Biggest Philosophical Challenges to Your Worldview

[John Dule]

In this thread, we post philosophers or philosophical concepts that are the most damaging to your personal philosophy, or at least ones that trouble you.

My list:

David Hume: The idea that what we consider "causality" isn't technically observable, and that we only identify causation through sheer force of habit, is pretty damaging to any philosophy that values scientific inquiry and materialism.

Determinism: On the flip side of Hume, determinism argues that everything is causation, which means that there are no parallel universes, alternate histories, or possibilities aside from what is. This makes a ton of intuitive sense to me, but at the same time it negates individual agency in the world, which is a core tenet of libertarianism. I still think that we can parse a definition of "Free Will" out that can still exist in a deterministic world, but it's clearly not as strong a definition as we would have had otherwise.

Solipsism: I think pretty much everyone should include this on their list, as it's effectively impossible for any of us to know that the world outside of our own consciousness exists. I don't see a way around this, and I'm not in the habit of ignoring facts that I find disturbing, so I have to concede that the only thing that I know with 100% accuracy is that I have thoughts.

Thomas Hobbes: Hobbes probably presents the best arguments against a libertarian society that I've ever heard, which is why I love him. I have never heard such an intellectually brilliant argument for authoritarianism from anyone else; I think that Hobbes should be viewed as the true counterbalance to libertarianism rather than Marx. His explanation for the emergence and necessity of the state is hard to argue against (though I have tried).

Ludwig Wittgenstein: I have said many times that I am a nationalist, but only for practical political reasons. After looking into Wittgenstein, I've come to believe that language (rather than race or culture) is the biggest division between humans, and that so long as we don't all share a common language that we have a near-equal command over, we're going to need to maintain separate states and communities. As a result, I have to endorse everything that entails from nation-statehood, including warfare, state loyalty, borders, and many other things that don't comport with a libertarian worldview. It's unfortunate, but again, I try to engage with reality.

Utilitarianism: I think that we are ultimately all utilitarians, at least in the narrow sense that if we understood that our preferred ideologies would result in ruin and catastrophe, we'd abandon them. This means that we implicitly value the ends over the means that we achieve them by, which I think goes for everyone but the most hardcore ideologues.

[Mr. Smith]

I assume this in relation to the macro-level known as politics? My views on a micro-level, where government is not a factor tend to be almost in opposition, much in the same macroeconomics and microeconomics differ

Bakunin and Emma Goldman's takes on Anarchism: They make an excellent case for Anarchism/Libertarianism that I have ever heard, and yes, I do consider it and libertarianism to be one and the same...especially if my views, communitarian, keep being lumped in as authoritarian. They answer almost perfectly what Ayn Rand utterly fails at.

Post Leninist Communism: Basically, they end up being the "bad example" of my general viewpoints. If Bakunin makes an excellent point against the state, post-Lenin Communism is an excellent example of what happens when the government goes too far. Ironically, it is supposed to be a middle process over to anarchy, itself antithetical to my views.

Nazism: Once again, a bad example of community, but I only have this here because most gravitate towards this as an example of statism. However, given how they largely allowed all sorts of deregulation and markets to go on on the condition of race, I personally don't see it fitting as communitarian.

Wilsonianism/Happy Warrior-[Scoop] Jacksonionan Neoconservatism: Despite the hypocrisies inherent, I tend to be isolationist and anti-intervention mostly because I see intervention as money taken away from building up the nation state and all the necessary programs. However, the world becoming more and more globalized and the problems that come when "the world isn't safe for democracy" make it hard to swallow completely ducking out. One only need look at the Rwanda genocide for all what happens when the back is turned.

Edward Snowden: I just read his autobiography recently, and he's literally the only person who has effectively refuted the "nothing to hide" argument regarding government surveillance. He's the only person that effectively made a good distinction between community interests and state interests. Everyone else just seems requote Jefferson's "those who would put security over freedom deserve neither", which seems counter-intuitive to me...after all, where's the freedom to do anything if other people are trampling you and your security just using their rights. No one else, especially not Ayn f*(king Rand, nor Goldwater, nor any of those libertarians.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

David Hume is actually at the top of my list too. I think Pyrrhonian skepticism is just as challenging to religious revelation as it is to scientific inquiry, and for many of the same reasons. He's a favorite philosopher of mine for exactly that reason--I like a challenge.

