procrastinationrs
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User ID: 4092
procrastinationrs
5d ago
OK, that sounds kind of like good and bad are a bunch of arbitrary BS, and if one knows that then one would have less reason to pay attention to it, but that doesn't seem to be what you think.
Anyway, I'll imagine you'll concede, since it seems really obvious, that what people take to be good or bad will be drastically different once they internalize that subjective experience is an illusion, correct? I mean, the whole current edifice is built on top of that BS we're discarding, so it would be very surprising if it all arrived at the same place. Especially given that there is no "place" because it isn't, and apparently can't be, defined. So .. any guidance? Is your message, most of what we believe is wrong but all that stuff stays the same, don't worry? Why do you think anyone would come to that conclusion?
Or am I just tilting and windmills because good and bad are arbitrary BS after all?
procrastinationrs
5d ago
Essentially everything comes down to empiricism and consequentialism
Well, hmm, hold on just a second here. Sure, it's fun to pour the acid of clear-headed skepticism all over lame normie beliefs, but it seems like you're being a little selective in what gets dissolved. Doesn't this call for a bit of positive work?
Consequentialism is grounded, in some vague sense, in consequences. Things going well if one thing happens, poorly if a different thing happens, etc. Let's go with "well" and "poorly" for the sake of argument. Can you trace out, at a high level, how we get those ought-ish counterfactuals from the is-es that remain? We could start with something picayune like torture, the standard arguments against which generally reference pain somehow, but it's clear where that would go -- something about tissue damage and perhaps altered brain chemistry affecting the future productivity of the organism. That would be fine, but I'm more wondering about "productivity" in the first place. Like, why is it better if one thing happens versus another? What would be poor about humanity getting wiped out tomorrow? Remember that answers like "well, we think we have feelings so they're a useful fiction" just affirm the consequent, via "useful".
For us now-enlightened folks, why does anything matter exactly? Wasn't all that crap just built on top of what we've discarded? Shouldn't we really continue the adulting and admit that nothing matters?
You misunderstand (and in the process create a bit of a word salad). I never asked for a universal conception of well/poorly, I'm fine settling for a human-race or cultural or even person-specific one. All of those that we're familiar with are founded on stuff you're tossing out. Which is fine, maybe good and bad should go to. Instead, you just seem to be assuming some version of "That stuff has to go, but this stuff can stay" but not addressing and perhaps not even realizing that. (At the same time as disparaging philosophy in general while praising consequentialism, when it's not easy to think of a purer product of philosophy than consequentialism.)
You're not being coherent, which is a bad trait in someone who seems to think they know more than other people.
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