/lit/ - Literature

ya dun goofd

>>4580301
See hippie new age stuff is mostly happy lies, if you wanna feel good read some religious phil otherwise youre gonna be some level of depressed which naturaly comes with knowing truth

>>4580318
>if you wanna feel good read some religious phil
This man is a troll.

>>4580318
Please anon, tell me it's all going to be okay.

>>4580301
That man is the antithesis of eloquent

>>4580301
Sorry, brother. There's nothing we can do for you here. Only advice I can give you is to stick your head between your legs and kiss your sweet 'ceps goodbye.

>>4580301
This is bullshit verbal diarrhea that makes no sense. The only thing this does is confuse and make one realize that this guy has no idea how to form a comprehensible thought. He thinks he's being super deep with his word salad. In reality, you could replace every word he said with a random intonation of "radda" and he'd make just as much sense.

>>4580348
Different anon. No, life does not have an objective meaning. We are just animals who fucked around enough to think and are looking for something that wasnt there in the first place. The fun of being a human is making your own meaning. Or not.
I didnt get anything out of trying to give meaning to actions, so I just sat around a while and ywH

>>4580326
>204+1810
>Not appreciating the Truth that lies at the heart of the world

>>4580385
I'm seriously having a panic attack right now, just did some pushups to clear my mind but I started thinking about if it's actually me that's doing the pushups and I got all creeped out and shit.

>>4580392
>>4580367
A-are you guys sure? Can you give me some philosophical quotes to make me feel better?

>>4580419
bro have u read the great gatsby

>>4580301
Short answer: Read the Stoics.

Long answer: Read the twelve-pages or whatever in which Aristotle lays out his ideas on happiness and ethics (because they explain the logic behind the eudaimonia theory of ethics), then read Diogenes Laertius' piece on the life of Zeno, then read Epictetus, Seneca, and Aurelius.

>>4580418
But anon, I DO appreciate the Truth that lies at the heart of the world. I stare into myself and find God here. I stare into God and see beauty and reason.

But no Platonic forms.

>>4580419
You're not too bright, are you?

>>4580426
But you're not the one to whom my post was addressed, no?

>>4580430
Good point. But you're still asking OP to assume the existence of objects that do not exist.

I'm not a Humean, but I would agree with him that that's unreasonable.

>>4580419
Yes, I'm absolutely sure. Here's a simple philosophical quote, that while not profound, actually means something:

>Don't take life too seriously, no one gets out alive anyway.

you're a stupid person, op

>>4580439
well I guess that kind of helps, i still feel fucked though.

>>4580427
well, not really tbh. what do you think about the video? can you at least refute his theory for me?

>>4580422
thanks alot anon, hopefully this'll help.

>>4580424
>>4580424
no, should I?

You can choose how to see things. And I'll give you the ultimate example: Death.

You say you're going to kill yourself. This presumably means you think death would be preferable to life.

But there have been other times when you didn't feel that way. You can hardly be said to have been wrong, since "preferable" here literally just means you prefer it.

But how can you prefer one thing at one time, and the opposite at another, and not be wrong? Preference is not factual but a matter of choice made based on how you -see- the situation.

Death happens to everyone, eventually. Fearing death in the abstract will not make you immortal, so while fears in general may be reasonable, the fear of death itself is not.

But that doesn't mean you should hurry to it either. Because that ability to choose means you can decide whether living or dying is preferable at ay given time based on the actual circumstances in which you find yourself. I think most people would agree that he happiest life is preferable- at least subjectively- to being dead.

And as we said before, we can choose how to view things, which means we can choose to view life as something good in and of itself. Thus, we can choose to prefer living over being dead, and essentially, can choose to have a life which is happy right up until the instant that, for whatever reason, death finally does occur.

If you're interested, I can get into the further implications of this in another post.

Meaning is a limitation, self-imposed or otherwise.

>>4580478
Please do anon, also, what do you think the vid in the OP.

>>4580497
Watched about 30 seconds. Seems like someone who is not an "enlightened being" guessing what it's like to become enlightened.

Anyway, back on-topic.

If this ability to choose is the only thing we have that cannot be taken away (and it is) then we should consider it the only ultimate Good. This necessarily means the development of the awareness and ability to effectively utilize this ability is THE most important thing. Thus, the only unqualified Bad is the placement of other things above the cultivation of this ability. Everything else is neither Good nor Bad, but indifferent. The value differences between other things are matters of preference, not Good/Bad.

Humans, as social animals, naturally feel compassion toward other humans. This means both that, as you become more free (which is what having this ability to choose really is, freedom) you'll find yourself being a nicer person, and that, if you behave in a compassionate way, you'll find yourself becoming more and more in line with your own Inner Nature (and thus, behaving as a free person and becoming increasingly free).

The wisdom which we, as rational beings and a part of the perfectly logical universe, are capable of cultivating, is called virtue.

Virtue and Freedom together (and they are inextricable) are happiness.

"Nothing's either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
-William Shakespeare

"It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man but the security of a god."
-Epictetus

>>4580532
thanks anon

>>4580556
No problem. Now read the Enchiridion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK8yL77dDSA

Here's an audio recording of it.

Feeling better, OP?

>>4580577
Yes, thanks so much.

>>4580694
No problem, anon. Have a wonderful evening.

>>4580401
>ywh

sounds like you're not so nihilistic after all

>>4580301
"Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone."

The universe is unintelligible at its best. Thinking we can understand it is the summit of vanity

>>4580713

>Thinking we can understand it is the summit of vanity

No, thinking it isn't worth exploring is.

>>4580726
You're right. We shouldn't turn away from the world. But we should remember how improbable it is we already understand everything.

seek god and seek redemption

new age syncretic pseudo spirituality, not even once

The only way to get out of nihilism is to trick yourself into an irrational leap of faith. Whether you backflip into Christianity or dive into Nietzsche's Übermensch shtick, what it all comes down to is applying a suspension of disbelief to your real life just like you would with fiction.

This will most likely cause vast amounts of cognitive dissonance, not to mention struggle, alienation and ridicule. I'd recommend just dwelling in nihilism and learning to deal with it.

24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon nothing:

25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon nothing.

26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon spooks:

27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

OP death is better than life, so don't fear the state of death. Or rather, non-existence is objectively better than existence.

Your mind is a facet of evolution that should not be, caged inside a dying body that desperately feeds itself pains and pleasures to convince itself to fight the vain battle of staying alive.

Now me personally, I indulge the body and stay alive, pretty empty inside but alive. I know I should kill myself but I'm not going to. And I guess there's a "peace" in that.

>>4581051
CAMUS PLS

op read The Myth of Sisyphus and if you survive you're on the path to becoming a true Ubermensch!

>>4581062
I hate the faux life-affirming resolution proposed in Myth of Sisyphus. Camus states exactly why life is worse than death and then pussies out and tacks a "b-but maybe life is still good" ending onto it.

Your never goin nowhere. Close your mind and scream. Freedom is choice, choice is power, power means responsibility, responsibility is pressure, and there is only comfortable futility.

>>4581067
I agree

>>4581067
what nonsense modern people talk
>life is worse than death
you know not what you're saying, nigger, but god forgives

>>4581306
Oh please. Existence is worse than non-existence. Stop this life affirming nonsense.

>>4581319
>Existence is worse than non-existence

Then why don't you kill yourself? It's only worse than non existence if you're in constant suffering.

>>4581327
No. Even the richest man on earth has a worse existence than his corresponding non-existent state.

I don't kill myself because I am too weak and I make the irrational decision to continue to live, a much easier choice when you are tied to a body that desperately wants to live despite the mind.

>>4581332
>No. Even the richest man on earth has a worse existence than his corresponding non-existent state

Why? How could you ever possibly know that?

>>4581332
You're just a pontificating faggot and Camus did it first and better as we have discussed. No one cares about you ability to bitch about how you're gonna go listen to Linkin Park.