George Berkeley presents the strongest case for idealism I'm aware of; I tend to lean more materialist despite believing in supernatural agencies within the world. The idea that a mind-independent physical world doesn't really exist is incredibly damaging to my understanding of things, and as Berkeley presents it, it's difficult to effectively dispute.

Rose Wilder Lane (yes, she was Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter) deserves a shout-out because she was a cofounder of the Libertarian Party and her Dale Gribble-like prickly kookiness makes libertarianism seem far more appealing to me than attempts to present the ideology as straitlaced and conventional-success-oriented do. I find her anti-socialist polemics far more entertaining, and thus in some sense compelling, than the slicker and glibber ones of someone like H.L. Mencken or even Evelyn Waugh.

Ippen Shōnin (now almost forgotten, but much of his writing still exists) and Kalonymus Kalman Shapira are the non-Christian theologians I've found most compelling and thus the ones who've presented the strongest challenges to the specifically Christian aspects of my worldview.

[John Dule]

Edward Snowden: I just read his autobiography recently, and he's literally the only person who has effectively refuted the "nothing to hide" argument regarding government surveillance. He's the only person that effectively made a good distinction between community interests and state interests. Everyone else just seems requote Jefferson's "those who would put security over freedom deserve neither", which seems counter-intuitive to me... after all, where's the freedom to do anything if other people are trampling you and your security just using their rights. No one else, especially not Ayn f*(king Rand, nor Goldwater, nor any of those libertarians.

I don't understand the assertion that the rights of others could somehow make you less free.

[afleitch]

This is a really good thread.

While being a philosophiser, I'm not as interested in outright philosophy as you might think. As for being challenged, I've had a lot of that in recent years resulting in a bit of reordering of my world view where the opposing view point is now the one I used to hold. So there's a bit of balance now whetr once there was conflict

In terms of challenging my atheism the Islamic Muʿtazila school of thought has opened up the strongest door to deism, particularly extending the the notion of 'taklif'; "God does not order the soul of any of his creation, that which is beyond its capacity' and it's proto-utilitarian concepts of good and evil all of which is eye-openingly robust and powerful. So much so that their position (in not relying as heavy on scriptural 'exposure' to ascertain the existence of god) is that I should effectively now accept that ontological truth. And some of my Muslim friends have suggested that too.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Dunno. Maybe Tyler Cowen's argument that if you count the welfare of people living in the future, then rather than making sure people are not deprived today the economy should instead be geared towards innovation and producing as much wealth as possible to be distributed to future generations. There's also a great deal of moral force behind the view that the nation state is an inherently illegitimate construct that relies on violence to maintain its borders and privileges welfare to its citizens when many more destitute people in the world are excluded by said violence.

Also veganism seems pretty well inarguable on a philosophical level but I still eat meat. Shrug.

And there's Nietzsche's worry that society's belief in the equality of man is inimical to the flourishing of great creative souls.  

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Like Marxism, religion also makes the false assumption of equality among humans

Depends on the religion.

[Mopsus]

And there's Nietzsche's worry that society's belief in the equality of man is inimical to the flourishing of great creative souls.  

Nietzsche is the only philosopher I find challenging to my moral philosophy, which distinguishes between moral and immoral actions as those whose negative consequences we can suffer with a good conscience vs. those we can’t. But with Nietzsche’s amor fati, he raises a specter similar to the image British-Americans had of Native Americans, or Greeks and Romans of Celts - a race of people who at all times did whatever they pleased, because they were inhumanly indifferent to pain and death. I find that position inimical, but I don’t think I can argue with it.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

And there's Nietzsche's worry that society's belief in the equality of man is inimical to the flourishing of great creative souls. 

Nietzsche is the only philosopher I find challenging to my moral philosophy, which distinguishes between moral and immoral actions as those whose negative consequences we can suffer with a good conscience vs. those we can’t. But with Nietzsche’s amor fati, he raises a specter similar to the image British-Americans had of Native Americans, or Greeks and Romans of Celts - a race of people who at all times did whatever they pleased, because they were inhumanly indifferent to pain and death. I find that position inimical, but I don’t think I can argue with it.

The thing is, both of those images were just that, images; neither colonial-era Native Americans nor ancient Celts were actually like that.

[Mopsus]

And there's Nietzsche's worry that society's belief in the equality of man is inimical to the flourishing of great creative souls. 

