I am not going to disagree with you (as there are all sorts of senses in which you are right), but on a low level, I'm not sure why asking for a method by which we try to evaluate the medium in which we exist and whether it would not be better to exist in a different medium is not an invitation to do philosophy with me. In as much as there is the suggestion that language (i.e. community) sets the rules for what questions are tractable (or not), it seems to be the case that even if different questions don't arise in a new language, perhaps other answers will. It is like trying to solve a math problem in one field using tools of another - sometimes it is a waste of time (impossible, possible but vastly less efficient, etc.) and sometimes it makes a hard problem easy.

In the end, we have but one life (or one moment) to do as we will, and as far as I can tell, it requires a choice. Making the right choice, knowing what the right choice is, knowing what the choice is, knowing how to make the right choice, and making a choice wisely are not the same thing. Doing philosophy tends to be about making choices wisely, no?

In that, no-essence, the thing is in the doing kind of way? Just a question of whether what we are doing is customarily called "philosophy"?

The important part is the narrative arc, not the parsing of Heidegger. The end of philosophy (problems dissolved when language is given its proper place) the beginning of Buddhism.

Fair enough.


As more food for thought, consider this bit about Heidegger in the IEP's discussion of metaphilosophy and how different it would have looked (and how much less radical it would seem) in light of Nagarjuna's metaphysic of of non-metaphysics rather than the light of the West. (How often do philosophers blame the history of the "world" on the musings of long since dead Europeans?)

https://iep.utm.edu/con-meta/

. . .
What though is wrong with the real being revealed as resource? Enframing is ‘monstrous’ (Heidegger 1994: 321). It is monstrous – Heidegger contends – because it is nihilism. Nihilism is a ‘forgetfulness’ of das Sein (Seinsvergessenheit). Some such forgetfulness is nigh inevitable. We are interested in beings as they present themselves to us. So we overlook the conditions of that presentation, namely, being and Being. But Enframing represents a more thoroughgoing form of forgetfulness. The hegemony of resources makes it very hard (harder than usual – recall above) to conceive that beings could be otherwise, which is to say, to conceive that there is something called ‘Being’ that could yield different regimes of being. In fact, Enframing actively denies being/Being. That is because Enframing, or the metaphysics/science that corresponds to it, proceeds as if humanity were the measure of all things and hence as if being, or that which grants being independently of us (Being), were nothing. Such nihilism sounds bearable. But Heidegger lays much at its door: an impoverishment of culture; a deep kind of homelessness; the devaluation of the highest values (see Young 2002: ch. 2 and passim). He goes so far as to trace ‘the events of world history in this [the twentieth] century’ to Seinsvergessenheit (Heidegger in Wolin 1993: 69)."

Heidegger’s response to nihilism is ‘thinking’ (Denken). The thinking at issue is a kind of thoughtful questioning. Its object – that which it thinks about – can be the pre-Socratic ideas from which philosophy developed, or philosophy’s history, or Things, or art. Whatever its object, thinking always involves recognition that it is das Sein, albeit in some interplay with humanity, which determines how beings are. Indeed, Heideggerian thinking involves wonder and gratitude in the face of das Sein. Heidegger uses Meister Eckhart’s notion of ‘releasement’ to elaborate upon such thinking. The idea (prefigured, in fact, in Heidegger’s earlier work) is of a non-impositional comportment towards beings which lets beings be what they are. That comportment ‘grant(s) us the possibility of dwelling in the world in a totally different way’. It promises ‘a new ground and a new foundation upon which we can stand and endure in the world of technology without being imperiled by it’ (Heidegger 1966: 55). Heidegger calls the dwelling at issue ‘poetic’ and one way in which he specifies it is via various poets. Moreover, some of Heidegger’s own writing is semi-poetic. A small amount of it actually consists of poems. So it is not entirely surprising to find Heidegger claiming that, ‘All philosophical thinking’ is ‘in itself poetic’ (Heidegger 1991, vol. 2: 73; Heidegger made this claim at a time when he still considered himself a philosopher as against a non-metaphysical, and hence non-philosophical, ‘thinker’). The claim is connected to the centrality that Heidegger gives to language, a centrality that is summed up (a little gnomically) in the statement that language is ‘the house of das Sein’ (Heidegger 1994: 217).

.... — IEP on 'Metaphilosophy' emphasis own

This presumes all sorts of things, Mentos, not the least of which is that happiness is the point of philosophy. Also, this question is not so much about what "I" should do, but about where a philosophical community chooses to graze. We learn, we talk, we teach - each part essential in carrying on philosophy.

One might consider the carrot and its will to a new garden. It might want to be in a new garden, but it actually grows just where it was planted. Strange thing is, the carrot may not be able to pick where it grew up, but it might have something to say about where future carrots are planted.

All it took was one self-proclaimed Nietzsche expert to remind me why I lost interest in this place. Call Judaism a hateful religion because some dead guy that every misinformed person reads as being an antisimite wrote an argument you find compelling? A OK. I can only imagine what the mods would have done had the person posting the topic on the "N" word written it out so that people could see it on the front page for days or weeks on end.

You are reversing the order of things. You think about things - perhaps dispassionately. What you think about is as much a feature of what happens in your head at the moment as it is what you are exposed to currently. There is no "X is required to think about Y" - either you are thinking about something or you aren't.

