In that statement, Un. said that members vote with their presence, which I took as an invitation to leave. — Mongrel

Again, I just interpret un's statement differently. It's a fact on any forum that members vote with their presence. That doesn't mean we want them to leave. We want as many to stay as possible, but not at the expense of keeping people here who would do clear harm to the overall quality of the site.

I would like to see Un endorse your statement that the moderators are interested in how the whole community thinks and feels. — Mongrel

OK, what he does or doesn't say is up to him obviously.

There's a bit of a better vibe than the old place, there isn't the same feeling that everyone's head is just a couple bad posts from being on the chopping block. Maybe that's just an illusion since it's mostly the same mods here anyway. — shmik

There are only two people who can ban anyone, jamalrob and me, and as far as I can remember at least, the only member who has been banned was a spammer. It's not in our interest or the interest of the site to alienate members by being ban-happy. Again, the way we work is intended to further everyone's interests. The site is the sum total of all the members not just the mods and admins. In other words, we go by option 2 above.

I think you've taken un up the wrong way. To say it's not a democracy here is just a fact. Neither the site owners nor the mods are elected, and it's not practical to hold referendums on moderating decisions. That doesn't mean we don't consider the needs of the community as a whole here or how they like to see things handled. Our considerations on this issue are just what the guidelines are based on. But no set of guidelines or practices is going to fully please everyone, especially not on a philosophy forum. Further, these guidelines don't represent any changes in policy. So, if you didn't feel this place was totalitarian before, there's no reason to feel that way now.

...considering this forum is just a handful of people, most of whom know each other, that the moderators and admins draw on the advantages of community — Mongrel

We're expanding at a rate of about 4 members / day. At this rate, we're likely to hit 1000 members within six months. As I said before, that increases the workload on the mods and having a written set of guidelines helps alleviate that somewhat.

So, the answer to your question "How totalitarian does this forum really need to be?" is as little as is practically possible to keep members happy both in terms of the quality of the site, which is largely defined by the standards of discussion we maintain, and in terms of the amount of freedom they have to say whatever they wish. As those two elements sometimes work against each other, a balancing is necessary.

Just another quick general comment: The site is expanding and having a set of guidelines to refer members, especially new members, to, helps reduce the increasing workload of the mods. Call us selfish, but we consider that a good thing. If you're a regular, have a quick read and get on with whatever you were doing. Pretty much everyone is cool here.

You can reverse the change so the thread under politics can still be bumped. Is your problem that people will respond here still? In that case you can put a link and a note here. — Ovaloid

The reason the best place to clarify this issue is here is because you can freely say whatever you want in Feedback including arguing that we are being too hard on racists and their ideas. Any mod would be well within his rights to delete the other thread in its previous position. So, in that sense the move is in your interest.

No, it wasn't. It was a much more general criticism of the status quo. Therefore, I would like it left there, please. — Ovaloid

That horse has bolted.

Also, why did you delete the comments? — Ovaloid

I didn't delete the comments. I merged the thread, so the responses are here now. Or should be, at least.

I've merged @Ovaloid's racism thread in here as it's really just a challenge to the guidelines.

This discussion was merged into Yet another blinkered over moderated Forum

Just to be clear, the guidelines don't represent any change in policy. Rather, they're a statement of existing policy. (That's another way of saying, "Chill, folks, if you haven't had a problem before, you're not going to have a new one now").

Why? Can't interesting discussion result from that? — Ovaloid

Generally, no.

Those who must convince everyone that their religion, ideology, political persuasion, or philosophical theory is the only one worth having. — Baden

The evangelist by definition can't think critically about their own position. Their interlocutors in their eyes are nothing but potential converts. It doesn't take much imagination to see how that almost inevitably leads to unproductive discussions. Note the words in bold though. Provided you don't fit the bill (and I'm not aware of anyone on the forum who does), you have nothing to be concerned about.

Furthermore, the racist/homophobic/sexist distinction looks potentially dangerous, as these terms are not very well defined. In many people's minds for example, thinking that homosexual intercourse is immoral is being homophobic, but the fact is the two are quite different. It's one thing to think an activity is immoral, and another to hate a group of people and want to harm them. So I think those terms should be defined, so that it becomes clear what is meant. — Agustino

Well, we didn't want to write a book length tract. Anyway, no, you won't be censured for stating the view that homosexual intercourse is immoral. But hate speech concerning homosexuals or other minorities won't be tolerated. So, your distinction is on target in that sense.

