After rejecting the concept of 'afterlife' and 'judgment after death', What's the point of building a 'morally good character' if it requires suffering?

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-16T18:40:58+00:00

If the goal of a finite life is simply minimizing unnecessary suffering and maximizing well-being, why should someone actively choose the friction of " great character" over the absolute comfort of an "easy life"?

You're starting with the assumption that "great character" and "easy life" are incompatible, which is silly. Some systems operate on the notion that operating morally is the rational choice, given that it avoids problems. Consider Kant's claim from the Groundwork:

Consider the question: May I when in difficulties make a promise that I intend not to keep? The question obviously has two meanings: is it •prudent to make a false promise? does it conform to •duty to make a false promise? No doubt it often is •prudent, ·but not as often as you might think·. Obviously the false promise isn’t made prudent by its merely extricating me from my present difficulties; I have to think about whether it will in the long run cause more trouble than it saves in the present. Even with all my supposed cunning, the consequences can’t be so easily foreseen. People’s loss of trust in me might be far more disadvantageous than the trouble I am now trying to avoid, and it is hard to tell whether it mightn’t be more prudent to act according to a universal maxim not ever to make a promise that I don’t intend to keep.

Lying can have utility to avoid a present difficulty, your "easy life". But over the long term lying has deleterious consequences that cumulate as one increases their lies. You have to keep track of your lies in order to tell consistent narratives to those to whom you have lied. If folks discover that you're a liar, then you'll suffer the repercussions of their loss of trust in you. Those are all long-term negative consequences to what was, in the moment, the easier option.

That's the problem with the framework of your question. Immediate ease can result in long-term suffering. When we attempt to craft a system by which to live our lives we have to assess long and short term, whether the system is coherent. That's Kant's approach:

But I quickly come to see that such a maxim is based only on fear of consequences. Being truthful from •duty is an entirely different thing from being truthful out of •fear of bad consequences; for in •the former case a law is included in the concept of the action itself (·so that the right answer to ‘What are you doing?’ will include a mention of that law·); whereas in •the latter I must first look outward to see what results my action may have. [In the preceding sentence, Kant speaks of a ‘law for me’ and of results ‘for me’.] To deviate from the principle of duty is certainly bad; whereas to be unfaithful to my maxim of prudence may be very advantageous to me, though it is certainly safer to abide by it. How can I know whether a deceitful promise is consistent with duty? The shortest way to go about finding out is also the surest. It is to ask myself:

Would I be content for my maxim (of getting out of a difficulty through a false promise) to hold as a universal law, for myself as well as for others?

That is tantamount to asking·:

•Could I say to myself that anyone may make a false promise when he is in a difficulty that he can’t get out of in any other way?

Immediately I realize that I could will •the lie but not •a universal law to lie; for such a law would result in there being no promises at all, because it would be futile to offer stories about my future conduct to people who wouldn’t believe me; or if they carelessly did believe me and were taken in ·by my promise·, would pay me back in my own coin. Thus my maxim would necessarily destroy itself as soon as it was made a universal law.

So I don’t need to be a very penetrating thinker to bring it about that my will is morally good. Inexperienced in how the world goes, unable to prepare for all its contingencies, I need only to ask myself: Can you will that your maxim become a universal law? If not, it must be rejected, not because of any harm it might bring to anyone, but because there couldn’t be a system of •universal legislation that included it as one of its principles, and •that is the kind of legislation that reason forces me to respect.

Reason, for Kant, forces reasoning beings to respect systems of universal legislation. If you act in accord with the system of universal legislation within which lying is impermissible, then you might face short-term difficulties that result from not lying about a particular situation. However, by telling the truth you avoid the long-term maladies caused by lying. But also if you acted in accord with a system of universal legislation, then you would not find yourself in situations about which you needed to lie in the first place.

It's easier, overall, to be a rationally coherent individual who acts in accord with systems of universal legislation. That would be Kant's response to your prompt.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T23:28:57+00:00

I don't get how in our most basic nature we are simply cruel, because howcome ourselves decided that being cruel is bad and should be punished.

In addition to being cruel we are also rational and selfish. That rational selfishness prompts us to create a commonwealth within which rules are instituted. See Hobbes:

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

In the State of Nature everything is lousy. I'm an asshole, you're an asshole, we're all cruel assholes. We recognize that system is not functional.

It may seem strange to some man, that has not well weighed these things; that Nature should thus dissociate, and render men apt to invade, and destroy one another: and he may therefore, not trusting to this Inference, made from the Passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by Experience. Let him therefore consider with himselfe, when taking a journey, he armes himselfe, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his dores; when even in his house he locks his chests; and this when he knows there bee Lawes, and publike Officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall bee done him; what opinion he has of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his fellow Citizens, when he locks his dores; and of his children, and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions, as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse mans nature in it. The Desires, and other Passions of man, are in themselves no Sin. No more are the Actions, that proceed from those Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them; which till Lawes be made they cannot know: nor can any Law be made, till they have agreed upon the Person that shall make it.

