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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Existence preceeds essence
    #7600959 - 11/05/07 11:17 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

"...man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-- and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialst sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is." - J.P. Sartre

Discuss?


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OfflineBooby
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7601190 - 11/06/07 12:48 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I have trouble with the sentence:"f man as the existentialst sees him is not definable," I googled it and it appears to be transcribed correctly and yet I can't help feeling the translator messed up. Anyway on to the discussion...

I am definable, I am the Great White Shark cruising the shoreline; Does anyone dare to swim?
I am the White Whale, Moby Dick with Pequod on my tail.


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Offlineundergrounder
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: Booby]
    #7601324 - 11/06/07 02:58 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

I like the idea. A hammer is a thing that is created with an innate purpose. A problem exists (to drive home a nail) and a hammer is created as the solution. Essence precedes existence. Humanity isn't like a hammer, we don't have an innate purpose, humanity is like a rock. A rock is formed through millions of years of shaping but it has no purpose. If a bear takes shelter under the rock, then the rock is given a purpose (to provide shelter). Existence precedes essence. By defining our purpose in life we can create that purpose.


Anyway if you're discussing Sartre do you mind answering my takehome exam for me?:

"'Existence precedes essence'. What does Sartre mean by this assertion? What are its consequences for the existentialist approach to ethics?"

The more drugs you're on the better. Many thanks... :imslow:


--------------------
:igor: RIP :igor:

Bigger and bolder and rougher and tougher in other words sucka there is no other...
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Offlinefireworks_godS
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: undergrounder]
    #7601351 - 11/06/07 03:31 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Humanity isn't like a hammer, we don't have an innate purpose....  A rock is formed through millions of years of shaping but it has no purpose.




A hammer doesn't have an innate purpose, either. Purpose doesn't exist within the hammer; it exists within the mind that takes action to assemble it. The act of assembling a hammer, in itself, is no different than the forces that have formed a rock.

The only question that is left is regarding our intention in producing a hammer, and whether or not that intention existed in the formation of a rock as well. Natural forces could very well be an expression of such an intention, just as well as our own personal forces are an expression of our intention. We humans have a very self-centered view that being, awareness, has to emerge from our form. :shrug:


--------------------
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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7601726 - 11/06/07 09:11 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

NiamhNyx said:
"...man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-- and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialst sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is." - J.P. Sartre

Discuss?




If you are fated to come to the realization that most of what you think you are, are the programs implanted by culture, then you might also realize that you will never know what you are or if you can have a "free" thought, or if anything you think is important whatsoever.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


Edited by Icelander (11/06/07 09:12 AM)


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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: Icelander]
    #7601935 - 11/06/07 10:21 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

The thing about a hammer, fireworks, is that it's essence preceeds existence in that it is created by a person with a function in mind. It is made to suit a purpose. Sartre is arguing that if there is no God, than we are not created for a purpose and thus there is no human nature. Our essence does not preceed our existence, but rather the other way around. We are and then we form ourselves. This is why we are free.


Quote:

"'Existence precedes essence'. What does Sartre mean by this assertion? What are its consequences for the existentialist approach to ethics?"




He means that there are no inherent values, that we cannot look to human nature to discover universal values because they do not exist, because human nature does not exist, etc. Further along the passage he quotes Dostoevesky, "If there were no God, everything would be permissable."

Icelander: No one is fated to realize anything, but one can choose to pursue any train of thought they wish. Sartre argues that we are free because we have the ability to 'nihilate,' to think about something else when we feel like it. He believes that we are able to choose our emotions, or in the very least, how we respond to them, and that who or what we were in the past does not determine who we will be in the future. We are capable of choosing to change course. This does not mean anything we think is important whatsoever, au contraire, Sartre thinks when we are aware of existence we tend to feel superfluous and that this is a great horror to us.

