Is the line between Nihilism and Existentialism as thin as I think it is or am I just misinformed?

DJBJ · 11 days

Both nihilism and existentialism take the consequences of the inherent meaninglessness of the world -- they just take it in opposite directions.

hornwalker · 12 days

I think the question is kind of ill-put: While it is true, in a sense, that both science and religion require a kind of "leap of faith," i.e., an original commitment to something that cannot ultimately be grounded in anything, the commitment to science implies a commitment to openness, questioning, exploring, etc. The commitment to religion, however, implies dogmatism and closing one's mind -- a commitment to something that is unchangeable by any possible experience.

You recognise that there is a possible "hole" in your relationship with science -- that you don't understand it, and that you might be deceived by those who say they do -- while a "religious" commitment to science would imply something like sticking to the ptolemaic world-view in spite of evidence to the contrary.

visarga · 2 months

Sartre's conception of pre-reflective existence is quite directly relevant, but all the phenomenologists have described similar phenomena.

The main difference is that while Csikszentmihalyi seems to focus mainly on flow as some almost extra-ordinary mode of existence related to the mastery of specific tasks, Sartre (and other phenomenologists) would argue that the main and prevalent mode of existence is a kind of self-less absorption in the world and "world-to-be" that in many ways parallel Csikszentmihalyi's concept. E.g., even though walking to the store while planning activities for Monday hardly is a particularly challenging exercise engaging my abilities to the extent that Csikszentmihalyis model would require for flow, I could be said to be in the same kind of state as Csikszentmihalyi is describing, if not as "intense" (or, rather, as intensely un-intense) as in the state of flow proper. Taken to the extreme, the notion implies that even in a state of self-reflection, where I attempt to make my "self" present to consciousness, I am not the "I" I am reflecting on.

Whybanme · 2 months

Trick question!

You are a little confused on the "Mind".

What do I win?

Lungs · 3 months

I'm struggling to make sense of your first paragraph. When you say "interesting," you seem to mean "merely amusing," and you talk about meaning deriving from something "in and of itself," but it seems like we're in danger of talking past each other here: If I were to assume that you mean this "in and of itself" as a reference to "inherent meaning in the world," you're missing my point, but I also do not feel confident that that is what you're saying. In other words, you'll have to elaborate on that.

There is actually work being done on developing a phenomenological theory and tool (specifically an interview-guide) to help with the understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. It is not meant to supplant medication and traditional medicine, but rather to make the schizophrenic feel more "at home" in the world: If we are able to understand the life-world of the schizophrenic, we may come to co-inhabit this world, and to communicate more directly with "the person inside the patient." Many schizophrenics feel alienated from the world, and as there is mounting evidence that schizophrenia might be related to stress, there is a hope that alleviating the stress of being alone might be helpful.

Understanding the world of the person suffering from schizophrenia might not be completely possible, but we may attempt to do so given that we are able to produce an adequate description of it (instead of simply giving up before even trying). When schizophrenics talk about "rays of control" emanating from certain persons, we might think of this as what is normally perceived as authority: Even though authority doesn't normally manifest itself as "rays," we all know the effects of the authority telling us what to do -- from childhood, school, work, etc.

Regarding hearing voices, it would depend on the particular situation of the person, but let's say someone is experiencing a compelling voice telling them to commit suicide. It could for instance tell us something about the position of the voice in the world of the person experiencing it, as opposed to the prominence of other things (like the written word or the puzzle) in the world of the schizophrenic whose hallucinations are of a different sort. One might ask how the compelling part of this is given: Do all things start pointing towards suicide? A glass window might present itself mainly as the possibility of breaking it and cutting oneself with it, instead of simply being the invisible boundary between inside and outside. A concrete practical consequence of such an inquiry, just to make that clear, is how one might design safe environments for schizophrenic patients.

(I also want to make a note that when talking about symptoms of schizophrenia, the terms "negative" and "positive" are often used in a specific sense: Positive symptoms are things like hallucinations (i.e., things that are present) while negative symptoms are things like apathy (i.e., the absence of "normal" behaviours). It can get confusing because one could conceive of a "negative hallucination," like all voices being "filtered out" or something)).

Lungs · 3 months

I don't perceive a chicken and egg problem. I'm saying that's what we would have if we were to argue about the primacy of either mode of inquiry, and that I think such an argument would be rooted in a failure to examine the assumptions that go into producing the dilemma in the first place. In other words, I think we might be in general agreement, but that we use slightly different vocabularies to make similar points.

Lungs · 3 months

Facts like these from the lower level make us re-frame our understanding of something familiar within a broader context, and one would be hard pressed to say this doesn't expand our knowledge.

And I'm not saying that. I'm saying that whether light is related to magnetism or not, it still appears to us as light. Of course, knowing more about light may change the perception of light (any phenomenon is given with a wealth of meaning beyond "the plain and simply sensory stimuli"), but at the same time, having false information about light will change the perception of light in the same manner. In fact, what is most interesting about light as a phenomenon is that it has often been linked to the concept of being: Light is rarely itself given qua light; we see a scenery, a car, snow, trees, etc., but not "light reflected off objects." In this sense, light is akin (and has indeed often been linked) to the concept of "being" in phenomenological philosophy.

