Mainly I like No-Man and some of his other offshoots.

Aye well I like some of his stuff, but personally don't like the stuff where he sings himself, like Porcupine Tree.

An apocalyptic one to suit the mood:

Yes, without self-love you don't hold yourself to account. One way to look at it: when you don't love someone, you're indifferent to their actions--you don't care if they do bad shit.

You can return to the UK and self isolate for 7 days, then live with your parents and help them self isolate. — Punshhh

Yes, that's my top plan right now. Stay in a hotel, or a cottage in the mountains, for 7-10 days till I'm sure I'm ok, and then go to them.

Moscow is fairly relaxed. No signs of panic buying, barely any face masks in the streets or even on the metro (that was a few days ago--I'm avoiding it now and staying at home).

I don't know if I should admire the response of the Russian people or be worried: people are spreading stupid conspiracy theories and pretending the threat doesn't exist.

I'm in Russia but my visa runs out next month, when I'm due to return to Spain, which is currently under lockdown as one of the worst-hit countries in the world. Visa extension applications in Russia have been blocked until May 1st, which is too late for me. I face a choice between travelling to Valencia via Madrid--which is possible as things stand as I have legal residency in Spain, but difficult because of the lockdown, and a bit dangerous just because of the virus--or else going back to the UK and staying with my parents. But I can't risk exposing them to the virus, because they're over 70.

In either case, I might struggle later on, to get a visa back into Russia in July as I'd planned.

Trying to work out if I could get a visa extension and stay here, I called the British Embassy in Moscow, thinking they might be helpful. "You'll have to contact the relevant Russian authorities," they said apologetically. Then they gave me a link to the Russian Embassy in London. I called them and they were not only unhelpful but also unfriendly (she was Russian and trained in the Russian style of customer service). So I asked the question on a Moscow expats Facebook group. One person said contact the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Another said no it's the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Someone else said no it's the Central Immigration Centre. Yet another person said no, they have nothing to do with visas. Someone suggested I go to Thailand.

Just moaning.

Should we be worried — Punshhh

I don't think there's a choice now, unless you choose some kind of oblivion*. We're all swept up in this.

* I'm drinking Russian cognac as I write

Don't know.

Turns out it's sung in Russian in an Armenian style, and it's a hugely popular song around the Caucasus.

There's a twitter icon in the editor tools, which is a shortcut for the code that you can, alternatively, enter manually:

Just a note to say you can embed tweets here:

I've been repeatedly listening to this short recording I made while having a beer in a cafe in a ski resort at the foot of Mount Elbrus in the mainly Muslim Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus mountains. I'm trying to work out what the music is. Shazam and other apps are giving me no results, and I'm not even sure what the language is. Arabic? Azerbaijani? Turkish? Karachay-Balkar or some other North Caucasian language?

Please help.

Many of us here are not American.

I've been very clear. I've given you a chance to answer, to tell us all what the hell you have in mind, but you respond with evasiveness.

So you have no answer? No clarification of the OP? No attempt to tell us in what way you think "I know" is vague?

I would have deleted the OP if I'd seen it before it generated a discussion. It's so lacking in anything philosophical or interesting that it looks like just an attempt to get on the main page instead of the Lounge, where your threads usually end up.

You don't know what "know" means? Have you looked it up? Have you got anything to say about how it has been treated by philosophers?

In what way is its use vague, as you keep on saying it is, with no explanation? You have not described the problem with "I know" or how it is vague. It's your OP that is vague. There is no clear question, and what there is doesn't make much sense.

It seems inherent, that we assume that the other person "knows" — Wallows

Not at all. When someone says they know, we don't just assume they do, unless it seems fairly uncontroversial and we don't have reason to doubt it, in which case we might give them the benefit of the doubt. But you don't give any context anyway; there are different ways of using the word.

What is the philosophical issue? What does this have to do with formal languages, which is something you brought up?

Do you think "speculative" is really applicable to the moral aspect of the position I'm against? To my ear that sounds specifically about what might be real or true, not what might be moral or good. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I see what you mean.

