Ah well, shenanigans of excrement paintings of obesity presently engaged in shenanigans — MortalsWrath

:chin:

Profanity is allowed.

This from the IEP entry on functionalism looks about right:

That is, what makes something a mental state is more a matter of what it does, not what it is made of. This distinguishes functionalism from traditional mind-body dualism, such as that of René Descartes, according to which minds are made of a special kind of substance, the res cogitans (the thinking substance.) It also distinguishes functionalism from contemporary monisms such as J. J. C. Smart’s mind-brain identity theory. The identity theory says that mental states are particular kinds of biological states—namely, states of brains—and so presumably have to be made of certain kinds of stuff, namely, brain stuff. Mental states, according to the identity theory, are more like diamonds than like mouse traps.

Functionalism is also distinguished from B. F. Skinner’s behaviorism because it accepts the reality of internal mental states, rather than simply attributing psychological states to the whole organism. According to behaviorism, which mental states a creature has depends just on how it behaves (or is disposed to behave) in response to stimuli. In contrast functionalists typically believe that internal and psychological states can be distinguished with a “finer grain” than behavior—that is, distinct internal or psychological states could result in the same behaviors. So functionalists think that it is what the internal states do that makes them mental states, not just what is done by the creature of which they are parts. — IEP

https://iep.utm.edu/functism/

But aside from these differences in ontology, I see the two as different primarily in their motivations and emphases. Functionalism was the basis for a lot of work in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, because computationalism is a kind of functionalism, or is based on it.

Welcome to the forum @Ecliptic

I banned @Frank Apisa for his low quality posts.

Do you then reject Marx's notion of species-being?

Even accepting what you say, does there not remain "an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way." (Theses On Feuerbach) ?

If your claim is that we cannot identify an essence that fully determines human actions, this is surely far from saying that there is no human nature at all.

Iconostasis.

The Canadian voice in my audioguide at the Moscow kremlin yesterday said "turn to face the iconostasis" when I was in one of the cathedrals. It was obvious what he meant, but I'd never heard it before.

Wiki: "In Eastern Christianity, an iconostasis (plural: iconostases) is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church."

Fans of Tarkovsky may be interested to learn that some of the icons and frescoes in these kremlin churches were done by Andrei Rublev and Theophanes the Greek.

People, please stop posting here about moderator actions. We have a feedback category.

By the way, it's our normal practice to delete any response to a deleted post.

Carry on with the Marx :cool:

I don't even know who the moderators are half the time. Is there a listing somewhere that members should be referencing? — Hippyhead

https://thephilosophyforum.com/profile/members/staff

Denying the antecedent, or at the very least a non sequitur. — Michael

In fact, I was warning against that fallacy. If I admit to sometimes judging posts or posters that I agree with as good, simply because I agree with them (which was implied), then it's reasonable for me to make it explicit that if I don't agree with them, I might still think they're good. Humour demanded a level of subtlety that it appears you, Michael, cannot reach. :wink:

No problem :smile:

What Banno said (thanks, I was too lazy to break it down myself).

Funny how people always think that people they agree with are good posters. — Benkei

This is definitely a thing. But personally speaking I can appreciate quality posts that I don't agree with. For example, I think you're a good contributor despite being full of shit.

If you have cause to complain about staff members then have the decency to complain directly to me by PM or in a feedback thread, instead of griping and disparaging the forum as a whole.

By the way, everyone is free to examine the posting history of banned members.

Thanks for the info on a question I didn't ask. — Professor Death

It wasn't for you.

In case it has to stated explicitly: this is not a Russian website, it's in a foreign language, and it's a philosophy forum with no mass appeal, and certainly not in Russia. The Russian authorities don't care about us and I'm happy for people here to criticize the Russian government if they want to.

Tzeentch made some good points and you were too lazy, rude, or ignorant to discuss them.

I don't see why. You're clearly on a war footing already, and it's clouding your judgment.

I serve the TPF members, not the Russian state.

Yeh, they only allow me to keep this forum going on the condition that I stamp out any criticism of Putin or the glorious FSB, defenders of the Motherland.

I moved it to the Lounge because it's a low quality or informal discussion. The one interesting post, from Tzeentch, gained only a stupid response.

To answer your point: that's fair, but because it's not automated it doesn't always happen.

I banned @Asif for unmitigated low quality.

Again no philosophy, and again quite Russia-centric.

Recent highlights:

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

The characters are grotesques or ciphers: rather than developing, they're only revealed, more or less gradually, and we know that how they respond to circumstances is the only way they ever could. The plot relies on several incredible coincidences. The satirical irony is laid on far too thick, even though we can share his anger and righteousness. Despite his progressive treatment of social issues, and despite his ironic targeting of snobbery, he's still a class-bound snob himself. And the repeated contemptuous descriptions of "the Jew" make for uncomfortable reading (I read somewhere that some of Dickens' Jewish friends complained about this during its serialization, and that he removed the phrase "the Jew" after a certain point in the finished book, but at least in my edition it's there up to the end).

