This is probably asked all the time, but how do you justify the eating of animals, philosophically?

I do eat meat, but I believe that animals have feelings and are just a human as us.

I dislike some concepts of psychological diagnosis, not because it can sometimes be useful, but because it encourages people diagnosed with mental disorders to act like if they were aliens and free from the law. My parents agree with my opinion too: in fact, they told me that at the age of 3, after i took some tests, I got labeled with High functioning autism (Asperger's). They never told me that until now (I have recently celebrated my 14th birthday) and I'm glad that they always treated me like a normal human being: yeah, i had some psychological problems, like weird speech and extreme anxiety, but I fixed them with the help of my psychologist. On the right side, they often tell me that I am a genius, even though I acutally don't believe it. People who got labeled with autism usually are treated like wild beasts and eventually become wrathful and dishonest. PS: Who cares if I have autism or not after all. Nobody should care about that. If you have problems, don't use a label like autism as a pass just because you are too lazy and you don't want to fix them.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a native speaker, so please excuse any language errors.

I'm currently 22 and I'd really appreciate your insights on my thoughts and some feedback.

Alright, straight to the point, going back to the basic questions:

1. Why does the world exist?
2. What are we supposed to do with our existence?

• First of all these to me seem more like answered scientific questions. The reason I'm saying this, if for example ( in very simplistic terms and ideas for the sake of comprehension) scientists reach the end of the universe and see codes, bites etc and manage this way to prove that we live in eg a video game. Then, automatically the real meaning of our lives would be that we were created by some more advanced/powerful species that somehow preexisted to basically entertain them. Thus, someone could argue that if we were able to do anything at all at that point then we should probably try to break out of that artificial world we are trapped in and try to get to the real world where the aliens are. That means that we would've a straight answer to both a) and b).

• I believe in science. I just think it is the closest legitimate thing we humans have created to be able to understand the world.The reason why I trust it is because it seems to work, I see its applications in my daily life eg cars, aeroplanes,surgeries etc. I do lack knowledge though and I do somehow doubt the scientific method, in the sense of: what if it is outdated? What if it doesn't encompass all case studies? What if there is a better way? But I feel like, right now if you want to learn the truth, science is the closest you'll get to it.

• I don't believe in God. (Unless it's proven by science.) To me God, is the easy answer. “Why does it rain? Because God is Sad” etc. It just seems like an uneducated guess. I tend to believe that one of the many reasons humans preserved God for so long iss because it's a way to cope with their insignificance when looking at the enormity of the cosmos.

• We are born, we live, we die. It is this living that is bothering me. How am I supposed to live my life?

Thing is in my mind there are two worlds: A) The real world, meaning the earth, solar system universe and the scientific approach that all of this is slowly switching off, so everything we are doing is coming to an end, disappearing never to be seen again.

B) The human world, which is a subset of the real world which seems like a microworld where we are sucked into a total different reality with different rules and where people seem to live ignoring/forgetting what is really happening and only seem to regain consciousness during certain periods of their lives called "Life crises" only to be sucked again into the human reality.

I have no Philosophy background and my knowledge in general is very limited I don't know the ideas or the branches that exists and you might think I'm misusing the idea of Philosophy here trying to practically apply it to my life. But if, humans and the world will one day disappear then in my mind the following holds true:

• That nothing is meaningful. That life should be seen as an experience. The same way you are landing on a new country for some days knowing you'll most likely never return and try to fit into your trip as much as good experiences as possible, to discover and experience stuff just for the sake of it just because you had the opportunity and why not have fun? So, it's like being the main character in an adventure. Like a nomad. I understand that this approach is sort of selfish. This makes me think it's important for me to travel meaning to explore that world, to see what it is like, to meet other people, to fall in love and to create. In my mind it's like a colourful celebration dancing around the fireplace. Having children, to add this is in, doesn't make much sense in my mind either. It's just like, I came, I experienced, I leave. Although this seems to be my reasoning if everything is going to die anyways, it is only in theory, because I live in the human world.

• In the human world, I forget about the real world. In the human world I have to care about money, status about laws, social psychology, ethics etc and so many other things. I saw two cats fighting the other day as I was walking past them and I was like you are so stupid. Like, you are fighting right now in front of me doing everything you are supposed to do in the cat world when in reality from my point of view it's meaningless cause if I want to I can kill you both. It's just like, in retrospect everything we do in the human world when looking from above is mostly meaningless.

I don't know if I have puzzled you. It's just like, knowing what I know, I'm certain I don't know how to live my life. There isn't a handbook for life and I reject the ones given from various religions, although I'm definitely sure I'm affected even subconsciously by a lot of their teachings since the majority of the world is lead by them eg Christianity and I grew up in that society.