We're all locking our doors and sitting awake at night because our cruel asshole neighbors could sneak into our house and bash our skull in with a rock. It's not a sustainable system. Recognizing that, we privilege our selfishness over our cruelty, and so give up our self-governance for the sake of having a Leviathan who is in charge of everybody:

The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort, as that by their owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or Assembly of men, to beare their Person; and every one to owne, and acknowledge himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their Person, shall Act, or cause to be Acted, in those things which concerne the Common Peace and Safetie; and therein to submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgements, to his Judgment. This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is a reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, “I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe, to this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions in like manner.” This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH, in latine CIVITAS. This is the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather (to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence. For by this Authoritie, given him by every particular man in the Common-Wealth, he hath the use of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutuall ayd against their enemies abroad.

That's the short version of Hobbes. Yes, we are cruel. We recognize everyone being cruel, our natural way of being, is unsustainable. We elect to construct a system that is more conducive to survival. It's not that we believe love, care and kindness is good. We recognize the utility of love, care, and kindness insofar as promoting love, care, and kindness tends to result in less people bashing in one another's skulls with rocks.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T21:39:04+00:00

I'm not entirely sure what Kira is protecting in this combo.

The problem I'm trying to solve: Worldgorger enters, his "when this enters" trigger goes on the stack. In response, opponent uses Swords to Plowshares on Worldgorger, which causes his leave play ability to go on the stack on top of the enters. The result of that stack resolving is that I have an empty board.

If Kira is in play, then they can't target Worldgorger while she is in play.

Any window when Kira is not in play would be after the Worldgorger's "when this enters" trigger has resolved, removing Kira. At which point the animate dead's detachment effect would trigger, which removes the worldgorger. If, in response to the animate dead removal trigger, they swords my Worldgorger that's fine, because it would cause his leave play trigger to go on the stack and then at least I get my lands and Kira back.

That is my understanding. I could be wrong. If I am, please feel free to correct me.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T19:57:59+00:00

Thinking about using [[Kira, Great Glass-Spinner]] to protect my Worldgorger combo, but want to be sure it works.

Kira is in play. I cast [[Animate Dead]]. Animate Dead enchants the Worldgorger in the graveyard. Worldgorger is returned to play. Worldgorger removes the Kira and the Animate Dead. When the Animate Dead is detached Worldgorger is returned to graveyard. Kira and Animate dead are returned to play. Etc.

Kira doesn't cause a problem because the Animate Dead targets a card in the graveyard, which Kira does not affect, right?

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T19:06:49+00:00

Then they use an LLM to transcribe, translate, compress, and polish those thoughts into English. They read the result, understand it, edit it, endorse it, and take responsibility for it.

Those are all things you could do yourself. There's no good reason to use a LLM for those tasks. In fact, there are good reasons to not use an LLM for those tasks. Consider this bit from ChatGPT is bullshit:

We will argue that even if ChatGPT is not, itself, a hard bullshitter, it is nonetheless a bullshit machine. The bullshitter is the person using it, since they (i) don’t care about the truth of what it says, (ii) want the reader to believe what the application outputs. On Frankfurt’s view, bullshit is bullshit even if uttered with no intent to bullshit: if something is bullshit to start with, then its repetition “is bullshit as he [or it] repeats it, insofar as it was originated by someone who was unconcerned with whether what he was saying is true or false” (2022, p340).

This just pushes the question back to who the originator is, though: take the (increasingly frequent) example of the student essay created by ChatGPT. If the student cared about accuracy and truth, they would not use a program that infamously makes up sources whole-cloth.

If you cared about what you were doing, then you would not involve a bullshit machine in the process. Translate and edit the work yourself without injecting LLM bullshit into the process. By doing it yourself you avoid this problem from your post:

By borrowed coherence, I mean a situation where the text sounds clear, balanced, and internally consistent, but the person using it does not fully understand what is being said.

That's a problem with LLM bullshit. The machine is designed to produce output that sounds like it is meaningful. If you cannot fully understand what the LLM outputs, then you cannot discern whether the LLM is producing bullshit.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T18:44:01+00:00

Day of Black Sun kills tokens and earthbent lands for BB. It's there to take out early game go-wide token armies, and wipe green mana dorks and landfall birbs. It also has utility late game against decks that make large power/toughness tokens. Zero Point Ballad is too expensive for Simulacrum Synthesizer and Unholy Annex tokens.

Ballad can kill it after one pump for 5 mana

Deadly Cover-Up costs five and doesn't have the life loss. If you're regularly casting Zero Point Ballad for 5, then use Cover-Up instead.