>>4581337
I take the state of non-existence to be as what we can infer from our own knowledge of the existent state: a permanent sleep without consciousness, identity or dreams, just permanent oblivion. It doesn't function on false pains and pleasures, it isn't doomed by impermanence, it isn't experienced through a raging animal desperate to stay alive, it isn't an experience through the falsity of pain and pleasure.

>>4581340
I don't care what you think. You were agreeing with me twenty minutes ago.

>>4581343
I agreed with you he copped out on the book. You're just being a whiney faggot and so was he.

>>4581346
You have no refutation of what I'm saying besides bitching about your beliefs being upset, so I don't care a bit for your thoughts.

>>4581346
To add to this: I suspect he only did this so he could avoid being called on his bullshit like you; and only caring if people agree with you is unsurprising given that you're just a whiney bitch.

>LOOK AT ME LIFE IS WORSE THAN NON LIFE AND I KNOW THIS NOW WATCH AS I LIVE BECAUSE REASONS

>tfw you wish you were /fit/ but all you do is cardio

>>4581349
You are proving yourself wrong by being around to cry about your stupidity, you nonsensical queer

>>4581343
>It doesn't function on false pains and pleasures

You're claiming that pains and pleasures are false? How so? If they're false, then you should be able to over look them and move on from them.

> it isn't doomed by impermanence
Is that a good thing? Just because something doesn't last forever doesn't make it a pure good.

> it isn't experienced through a raging animal desperate to stay alive

Are you a dog? Humans have mental capacities above and beyond those of our naturalistic instincts. They affect you, sure, but they don't rule you.

>>4581352
>>4581357
Ooh boy. Did I not already explain why I'm still alive?

Also, me being alive does not prove me wrong in the slightest. I would love to hear how you think it does actually.

>>4581364
7/10 almost responded

>>4581363
>a pure good.
Need I even home in on this?
>then you should be able to over look them and move on from them.
If one were to completely overcome all types of desires they would be dead.
>They affect you, sure, but they don't rule you.
I agree, I think there are situations where the superego moderates the id. Fundamentally though all things spring from the id.

>>4581367
What a great riposte, you've sure shown me son.

>>4581370
>Dear diary, life sucks and I'm a pussy
>Please debate my retarded double-think with me so I have something to do before I go back to jerking off to cartoons

>>4581375
Alright honey, you aren't interested in debating the issue so you're wasting your own time trying to entertain yourself.

>>4581375
Your posts seems to evade his arguments, so the only one who is acting childish is you

>>4581368
>If one were to completely overcome all types of desires they would be dead.

There is a difference between desires and needs. You need to breathe and feed yourself. You don't need to engage in behavior that ultimately makes you worse off.

>I agree, I think there are situations where the superego moderates the id. Fundamentally though all things spring from the id.

> Fundamentally though all things spring from the id.

You're just saying things now. You're talking pseudo-psychology, not philosophy. `

>>4581380
>You don't need to engage in behavior that ultimately makes you worse off.

Now you get me. I'm not differentiating between the two though. Both function as part of the biological imperative, both desires and needs (esteem, security, utility, all functioning to solidify the will to survive). In this way I consider even staying alive to be merely confirming the imperative.

What would happen if you were to starve yourself? You would be racked with incredible pain, driven instinctively to eat anything you could get your hands on. You would stop this by eating - ending pain, bringing the pleasure of the ending of pain.

Now you say that there is a difference between simply staying alive, and living. I don't agree. I think that there is little biological difference in say, eating, or loving your mother, as both serve as functions of the survival imperative (albeit in different intensities). To me this affirms that all my "good/bad" thoughts really spring from the will to survive.

>>4581388
Oh, and to expand on the id/superego thing, which was really just me liberally employing the terms:

Consider the situation of a mother and her child starving together in a desert. Now, there's a reasonable chance of survival for both of them.. given enough time. The mother holds on her person the last piece of food the two have. Herself and her daughter are starving and near death. Despite knowing she is condemning herself to death, she gives it to her daughter.

Why? Because the utility or pleasures she could derive from life after willingly condemning her daughter to death are gone, or at the very least utterly tainted by the societal guilt and shame of allowing your daughter die. Her pleasures would be gone - only pain would remain, so this decision too, altruistic as it seems, has the self at its core.

This is just an example of how the superego (i.e. the learned social constructs) can override the id (in this case, the desire to survive).

>reads new-age spiritual bullshit
>goes through existential crisis
Lel, OP is either 16 or severely autistic. Seriously, this shit doesn't happen to adults.

>>4581378
>>4581377
Yea just let me point out in detail why meone who's still drawing breathe and shitposting how "the richest man alive would he better off in his non-existant state" is retarded. Obviously the fact that I would rather call this anon the whiney pedantic bitch that he is means he is objectively correct and not just a sad NEET faggot why likes to believe dumb, contradictory things and jack off about how well he can disguise his bitching as philosophy.

>>4581399
>im so superior xDDDDDD

>>4581402
>All those typos

Man that poor guy I'm talking to is probably going to die from autism

>>4581402
You act like I'm the only person on earth to hold this view. Have you ever heard of Schopenhauer? Darrow? Hegesias? Zapffe?

I mean I'm not bothering to read your post past the first sentence because I can see about twenty boring ad hominems in it.

>>4581375
Hey, that's an unfair caricature. I jerk off to cartoons and I like my life.

>>4580301
None of this shit should be news to anyone who has gone through a intro to philosophy course.
This deterministic nihilism stuff has been stale for fucking ages, and people have been living just fine with it for about as long. If this was really all it took to drive you down into the existential dumps it was because of either a) it is the first time you challenged your own "cosmic significance," in which case it was not really the text doing it to you, it was yourself, or b) you don't have (and need to find) something in your life that feels special and profound enough that you can at least entertain the idea that there is some something more to the nothing and that you might be a part of it.

>>4581604
Anon already helped OP find the truth of Stoicism. Now he's off somewhere reading the words of Epictetus Christ our Lord and Savior.

>>4581608
How can man ever be as based as Epictetus was? When I get to heaven he's the first fucker I'm going to greet.

>>4580301

life may very well be devoid of all meaning OP but you sure as hell shouldn't give up on /fit/, I'd rather go into a strange and frightening world with my /fit/ on.

>>4581604
>None of this shit should be news to anyone who has gone through a intro to philosophy course.

can no one on this board figure anything out for themselves?

>>4581703
The point was how rudimentary the ideas are, not that they couldn't be reached on one's own.

What's so ineloquent about OP's post? How would you rewrite it?

>>4581756
I think the primary criticism is of the video that's apparently based on the same book that led OP to be so upset in the first place, and the fact that, if the book is fairly represented by the video, it's bullshit.

This thread proves that /b/ is the most honest board on 4chan.

>>4581712
I'm sorry for the way I worded my post

>New Age Spirituality
Are you a housewife going through a midlife crisis, or just stupid?

>Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

Just have a cup of coffee anon.

>>4580301
>mfw this is just a 2deep4u shit head trying to set himself up as the next L. Ron.
he keeps contradicting himself.
>dat cough halfway through.
he might be stoned, so he just edited out the ramble about fritos.
relax OP. have a nice dinner, then a smoke afterward, you'll feel better.

Thoreau's "Walden" sounds like it would be perfect.

Honestly (and I mean this respectfully; I have made the same mistake), it seems to me that you are using fitness to "repress" some of your unpleasant experiences. This not satisfying you, you attempted to turn to esoteric (and, ultimately, false) knowledge.

Remember the tetrapharmakon of Epictetus:
"Don't fear God/ don't worry about Death/ what is good is easy to get/ what is bad is easy to endure."

It seems to me like you may be very skeptical about the third line. But it is perhaps the most important. You don't need expensive supplements or steroids to be fit; else how would have anyone been fit before these things were invented. Those things are a scam perpetrated by wicked and avaricious men.

"All is as thinking makes it so."

Leo Buscaglia. "Live a lie if you have to."

>>4582640
I love you.

>>4582640
That sounds more like Epicurus than Epictetus.

Epictetus would be all, "Don't fear God/or anything else/accept that you are just a mind/and nobody can fuck with you."

