes, indeed Descartes was primarily focused on finding a metaphysical basis for science, i.e. a metaphysics in the service of science. The question re...

I agree that solution seeking becomes the first natural response. When I get a headache, I take ibuprofen. When I balance my checkbook, I use a calcul...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SIizvT5Bk8

But not its immanent objectivity. What is natural is not what is good per se. I don't know, you're setting the precedent here. I mean, we can a more c...

This does not change the fact that torture can occur beyond human interaction. The point is that there is a contingency factor here, in that we have t...

Yes from the personal view, but from the metaphysical side nothing is solved. Metaphysically speaking I doubt the universe has any moral compass whats...

Or, we can also look at what it's like to experience pleasure and pain. Telling a person who is being tortured that it's just a bunch of signals in th...

Yes, Lovecraft. He's incredibly revealing in his phenomenology. You throw around the term "science" as if it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. "nuh-uh, L...

Specifically read this, it's an introduction to his theories.

Well, I mean I doubt most other animals have existential crises like we do. But certainly they have instincts that keep them from doing things that wo...

And my argument is that this smart brain evolved this tendency in order to trick its captive self-model into continuing to exist. You seem to be impli...

“No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little” - Edmund Burke

Not sure what you mean by this. Why does anything need to be worked out at all? Why do we need to give people problems? That's a strawman.

Yet we don't go around breaking people's arms so they can feel a pulse of endorphins. Sure, maybe your emo cousin cuts herself to feel better, but is ...

No, suffering is not intrinsic to having fun, otherwise it wouldn't be suffering! Pain may be but again pain is not equivalent to suffering. Growing u...

Surprising as it might be, I'm generally a content person albeit with a bit of a melancholic edge. The prospect of suicide used to scare the shit out ...

Not really, though. Extreme pain is indeed an extreme example but not because it's strange, unusual or anything like that. It's extreme because it's e...

I'm not just arguing that life has its ups and downs, I'm arguing that life has far more downs than ups (and that the down are structurally apparent),...

I agree that there can sometimes be something sexy about pessimism or existentialism in general, but ultimately I think if you are more often than not...

It's more phenomenological and existential than philosophy of science, concerning the qualitative experiences of a sentient organism, or a mind. A con...

Pessimism is generally less concerned with the lack of meaning than existentialism is. It's more of the combination of the lack of meaning + the inevi...

Yes, I think there is an element of heroism, as there is in practically any action we take. The number one priority of the ego is to affirm itself as ...

Instead of "vague" I would use the term "uncertain". It's uncertain whether or not the world has meaning, or if there is any sense of justice, or if w...

I see you've read Nietzsche. Interesting points.

Existential angst seems to require some degree of objectivity and a desire for objectivity. Delusions can be comfortable but we inherently don't like ...

I've been meaning to make a post on Ross's argument. I'm not sure if it is as persuasive as others make it out to be.

You see the same thing from women, though. It's apparently wrong for men to tell women what is best for them, but it's totally okay for women to tell ...

This. Radfems and co. often berate the Men's Rights movement, and the Men's Rights movement often berates the Radfems and co. It's an endless series o...

The only reason I can see for this, though, is because we fear the ramifications of a poor belief or desire the functionality of a good belief. Belief...

Resuscitating this thread. What is the place of existential angst in nature? Where does it come from? As far as I can tell, humans are the only known ...

I don't have an excellent background in feminist philosophy, nor the history of feminism, but this apparent third-wave feminism strikes me as a rather...

This is precisely what I was referring to. Thanks to a familial relationships and pseudo-memories imbued within genes (i.e "instincts"), hunger automa...

To interject here, sometimes people eat because they enjoy eating, or because they're bored. You are correct in that we seem to eat primarily to get r...

So this is exactly what I was talking about: the prioritization of harm. You haven't really done anything to explain why harm is more important than b...

To answer to OP, then, I would argue that a unitary existence, if it is at all coherent, would at the very least need to be: Self-sufficient (such as ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrm2Uy7IYjY

Ernest Becker brought to light in his book The Life and Death of Meaning the psychoanalytic observations of young children. In youth, children develop...

If I recall correctly it is that the Neo-Platonists believed that complexity cannot be explained by complexity (only simplicity can). Whether this lea...

I'm surprised, to be honest, that Schopenhauer's monism is what worries you about his metaphysics. In my opinion, that is minor challenge to his view;...

According to Quine, the answer to the fundamental question of ontology, "what exists?", is this: "everything." Everything exists. Maybe you can explai...

I'm actually taking a digital circuit logic course right now, so this is kind of up my alley a bit. Hopefully philosophizing about all this won't affe...

He understood the cause of stress, which although is indeed suffering, does not cover all bases. Buddhism can help with anxiety, stress, disappointmen...

Unless we're misanthropes, we would get involved in social affairs (for ethical reasons) if we cared about the people who were part of society. We nee...

Do you accept that this is the bystander effect?

The point I was getting at is that the human psyche's stability during episodes of trauma is primarily held together by hope. Hope for a better future...