I'd say that what is inevitably going to happen (and is already beginning to happen on TPF), is that folks are going to appeal to LLMs as indisputable authorities. "You say X but my almighty LLM says ~X, therefore you are wrong." This will occur explicitly and also in various implicit ways.. — Leontiskos

Unfortunately, it's almost inevitable now that Al will become in the near future THE general authority. So, thinking will no longer be a practical necessity. We could even draw a logical line from human laziness to a situation where people simply plug their "personality" into a mobile AI, stick it on themselves, and allow it to do all their conversing for them.

Because this is an appeal to an LLM it doesn't directly contravene the rule. Nevertheless, I would argue that it is still remarkably contrary to the spirit of philosophy. It is that look-up-the-infallible-answer routine, which is quite foreign to philosophy (and is itself based on an extremely dubious epistemology).

I hope TPF will discourage this "look up the infallible LLM answer" approach, especially as it becomes more prevalent. The risk of such an approach is that humans become interpreters for AI, where they get all their ideas from AI but then rewrite the ideas in their own voice. Such a result would be tantamount to the same outcome that the current rule wishes to avoid. — Leontiskos

All we can do is be the change we want to see. I'd rather lose on argument than bluff my way through one. That's the beginning of outsourcing your personality. The end is human jello permanently plugged into AI-Tik Tok, gurgling its way happily to death.

the glorification of crime is a very real phenomenon, particularly among young men. In my experience, the posters hanging on the walls of college dorms will generally be of either famous musicians (the poet archetype) or various Hollywood villains (e.g., Tony Montana of Scarface seems to have enduring popularity, Tyler Durden of Fight Club and Heath Ledger or Joaquin Phoenix's Joker as well). A Batman poster is the sort of thing you have your parents buy for you as a kid. As a teenager or young adult, you get a poster of the Joker. Having recently browsed through two different poster stores in flea markets, this trend still seems to be very much a thing, with horror movie characters also featuring heavily (athletes, of course, also remain popular). We could also consider the appeal of crime-focused video games (e.g. Grand Theft Auto, Hitman), gangster rap, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Skipping the Nietzsche debate for a more general comment relevant to this: It seems the way the “glorification of crime" often functions ideologically is as a kind of destructive substitute for creative self-recoding, that is, actual resistance to the socio-symbolic / Big Other or however you want to put it. The urge to resist gets channeled towards legible functionalities that are unthreatening on the meta level because they are a) by their nature identifiable and punishable by the overwhelming forces of state security (and even offer the state potentially welcome opportunities for the marginalization, ghettoization and reproduction of underclasses); and b) transformatively consumable and therefore self-neutralizing—the fantasy of being a criminal as an accepted social practice becomes a form of entertainment within which the impetus to actual deviancy is dissolved. This is not to suggest all crime follows this route, as genuine resistance such as it is may also be criminal, but to point to a kind of social defence mechanism that serves to redirect opportunities for resistance.

We might consider this a second order “grammatization”---to repurpose a coinage of Bernard Stiegler—the means by which the social order makes reality legible, predictable, and controllable. First order grammatization could be seen as applying directly to phenomena which are, in perception, individuated as functionally / aesthetically / practically categorized and conceptualized coherencies relativised by our human umwelt / life world (as opposed to the unconceptual functional coherencies of an animal’s umwelt). Being a socialized individual, I can’t see a tree or a lamp without seeing the concept of a tree or a lamp and that comes intertwined with the direct sensory phenomena to form the recognizable object etc. Second order grammatization then would be this process applied to concepts themselves, of e.g. resistance as criminality, and this happens through a controlled process of overcoding that is in its nature limiting, just as first order grammatization is limiting—the difference being that first order grammatization is aimed at creating (recognizably human) sociality whereas second order grammatization (ideological imprinting) is aimed at protecting/sustaining it.

Also, consider how these “deviant” messages are nowadays primarily delivered through the anaesthetising information machine of mass media where the audience is pre-conditioned into passivity from the get-go.