OP here guys, I'm going to make it

>>4582640
yeah, i got into fitness because i was trying to repress the fact that i was transgender

hope you're okay op

>>4583840
keep at it, my budding, beautiful friend

OP here again

>tfw your existential crisis is fucking you up and you feel like you could kill yourself any minute now

fuck fuck fuck

>>4584431
>tfw epictetus isn't helping me

good bye /lit/

Get a grip.

Get a car.

Look at people whilst eating your food and drinking your coffee.

Acquire a skill -- if you live in the UK the government is bending over backwards to give you a skill through apprenticeships.

>>4584442
Honestly, you get over it.

I sometimes have episodes where I'm lying in bed at night and then suddenly

>I will die one day
>fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

It's common to feel like this. But there's no logical reason to kill yourself.

>>4584442
ffs op, read democritus and everything will be good.

>>4584513
Exactly!

>>4584442
There's no point in living, nor killing yourself, so you might as well enjoy life and go out do some stupid mean shit and have the time of your life. Have a nice cup of sage.

why would you fear death

>>4580707
Did I suggest I was a nihilist?
I don't think there is an objective meaning to what we're doing, but I believe in finding subjective for yourself.

>>4584442
>epictetus isn't helping
Then you haven't read it enough. Keep reading.

Take LSD.

>>4580301
You want Stoicism, bro.

>>4584442
Read this two part lecture by James Stockdale (a Vietnam vet that spent most all of the war, practically all of it IIRC, in a Viet Cong POW camp)
http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/stoicism1.pdf
http://www.usna.edu/Ethics/_files/documents/Stoicism2.pdf

>>4584513
Democritus might actually be the answer for OP.

>>4584981
Yeah, I talked OP into stoicism, convinced him life was worth living, then told him to read Epictetus as a way of delving further into stoicism and getting his head on straight. A little while later, he said he felt worse again and Epictetus wasn't helping.

I dunno, man.

embracing nihilism/ running the program and its cancellation concurrently is the only way fuckboy cannot into post-nihilism learn to fred you big babby or you can just end it now, wince-like-a-fat-cunt-pre-uhaul-collision, die in a confla-goddamn-gration

>>4585034
How Absurd.

>>4584981

stoicisim is for bitches. it is the prototypical head-up-the-ass philosophy, functioning through a most rigorous and ultimately futile self-deception involving the basics of action theory. the day i'll believe reason can take precedence over the passions is the day based David Hume crawls out his grave to give kants homosexual corpse a blow job

>>4585043
Can I come camp in your yard and listen to you rant every day?

>>4584981

>must not think about pussy must not think about pussy must not think about pussy must not think about pussy
>thinks about pussy
>i'm such a weak man o fucking kill me god please
>becomes a hermit to distance himself from "terrible earthly pleasures"
>gets eaten by a bear
>stoicism

>>4585043
>some Brit fatass having any kind of insight into the human condition or truth

My sides.

>>4585043
>>4585052
>I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, better post it on /lit/

>>4585043

You think based supergod David would ever go near immanuel's shriveled zobiefaggot dick?
The answer is no.
Just look at this goddamn pimp. Fucking look at him.
What a boss. Lead us into the center of the earth, Pimp lord

>>4585076

>mfw Hume was so obese he couldn't stand to look at himself in the mirror

>>4585062
>>4585066

I know more than all of you terminally depressed faggots combined. In order for you to be at peace with your plagiarized notions of the "hrhrhr human condition" you need to first be at peace with your what you are. Hume offers the only philosophical insight into human nature, an insight proved daily by the expansion of Humean meta-ethical discourse (which now dominates contemporary phil), an insight directly supported by contemporary neuroscience.

there is no discussion here. you're an animal controlled by your passions. reason is merely a method for their immediate and delayed realizations. reason can't subdue "anything", reason doesn't have that direction of fit necessary for interaction with passions, thus stoicism is a bunch of bullshit.hth

>>4585095

your passions are then the product of the amalgam chain of physical reactions leading to you having certain preferences and wants, inherited and environmentally stimulated. since these passions are direct products of physical events beyond your control ('your' here being a totally misleading word, since 'you' are a non-entity, there is no 'you'), we must necessarily accept that there is no free will. the ability to do othewise does not exist. you are a program, an extension of prior events, you are merely the determinism perceiving itself.
now, are you 'free' in so far as we define freedom as "the ability to do what we want"? yes you are.
But are you free to want to want what you want? Regress of ideas (want to want to want to want ad infinitum) shows us that such linguistic constructs are an error. you do not have the ability to do otherwise. you are not free. there is no "you"

>>4585117

such a concept was proven by experiments in neuroscience, see modern Libet experiments.
your awareness of a decision was preceded by non-consciouss brain activity (brain-activity by which the observer could deduce the nature of the decision without the subject even knowing about it) by a second or more.

You thinking that 'You" made the decision is an evolutionary coping mechanism, necessitated to compensate by the great evolutionary blunder which is consciousness in itself. Since it has been proven that "you" didn't make the decision (your non-conscious brain did, as product of endless chain of physical reactions), it is then necessarily true that "you" don't exist. "I do x action" is inherently false. You're merely a spectator within your own flesh, you're merely determinism perceiving itself, as it heads toward extinction

Is OP still alive?

bundle theory is buddhism for los retardinhos

ki/_/_ yiuselb

>>4585134

I think he killed himself when he read these >>4585095
>>4585117
>>4585125

>>4585137

haha, now i gotta this with this ersatz impersonation of a faggot,

>bundle theory

what i'm talking about is far beyond simple bundle theory junior, but kudos for throwing in that buzzword now i totally won't think you're a try-hard ignoramus

>>4585148
Wow can /lit/ claim it's first victim?

>>4585076

Is that a silk shower cap?
#myswagger

good job killing op though real talk

>>4585155

Don't know if it would be the first. The Misery is potent around here.

>>4585174
That would make us more hardcore than /b/ if we could actually get an idiot to kill himself.

>>4585206
That goes for the whole website. Even /vr/ probably talked someone into suicide after he admitted that he never finished final fantasy 4.

OP please respond!

>>4585095
>I know more than all of you terminally depressed faggots combined.
>He thinks stoicism is abstinent ascetic philosophy.

You've already proven otherwise.

>>4585283

nice strawman fuckboy, that was merely an hyperbolic example in my general attack towards stoicism's central meta-ethical claim, i.e. that reason has primacy, and that reason can order emotions/passions and subdue them..clearly this was way over your tiny lesbian head, back to your corner

>>4585043
Hume said an emotion WAS unreasonable if it was based on false belief. The purpose of stoicism is to eliminate false belief in the pursuit of eudaimonia (of which the pursuit is the greatest of human passions).

What now, bitch?

>>4585351
three words: hella f*ckin epic

>>4585676
this guy is right and seems to have rekt your precious little cooter. gonna keep at it at this point, twinkletoes??

Grief -> despair -> anger -> depression -> acceptance

Just wait a little OP you are soon there.

>>4585276
I'm still here, came really close to killing myself though.

I'm going to become an ubermensch, even though we're all fucked in the end. I'll be reading more epictetus and democritus as suggested.

>>4587426
We're not all fucked in the end, though.

>>4580467
dude people use stoicism to get through prison
it'll help you

>>4587431
Dead (or returned, as Epictetus prefers) not sexed up.

>>4587426
OP, read this
>>4585009

>>4580483

And all healthy individuals will invite such limitations.

http://nietzsche.holtof.com/reader/friedrich-nietzsche/the-gay-science/aphorism-290-quote_04784e1de.html

http://www.killian.com/earl/ThusSpokeZarathustra.html#onenjoyingandsufferingthepassions

>>4583243
Woops. So easy to confuse them.