Like, being nice to your peers and helping the poor makes sense if you think that this is the law send by God and the earth is a testing period that will determine if you'll go to heaven or earth etc. But since, I don't believe in that I'm now called to reinvent my own values which I'll live my life by and it's very difficult, it is giving me headaches.

Any comments truly appreciated.

Hi I’m looking for a philosopher who is concerned with the following work: the idea that it’s impossible to put a label on yourself because thoughts don’t have physical properties. I hope I’ve explain that well enough. Do any philosophers do work about this idea?

Hi! Need help on a philosophical reflection on this statement:

Dialogue is required in creative fidelity. The obstacles to genuine dialogue are seeming, speechifying, and imposition.

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I made an introduction video (2 mins) to Christian Philosophy, designed for non-Christians and non-philosophers. Here. Could I obtain some input on the content to know if it is too simple or too complex?

Thesis: If Christianity is true, then believing in its claims does not have to start with blind faith in divine revelations but can start with philosophy.

Simply put, the argument is:

1. Philosophy is the search for truth,
2. And if Christianity is true,
3. Then Philosophy will (likely) find Christianity.

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I was listening to this talk by a British philosopher lady about “what is philosophy used for,” it was about a 26-27 min long video and she talked about the belief system & overcoming self-limiting beliefs(judgments etc). I feel like I got the link from this sub but I can’t l find it anymore nor is it in my web history, she was from university of London I think? Anyone have that link?

What is holiness/divinity supposed to be? It's a concept that seems to appear across religions and cultures. Pagan religions from Europe, East Asia and pacific islands have sacred mountains, sacred forests and sacred leaders. Buddhist, Hindu and Abrahamic religions also have holy sites and artefacts. What does this divine status mean in a metaphysical sense? And how does a person or place achieve it?

hard determinism has the same problem as the "teleological argument"

A) the deterministic argument is based on the empirical experience/observation of causality in the world

B) but that empirical experience/observation, per se, never provides evidence of necessary and inevitable causality (hard determinism).

C) thus hard determinism is something separate from the strictly empirical experience/observation

D) thus the step from the "degree of causality indicated by experience/observation" to the "highest possibile degree of causality" (which is inevitable causality --- hard determinism) is something demanded by pure reason

E) and this is an unjustifiable "ontological leap".

The modus operandi is the same as the (fallacious) teleological proof of God.

I experience a certain order, an intelligent (or intelligible) design in the world (the "fine tuned universe").

Therefore, from the solid ground of (empirical/ontological) experience, I attempt a desperate leap to fly into the thin air of pure (logical) possibility of the actual existence of a Being embodying that order and that intelligent design at the highest possible degree (God), without even admittind I left the ground.

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A brief defense of Dialectical Materialism (I published this in a post a few days ago and an admin told me it's better suited here so here it is)

I often see in some discussions regarding Marxist Philosophy that it is very common the belief that Dialectical Materialism wasn't present in either Marx or Engels just because that formulation isn't found in their work, and that, instead, it was just a dogmatic theory (the "diamat") made by Soviet academics for their manuals; and, accompanying this conception, the conviction that Marx was just a purely socio-economic scientist and philosopher which didn't support any particular position regarding natural sciences nor any philosophical worldview.

This is not true, and is, in fact, a deep mistake that makes impossible to understand Marxism properly. I will try to explain here why in a very very basic, synthetic and even brute way, so that my general point can be easily digested, as far as I can.

I will quote two statements, and I will put their references as footnotes, like this: "blablabla". (n), where "n" will be the number of the footnote. In the footnote itself, I will write the source from where the quote is from (the APA thing), as well as the same quote repeated, but in Spanish. Why would I do that? Because I took these two references second-handly from a book in Spanish (whose argument is what I'm mainly following), and the book's references are from editions in Spanish. After all, It's easier to find the quoted statement in a book in its original language with just a quick word search (Ctrl-F). I will put the full reference this book at the bottom of the post ("consulted works"), and, below it, the full reference of another one that covers the same topic and I consider relevant as well. I'm not putting the quotes' references nor the books ones from editions in English cuz I'm lazy (and in the case of the books, idk if there are even editions in English). But if this gets some attention and the demand for it is high, I will put them as well.

I don't know if I have explained this clearly. Maybe I have put too much effort. Anyway, if you have doubts, feel free to ask.

I begin now.

Dialectical materialism was developed by both Marx and Engels, as well as their disciples: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Gonzalo, etc. It's true that the term "dialectical materialism" doesn't appear in their texts but rather later, first in the work of Plekhanov and then in the work from the rest of the founders of Marxism stated above, but that doesn't mean that their dialectical and materialist conceptions aren't, in fact, dialectical and materialist.