I may as well add a bit before the conversation moves on too far. First, to spell out my objection to your approach, @Metaphysician Undercover. According to your theory of appetites, it seems sexual hunger like regular hunger would be a mere signal of a deeper instinct towards sex, an instinct reflecting itself in sexual habits, and such a hunger would only arise when those habits were not engaged in sufficiently to satiate it. But you see the problem: Because sexual hunger has an external physical effect that is a necessary condition for the successful completion of the sexual act (in males at least) you can't in this case put the deeper instinct cart before the conscious compulsion horse without falling into obvious absurdity. In the case of regular hunger, the physical effects are almost purely internal and allow you to successfully complete the act as habit or on a whim, but that still doesn't efface the element of compulsion inherent in hunger without which it would not be what it is, i.e. the primary drive behind the act of eating. Of course, hunger comes in degrees which makes the compulsion at the level of instinct more or less an impingement on consciousness and more or less a pure compulsion in the sense of an irresistible urge. But in it's basic form, it just is the latter (ask any (other) animal). None of this is to deny our obvious ability to arrange our habits around times hunger is likely to arise, but there is no room for a categorical wedge between the conscious awareness of hunger and our reasons for eating.

What I am arguing against, is the idea that human beings, as well as other animals, are "aware" of inner feelings, like the urge to eat. I think that the fact that we refer to these as "instincts" demonstrates that we are not aware of such things. An instinct is something which motivates us which we are not aware of. — Metaphysician Undercover

Instincts may motivate us in ways we don't understand or that we can't fully trace, but they primarily do so by means of feelings and emotions of which we are aware. You just can't cut that link and retain a coherent depiction of the human condition.

So we don't simply observe our pangs of hunger we have to construct such an attntional state by way of learnt cultural concepts — apokrisis

I would say we mediate our response to our awareness of the biological state / drive through the filter of the assimilated social other. Or that our (human) awareness of the biological state is framed by the assimilated social other. So, we lose the pure element of compulsion but we don't efface the awareness of the primary drive.

I understand TGW to be claiming that first awareness is of the inner milieu and I would certainly agree with that.

But if you understand self-awareness to be a linguistically mediated event then of course we must be aware of others first in order to learn language. — John

The linguistic mediation is gradual and organizes but doesn't replace the drives of the inner milieu.

So introspection might be culturally mediated, but inner awareness certainly aint. — John

I'd put it that the cultural mediation is experienced as self-conscious introspection such that the inner awareness of drives is no longer all-consuming but still prods through in a kind of a symbiotic competition with said introspection.

I'd say SX is correct for exactly this reason. Children don't understand themselves to be experiences before the development of theory of mind. They are not aware experience, just (their own)sensations and things around them. They are aware of others before they even catch on there are such things as experiences. Children are concious of others before they make the distinction of self/other. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yeah, it's the experience of the other internalized that fuels the development of the concept of self. Again, that doesn't mean children are not previously self-aware in the basic sense of being conscious of their drives. But that these drives are the substrate that when moulded into a (somewhat) coherent whole through the gradual internalization of the social world become what we call the "person" who is self-aware both of the drives in their remaining biological manifestations, and of the self as an observer of said drives and mediator of such.

I never claimed TGW was head chef. My beef here is with MU though. And I await his explanation of my paradoxical sex life. Although SX is right, the trail of breadcrumbs isn't really leading back to the OP at present...

Putting a cherry on MU's shit sandwich isn't going to make it any more edible. Hmm, suddenly I'm not hungry anymore...

Yes, I think it applies to all the appetites... — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed, I don't have sex out of sexual hunger, I do it out of habit. My sexual hunger only kicks in when that mechanism that compels me to have sex fails. Of course, the only problem with this is that my lack of sexual hunger means I can never perform, so I never actually end up having sex. Weird.

But that's already a generalisation that is neither true nor useful. It is arguable whether there was ever even a majority of Germans that could reasonably be described as Nazis — Barry Etheridge

It is true when you keep the goalposts where they were. (Note the key word "acquiescing").

(And I do need to remind you that Germanic peoples include the English so your shorthand is itself of a shorthand that is wildly inaccurate!) — Barry Etheridge

True, it was badly phrased to the point where if you didn't read any of the rest of my post you might have been confused about what I obviously meant.

