Why use the word God at all?
The word “atheism” was coined before his birth as well.
James was supposedly this hyper rational being, but couldn’t see that?!?!
I’ll go back and look at my discussion between, James, John Bannon and I.
I remember clearly that James and John Bannon both believed in god, they were quarreling over what that meant. I was the atheist of the thread.
I remember another time where I grew a wild hair and made a thread saying, “what if it’s blasphemy to say blasphemy exists?”
James replied that he was “very afraid of me”
Which I thought an odd reply.
Well, I understand that very well. The problem is it does not answer my question. Given that you made an attempt to answer my question but did not do so in the end, I can only conclude that you did not really understand what I asked. You can, but you don’t have to, proceed in your attempts to understand my points. It’s up to you. As far as I am concerned, you are welcome to do so.
Basically, the question that I am asking is: do human beings strive to maximize longevity or do they strive to maximize Integral of Joy Over Time? Notice that this is an either/or situation. You can’t have it both ways.
What does it mean to say that someone is striving to maximize longevity? It means that they would rather live an eternal life of hell than a relatively long life of pleasure. For such people, every life that is long is better than every life that is short.
And what does it mean to say that someone is striving to maximize IJOT? It means that they would rather live a high-IJOT life than a low-IJOT one and this means that they’d choose a short life over a long one if it’s higher in IJOT.
These are two different methods of determining what is better and what is worse.
This suggests to me that, according to JSS, human beings strive to maximize how long they live – not their IJOT. IJOT being merely a means (in the same way that power and growth are means.)
I suppose you didn’t understand what I meant by that statement. What I said is that we all know what the word “happiness” means (even if we don’t know how to verbally describe what it means and what stands behind such phenomena i.e. what causes it.) Have you ever met someone who uses the word “happiness” to mean “pain”? or even worse, to mean “dog”? The point I was making in that thread is that in order to understand what MIJOT is you don’t have to verbally describe the meaning of the word “joy” nor do you have to understand what causes the phenomena that is represented by that word.
lol you took the words right out of my mouth… and i know nothing about the guy other than he looks like the ‘doc’ from back to the future.
i do get a kick out of the ‘theory of everything’ guys, though. especially the ones that started emerging after the 40s when the limits of philosophy had pretty much been reached. ‘designer philosophers’, i call them, and there’s thousands of em all claiming to have figured it all out, and yet none of them agree with each other if they even understand each other at all. but there’s a veritable buffett of leftover and discarded ideas from the analytical period… and that’s what these guys are usually playing around with.
have you noticed something peculiar about the pragmatist movement? james, pierce, rorty and the gang. this movement was a confession of sorts. it said ‘epistemology is over and metaphysics is dead’, more or less. and right about the mid twentieth century the focus took a dramatic turn toward politics and sociology. i see this as a kind of solution to the crisis of the death of philosophy… just as philosophy was the solution to the death of god. the post-structural age is a deconstructive age because of this, i think, but certainly not nihilistic on account of both god and philosophy biting the dust. it’s rather a return to the pragmatism of before with a view toward a progressive dismantling of conservatism and the anachronistic ideology it is built on. there are no more epistemological, metaphysical or ontological problems like there were in the nineteenth century. these subjects are now in the shadow of economic problems more so than ever before. and since you can no longer use philosophy to solve these problems ‘theoretically’ (unless you’re content with twiddling your thumbs), the only genuine philosophical project left is a post-structural deconstruction of all the ideological constructs that brought the world to its current crisis. periodic economy crashes, mass migrations, global warming (of whatever degree), poverty, terrorism, war, etc. all these are in some way or another the effects of a general ‘world weltanschauung’ that has persisted for centuries… and that is no longer able to navigate, much less solve, the brute facts of these problems.
but anyway these ‘theory of everything’ guys are just recreational chatter in the background. you know how many ken wilbers and james s. saints and jakobs there are on the book shelves? more than you can shake a library card at. what we need are good defunked economists, not defunct philosophers.
