Let's hear your opinions.

If you do not value yourself, how do you preserve yourself?

Any cunt coming to the philosophy forum seeking to promote themselves as an individual is a fucking retard in my eyes. So I'm willing to sacrifice my best frozen badger and shove it up your arse (instead of mine), simply to make this point.

That is, if any cunt values itself within this thread, I'll be shafting them in some form. In case you're wondering, jamest isn't here.

I value myself as it is irrational not to do so.
I value myself for two faculties intrinsic to humans.
My faculty of perception allows to me find satisfaction in reality.
My faculty of rational thought allows me to survive, if not thrive.

jamest wrote:Any cunt coming to the philosophy forum seeking to promote themselves as an individual is a fucking retard in my eyes. So I'm willing to sacrifice my best frozen badger and shove it up your arse (instead of mine), simply to make this point.

That is, if any cunt values itself within this thread, I'll be shafting them in some form. In case you're wondering, jamest isn't here.

If you give away the experience of that immaterial badger you will have nothing of any value at all remaining.

wisedupearly wrote:how do you preserve yourself?

CH2O



Oh, wait. You mean "How do you preserve your self?" Smells like teen spirit.

But let's get serious here for a moment. In the immortal words of Sam Baldwin from "Sleepless in Seattle":

Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long.

There's a few other trivial tasks, such as dodging the muggers and drug addicts, and staying out of the way of road rage. Then I can get down to the serious business of mocking stupid posts on the internet.

Clearly your serious is short in duration and shallow in depth. I am threatened with a frozen badger suppository so give it your best shot. Not Jack Daniels either.

wisedupearly wrote:Clearly your serious is short in duration and shallow in depth. I am threatened with a frozen badger suppository so give it your best shot. Not Jack Daniels either.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

If you want 'serious', jamest is your go-to guy. His 'serious' is long and hard with a tip that's vaguely badger-shaped, and dripping tears of anticipation. Like Destroyer and Little Idiot and several others, jamest has been yanking on that 'serious' for a long time, but has never arrived at the climax.

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

BWE wrote:Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.

That's the spirit!

I have intrinsic value - which is to say I value not experiencing negative feelings and emotions and experiencing positive ones (with no ontological commitments about what I mean by experiencing, feeling etc.). I don't want to be cold, hungry, lonely, in pain. I do want to be warm, comfortable, loved, entertained, intellectually stimulated.

That is more that I assign values to states and to actions than that "I" have a value though. It would also be difficult to evaluate what "improvement" of value would mean. Is my value improved if I take more concern over meeting my own needs and less over the needs of others, or vice versa? Is there a golden mean, or is greed good? With no extrinsic scale on which to measure the question is in danger of looking circular or degenerate.

In the abstract I'm not sure I do have value. If I were gone the universe would not miss me and I would not miss the universe. As for everybody, there are people who would be saddened if I died suddenly and they would have preferred my continued existence, and in that sense (as for anyone) I could be said to have value. But that has nothing to do with self-preservation.

Thommo wrote:In the abstract I'm not sure I do have value.

If you live rationally you certainly have value to yourself. That is all you need. It maybe all you will ever get, but I hope not.
Think rational and act rational. What you have you will be more likely to keep. You will be more likely to increase your community. And so it goes.

wisedupearly wrote:

Thommo wrote:In the abstract I'm not sure I do have value.

If you live rationally you certainly have value to yourself.

As I said, it's a matter of perspective. There are different things that phrase can mean and by some of them I do and by some of them I don't.

Living rationally is not dependent on self-value. Living rationally is contingent on making decisions on a rational basis - that is, by making decisions that maximise the chance of reaching desired outcomes based on certain reasonable constraints and sets of assumptions.

It matters not if I eat because I dislike hunger, if I eat because I enjoy the experience of eating, or if I eat because I am aware that if I do not I will starve. Ironically to think of my day to day life as being founded upon the last would be very much the exemplar of the sort of intellectuallism you were decrying in your other thread. Daily life is founded far more on habit, routine and the satisfaction of basic needs without a broader intellectual framework, in reality.

wisedupearly wrote:That is all you need. It maybe all you will ever get, but I hope not.
Think rational and act rational. What you have you will be more likely to keep. You will be more likely to increase your community. And so it goes.

I don't even know what you mean by "increase your community" or "will be more likely to keep what you have". There's also a missing link between these things (which hopefully you will define) and acting rationally. Why, beyond your mere assertion, do you ask me to believe that I am more likely to do these things if I "value myself" or "improve my value"?