Even though I know that the amygdala is involved in certain emotional responses where it is advantageous to not have to have the sensory stimuli pass through the slower and reflective processes of the frontal lobes, I can still give a phenomenological description of a dangerous situation: The presence of the danger makes almost all possibilities fade away into near-disappearance, and the door, which is presented as "to-be-locked" after I have passed through it, is inflated. The fight-or-flight response has a phenomenological description which is independent of the neurological description (though they are both (legitimate) abstractions from a whole (legitimate given that they are perceived as abstractions and not as true descriptions of the world in itself)). Because this response has the peculiar nature of not primarily passing through the "higher" brain areas, it is not particularly susceptible to being changed by our understanding of it: It is a primary response which appears in a certain way, usually regardless of our knowledge of the neurological mechanisms at work.

Lungs · 3 months

You're asserting some sort of primacy whereby one mode of inquiry is "truer" than the other. This relationship of primacy can easily be reversed, but it'll leave us with a chicken, an egg, and a perennial question. I think this question stems more from faulty metaphysics inherent in our tradition than from a necessary and natural order of things.

Lungs · 3 months

I'm just saying that a phenomenological description (which is one mode of examining something among other valid modes) doesn't take the underlying neurology into account. As an example, assume that the same hallucination (say, a hovering rose) can be produced by at least two different mechanisms in the brain. What's phenomenologically important is the hallucination as experienced, not the underlying brain structure.

And just to be painfully clear: Yes, you would need a neurological examination to have a fuller understanding of what's going on, but in and of itself, the phenomenological account can be interesting, and doesn't need the neurological explanation to be meaningful.

Regarding schizophrenia, I think you might have to be a bit more specific about what it is you're after.

Lungs · 3 months

In a sense, that would be the ideal form of reductionism (I would rather have that than other forms of reductionism, if we must have some form), but the flawed premise for reductionism, as I see it, is the failure to recognise how what one is reducing to is usually defined in opposition to what one is "reducing away." When one reduces "mind" to "body," for instance, one tries to merely erase one side of an interdependent pair of concepts: Perceiving the implausibility of the "res cogitans" of Descartes' dualism, one simply ignores it without carefully examining the "res extensa" that one is left with -- a "res" that is just as much a result of the faulty thinking that produced the "res cogitans."

Now, I'm not talking about discarding all the knowledge, methods, and such, that science has produced for us -- that would be foolish -- but I think that the way we think about this knowledge needs to undergo a radical transformation. We need to get rid of the faulty and unquestioned metaphysics that enables us conceive of such a thing as reductionism.

Lungs · 3 months

The word phenomenology is used in a lot of different contexts. It may resemble psychology, but the philosophical version of it uses it as a method in posing and examining philosophical questions: There are phenomenological ontologies, etc.

Neuroscience is definitely important, but there are good reasons for not succumbing to the temptation of reductionism. I would say that we need both working together, or, even better, a unified conception where both methods are recognised as complementary abstractions from a whole.

Lungs · 3 months

Not necessarily. The phenomenology of a hallucination will be both philosophically interesting and independent of a neurobiological description of what structures and chemicals are responsible for producing the hallucination.

Merleau-Ponty deals with certain phenomena that are like hallucinations (like phantom limbs) in his Phenomenology of Perception. "Abnormal experience" can tell us quite a bit about "normal experience."

chortlechortle · 3 months

Because those of us who say it isn't outnumber those who say it is.

LeviTyson · 4 months

Fear warns you of danger. Fear has an object while anxiety has none. Anxiety arises both on a "normal" level (i.e., in connection with choices that have to be made, exercising one's freedom and assuming responsibility) and on every level up until it gets "pathological," which is what you're talking about, but there's still a difference between fear (of X) and anxiety (in the face of --).

swinebone · 6 months

I started reading Foucault with Discipline and Punish, and I loved it! However I know from other cases that English translations often seem to make philosophers seem more impenetrable (I think this is why so many native English speakers seem to be having a lot of trouble with Kant, Heidegger, etc. By all means: they are not simple philosophers, but they're not as obscure as it would seem from a lot of comments from English or American people). If possible, try to get a hold of the book in French, or in some other language that you speak.

It should also be noted that I had a lot of experience with philosophy, and was kind of prepared for the way of thinking that Foucault uses, so you may benefit from some sort of introduction. Other than that, I can only recommend the principle of charity: If you read something and think "what the fuck is this," try reading it again, and ask yourself if there are other ways you might understand what he's writing.

Either-Or · 6 months

1) Actually, Sartre, like Heidegger, does away with the object-subject dichotomy: The for-itself cannot be in-itself, but this relation is not the same as that between the subject and the object, which is so drenched in faulty metaphysics that it precludes a true view of the matter at hand. The for-itself and the in-itself should be considered theoretical abstractions of a whole (being), a mere methodological device for the sake of simplifying analysis, and the "relationship" between them is a much more intimate one. As Sartre says, the for-itself is being nihilating itself.