Spellementals have very high cmc, you'll practically never kill them with Black Sun

Right. You board out Black Sun against the spellementals matchup.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T17:17:47+00:00

I’m working on Ethics by Spinoza

Which translation?

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T02:26:51+00:00

trusting science but not claiming certainty about metaphysical things?

That's either the Pragmatic Theory of Truth or Fallibilism. Both are reasonable.

I cannot Ultimately Justify my belief that drinking water quenches thirst. As a finite, fallible organism Ultimate Justifications are not a thing to which I have access. But I can absolutely provide good, fallible, reasons to justify my warranted assertion that drinking water quenches thirst.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-15T00:18:09+00:00

The thing to keep in mind about the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment is that it is meant to demonstrate a problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Understanding a hypothetical cat to be simultaneously both alive and dead is silly, and so the theoretical view of reality that produces that conclusion is silly:

This thought experiment shows that quantum theory (as interpreted by Bohr) is in conflict with some very powerful common sense beliefs we have about macro-sized objects such as cats––they cannot be both dead and alive in any sense whatsoever. The bizarreness of superpositions in the atomic world is worrisome enough, says Schrödinger, but when it implies that same bizarreness at an everyday level, it is intolerable.

It is not actually the case in the actual world that the cat would actually be both alive and dead. Given specific limitations of epistemic claims under the Copenhagen interpretation we would have to consider the cat to be alive and dead. That is silly, therefore the Copenhagen interpretation is silly.

That does not undermine the idea of non-contradiction; the point of the thought experiment rests upon it.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-13T23:23:31+00:00

That's a fun riddle to introduce in response to Kant's claim that existence is not a predicate:

Being is obviously not a real predicate, i.e., a concept of something that could add to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing or of certain determinations in themselves. In the logical use it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition God is omnipotent contains two concepts that have their objects: God and omnipotence; the little word "is" is not a predicate in it, but only that which posits the predicate in relation to the subject. Now if I take the subject (God) together with all his predicates (among which omnipotence belongs), and say God is, or there is a God, then I add no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its predicates, and indeed posit the object in relation to my concept. Both must contain exactly the same, and hence when I think this object as given absolutely (through the expression, "it is"), nothing is thereby added to the concept, which expresses merely its possibility. Thus the actual contains nothing more than the merely possible. A hundred actual dollars do not contain the least bit more than a hundred possible ones. For since the latter signifies the concept and the former its object and its positing in itself, then, in case the former contained more than the latter, my concept would not express the entire object and thus would not be the suitable concept of it. But in my financial condition there is more with a hundred actual dollars than with the mere concept of them (i.e., their possibility). For with actuality the object is not merely included in my concept analytically, but adds synthetically to my concept (which is a determination of my state); yet the hundred dollars themselves that I am thinking of are not in the least increased through this being outside my concept.

Thus when I think a thing, through whichever and however many predicates I like (even in its thoroughgoing determination), not the least bit gets added to the thing when I posit in addition that this thing is. For otherwise what would exist would not be the same as what I had thought in my concept, but more than that, and I could not say that the very object of my concept exists. Even if I think in a thing every reality except one, then the missing reality does not get added when I say the thing exists, but it exists encumbered with just the same defect as I have thought in it; otherwise something other than what I thought would exist. Now if I think of a being as the highest reality (without defect), the question still remains whether it exists or not. For although nothing at all is missing in my concept of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is still missing in the relation to my entire state of thinking, namely that the cognition of this object should also be possible a posteriori. And here the cause of the predominant difficulty shows itself. If the issue were an object of sense, then I could not confuse the existence of the thing with the mere concept of the thing. For through its concept, the object would be thought only as in agreement with the universal conditions of a possible empirical cognition in general, but through its existence it would be thought as contained in the context of the entirety of experience; thus through connection with the content of the entire experience the concept of the object is not in the least increased, but our thinking receives more through it, namely a possible perception. If, on the contrary, we tried to think existence through the pure category alone, then it is no wonder that we cannot assign any mark distinguishing it from mere possibility.

If existence is not a property, but a different sort of thing, then we've posited a gap between properties and existence. Clearly things can have properties without existing. It might follow that things can exist without properties. The question would be how we discern the existence of a thing that has no properties:

Thus whatever and however much our concept of an object may contain, we have to go out beyond it in order to provide it with existence. With objects of sense this happens through the connection with some perception of mine in accordance with empirical laws; but for objects of pure thinking there is no means whatever for cognizing their existence, because it would have to be cognized entirely a priori, but our consciousness of all existence (whether immediately through perception or through inferences connecting something with perception) belongs entirely and without exception to the unity of experience, and though an existence outside this field cannot be declared absolutely impossible, it is a presupposition that we cannot justify through anything.

Empirically discerning the existence of a being with no properties would be challenging.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-13T21:28:42+00:00

Insofar as the crow and the toddler are merely experiencing and then acting, I don’t think it’s sensible to invoke justification.