>>4585676

you're fuckin wrong ace, that was a preface to a greater point, which you clearly missed. Hume specifically said, if you had actually read the treatise, that even an emotion based on false belief could not be called unreasonable, since "reasonable" can only apply to beliefs. emotions can't be evaluated in such a way since they have fundamentally different directions of fit from the standards used to uphold and dismiss beliefs. since passions are unreflected token entitites, original beings (not a mirror of anything out there) they cannot be evaluated through the standard of the outside world. only reflected beliefs can be evaluated as reasonable or unreasonable.

stoics claimed that you could directly stifle emotions through reason, thus inverting this direction of fit. they were dead as hell wrong since only passions are capable of stifling passions, reason is merely the secondary and inherently subordinate tool. "slave of the passions"

OP. TURN BACK NOW. WESTERN PHILOSOPHY IS A MASSIVE FAILURE AND NOTHING MORE THAN A PRODUCT OF INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY IMPLEMENTED FIRST BY TYRANTS AND THEN BY CAPITALISTS. READ SOME NIETZSCHE BEFORE YOU READ ANYTHING ELSE.

>>4585095
>>4585117
>>4585125

WOW. This is the most fucked up thing I've read in my life.

Can any of you guys please refute these? This shit CANNOT be true.

>>4585095
>>4585117
>>4585125
this guy gets it

>>4589464

it is true though. sorry for bursting your pretty little cunt of a bubble ace, but look at it from this side, at least now you don't have to blame yourself for being such a useless heap of briny assmeat, kill yirsel

>>4589464

It is false. Let Jesus Christ within your life and stay away from the possessed. These are mere distractions from the Truth and the Light of God.

>>4589507

desperate fanatic mantra as means of deceiving yourself through determined repetition..."this can't be true" says reason. "this is true" says passion. eventually, reason yields...

so,
once more, with feeling this time padre

>>4589497
Fuck off 4chan, tripfag.

>>4585117
>>4585125
Go to bed, Dennett.

>>4589535

i run shit around here faggot, get in line

>>4589538

>Dennett

kek

>>4589539
not really faggot

>>4585095

>believes he has a point
>tries to prove it

Btw, saying a brain state precedes a physically expressed mental state is the equivalent of saying an eye function precedes a physical act of seeing.

Of course, I determine nothing an hold no beliefs one way or the other.

>>4589543
>kek
What's that Lessie? Can you take out that humongous cock out of your mouth when you speak?

How does it feel to share the same ontology in regards to free will with a third-rate philosopher?

OP, take it from a wise one. Life is filled with difficulty. This is natural. Even the richest and most powerful lay awake with worry on occasion. This is natural. Humans will never end the struggles that plague us, just as the ants will never rid themselves of grasshoppers. This is natural. You can end your life now, as you have already joined in, but I feel the peace that you desire. You can also. Nature is a constant and perfect painting. Once you understand how it works, you can see the patterns that permeate every detail. Its truly amazing to behold.

>>4585117
The fact that a tripfag is declaring the self to be non-existent is so fucking rich that I am going to have to pass on desert tonight.
(Not an ad hominem fallacy because I genuinely agree with him, faggot that he is)

>>4589662
dessert*

>>4585117
>you are merely the determinism perceiving itself
what are we gonna do with all these epiphenomena?????????

>>4581332
why do you think non-existence is better than existence? Isn't it a valueless state? At most we can say it is different

>>4585117
>you are merely the determinism perceiving itself

explain qualia and I'll believe you

>>4585125

1/?

Consider that every written token of the English word “soup” is made up of marks which look at least vaguely like “s,” “o,” “u,” and “p.” But of course, it doesn’t follow that the word “soup” is identical to any collection of such marks, or that its properties supervene on the material properties of such marks, or that it can be explained entirely in terms of the material properties of such marks. It would be absurd to suggest that students of language should confine their attention to such material properties, or that any features of language that could not be detected via the study of such properties aren’t real. Everyone who considers the matter knows this. To take another example, borrowed from psychologist Jerome Kagan, “as a viewer slowly approaches Claude Monet's painting of the Seine at dawn there comes a moment when the scene dissolves into tiny patches of color.” But it doesn’t follow that its status and qualities as a painting reduce to, supervene upon, or can be explained entirely in terms of the material properties of the color patches. It would be absurd to suggest that students of art should confine their attention to such properties, or that any features of a painting that could not be detected via a study of such properties aren’t real. Everyone who considers the matter knows this too.

Yet when neuroscientists discover some neural correlate of this or that mental phenomenon, a certain kind of materialist concludes that the mind’s identity with, or supervenience upon, or reducibility to, or complete explanation in terms of neural processes is all but a done deal; and when they fail to discover any such correlate, such a materialist will conclude that the mental event or process in question doesn’t really exist. In fact such conclusions presuppose, rather than establish, neuroscientific reductionism -- just as someone who concluded that sentences and their meanings don’t really exist, but only ink splotches do, or that paintings don’t really exist and only isolated color patches do, would be presupposing rather than establishing reductionism about language or art. It is first assumed by such materialists that all that really exists is what can be put in the language of physiology, neurochemistry, and the like; and then it is “inferred,” in an entirely question-begging fashion, that what we take ourselves to know from introspection is either entirely reducible to what the neuroscience textbooks tell us or doesn’t really exist at all. Circular reasoning of this sort pervades the neurotrash literature.

>>4589928

Cont.

New Atheist vulgarians like Coyne will no doubt retort that the only alternative to their crass reductionism is a belief in ghosts, ectoplasm, or some other spook stuff of the sort beloved of the more ideological sort of materialist, who only ever wants to attack straw men. Of course, dualists of either the Cartesian or Thomistic stripe are not in fact beholden to such concepts. (See my series of posts on Paul Churchland for an illustration of how badly some materialists caricature dualism.) But the anti-reductionist position does not require a commitment to dualism in any case. The objections of Burge, Tallis, Bennett and Hacker do not presuppose dualism, much less any theological point of view.

Rather, what is necessary is just the ability to see that it is only persons, rather than any of their components, who can intelligibly be said to be conscious, to think, to perceive, to act, freely to choose, and so on (just as it is paintings and words, rather than the paint or ink splotches they are made up of, that can intelligibly be said to represent things, to have syntactic and semantic features, and so forth). Hence, from a failure to locate such activities at the neuronal level, it simply does not follow that the activities do not exist -- again, one must presuppose reductionism to draw that sort of conclusion, so that a failure to locate the activities at the subpersonal level hardly establishes reductionism. Similarly, it makes no sense to attribute the activities in question to the subpersonal level (as some reductionists do) -- to characterize neural processes as “deciding” this or “perceiving” that. Only persons decide, perceive, think, freely choose, etc., if anything does. Hence it is to the level of persons as a whole, and not to their parts, that we must look if we are fully to understand what is happening when we think, perceive, feel, choose, act, etc.

>>4589930

Cont.

Appeals to the predictive and technological successes of neuroscience no more establish that neuroscience gives us an exhaustive picture of human nature than the predictive and technological successes of physics tell us that physics gives us an exhaustive picture of reality as a whole. I explained in an earlier post why the latter sort of inference is fallacious, and parallel considerations show why the former sort is fallacious. Mathematical models in physics are abstractions from something concrete, something apart from which the mathematics would be entirely inefficacious. The models surely capture something real, but by no means the whole of what is real. To think otherwise is sort of like thinking that what is “really” in a photograph is only what is captured by the outlines one might find in a coloring book. Neuroscientific models are no different. They too are abstractions from concrete reality, a reality that outstrips the model. They no more provide an exhaustive description of a person than a chemical analysis of the ink in a book exhausts the content of the book.

Arguments to the contrary typically not only beg the question, but are inconsistent. For instance, arguments for the untrustworthiness of introspection crucially rely on evidence derived from introspection. Mental properties that are claimed not to exist at the personal level are smuggled in at the subpersonal level. Such question-begging reductionism and inconsistency often take the form of what Bennett and Hacker call the mereological fallacy (and what others have called the homunculus fallacy). Higher-level, personal features of human beings (decision, awareness, intentionality, etc.) are “explained” or explained away by appealing to purported lower-level, subpersonal features of the nervous system, but where the purported lower-level features are really just further instantiations of the higher-level features in question -- in which case they have really just been relocated rather than either explained or eliminated.