Any attempt to view the persecution of the Jews as a collective act of the German people is itself therefore nothing but propaganda . — Barry Etheridge

I'm not interested in arguing about this as it doesn't really bear on the point I was making.

... hunger only kicks in when the mechanism which compels us to eat when we should eat, fails to do so — Metaphysician Undercover

Fascinating. Can we apply this to other appetites too? I mean it totally explains my sex life.

I see some distinctions here, though. Germany as a nation was the enemy in WW2 and they were officially Nazis. So, to hate those Germans and those Nazis was not racist. The enemy was clearly defined. I would say, though, that if in 1940, you hated a German immigrant in the US who had nothing to do with the atrocities solely because he was German, you'd have been racist (considering some Germans were Jews). And certainly you'd be racist today if you continued hating the krauts. — Hanover

Not sure about the official enemy bit. The Germans were acquiescing to Nazism well before WWII started (and I use "Germans" as a convenient shorthand for "Germanic people in Germany as opposed to other ethnic groups living there"). Point remains that the weight of oppression on one side somewhat relieves the moral burden of offensiveness on the other.

On another note, could you guys add a feature so that when a post says "Jew" in it, I get notified, just like when it says hanover? — Hanover

All doable within the current system, mon ami. Just set up another account with the user name "Jew". I will then make a new rule that everyone must write @Jew instead of "Jew" when referring to said ethnic group. I'm sure that will be a crowd-pleaser. :-*

I think most people would agree with the thrust of your argument, but even then there could be major disagreements about how to analyze specific situations like:

1) A white person says it's wrong for blacks to use the N word because it encourages racism.
2) A Republican politician claims the slogan "Black Lives Matter" is inherently racist.
3) A Jewish politician claims Palestinians should be denied rights due to their inherent anti-semitism.

Who's the racist in these cases: The historically oppressed? The historical oppressor? Both? Neither?

One needs to ask whether Farrakhan's 'white man' is a race or an institution, but from the position of an instance of the institution, it comes to the same thing. — unenlightened

I won't argue the toss on Farrakhan. I think we're agreed it's not valid to posit a symmetrical relation with regard to the interpretation of language in the context of an asymmetrical social relation between the groups using it. I'd say it's the same principle as applies to the use of the words "nigger" / "nigga" and so on.

EDIT: I should add that the reason I agree with Mongrel that we shouldn't be afraid to say that minorities can be racist in some contexts is not so much the worry that not doing so will spread the very thing we object to and thus be hypocritical etc. etc. but that it doesn't mitigate oppression to reduce the oppressed to people who can't even be morally wrong about stuff. (And I take it you would probably agree from what you've written).

Anyone can be racist in the same way anyone can hold any irrational belief.

Acceptance of the idea that the oppressed have license to condemn whole groups of people contributes to racism because it represents approval of the very thing a racist does.. — Mongrel

"Whole groups of people"? Nationalities as well as races? If so, depends. Did Jews who condemned the German people en masse for their acquiescence to Nazism somehow contribute to racism? Hardly. Does their attitude suggest they were racist / bigoted? Not really. Were they justified in feeling antipathy towards every German for the behaviour of the Nazis. Strictly speaking, no, but...

On the other hand, when Louis Farrakhan says, "The white man is our mortal enemy and we cannot accept him. I will fight to see that vicious beast go down into the lake of fire..etc...", yeah, racist and encouraging racism.

Depends on level of oppression, type of generalization etc. Context, basically.

As I mentioned earlier, if you want to bang your drum on the broad issue of animal consciouness, fine, I'll get involved. But start a new thread.

No. — tom

If you really think this, that mentalizing (in whatever form) does not necessitate at least some awareness of the other (in this case, that an animal can mentalize with regard to another animal without being aware of that other animal), I would say that you're simply wrong. Mentalizing necessitates awareness of the other by definition. If you can't accept that, fine, we'll agree to disagree. As for the rest of your post, the broader issue of animal intentionality is worthy of a separate thread. I'll get involved if you want to start one, but we're somewhat off-topic here.

Mentalizing, rudimentary or not, necessitates at least some awareness of the other. Agree?

The classic "Byrne, R W (2003) Imitation as behaviour parsing." shows that awareness is not required for learning complex behaviours. — tom

You made the claim, which I objected to that

"...animals aren't aware of themselves OR any other animal."

and you said:

"The animals literally are unaware of the existence of the researcher, or themselves."