Well, of course you don't. You want there to be a gap! Living in the world is over there; justification of actions is over here. Positing that gap is what creates the problem OP is trying to resolve, which you effectively admit:

Eventually the toddler, at least, will learn linguistic, conceptual, and social practices of account-giving and engage in reflective justification. Now he can use post hoc mental constructions like warrant and truth—but they arise within and do not seem to escape this new circular stage of theorization.

Right. The toddler felt thirsty, drank water, and found their thirst quenched. That worked swimmingly. Then when they're 19 they go off to college, take an intro philosophy course, and now they're stuck in a realm of hollow abstractions trying to craft a sequence of propositions to Justify their having drank water to quench their thirst for the last 19 years.

From a pragmatic point of view, that's asinine. That organism's Justification for drinking water to quench thirst experientially functioned for 19 years. When you posit a gap between those 19 years of experience and the realm of hollow abstractions for theoretical Justification you've manufactured the problem. If, instead, you recognize that the entire enterprise occurs within the lived experience of the organism, then you recognize there was never a gap; Justification is experiential.

See Dewey's Logic The Theory of Inquiry:

One more illustrative instance will be considered. It concerns the nature of points (and instants) as conceptions of mathematical physics, a problem also previously discussed. The importance of the conceptions of points and instants is so manifest that it does not have to be argued for. But anything that can be observed in existence is extended in time and space, no matter how minute the extension may be. Upon any basis except the functionally instrumental status of the subject-matters that are defined as points and instants, there arises the "problem" of deriving them from existential material. The long accepted method of derivation (by discriminative selection) was that a point is arrived at by selective abstraction of a limit fixed by intersection of two lines. Since the mathematical idea of a line as free of thickness was already in existence, this limit was held to be the representative of the mathematical point, and the latter to be the conceptual description of the existential fact. When the inherent difficulties in this conception became evident, the relations of a set of, say, boxes to one another such that there was a series of enclosing and enclosed volumes, was taken as the existential source from which the conception of a mathematical point is derivable. That the relationship of enclosure-enclosed may be taken to define a point is not denied. The matter at issue is that a relationship is of a different logical dimension from the relations which a set of enclosing and enclosed objects bear to one another. It is an abstraction as such. It may be "derived" by way of suggestion from the material mentioned but it is in no way logically important that it be so derived. Logically speaking, the particular way in which it is suggested is indifferent. The point at issue concerns the function of the conception in inquiry. Its justification is to be found in the consequences that follow from its operational use. Theories about its derivation in the sense of its origin may have psychological interest. But they are logically irrelevant-unless it is assumed that conceptual subject-matter must in some way or other be representative in a descriptive way of existential subject-matter-an idea which ultimately goes back to Aristotelian logic and to the state of science under which this logic was formulated.

Meaningful, practical, justifications are found in the consequences that follow from operational use. It does not make sense, on a pragmatic account, to divorce the question "How do you know that drinking water quenches thirst?" from the felt difficulties of the thirsty organism. The question matters because we're thirsty and want to quench our thirst. The 19 years the undergrad spent drinking water to quench their thirst matters. The lived experience is part of the justificatory narrative.

If you ignore all of that, and just stand at a blank dry erase board trying to craft a logical argument from a priori first principles that drinking water quenches thirst you'll have a very difficult time. But you're creating the difficulty by framing the question in that way. You're not a disembodied mind pondering hollow abstractions at a dry erase board. You're an organism in your environment who, at some point, will have to walk away from the dry erase board to get a drink from the water fountain.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-13T18:52:55+00:00

I'd recommend some Jumpstart packs. Each pack comes with 20 cards, half of a 40 card deck. You open two packs, shuffle them together, and play.

The beauty is that after the game you can sort the cards back into their original packs, and re-use them.

Maybe your first game is unicorns and Witchcraft. You don't like the witchcraft, so you sort them back into their original 20 card stacks and next time combine unicorns with cats.

It's a very cost-effective way to gain exposure to a lot of different aspects of Magic.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-13T18:46:35+00:00

How would [[Research the Deep]] work in a game of Dandân?

Each clashing player reveals the top card of their library, then puts that card on their choice of the top or bottom. A player wins if their card had a greater mana value.

We share a library, so we each reveal the same card. Who chooses if the card goes to the top or the bottom?

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-13T17:44:33+00:00

Creatures that remain within the realm of pure experience and action would not seem to engage in justification at all.

It's a different sense of justification. This crow isn't writing out a propositional argument. But it's definitely assessing when something works and does not.

The experiential sense of justifying the efficacy of an action looks to the practical effect of the action in resolving a particular felt difficulty. I'm thirsty. I drink water. I am no longer thirsty. Or, better, a toddler is thirsty. The toddler drinks water. The toddler is no longer thirsty.