Thommo wrote:
Daily life is founded far more on habit, routine and the satisfaction of basic needs without a broader intellectual framework, in reality.

Quick response. More to follow

Why do you throw away so much of your life as being habit, routine, no broader intellectual framework?
You are not to blame as this attitude is baked into the de facto philosophy of modern Western society. As you are capable of rational thought why wouldn't you want to apply it to all parts of your life?
When you think and act rationally in everyday life you are far from intellectualism as what you are working with and improving is right in front of you. It does NOT depend on the approval of others, only your satisfaction.
You can argue about consciousness and free will until the cows come home to die and you will not have improved your life, your daily life at all.

wisedupearly wrote:Why do you throw away so much of your life as being habit, routine, no broader intellectual framework?

Why does habit/routine amount to throwing away life?

wisedupearly wrote:

Thommo wrote:
Daily life is founded far more on habit, routine and the satisfaction of basic needs without a broader intellectual framework, in reality.

Quick response. More to follow

Why do you throw away so much of your life as being habit, routine, no broader intellectual framework?

What do you mean throw away? I'm informing you of how I, and realistically you and everyone else as well, experience my decision to eat. I eat at roughly fixed times of day, which although having some measure of reason behind them are as much down to social convention and daily routine as to when I actually get hungry, or what would maintain the best equilibrium in my blood sugar levels, and have precious little to do with a "rational analysis" building things up from some appraisal of my own self-worth and whether that would be raised or lowered by eating or not at some particular time or another.

Decision making is a mish-mash of instinct, reasoning, heuristics, short cuts, attention and inattention.

wisedupearly wrote:You are not to blame as this attitude is baked into the de facto philosophy of modern Western society. As you are capable of rational thought why wouldn't you want to apply it to all parts of your life?

I'm not to blame because it's got nothing to do with philosophy and there's nothing negative happening for which to assign blame! I don't have a problem with getting enough to eat in the first place.

The reason not to apply "rational thought" to all parts of life is because there aren't enough hours in the day. I have to get things done, and that means trusting in conclusions I've reached before, habits I've established and numerous autonomous parts of my own brain function, from my respiration to learned skills like the movements needed to drive a car.

A lot of the time these things are done a-rationally, because it allows me to focus my limited cognitive resources on things that I value more at the time. That is to say that habit, routine and arational actions have a place in a rational overall strategy.

I'm certainly in favour of rationality as opposed to irrationality, but I would use the terms in a very different sense than you seem to be, which strikes me as being to rationality as scientism is to science.

wisedupearly wrote:When you think and act rationally in everyday life you are far from intellectualism as what you are working with and improving is right in front of you. It does depend on the approval of others, only your satisfaction.
You can argue about consciousness and free will until the cows come home to die and you will not have improved your life, your daily life at all.

It's very generous of you to give me permission to do so, but I don't actually tend to argue about consciousness or free will. I don't think I've participated in discussion of either for literally years. If you think that's what I've said here, then you are mistaken.

I used consciousness & free will merely as examples of what is common on philosophy sites.
Preparing meals gives you satisfaction?

Sometimes, it can be entertaining enough. Obviously it's a mechanism by which I can satisfy my hunger as well.

Why do you ask? Do you think there's some bridge from that to improving my value, or to using rationality in every aspect of my life?

wisedupearly wrote:
Preparing meals gives you satisfaction?

Yes. Very much so.

wisedupearly wrote:I value myself as it is irrational not to do so.
I value myself for two faculties intrinsic to humans.
My faculty of perception allows to me find satisfaction in reality.
My faculty of rational thought allows me to survive, if not thrive.

As far as I can tell, your argument assumes that each individual will find the greatest satisfaction in promoting their own individual survival and wellbeing. Evolutionary theory suggests that this is not necessarily the case, since natural selection acts to create adaptations which promote the survival, not primarily of the individual, but of the individual’s genes, whether in their own offspring or the offspring of others, usually relatives. Evolution often programmes individuals to find satisfaction in looking after other individuals as well as themselves, not necessarily their own offspring. This is crucial in the evolution of cooperation, and humans have clearly evolved as a highly cooperative species.

Of course, claiming that some behaviour or feeling is an evolved predisposition is not to claim that it’s rational. Are you saying that if a person has an evolved predisposition to find satisfaction in looking after some other people’s wellbeing, as well as (or, occasionally, instead of) their own, then this satisfaction is irrational?

(I’m talking about inclusive fitness theory as described by Wikipedia here; there is a consensus among evolutionary biologists that inclusive fitness theory is correct)