But the paper you cite here in defense of that claim doesn't defend it. Byrne is dealing with the issue of "mentalizing" i.e. attributing intentionality to others not mere awareness of others, and he admits of rudimentary mentalizing capacities in other animals in any case.

Non-human great apes appear to be able to acquire elaborate skills partly by imitation, raising the possibility of the transfer of skill by imitation in animals that have only rudimentary mentalizing capacities: in contrast to the frequent assumption that imitation depends on prior understanding of others’ intentions...

The evolution of the ability to parse the behaviour of others, which on current evidence evolved at least as long ago as the shared ancestors of humans and other great apes around 12 Myr ago, may therefore have been a necessary preliminary to the later development exclusively in humans of the ability to mentalize: to attribute intentions and causes to observed actions. Behaviour parsing may still be part of the everyday process of doing so. — Richard W. Byrne

Don't want to take this off-topic into a debate about animal consciousness. Suffice to say that if you believe animals are not conscious at all, you're unlikely to get anything out of this discussion.

I'm reminded of Vygotsky here and the social development of thought. Our inner life as a result of the gradual internalization of the social world / life of the other. Self-awareness being dependent on a successful assimilation of other-awareness. Ramachandran's ideas seem to plug in nicely to that.

Where does he deal with the results of the mirror test?

But animals aren't aware of themselves OR any other animal. — tom

You can't account for the rich social life of many animals without positing awareness of others. There's also the mirror test, which suggests self-awareness in some higher mammals such as chimpanzees, elephants and maybe even birds.

Even those tragic souls who spend their time trying to convince themselves and others that apes and dogs can "talk", have never reported a single question ever being asked. The animals literally are unaware of the existence of the researcher, or themselves — tom

It doesn't follow from the fact that language is unique (as far as we know) to humans that non-humans cannot be aware of each other.

As an aside, picking up on Mongrel's reference to fate, people in some cultures take this very seriously. And the result can be quite negative. In Thailand, for instance, it impacts people's attitude towards safety. Thais generally take far fewer safety precautions when driving, for example, and when you ask them why, they may say something like "I'm going to die when I'm going to die" as if they have no say in the matter. And regarding accidents, they may consider a religious bauble they have in their car as more preventative than their own ability to act. Not good.

What's bothering me lately is that it seems like if the rest of society was aware of this fact pretty much every problem in the world could be solved. — Shade

How? Can you give an example? It seems to me that even if everyone believed in determinism, all it would do is make people think problems were inevitable. At best that might foster a more stoical attitude to life. At worst, it would lead to more apathy.

Why isn't there more of an effort to educate people about it? — Shade

Because the consensus you seem to think exists on the issue, doesn't actually exist. Because philosophy in general isn't taught widely. And because (as Mongrel mentioned) most people wouldn't believe it anyway as their experience of having free will would remain undiminished by the claim they don't.

But my other point was that arming cops with tasers is also not without its problems. Just google "tasered to death by cops". — Sapientia

Yeah, at least a cop won't normally shoot you for resisting. Tasering is just too easy and ends up being overused.

I was going to mention what Michael said about a dedicated armed response unit. — Sapientia

I don't think this would work in the US unless gun ownership was reduced drastically (which, with the 2nd amendment, isn't going to happen). The country is swimming in arms and nobody is going to want to be a cop if they think they're going to be a sitting duck out there.

I would counter with the observation that there exists no human society that does not use spoken language which suggests that variations are in fact finite and quite possibly do not exist at all. The human brain is pre-programmed for spoken language and grammar to such an extent that where no common language exists children are capable of creating one without supervision or guidance at all. — Barry Etheridge

The human brain is pre-programmed for language and grammar, it's true, but the language doesn't have to be spoken. Deaf children learn and create sign language in a way similar to normal children and spoken language right down to the potential insertion of novel grammatical complexity across generations / over time. A good example of this is Nicaraguan Sign Language, which developed spontaneously among a group of Nicaraguan schoolchildren as a pidgin initially before graduating later into a full-blown language. The reason no society uses anything other than spoken language is not because variations don't exist, but because they're generally unnecessary.