Nietzsche is the only philosopher I find challenging to my moral philosophy, which distinguishes between moral and immoral actions as those whose negative consequences we can suffer with a good conscience vs. those we can’t. But with Nietzsche’s amor fati, he raises a specter similar to the image British-Americans had of Native Americans, or Greeks and Romans of Celts - a race of people who at all times did whatever they pleased, because they were inhumanly indifferent to pain and death. I find that position inimical, but I don’t think I can argue with it.

The thing is, both of those images were just that, images; neither colonial-era Native Americans nor ancient Celts were actually like that.

Be that as it may, how humans have historically been doesn't necessarily determine how humans ought to be (we are talking about morality here). Not unless you believe in a universal human nature, which I do, but I acknowledge that that's mostly an unproven assumption.

[Mr. Smith]

Edward Snowden: I just read his autobiography recently, and he's literally the only person who has effectively refuted the "nothing to hide" argument regarding government surveillance. He's the only person that effectively made a good distinction between community interests and state interests. Everyone else just seems requote Jefferson's "those who would put security over freedom deserve neither", which seems counter-intuitive to me... after all, where's the freedom to do anything if other people are trampling you and your security just using their rights. No one else, especially not Ayn f*(king Rand, nor Goldwater, nor any of those libertarians.

I don't understand the assertion that the rights of others could somehow make you less free.

So you honestly can't see how if you gave people all these rights, utterly unmitigated,that they could use these very rights to at best limit the rights of others, at worst murder them, depriving them of their rights.

We do not live in a vacuum where our actions only affect us and us alone, other people can and do pay the consequences for what we do.

[Mr. Smith]

And just for fun, time for own problems with critiques of collectivism/communitarianism

Libertarians: They tell you that "for the greater good" is a scam, and they worry about intervention ruining people's rights. But they do not account for or refuse to account for what happens when choices are made that may harm others on a large scale. There is a ripple effect that cannot be escaped because humanity is inherently social and we as individuals usually choose whom to go with. Negative liberties need to be curbed in order to promote positive ones. Libertarianism inherently appears to be an ideology that insists on running away from a very fundamental part of human nature, when it ought be debating it. Those that say "think for yourselves" often tend be ones that expect others to agree with them on these merits.

Social liberals [and economic ones to an extent too]: They tell you to just jump over and accept any last social trend with an open mind with little regard for the consequences of said trend. They put so much focus on accepting individual identities but with very little understanding of the baggage that may come from the culture of said identities. They worry about narrow-mindedness and like libertarians, fear hive-minds and tradition, but don't seem to think much about WHY a tradition is what is it is.

Conservatives/Statists: Often make the mistake that they themselves are the only part of the community, and that only their own rules work, and they then draw from one dwindling source, which becomes rigid and stale. They are often right to look towards the tried and true, even in regards to people, but for differing reasons, they are absolutely blind to perversions of said rules.


Free-market Economists: Assumes that collectivization will lead to less productivity and a lesser quality of life, when really, it just even the playing field. Also, collectivization is better for treating larger issues outside control of humanity, whereas the free market obsesses just what people buy, and people buy all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons, for good intent, bad intent, and frivolity...but the consequence towards the environment could still be terrible in the end.


New Atheism: Like libertarianism, it's just a big cover-up of a big fundamental question. Instead of trying to debate and understand the unexplainable, it's just a big "no"...not even a shrug. Far too much reliance on the absolute and concrete and not enough placement on the abstract.  Humanism, Agnosticism, these are tenets of atheism I respect, but outright shutting the door on the supernatural? Absolutely not.

[John Dule]

Edward Snowden: I just read his autobiography recently, and he's literally the only person who has effectively refuted the "nothing to hide" argument regarding government surveillance. He's the only person that effectively made a good distinction between community interests and state interests. Everyone else just seems requote Jefferson's "those who would put security over freedom deserve neither", which seems counter-intuitive to me... after all, where's the freedom to do anything if other people are trampling you and your security just using their rights. No one else, especially not Ayn f*(king Rand, nor Goldwater, nor any of those libertarians.

I don't understand the assertion that the rights of others could somehow make you less free.

So you honestly can't see how if you gave people all these rights, utterly unmitigated,that they could use these very rights to at best limit the rights of others, at worst murder them, depriving them of their rights.

We do not live in a vacuum where our actions only affect us and us alone, other people can and do pay the consequences for what we do.

If everyone has, at a bare minimum, the right to their personal bodily autonomy, then I don't see how that comes into conflict with the rights of anyone else. The idea that rights are a zero-sum game for society is pretty baseless.

