Most philosophy seems to be centered on one of 2 things: survival or self-actualization. Almost all non-religious philosophy is centered on the latter. Darwinism (as a philosophy) and existentialism are the only major philosophies of survival that I can think of.
Any others?
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Seems broadly untrue, unless epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, ethics, etc. are all actually/secretly about self-actualization?
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Yup, they are, and it's not "secret" -- it is all concerned with the nature of being and its flourishing/generativity. The question of being vs. non-being is in a way too elemental to theorize a lot. You kinda have to contemplate it and stick to simpler pre-theory.
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Are there not other, more practical reasons why one might be interested in investigating the nature of being? Like, coming up with cool product ideas, or winning debates?
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You realize that requires assuming and embracing being over non-being?
Except during wartime, most people don't realize there are assumptions being made in that department.
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Isn't the idea of "embracing being over non-being" itself a dichotomy advanced by existentialism (a wartime philosophy)?
Is it not self-evident to most that being is preferred over non-being? Perhaps we need philosophy to help those for whom it isn't obvious.
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Camus' "the only serious philosophical question is that of suicide" is something like the P≠NP proposition of philosophy == "Choosing life is better than choosing death".
Most people assume it is true and move along to other questions. Few work on the proposition itself.
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The question doesn't make sense to me, some assumptions baked in that aren't clicking. I don't understand what it means to "choose death", unless Camus meant self-defenestration.
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Surely the result of “choosing death” is suicide? Else you’re not really choosing it. Antinatalism could be the penultimate stop. But if you really and truly choose death, ya gotta kill yourself.
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Can't I instead choose to do a bunch of drugs and forget about all that "you have to choose between life or death" stuff?
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that is philosophical suicide/acting dead. To not choose is to choose death. Affirmative choice of life over death, even if unconscious, has a very high-energy generative signature, not a degeneracy condition.
this is a bit woo-ey but – in a way literal suicide strikes me as an unimaginative sort of death, and there are more imaginative, even somewhat fun** ways to die while alive. maybe think of it as "to tune in or to tune out". lots of people are tuned out
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Cool, now we've gotten these definitions straight. To return to the original question (vis a vis Jaynes), most philosophy is about self-actualization because the philosophical meta-paradigm is a set of religious practices, and you've just described the existentialist practice.
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