What I have said, and continue to say, is that what you are exposed to (and ultimately what happens in your head even after the exposure ends) is a function of the systems in which you exist. Where those systems create a circumstance that you are exposed to A instead of B, one can inquire as to why A rather than B. That is all I am suggesting you do - consider why Israel and not anything else. If you say it is because Israel Cs and not Ds, it behooves you to at least find out if B also Cs. You can't justify the attention you pay to A by telling me more about A, you need to actually find out about B. But in the system you exist, you aren't going to passively learn about B, you will have to self-educate. All you will ever hear is A. And so you will think about A. And care about A. For all of the right reasons, because we know that A does C! But you will have missed the point.

Is this an exercise in misreading? I said that focus on Jews is likely antisemitic and that Israel is an example of that. Focus on Ukraine is a different topic.

One need not "hate" Jews to be antisemitic. One need not even have ever met one or know where to find one. The Jews were being blamed for all sorts of things in Europe at times/places where they weren't even present in the area. The Western institution of antisemitism is what the OP was referring to rather than "Jew Hatred" which is all you can seem to understand. That is why they suggested that antisemitism should be restricted just to Europeans and something like "jew hater" to everyone else in instances where they are engaged in actually identifiable negative conduct/speech.

This is the equivocation that I referred to in my initial response. It is even equivocation that happens within the Jewish community. The problem is that people want to use (and do use) antisemitism as a euphemism for Jew hater, thereby confusing the issue of which is which.

You've asked a dumb question multiple times in an effort to change the conversation about antisemitism into a conversation about yourself. I've now responded that the West's self-infatuation (and the likely cause of your concern for Ukraine) is racist. So your support of Ukraine doesn't mean that you hate Ukrainians, but it may mean that you hate Africans.

I'm not sure what the "this" is. One need not look too hard to see that support of Israel is commonly attributed to Western guilt over the holocaust and trying to push the Jewish problem out of Europe and into the Middle-East who was not responsible for the European atrocities. It isn't that Europe is pro-Jewish, but that they are pro "Hey Jew, get out and go back to your own country!"

Just try a little bit of historic context for how you exist in the world and you might find that identifying certain things as antisemitic is both accurate and useful, but that also may not mean that it is necessarily a problem in the particular instance being discussed.

The danger with conversations like these is that any example I offer to show the problem will just lead to your allegations that I am trying to deflect. This conversation is about antisemitism, not Israel. Israel, unfortunately, is heavily implicated in antisemitism and so can be a good place to point to. How much aid has the US sent to Ukraine to fight Russia? How many people died in Ukraine and Russia regardless? How many people would have not died had the US used that same amount of money to support medical/food programs in any number of places around the world? Is focusing on Ukraine while neglecting the rest of the world evidence of Western racism?

Again, irrelevant to whether there is systemic antisemitism in the West and the impact it has had on people's relationship to Palestine/Israel. Merely regarding a story that you have heard with concern makes you a fine person. In and of itself, it informs people of little. Western Media coverage of Ukraine can probably be used to demonstrate systemic racism given the unequal coverage it receives as compared to other amounts of suffering in the world.

I agree. Which is why I said Israel is complicated. There has to be room for legitimate criticism of bad actors regardless of their origin/circumstance. Israel obviously does contemptible things, but that doesn't change the larger conversation.

No, they don't. You just feel a deep need to make it about yourself so you can claim that you are somehow outside of your society/culture/etc. It is nice for you to make a conversation about other people and the problems they encounter about your feelings, but nobody actually cares about them. Be nice - that is what you should do. Great if you are. You might still do things that are bad as a result of your circumstance. (Like how your daily pollution actually hurts other people but so it goes because it isn't obvious enough to you what the relationship is.)

Here is a random link on the topic. It is Austrialian, so you can't blame the US.

Racism takes many forms and can happen in many places. It includes prejudice,
discrimination or hatred directed at someone because of their colour, ethnicity or
national origin. People often associate racism with acts of abuse or harassment.
However, it doesn’t need to involve violent or intimidating behaviour.
Racism can be revealed through people’s actions as well as their attitudes. It can
also be reflected in systems and institutions that operate in ways that lead to unequal
outcomes. Racism is more than just words, beliefs and actions. It includes all the
barriers that prevent people from enjoying dignity and equality because of their race.1 — Australia

https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/ahrc_sr_2021_4_keyterms_a4_r2_0.pdf

This is petty, mentos. Do racists in the US hate black people? Your personal feelings are entirely aside from the system.

Willful misreading isn't helpful. I said that the reason you are likely talking about Israel is because of systemic antisemitism. The reason you are talking about Ukraine (if you live in the US) is probably related to fearing Russia. If you live on the Russian border, it is a different story.

You wouldn't know what is happening in Ukraine if people didn't report about it. The question is not why you care, but why they reported.

Neither is thinking you have any idea what my motivations are in posting. I already gave non-Israel examples of antisemitism. Here is some non-Jewish stuff about benevolent racism/prejudice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_prejudice

Right, so the way to respond to identifying systemic antisemitism is to go on talking about yourself. Do you believe in things like systemic racism? If so, what does evidence for that racism look like in your (or anyone's) daily living?

It is like plucking a leaf from a stream and claiming that it is wet because it was in the stream and not because of the water cycle. There is a system in which things happen even if a discrete moment seems explicable by more immediate things. It isn't that the water in the stream didn't make the leaf wet - it is just that there is water in the stream because it rained.