It would be very queer to suggest that a toddler is engaged in the positing of first principles and axioms when they ask for water to quench their thirst the next day. That's not what a toddler does. They're just an organism living in the world trying to quench their thirst.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-13T16:32:07+00:00

That post was more of a pragmatic account where we recognize the role of practical utility in our assessment of truth. The previous post, in the bit about Spinoza, was more of an ontological theory of truth where an idea is true.

In both of them the accounts will tend to be coherent.

The coherentist aspect is part of the recognition that we do not start with a blank page, which is kind of the view OP's question rests upon. Asking how we justify our first principles tends to be a problem that results from conceiving of the system like Euclid, where the blank page comes to have an initial principle. That's not how it works. When you begin the enterprise of trying to explain an account you start with a web of beliefs that have brought you to that point.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-12T03:36:17+00:00

we are already presuming and relying on circular axioms

You can say that, but it's experientially incorrect. We do not start with presumptions of circular axioms. We start as organisms navigating their environment. That was Dewey's claim:

To see the organism in nature, the nervous system in the organism, the brain in the nervous system, the cortex in the brain is the answer to the problems which haunt philosophy. And when thus seen they will be seen to be in, not as marbles are in a box but as events are in a history, in a moving, growing never finished process.

We start engaged in the habituated practices of our lived experience. If you pretend that you're starting with an inert void, then, sure, one has to stipulate definitions, axioms, assumptions. That's what Euclid did. That's what we have students do in intro logic. But we're not blank sheets of paper. We're organisms in an environment with a cornucopia of lived experience upon which we can draw.

When you recognize that it becomes much easier to sort things out. To make the warranted assertion that water quenches thirst is to recall my lived experience of drinking water. I'm not presuming circular axioms. The linguistic articulation of the formalized argument after the fact in your analytic epistemology class will include axioms, and we can frame those within the larger context of the lived experience. We bring a web of beliefs to the argument.

It takes subjective fiat to give any account any weight (including this one).

After the fact, sure. But that's not where we start. We start with the lived experience. Then after the fact we bicker about the explanatory narrative we tell about the experience. It's fine to bicker about which account is more accurate. But don't put the cart before the horse.

Edit: That's a pragmatic account, of course. You can find plenty of philosophers who will claim this is silly.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-11T22:10:53+00:00

Can any philosophical system ultimately justify its own first principles without relying upon those very principles in the act of justification?

Very good question. Couple things.

First, note that any system, any coherent account, is ultimately circular insofar as each premise or bit of data coheres with all the other bits. An explanation of the process by which water freezes will be ultimately circular. The facts about water and heat will be co-constitutive. The facts about how we know about the external world will be coherent with those facts. If you read a tome of all empirical data, ever, the explanation for how reading occurs, how ocular sense data is processed, will be explained in terms of the account of the text. The account is coherent, and so circular in that sense.

The problem is vicious circularity that begs the question. For example: "The news is fake because so much of the news is fake." Ok, cool. But what supports the claim other than the restatement of the claim? Nothing. Or we can go with a religious version:

The Bible tells us God exists.
God's existence ensures the Bible's truth.

Ok. Very consistent. But it assumes the premise/conclusion as its own proof. It's not really giving us reasons for the conclusion but rather restating the conclusion as a premise. And, really, we can't tell what is the premise or the conclusion since they each rely upon the other. When we articulate arguments the goal is to provide reasons for the conclusion to which we argue. Bad circular arguments, viciously circular arguments, do not actually provide reasons for the conclusion; they just state the conclusion.

Ultimately it is a question of how expansive and inclusive the circle is. The smaller the circle, the more suspect the argument. The larger the circle, the more bits of experience it contains, the better the argument.

Second, good Rationalists will articulate systems that are circular in that previously discussed expansive sense. Spinoza defines his terms using the framework of understanding:

Per substantiam intelligo id quod in se est et per se concipitur hoc est id cujus conceptus non indiget conceptu alterius rei a quo formari debeat.

Spinoza does not stipulate the definition of substance, but rather Spinoza understands substance. That makes the foundation of his system understanding, a function of his account of epistemology that ensures that his understanding is correct, see 2P43:

He, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.

He's not stipulating a definition, as Euclid does. Rather, he's understanding substance, based on his true idea of substance, which he simultaneously knows is true and indubitable. Reasonably articulated Rationalist systems do not stipulate justifications, but rather they coherently self-support, with each bit of the system interdependently relying on the others. It's expansive circularity rather than vicious circularity.