It's true that many Soviet manuals do commit deterministic and naturalistic mistakes, but this don't apply to the works of the founders of marxism. The idea that Marx didn't have any worldview, which has been propelled by academic revisionists such as the Neue Lektüre, and which has its root in an anti-engelsian current that appeared in "occidental marxism", is not consistent at all, and there is plenty of evidence of it:

Marx and Engels had to divide their work so that Marx could finish The Capital while Engels exposed the basic elements of dialectical materialism in Anti-Dühring and in Dialectics of Nature, and Marx never rejected it (he even wrote one of the chapters of the Anti-Dühring). Marx knew Engels work, both A-D and DoN, even praising the later in one letter to Wilhelm Alexander Freund stating that it was "incomparably more important" than the A-D. (1)

But even those that, independently of Marx's opinion, think that Engels' dialectics of nature was not marxist, aren't consequent knowing that many of this critics attack a supposedly mechanistic and deterministic base on Engels. This can't be the case knowing that Engels criticized these very mistakes from his own rivals in his letters, and that his emphasis on the materialistic side of his dialectical materialist thought comes from his historical context, in which he had to defend materialism against idealism (like with the left hegelians) than dialectics against metaphysics in order to demarcate and separate Marxism from other currents of though which, inversely, emphasized idealism.

But this doesn't come from forgetting the dialectical part, because, as it can be seen in his Ludwig Feuerbach..., it remains as the key to his criticism against those conceptions that require the supernatural and therefore God as the external-from-matter source of its movement, and this idea is not present in Engels' thought because he thinks dialectically. He understands that movement is the counterpart of matter, not an external addition to it. In other words, that matter doesn't move because of a finite chain of external causes that necessary lead to God, as movement is not external but intrinsic to matter (just as thermodynamic laws imply). Indeed, in LW..., he states against Hegel, the one that developed idealism the most, that if men "only existed out of condescension of the Idea", freedom would be impossible. (2)

This is absolutely incompatible with both idealism and mechanistic materialism. It's incompatible with idealism because it rejects that an absolute consciousness comes before matter in movement and instead accepts that infinite matter in infinite movement constitute the base of consciousness; but also incompatible with mechanistic materialism because accepting what we have just said means, one, to accept that causes of things are internal to them and therefore understandable only through them, not externally, mechanistically; and two, that human life must also be understood in the same way, which implies to assume volition, subjectivity, consciousness, as the specific way in which it determines itself on the base of its condition as an animal that objectifies/produces itself through labor. Determination of humanity comes mainly within it, not externally, mechanistically, and that's why it can free itself (specifically, through the Proletarian Revolution).

In conclusion, anti-Engelsianism, and therefore a "purely social philosopher" conception of Marx that reduces his thought to just the critique of political economy and that rejects "Orthodox Marxism" (which is really just Marxism) as the true development trajectory of Marxism after Marx, is simply and plainly unsustainable.

Footnotes:

1. Carlos Marx y Federico Engels: Cartas sobre las ciencias de la naturaleza y las matemáticas, ed. cit. , p. 90.; "Incomparablemente más importante".

2. Federico Engels: "Ludwig Feuerbach y el fin de la filosofía clásica alemana", en Carlos Marx y Federico Engels: Obras escogidas (en tres tomos), Ed. Progreso, t. lll, Moscú, 1980, p. 362.; "Existir solo por condescendencia de la Idea".

Consulted works:

Arencibia, P. R. (2019). Marxismo y dialéctica de la naturaleza. Edithor; M., B. A. J. (1979).

Ávila, B. J. Conocer Engels y Su Obra. DOPESA.

I hope I have written these well. I always make a mess with the APA thing.

The following assumes pantheism is true.

Imagine, if God is present in all things could the symphony of life actually be an opportunity for God to judge and reconstitute itself? The idea of hell can be understood as being apart from the presence of God, like the whole of God cast you, a piece of God, out. I find this very interesting. I guess a maximally great being can't be maximally great if it needs to be reconstituted or changed, though, right?

Alternate Universes Lets say they did exist Lets say millions of universe’s Lets say infinite possibilities Now doesn’t that mean theres a universe where alternate universes dont exist????

Which philosophy books are you reading currently? I just started “Classical Philosophy” by Peter Adamson. Any recommendations?

