@ Scott H.

you have, in my opinion, failed to take a coherent philosophical position. You have taken a thought experiment, misunderstood it, made many assertions because of it, extrapolated from those misunderstood assertions and then made downright bizarre and possibly contradictory claims which are akin to personifying the universe as some kind of sentient entity that can judge incidents and distributes pain and pleasure (not sensation, it actively knows what every sensate entity experiences as pain and pleasure) and goes out of it's way to do so, but it's not god.

Fair enough. It makes little sense but fair enough. Since it seems that you are not willing to listen to criticisms about the senselessness of your claim perhaps you might be more open to criticisms of your claim.

You have not refuted sadism. You have given an assertion of what you claim constituted sadism based on eternal recurrence. If you accept eternal recurrence why can you not accept sadism as a necessary component in such eternal recurrence.

Since you have come on here promoting this concept and claiming you wish to rid the world of Sadism let me ask. If things are all exact reiterations of a previous universe, then this has all happened before and will happen again. We still have sadism. You have failed, always have always will. Thus having ran with the idea of eternal recurrence you have knowingly wasted your own valuable time, always have, always will.

Yet this isn't the limit. You claim that pain and pleasure are distributed by an God like sentience called universe as a law of nature in order to sustain itself. Yet you want to rid the universe of that which is to say you wish to destroy the universe. Besides the crass arrogance and insane danger of such an actively nihilistic position, how do you intend to do that exactly? And if you care (as you claim you do) about people then how you you reconcile such a destructive position which would potentially eliminate all life with your claims of compassion?

Mercy killing?

Cito di Pense wrote:Well, there you have it. I don't much care whether or not your intent is to make people suffer,

You don't?

If "intent" was reliable, wishes would be horses.

What would it mean for intent to be reliable?

If your methodology was explicit, beyond "defining every term", we could explore where it led.

If we could already explain what it was we were doing, we wouldn't need to conduct philosophy.

You haven't even really tried to define "amusement", though, have you?

You didn't even respond to the comment in my previous post:

"If we tried to define every word in every definition, we would never truly define anything. As any good student of logic knows, we must eventually have recourse to sense experience and define words by means of social gestures."

You may amuse yourself by imagining that you are on a mission to eliminate suffering.

Why else would I have stayed alive through retching and nightmares?

Now, turning to Audley Strange's barrage of ad hominem attacks:

Audley Strange wrote:@ Scott H.

you have, in my opinion, failed to take a coherent philosophical position. You have taken a thought experiment, misunderstood it,

Bare assertion.

made many assertions because of it, extrapolated from those misunderstood assertions

Again, bare assertion (on your part).

and then made downright bizarre and possibly contradictory claims which are akin to personifying the universe as some kind of sentient entity that can judge incidents and distributes pain and pleasure (not sensation, it actively knows what every sensate entity experiences as pain and pleasure) and goes out of it's way to do so, but it's not god.

I answered this objection on page one:

"It would be built into the laws of nature."

You then said "Bullshit" and denounced my suggestion as 'magic.' I then explained:

"Denouncing it as 'magical' won't help, nor will claiming that the universe is unconscious (which would challenge the entire theory of panpsychism), nor will a straw man anthropomorphization of such a law of nature,"

and you didn't respond. Now, after two pages of debate, you come back spewing personal attacks.

You have not refuted sadism. You have given an assertion of what you claim constituted sadism based on eternal recurrence. If you accept eternal recurrence why can you not accept sadism as a necessary component in such eternal recurrence.

Since you have come on here promoting this concept and claiming you wish to rid the world of Sadism let me ask. If things are all exact reiterations of a previous universe, then this has all happened before and will happen again. We still have sadism. You have failed, always have always will. Thus having ran with the idea of eternal recurrence you have knowingly wasted your own valuable time, always have, always will.

We can still get rid of sadism, and if eternal recurrence were real it would at least become more comfortable.

Yet this isn't the limit. You claim that pain and pleasure are distributed by an God like sentience called universe as a law of nature in order to sustain itself.

Straw Man #2: I am actually claiming that the worldview of counterbalancing pleasure is correct.

Yet you want to rid the universe of that which is to say you wish to destroy the universe.

Fallacy of Composition, in any case.

Besides the crass arrogance and insane danger of such an actively nihilistic position,

A position that isn't mine.

how do you intend to do that exactly?

Are you asking me how I intend to destroy the universe? You're not hoping to make that my intention, are you?

And if you care (as you claim you do) about people then how you you reconcile such a destructive position which would potentially eliminate all life with your claims of compassion?

Mercy killing?

It's really a matter of necessity depending on how stupid and foolish the human race is. If you create torture chambers, for example, or make a living mockery of the physically deformed on purpose, and you show no sign of abandoning your cruelty, and there is no safer or wiser alternative than to eliminate suffering by destroying the world, then -- sorry to say it -- we might have to.