AI is result-oriented. Intellectual development, and particularly philosophical intellectual development, is process-oriented. If you just want to post the "right" answer, you are doing things wrong. It's no fun that way either. And apart from keeping things philosophical, we want to keep them human here. Within 10 years, the vast majority of the internet will be AI generated---such is the logic of competitiveness and consumerism. We won't be.

I don't use GPS while driving or LLMs for my TPF postings either. Call me a luddite ... I'm secure in my own cognitive abilities — 180 Proof

:up: :up:

This is no different than having your friend do your homework for you. If he explains you the topic, you read the book, you understand it, you do the assignment, you're fine. If he does it for you, then you cheated, and no one likes a cheater. — Hanover

:up: :up:

(To put my "way out" another way as it is vaguely worded above: It is to performatively reverse this situation of being-under-judgement by becoming the analyst and judge of one’s context, that is one’s cultural and social context. This creative reversal can take the form of art, philosophy, or science, the point is that one engages in the types of activities that change and develop the social weave rather than being smothered in it through a hystericized reaction to its prereflective installment. The sufferer is an inverse artist who is painted by a given socio-symbolic "God", cannot escape this portrait, and freezes in the mirror to concretize the situation and make it all the easirer for herself to be so painted. But, to regain control, she must paint the hand that is painting her. And for someone in such a faulty self-relationship, that will likely need to be a constant effort.)

There is so much to be questioned in theory and human experience. With diagnostic criteria of body dysmorohic disorder, erroneous perception comes into play. In particular, a person may be preoccupied with a feature of 'ugliness' which is not observed by others. But, so much involves cultural or intersubjective standards.

Some of this comes down to cultural aesthetics about the body. However, it also involves ideas of perfection in the wider sphere, including moral aspects. Here, I am suggesting that ideas of 'goodness' and 'badnees' come into play in self perception and ideas of what is seen as 'wrong' in the mirror. — Jack Cummins

Definitely. As hinted above, what can go wrong is at least in large part a hystericized reaction to being judged where one performatively tries to out-judge the judge and becomes stuck in the mirror which is the ostensible tool for so-doing, not realizing that the object in the mirror is always a socially mediated projection, a socio-symbolic weave layered over an irretrievably lost "pure" physicality---and at some level we cannot but know that. It's like being caught in a paradoxical spiral where one intensifies exactly what one is trying to avoid. The fear becomes self-manifesting.

The two may overlap, especially in conjunction with sexuality, which has so much of a significant role in both aesthetic and moral dimensions of identity and the arena of perception by an 'other'' or others. It involves self acceptance and repentance of one's personal worth, on a whole global or blurred picture of personal identity and self worth. It involves relationships and how one experiences in moments of alonenesx in the mirror of reflective self-awareness. — Jack Cummins

The connection with sexuality is really hard to work out. It's such a broad category when extended up from biology through psychology and into different cultural contexts. Happy to hear further ideas on this.

There is neither outside nor inside prior to interaction. We always understand ourselves though participation in normative discursive communities, but these are partially shared circumstances, subtended by perspectival positionings do not allow for their being swallowed up and dissolved into a flat social totality. We mirror ourselves in others as reciprocal interaffecting, but it is an interaffecting that doesn’t remove the utter particularity of individual vantage. — Joshs

I agree with this. I don't think I have said anything that suggests I don't. But if I appear to have, let's thrash it out.

(Ok maybe "utter particularity", I can't say I fully agree with. We can't escape certain commonalities.)

Of course, we don't need Sartre specifically for this theory, we need only the socially installed other at the level of prereflection, a theoretical destination that can be reached through many other thinkers; Vygotsky, who I mentioned above, comes to mind. And we can access the dynamic easily with everyday examples.

I might say to myself in the context of this conversation, "I think I'll mention thinker X... but wait, Joshs will probably rip him apart too", and what I've done there in a very simple sense is reflect on another, specifically the potential action of another, something we do all the time. But behind that is the fact that prereflectively my intentional acts are interwoven with the socially symbolic; Joshs was always already there in the original thought, but not as Joshs, rather as one part of the overall social weave---perhaps "critic-who-knows" or whatever---a weave that sets a "tone" or "colour" to the original thought such that a) thought can be recognized as multidimensional---capable of having such "tones" and "colours", and b) that capability is what sets thought apart from itself such that it can be recognized inherently as my thought of this or that. So, "critic-who-knows" and all the other functional sub-elements of the social system (and "critic-who-knows" is strictly a functional element with which both human and non-human actors can resonate---e.g. AI can be "critic-who-knows", or a book we are about to read can or etc.) are always-already-there in the developed person, the socialized self.