To answer the original question, I think it might be better to start with the "relationship" between consciousness and itself: Sartre talks about the pre-reflective consciousness as the way in which consciousness concerns itself, and signifies the relation by putting the "of" in "consciousness of itself" in parentheses: Consciousness (of) itself.¹ This is to signify that while consciousness cannot exist other than as consciousness of something, it also implicitly maintains its own structure as being conscious (of) being conscious of something. This is why we so readily answer "I am counting" to the question of "what are you doing?" This relation of consciousness to itself is immediate.

In opposition to this, consciousness of something is consciousness of not being what it is consciousness of, and as such it is a negation of what it is consciousness of. In other words, the relationship is a negative one. This is how "things" are differentiated, how something can be fragile, etc. This relation is mediated.

2) Both the conscious and the nonconscious are part of being. As I said already, the "relation" between for-itself and in-itself is not really a relation as such, at least not if a relation implies distance; they are aspects of a whole, of being. Consciousness differs by being that which brings nothingness into being, or in other words, is being bringing nothingness into itself.

3) I'm not sure where you get that bit from, but if Sartre says that the nonconscious cannot understand nothingness, it is because something nonconscious simply cannot understand at all. If you mean how the in-itself cannot admit nothingness, the point is that if you abstract being into something that is principally not witnessed by any consciousness, then you cannot say very much about it, but you may approximate it by saying that it coincides perfectly with itself, that it doesn't allow for any nothingness or distance, etc.; the in-itself simply is, neither more nor less.

4) Sartre's concept of "self-deception" (I take it you mean Bad Faith) is one where we take a reflective attitude and direct our consciousness on itself in the way in which consciousness is consciousness of other things. In other words, if consciousness looks at itself and takes itself as thing, we are in bad faith. It is very "easy" to make this mistake because essences are constituted through successive appearances of anything such that whenever we take ourselves as object, we run the risk of confusing what we might be said to have been with what we "are."

1: I can't remember exactly, but I think in some places, the English translation turns this into "self-consciousness" because the translator believes this English construction is a good way of conceptualising Sartre's thought. However, I think the only result is that, as "self-consciousness" is a more established construction than "consciousness (of) itself," the phrase is simply passed over as another word in the continuous stream of a flowing text: Much like how in "paris in the the spring," we skip the second "the" (at least when the sentence is properly formatted -- it might not work here), we end up reading "self-consciousness" as [self-consciousness], and not [consciousness (of) itself].

ephesius · 7 months

It is not sufficient. It is necessary, but you also need friends, for instance. At least according to Aristotle.

why is it that good people are usually miserable?

Do you have some statistical data to back up this statement?

Either-Or · 7 months

Ah, right, like that. Then, thanks for the offer, but I just bought Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Judgement, Bataille's Eroticism, and Derrida's Spectres of Marx, so I'm set for a while with books. :)

Either-Or · 7 months

Thanks for the offer, but I must say I'm not quite sure what you mean. The Life of The Mind is a book by her, is it not? Does that book contain all her writings, or are you talking about some other collection with everything, also called "The Life of the Mind?" I've been thinking I should buy The Life of the Mind, you see, and I prefer books over files -- it's just when things get absurdly expensive or hard/impossible to find, or when I don't have a lot of time, that I resort to finding stuff online. So I already own The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and The Origins of Totalitarianism.

If you're talking about some compilation with all her "smaller" (and more difficult to find) writings, however, I am very interested! :)

Either-Or · 7 months

It should all be considered "fair use" anyway, I think. :)

Hold423 · 7 months

You're confusing the individual organism for the relevant units of evolution -- genes. If there are genes that give the capacity for empathy and altruistic behaviour in, say, a pair of siblings, and these siblings wind up in a situation with another pair of siblings, who are not capable of empathy and altruism, and this situation requires that at least two people work together so that at least one of them survives, then the pair who are disposed to act altruistically will "win." See inclusive fitness for more.

Furthermore, evolution doesn't care what is "rational": As long as the species isn't extinguished by developing a trait, it will live; altruism didn't even have to serve a purpose like the one just outlined -- as long as acting altruistically didn't make the species as a whole less fit.

Evolution isn't normative.

Positronix · 7 months

It's because someone did them the favour of conceptualising the market forces in terms of an "invisible hand," which sits much better with the clergy.

CSG22 · 7 months

I don't know, but perhaps there might be a comma there? "not give woof, and warp community of sensation"?

towardsthesun · 8 months

Attempts to make philosophy accessible aren't necessarily condemned, but when you're doing something that revolves around making things more problematic, you're just not going to have an easy time doing so. Today, a lot of the things that Socrates says in Plato's dialogues seem "obvious," but it's only when they start to be less obvious, that you're "doing philosophy."

Either-Or

TROPHY CASE

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