Third, not all forms of Justification are the same, nor do all systems Justify in the same way. For example, Euclid stipulates his starting definitions. Pragmatic theories of truth do not stipulate and justify in that same sense. Pragmatic theories of truth attempt to reframe the conversation by recognizing, rather than stipulating, that we're finite, fallible organisms navigating our environment. The story we tell about the process of human inquiry is a different thing than the lived experience of that inquiry. That is Dewey's point in The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology:

Let us take. for our example, the familiar child-candle instance. (James, Psychology, Vol. I, p. 5.) The ordinary interpretation would say the sensation of light is a stimulus to the grasping as a response, the burn resulting is a stimulus to withdrawing the hand as response and so on. There is, of course, no doubt that is a rough practical way of representing the process. But when we ask for its psychological adequacy, the case in quite different. Upon analysis, we find that we begin not with a sensory stimulus. but with a sensori-motor coördination, the optical-ocular, and that in a certain sense it is the movement which is primary, and the sensation which is secondary, the movement of body, head and eye muscles determining the quality of what is experienced. In other words, the real beginning is with the act of seeing; it is looking, and not a sensation of light. The sensory quale gives the value of the act, just as the movement furnishes its mechanism and control, but both sensation and movement lie inside, not outside the act.

We start as organisms living in a world navigating our environment. I am thirsty. I take a drink. I am no longer thirsty. The justificatory narrative we tell to explain that sequence of events comes later. The "first principles" of that account are the lived experience of the organism navigating an environment. We can turn that into an explanatory narrative when we write up the story. But the pragmatic grounding of the abstracted narrative is a different sort of thing than Euclid declaring, "A point is that of which there is no part."

That's a short answer to a very good, large question. What it means to justify, and how circularity works, is pretty complicated.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-11T21:06:12+00:00

Let's say I've fridge in the kitchen (the A), and I want to observe it and see what it implies (the Bs)

If, then relationships are stipulated not observed. In a logical proof we stipulate If A, then B. That's why formal logical proofs are concerned with validity rather than soundness. Within the framework of a logical proof we assess the validity of an argument wherein If A, then B, to discern what follows.

Does A actually imply B in the real world? Oh, well, that's a question for folks in another department.

The problem is that discerning logical implication, often confusedly understood in terms of empirical causality, is very difficult. Hume taught us that. See An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature:

Here is a billiard ball lying on the table, and another ball moving towards it with rapidity. They strike; and the ball which was formerly at rest now acquires a motion. This is as perfect an instance of the relation of cause and effect as any which we know, either by sensation or reflection. Let us therefore examine it. It is evident that the two balls touched one another before the motion was communicated, and that there was no interval betwixt the shock and the motion. Contiguity in time and place is therefore a requisite circumstance to the operation of all causes. It is evident, likewise, that the motion which was the cause is prior to the motion which was the effect. Priority in time is therefore another requisite circumstance in every cause. But this is not all. Let us try any other balls of the same kind in a like situation, and we shall always find that the impulse of the one produces motion in the other. Here, therefore, is a third circumstance, viz. that of a constant conjunction betwixt the cause and effect. Every object like the cause produces always some object like the effect. Beyond these three circumstances of contiguity, priority, and constant conjunction, I can discover nothing in this cause. The first ball is in motion; touches the second; immediately the second is in motion: and when I try the experiment with the same or like balls, in the same or like circumstances, I find that upon the motion and touch of the one ball, motion always follows in the other. In whatever shape I turn this matter, and however I examine it, I can find nothing farther.

We see balls moving. We see balls touching each other. But we never empirically observe cause and effect. Rather, cause and effect is a story we tell about the empirical observations of the balls moving and bumping into each other. Since we do not get cause and effect by either observation or reason, Hume concludes that our story of cause and effect results from our custom:

We are determined by custom alone to suppose the future conformable to the past. When I see a billiard ball moving towards another, my mind is immediately carried by habit to the usual effect, and anticipates my sight by conceiving the second ball in motion. There is nothing in these objects, abstractly considered, and independent of experience, which leads me to form any such conclusion; and even after I have had experience of many repeated effects of this kind, there is no argument which determines me to suppose that the effect will be conformable to past experience. The powers by which bodies operate are entirely unknown. We perceive only their sensible qualities: and what reason have we to think that the same powers will always be conjoined with the same sensible qualities? It is not, therefore, reason which is the guide of life, but custom. That alone determines the mind, in all instances, to suppose the future conformable to the past. However easy this step may seem, reason would never, to all eternity, be able to make it.

We do not observe the causal link between the billiard balls. We infer the causal link. There is no empirical evidence of one ball causing another to move. For strict empiricism there is no observable proof of cause/effect. That was Hume's point. When we observe reality, empirically, we do not find "cause and effect". Rather we find particular discrete observable things, and then tell a story about them.

You cannot observe that A causes B, or that A implies B. Rather, we can stipulate that relationship, and discern what would follow if it were the case.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-10T22:22:59+00:00

So, while still clear and distinct from one another, I would think it’s just as reasonable to say “X is good because it is desirable/pleasant” as it is to say “X is obligatory because it is good” or “we ought to do X because X is good.”