Tell me what you think

Any criticism welcome This general idea is going to be a thesis of an essay I’m writing:

Society or humanity should be considered in an analogy as to a person. I hope that my view of humanity as a “young adult listening to jimmy hendricks, loaded walking down the street, back towards his humble abroad to swift away into slumber and be brazenly awoken the next morning to a seemingly endless hypocrical scenarios in which he requires of himself to act based on inherited notions, conciliatory and unconscious still unproven” is true because if so that means that boy loaded has dreams and intelligence and struggles and triumphs and growth and rapture and sex and money and the immediate need for both and agreement of worthlessness at the same time. It has a search for purpose for it role (career) and it continues everyday to try and configure an understanding of how to move forward. All the while attempting to grasp at the past while barely even acknowledging the Now. We are as us. This opens many windows in the understanding of Us, Me, We and what we and I and Us will be a part of.

Thx

Assume that this universe isn't eternal and there is no higher realm this universe is part of.
(It has a beginning and an end and is all that exists.)
Then it might only be up to us, observers, that the universe exists right now. Why?

Most of us believe that everthing in this world follows logical steps,
from the atomic scale to the astronomical scale, from physics to chemistry to biology
and so on. With this deterministic view we can imagine the Big Bang as step s0,
the next step would be s1, s2, s3, (which contains the formation of particles and galaxies)
and so on, until we reach step sN, the creation of a conscious observer.
From now on, it could still be a long chain of steps sN+1, sN+2, etc.
until the final endpoint sE is reached, the end of the universe.

Now if the universe isn't eternal, there is no universe at all before s0 or after sE, only in between. It's like a huge calculation being made and after the calculation is finished,
it has no use anymore, (because there is no higher realm which could make use of it, see above). It's like baking a cake with a recipe, step after step, and when the cake is ready, it has noone to eat it after. Or imagine a rendering process. From the very start of a 3D model a computer calculates the materials and the light to render a final image. But the image is never used after its creation.

Now imagine, that the universe had never created a conscious observer or imagine,
all of humanity and other living things ceased to exist. What is the universe now other than a predetermined calculation from s0 to sE, where calculation time doesn't play a role anymore because there is no observer which would check the steps in between (sN, sN+1,...)? So, in other words, sE is already reached in no time, and therefore s0 to sE is nothing more than a timeless (call it:) very huge algorithm, without a use because there is no higher realm to use the algorithm.

So without a conscious observer there are no steps sN, sN+1, .... to be observed in time. We could still argue that the universe would exist without humanity, it would do what it does, but if the determism is true, sE is already reached with the start of s0, so that it becomes obsolete, without any further use and without any observer to check the steps in between.

Without any conscious observer the end of the universe would be reached in no time,
and this equals no universe at all.
So without any conscious observer there is no universe at all.
It's only up to us, that the universe exists right now.

Like Soc, Lao Tzu, and Epictetus. What other philosophers were wrote about but never wrote anything themselves?

And of course the vegan sock puppet accounts really went into overdrive on that now removed factory farming thread. Really looks bad when you get caught evading the post time outs, vote manipulating, and generally sock puppeting to harass people.

The accusations that eating meat is rape (yea one of the socks kept harping on this) and endlessly harassing people with it was sure something, or the lack of a retort to the mirror issue of abortion when a fetus has the potential to be a thinking human.

I'll edit this with my closing point since I decided to write up something seriously discussing it with one of the not-socks-puppets.

My last comment:

As someone who went through severe depression, having a wide variety of tasty food was one of the things that made that period of my life survivable (60-70+ hour work weeks month after month). Part of that was my own financial position being good enough to afford the luxury, and part of that was the ease of availability of that variety of food including meats.

Imagine telling a poor farmer picking strawberries all day (not me for the record) he can't have Al Pastor tacos when he gets home because pork is now exclusively the domain of the rich because we've outlawed efficient means of production of it like factory farms? He's just supposed to man up and eat his soylent? That's cruel on a level far beyond anything we do to the livestock because that animal can actually consider his place in the universe and how much it sucks.

Edit: and to retort to the "slaughterhouses are traumatic for the workers" argument that's been brought up in these comments: did you know there's only one way to skin a cat well? Veteranarians going through training have to practice skinning animals (among other trainings) to get over their revulsion to it and become desensitized to how horrible it is. It's the same for human doctors in their residency, a good friend had to tell a woman screaming at her that she was going to die in the next few days. They have to see horrible horrible shit to learn and perform their job. Trauma sucks, support structures for the workers are important. The thing is the workers actually internalize that trauma, it's part of being human, meanwhile you give a factory pig a corpse of its fellow and it will chow down on it, completely ignorant of whatever moral and ethical quandaries you try to ascribe to the animal.

Edit2: if your argument relies on comparing livestock to oppressing an other I don't care about your argument because it's based on a moralistic pretense that an animal is in the same league of consideration as a person. I'd rather we fully mechanized the slaughterhouses so less humans are involved personally.