>>4589934

Cont.

Another fallacy often committed by the neuromaniacs involves ignoring the distinction between normal and deviant cases. Dogs naturally have four legs. Everyone knows this, and everyone also knows that it is irrelevant that there are dogs which, as a result of injury or genetic defect, have less than four legs. No one would take seriously for a moment the suggestion that the existence of the odd three-legged dog should lead us to conclude that it isn’t really natural after all for a dog to have four legs. Everyone also knows that dogs tend to prefer meat to other kinds of food. Though dogs will eat other things and the occasional dog may even prefer other things, that does not undermine the point that there is a tendency in dogs toward meat-eating. No one would take seriously for a moment the suggestion that the existence of the odd dog who prefers fruit and vegetables shows that dogs are “really” all herbivores.

Yet such common sense goes out the window with neurobabblers, who (as it were) allow the deformed tail to wag the otherwise healthy dog. In particular, the way people behave in artificial experimental conditions (such as Libet’s experiments) is taken to determine how we should interpret what happens in ordinary conditions, rather than the other way around. Unusual behavior on the part of subjects with neurological damage is taken to show what is “really” going on in normal subjects (as in “blindsight” and “split-brain” phenomena).

>>4589928
>>4589930
>>4589934
Edward Feser, pls go.

>>4589938

Cont.

We will see how some of these general features of the arguments of neuromaniacs manifest themselves in what Rosenberg has to say. Notice first, though, that nowhere in what has been said so far has there been any appeal to “intuition.” Neuromaniacs like to pretend otherwise -- to pretend that their critics have only inchoate hunches on their side while the neuromaniacs have science on theirs -- but this is sheer bluff. (And I for one hate arguments that appeal to intuition.) The appeal has rather been to mundane facts, to the plain evidence of everyday experience -- that is, to empirical evidence of the sort those beholden to scientism pretend to favor. In fact their attitude to empirical evidence is ambivalent. When doing so will enhance their appeal to the mob, those committed to scientism will play up their just-the-facts-ma’am homespun common sense. But once the bait is swallowed, they will switch gears and insist that common sense and ordinary experience actually get much or even everything wrong -- conveniently forgetting that this casts into doubt the very empirical evidence that was supposed to have led to the scientistic picture of the world in the first place. The paradox is as old as Democritus, and Rosenberg is just an extreme case of a general pattern one finds throughout the literature of scientism, materialism, and naturalism.

The neurobabbler, then, is committed to a position that is not only radically at odds with what the actual evidence of experience tells us, but arbitrary and inconsistent in its treatment of that evidence. The burden of proof is on him to show, in a non-question-begging way, that his position is even coherent -- not on us to show that he is wrong.

>>4589939

No.

>>4589940

Cont.

In “blindsight,” a subject whose primary visual cortex has been damaged to the extent that he is no longer capable of having conscious visual experience in at least certain portions of his visual field is nevertheless able to identify distant objects in those portions of the field, by color, shape and the like (by pointing to or reaching for the objects, say, or by guessing). Though blind, the subject can “see” the objects in front of him in the sense that information about them is somehow getting to him through his eyes even if it is not associated with conscious experiences of the sort that typically accompany vision.

What this tells us, Rosenberg insists, is that “introspection is highly unreliable as a source of knowledge about the way our minds work” (p. 151). Indeed, Rosenberg claims that “science reveals that introspection -- thinking about what is going on in consciousness -- is completely untrustworthy as a source of information about the mind and how it works” (pp. 147-8, emphasis added). In particular, “the idea that to see things you have to be conscious of them” is “completely wrong” (p. 149). But there are three problems with these claims. First, the “blindsight” evidence cited by Rosenberg does not in fact show that introspection is unreliable at all, let alone “highly” or “completely” unreliable. Second, even if it is partially unreliable, it doesn’t follow that to see things you needn’t be conscious of them. Third, the blindsight cases in fact presuppose that introspection is at least partially reliable.

Take the last point first. The blindsight subject tells us that he has no visual experience at all of the objects he is looking at -- that he cannot see their colors or shapes. How does he know this? Via introspection, of course. The description of the phenomenon as “blindsight,” and the argument Rosenberg wants to base on this phenomenon, presupposes that he is right about that much. If he’s wrong about it, then that entails that he really is conscious of the colors, shapes, etc. -- and such consciousness is, of course, precisely what Rosenberg wants to deny is necessary to vision. Moreover, the argument also presupposes that the subject can tell the difference between being blind and having conscious visual experience -- something the subjects in question did have in the past, before suffering the neural damage that gave rise to the blindsight phenomena. Hence, their introspection of that earlier conscious experience must also be at least partially reliable.

>>4589943

Cont.

So, the subject cannot be completely wrong if the argument is even to get off the ground. But isn’t he at least partially wrong? Well, wrong about what, exactly? Rosenberg says that the example shows that introspection “is highly unreliable as a source of knowledge about the way our minds work,” and he asks rhetorically:

After all, what could have been more introspectively obvious than the notion that you need to have conscious experience of colors to see colors, conscious shape experiences to see shapes, and so on, for all the five senses? (p. 151)

But this is sloppy. Strictly speaking, what we are supposed to know via introspection by itself are only our immediate conscious episodes -- “I am now thinking about an elephant” or “I am now experiencing a headache” or the like. No one maintains that the claim that “You need to have conscious experience of colors to see colors, etc.” is directly knowable via introspection, full stop. The most anyone would maintain is that introspection together with other premises might support such a claim. So, even if the claim turned out to be false, that would not show that introspection itself is unreliable. It could be instead that one of the other premises is false, or that the inference from the premises is fallacious.

Now, blindsight subjects also say that it feels like they are guessing, even though their judgments are more accurate than guesses. Doesn’t this show that introspection is deceiving them? It does not. For what is it that they are supposed to have gotten wrong in saying that it feels to them like they are guessing? Certainly Rosenberg cannot say “It feels to them like they are guessing but in fact they are conscious of the colors and shapes”-- since his whole argument depends on their not being conscious of the colors and shapes. But then, what is it that they are “really” doing rather than guessing? Again, what is it exactly that they are wrong about?

>>4589948

Cont.

Suppose you hit me in the back with a stone and I say that it felt like a baseball. Did introspection mislead me? Of course not. It wasn’t a baseball, but what introspection told me was not what it was, but what it felt like, and it really did feel like a baseball. The judgment that it was in fact a baseball was not derived from introspection alone, but from introspection together with certain other premises -- premises about what that sort of feeling has been associated with in the past, what objects people tend to throw under circumstances like the current ones, and so forth.

Similarly, when the blindsight subject says that it feels to him like he is guessing, the fact that his answers are better than what one would expect from guesses does not show that introspection is wrong. It still does feel like a guess, even if it turns out that it is more than that. It is the feel of the experience alone that introspection gives him knowledge of, not the entire reality underlying the feeling. The judgment that it is merely a guess is not derived from introspection alone, but from the introspective feel of the experience together with premises about what experiences that feel like this one have involved in the past, assumptions (false, as it turns out) about whether people can process visual information without consciously experiencing it, and so forth. Blindsight cases show only that the inference as a whole is mistaken, not that the introspective component by itself is mistaken.

Rosenberg might respond: “But the blindsight subject doesn’t merely say it felt like he had guessed. He says he did guess. And isn’t that mistaken?” But what is the difference, exactly, between feeling like one is guessing and really guessing? To guess is to propose an answer without thinking that one has sufficient evidence for it. And that is just what the blindsight subject does. True, we have reason to think that information is getting through his visual system in such a way that it causes him to answer as he does. But he has no access to that information, and thus it doesn’t serve as evidence for what he says. The neuroscientific evidence suggests only that his guesses have a certain cause. It does not tell us that they weren’t really guesses after all.

>>4589950

Cont.