New Atheism: Like libertarianism, it's just a big cover-up of a big fundamental question. Instead of trying to debate and understand the unexplainable, it's just a big "no"...not even a shrug. Far too much reliance on the absolute and concrete and not enough placement on the abstract.  Humanism, Agnosticism, these are tenets of atheism I respect, but outright shutting the door on the supernatural? Absolutely not.

This is a very hot take. Which atheists are saying that we shouldn't try to understand phenomena that we don't have explanations for? That's what religion is; it's an attempt to avoid understanding why something happens and to put an end to the debate altogether. No atheist I know has "shut the door on the supernatural." We simply say that there is no evidence for it, and therefore no reason to believe in it. If I were to see ample evidence to the contrary, I would change my mind. It's as simple as that.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Very interesting idea for a thread. Let's see.

The Problem of Other Minds: This encompasses solipsism, as Dule correctly noted, but the problem to me runs much deeper than that. Sure, it is unsettling to realize we have no proof that other people exist, that they have a consciousness just like our own. But most people are willing to take that leap of faith, and in a sense our instincts here provide for what our reason can't account for. The true existential horror lies in accepting that other people exist, and that we have no way of ever truly understanding then. Sure, we have developed some very crude means of communication, but those are faulty, unreliable, deliberately falsifiable, and even if they were accurate, only cover a minuscule fragment of what goes on inside a human mind. For all intents and purposes, we remain locked in the prison of our own minds. As someone who believes humanity's highest calling is universal love and understanding (to give you an idea, I think the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion was beautiful and one of the happiest endings I've ever seen), this is an important, if tragic, reality check.

Divine Command Theory (Anscombe): I believe in objective morality, and I don't believe in God (at least not affirmatively). That's far from an uncommon combination of beliefs, but it's one that's very hard to speak coherently about. Anscombe makes a very compelling argument that most of the moral vocabulary we use ("ought", "right", "duty", etc.) only makes sense if we presuppose the existence of a law-giving creator God. If we remove that, most of the major moral theories that have been proposed for the past 300-400 years (whether deontological or consequentialist) completely fall apart. Traditional Christian (or really Abrahamic) morality worked a coherent system that made postulates and derived moral conclusions from them. Secular morality has been incapable of proposing an equally coherent alternative, instead too often recycling Christian concepts devoid of their original context and melding them into a conceptual mumbo-jumbo. I do not think (and neither does Anscombe) that a coherent secular theory of morality is impossible, but it's awfully hard to build one with the language we currently use. Realizing that was illuminating to me, and helped me figure out why I was hitting a roadblock in trying to articulate my thoughts on morality.

Subjectivism (Nietzsche): On the diametrically opposite end of the moral-philosophical spectrum, it's impossible for a proponent of objective morality not to seriously grapple with Nietzsche's critique. His way of delving into the history of concepts and ideas and unveil the power structures that underlie them makes him kind of a precursor to postmodernism. And with regard to moral systems, he paints the compelling picture of a masquerade serving to cover up the emptiness of most people's existence. Knowing all we know, it's hard to reject that picture wholesale. Nietzsche's alternative is not nihilism, as edgy internet teens would have you know, but rather subjectivism, wherein each individual is responsible for constructing their own moral principles to live by. This is a genuinely seductive notion, and it might be in practice what I am striving to do. But I cannot accept this any more than I can accept solipsism. If humanity is to be truly reunited, then there must be some common moral ideal that all should reach. It's hard to find, perhaps even impossible, but it must exist in some metaphysical sense.

Determinism: Unlike John, I'll confidently say that I am a determinist. I believe that the laws of causality are absolute and universal, so that, if someone knew everything about the universe at time T, they would be able to know everything that would happen after T. I know the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics pokes holes in that idea, but frankly, the Copenhagen interpretation strikes me as pseudoscientific in nature. The problem is that accepting the universal law of causality makes it hard conceptually to think of individual choices as meaningful. If whatever I do, I was always going to do it anyway, then why should I put any thought (whether moral or practical) into my actions? The answer exists, and it's quite simple in a way, but it's hard to articulate rigorously. The best I can say right now is that we're all part of the flow of causality, and from our individual perspective, what we do is not predetermined, and can never be.