It’s Peirce, Zoot, not Pierce. It’s more like Purse and less like Peers. And while he did identify himself as pragmatist, he had little to do with James (and even less so with Rorty.) That’s why, later in his life, he renamed his position to pragmaticism. He was very much into metaphysics.
CSP on Agapistic Evolution:
iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/libra … volove.htm
I am having trouble understanding why you think that your question wasn’t answered. I suspect that you didn’t get my point.
That is saying that James did not believe that anyone truly lived for sake of ONLY longevity.
His reasoning was that evolution determines what the eventual highest purpose for lives are. And evolution would naturally eliminate those who tried to live solely for longevity because they would fail.
He explained (in that same post) that in order to succeed (and thus have evolution choose your form of existence over alternatives as what we call “life”) you would have to pursue the right combination of joy and longevity together (“Northwest” - NOT North and NOT West).
He explained that such a necessary “purpose to life” (established by evolution) is difficult to keep clear in mind. And I assume that is what has caused it to take so long for man to figure it out.
Again, he was saying that the purpose of life is already there guiding and refining life toward an eternal joyful state. What is interesting is that he never claimed the thought to be merely handed down from above. Instead he explained why it logically must be true. In other words it was not merely wishful thinking.
I think that is true (as we pointed out the last time we discussed this).
James would have said (and in many ways did) “Stay focused on MIJOT at all cost.” - MORALITY
But he would probably also expect people to constantly get confused and misstep (or as he would say “sin”).
The explanation of what causes that feeling of joy is paramount in understanding why longevity alone cannot be the focus or moral purpose. What is causing the joy is causing the success and thus what evolution is using to establish highest purpose. Evolution eliminates those who cannot sense joy, leaving joy a fundamental requirement of life.
And also keep in mind that he says that the highest purpose, or the “origin of morality” CANNOT be chosen, but must be previously instilled because making a choice requires that a purpose is already there. So everyone’s very first choice can only be made by a higher purpose already existing. People cannot actually choose their highest purpose in life. They can only screw up the one they were born with.
Like I said, he had this morality subject nailed in every detail.
James was into explaining things. God was merely one of them.
I can’t find anywhere James used the word “afraid”. Can you find a reference?
search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&author_id=34903
if you go here, then search for afraid a lot of examples come up, some aimed at other people.
oh c’mon andy, you don’t think i know who THE charlton peirce was? i was talking about daryl pierce… an uh, an old buddy of mine from muncie indiana.
That is not saying that James S. Saint did not believe that there is a single human being striving to maximize how long they live. Rather, it is merely describing the concept of IJOT. It’s unclear from that statement alone whether IJOT is a means or an end.
Right now, I am really only interested in one thing, and that thing is what James thought is the highest goal shared by all humans (not necessarily all living beings, we don’t have to go that far.) I don’t care about the origin of such a goal, that’s beside the point.
There are two competing beliefs in my mind. These are:
James thought that humans (consciously or unconsciously) strive to maximize IJOT and that their success in terms of survival is merely a consequence, a by-product, of such striving.
James thought that humans (consciously or unconsciously) strive to maximize how long they live (not the lifespan of their species) by various means but most successfully by maximizing IJOT.
I am inclined to believe 1.
Thanks. I had just mistyped it in my search.
As stated before, “IJOT is a measure and MIJOT is the goal”
As long as you have that much, I’m sure that you are close enough.
Since he specified “all life” and animals and insects don’t consider old age plans, he wasn’t talking about conscious choices but rather inherent drives and instincts. He was talking about a shared goal and morality for all living beings.
Now that I have read over it about ten times, I am confident about that much.
Right. I take that to be an answer to the question I asked.
Your answer being “It is an end”. Of course, what I meant is maximum integral of joy over time. You are correct that IJOT is a measure and that as such, literally speaking, it’s not something that can be a goal. But when I said “IJOT is the goal” I meant “As much IJOT as possible is the goal” in the same way that when we say “Power is the goal” what we mean is “As much power as possible is the goal”.