So, Rosenberg hasn’t established from blindsight alone that introspection is even sometimes unreliable, let alone that it always is. But the deeper problem with his argument is that, from the fact that some of the information typically deriving from conscious visual experience can in some cases be received through the visual system without the accompanying experience, it simply does not follow that all such information always does (or even can) be received without conscious experience. Again, the subjects cited by Rosenberg were not always blind; they had seen colors, shapes, and the like in the past and then became either permanently or temporarily unable to have conscious visual experiences. There are no grounds for saying that this past experience is irrelevant to their ability somehow to process visual information “blindsight”-style -- for denying that they can identify colors and shapes now, without visual experience of them, only because they once did have visual experience of them. You might as well say that, since many deaf people can read lips, it follows that perception of sounds isn’t necessary for speech. Obviously, lip-reading is a non-standard way of figuring out what people are saying, and is parasitic on the normal case in which sound perception is crucial. Similarly, Rosenberg has given us no reason whatsoever to doubt that blindsight is parasitic on cases where conscious experience is necessary for color perception. As with the three-legged dog, the deviant case must be interpreted relative to the normal case, not the other way around.

As Bennett and Hacker note, there are also problems with the way the so-called “blindsight” cases are described in the first place. For one thing, the typical cases involve patients with a scotoma -- blindness in a part of the visual field, not all of it -- who exhibit “blindsight” behavior under special experimental conditions. In ordinary contexts their visual experiences are largely normal. For another thing, how to describe the unusual behavior is by no means obvious, precisely because while in some ways it seems to indicate blindness (the subjects report that they cannot see anything in the relevant part of the visual field), in other ways it seems to indicate the presence of experience (precisely because the subject is able to discriminate phenomena in a way that would typically require visual experience). In short, the import of the cases is not obvious; even how one describes them presupposes, rather than establishes, crucial philosophical assumptions. It is quite ludicrous, then, glibly to proclaim that “neuroscience” has established such-and-such a philosophical conclusion. The philosophical claims are read into the neuroscience, not read off from it.

>>4589951

Cont.

In Benjamin Libet’s famous experiments, subjects were asked to push a button whenever they wished, and also to note when they had consciously felt that they had willed to press it. As they did so, their brains were wired so that the activity in the motor cortex responsible for causing their wrists to flex could be detected. The outcome of the experiments was that while an average of 0.2 seconds passed between the conscious sense of willing and the flexing of the wrist, the activity in the motor cortex would begin an average of 0.5 seconds before the wrist flexing. Hence the willing (it is suggested) seems to follow the neural activity which initiates the action, rather than causing that neural activity.

Writers like Rosenberg and Coyne find all this extremely impressive. According to Rosenberg, the work done by Libet and others “shows conclusively that the conscious decisions to do things never cause the actions we introspectively think they do” and “defenders of free will have been twisting themselves into knots” trying to show otherwise (p. 152). Coyne assures us that:

"Decisions" made like that aren't conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we've made them, then we don't have free will in any meaningful sense.

To be sure, Libet himself qualified his claims, allowing that though we don’t initiate movements in the way we think we do, we can at least either inhibit or accede to them once initiated. Even Rosenberg allows that Libet’s experiments by themselves don’t prove that there is no free will. But he insists that they do show that introspection is not a reliable source of knowledge about the will.

>>4589958

Cont.

What’s really impressive about all of this, though, is how easily impressed otherwise intelligent people can be when in the grip of an ideology. And the fallaciousness of the inferences in question is not too difficult to see. To begin with only the most obvious fallacy, Rosenberg’s and Coyne’s argument presupposes that the neural activity in question is the total cause of the action, which is of course precisely part of what is at issue in the debate between neurobabblers and their critics. And for the critics, both the neural activity and the “feelings” experienced by Libet’s subjects are merely fine-grained, subpersonal aspects of the person -- where it is the person as a whole, and not any of his parts, who is properly said to be the cause of any of his actions. Just as the significance of a word or sentence is crucially determined by the overall communicative situation of which it is a part -- you are not going to know whether “Shut it!” is merely a terse request to close the door, or a quite rude command to keep silent, without knowing the context -- so too the significance of both a neural process and a conscious experience cannot be known apart from the larger neurological-cum-psychological context. Treating the wrist flexing and the neural activity in question in isolation merely assumes reductionism and does nothing to establish reductionism.

After all, neural activity and bodily movements as such do not entail action, free or otherwise. The spasmodic twitch of a muscle involves both neural activity and bodily movement, but it is not an action. So, whether such-and-such a bit of neural activity or bodily movement is associated with a genuine action cannot be read off from the physiological facts alone. In particular, there is nothing in the physiology as such that tells us that the neural activity Libet is interested in counts as a “decision” or an instance of “willing.” And what exactly justifies us in identifying this neural activity as “the” cause of the action in the first place, as opposed to merely a contributing cause? And what do we count as “the action”? Moving one’s hand? Pressing the button? Following the prompts of the feelings the experimenters have told one to watch for? There is no way to answer apart from appeal to the intentions of the subject -- in which case we have to rely on his reports of what he had in mind, rather than the neurological evidence, contrary to Rosenberg’s insistence that introspection is of no value. And as Tallis points out, the intentions of the subject long predate the neural activity Libet fixates upon. Those intentions were formed during conscious episodes that occurred minutes or hours before the experimental situation. (And this is just to note some of the more obvious problems with Libet’s claims. The variety of ways Libet’s evidence can be interpreted has been explored in detail by Alfred Mele.)

>>4589962

Cont.

As Tallis also points out, arguments of the sort inspired by Libet’s work typically presuppose an extremely crude model of what counts as an action. One would think from the way Rosenberg and Coyne tell it that intentional actions are those preceded by a conscious thought of the form “I will now proceed to do X. Here goes…” But a moment’s reflection shows that that sort of thing is in fact extremely rare. Indeed, that most intentional action is not “conscious” in this way is something common sense knew long before Libet came on the scene. To borrow some examples from Tallis, when you do something as simple as walking to the pub or catching a ball, you carry out an enormous number of actions “without thinking about it.” You do not consciously think “I will now move my right foot, now my left, now my right, now my left, etc.” or “I will now run, I will now jump, I will now flex my fingers, etc.” You just act. Yet your actions are paradigmatically intentional and free -- you are not having a muscle spasm, or sleepwalking, or hypnotized, or under duress, etc. To be sure, that by itself doesn’t show that free will exists. But the point is that Rosenberg, Coyne, and their ilk have not shown that free will does not exist, because free will is not the straw man they are attacking.

Indeed, not only is a conscious feeling of the sort Libet and his admirers describe not necessary for free action, it is not sufficient either. As Bennett and Hacker point out, feeling an urge to sneeze does not make a sneeze voluntary. Since Libet himself is willing to allow that we might at least inhibit actions initiated by unconscious neural processes, even if we don’t initiate any ourselves, Bennett and Hacker observe that:

Strikingly, Libet’s theory would in effect assimilate all human voluntary action to the status of inhibited sneezes or sneezes which one did not choose to inhibit. For, in his view, all human movements are initiated by the brain before any awareness of a desire to move, and all that is left for voluntary control is the inhibiting or permitting of the movement that is already under way. (Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, p. 230)

>>4589964

Terminus.

As this shows, the very idea that “free actions,” if they existed, would be those preceded by a certain kind of “feeling” of being moved to do this or that, is wrongheaded. In particular, it is a crude mistake to assimilate willing to the having of an “urge.” As Bennett and Hacker emphasize, being moved by an urge -- such as an urge to sneeze, or to vomit, or to cough -- is the opposite of a voluntary action. And when Libet instructs the subjects of his experiments to note when they have certain “feelings” or “urges,” he not only manifests his own sloppy thinking about the nature of action, but encourages similarly sloppy thinking in his subjects, which casts into doubt the value of the whole experiment. The subjects start looking inwardly for “feelings” and “urges” as evidence of voluntary action -- something no one does in ordinary contexts, because in ordinary contexts voluntary action doesn’t involve feelings and urges in the first place. Of course, one might respond that Libet may not have intended to suggest that a decision to move one’s wrist is exactly like having an urge to sneeze or to vomit. But that only reinforces the point that the relevant conceptual issues bearing on the nature of action have been poorly thought out by those making sensationalistic claims about what the neuroscientific evidence has “shown.”