Tribalism (Schmitt): All right, let's get a little more political. I don't believe that politics is, in principle, that which pertains to "the distinction between friend and enemy" (if you pressed me for a definition, I'd go a more conventional route and say it's that which pertains to the socially sanctioned use of coercion). However, I do recognize that "the distinction between friend and enemy" plays a fundamental role to the practice of politics. That is strikingly visible in this age, where crass xenophobia and the crudest forms of tribalism are trendy again. But looking back on the past centuries, I find it hard to deny that almost every mass political movement was founded on an in-group vs out-group distinction. Whether it's a product of muh human nature or of socioeconomic circumstances, I do not know, but it is a reality for the foreseeable future. And those who, like me, aspire to universal human brotherhood, nonetheless need to accept this reality and work within its parameters. One of the unfortunate conclusions this leads to is that leftist movements sometimes need to actively cultivate class antagonism (insert "billionaire tears" memes here).

Individualism (Mill): John Stuart Mill is perhaps the only libertarian philosopher I have any interest in. That's because, unlike most libertarians, he shows a genuine appreciation for the complexity of the human mind and a genuine concern for its flourishing. The caveman-like, short-sighted egoism that is the backbone of most libertarian thought has no place in his writing. That probably explains why he was actually willing to give serious consideration to socialist thinkers, and, while rejecting their conclusions, accepted some of their fundamental premises (that the right to property is not absolute, and that capitalism is not some natural reality but a human construct). But I digress. What's interesting with Mill is not his economic thought (nor even his feminism, however impressive for the time), but his case for radical social libertarianism. He makes a compelling case that, to grow and flourish, individuals need the space to make decisions over their own lives, no matter how wrongheaded. As someone who generally leans far more on the "nanny statist" end of the spectrum, I respect both his passion (which is clearly born of his own personal experience) and the soundness of his arguments.

[John Dule]

Very interesting idea for a thread. Let's see.

The Problem of Other Minds: This encompasses solipsism, as Dule correctly noted, but the problem to me runs much deeper than that. Sure, it is unsettling to realize we have no proof that other people exist, that they have a consciousness just like our own. But most people are willing to take that leap of faith, and in a sense our instincts here provide for what our reason can't account for. The true existential horror lies in accepting that other people exist, and that we have no way of ever truly understanding then. Sure, we have developed some very crude means of communication, but those are faulty, unreliable, deliberately falsifiable, and even if they were accurate, only cover a minuscule fragment of what goes on inside a human mind. For all intents and purposes, we remain locked in the prison of our own minds. As someone who believes humanity's highest calling is universal love and understanding (to give you an idea, I think the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion was beautiful and one of the happiest endings I've ever seen), this is an important, if tragic, reality check.

Divine Command Theory (Anscombe): I believe in objective morality, and I don't believe in God (at least not affirmatively). That's far from an uncommon combination of beliefs, but it's one that's very hard to speak coherently about. Anscombe makes a very compelling argument that most of the moral vocabulary we use ("ought", "right", "duty", etc.) only makes sense if we presuppose the existence of a law-giving creator God. If we remove that, most of the major moral theories that have been proposed for the past 300-400 years (whether deontological or consequentialist) completely fall apart. Traditional Christian (or really Abrahamic) morality worked a coherent system that made postulates and derived moral conclusions from them. Secular morality has been incapable of proposing an equally coherent alternative, instead too often recycling Christian concepts devoid of their original context and melding them into a conceptual mumbo-jumbo. I do not think (and neither does Anscombe) that a coherent secular theory of morality is impossible, but it's awfully hard to build one with the language we currently use. Realizing that was illuminating to me, and helped me figure out why I was hitting a roadblock in trying to articulate my thoughts on morality.

Subjectivism (Nietzsche): On the diametrically opposite end of the moral-philosophical spectrum, it's impossible for a proponent of objective morality not to seriously grapple with Nietzsche's critique. His way of delving into the history of concepts and ideas and unveil the power structures that underlie them makes him kind of a precursor to postmodernism. And with regard to moral systems, he paints the compelling picture of a masquerade serving to cover up the emptiness of most people's existence. Knowing all we know, it's hard to reject that picture wholesale. Nietzsche's alternative is not nihilism, as edgy internet teens would have you know, but rather subjectivism, wherein each individual is responsible for constructing their own moral principles to live by. This is a genuinely seductive notion, and it might be in practice what I am striving to do. But I cannot accept this any more than I can accept solipsism. If humanity is to be truly reunited, then there must be some common moral ideal that all should reach. It's hard to find, perhaps even impossible, but it must exist in some metaphysical sense.