In any event, I already pointed out that things can look supportive of Jews (or Israel) and yet be antisemitic. So Canada and the US supporting Israel isn't all that impressive or informative. In fact, the more supportive they are, the worse it is. Kind of like the idea that the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference. They need to stop paying attention.

Don't follow. The West only cares about Israel because it is antisemitic. If the West didn't care about Israel, nothing that happens there would cause WW3. Which part of the idea is missing?

P.S. I will refer you to my initial post where I wrote the following. It specifically identifies the trouble with antisemitism and Israel, anticipates the retort, and states that antisemitism is a systemic issue.


Israel (whatever you think about it) is far too complicated to be a helpful example of what antisemitism is or isn't. In some respects, merely discussing it is evidence of antisemitism unless such discussion is happening amongst people meaningfully effected by it. Some people will furiously insist that calling discussions of Israel antisemitic is just an unwarranted method of deflecting justified criticism (and sometimes it may be) of Israel, but that doesn't erase the intellectual structures which gave rise to a discussion of Israel rather than something else. Why is Israel an object of curiosity as opposed to anything else in the world?

I'm telling you that they might cause WW3 because of antisemitism. Not complicated, just not what you want to hear.

Maybe because it's in the news? Maybe because people are suffering and dying? Maybe because there is cause for concern regarding the direction in which events are going? Maybe because some people have questions about the leadership? If you talk about the weather or goldfish or a possible cure for Parkinson's or how to grow cabbages, you don't have to produce a "sufficient explanation". Again, I ask you, what puts Israel in a special category? — Vera Mont

You say automatic defensive posture - I just point out the inexplicablity of its coverage given its relative importance. Why has anyone cared about Israel since 1900? Did anyone care about Palestine before?

For the Western audience, you can't just point to its coverage as reason for why you are talking about it as if that is independent of the Western antisemitism. It is covered because the West is antisemetic and when you talk about it, you are likely just acting out that antisemitism. Isn't your fault. You don't know any better. It is a system of antisemitism just as it is a system of racism.

Perhaps you don't believe in things like systemic racism. If so, at least you are consistent. If you do believe in such things, then ask yourself why seemingly "innocent" people who would never call themselves a Jew hater couldn't possible be motivated by antisemitism.

The ways I can think of explaining "antisemitism" as euphemism are different levels of unpleasant, so perhaps a metaphor will work. It is the difference between picking the lesser of two evils vs the evil of two lessers. None of those words are good, rearranging them doesn't fix the problem, but we know there is a spectrum. "Antisemitism" is just nicer sounding than "Jew Hater" and has the added benefit of confusing people about who is actually being discussed.

And yes, you are right, speaking about any group puts you in ambiguous territory. Seems pretty simple. The question is whether there is sufficient intellectual warrant to speak in those terms and potentially be misunderstood.

Whether or not you are entitled to your opinion is neither here nor there, what is being discussed is whether it is useful to speak in terms of religion. If someone says, "I want you to stop cutting down my lawn because I like the way the grass feels between my toes" it is considered to be of less moral force than "I want you to stop cutting down my lawn because it is my property." Some conversations lend themselves to ethics based arguments (which include religious based ones even if you disagree) and pretending as if you are discussing individual ethics rather than communal ethics is more trouble than it is worth.

The same does apply to the US and Japan. When people who hate the US talk about the US in negative terms, it is a) evidence that they hate the US and b) might be true. Do you think Jews are the only group/people capable of being hated?

It might also be helpful to have a discussion about evidence more generally - one can have evidence for a false proposition just as one can have counter evidence for a true one. Think of it this way, either P v not P but not both is alleged to be the case. Symbolically we might represent P as T, not P as F, ~ to mean "is not evidence for" such that we get T, ~T, F, and ~F. With that out of the way, it is also useful to hone in on a definition of entailment and to what extent logical necessity is extensible to states of affairs where causality is stochastic. As some jurist once wrote, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it. . ."

That Israel does bad things is self-evident, but also insufficient to explain why it is the topic of conversation. It doesn't take a thesis to know that most people talk about Jews and Israel because they are antisemitic - you'd be hard pressed to come up with an alternative explanation. Indeed, the claim in the OP is along these very lines - that antisemitism is the type of Jew hating reserved to describe the Western fetishization of the Jews. The problem, of course, is that Jew hatred anywhere has come under the euphemism developed at a time where the only relationships of intellectual interest were the relationships of the Europeans to themselves and the people they were subjugating - it isn't even that they didn't care why the Chinese hate/hated Jews, it was that they didn't/don't care about why the Chinese thought about anything.

The logic stuff was a joke, but also a way of highlighting how judgments about a label work even in the absence of strict rules/definitions/standards/theory.

Fact of the matter is even Jews are anti-semites because antisemtism is the consequence Judaism, a morality of hate and resentment which drives one into ressentiment. It popularized this formula. — Vaskane

How this doesn't go down as hate speech is a bit beyond me. While anyone can theorize anything they like, stating "facts" like this about Jews doesn't strike of philosophical value and engenders conversations like demanding that someone prove that woman are morally equivalent to men. It is on its face hateful or so decontextualized that anyone but a rarefied few would grasp its subtle underpinnings that might be capable of redeeming the assertion. Sure, bad psycho-analysis has some role on the continent, but it would be best if it was restricted to its couches and private therapy rooms, no?