Although I see your point, I prefer to accept the existentialist premise because it opens more doors and is more motivating than believing I'm not free. So I'm consciously choosing how to orient myself and how to feel, and this has implications regarding how I will live my life. It doesn't mean anyone is important or special, it only means that we are (or can be) self made.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7602522 - 11/06/07 12:43 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

So I'm consciously choosing how to orient myself and how to feel, and this has implications regarding how I will live my life. It doesn't mean anyone is important or special, it only means that we are (or can be) self made.


While you may believe that you are choosing how to "orient" yourself there is no way to know if this is true. Your motivations for action were most likely constructed in your earliest formative years and all actions may well be the result of how that all went as they are the conscious/unconscious motivating factors in present decisions as to a course of action.

I wasn't saying important as in being "special", but rather as in being unknowable and therefore unimportant. I could have made that more clear.

So I believe we can have some minor influence in our current affairs but in no way are we self-made. We react and make ourselves based on what has happened to us before we had any choice in the matter.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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OfflineAhimsa
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7602721 - 11/06/07 01:35 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

OK i've never thought about all this exist and essence and probably never will after this but here goes my idea.

Man forms out of the biosphere or earth, but before man knows that he exists he is something else(preman), the biological evolution produces man, in this state however he doesn't consieve of himself, yet he has function, a biological function, the function of man in his form before thinker is that of his biological necessecity, the existence of man as a preman is real as is his function, thus t'is that man is essence and existent at the same time and then man becomes conscious and thinks, and forgets his pre-thought state of being.

Please be gentle with me, i may be talking bogus, then i may not, seriously i couldn't say as i haven't thought about it, it's just a thought, maybe it is of no use to you, however i like the idea of being selfdefined... thanks


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7603069 - 11/06/07 02:56 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

NiamhNyx said:
we cannot look to human nature to discover universal values because they do not exist, because human nature does not exist, etc.




Francis Crick pwned Jean-Paul Sartre.


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: Ahimsa]
    #7603228 - 11/06/07 03:28 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Please be gentle with me,

Oh baby!:doggystyle:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: Icelander]
    #7604509 - 11/06/07 08:30 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Icelander said:

While you may believe that you are choosing how to "orient" yourself there is no way to know if this is true. Your motivations for action were most likely constructed in your earliest formative years and all actions may well be  the result of how that all went as they are the conscious/unconscious motivating factors in present decisions as to a course of action.

I wasn't saying important as in being "special", but rather as in being unknowable and therefore unimportant. I could have made that more clear.

So I believe we can have some minor influence in our current affairs but in no way are we self-made. We react and make ourselves based on what has happened to us before we had any choice in the matter.




Well, you're basically arguing in favour of "soft-determinism" which is something that makes a lot of sense, but I don't like the implications so I prefer to take a liberatarian position on the matter of free will. The libertarian perspective is also pretty convincing, so it's really a matter of choosing the perspective that best suits the worldview you want to bolster. :shrug:

We'll never know anything with certainty, and absolutely everything is interpretation, but I think this is liberating. It means we can see things however we want to (although a good argument is always helpful.) Nietzsche would argue that we adopt values based on thier survival function. There are two general orientations - slave values and master values. Master values are those chosen by those in a position to choose, and they further the ends of the chooser. I'm choosing my values and my theoretical leanings based on how useful they appear to me and whether or not they broaden my scope of potential freedom. I am excited by the existentialist perspective because it is expansive and liberating rather than explaining away defeats. We all have 'facticity,' unchangeable factors including our past conditioning, but we are not trapped by this facticity as we can, at any time, choose to change how we think and feel. Sartre called this 'nihilation' and made it the basis of a rather radical concept of freedom. I have done this in some fairly drastic ways myself, so I am convinced that there exists such a thing as agency. Whether our freedom is quite as radical as Sartre suggests is open to scrutiny, but I tend to agree with Simone de Beauvoir in that we are free if we realize we are free.


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7605377 - 11/07/07 12:11 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

I don't like the implications so I prefer to take a liberatarian position on the matter of free will.