It’s time to bring this long post to an end. But we’re not done with Rosenberg yet. In general, he assures us, “consciousness can’t be trusted to be right about the most basic things” (p. 162). Yet science itself, in whose name Rosenberg makes this bold claim, is grounded in observation and experiment -- which are conscious activities. How exactly are we supposed to resolve this paradox? Rosenberg never tells us, any more than Democritus did (though at least Democritus could see the problem). But even this incoherence is as nothing compared to that entailed by Rosenberg’s denial of the intentionality of thought. It is to that denial -- the crowning lunacy of scientism -- that we will turn in the next post in this series.

>>4580577
>If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.

>>4583867

>the fact that I was transgender
>fact

No one else saw this until now?

OP, you're the single emotionally weakest person I've ever encountered. How much of a box have you been living in if these sort of things scare you? It's a big, scary, uncaring world. Get the fuck over it.

>>4590024

Does anyone want to talk about this? It just doesn't seem right at all.

>>4587497
>>4587499

I've read these, it kinda helps.

>>4589587
Can you please explain further?
right now to me existence seems like hell, and non-existence seems even worse. Sure I could keep my sanity with stoicism and all that but it's just futile, i really wish i wasn't born.

>>4590026
Well I always just brushed off every existential crisis I had but I can't ignore it now. I'll try not being a pussy but if i'm not better in a year I'll have to kill myself.

>>4590090
You're nothing more than a speck of dust. Nothing you do, no matter how hard you try, will every change anything at large. No one is looking out for you. No one care about you. You'll be forgotten about in the blink of an an eye. It will be as if you never existed. And you know what? That's fucking beautiful. You're free to make all the mistakes in the world. No one will judge you or hold you accountable at the end of the day. You're free to think whatever you want, no one is going to tell you you can't. You're free to explore the world and be whoever you want. The universe doesn't give the tiniest shit about you. And that means you are absolutely, completely, mind bogglingly free. So fucking enjoy it and make the most out of it. You've been born with the ability to make your own meaning in life. And as far as I'm concerned, that's pretty fucking amazing.

From the bathtub to the bathtub, I have uttered stuff and nonsense.

Get some Alan Watts lectures in your life. (Youtube)

>>4590131
wat if god is real

:o
:o
:O

you can run, you can run

>>4590174
Go to heaven for the climate; go to hell for the company.

>>4590174
Give me evidence for it, and I'll humbly convert.

>>4590131
>no one is looking out for you
>no one care about you

Unless you have no family or genuine friends those statements should be false.

>>4590180
look at the nature
:o

>>4590181
i have no family or genuine friends.

>>4590189
Seriously, OP. Get a grip. That video you linked was fucking stupid and didn't really say much of anything.

>>4590172
It sounds like feel-good bullshit tbh, I want to believe in what he says though.

>>4590203
i have no family or genuine friends.

>>4590203
I keep finding them al over the place describing pretty much the same thing, I wasn't interested in spirituality but it's just an intriuging idea to entertain when you realize no one has "figure it out" philosophically. So I just read and watched a bunch of shit and i've been suicidally depressed ever since, maybe it's fucking retarded but it fills in the gaps that philosophy just can't, too bad I found something really disappointing. I'm kind of young so hopefully this blows over and I come back to reality but for now I am beyond fucked.

>>4590226
Even at 6 years old I wasn't this retarded.

>>4590232
me neither, I was just going through a fucked up depression that led me there in the first place, so maybe I'm using emotional reasoning to make myself believe all this bullshit is real, it doesn't matter if it isn't because it FEELS real. I've head fucked myself, but i'm not sure what the fuck is going on really, maybe I need to see a psychiatrist.

>>4590239
You should drink some coffee and try to compose yourself, the things you're saying here strike one as internally inconsistent, as if they were summoned out of the air.

The only consolation I can offer you is that you possess subjective experience, so physicalism is almost certainly false. You're not a machine, you're a person. This should be evident to everybody, but it's so glaringly obvious that it's often forgotten. Happiness is possible. There are happy people all over the world who are more foolish than you, and happy people who are much wiser than you.

You could even consider yourself lucky that you are depressed! Happy people need nothing, but the despondent need beauty. Make or draw attention to whatever beauty you find in the world. That's my advice. You seem impressionable enough to benefit from it.

>>4590211
He feels good about what he says I'm sure, but he says it because its true.

This is the longest mental breakdown i've ever seen on /lit/

>>4590211
Watts advocates there is nothing to cling to, and no meaning to the universe in the traditional sense. Its not feel good philosophy, although when applied it will leave you experiencing life directly, and thus feeling good in a healthy stat.

>>4590368
I hope.

>>4590252
Thanks, that sounds like a good idea, I really have no choice at this point anyways.

>>4590392
I'm losing my fucking mind.

OP, i too wanted to kill myself today. instead i just cut my arm up a bunch. never done that before, but i didnt know what else to do. shit sucks. i dont have any words of advice.

MEDITATE

QUIET YOURSELF

OBSERVE THE OBSERVER

>>4590461
>buddhism: a living death

>>4590463

DEATH TO THE EGO

>>4590472
>>4590463
>>4590461
this shit is fucked up, I actually tried mindfulness meditation and that's probaby what fucked up my mind i feel detached from myself, and if I let go i'll slip into an abyss. man who knew spirituality could be BAD. you only hear about happy bald guys and all this feel good bullshit, i'm losing my damn mind right now

>>4590449
We're fucked man, we're all fucked. Killing yourself is fucked living is fucked, let's just pray that we die in our sleep.

Hasn't it occured to anyone that OP is just trolling?

>>4590498
I'm not, I'm shaking right now as I type this, I haven't ate for like a day and seep is extremely difficult, this is the first time i've been hit hard by an existential crisis and I deeply appreciate the support ITT. Any other board would have told me to kill myself already.

>>4590504
what realization have you come to that has affected you so much?

>>4590520
>>4590520
Well besides all the spirituality stuff that's screwed my mind, I can't really say it's anything but the fear of the unknown. It's just much more intense and I associate how fucking bad I feel with all these "what if" questions, i can't stop obsessing over this. It's just a feeling of not knowing anything and being existentially confused but assuming the utter worst of possibilities of what all this shit is. I'm not trying to be deep or anything, you're all much more smarter than I am but I bet this bothers you guys quite often as well. It's just managed to grip me now and I can't really count on suicide either because there's still that what if about death, I can only hope it's eternal slumber.

>>4590482
Let go of your attachments. What's happening is that you're recognizing the delineations that you have made in your own mind. Do not shy away from them: know that they are only what you have made of them. Closer examination of anything begets a sort of nausea, a sort of proclivity towards the notion that everything is disgusting. This is born out of a certain conditioning. The truth is that everything is not, in fact, disgusting. Nothing is disgusting, as nothing is beautiful. If there is a moment beyond this moment, forget it. Your experience is on a sensory delay. To dwell is to get lost in the forest of self-creation. You have not experienced ego death; you have only begun to understand what it entails. There is no fact, there is no fiction. There is only the narrative, and the narrative is an obstacle. Remove the narrative. The enlightenment of Buddhism is the existence ahistorical, taken away, no longer trapped in the moment by yourself. It is the total escape, not from the narrative but from being dictated, swayed, or in need of the narrative, of being swayed by self-consciousness. It's an escape from the need for language, for communication. It is a recognition of one's engagement, rather than the interpretation. It's a total acceptance of the arrest that existence is, of being caught in the flow of things and of the delusion that you are capable of escaping.

I don't know how much you've read, but I found A Still Forest Pool to be of incredible help.

>>4590544
You're right, you are a little dense and probably dug too deep. But the fear is a natural reaction to your first exposure to this.

I can't offer you anything. This would be too valuable a learning experience for me to spoil. You need to overcome the dread yourself. Read into more philosophy, be it religiously-themed or secular, and take the time to think these things through for yourself. It will do you more good than listening to the people here.
Good luck.