Historical claims (like the cause of antisemitism is X and even Jews are antisemitic because of X) are inherently non-philosophical if only because the terms employed are so vague as to say practically nothing. You can try to use jargon in such a precise way that anyone who already knew what you thought would understand what you are saying in just the way you meant it, but for the casual reader (you know, most people who see the word "ressentiment" and think, "Huh? Can that guy spell?") the words hanging by themselves mean something very different.

Had you said something like, "Those Jews whose views on equality were so anti-abusive master that when finally given the chance to be master they...." maybe you would come closer to not sounding like an outright antisemite. But to write something tantamount to "Even Jews hate Jews because that is what inherently arises from hateful, reactionary Judaism" reads much more like an argument for why people should be antisemitic written in brief. Writing "the Judaic Religion also creates very strong individuals..." just doesn't do the work of fixing the horrid thing written.

Lovely, someone wrote a book called the On the Genealogy of Morals (picked for its ease of title even if you'd rather a different reference) and the Jews come out of it looking less than philosophically enviable.

For anyone who cares, here is a random Wiki on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#Slave_revolt_in_morals

Nietzsche felt that modern antisemitism was "despicable" and contrary to European ideals.[164] Its cause, in his opinion, was the growth in European nationalism and the endemic "jealousy and hatred" of Jewish success.[164] He wrote that Jews should be thanked for helping uphold a respect for the philosophies of ancient Greece,[164] and for giving rise to "the noblest human being (Christ), the purest philosopher (Baruch Spinoza), the mightiest book, and the most effective moral code in the world".[165] — RandomWiki

The killing of 8000 children isn’t accidental — they simply don’t care. They don’t care about Palestinian lives. That’s obvious in the rhetoric and the actions.

So ask yourself: what’s worse, someone who murders children and recognizes them as victims for some cause, or someone who murders children for some cause but who sees them as irrelevant statistics? — Mikie

Making something complicated seem simple is often disingenuous, but I happen to agree that your description frames the issue. "I had no other choice but to bomb people in tunnels, so any collateral damage is not my problem" is obscene. The fact is that Israel decided that occasional annoyances from evil Hamas was sufficient warrant to stop caring about the lives and well-being of millions of people. Israel had other choices - hard as they might have been politically (the choice to do nothing is a choice). Just as good-faith moral clarity from a standard Westerner requires seeing Hamas' behavior as abhorrent and morally repugnant, so too does it require seeing "Sorry if I killed some kids" the same way.

And for those that say the Israeli's do care about the children, lip service and rending their garments after they have used the death of a few hundred people to justify the past and future killings of thousands of other people, Israeli care is meaningless. The retort of "What would you do?" sounds great - as if the only answer is weighing the method of killing innocents with indifference - but choosing to let even 10,000 Israelis die due to Israel's inability to repel Hamas (or other) attacks is a profoundly more moral choice.

Totally asymmetric warfare makes the problem less obvious, but why is sending several thousand troops to their death in a "justified war" more moral than tolerating the murder of a few hundred of your own citizens? Is it because we can pretend that maybe the soldiers won't die and blame their deaths on the "enemy"?

The hard part about all of this is that the moral thing to do is not necessarily what we ought to do - we can be justified in doing bad things. Having justification, however, doesn't make the bad behavior good. Or if you prefer, obedience to one duty does not diminish your disobedience to another.

Behind the curtains of all the rhetoric there is a scale where infinitely valuable lives are measured and traded. Pretending otherwise does not further our ability to do better.

"Antisemitism" is a euphemism. What it is a euphemism for is a bit hard to get your arms around because different contexts present the issue differently. The simplest reductive definition is something like "Jew hating," but even that definition misses much of the issue and obscures what is meant. (Who, after all, are the "Jews" and are they the same as the object of the "Jew hater"?) Engaging in the definition game is largely a waste of time and does not further understanding - the question is really "what is meant by antisemitism" if you are talking to a person using it or "what usage of antisemitism most informs the present contextual usage?"

Being "for" or "against" the "Jews" can be antisemitic if the agenda being advanced is antagonistic to Jews in one respect or another or reduces Jews to mere object (rather than agent). For instance, wanting to help Jews establish god's kingdom to bring about the second coming of Christ is usefully being understood as being antisemitic. Similarly, when Christians "adopt" "Jewish" practice in an effort to show Jews that Christianity is truly the spiritual successor to the Jewish people subsequent to the Christ, that is also an example of antisemitism.

A simple heuristic is that anytime you speak about (or react to) Jews or someone's Jewishness you are in ambiguous territory. There is generally a more precise way that you can speak (or react) that removes Jews or Jewishness from the conversation with no loss in substance. Obviously if you are talking about banning ritual slaughter of cows in the EU and you fail to account for Islamic or Jewish views on the subject, you would be missing a significant consideration in the conversation. Importantly, however, you must be careful to understand "Islamic or Jewish views" to refer not to Islam or Judaism writ large, but to a subset of people who happen to adopt a particular attitude about ritual slaughter. The linguistic convenience of speaking about groups of people (where knowledgeable people understand that you may be speaking of only a small portion of the group) must be understood for what it is - a convenience.

