Anyone have a philosophical issue that theyve ever had an obsession with? You know what i mean...

Anyone have a philosophical issue that theyve ever had an obsession with? You know what i mean, that ONE problem that you spent weeks or even months wrestling with, and if it wasn't a crisis it was something that never really left your thoughts for weeks on end.

I know mine was Solipsism. As a teenager, it destroyed me, knowing that nothing can be known for sure. Even after i decided to swear off philosophy, whenever it popped up id immediately equate it with this one idea instead of its totality. Shit still scares me sometimes.

Oh and also if youve ever gotten out of it, how did you? Usually, i just tired myself out so badly that i stopped caring, and went back to a normal life.

Other urls found in this thread:

jstor.org/stable/449976
newadvent.org/fathers/120105.htm).
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The only way solipsism can bother you is if you believe in dualism.

Que obligatory mickey mouse/donald duck meme

Who gives a shit lmao? Literally no reason to care...

yanediot

the word you're looking for is "cue." the one spelled with a Q is "queue" and it means to form a line, or more generally, the order of people waiting one's turn for something.

what you spelled is Spanish for "what" and does not occur in English.

anyway, here's you meme

fuck youre right. total brainflub on my part. Sorry about that user

How does the mind see its contents (the hard question)

I used to get legit anxiety because of philosophy delusions, now not so much, feels boring desu, I want to recover the vitality of being 17 again

You need to read some better philosophy then

B U M P

>thinking that solipsism is not being able to be sure that things can be know for sure
wew

Zeno's paradox... the one with the arrow. It has led me to some strange places.

What makes for acceptable axioms and who determines them

solipsism is inconsequential my dude there's still phenomenon occurring before us and we react to it accordingly and we have to interpret it, whether it's real or not doesn't change the fact it affects you.

Oh, ihr Genügsamen!

>Anyone have a philosophical issue that theyve ever had an obsession with?
epistemology and the leap of faith

Biological immortality and ethics.

Free will, when I was a Christian. No matter how I thought about it free will inherently doesn't make sense, and if free will doesn't exist then moral accountability isn't really fair, and if that is true, then Christianity (at least the form I grew up with) will seem incredibly unfair.

I had a few other crises related to religion, and now that I've dropped religion I generally have fewer crises, because there are less contradictions in my worldview, although they definitely pop up every now and then.

Now that

Read Paradise Lost, not memeing you.
It covers this topic (in Book 8 i think) exceedingly well.

Could you'd summarize the gist of it for me first? Is it an argument I will likely already be familiar with as someone who grew up in the american protestant church?
Sorry about the typo at the end by the way

The Big Problem is actually expressed most accurately in the Dune novels by Frank Herbert: what kind of actions are justified to ensure the continued existence of the human species? If we find that genocide, for instance, or something equally abhorrent, is necessary for the biological survival of the species over a long timeframe (tens of thousands of years), is it justified to pursue the indefinite continuation of the species? Is there anything ethical in self-preservation? If there isn't an outside frame of reference (i.e., rules from God that we obey in order to reach some ultimate good), if the only determining factor of what makes an action worthwhile is long-term biological survival of the species, is there any way to have an ethics that isn't just self-interest? How, then, does that filter down into the ethics of individual lives?

>Could you'd summarize the gist of it for me first?
do you have a JSTOR account? I found a good little paper I can link. If not I'll type something up.

>what kind of actions are justified to ensure the continued existence of the human species
none

Green terrorism is unironically more compelling.

explain

>Green terrorism is unironically more compelling.
Oddly enough Herbert deals with this too. In the Dune universe they've already had the Butlerian Jihad against the thinking machines. In real life I'm stuck on the same point, so-called 'ecoterrorism' might be morally justified, but then why don't I feel compelled to commit crimes and acts of sabotage? I'd rather maintain my individual liberty. This makes me a hypocrite. Is the only way to live ethically, in this scenario, to be a criminal?

Knowledge is irrelevant, a thing becomes real when it is believed to be so. Believing precedes knowing.
It is fair, you're just arrogant.

Contradictions are good, get over yourself.

(me)
jstor.org/stable/449976

this is a really good piece, im just going to leave it here.

