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> If you seriously attempt existentialism, you will fail. You cannot create your own meanings. If you take that failure seriously, and analyze what went wrong,
by nickstefan12 10y ago
> If you seriously attempt existentialism, you will fail. You cannot create your own meanings. If you take that failure seriously, and analyze what went wrong, you may recognize that subjective meanings are impossible. Then—since objective meanings are also clearly impossible—you will end up in nihilism.
> The way out is to recognize that meaningness is neither subjective nor objective. It is a collaborative accomplishment of dynamic interaction. One might say that it lives in the space-between subject and object; or that it pervades the situation in which it manifests, including both subject and object. But these metaphors are misleading; meanings simply don’t have locations.
The word gymnastics used on that site to disqualify "everybody else's muddled middle" except for his own personal version of a "muddled middle" seems hypocritical. He talks in enough circles, and we are supposed to forget that his muddled middle is pretty much all the other muddled middles he says can't work.
I wasted so much time reading philosophy stuff in college. Its like a virus that infects the mind, "there must be a RIGHT answer!" and the infected mind goes in circles arguing with itself. Its an infinite recursive loop without a base case.
The base case is this: "would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?" its not meant to mean that we should all get on "brave new world" soma. what it does though, is get your mind out of that infinite loop of "i must know the RIGHT answer with certainty!". These sorts of topics have no certainty. They are topics worth considering, but trying to find "correct" is just missing the forest from the trees.
- smhost 10y agoBut isn't that exactly what Chapman is saying? That there is no RIGHT answer, that there is no certainty, that each view has merit but isn't universally true, etc.
- nickstefan12 10y agoI believe that you are correct. The essence of his "intent" is probably not much different than what I'm getting at. I think what bothers me is that there is such an emphasis on precision of language and precision of "history of vocabulary" that the idea gets lost in an effort to differentiate. It's highly likely I'm being too harsh on him. I probably have baggage from having read a lot of this kind of stuff and having it leave me less than satisfied. My apologies. Perhaps what bothers me is that he spends a lot of time tearing down and differentiating from others, and less time telling us what he actually does believes in.
- justinmk 10y agoDavid Hume arrived at a reasonably rigorous framework (Principle of Nature's Uniformity) that allows your conclusion, in my opinion. He's worth reading, if only to find enough closure to move on from philosophy.
- projektir 10y agoI don't think it's fair to say that because the answer to the question of "there must be a right answer!" is very hard to find, that the question is not worth pondering. What if we approached physics that way? And decided that we shouldn't bother trying to explain gravity because many people in college pondered the question in circles and couldn't answer it? Hard questions may just be... hard. And maybe this is far harder than physics.
- nickstefan12 10y agoIts more than things being "hard". Its about the nature of the questions philosophers try and answer. Kant and his Critique of Pure Reason has those 4 quadrants of "knowing". A priori vs posteriori. Synthetic vs analytic. Its literally a CRITIQUE of how far pure reason can take us. In the area much of philosophy dances in, pure reason simple cant take us very far! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic%E2%80%93synthetic_dis... Finding "a" reason to live matters far more than finding "the" reason to live. Would we rather be happy or would we rather be right? I like this quote attributed to Kant: "Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for".
- projektir 10y agoI'm generally interested in philosophy relative to most normal people as opposed to philosophers, and, to normal people, there are many very real questions that are worth answering, including those relating to meaning. Those questions seem like they can be summarized as "What is going on, what should I do, and why?" > Finding "a" reason to live matters far more than finding "the" reason to live. Would we rather be happy or would we rather be right? This framing seems strange to me. When you make this statement you already make a claim: that the reason to live is to seek happiness.
- keithly 10y agoSeems like you did get something out of all that time you wasted on philosophy. :)
- 10y ago
- openfuture 10y agoMy solution: Just take responsibility for your actions and everything else falls into place.
- jv22222 10y agoAgreed. I'll take that one step further. Take responsibility for all that you output AND all of your input. I.e If someone does something that makes you unhappy, on some level you have agreed to allow that to make you unhappy. You can also decide to not be affected by that input. Not saying it's easy, just saying that that it's possible to have some control of response to input.
- pasquinelli 10y ago"Its like a virus that infects the mind, 'there must be a RIGHT answer!' and the infected mind goes in circles arguing with itself." I think that's a strange and, honestly, naive way if looking at the whole thing. As far as I see it nearly every philosophical position basically makes a sense. They're all valid, and as far as their soundness goes, often the subject matter doesn't allow us to have any good strong opinions. It's interesting the variety of thinking there is and the arguments to be made for one position or another. If you're caught looking for the one right answer then yeah, I agree that's a virus, but it is independent of philosophy.