Israel (whatever you think about it) is far too complicated to be a helpful example of what antisemitism is or isn't. In some respects, merely discussing it is evidence of antisemitism unless such discussion is happening amongst people meaningfully effected by it. Some people will furiously insist that calling discussions of Israel antisemitic is just an unwarranted method of deflecting justified criticism (and sometimes it may be) of Israel, but that doesn't erase the intellectual structures which gave rise to a discussion of Israel rather than something else. Why is Israel an object of curiosity as opposed to anything else in the world?

I've used square quotes throughout this post in order to draw some attention to words that are used as if they mean one thing when they are actually used in a variety of contexts to mean different things (which are often contradictory). You must always consider the possibility of equivocation - people using the same word in different senses at the same time. Each of them may think they had a mutually intelligible conversation, but each of them may actually understand what was said in fundamentally different ways.

I would add that I am trying to explore the ideas around essentialism, relating to gender and sexuality. — Jack Cummins

To what extent are men and women different, or what it means to be a man or woman and how this question is explored introspectively? — Jack Cummins

I haven't read the other thread from which your OP comes, so forgive me if any territory was already covered.

"Male" and "female" are simply words people use. There are many others, of course, but there is no inherent content in a word (be it uttered or written) or grouping of words. In simplest form, we understand meaning (and attempt to convey it) in words by virtue of context - where/when the word is used, by whom it is spoken, to whom it is directed, the language community within which it is used, etc.

"Biology" is no different than any other word. Some people mean one thing, other people understand something else, and the world turns. In this case, we are talking about essentialism - what is it, from a biological perspective, that justifies including some organism in group A and excluding them from B? Essentially, the biology split between male and female is in the context of sexual reproduction: it hinges on what an organism contributes to its offspring: males provide the smaller gamete while females provide the larger gamete. In this way, the use of male and female regarding a specific reproductive act is unambiguous.

Where biology becomes increasingly ambiguous is the extent to which the use of "male" and/or "female" is abstracted away from a particular reproductive act. On the first level, organisms that contribute the larger gamete exclusively are female, organisms that contribute the smaller gamete exclusively are male, and organisms that contribute both are hermaphrodites. On the second level, organisms are grouped together - those have reproduced with one another are in the same group (species) while other organisms that have not reproduced with them are not in the group. On the third level, the criteria for group membership is expanded - organisms that are the offspring of the reproducing organism/s (parent/s) are added to the group irrespective of whether the offspring will ever reproduce. Not just are offspring added, but so are other organisms that are believed to be similar to the reproducing organisms (e.g. siblings of the parent/s). Whatever the structural account of how gametes (large or small) are made (e.g. gonads), species members that have the structural potential of making large ones are called called female, those capable of producing small ones are male, and those that have the potential to do both are hermaphrodites. The move here (rather than the particular steps) is what is at issue - the act of reproduction and naming the participants (by class) turns into naming other non-participants by abstraction. The question is, what characteristic makes the use of "male" or "female" warranted in the case of an organism that either has a) not yet reproduced or b) is incapable of reproduction (e.g. injured such that gonads are non-present or non-functional). Putting aside the taxonomical issue of what a species is, at some point characteristics of the organisms aside from contributing the larger or smaller gamete begin to be considered - those characteristics that are found with greater frequency (or exclusively) in males than in females (and vice versa) are then deemed "male".

The utility in associating other characteristics with potential gamete contribution (even if a factual impossibility) varies. Sometimes it is helpful in describing anatomy, sometimes it is helpful in predicting a disease process, etc. Each of the extended uses of "male" and "female" need to be evaluated on their own merit (do they convey any substance in an acceptable manner). The biological use case of "male" and "female" are not, however, prescriptive, rather they are descriptive of statistically meaningful trends (i.e. characteristics that occur with sufficient frequency). Equally important, they are not statements of "natural law" (i.e. a limitation on how the natural world might be).

Where the difficulty arises, in my mind, is when people try to subsume the biological underpinnings of sex (gamete contribution) and speak as if the correlative characteristics are what is essential to the biological categorization. I grant to you in advance that the words/concepts of male and female preceded biology and that how sexual reproduction happens is utterly irrelevant to the development of those ideas/words outside of a more contemporary biological understanding of sex. It is precisely this type of co-development that ends up causing confusion about what "essentialism" can even mean because the great weight of history and historical uses is against the contemporary technical usage of a word.

From my perspective, discussions of biology in conversations about sex/gender are really just rhetorical devices - appeals to authority to validate a person's claims. In large part, this relates to something another poster alluded to (whose name I might add later when I look it up it was you) when mentioning the hardware of anatomy and whether such anatomy fundamentally dictates/limits experience/preference. If, for instance, you haven't a certain part of your brain, is there some essential difference between you and a person that has that part? If having that part of the brain is highly correlated with being in the biological bucket of male, then aren't males essentially different than females? Does a single example of a male not having that part of the brain or a female having it change whether that feature is essential to male/female?

The inclusion criteria for what is male/female from a biological perspective is never the same as the essential criteria being discussed - we know in advance that there is almost certain to be less than a perfect correlation (every male has it and every female does not). It is, therefore, a foregone conclusion both that any alleged claim regarding an essential characteristic will have exceptions and that the person making the claim will ignore those exceptions.