And, of course, this inheres bidirectionality. As the social system is installed in me, so am I installed in the social system. But things can go wrong. I am hypothesizing a kind of hystericized reaction to the presence of the other as gaze as manifested in the physical mirror relation, which relation then becomes diseased and destructive. And which reaction amounts to a fundamental denial / rejection of the reality of self as self-for/with/among/judged by etc other. We can come at this through Sartre (and I did so for the reasons I mentioned above) or Vygotsky or systems theory etc. But I'm curious if any of this makes sense to anyone else on its own terms.

@Joshs @Moliere

Interesting back and forth. I know Sartre is polarizing and has been accused of completely misunderstanding Heidegger. The Husserl angle I'm not as familiar with as I've always approached Husserl through the lens of his successors. Work to do on Husserl then. Thanks.

(Incidentally, if you look at this through a systems theory lens, the corollary of non-positional awareness is something like the structural coupling of the systems of consciousness and society through language. The other sneaks in again prereflectively.)

I wonder how your argument would change if we substituted Husserlian for Sartrean phenomenonology — Joshs

The short answer is it doesn't work, particularly if you mean later Husserl.

The more rambling answer is I've never given Husserl the attention he probably deserves. However, to my knowledge, Sartre's structure of intentionality is derivative of early Husserl. But we need Sartre's formulation "consciousness is what it is not" to set up the idea of the other being integrated into non-positional awareness. I see this as developmental (Vygotsky, Lacan) in a way that Sartre didn't really address as far as I know.

But the analogy of the sphere with a mirror on the inside and a hole to the outside (from secondary literature) got me thinking about mirror-based pathologies etc. Sartre doesn't give us these kinds of metaphors directly. He gives us situations like the man looking through the keyhole who suddenly finds himself observed, but I find this less evocative and want a bit more even at the risk of stretching the theory further than he may have intended. I think what I've said is pretty much consistent with him though.

Anyway, Husserl's "consonance" attempt to avoid solipsism is just more Descartes right? I don't find it convincing and Husserl got dumped by many of his follower's, including Sartre, by turning idealist in the end. Solipsism is something idealism can't really make go away. It's not just the thrust of subjectivity we need, it's a kind of meta-phenomenal grounding supplied by the integrated context of the other.

So, back to the short answer. Husserl's no good for me. And that's OK because I think he went off track in the end, didn't really explain why, and is ultimately superceded by Sartre and others who came after.

Who do you find more convincing, particularly in relation to solipsism, and why do you think Husserl went off his original track the way he did?

You guys... :grin:

He told me to "ruck off". So, I suppose he lost his temper, but I grant him the decency of some self-censorship.

Banned @daniel j lavender for refusing moderation. His recent discussion was a copypasta from elsewhere on the internet and has been removed.

Not a fan of the topic of Narcissus. To me what he had was a disease of the mind, not the lack humility, if this is the diagnosis. Symbolically, when it's already a disease, a procedure is necessary to be performed, not an analysis to be laid out. He was left to die alone. No sage could save him. — L'éléphant

I hope my previous comments have helped clarify where I'm coming from on this. A disease of the mind is just what I have in mind.

As I have said before, the self is a 'modern' coming of age, for in the primitive times, it was always 'the other' that primitive humans had looked at, not themselves. It was a process to have finally arrived at the self, the recognition of the self -- a very long time. It was also not experienced by a handful of people, rather the whole village. It was not self-love that brought us to the self-awareness, not narcissistic, rather it was the beginning of wisdom. — L'éléphant

I hadn't considered the historical perspective actually, so thank you for this.

The reflection in the mirror physically and psychologically is the foundation of personal and social identity. The sense of self is gained in front of the mirror in connection with the gaze of the other in social interaction. — Jack Cummins

Exactly.