Suicide and boredom, which is the problem of what does it take to stop being unhappy.
it turns out that the most important thing to get out of this is that
-pleasure is nice but does not replace pain day after day
[it is not worth it to have pleasure, if the pleasure is followed by pain again or if pain is present with the pleasure]
-pain & pleasure disappear one you no longer move (physically first, then mentally), but you cannot stop moving physically, so there remains just mentally (that is reached by first stopping moving around (which you discover after you see that pleasure and pain are overrated to be happy))

I look to Greek tragedy as a model for living. The oracle foretold the fate of Oedipus, yet his free choice is what brought him to slay his father and to wed his mother. Had he truly believed the prophecy, he should not have wed for fear of it coming true. When we look at Oedipus and Creon, they lack wisdom in decision making, and allow their passions control them. Both ignore the declarations of the old prophet, and their egoism brings them to ruin.

Determinists would have you believe that there is only being towards fate, whereas the great weight of Gentile thought tends towards being despite fate. The maxim is this: we always have the ability to resist, and if we choose not to, the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Like Adam and Eve in the garden , we possess all the tools necessary to resist "fate" (see: City of Good Book V: 1, 8-10 newadvent.org/fathers/120105.htm).

The Christian message is quite similar to that of the tragedies, in that we are called to 'resist' (as Christ calls us to lead a life becoming of him; as the Chorus calls upon Creon), but will ultimately fail (as foretold by Scriptures; as foretold by the old prophet). Is this paradoxical? No. Ultimately, Being against fate is Being towards a higher purpose (the will of God; the will of the gods, virtue, justice, etc.). I would suggest that there is a reason that 'resisting fate' resonates so strongly and universally, and why redemptive figures who break the chain of fate are so common.

If you're truly a skeptic, a determinist, what have you- there can be no moral principles. There is no free will. Eat and drink for tomorrow you die. If these are your principles, I think that eco-terrorism makes the most sense. Who would care about the propagation of the human race? The only goal would be to make the world as livable as possible for yourself.


Sorry for semi-inarticulate post. I hope you get the gist.

Free will for me. Compatibilism is nonsense. And the mind-body problem. And "why is there something instead of nothing?"

All three ultimately brought me to mysticism, religion, and grad school for philosophy, so the obsession is ongoing.

>Compatibilism is nonsense
No it's not.

The Problem of Evil.

Once I realized the free will defense wasn't as strong as I originally thought I was hooked.

Good write-up. I'm depressed after reading it tho desu

Weird, free will not making sense is what pushed me to Christianity.

Some theories of compatibilism may seem fine if you're mostly into epiphenomenalism, or some highly complex mechanical emergentism where the mind has efficacy but it's still just another cog plugged into the great cog machine of matter. But that doesn't provide actual free will. No amount of fame-in-the-brain bullshit will get you free will. It just gets you tortuously unfree automata.

Kant's formulation of the antinomy basically holds. Layering algorithms on algorithms and making them "fuzzy" via QM is still an automaton and doesn't solve the mind-body problem.

...

There is no problem, read something.
>le science
Fuck off undergrad.

Sure, I'll just read something?

Literal meme response, I think you can do better.

I only know one thing:
>the universe is my will
Most of you will know nothing their whole lives through.

>there can be no moral principles.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I'm only half on-board with your analysis. Being involved in eco-terrorism and primitivist projects against civilization is a singularly moral pursuit, it assumes a moral frame of reference that's not dependent on humanism (i.e. human lives have inherent value). To believe that human beings have no moral imperative to continue existing is one thing, but to believe that you should undertake some kind of project to protect nature against the destructive influence of human beings assumes a non-human morality. Unlike religion, in which this non-human morality is transcendent (aka at God-level), the eco-terrorists' non human morality is imminent, located at earth-level.

About your ideas w/r/t acting against Fate, I think it's a compelling narrative. I have to remain skeptical about 'fate' and determinism because it's an empirical claim, about actions that take place in the world, that remains forever unverifiable.

>can people change
>is redemption real
>are women self-aware

my big three

no, no and...maybe.

thanks, sorry it depressed you though.

>Being involved in eco-terrorism and primitivist projects against civilization is a singularly moral pursuit
It can be, and I think that this reflects on our design. We are ordered towards a higher purpose. Although we may differ about what that purpose is (and I apologize in advance for invoking the Stirner meme), I have yet to meet the man who is free of all "spooks". I think that a spook-free individual would likely end up an eco-terrorist. Caring for progeny is not rational, and if man is a rational being, giving into this impulse necessarily implicates a higher order of consciousness than rationality, which is anathema to the skeptic. Eco-terrorism reduces competition for resources and creates a more immediately livable environment. Eco-terrorism lowers the threshold of effort for 'survival' more than any other project I can imagine, and also allows for a guilt-free suicide (for when the person has run out of pleasurable things to do).