Once we have some understanding (if not agreement) about what we mean by "essentialism" from a biological perspective, we can take up how it relates to your areas of interest. Suffice it to say, I am sympathetic to gender being performative and society enforcing/teaching individuals how to play the part (even if that part changes over time). In the same way that society molds our desires and identities with everything else (need for chocolate, being Scottish), it should come as no surprise that people believe that sex/gender is a core, immutable part of their identity that is actually based in their very being (biology).

I dunno how courts calculates damages that have to be paid to the wronged party. — Agent Smith

For the sake of amusement:

. . .

This Court has sustained recoveries for future profits over four years based solely upon evidence of the profits of an established business for the past four years. We there approved an instruction which told the jury,

"Damages are not rendered uncertain because they cannot be calculated with absolute exactness. It is sufficient if a reasonable basis of computation is afforded, although the result be only approximate."

The ways compensatory damages may be proven are many. The injured party is not to be barred from a fair recovery by impossible requirements. The wrongdoer should not be mulcted, neither should he be permitted to escape under cover of a demand for nonexistent certainty. . . .

Certainty in the fact of damage is essential. Certainty as to the amount goes no further than to require a basis for a reasoned conclusion. ... — Palmer v. Connecticut Railway, 311 U.S. 544 (1941)

The fact of harm requires far more proof (certainty) than the quantum of damages stemming from the harm. Although this case is about lost profits, the general sentiment is there - defendants do not get rewarded by the fact that the difference between being unharmed and harmed is non-objective because the unharmed case is counterfactual. One cannot be "certain" or "objective" about that which isn't the case - one can only form a reasonable conclusion about what might have been. Granted, certain sorts of damages are more amenable to "objective" analysis because of the sort of harm suffered (e.g. the cost to replace a new 1993 Ford Focus destroyed when the defendant ran a fork lift into it), but other sorts are far more "subjective" and can result in wide variances in award/calculation.

Yeah, I was asking what the the topic was.The Saudi regime is is a brutal dictatorship with a cloak of piety, propped up by the West.

A witch-hunt is a synonym for unjust persecution and terrorising of a population and victimisation of any social deviance. Probably, it's an unsound legal concept, — unenlightened

This is why I often like your posts, but I have the need to throw way more words at it.

There's no such thing as supernatural witchcraft. The accused were therefore killed† on false‡ charges. Naturally, supernatural witchcraft was proven in none of the cases. Unjustified charges, conviction, sentence - state-sponsored. — jorndoe

Putting aside the debate on debate and epistemology for a moment, there is a big difference between there being no such thing as super-natural witchcraft (as in a set of actions causing a particular outcome by way of a mechanism other than that typically described by "natural") and there being no such thing as trying to perform super-natural witchcraft (however ill guided). It reminds me a bit of the idea of factual impossibility. I'm sure you can find better sources (I just wanted to point), but the idea is that whether or not your intent and behavior (mens rea and actus rea) can factually result in your desired criminal outcome, the factual impossibility is no defense to being convicted of crimes that do not (or may not) require a particular outcome to be accomplished (cf inchoate crimes such as conspiracy and attempt). In this context, the question is not so much whether being a super-natural witch is punishable by death, but whether you must have accomplished super-natural ends to be convicted of witchcraft.

The law (whether announced, secret, post hoc, well conceived, etc.) is a function of human relations and power (though many an academic/theologian/philosopher would like to posit law from an other source). The source of justification for law (rather than the power to coerce) comes in its ability to get agreement (or at least volitional cooperation) from its subjects. Asking a question like "Is action X justified?" is inherently context dependent - social group A may differ on what constitutes justification that social group B. This is not, of course, to say that relativism is true, but simply to point out that asking "Is this justified?" is fundamentally different than asking "do you agree?"

Unelightened more or less hit the nail on the head - in Saudi Arabia the public execution of a person is likely deemed justified by the relevant social/legal group. In this case "relevant" means those folks with sufficient ties to the group that their opinion/conduct could have substantially effected the outcome. The world community writ large is not the relevant community just as the murdered witch's family is not the relevant community. Making any appeal to Saudi Arabian authority (the "SAA"), process, etc. that the executions/murders were unjustified is almost certainly a non-starter. The SAA's internal justifications may be many and internally consistent/compelling. For instance, people may deem that reading Locke in an authoritarian communist state poses sufficient threat to social order such that public, brutal treatment of such readers strikes as an effective means to maintain order/remove the threat. In some social groups, the particular treatment of an individual simply does not carry as much weight as the overall integrity of the community. The prevention/condemnation of the ill-treatment of individuals at the hands of the law is not a universal requirement/desire.

Are the SAA authorities morally abhorrent, deserving of overthrow, etc? I'd go with a yes. Is the murder of witches justifiable? I'd also go with a yes given the right system/context of justification. Do I think it justified for my own purposes? No.

It is simple enough to call out the SAA for what they are and point to obviously abhorrent behavior as examples without engaging in the rhetorical device of an intellectual examination of those examples. It isn't just because your examination may reach unexpected results, but it is because the method of your examination and its results are independent of the abhorrence of the action. Suggesting that there is some context in which the murder of woman for political purposes can be legitimated is already to have slipped into an arena where it can be legitimated. We (presumably) all agree you shouldn't murder women for sticking pins into dolls hoping it will cause someone to break a leg or die (whether that person is a neighbor or the glorious leader). But it isn't because all people agree, rather it is the largely shared background posters on this forum have in the liberal tradition (rights theory and/or similar theories involving the protection of the individual from the group).