Less troublesome terms, ones that don't introduce Kant's more subtle and unique transcendental, are immanent and speculative. Kant uses these terms too, but in an obvious way that's in line with what you're saying.

Yeah I think that works.

EDIT: Although it's probably still going to be confusing and distracting for anyone who has struggled with these terms in Kant.

My instinct is to say you should ditch the word entirely and find something else (I may think of something later), but between those two options I'd go for the latter. The trouble with that is you inevitably introduce a distinction that you're not interested in, which distracts from your main points. In fact, that criticism would apply to the other option too.

Incidentally, and to make things even more confusing, your own position might be classed as a form of transcendental philosophy, in that it attempts, a bit like Kant, to describe and police the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate philosophy, between thinking about the objects of experience and a speculative metaphysics about objects beyond it.

I've just read the essay and I can see that despite the clear definition of transcendentalism at the beginning, elsewhere in the essay you use transcendental in the sense of Kant's transcendent. I don't think you can mention Kant and then ignore the distinction.

@Pfhorrest I'm sorry if you think I'm rudely ignoring your essay and the reasons you chose to use the term transcendentalism, but I can't resist a bit of Kant clarification:

The distinction between transcendent and transcendental is very important in Kant. He uses transcendent to describe metaphysics that reaches beyond possible experience, as opposed to immanent metaphysics, which is effectively just physics (or in any case is restricted to the empirical use of the understanding). This is the distinction you have in mind in the essay.

Let us call the principles whose application keeps altogether within the
limits of possible experience immanent principles, and those that are to fly beyond these limits transcendent principles. — Kant, CPR, A296/B352-3

In contrast, he uses transcendental to describe his own philosophy, the enquiry into the possibility of the a priori. There are quotations all over the CPR to this effect, if I recall correctly (I don't have access to it right now). Here's one I found somewhere:

We must not call just any a priori cognition transcendental, but must call transcendental (i.e., concerning the a priori possibility or the a priori use of cognition) only that a priori cognition whereby we cognize that—and how—certain presentations (intuitions or concepts) are applied, or are possible, simply a priori. — Kant, CPR, A56/B80-81

Since this is what Kant is doing, transcendental cognition is okay according to him, but transcendent isn't.

This unfortunate but now unavoidable distinction makes "transcendentalism" ambiguous in a work of philosophy, even without taking into account the most common use of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism . But maybe it's fair to use it when you define it clearly as you do, as to do with Kant's transcendent rather than his transcendental.

EDIT: These definitions are pretty good:

transcendent: the realm of thought which lies beyond the boundary of possible knowledge, because it consists of objects which cannot be presented to us in intuition-i.e., objects which we can never experience with our senses (sometimes called noumena). The closest we can get to gaining knowledge of the transcendent realm is to think about it by means of ideas. (The opposite of ‘transcendent’ is ‘immanent’.)

transcendental: one of Kant’s four main perspectives, aiming to establish a kind of knowledge which is both synthetic and a priori. It is a special type of philosophical knowledge, concerned with the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience. However, Kant believes all knowing subjects assume certain transcendental truths, whether or not they are aware of it. Transcendental knowledge defines the boundary between empirical knowledge and speculation about the transcendent realm. ‘Every event has a cause’ is a typical transcendental statement. (Cf. empirical.)

https://kantphilosophy.wordpress.com/technical-terms-of-kantian-philosophy/

We've had reading groups, and we had monthly readings for a while, a couple of years ago, in which we would discuss short philosophy papers. It was good while it lasted, but we were persuaded to choose a couple of really crappy or boring papers and that probably put people off.

All it takes is for a few people to dedicate their effort and time. There have been lots of suggestions for reading groups over the past few months, mainly by Wallows, but nothing has come of them.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/categories/16/reading-groups

He has suggested trying again in the future some time, with just one thread and a more general topic.

Along with Jonathan Miller, Clive James and Gary Rhodes died yesterday as well. Rhodes, being a chef and not a writer, wasn't known for his words, but James wrote a lot of good stuff:

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.