You have to do a calculation in that case. Is it worth it to die in the fashion of Jesus himself or of Socrates to teach a valuable lesson to your brothers and sisters in moral courage and resolution in opposing evil, and the triumph of the human spirit? Or is it worth saving yourself by lying for example, in order that you may protect your family from being killed as well? — Agustino

I do still have a dash of the moral romantic in me (though I can't deny it may be nothing more than the final limp twitchings of a deep-seated neurosis). So, though voluntary crucifixion would certainly be beyond the reach of my flailing moral imagination, I might yet be induced to drink the hemlock if it were in the cause of rescuing mankind from terminal ethical degeneracy. (Only on the proviso my tormenters agreed to leave my family out of it though, and this reprobate atheist was guaranteed a place in the history books to compensate for his certain lack of heavenly award).

I would add Baden that ultimately it's as Kierkegaard states an aesthetic choice - belief in God. We all make the choice, not through words, but through our actions. In the face of the anxieties of life, you can choose virtue and morality - or you can choose power. You can escape by faith, or you can escape by power. And it's a choice precisely because there is no intellectual reason to choose virtue over power, or power over virtue - that's why in the end analysis it's an appeal to your moral imagination. — Agustino

The Kierkegaard reference is salient here, I agree. I would say though that the moral imagination is largely a product of, and constrained by (sensibly I would contend) the moral environment. Don't ask me to be Jesus when there are Romans around.

I don't know how you jump from what seems to be essentially an endorsement of religious toleration - which isn't incompatible with atheism or secularism or progressivism - to conservatism or religion or non-secularism or anti-atheism. — Sapientia

I'm also curious about this, Agustino. Can you point to an example of a country with the system of government that most closely fits your ideal?

Thanks for expanding on this. I'm curious: Do you think it's at all possible to remain an atheist and achieve happiness, or do you think faith in some religion is necessary?

Perhaps you should join the Amish. Heck, maybe even TGW will go along with you. He can keep his extra gods under the mattress.

Joking aside, all I see here is a desire to make the world in your own image so you can feel more comfortable in it. Join the club. We'd all like the world to reflect our particular ideals. There's no morality in that. It's more the drive for preservation writ large.

To a secularist atheist like myself, for example, all this talk about sex just reflects your desire that others should have less of it. And it doesn't take much looking under the psychological blankets to hypothesize why that might be the case. So, in order to get anywhere with all this, you'd have to present a more convincing set of arguments - in particular to the satisfied sexually promiscuous modern male - as to why the pleasure he gets from his lifestyle is somehow bad for him and why he'd be better off under a repressive conservative order in which some form of religious ideology would be compulsory.

To those arguments you did present, you're likely to get responses along the following lines:

For example - unrestrained sexual appetite in a married couple will lead to jealousy, anger and hatred - a terrible set of emotions. — Agustino

Solution: Don't get married.

but if they live in a society which promotes unrestrained sexual appetite, their families will never be stable, nor will the partners be devoted to caring for and respecting each other. — Agustino

Solution: Don't have kids

Sex in non-comitted relationships, while not as big a problem as what is mentioned above, still remains an issue for the following reasons: (1) it is unlikely that the participants can experience a pleasure greater than that achievable by masturbation as there is no love involved, or intimacy from which such pleasure could originate — Agustino

This is obviously false. And probably every man reading this - other than you - knows that. If it weren't false, men would just masturbate. Why go to all the trouble of seducing women if equivalent pleasure can be achieved through DIY?

(2) it encourages a habit of using others as a means to obtain a selfish end, therefore it is contrary to morality and care, (3) it creates future problems in committed relationships as people again want to feel special, and having had many sexual partners before diminishes from this feeling, (4) having a habit of looking at others as a means to achieve your selfish ends will prevent you from entering into a loving relationship and looking at a person in a different way, — Agustino

There is some validity in all this, but romantic love presents its own problems too. Think of all the heartache, pain and even violence, love and love unrequited cause. It's not clear that we wouldn't be better off without it.

(5) it encourages slavery towards external sources for controlling personal feelings, (6) it keeps one subject to one's own sexual desire, as opposed to its master. — Agustino

The alternative, making one's sexuality a slave to ideological forces, hardly seems more palatable or psychologically healthy. Just ask a Catholic priest.

All of this is not to say I'm a great fan of modern life, or especially antithetical to alternatives, or unsympathetic to those who present them. But again, I see your alternative as so tied to your particular personality as to be utterly alien to those of us who don't share your worldview.

I actually clicked on that. Damn you. ;)

I know you did, and I disagree, but I'm not going to argue the toss here.

Strange. I think I'm up to date. Does work for me on Firefox at least.

The quote function doesn't work for me on Chrome. This seems to be a recent thing. Anybody else have this problem?