Questions like yours are merely requests for the inn-group to cluck approvingly in sophisticated ways. In a philosophy forum, intellectual rigor compels a "reasoned" exploration of the topic and there is no honor bestowed on the person who best argues for the position that the SAA should murder women for political gain. The same is true for asking someone to argue why the SAA should murder homosexuals. Yes, there are real consequences to philosophical theories and people should be careful of advocating for theories that in theory could give permission to bad people to do bad things (or good people to do bad things), but acting/speaking in this context as if there is no way that people could justify bad behavior is naive at best.

P.S. I'd love to hear from someone in Myanmar supportive of the junta and current order with respect to the moral acceptability of murdering women for political gain.

To **eff the ineffable. — skyblack

One of my lectures is entitled "Effing the ineffable: A Conversation about God." And yes, the double entendre is intentional.

This will seem unrelated, but so it goes.

I was driving a little while ago and thinking on the way in which Buddhism imagines suffering to be the core condition of existence in ways that Judaism does not - that to live is to suffer and from the moment we emerge we have desires that we must thereafter seek to satisfy. Completeness, as such, is never our state. The contrast here is merely the impetus to contrary thinking, and so I was reminded of the child's mind as Buddha's mind - that somehow a young child can seem utterly satisfied and contented as if they are without suffering. What is interesting is that this Buddha mind is lost through successive experiences rather than enhanced - that suffering is made manifest not merely by its existence but its perseverance.

If we accept for a moment that the notion of Buddha's mind approaches the non-self, then the child's mind approaches the non-self. This is to say that development from a lump taking succor at a nipple finding the end of want to a child wishing for something it does not have is simultaneously a move towards individuation (these are my hands, this is my stuff, you are not a part of me, your stuff is not my stuff, etc.) and away from non-self. The interesting turn here is infantile amnesia - that we cannot remember what it was that happened to us prior to a certain point in our development. While it is convenient (and perhaps true) for there to be a biological/anatomical explanation for the inability to remember that young, it could very well be that the child's mind as the non-self does not attach to unindividuated memories, i.e. that the self hasn't sufficiently emerged from the non-self to either suffer or to attach experience to itself.

It isn't so much that one must be non-self to be in the world, but the experiencing of the world as non-self does not survive the present (the moment of experience). This comes close to the metaphor of the last bit of awareness being just before sleep and the first moment of awareness being just after - that your body is able to simply exist in the world (with all experiences) and yet be attached to none of them.

I wonder if suffering doesn't actually begin until the non-self ceases to be. Differently, until the moment the illusion reduces the non-self to self, there is no self to suffer.

That awareness is empty, means that it is always the same awareness that looks out through a philosopher's eyes, her husband's eyes or her cat's eyes; — unenlightened

I started this response weeks ago but never finished.


For some reason I’m reminded of the veil of ignorance. It is by happenstance that we find ourselves looking through these eyes in this moment and we could have just as easily found ourselves behind any other set of eyes - so our behavior towards the outside eyes should be no more invested than our inside eyes. (Yes, the comparison falls apart and this is no Rawls.) Your comment cuts more deeply of course, but are we not equivocating a bit on “the same”? Each set of eyes has the same awareness (class membership) but there feels to be an essential difference - that the content of my stage is not the content of your stage (identity). That is the hurdle I can't seem to get past - the me that is not you.

Since your post I've encountered the idea of non-self a few more times, most recently with the quip "the suffering of others is my own suffering." It was expressed in the context of universal affirmation/love and meant to be something profound (I cannot be happy until we all are happy and so we are all deeply invested in one another) - a rebuttal, of sorts, of the notion that progress is measured by our ever expanding scope of moral/ethical concern. Again, I feel sympathetic to the idea, but don't understand how I feed myself instead of others (who are certainly more hungry than I) if all of the other non-self selfs have equal claim to my preference. In the absence of stillness (the actualization of the non-self), the truth of the non-self is debilitating.

@skyblack isn't wrong when speaking of the passions (absurdism by any other name), but it is curious that there is a suggestion that proper something driven by passion (an inherently self based thing) will somehow bring the non-self to actualization in a non-still way. Understanding of the non-self as something reserved for not now (i.e. for another "life" or "after-life" or...) has its merit for intellectual consistency (and ball hiding), but it fails to satisfy my pragmatic concerns. If understanding is the ability to do something (perhaps the correct application of a rule), what thing can be done that might demonstrate understanding of the non-self? How can the self ever act in accordance with its non-self essence?

Even as I imagine what you might be thinking, I am not thinking your thoughts. The "disembodied" us finds no fusion. My mind wanders here. I reject it and find no more thoughts than when I started. When I stare at the screen and time passes, your thoughts do not impress themselves upon me. I wait for you and find nothing, but that is not who you (we) are.

I suspect we will have this conversation from two very different perspectives, but here are some initial reactions to the general area of equity value increasing.

Markets are not necessarily tied at the hip - what is true in the US is not true in Japan and trying to make broad historic comparisons devoid of any nuance is fraught. If one is to consider the long-term trend of large cap stocks, it feels like the trend should be limited to an appropriate context/scope rather than universalized.