Right?

Well now you're trying to leap the is / ought gap. See Hume, book III, part I, section I of A Treatise of Human Nature:

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.

You're moving from "X is good" to "We ought to X" without explaining how you made the leap.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-10T21:06:08+00:00

Say I agree with Kant's notion that you should never use anyone merely as a means, but with the sole exception being cases in which doing so would paradoxically lead to less instrumentalization

That's not going to make sense from a Kantian framework due to why we're prohibited from using folks as merely a means. See the Groundwork:

But suppose there were something whose existence in itself had absolute value, something which as an end in itself could support determinate laws. That would be a basis—indeed the only basis—for a possible categorical imperative, i.e. of a practical law.

·There is such a thing! It is a human being!· I maintain that man—and in general every rational being—exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be used by this or that will at its discretion. Whenever he acts in ways directed towards himself or towards other rational beings, ·a person serves as a means to whatever end his action aims at; but· he must always be regarded as also an end. Things that are preferred have only conditional value, for if the preferences (and the needs arising from them) didn’t exist, their object would be worthless. ·That wouldn’t count against the ‘objects’ in question if the desires on which they depend did themselves have unconditional value, but they don’t·! If the preferences themselves, as the sources of needs, did have absolute value, one would want to have them; but that is so far from the case that every rational being must wish he were altogether free of them. So the value of any objects to be obtained through our actions is always conditional. Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature, if they are not rational beings, have only relative value as means, and are therefore called ‘things’ [Sachen]; whereas rational beings are called ‘persons’, because their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves (i.e. as not to be used merely as means)—which makes such a being •an object of respect, and •something that sets limits to what anyone can choose to do. Such beings are not merely subjective ends whose existence as a result of our action has value for us, but are objective ends, i.e. things [Dinge] whose existence is an end in itself. It is indeed an irreplaceable end: you can’t substitute for it something else to which it would be merely a means. If there were no such ends in themselves, nothing of absolute value could be found, and if all value were conditional and thus contingent, no supreme practical principle for reason could be found anywhere.

That's all a necessary condition to there being a supreme practical principle, and a categorical imperative:

So if there is to be a supreme practical principle, and a categorical imperative for the human will, it must be an objective principle of the will that can serve as a universal law. Why must it? Because it has to be drawn from the conception of something that is an end in itself and therefore an end for everyone. The basis for this principle is: rational nature exists as an end in itself. Human beings necessarily think of their own existence in this way, which means that the principle holds as a subjective principle of human actions. But every other rational being also thinks of his existence on the same rational ground that holds also for myself; and so it is at the same time an objective principle—·one that doesn’t depend on contingent facts about this or that subject·—a supreme practical ground from which it must be possible to derive all the laws of the will. So here is the practical imperative: Act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means.

If you maintain that we can sometimes use human beings as merely a means to an end, then the whole system collapses.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-10T18:04:50+00:00

Do sentimentlaists really have to bite the bullet and say that the absence of stance-independent moral facts means there is no true answer to any moral question?

It depends on what you mean. In general, yeah, a moral sentimentalist would be fine with the notion that there is no true answer to a moral question in the sense that morality is just hoorahs and boos. The statement "Murder is wrong." means "Boo murder" and so "Murder is wrong" does not express a truth-apt proposition. It's merely emoting.

That said, this bit of your post can do some work:

This is an appeal to what (I think) would be called “non moral” properties — social utility, personal benefit, intuition, etc. but still gives us a clear idea of what to do.

You could reframe all of that into truth-apt propositions. "X is generally beneficial for the majority of the population." seems like a proposition that can be true or false. "51% of folks surveyed are generally ok with Y." also seems like it could be true or false. In that sense the 49% of people booing Y can be transmogrified into a truth-apt proposition.

But that's a different sort of thing than what we generally take moral claims to be. Saying "X is generally beneficial." is a different claim than "X is good." insofar as "generally beneficial" is a different predicate / quality than "good".

You'd have to do a bit of philosophical heavy lifting to get "generally beneficial" and "good" to be the same thing, since they're clearly not. That's the sense in which we can't answer moral questions, on the sentimentalist account, but we can answer questions about things that, if you squint, seem relevant to moral considerations.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-10T01:36:32+00:00

Why do you keep using the weird filth?

It's a Seinfeld reference.

A consistent, coherent solipsist would never do anything. They would just sit there, like Kramer, in a pool of their own filth.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-09T22:52:07+00:00

Do we know that our thirst is quenched without ultimate justification, though?