The mirror itself is of significance. I remember when I lived with a mirror nearby my bed it was horrible to see myself as soon as I woke up each day. Of course, the mirror is a reverse image so it is not as one appears exactly to others as most people are not completely symmetrical. — Jack Cummins

This is the type of "haunting" of the mirror that can become a damaging pattern.

Self lies have also become the new mirrors even though they can be played around with. We live in a world of images and one can love or loath oneself. Identity problems arise in conjunction with such images, including eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder and gender identity problems.

Someone with body dysmorphic disorder is a perfect example of the Narcissus I'm pointing to. And the hyper-focus on image excacerbates the problem. The image is never stable, every angle, mirror or camera will present us with someone something different. Without something else solid to fall back on, it's easy to become destabilised by it. But that something to fall back on can never be something entirely physical. It must transcend the physical image. It must be an abstract structure of self that can stabilize it, conceptualize it, and "recover" it from the mirror.

The psychological aspects of self and the perception of self by others is the foundation of relationships and so many developmental and psychiatric issues. Autism is interesting as it is like a soliptist bubble in some ways.

I have read some of Sartre's writing on self, body and otherness, which I found helpful. Also, the social sciences shed light on the issues, including Erving Goffman's sociological work, 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life'. Also, object-relations theory, especially the work of Melanie Klein, looks at developmental aspects of self identity, with the role of mother as the initial mirror. — Jack Cummins

I'm in the middle of a Goffman book now ("Behaviour in public places"). Klein's work sounds interesting to. But yes, sociology is highly relevant here. My approach kind of flits between philosophy and the social sciences.

One book which I came across which I see as very significant is Martin Buber's 'I and Thou'. It compares the relationship between self and a personal 'God' and the human other. This is of importance in imagination and fantasy. As belief in God is facing there may be more attention to the opinions of others for a sense of self and self esteem. — Jack Cummins

I haven't explored Buber closely, but I should. He often comes up tangentially in my research.

But, as for the solution to the problem of self loathing or excessive self-love I am not sure that there is a complete solution. In practical terms, ito throw away the mirrors entirely might result in a complete disheveled appearance. Also, opinions of others may be overvalued but do need to be taken into account for coping in social life.

Agree, it's a healthy relationship with the mirror, and by extension with other, that's important. Fleeing the other or the image of the other is no healthier ultimately than overvaluing it. It's more the flip side of the same fear.

I am an existentialist outsider in many respects but don't wish to be a complete isolate. As people spend more time on the internet and phones there is a danger of going into a fantasy life in which the other becomes more remote. It may be a way of getting lost in a life of fantasy and preoccupation with an idealised imaginary image of oneself. To find the balance in navigating self and aloneness may be the way to wisdom. Through feedback from others we gain some awareness of our own blindspots, which may be uncomfortable but essential for deepening self-awareness. — Jack Cummins

Yes, I've deliberately isolated myself at times, and I am generally a loner, but it all must be with the goal of finding productive and fulfilling relationships with the other, because, again, the self is in some sense the other to the self. There is a radical awareness of and relationship to the other that we cannot do without.

It might also help to shed light on this if I clarify Sartre’s concept of consciousness that I’m making use of here, especially non-positional awareness. So, from a phenomenological angle, we can say consciousness is always consciousness of something, and from this we get intentionality. I look at the lamp in front of me and that is the object of my consciousness. But, of course, that is not the whole story, for I am not only aware of the lamp. It doesn’t fill my awareness. I do not become the object. For even to have an object, we must have a subject and implicit to non-positional awareness is that separation—what is going on is an observation that requires an observer, i.e. me. So, this is a moment to moment background knowledge and is pre-reflective. It is not me saying to myself after looking at the lamp, “I looked at the lamp”, it is included in, immanent in, the experience of looking at the lamp.