>>4590566
All this shit is so depressing, i'd rather not confront it now, i'll probably never be ready. I'll check that book out and hopefully it won't fuck my mind up even more.

I've been like this for the past two years. Already tried suicide twice.
I think it's the acid people.

I think you got some bad bud. That's what I think it was. that shit fucks your mind all up

What helpped for me, I got some meds that helpped slow my mind down, and after i got a good barring on my surroundings and wasn't going flipping insane, I took myself off of them, and everything seems to be back to normal.

>>4590577
thanks anon, yeah I'm a dense motherfucker so this is all hitting me like a ton of bricks. I don't really know what i'm bound to discover/realize, but man it scares the crap out of me.

I used to be a deeeeeeep deep DEEEEP philosophical person, and infact I still believe myself to be one, and this has happened to me. If you're using any drugs, try stopping them for a week or two, and then go back to them to see it it's changed for you.

>>4590544
Everlasting nonexistence is impossible if nature is consistent in death. Nature builds in dualities, so nonexistence would Imply existence. This also means your memories imply a Tabula Rasa. Learn that every inside creates/requires an out and viceversa and you will understand much.

Hey OP, read the desert fathers. You don't have to be Christian for the feels:

http://www.coptic.net/articles/sayingsofdesertfathers.txt

You are only in your own desert.

>>4590581
It isn't, though. It isn't anything. You seem to have already recognized that the flow of action is distinct from the interpretation. The tension you're feeling is from the want for narrative and interpretation. In narrative, there appear to be only two roles: contribution and interpretation. Both are, in practice, knights of faith. What you lose in narrative is the notion of passivity. The notion of not acting, of not having to act, of simply existing. Again, the depression you're feeling is only a creation of your mind.

If you need some Western thought to proceed from here, try Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. Kierkegaard is going to be more likely to suggest societal institution, while Nietzsche comes right out and notes that such attachment doesn't necessarily get you anywhere. As it is, the choice is yours: either you allow the narrative to dictate you and you attempt to influence it "positively", which would be to my knowledge acceptable within various strains of Mahayana and Hinayana (taking "Mother Teresa" sort of role, trying to comfort others even when you yourself might not think the goal plausible, by being a priest/monk/detective/doctor/writer/whatever you can do-- the bodhisattva who eschews nirvana to aid others) or to attempt to distance yourself from the thoughts of others. Even posts like this. This post isn't helpful; it's a delineation in and of itself. I can point you in a "positive" direction myself but I cannot tell you what will be necessary to lessen the injury of being.

>>4590612
I can't bare to read that, sorry.

>>4590591
Medicating yourself to forget doesn't work, it's only temporary and once it wears off you'll be in hell again.

>>4590583
>>4590591
Haven't done any drugs in a looong time, my mind is kind of fragile so bad trips were just common for me. Even caffeine will send me over the edge right now, just being "normal" right now is a trip itself.

>>4590598
oh god no, pls no

>>4590616
I really appreciate this post anon.


Man I didn't expect this thread to get this many replies, from all the stories I've heard about /lit/ I was prepared to be mocked for being stupid and going through some existential crisis bullshit. Thanks /lit/, hopefully I won't kill myself, or maybe hopefully I will., i don't know.

>>4580435
But Hume wouldn't deny the existence of though independent objects, including the forms.

>>4590598 here

It also implies your aversion/deprssion is temporal. Change is another law and goes hand in hand with duality. Methods of the flow of action as >>4590616 referred to. Also that anon is right, and probably being more helpful than myself. Hooray for devils advocate.

>>4590598 here

It also implies your aversion/deprssion is temporal. Change is another law and goes hand in hand with duality. Methods of the flow of action as >>4590616 referred to. Also that anon is right, and probably being more helpful than myself. Hooray for devils advocate.

>>4580301

Who is this faggot, op?

>>4590653
The author? Steven Norquist.

>>4590598
Nature doesn't build in dualities. You do. That death constitutes a dichotomy is a creation of the "living". What you're rebelling against with your interpretation is, in precise terms, the end of sentience and the ability to interpret. The end of consciousness and self-consciousness acting hand in hand. I don't see where the tabula rasa is required; biologically, anyway, it doesn't follow logically. We are aggregates of experience which will produce a set of results outside of our influence. Even if we say something. The final score is already fixed.

An aside: the argument Camus makes against suicide doesn't hold any water precisely because it presumes this false dichotomy. That the living experience is distinct from non-experience. Standpoint epistemology is a useful trap, but a trap nonetheless.

>captcha: demarcation nditinlo

>>4590632
>Man I didn't expect this thread to get this many replies, from all the stories I've heard about /lit/ I was prepared to be mocked for being stupid and going through some existential crisis bullshit. Thanks /lit/, hopefully I won't kill myself, or maybe hopefully I will., i don't know.
I been to many boards and only /v/, /x/, /pol/, /b/ and /soc/ live up to their names.

>>4589928
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>>4589968

>>4589928
>>4589930

al right ace... there might actually be someone with half a brain in this cesspool of air headed lesbians.
now, i don't have the time at this moment, but i will be going through your arguments in detail to firstly show you why we're in perfect agreement with regard to free will*, and secondly to render them as ineffectual with regard to free will*** (a distinction that i'll clarify, suffice it say for the moment that free will*** concerns the topics of my earlier posts).
doing this will be pretty easy primarily because you assume that I'm spouting Rosenberg, which i'm not.
i'm bumping this thread so that it doesn't time out. i'll be back,

>>4589759

qualia are absolutely compatible with what i'm saying. they're the means by which the specific incarnations of the deterministic chain are able to perceive themselves.

the entire topic of qualia (and intentionality) as objections to reductionism is such a ridiculously laughable non-problem... all due to an endemic confusion about what it means to discuss things in first vs second order terms, orders which ultimately reduce to the same token substance

stay tuned

>>4580301
>>4585095
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_W4lSw-jXs

>>4592699
that tl;dr guy who posted is a copypasta from a professional catholic philosopher

>>4580301

Meditations of Marcus Aurelius cures nihilism.

>>4592978
I was reading about Meditations and a quote came up: "Let opinion be taken away, and no man will think himself wronged. If no man shall think himself wronged, then is there no more any such thing as wrong."

No help me out here /lit/, how should one deal with opinions if it doesn't have the power to end it? I mean, it's impossible to not be influenced by something (external or internal) when thinking about a subject.

>>4589497
>>4589464
my fucking sides, this dude got rekt

>>4580301

>>4593118
You just have to accept it man. I could try and type it up long and complicated but that is the basic idea and Aurelius would be a good place to deal with that, better than I.

>>4593118
Nothing but virtue is truly Good (in itself) and nothing but the lack of virtue is truly Bad (in itself) but some things can be preferred or not preferred.

That is, it's perfectly reasonable to eat rather than starve, to save the life of someone you're close to, and so forth.

The point is to not let shit affect you too much if you can't control it.

>>4593800
ur a nigger nothing is good or bad in and of itself good and bad are relative terms

>>4580301
10/10
This fucken charlatan "mystic" is making me rage.

belongs on /x/, preying on the stupidity of idiots and their search of the mystic "nothingness" "hauntedness", my book by the title of "mumbo jumbo" talks about these phenomenon in greater detail, be sure to buy and read it. HAUNTED UNIVERSE!!0ne!

ugh.

>>4593800
You must be new here.

>>4593819
Virtue is objectively Good. Deal with it.
>>4593979
Why do you say that?

>>4580301
This guy is soo full of shit. He has no clue what nothingness or awakening, in the classical or contemporary sense. I hate the faux-gurus and hippie new-age faggots, stuffing their faces with pseudo-intellectual garble.

OP stop trying to be "deep", you clearly are not cut out for any serious contemplative tradition. People, recorded by the Buddhists and others, do feel aversion and fear towards void states, but that shit novice level. This guy isn't awakened. You shouldn't be afraid, as this guy has no clue what nothingness (sunyata) actually means. He is projecting his fear because he has little knowledge of anything remotely associated to intermediate and advanced contemplative practice.