Now, let me explain something: in this scenario, you'd be just a bunch of idiots. You'd be the ultimate, slobbering sadists in the face of any conceivable compassionate proposal, droning on, puffing out fallacies like clouds of gas while you laugh in the face of your deformed victims. "I don't care how you feel," you'd sneer. "I don't care."

You have two choices: either show compassion to the less attractive and less fortunate, a rather easy thing to do, and thereby secure the foundations of your future happiness, or not show compassion to the less attractive and less fortunate, in which case we might have to (excuse me, but) fuk' it up for ya.

You can be an enlightened species, or you can be... the stupid people. The choice is yours.

Scott H wrote:What would it mean for intent to be reliable?

It would mean that evangelizing would be more effective. It might be pertinent to differentiate "intent" from "design", as far as philosophy is concerned, because "intent" is always a posteriori when one is making excuses. It's about mind reading. If you present your design before you produce your prototype, it's called "engineering".

Scott H wrote:If we could already explain what it was we were doing, we wouldn't need to conduct philosophy.

I'll give you that, but then you might need to reciprocate and indicate where philosophy has ever explained what we're doing.

This is an opportunity to remind you that most "explanations" of that sort are really just "excuses". I don't, for example, readily excuse priggish moralizing, when it comes from religious nuts, just because they say they "intend good things". I distrust people who begin by saying they have my best interests in mind when what they have in mind is theirs.

Scott H wrote:

You may amuse yourself by imagining that you are on a mission to eliminate suffering.

Why else would I have stayed alive through retching and nightmares?

We're all free to articulate our mission in life. We must beware of woo, and of making of our efforts nothing but an amusement for other people.

Scott H wrote:We can still get rid of sadism, and if eternal recurrence were real it would at least become more comfortable.

Yet, it is not the goal of all sentient beings, as one might call them. Or one might define sentience as "comfort seeking". Such creative definitions are as arbitrary as anything else in philosophy.

Scott H wrote:Straw Man #2: I am actually claiming that the worldview of counterbalancing pleasure is correct.

Well, don't simply avoid stating your claims because of the special thrill of claiming others are erecting strawmen. If nobody understands what you are claiming, it might not be all their fault. Have you considered that? Or do you see yourself as some sort of genius whose profound intellectual works are simply being misunderstood by a bunch of plodders?

Scott H wrote:It's really a matter of necessity depending on how stupid and foolish the human race is.

Yeah, I think we're closing in on something, here.

Scott H wrote:You can be an enlightened species, or you can be... the stupid people. The choice is yours.

You already offered us the choice, God. Some of us decided that atheism was a better bet, and that species tend to go extinct on their own, with or without moral guidance.

Scott H wrote:You have two choices: either show compassion to the less attractive and less fortunate, a rather easy thing to do, and thereby secure the foundations of your future happiness, or not show compassion to the less attractive and less fortunate, in which case we might have to (excuse me, but) fuk' it up for ya.

Eventually they'll get their hands on a small thermonuclear device, and then we'll see that they mean business. Nobody comes out of something like that smelling like a rose.

Scott H wrote:
Now, turning to Audley Strange's barrage of ad hominem attacks:

Which are relevant since you have at the centre of this bizarre collection of thoughts, your own bleak perception of the world which you have not been shy in discussing. Thus you become part of your notions.

Audley Strange wrote:@ Scott H.

you have, in my opinion, failed to take a coherent philosophical position. You have taken a thought experiment, misunderstood it,

Scott H wrote:
Bare assertion.

On the contrary, you claimed that your notions were based on Neitzche's idea of eternal recurrence. Which is in and of itself says very little that could be considered profound since the process is considered cyclical and mechanistic. I would say your misunderstanding is evinced by your words, which are there for everyone to see and judge for themselves.

made many assertions because of it, extrapolated from those misunderstood assertions

Scott H wrote:
Again, bare assertion (on your part).

Not so...

Scott H wrote:
As I state above, the idea is that the universe actually justifies suffering with pleasure, and that with any significant increase in suffering, there must be a corresponding increase in pleasure to 'justify' it (rather like the conservation of energy, only suffering may not have to exist):As I state above, the idea is that the universe actually justifies suffering with pleasure, and that with any significant increase in suffering, there must be a corresponding increase in pleasure to 'justify' it (rather like the conservation of energy, only suffering may not have to exist):

extrapolation and assertion.

and then made downright bizarre and possibly contradictory claims which are akin to personifying the universe as some kind of sentient entity that can judge incidents and distributes pain and pleasure (not sensation, it actively knows what every sensate entity experiences as pain and pleasure) and goes out of it's way to do so, but it's not god.