I read a good piece of secondary literature that helps visualize this. We can imagine non-positional awareness as a sphere on the inside of which is a mirror. Suppose there is a hole in the mirror to the outside, to the phenomenon. Well, consciousness simultaneously “reaches out” to that outside while mirroring itself on the inside and this happens in the moment. It’s what gives moments their immediate “feel” and what gives us the ability to immediately act in the world like a participant. It’s immanent to every act of consciousness rather than being in any way separate. It’s that immediate pre-reflective sense of being a subject observing an object that allows for later reflection. That later reflection is harder to visualize because it involves a kind of loop, where consciousness reaches out and returns to the self---through the filter of the previous immanent knowledge of it being a subject vs objects---in order to examine a moment or series of moments or the result of a moment, e.g. a feeling that is a part of itself, and in this act the subject is made object by consciousness.

And here, as Sartre points out we have no conceptually privileged access to the nature of our pre-reflective apparatus in terms of its pure being than we do to others' consciousness as immediate being. It can only be experienced reflectively as an object for us as others are. For the conceptual, I, the subject as self-understanding, solipsism makes no sense because we are in principle no better off in relation to our own pre-reflective existence than we are to that of others. That is, we can never find ourselves as substance, we are given to ourselves only through our actions, which allow for reflection.

What follows then is an attempt to explore a form of brokenness in or in our relation to this non-positional awareness, and, by extension, the other.

Interesting points which I will come back to. For now, I should clarify that I am using Narcissus as a stand in for a neurosis whereby someone gets locked into or caught in the physical mirror because their relation to the other (the social mirror) is diseased. The most obvious corollaries are body image disorders, rather than narcissim per se.

@Outlander

Things have become a bit derailed. Let's keep things on the topic of the OP rather than the poster who wrote it.

@Illuminati

If you respond to off-topic posts, you may end up derailing the thread yourself.

I'll delete anything off-topic from now on.

You’re correct, of course. A salutary admonition. I have noticed from time to time a dialog will appear ‘do you like this personality?’ All part of subscriber management. — Wayfarer

Not a criticism of you of course. I was quite amused for a while until it began feeling creepy and then I thought, wait, I'm talking to my own projection here in a hall of mirrors. No bueno...

I actually hate when it does personality. It's fake and manipulative, essentially regurgitating our style back to us to ingratiate itself and maximize engagement. I use Perplexity mostly now, which I think has a GPT engine, but pretty much no personality or engagement tricks at all.

"On Quality" - Robert Pirsig (published posthumously)

Good as a short introduction to Pirsig's thought.

"Event" -Slavoj Zizek. Good start. Relevant to something I've been writing.

Consdering buying:

"The Radical Luhmann" Hans-Georg Moeller

The sample is really good. I'll probably buy the full thing when I've got through reading some other material.

Brothers Karamazov — Hanover

I have been reading that for years.

but now I fear it will be too large and will crush my chest with its weight. — Hanover

I suppose it's one of those books that grows on you.

Ha, we'll see, I guess. Anyhow, I am going to resume observer status for a while. Good night.

I see where you're coming from. So, it became a rights issue because a group of women objected and yes, the public should pay attention. But I don't think there is an absolute answer as to whether they were right or wrong. The situation is contingent on the objection which is contingent on the cultural context, which is contingent on local cultural values. If this group hadn't objected, and perhaps in another country there might not have been an objection, this issue wouldn't have arisen and wouldn't have needed to. It's culturally conditioned and would seem, in this case, to be very difficult to universalize. That's just my take. I'm not deep into this and I have no objection to attempts to argue for either side. It could be interesting.

What about women's rights? Nobody even wants to mention the issue that brought on the recent UK ruling. Aren't women's rights enough of a concern to even talk about it? — frank

Part of what constitutes values are balances of rights and these are intertwined with socially determined definitions. I know cis-women, for example, who would virulently object to excluding trans women from womanhood and consider it a (trans)woman's right to use the woman's bathroom as much as a woman's. And even if we accept your premise and speak of biological women's rights in opposition to trans-women's rights, we still identify a conflict of rights in the overall sphere of human rights between some* biological women who object to certain things---e.g. trans women using their bathrooms---and trans women. So, I think we are indirectly speaking about rights just by discussing who is affected in what way and so on.

*This is important. In Ireland, as in Thailand, people are free to use bathrooms in accordance with their gender identity. And women in those countries don't generally consider that an impingement of their rights. We are back to culture. This is a very contentious issue in the U.S. and in perhaps some other countries, but it can only become a rights issue in a cultural context where biological women decide trans women impinge on their rights by doing certain things or being in certain places they consider exclusive to them.