There is no reasoning someone out of a position he has not reasoned himself into.

Personally, I liked his criticism:

Here is a book so dull that a whirling dervish could read himself to sleep with it. If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead. — Clive James on Brezhnev: A Short Biography

47..."Forget this transcendent certainty, which is connected with your concept of spirit."

In what way is certainty linked to the notion of spirit? — ZzzoneiroCosm

It's a puzzling one. First, it's clear that here and throughout On Certainty he attacks the notion that ordinary certainty is not enough, that we need, not only a solid bedrock, but one that is is somehow guaranteed to be solid, for all time and universally, that is, an absolute certainty. This impossible kind of knowledge would be transcendent, as it would require a foundation external to human capacities.

This is where the concept of spirit comes in, I think. Transcendent (not transcendental) metaphysics is part of what Wittgenstein and others were reacting against in the early 20th century. Passage 47 implies that he sees a connection between the epistemological search for absolute certainty, and transcendent metaphysics such as that of the rationalists. In OC, Wittgenstein is discussing Moore, who was defending common sense against philosophers such as Bradley, for whom the concept of spirit may have been significant, as it was for Hegel, who heavily influenced Bradley. Wittgenstein's word is Geist, the same as Hegel's. Spirit transcends our everyday reality, and is thus similar to the Holy Grail of epistemology.

Here's the context:

46. But then can’t it be described how we satisfy ourselves of the reliability of a calculation? O yes! Yet no rule emerges when we do so.—But the most important thing is: The rule is not needed. Nothing is lacking. We do calculate according to a rule, and that is enough.

47. This is how one calculates. Calculating is this. What we learn at school, for example. Forget this transcendent certainty, which is connected with your concept of spirit. — Wittgenstein

So calculating according to a rule is enough. Even if it is legitimate to ask if the rule itself is reliable, we shouldn't expect by doing so to find another, higher level, transcendent rule. In the end it is in the very following of the rule that one attains correctness and reliability.

Wittgenstein appears to view this yearning for transcendent truth, rules, knowledge, certainty, and so on, as all connected to the bad philosophical habit, a legacy of theology, that Kant ends up rejecting in the Critique of Pure Reason. As far as Wittgenstein was spiritual, he regarded it as involving what cannot be said, and therefore as nothing to do with philosophy.

I don’t think you quite understand what I’m trying to point out here. The whole picture being painted is one that disregards human life as part of economy. He clearly is happy to depart from basic human interactions and lay out ‘economics’ as purely being a monetary exchange scheme rather than possessing human ‘wants and needs’ (he says ‘wants and needs’ then parcels it off as ‘use value’). This progresses into ‘use value’ only being of any ‘value’ - in the marketplace - if there is an exchange based on ‘goods’. If you cook a meal for your family this is essentially framed as of no ‘Value’. Do you see how this can be construed as dehumanising? — I like sushi

Is this referring to the work of Marx? If so, it's a really bad misreading.

I think art is an exception to the kind of commodity production that Marx identifies as being the normal capitalist way of going on. Art is more akin to previous, less alienated modes of production. In any case, Marx wasn't remotely concerned with it in Capital, because it's atypical.

But if you're thinking of art production as a model of un-alienated production and exchange, then maybe you're on to something.

In Capital, as fdrake suggests, Marx identifies anything that we value as a use value before we consider whether and how it's being produced for and exchanged in a market. It doesn't matter for his purposes, in that work, in what way these things are useful or desired: they can be any kind of wanted things, not only necessities but also works of art, entertainment, gratification, etc.

By the way, don't mistake Marx's neglect here, in Capital, for a temperamental or moral neglect of art in general.

I deleted it for low quality.

My computer is sentient, you can not deny it!

What if I say a PC becomes conscious the moment you connect it with a monitor and it displays some content. Then I can say, look, there it is its qualia right there on the display, that's what it thinks, that's what it feels. It does not feel like we do in terms of pain and desire, but in terms of geometry of overlapping densities of magnetic and electric fields, however is that supposed to feel.

How can you deny this sentience?