Argument from consequences. :nonono:

And since you mentioned that jolly ole fella Dr. Nietzsche...

"The causa sui is the best self-contradiction which has been thought up so far, a kind of logical rape and perversity. But the excessive pride of human beings has worked to entangle itself deeply and terribly with this very nonsense. The demand for "freedom of the will," in that superlative metaphysical sense, as it unfortunately still rules in the heads of the half-educated, the demand to bear the entire final responsibility for one's actions oneself and to relieve god, the world, ancestors, chance, and society of responsibility for it, is naturally nothing less than this very causa sui and an attempt to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by the hair, with more audacity than Munchhausen."


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: Icelander]
    #7605413 - 11/07/07 12:28 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

Icelander said:
So I believe we can have some minor influence in our current affairs but in no way are we self-made. We react and make ourselves based on what has happened to us before we had any choice in the matter.




Exactly. Organisms are a product of their environment. The only thing that differentiates a slime mold and an armadillo is the amount of complexity involved in their behavior. A slime mold reacts to its environment in entirely chemically mechanistic ways. An armadillo reacts to its environment in mechanistic ways too, but it is easy to be fooled by its behavior. The armadillo has a 'processor' of sorts, we call it a brain, that receives chemical inputs and gives motor/physical outputs. The ability of the armadillo to process information may make it seem as if it has free will, but it is really just as deterministic as a modern computer. Human beings are not an exception to this merely because we have such an efficacious central nervous system.

What is so bad about determinism, anyway?


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InvisibleVeritas
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7606075 - 11/07/07 09:32 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

we can, at any time, choose to change how we think and feel.




Hmmm...isn't this what you were arguing against in my "Get over it" thread?  :wink:

I completely agree.  This is the basis of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy--that we are 100% responsible for the way we respond to our experiences.

The difficulty is in continuing to choose a different response than the one that has become our neural path of least resistance.  The older we are, and the more survival-related these pathways, the more effort it will take to make different choices, and the more awkward changes will feel to us.


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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: Veritas]
    #7606546 - 11/07/07 11:33 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Alright Mush, you got me. I'm guilty of logical fallacy. Let me retract that particular statement then. My philosophical training is first year! Forgive me!

Veritas, uh yeah I think you're probably right, I did argue that...I guess I have slightly shifted my views - not changed them, just reorganized them a little... I think that Sartres notion that we are completely free and thus completely responsible, based on our ability to nihilate (change our thoughts) is the slightest bit of a stretch. He's definitly onto something, but I think de Beauvoir hit the nail on the head when she said that we are free if we realize we are free. If we don't realize it, we are subject to our socialisation, social pressure, etc. When we are aware of these things and realize we are able to choose we may break down our socialisation and resist social pressures. I might add that Sartre later changed his views regarding our complete freedom and responsibility, and admitted that people can become mystified and lose awareness of thier freedom.

And of course it is worth noting that exercising ones freedom can lead one to run ins with the law, lynch mobs, etc. who do whatever they can to limit and castrate authentic expressions of freedom. So yes, while we have existential freedom, there is a world of people with bad politics who will do what they can to repress the free individual. It is difficult, under such circumstances, to avoid accepting compromise in favour of a lot of pain and suffering. Perhaps if more people recognized thier existential freedom we'd live in a more fulfilling, less repressive society?


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InvisibleLuddite
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7607911 - 11/07/07 05:09 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

My net worth is over $700,000



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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: Luddite]
    #7608615 - 11/07/07 07:59 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Trying to get a date?:lol:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7610715 - 11/08/07 11:25 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

NiamhNyx said:
Alright Mush, you got me. I'm guilty of logical fallacy. Let me retract that particular statement then. My philosophical training is first year! Forgive me!




The only reason I point out fallacies is because it makes me feel smart and better than everyone else. Honest.


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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Re: Existence preceeds essence [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #7612709 - 11/08/07 08:34 PM (16 years, 2 months ago)

:lol: I think the main reason most people do most things is to feel good about themselves.


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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order


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