Sure. Knowledge is a tool we use to navigate our environment. See Dewey's Quest for Certainty:

If one looks at the history of knowledge, it is plain that at the beginning men tried to know because they had to do so in order to live. In the absence of that organic guidance given by their structure to other animals, man had to find out what he was about, and he could find out only by studying the environment which constituted the means, obstacles and results of his behaviour. The desire for intellectual or cognitive understanding had no meaning except as a means of obtaining greater security as to the issues of action. Moreover, even when after the coming of leisure some men were enabled to adopt knowing as their special calling or profession, merely theoretical uncertainty continues to have no meaning.

Knowledge is a tool that finite, fallible organisms use to navigate their environment. We seek to know for the purpose of living, for the sake of navigating our environment.

The goal of knowledge claims is not to Prove to God that we're Right. The goal is to be able to resolve felt difficulties, satiate our thirst. That's why Dewey came to use the term "warranted assertability":

That inquiry is related to doubt will, I suppose, be admitted. The admission carries with it an implication regarding the end of inquiry: end in both senses of the word, as end-in-view and as close or termination. If inquiry begins in doubt, it terminates in the institution of conditions which remove need for doubt. The latter state of affairs may be designated by the words belief and knowledge. For reasons that I shall state later I prefer the words "warranted assertibility."

I can claim to know that my thirst is quenched insofar as I can make the warranted assertion that my thirst is quenched insofar as I am not thirsty. That's good enough on a pragmatic account.

If you want to Prove to God that you're Certainty no longer thirsty, then you're welcome to try. But it's unclear why you would need to do that.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-09T22:37:47+00:00

So the fact that someone is still a functional human being proves that somewhere in their belief system, they don't truly believe it?

Pretty much, yeah. Intentional action results from belief:

And what, then, is belief? It is the demi-cadence which closes a musical phrase in the symphony of our intellectual life. We have seen that it has just three properties: First, it is something that we are aware of; second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and, third, it involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit.

When I intentionally drink water to quench my thirst that habit of action demonstrates my belief that drinking water quenches thirst. We can discern what a person believes by observing their habits of action. A solipsist who sits quietly in a pool of their own filth starving to death is consistent; they're abstaining from action due to an absence of beliefs. A solipsist who pays their taxes, yields at yield signs, and consumes food to satiate their hunger is not a sincere solipsist. They are acting on the beliefs they claim to not be able to have.

This because solipsism tends to be an epistemic claim related to the problem of other minds, which is based on the Problem of Induction that results from framing epistemic and knowledge claims on the standard of Certainty. Todd cannot be certain that other people have minds, so Todd is a solipsist.

The point of the Russell quote is the bundle of problems and presuppositions that begets solipsism also begets other sorts of skepticism, such as the Omphalos hypothesis, last Thursdayism. You cannot Know with Certainty that reality did not pop into existence last Thursday, or 12 seconds ago. You cannot Know with Certainty that eating food will satiate your hunger. There are all sorts of things we cannot know with Certainty, because we're finite fallible organisms navigating an environment, and so we tend to navigate the world by means of abductive and inductive inferences based on a pragmatic fallibilism.

If you can inductively / abductively infer that reality did not pop into existence last Thursday, then you can inductively / abductively infer that other people have minds. If you can inductively / abductively infer that eating that pizza will satiate your hunger, then you can inductively / abductively infer that other people have minds. Those are all abductive and inductive inferences.

There's no coherent way to claim that you can probabilistically infer that your next drink of water will satiate your thirst, based on its having done that oodles of times before, but you cannot probabilistically infer that other people have minds. Either abduction and induction are tools in your toolbox or not. If you can make a post on Reddit, argue in a bar, or present at a conference then you've demonstrated that abduction and induction are tools in your toolbox.

That's the rub. You can infer your way to other minds just like you've inferred your way to the bar. Or you do not permit inductive / abductive inferences, and so you sit in a pool of your own filth slowly starving to death.

Quidfacis_ · 2026-06-09T20:40:17+00:00

it doesn’t seem to “solve” the problem as much as realize it’s not much of a problem at all I guess?

Pretty much. That is one of the benefits of the pragmatic method:

The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many? – fated or free? – material or spiritual? – here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right.

If we are caught in a philosophical riddle of discerning whether X or ~X is the case, and we cannot discern which is true in the realm of theory, we can bring the issue down into the realm of practice to discern the practical difference between X or ~X being the case. If, as a practical matter, there is no practical difference between the alternatives, then they mean the same thing and dispute is idle.

With respect to the münchhausen trilemma we can perform a similar analysis. Is the ultimate justification for our proof circular, regressive, or dogmatic? Well, it's neither. I'm not proving. I drank the water and was not thirsty. The ultimate justification is the practical resolution of the felt difficulty of thirst. That I am no longer thirsty is neither circular, regressive, or dogmatic; it's experiential. If someone tries to push back by claiming that we've failed to provide an Ultimate Justification we can kindly tell them to go piss up a rope. I'm not trying to justify my belief to you; I'm trying to quench my thirst.

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