It seems more like a passing thought than a philosophical thesis or discussion-point. A lot of work has been done in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and so on, but this OP didn't acknowledge any of that.

If I haven't seen a discussion before it has generated a lot of comments, I will sometimes leave it even if it's low quality. In this case, it hadn't generated much discussion when I saw it.

matter only 'has being' when appears in human form. That's why we're 'beings' and things, just 'things'. — Wayfarer

People have pointed out to you a few times before just how idiosyncratic your use of "being" is, at least in philosophy. This discussion is partly about about Heidegger, and Heidegger uses the term being in the traditional Aristotelian sense: a being is something that can be said to be. Being is about existence.

From your profile, click 'Edit profile' > 'Set preferences'. I guess if you check the box labelled 'Email me when I'm mentioned in a discussion', that will do it. I'm not sure though, because I have most email notifications turned off.

So the solutions you talk about obviously seem like solutions now. We're in the same situation now as the early fossil-fuel enthusiasts were in 200 years ago. What happens when we find out the Indium in solar panels causes devastating damage to microbes, the disruption to air streams caused by wind power results in damaging weather pattern changes, the habitat loss from converting to biodiesel is worse than the fossil-fuel it's replacing... These are all real concerns by the way, just not well researched enough to provide any concrete worries yet. The point is our optimism about growth blinds us to the historic fact that virtually everything we thought was going to be some brilliant development turned out to be shit, in terms of some (usually long-term) undesirable consequences. — Isaac

True, and yet...



Few things are more important.

What makes you so confident that, unlike almost every development in the past, today's 'solutions' won't just end up being tomorrow's problems? — Isaac

That's not exactly what I'd say. I'd say I'm confident that we can deal with the problems that come up. It's never absolutely certain but I think the alternatives to technological progress are immoral, unfair, dangerous. My attitude to the precautionary principle is, roughly, that if you know you can make a change for the better, and if it won't be outweighed by changes for the worse as far as you can tell, then there is no justification for failure to make that change. This is how we do it.

And it's important to point out that past developments have not just ended up being today's problems. They have been good in many ways.

There are exceptions, of course. Nuclear weapons, for example, which could end up being a really stupid idea. This does show that the technological cannot be separated from the political, but I don't think it should lead us to seek to slow down technological progress as such.

I disagree with this, I don't see how, on the face of it, more of the same could possibly be a cure for the problems the previous growth caused. — Isaac

There are several ways. For climate change, there are technological solutions, such as clean energy, and they require massive research and investment; and societies with highly developed infrastructure and commanding resources effectively can protect themselves from unwelcome changes. So both mitigation and adaptation can be achieved with growth. For other environmental problems, we can see the positive results in developed countries already, where e.g., pollution has been reduced.

It's not more of the same, but more and different.

I think this is more myth-building. Its the only way we've found because it's the only way we've really tried. That's not much to commend it. For a start, economic growth does not seem at all to depend on how capitalist a country is. Some very socialist economies are doing very well, some extremely free-market economies have done very badly. If the degree, or proportion, of capitalism in an economy does not correlate well with human development, it seems, on the face of it, quite unlikely that its capitalism that's responsible — Isaac

But you appear to agree that "it's the only way we've found", which is what I said (although I actually said "best way we've found so far") Otherwise sure, you're pretty much right here I think. I'm not arguing for capitalism but for growth.

I've answered all this already. We choose to measure specific metrics because they're the things we value, the things we want more of. We favour them as being more important than other things. It's reasonable on this basis to describe their increase as improvements, and this doesn't entail ignoring the context.

We've certainly strayed a long way off topic. I forgot it was about the "leap from socialism to communism."

You're saying that the preference of the householder for having a washing machine has been shown (and so is a reasonable factor to include in the judgement), but the associated environmental and social problems have not (and so it is reasonable to exclude them from the judgment)? — Isaac

No that's not my position. My position is that there have been associated problems, and that recent climate change and other environmental problems are caused by economic growth, but that the two things are not inevitably linked, at least not to the detriment of human beings. I believe that the primary aim of policy should be to improve people's lives and that the best way to do that while also solving the associated problems is more economic growth, which will allow us all to switch to cleaner energy, find more resources and use existing ones better, and also allow particularly vulnerable populations to protect themselves from change. In a nutshell, an economically growing humanity can clean up after itself, as is evident when we look at history.