But aside from all that, it's great. The intensity and distinctness of the characters (unchanging as they may be), of the most dramatic scenes, and of his scene-setting descriptions is brilliant. And it's great fun.

War and Peace, Lev Tolstoy

I read it straight after the Dickens and had grouped the two books together in my mind as classic mid-nineteenth century novels, but of course, Tolstoy could hardly be more different. War and Peace feels much closer to my world and my life, and it's more real. The characters develop, change their minds, behave unpredictably. The war bits are much more realistic than I expected, intentionally emphasizing the cowardice and the chaos, the comical errors, the blood and guts, the self-serving lies of the officers, and the basic uselessness of orders and tactics. Tolstoy has some persuasive historico-philosophical arguments and manages to weave them into the plot (except for the final epilogue, which is a repetitive and anti-climactic essay).

Also it's great fun to read. It's full of energy and a passionate love of life and the world--not what you get from Tolstoy's contemporary Dostoevsky.

All Hell Let Loose, Max Hastings

To correct my ignorance of the Second World War--I didn't have a good idea of what happened and when--and especially to see how the Soviet Union fitted in to everything else that was happening, I wanted a one-volume overview, and this turned out to be a pretty good choice. Knowing that Hastings is politically a moderate conservative, hovering around the centre-right, I was surprised at how devastatingly critical he is of the British war effort, not only from a strategic-military point of view but also morally. He shows great sensitivity to the experiences of ordinary soldiers and civilians in all the countries involved, and doesn't hold back when smashing apart the myths of heroism and sacrifice that have been part of the Allied story ever since 1945 (not that he claims heroism and sacrifice were non-existent). One of the unique features of the book is that almost every paragraph contains quotes from archived letters written by people at all levels of society and the military.

Next:

Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoy. I know some people say this is the best novel ever, but I can't help but expect it to be a let-down after W&P.

A Hero of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov. I confess I got this partly because I discovered that his ancestors were the Learmonths from Scotland. Maybe I'm homesick or something.

The Unconsoled, Kazuo Ishiguro. I read this when it was first published, when I was in my early twenties. It creeped me out, I didn't get it, but I was fascinated. Now that I'm older and it feels like time is running out, it'll make more sense.

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56, Anne Applebaum. For me this is going to be a kind of sequel to the WW2 book.

Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine, Anne Applebaum. I mentioned to a Russian friend that I was going to read this book and she impatiently said "It wasn't just the Ukrainians who suffered under Stalin! It was us too!" :roll:

War and Peace again, because it was so good.

Instead of many, why not read a few? It's not all or nothing.

Also it might just be me but all I see is this: — Michael

A direct link to the image gives a 403 "Your client does not have permission to get URL..." — Michael

Me too. Maybe only you can see them @SophistiCat.

I always do when I see them.

Then is blame is always a mistake, and is there no such thing as agency, which would seem to follow?

I was just curious. It seems to me there's a great confusion, at least a great divergence of opinion, about what the difference is.

Because people see mental illness as a character defect rather than a biological disease. — Wheatley

Do you think there are character defects at all?

:cool:

I'm only saying what I'm saying. My first post was kind of making fun of the fact that you're still bitter since I deleted or moved one of your discussions a couple of weeks ago. In my second post I said that anxiety was hard, asked you to explain something I didn't understand, and wished you well. No need to be confused.

By the way, when I talk about stupidity I don't really mean a lack of intelligence so much as an attitude, e.g., thoughtlessness, lack of good sense (being pedantic), laziness, refusal to change one's mind no matter what, and so on.

Neither do I want to exclude people without any philosophical education. It's about the attitude.

I'm not sure you would understand but it's all in my head. Its anxiety. — Wheatley

That stuff is hard sometimes.

If you really want me to stop, I'll stop. — Wheatley

Stop what?

Signing out for a while... — Wheatley

Take it easy.

It's been at least two weeks Wheatley. I thought you'd be over it by now.

I do feel as if a push for heavier moderation has come in the past year or so, but maybe that's my own perception. — Noble Dust

There hasn't really been a concerted push for heavier moderation of low-quality posts. Every so often one of the staff might say to the others, "let's get rid of all this X crap", or "can we stop X from posting all this Y", but very often we don't see it through strictly, and we've been doing that from the start anyway.

What has changed is that we've become less tolerant of racism and sexism, but that doesn't apply to most of your examples.

I pretty much agree with @StreetlightX and @Banno. I think we're too lenient. There's too much low quality stuff on the forum, because the mods are busy dealing with flaming and trolling.