I do think that James thinks that all human beings strive to maximize IJOT (i.e. that all human beings choose the perceived path of highest IJOT) rather than other things such as how long they live (i.e. the perceived path of longest life.) It’s just that reading some of James’s posts makes me question that belief.
So yes, it appears that you did answer my question after all, it’s just that I didn’t think, because I wasn’t sure, that you did so.
A simple “It is an end” would have done the job.
There’s been a purging in ILP …
John Bannon was a user here. You cannot search for him.
Uccisore used to say that if anyone knew his sock puppet, that everyone on the boards would be mad at him.
James and uccisore left at the same time.
I think james was uccisore.
I have other reasons to believe this: uccisore used to refer to my private messages with James in debates.
My point being… anything that embarrassed uccisore (or James) would easily be deleted.
I searched HARD for that thread on blasphemy… found nothing
Thanks for clarifying that carleas! John j Bannon … how on earth did you find that!!! From John Bannon !!!
I’ll look it up right now
Arggghhh!!!
I can’t search JohnJBannon or John J Bannon.
At least you found him!!!
It’s in there , spend more time , You will find it. Hi Ecmandu, remember a while ago? There was an echo between us?
I guess after so many reverberations it’s harder to pick up.
As.far.as.James.is.concerned… he let.me.know he was not.up to par.on ontology, or.self valuing
That leaves morality in the sidelines , as far as objective criteria. Ethics . that is of another kilter.
Origin? Basic fear of.proximate neighbor’s snarling teeth, but the little guy can prephase David and.Goliath.
Usually the little guy wins! More brainstuff , better nourished is the key.
Orbie??
I just realized also the silhouette and you and I were in the same threads 6 years ago.
I used to write in paragraphs back then too…
Oh my how time flied…
My persona morphed by it’s self, nothing of a conscious decision to hide and form an alternate reality.
For time is a glue that dissolved over.time, like poof, no passage through measurement, not even signifiers, only a Zen happening.
Just like that, poof.
Ought implies that the world is one way, but should be another.
So within the Ought is an implication for what already is. It’s unsaid but necessarily implied.
You have to get an Ought from an Is. Otherwise there could be no “should be another way”.
Furthermore Ought implies an improvement on what Is, on behalf of the person proposing the Ought. This is where moral disagreements occur. Because, almost always, the Ought is biased to the-self. So person A says it Ought to be this way, person B says another way, and person C says another way as well. Ought is self-serving. Sometimes, people will agree to some general Ought, because it is helpful to their own group, but is detrimental to other groups. This is political-census and “the majority”, sociology. Ultimately, everything must start from what Is, and if the interpretation is accurate (superior) or inaccurate (inferior), then the Ought can proceed to what is morally good (better) for one person or a group, or morally evil (worse) for one person or a group.
Now the hypothesis can be made that people Ought to be “on the same page” (Bible?) concerning the origin of morality, but that is rarely the case. Some people start with science and ‘Evolution’ of sociological interaction within species (kin-selection), while the masses and most of humanity start with religious indoctrination and God’s Word. Why do most people start with God’s Word? Because it’s easier to proceed through life having somebody else (Priest?) do your thinking, believing, faith, reasoning, and moral guidance for you. It’s easier to outsource then it is to Do-It-Yourself.
Because moral-belief has been outsourced for so long (to Theologians, Moral Authorities, Priestly Class, etc), the “Reality” of moral origins don’t really matter. It doesn’t really matter to the person who believes in God’s Divine Creation, and Damnation to Hell, whether his/her religious belief is “real” (realistic) or not. Instead, people are pragmatic, especially women. They will do, say, and believe as the Priest/God commands of them, because they desire the practical benefits of it. Churches instill a sense of community, reinforcement of moral order, marital laws, relationships, the ‘Joy’ of fanaticism, etc. People mostly want the Benefits. They want the cake and fruit-punch. The mumbo-jumbo of moral dilemmas is left up to “their betters”, meaning priests or anti-priests (philosophers).