Determinism: Unlike John, I'll confidently say that I am a determinist. I believe that the laws of causality are absolute and universal, so that, if someone knew everything about the universe at time T, they would be able to know everything that would happen after T. I know the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics pokes holes in that idea, but frankly, the Copenhagen interpretation strikes me as pseudoscientific in nature. The problem is that accepting the universal law of causality makes it hard conceptually to think of individual choices as meaningful. If whatever I do, I was always going to do it anyway, then why should I put any thought (whether moral or practical) into my actions? The answer exists, and it's quite simple in a way, but it's hard to articulate rigorously. The best I can say right now is that we're all part of the flow of causality, and from our individual perspective, what we do is not predetermined, and can never be.

Tribalism (Schmitt): All right, let's get a little more political. I don't believe that politics is, in principle, that which pertains to "the distinction between friend and enemy" (if you pressed me for a definition, I'd go a more conventional route and say it's that which pertains to the socially sanctioned use of coercion). However, I do recognize that "the distinction between friend and enemy" plays a fundamental role to the practice of politics. That is strikingly visible in this age, where crass xenophobia and the crudest forms of tribalism are trendy again. But looking back on the past centuries, I find it hard to deny that almost every mass political movement was founded on an in-group vs out-group distinction. Whether it's a product of muh human nature or of socioeconomic circumstances, I do not know, but it is a reality for the foreseeable future. And those who, like me, aspire to universal human brotherhood, nonetheless need to accept this reality and work within its parameters. One of the unfortunate conclusions this leads to is that leftist movements sometimes need to actively cultivate class antagonism (insert "billionaire tears" memes here).

Individualism (Mill): John Stuart Mill is perhaps the only libertarian philosopher I have any interest in. That's because, unlike most libertarians, he shows a genuine appreciation for the complexity of the human mind and a genuine concern for its flourishing. The caveman-like, short-sighted egoism that is the backbone of most libertarian thought has no place in his writing. That probably explains why he was actually willing to give serious consideration to socialist thinkers, and, while rejecting their conclusions, accepted some of their fundamental premises (that the right to property is not absolute, and that capitalism is not some natural reality but a human construct). But I digress. What's interesting with Mill is not his economic thought (nor even his feminism, however impressive for the time), but his case for radical social libertarianism. He makes a compelling case that, to grow and flourish, individuals need the space to make decisions over their own lives, no matter how wrongheaded. As someone who generally leans far more on the "nanny statist" end of the spectrum, I respect both his passion (which is clearly born of his own personal experience) and the soundness of his arguments.

Great post all around. I just want to note that I am in fact a determinist because it's essentially irrefutable; I just find that it clashes with some of my more idealistic notions of human individuality. In short, I don't want to believe it, but I have to because I can't ignore uncomfortable truths. Some other things:

- Your bit about Nietzsche is spot-on, and it's my biggest problem with Ayn Rand (who I still love, but who I disagree with on many things). After reading the Genealogy of Morals, I have now come to view any notion of "objective" morality as impossible. Rand's claim of "objectivism" inherently argues that there is only one acceptable perspective from which to view the world, which ironically negates individuality and different perspectives-- something that ought to be the core tenet of libertarian thought (as Mill eloquently argues). Nietzsche has had a profound impact on my worldview, but I no longer see him as a "challenge" to my personal philosophy because I no longer believe in objective morality.

- "Divine Command Theory," as you put it, came to me through William of Occam and various other "natural law" philosophers like Cicero. Along with Nietzsche, this worldview played a big part in convincing me that objective morality is unattainable, for the same reasons you listed. The logic employed by natural law philosophy was so tortured that it made me realize just how poor the argument for "morality" (as it exists outside of human consciousness) really is.

- Glad to see that you share my love of Mill; I would much prefer that he (rather than Rand) would become the face of libertarianism.

- What you said about Schmitt sounds very similar to what I said about Wittgenstein, though I haven't read Schmitt (I'll have to check him out now). My friends in the philosophy department have also told me that he's worth looking into.

[Antonio the Sixth]

- Your bit about Nietzsche is spot-on, and it's my biggest problem with Ayn Rand (who I still love, but who I disagree with on many things). After reading the Genealogy of Morals, I have now come to view any notion of "objective" morality as impossible. Rand's claim of "objectivism" inherently argues that there is only one acceptable perspective from which to view the world, which ironically negates individuality and different perspectives-- something that ought to be the core tenet of libertarian thought (as Mill eloquently argues). Nietzsche has had a profound impact on my worldview, but I no longer see him as a "challenge" to my personal philosophy because I no longer believe in objective morality.