@Noble Dust In my view, Baden's post on how to write an OP lays out an ideal, and casual discussion topics are sometimes all right so long as they're not stupid. Banno divides opinion, but I think his topics are examples of OPs that haven't taken a lot of effort but which are not stupid.

Sorry ssu, but your post is shallow, stupid, and ignorant. Ciao xxx.

And things would have been better if they have stayed in the countryside without an industrial revolution? — ssu

No. It's really annoying when you do this. Many things got worse for many people, but it doesn't follow that I think things would have been better had the industrial revolution never happened. It's really odd that you feel the need at every turn to stamp your foot and insist that capitalism is better than what came before. It is not black and white, obviously.

You minimize the trauma and destructiveness of capitalist ascendancy, but you don't even have to do that to defend the status quo.

Sorry, did the vagabonds or, ahem, Luddites own the land? Who was it stolen from? Or is the argument, as Proudhon put it, that property is a theft? — ssu

Vagabonds existed because the common land was stolen in the enclosures, with many peasants being evicted. Luddites protested the unfair situation that led to the devaluation of their skills, owing to the growing power of the capitalists as traditional economic relations were broken down. But yeah, I guess the treatment of the Luddites is not the best example of direct repression in defence of land-theft, as that battle had been mostly won already.

Well, let's remember again that they weren't as slaves forced into the factory. — ssu

Obviously they were forced by circumstances, if not by direct coercion.

Likely as factory workers, however bad the conditions were then, did get better salaries than working the fields and literally facing hunger. — ssu

What you describe here is poor farmers being forced to work for capitalists.

In any case, I don't know if anyone is saying things were better for peasants than they were for the working class, although in some cases they probably were: peasants sometimes had a level of economic independence that factory workers could only dream of.

But yes, people all over the world go for urban living and factory work instead of staying in their villages. The degree to which they are forced varies geographically and historically. That doesn't go against my points.

So, is the answer Communism or is it capitalism, where we try to fix the problems, jamalrob? — ssu

Although it's irresistible, communism seems like a dangerous utopian dream if it's meant to be an immediate aim. Even as a distant goal it can serve to justify present-day suffering. I am not sure what the answer is ssu.

Your response to KK is emotive and irrational.

It's hardly debatable that the concentration of the ownership of land, and capital in general, can be traced back to theft in the form of such legal measures as enclosures and clearances, with accompanying punishment and repression of the victims (vagabonds, Luddites, etc).

The question we have to address is: radicalism or reform? That land ownership originates in theft might not justify the wholesale dispossession of the owners in one fell swoop. Conservatives and moderates can point to the Bolsheviks' terror-frenzy of dekulakization, starting with Lenin and culminating under Stalin, which I agree was a crime that no original theft can justify (even if the victims had primarily been rich landowners, as claimed). Also, such radical projects usually turn out to be disastrous. And yet, we do live in societies whose unequal distribution of ownership is a legacy of that original theft. So, what to do eh?

What is lacking typically is the understanding just how feudalism was abolished by modern commerce, which is only replaced by very eager figures of speach of "modern day feudalism". As if our current time in the prosperous West with it's democratic structures and welfare state resembles the feudal past. We may have problems today, but they don't anything like under feudalism. Just as our present day farmers, those usually old people who work still with agriculture, are far away from the subsistence farming peasant of the past. — ssu

Feudalism was "abolished by modern commerce" in a specific way that I think justifies drawing a parallel between feudalism and capitalism in terms of the inequality of ownership, property relations, and the relations of production, despite the huge differences between the two systems in other ways.

The bourgeoisie didn't simply cry "feudalism is unfair and we hereby abolish it!", even if it seemed to take that form in certain places and historical moments (where the Enlightenment took its most radical and progressive form (jeez I do sound like a boring old Marxist eh)). What happened is that nobles, even e.g. Scottish clan chiefs, gradually began to find the benefits of capitalism more attractive than their traditional obligations as patriarchs, nobles, or vassals, and became capitalists, alongside and competing with the new capitalists who arose out of commerce. The peasants were out of luck: thus the working class was born.

I don't think anyone is denying that there are huge differences, or that we formally have freedoms that are often beneficial. They key point is, despite that, each of us is thrown into a world in which a small part of the population holds the land and capital, thanks to inheritance and class dominance. Whether one is an owner or, on the contrary, depends on the owners for one's livelihood, with virtually no say over the situation, is an accident of birth--also rather like feudalism.

Well, I hope we still can discuss difficult topics. Because if this forum will have problems for an open dialogue, just think how bad it will be out there in the real World. — ssu

I agree. I want to keep it open to a wide spectrum of views.

Well, he was talking about his rough neighborhood and things what he saw. I don't think he made it up. — ssu

I thought so too at first, but now I suspect he did. In any case, it was his racism that led to the ban. Even if it were true that he'd become racist owing to his bad experiences, it's not an excuse. He was not only "talking about his rough neighborhood and things he saw".