There are several commentators who argue this case from across the political spectrum, but unfortunately many of them go too far in celebrating the wonders of capitalism. This is understandable: capitalism might not be the best way to solve these problems, but so far it is the best way we've found to achieve quick growth, and given the choice between capitalism and Malthusian de-growth, I'll take the former, along with the millions who buy washing machines as soon as they can afford them.

This is more or less where I'm coming from: https://www.neweurope.eu/article/the-no-growth-prescription-for-misery/

Obviously if I'm going all-out to argue for this I'll have to do a lot more, but I'm not sure I want to get into one of those statistics-drenched debates, and I hadn't really intended to get into it when I first entered this discussion--so if I decide to chicken out, I apologize.

That's the matter I'm taking issue with. I don't see how it makes any sense to say something is an improvement "in itself" where, by that, you mean "when ignoring certain other factors inextricably connected with it" . — Isaac

It does make sense. If I couldn't buy a washing machine (income) and didn't have access to a launderette (infrastructure or economic development, not part of the HDI but significant for my example), it would make my life worse. To measure things at all requires the isolation of specific metrics. The ones we choose to measure here are based on the things we all value; they are factors that contribute to freedom, opportunity, health, leisure, and so on.

Here's a contrived example. We value education. It's usually better to go to school than not to go to school, even if there's a risk that you will be run over by a car on the way there. But, you may ask, what if going to school always leads to traffic-related premature death: surely that means going to school does not represent an improvement over not going to school? Of course not: it just means we need to do something about the traffic or the location of the school (or whatever).

But, you may further ask, what if going to school inevitably leads to traffic-related premature death? I.e., what if the increased HDI, and economic growth more generally, inevitably leads to environmental catastrophe and social breakdown? Well, that hasn't been shown.

So maybe this is all just about the choice of words. I think that @boethius could make his case more strongly by saying, yes, there have been improvements, but those improvements have been achieved unsustainably, and continuing to pursue them will lead to terrible consequences. And then we could argue about that, which is the substantial disagreement.

Maybe you can now see what I've been doing here. I have not really been arguing directly over that substantial disagreement, but trying to reveal what @boethius's choice of words, his choice to actually deny demonstrable improvements, says about his position more generally.

Because in itself the availability of washing machines is an improvement, and I'm not going to argue for that. There may be other metrics that have shown other things getting worse, and you're right that the underlying issue here is to interpret that balance of gains and losses, but my point was to reveal boethius's stark denial of real gains for people (again, I'm not going to argue that the increased HDI figures show real gains for people).

If my argument begs the question, it does so in the way that Moore's Here is one hand does.

What's dishonest about repeating my argument and dealing with criticism? — boethius

Precisely this kind of response. You know very well that I did not claim there was anything dishonest about repeating your argument and dealing with criticism. This is tiresome.

How do you know it's not that you have missed the point and how is argument I'm intentionally missing the point more credible than the argument you're intentionally missing the point and pre-emptively accusing me of what you're doing as a Trumpian-style diversion tactic that has proven to be extremely effective on those that lack critical thinking skills?

Please, share your reasons why we should assume prima facie that your argument throwing shade on my intentions is more credible than a similarly structured argument throwing shade on your intentions of throwing shade on my intentions. — boethius

This is gibberish, but from what I can make of it it's full of baseless assertions, and baseless attributions of what you see as the enemy position. Diversion tactic? What are you talking about? I came here to make two simple points, first that you used "fetishism" in a way unrelated to Marx while claiming it was "Marx's language", and second that economic growth has led to improvements. You have done everything you can to deny that these improvements are improvements at all, and this is what I want to show, that you are dismissing real benefits that people have enjoyed, on the basis of possible future problems. I'm not interested in directly confronting your inhumane apocalyptic dogma.