Scott H wrote:
I answered this objection on page one:

"It would be built into the laws of nature."

You then said "Bullshit" and denounced my suggestion as 'magic.' I then explained:

"Denouncing it as 'magical' won't help, nor will claiming that the universe is unconscious (which would challenge the entire theory of panpsychism), nor will a straw man anthropomorphization of such a law of nature,"

and you didn't respond. Now, after two pages of debate, you come back spewing personal attacks.

If my "personal attacks" upset you, report them, I've dealt with your complaints about such above. Also I was busy and there was nothing important enough happening on RS to drag me away from real life. I'll be gone for a while again soon, my time for such frivolities as this is limited.

So yes I didn't respond, now I am. You making up shit and then claiming that "you can't just denounce the shit I've made up" leaves you with a heavy burden. You have to prove that your claims are not just magical bullshit. To me claiming some sort of law of nature which judges and distributes pain and pleasure for cosmic balance is just bullshit at best and clandestine theology at worst. I'll stop denouncing it when you can give me a better answer than "well because I say so."

You have not refuted sadism. You have given an assertion of what you claim constituted sadism based on eternal recurrence. If you accept eternal recurrence why can you not accept sadism as a necessary component in such eternal recurrence.

Since you have come on here promoting this concept and claiming you wish to rid the world of Sadism let me ask. If things are all exact reiterations of a previous universe, then this has all happened before and will happen again. We still have sadism. You have failed, always have always will. Thus having ran with the idea of eternal recurrence you have knowingly wasted your own valuable time, always have, always will.

Scott H wrote:
We can still get rid of sadism, and if eternal recurrence were real it would at least become more comfortable.

No if what you said had any merit then the best we could do would be to see Sadism in your terminology. Comfortable to whom? To the person that understood that his role eternally is to be tortured?

Yet this isn't the limit. You claim that pain and pleasure are distributed by an God like sentience called universe as a law of nature in order to sustain itself.

Scott H wrote:
Straw Man #2: I am actually claiming that the worldview of counterbalancing pleasure is correct.

I know you are! You are claiming it is distributed as a universal law of nature. How does the universe make these "justifications" unless it has some form of sentience? This is not a straw man it is the very essence of what you have been saying...

Scott H wrote:
The whole idea of this is that without the pleasure, the rabbit's anguish would throw the universe out of balance ("There is too much suffering!") and the universe therefore grants the sadist a counterbalancing pleasure in order to justify the rabbit's excruciating predicament.

Do you have anything to back such notions up at all?

Yet you want to rid the universe of that which is to say you wish to destroy the universe.

Scott H wrote:
Fallacy of Composition, in any case.

Really? Mea Culpa...

Besides the crass arrogance and insane danger of such an actively nihilistic position,

Scott H wrote:
A position that isn't mine.

Okay..

And if you care (as you claim you do) about people then how you you reconcile such a destructive position which would potentially eliminate all life with your claims of compassion?

Mercy killing?

Scott H wrote:
It's really a matter of necessity depending on how stupid and foolish the human race is. If you create torture chambers, for example, or make a living mockery of the physically deformed on purpose, and you show no sign of abandoning your cruelty, and there is no safer or wiser alternative than to eliminate suffering by destroying the world, then -- sorry to say it -- we might have to.

Now, let me explain something: in this scenario, you'd be just a bunch of idiots. You'd be the ultimate, slobbering sadists in the face of any conceivable compassionate proposal, droning on, puffing out fallacies like clouds of gas while you laugh in the face of your deformed victims. "I don't care how you feel," you'd sneer. "I don't care."

You have two choices: either show compassion to the less attractive and less fortunate, a rather easy thing to do, and thereby secure the foundations of your future happiness, or not show compassion to the less attractive and less fortunate, in which case we might have to (excuse me, but) fuk' it up for ya.

You can be an enlightened species, or you can be... the stupid people. The choice is yours.

Hmm. I find it very interesting that in this rant that you used "you" to refer to humanity rather than "we" except for when you say "in which case we might have to (excuse me, but) fuk' it up for ya."

Still if we are going with the concept of eternal recurrence it matters not one shit does it? If you are right then it's all happened, happening and will happen. You've solved nothing except ending suffering by suggesting mundicide. Good stuff.

One more question, are those non-humans you identify with who intend to "fuck it up for" us not even more Sadistic? After all if they were enlightened surely they would take pity on the dire situation of us dumb domestic apes that know not what we do, rather than be first class motherfuckers. Would they not upset the precious cosmic balance by being so, or are there super enlightened megabeings that will take care of them and show them the error of their ways.

I am not being facetious here. I am pointing out how one can continue to extrapolate wildly from your notions. They can go nowhere forever.