That said, I really think that humanity itself is evidence enough to btfo determinism. Everyone professes faith in some higher cause than the will, whether explicitly or implicitly. If we were savage beasts who spontaneously developed rationality, we could never have followed Nietzsche's model of social development whereby the weak tricked the strong into adopting moral principles- the weak would have been thrashed like straggling wolves.

I don't have an account

Care to explain why it's fair? If there's no free will, condemning someone for committing evil acts is like condemning a machine for performing its function. It's fucking stupid.
>Contradictions are good, get over yourself.
kek, nice maymay

There is free will, idiot.

>I don't have an account
double checked the link and you can read it for free if you sign up. Either way I really commend Paradise Lost to your attention

This is what Nietzsche does to kids. They think they have to be weird obsessed shits. Nothing but vanity.

>Weird, free will not making sense is what pushed me to Christianity.
Why?

>Implying there is any philosophical consensus in favor of free will, making it idiotic position to disbelieve in it
delete your account you fucking dumbass

>philosophical consensus
Oh look, a wild analytic!

Agreement does not give truth value you fucking idiot.

I can't stop fearing death

inb4 le "you didn't exist before you were born it shouldn't inconvenience you any more after life" that doesn't make me feel any better

free will

i still dont have any opinion about it
drives me fucking crazy

What does it mean that nothing I do matters?

When i was 20 i went through a phase where i discovered that all of our definitions, all of our symbols that we use to describe our experiences were always lacking. I discovered that (i know the fedora tippers will murder but fuck you guys) mathematics itself relied on belief, and that 2 plus 2 could equal 5 if you believe that 2=2.5 and 2.5 plus 2.5 is 5.

Of course the mathematicians (or anyone who knows simple math) will say
>but thats not how it works! 2=/=2.5!!!

How did we decide what the value of 2 is? Was it already there before we discovered mathematics?

No. 2 is a value we accept as true(ie: we believe in the value of 2). In the universe [[[it seems]]]the only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. This can never be verified, which is why i say it seems.

All of our conceptions of what is true are relative and misleading. Our definitions, our objective descriptions, are only temporarily useful. Even if they seem to logically accurate for billions of years, the universe will recycle what is true, and eventually our objective truths will become increasingly misleading.

Then i read Wittgenstein and was glad to find another autistic lightbulb in the darkness. Wittgenstein confirmed for me the curse of language.

I found solace in the Witty. For those of you who have not read Witty, read On Certainty and the Blue/Brown book, and when you have read other works that complement it, read Tractatus.

just read Phaedo lmfao Socrates talks about the forms of numbers for like a third of it.

I have an obsession with Nietzsche's thesis, and I have for some time.

I don't know who or what the Übermensch is, and I don't know whether or not the archetype is even sufficient to save the values of Western civilization. I think the more likely outcome is extreme nihilism and a culture that glorifies the Last Man, and we'll be swallowed by the House of Islam.

Rec me some philosophy that will make the lamotrigine stop working famalam

I failed the meme

>start with the greeks!

How does Phaedo relate to the form of numbers?I will read it soon in response to your post

I took a real long time thinking about nominalism

That's not even the right Mickey Mouse meme

Clearly that's not what I was saying. I meant that disbelieving in free will clearly doesn't make someone an idiot because tons (I think most?) of extremely smart philosophers don't believe in free will either

it's part of his argument for the eternal nature of the soul. He discusses how 'things' participate in the forms, and how certain forms are mutually intolerable, e.g. Even and Odd. He talks a lot about the number two. I don't want to cheapen the argument by giving a reductive account of it, because it's quite clever. It's a short read in any case, although it takes a little work to follow.

Thanks for the mention. I will read this.

Separately, do you have any qualms with Plato's ideas (that youve read)? Im not intending to argue with you, just want to perceive another anons viewpoint

>Separately, do you have any qualms with Plato's ideas (that youve read)?
I honestly consider myself a Platonist, so not really.

When I first read Plato I brushed him off. He's so 'dated' and counter-current that it was essentially a knee-jerk reaction. In school, I was rushed along to Aristotle and Hume and Kant, and was never really encouraged to give Plato a fair shake. I think I was only ever assigned Apology and excerpts from Republic.

When I started developing more "patrician" tastes, I got interested in theater and sculpture, and was drawn towards the Greeks. I was drawn in further by Thucydides, because he made me start to seriously question the virtue of Democracy. I already had a familiarity with Locke, Rousseau, Weber, etc., so eventually I started thinking about the 'ideal' state: it's form, the basis of it's authority, etc., which led me back to Republic.I started to engage with the argument of Thrasymachus and my love for Plato developed from there.

I've spent years just fixating on how one can prove the traditional concept of justice is valid, as well as which form of morality is most valid.