Personally, like most Irish and Thai people, I see no problem with bathrooms being used according to gender identity and there is no significant problem that I am aware of socially that is specific to biological women's attitudes either, so in those cultural contexts, the issue just doesn't really arise. When it comes to sports and gender-affirming care though, that needs a lot of careful working out based on scientific evidence etc. I don't think there are simple answers and I don't have a position because I haven't researched it enough.

Thank you for clarifying.

(I only interjected really to make the point that the important difference seems to be one of cultural values not what social reality as defined by social institutions is currently telling us.)

Search engines and dictionaries are usually pretty good indicators of social reality though. Law is another important institution and perhaps @Michael being from the UK is a better person to engage you on that specific point.

Well, for example, I typed "Is a transgender man a man?" into Google and got the result:

"Yes, a transgender man is considered a man. The term "transgender man" refers to an individual who was assigned female at birth but identifies as a man. Their gender identity is male, and they live as a man."

The reason I got this result is that the dominant current discourse of developed nations (social reality) does indeed go against biological reality. That doesn't preclude you arguing that it shouldn't be the case though.

My understanding of what you are doing is expressing a cultural value that was formerly implicit due to the absence of a trans discourse, but you would like to be explicitly accepted in opposition to this new discourse. It seems then that you and your interlocutors have different values that you would like to be discursively dominant. As it stands, the idea of gender being separate to biological sex is dominant in most developed countries. Everyone has a right to openly argue for their discursive preferences, but that dominance can be demonstrated as an institutional fact. E.g. Webster's and the Oxford dictionary recognize gender as having a legitimate meaning that can oppose biological sex.

All I am saying here is that a focus on arguing for your values would seem more productive than denying an institutional social reality. Social discourses can change but for now, it is what it is.

Black Mass - John Gray

Strong critique of utopian thinking throughout post-enlightenment western political thought right up to recent American neocon foreign policy, especially re war on terror etc. Little in the way of solutions though.

Berardi is a cultural critic, particularly focused on technocapitalism. His best known book is "Uprising", but I haven't read that. Anyhow, he provides a useful framework that dovetails with authors like Mark Fisher, Byung Hul Chan, Bernard Stiegler etc. and I particularly like his emphasis on poetry.

Breathing: Chaos and Poetry---Franco "Bifo" Berardi

A bit uneven but where's it's good, it's very good.

Let's leave it there then. Thank you for the chat.

However, there are issues. — Malcolm Parry

There clearly are issues and it's up to you as a society to work them out to your preference. But any rational social policy should be logically consistent with itself at least. It's not logically consistent to base a policy of disbarring people from women's spaces on women being disturbed by the physical presence of men and then base entry to those spaces not on physical characteristics defining such presence but ultimately on something that can be entirely unseen like chromosomes.

However, if a trans man wishes to use the female restroom they would be allowed as they are female. — Malcolm Parry

That means your objection is not based on what someone looks like or what physical bits they have. And, if so, what does it matter whether trans women pass for women?

Well, it's culturally dependent. Where I live---Thailand---we are very much there. The idea of preventing trans women from using a woman's bathroom isn't at all on the radar. I don't think it's an issue in my home country of Ireland either.

I get you in terms of the U.S., but I'm trying to work out on what one could consistently base an objection when biological sex and gender have no necessary connection because they are based on different categories of reality and gender is technologically mutable. Does it mean that objectors want anyone regardless of their biological sex to get arrested if they look too masculine? That, as I said, is inconsistent with wanting to protect biological women from encroaches on their space by biological men because it discriminates on a level, the physical, that now has no necessary connection to the biological in practice and so the objection could be applied to biological women as well as biological men.

On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects: Gilbert Simondon

I very much like Bernard Stiegler's approach to technics and he was highly influenced by Simondon. So, back to the source here.

Challenged on what basis? Physically, a trans man---who you must want to be in women's bathrooms because you claim they are women due to their biological sex---can easily look more like a man than a trans woman, so it can't be a physical basis because that would contradict your exclusive focus on biological sex.