- "Divine Command Theory," as you put it, came to me through William of Occam and various other "natural law" philosophers like Cicero. Along with Nietzsche, this worldview played a big part in convincing me that objective morality is unattainable, for the same reasons you listed. The logic employed by natural law philosophy was so tortured that it made me realize just how poor the argument for "morality" (as it exists outside of human consciousness) really is.

Oh, I completely share your distaste for "natural law" philosophy in particular. At least both Kantians and utilitarians recognize moral statements as qualitatively different from and irreducible to descriptive statements. Naturalism at its core basically says "it is, therefore it ought to be", which is almost as bad as having no moral system at all. That's why I really can't stand Aristotle, even if there are bits and pieces of his moral thinking that I really like.

Anyway, I actually agree that morality doesn't exist outside of human consciousness. The conclusion I've come to after years of grappling with these problems is that you're right, "objective" morality doesn't really exist. Notions of good and bad are inherently tied to the perceptions of a specific subject. However, knowing that we all are such subjects, we should strive to broaden the scope of our moral sentiments by taking into account other people's experiences, and ultimately tend to moral conclusions that are, if not "objective" at least universal. If we actually managed to break the barriers between our consciousnesses and become truly connected to one another (again, see Evangelion), then we could come to moral conclusions that truly apply to every single human being. Failing that, we must use our capacity for empathy to try to approach that.

- Glad to see that you share my love of Mill; I would much prefer that he (rather than Rand) would become the face of libertarianism.

Indeed. Glad to see you don't put too much stock in Rand. She really is the hackish, vacuous facsimile of a serious individualist philosopher.

- What you said about Schmitt sounds very similar to what I said about Wittgenstein, though I haven't read Schmitt (I'll have to check him out now). My friends in the philosophy department have also told me that he's worth looking into.

I'd say that's worth it, with the obvious caveat that he was an unabashed Nazi and his philosophy is very hard to separate from his politics (even more so than for other Nazi-sympathizing philosophers). I take the sadly insightful reflection on people's political behavior for what it's worth, but obviously draw very different conclusions from it than he did.

Wittgenstein, on the other hand, is great. Probably one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, honestly. I think I entirely agree with his thought, although you're right that it has serious implications on our ability to communicate across languages (or even among speakers of the same language but which have different associations with words). I feel like I covered this in my first point, though, as the subjectivity of language is just one specific facet of the general problem of other minds.

[Blue3]

Personally, I swing a lot between:

-where the line is for justification of less-than-amazing actions for good results. Ideally, the results don't matter, just being true and fighting the good fight. But what if there was something like a reasonable compromise? Where does one draw the line?

-related to the above, sometimes I want a  great leader with the right ideas to just have the power to get done what needs to get done, skipping the usual process, and then revert to the usual process to protect the new status quo. But I also have the ideal of hoping a society is created where we don't need government, much less counting on a savior figure who will probably bring more problems than solve any. I'd guess you could say the tension between direct democracy and liberal/constitutional/rights-based government (usually democracy) could be included in this. My divided thoughts on parliamentary versus presidential modes for choosing a leader in a democracy I feel could also be included in this.

-also related to the first point, the tension between being antiwar and a humanitarian. Morality doesn't know borders, I'd like my government to help as much as possible, and respond militarily to stop/prevent humanitarian crises such as brutal dictatorships or massacres or persecutions when that's the only option. But I'd also rather we not go to war, and dismantle the military-industrial complex.

-similar to all this are my feelings on federalism. Sometimes I feel like a unitary government makes the most sense, to enforce rights and ensure a high living standard. Sometimes I feel further decentralization, to just a league of city-states, would be more ideal. Usually tied to my current faith in my fellow citizens, or how rights-based versus majoritarian the national government would be. This also applies to my ideas for the ideal state of the world, if we should move  closer to world government, or decentralize and break-up more.

-away from politics, back to more general philosophy, is the general philosophy of Buddhism followed to its logical conclusion: to find happiness and end suffering is to just accept everything, and no longer fight for change, to no longer have desire or distaste for anything, to no longer be attached to anything. I just strongly disagree with it, it's like a surrender to nihilism.

[Blue3]

Anyone feel similar to what I wrote?