I see us as being in a paradoxical tension between chaos/randomness and structure, so not deterministic per se but it still leaves no room for free will or resistance as you put it. We're at the whim of forces totally out of our control in any sense but it does make for some good poetry.

That's if global warming doesn't cook us first.

Not a real philosophical issue, but I'm obsessed with applied ethics and the need to live a completely altruistic life.
On a day to day basis I can't justify to myself most of the things I do, from using technology built through slave labour to the fact that I'd rather buy junk food than giving literally all I've got to charities.

I know that I may be a bit too unrealistic, but at the same time I can't find any decent argument for not devoting my entire life to humanity. I'm an hypocrite for not abiding to these beliefs, and I suffer greatly cause of it.

>inb4 ethics are a spook

what a shitty argument imo. go read chomskys and searles opinions on it and calm the fuck down

It wasn't even meant to be an argument, I was just stating my position and I'm perfectly calm. Well maybe not calm, I go through cyclical periods of mania and intense poetic self reflection but I'm at least comfortable with that. I've read Chomsky and and other reductionists and don't buy into all that reduction bullshit. It's just Idealism in disguise.

Those are some serious mental gymnastics there guy. Sounds like you need a job/hobbie that you find rewarding

Why don't you start off small like volunteer work a few hours a week and build upon that?

I already do that, but I don't find good reasons for me to put limits to that altruism.
In the same way I seriously can't justify either bland consumerism and luxury items. Everytime I see someone with an expensive car I feel real disgust, and there's literally nothing I can do about it: I know that in the moment you start pondering about living an ethical life things such as buying expensive houses during a global recession becomes almost criminal.

Honestly, do some work with people that are assholes. You probably only deal with people like yourself (well educated, and well meaning) , but when you deal with a wider breath of people you'll maybe start to accept some suffering for humanity.

For over a year I've been going crazy over the idea that ultimately truth knowledge on arbitrarily chosen assumptions. Everyone seems like a dishonest hack.

Fucking hell, it's obvious that the idea of "Is there objective morality?" is fucking stupid because objective and morality are arbitrarily defined. Why do pseudo intellectuals pretend that endless masturbation will cause the "true" meanings of these terms to pop in to view?

Now extend the above paragraph to literally a trillion different things and realise how fraudulent I think every philosopher is.

What's also infuriating is that the marketing surrounding ideas matters a huge amount but that's just a pseudo Intellectual defect, not the core of my hatred

>2017
>the idea idea
ISHYGDDT

Should say:

For over a year I've been going crazy over the idea that truth and knowledge ultimately depend on arbitrarily chosen assumptions.

This is me. I am
In a nutshell,Objectivity is horseshit

To be fair ethical theories are usually built upon arbitrary concepts that can't really be denied by an actual reasonable person. Concepts such as ''suffering should be diminished'' are arbitrary, but what's wrong in trying to built an ethical system based on such a statement? You still can evaluate it and see if it makes sense.

>Objectivity is horseshit
Is that a fact?

Just accept that you yourself are also a dishonest hack like everyone else and that's never going to change. There is a contendedness that can be found in that.

No.
If you believe that objectivity is horseshit you accept that objectivity is horseshit without needing facts.

My simple critique that objectivity is horseshit is a belief. If you find objective values that can be universally defined (using only logic, reason, whatever you feel defines objectivness) and is infinite then of course, you will deny my reasonless assumption that objectivity is horseshit.

Of course, if you are intelligent, you will reallze that intelligence takes many forms, and that reason, logic, belief, instinct and all the rest are but many of the different ways to propose a conclusions.

Irregardless of my ways coming to the conclusion, objectivity is horseshit.

Read nicomachean ethics, friend

Yeah it was trying to understand Wittgenstein in relation to the idea of thought systems.
Spent 2 years on it and I did understand it enough in the end but it was totally pointless.

All that exists is the present. The future is something you imagine in the now. The past, memories, are something you imagine in the present. You will never be dead. You will only be concious while you're alive. When you're dead you won't be anymore. Death is, quite literally, just a figment of your imagination.

Refute conciousness as not objectively true. You can't. Next time you're in a lot of pain, try saying it's not objectively true. You can't do that either.

>I see us as being in a paradoxical tension between chaos/randomness and structure, so not deterministic per se but it still leaves no room for free will or resistance as you put it.
I'm the person you replied to, care to elaborate a bit?

Agreed, per Wittgenstein (On Certainty), we can agree that it as least somewhat true

Somewhat true that i perceive some kind of "consciousness". Also it is somewhat true that i perceive some kind of "pain".

Really this amounts to word games, where we accept the definition of "consciousness" and "pain", regardless of the perfectness of either terms

In essence i am in concurrence with you that we are stuck in some sort of trap where of using language to describe our expierence.

stop thinking basterd!

I mean conciousness is a prerequisite for everything, even if it's not well defined. Why does it need a good definition? It's there and it's undeniable. It's objectively true. Truth and understanding aren't the same thing.

>phenomena are truth apt

wew lad

do we actually have any control over our lives, or are we ultimately a product of our environment, genetics, circumstance, and pure chance

>has not read the man Witty

If i want to talk about about consciousness we must have a somewhat agreeable definition of consciousness

Much in the same way that if we are to try to agree that 5 = .5x10, then 2*5=10, we must also agree that 10*.50= 5, and 5*.5=.5.

If 2.5*2=/=5, then we disagree about the value of 2.5, or 2, or 5, much in the same way we disagree about the meaning of what consciousness is.

Of course, the example i just gave is nonsense if you are unfamiliar with Wittgenstein. If you are unfamiliar with the man Witty, nothing i say will make sense, most likely.

Because i know you arent somewhat read on Witty, ill keep going simply because i enjoy pain.

Conciousness needs some sort of definition because how else can we talk about it? Youre perception that its there means nothing; nothingness (in its most complete form, incomplete, impossible to determine) is always perceptible in anything, including consciousness.

Therefore our definition of consciousness has some definition. Would you like to propose our incomplete definition of conciousness?

No, it doesn't need a perfect definition. I say conciousness, it maps to an idea in my head, it maps to one in yours. We might not be able to perfectly define it linguistically, but we still understand the concept.

Why does everything have to be perfectly defined in your language game? You're thinking yourself in a corner in an overly rational framework. Language isn't everything.

Also we don't have to agree on anything for it to be true. You have to be concious to even play a language game, regardless of us agreeing on the definition or playing the same game. In fact, I cant prove your conciousness is true. It's only objectively true when reffering to my own. You being concious isn't an objective truth from my perspective. So agreeing on a definiton on this topic is irrelevant because each conciousness is only true to each individual, other people have nothing to do with it. Meaning you're playing the language game with yourself.

Memory, conciousness, and their fragility.

I didn't find anyway cope with the fact that everything I experience, good or bad, will just be part of the past condemned to slowly fade and corrupt.

I don't think this really qualifies as a philosophical question but for me I've always struggled with the idea of the value and enjoyability of life after the loss of innocence and youth.
All throughout my teenage years I stressed deeply about whether or not I was making good use of my youth and it got to the point where I concluded that if I was having this discussion so often then the beauty and joy of my innocence was already gone.

I don't really know what to think for sure these days. Honestly I was more meticulous and structured in thought in my teenage years, now I've sort of lost touch with any lucidity and I feel like I'm just drifting. I miss being young a lot and those memories torture me now because they impose my current predicament and age.

I don't feel any joy in my life anymore and I'm not sure what to do.

>no it [conciousness] doesnt need a perfect definition

I am totally agreeing with you. We dont need perfect definitions to talk about anything.

>but we still understand the concept

I hate to play the semantical game
I really do, but this concept of "consciousness" you speak of, it is different for both of us, and this difference will diverge our conversation

>Except that consciousness is objectively true for anything.

That truly depends on your perception of what consciousness is: is a stone conscious? I dont see it as such. I see a tree as conscious, but not a stone.

I guess on the whole i am not denying consciousnesses or feeling or being on the whole, rather that all of these subjective descriptions of our experience are impossible to fully relate to all other possible experiences.


I am avidly against most metrics of objectivity, i know that leaves very little room for conversation about anything, and for that, i apologize.

I'm invoking solipsism, or the 'philosophy zombie' argument, to say that we don't need to have a conversation. From my perspective, which is reality as far as I know, the only thing I can say for sure is concious is myself. I'm not trying to have a conversation about conciousness with you per say, in the framework you're describing, that of a language game.

I'm saying you can come to the conclusion that you yourself are concious, on your own. From my perspective it's not objectively true that you're concious. All I can say for sure is that I am. I'm saying you can say the same thing, without entering in a language game with me, or having to strictly define it.

I'm simply obsessed with "why". I can never stop asking it and the fact that this question can be asked ad infinitum bothers me a great deal. I don't know why, how, or when this started. Basically, all that I can do is think about that. I was diagnosed with OCD some years ago and it has been treated with medications, but that could very well be the culprit.

tacking your fantasy of ''truth'' or ''objectivity'' on what you experience is already nihilistic.