Large cap stocks (or publicly traded equities more generally) in the US are in a weird position precisely because of some of the things you hinted at but did not necessarily explore - the need for the average schmago who hopes to stop working at some point to somehow provide for their own "income" in later life. The US has perversely incentivized savings vehicles which favor equities. What this ends up meaning is that there is a constant influx of new money into a market that is already fully owned, i.e. for new money to make an "investment" it has to get the old securities from someone willing to sell. The entire large cap market simply goes up in value sufficient to absorb the new money being poured into it. This is the case irrespective of the performance of the underlying securities absent there being an alternative investment to absorb the new money (see the recent stupidity regarding things like crypto and efts).

Because people are placing huge sums of money in the public equities market, it has become a store of value that is unrelated to the "fundamentals". For instance, if you are discussing "income" as in the stock paying capacity of a publicly traded entity, you are missing the current justification for modern investments: total return. One does not invest money in hopes of "income", rather people are investing in hopes of capital appreciation that is realizable upon sale of the security (rather than liquidation of the entity). Until such time people are convinced that the large cap equities are not a store of value with a realistic potential for outsized total returns, there is no danger of the overall investment class declining - there will just be a shifting of value from one equity (share of stock) to another.

Debt capital is not independent of equity capital. Where businesses can attract necessary financing through new equity at tolerable rates of return, the features of equity may exceed the allure of the benefits of debt. The current interest rates are as much market driven as controlled by a particular inter-bank interest rate and lenders have been tripping over themselves to basically give away (loan) money for free. Lending appears to be more like an inflation hedge rather than a place to make profits (and this might be heavily influenced by packaging of debt instruments to be sold as secondary instruments). Yes, there are large interest rates to be had in areas like consumer debt (credit cards), but the rates of default and what not may not make those avenues of lending as lucrative as the face value of interest suggests.

Ultimately, I think much of this relies on the idea that "you can't beat the market." People are required to invest but lack the skills/time/resources to make informed choices (choices that exploit differing values/investment goals rather than asymmetry of knowledge). Money keeps pouring in because it must and early investors are keen to take advantage of their privileged status to make giant gains on IPOS or other secondary offerings (to institutional investors or consumers). Perhaps it is most easily summed up with the idea that those who can afford to lose are poised to win and those who can't afford to lose are stuck in a rat race of funding the winners while hoping that they can get out before the market moves on. As long as everyone keeps faith, the scheme continues - if people lose faith, it all falls apart.

In any event, the value of the dollar (or any currency) is a function of the market in which it is exchanged. Actually productivity is independent of the way in which it is valued and what we see is that our markets (driven principally by large cap behavior) continue to increase their productivity and there is little reason to believe that the rate of increase of productivity will slow down, i.e. large cap stocks should see real growth.

Ironically this is an inquiry into what isn't.

I'm happy to engage with you on "what is," but not so much a game of hide the ball. If there is a metaphysical statement about existence that is somehow "true" irrespective of our ability to imagine it, experience it, or otherwise engage with it and its truth has utterly no impact on how we conduct or ought conduct our lives, I have difficulty understanding how we might inquire/investigate the statement. The ineffable is, perhaps, shareable in a place that isn't wholly constituted by the written word, but as this is a text based internet forum, aside from a random link or two to something else on the internet, I've got nothing.

If someone has somehow understood/groked non-self more deeply than I have and is still engaged in the business of using their inhabited bodies to do body like things, why? Or more inline with my initial question in the OP, can we empathize/relate to them in a meaningful way given that we haven't gotten it?

I haven't forgotten about this thread, but then I haven't much to add. I was sitting and moving closer to the stillness when this came along...."Oh Yeah Habibi"

Ask what makes your consciousness separate from mine, we have recourse to the contents of consciousness, what we have access to - awareness and awareness of being aware have left the building, and all we have is distinct privileged access, otherwise we seem to be indistinguishable. — unenlightened

I keep mulling this over. I haven't quite gotten it yet, I think. The non-self that is not-you has privileged access X and the non-self that is not-me has privileged access Y, but are otherwise non-self. This difference in access is... That is where I am lost. On the one hand,the difference between picking your nose and touching your nose is the width of a nostril, but most people find the nostril width to be of significance. I am, however, a general fan of the idea that claiming ownership (or privileged access) to memories is dangerous - after all the memories are but present thoughts arising from who knows what. Whether those memories came from some prior time that my non-self self did something involved in making/observing those memories I cannot say. Perhaps they are nothing more than watching a movie recorded long before I was born or a place I've never been and mistaking the camera's perspective for my own.

its vanishing point, so to speak. — 180 Proof

As usual I want to agree with you. It isn't so much that the experience of anticipatory vanishing followed by the later realization that I have not is rather unlike never having been, but that hanging on to the moment before the moment after doesn't bring the epiphany. Perhaps that is why the black hole analogy is so poignant for some people. That our experience of falling into timelessness happens in time and the essential nature of reaching timelessness is that there is no time in which to have an experience. We always seem to be popping out of the void with no awareness of having actually been in it.

The difference between us and the nothingness and us and the black hole is that the black hole is situated in our experience whereas the nothingness is behind us/pervades us/gives rise to us. Even as we imagine the void, we are the void. The light switch that is "we are something" and "we are nothing" doesn't change the void, but only the illusion that is us. Now the light switch is on "we are nothing" and the unchanged void strikes me exactly as it did before.

Maybe I'm still waiting to go poof as I shout eureka. Maybe I've already gone poof and being nothing is actually identical to being something. Still, I am willing to give up the experience of existence as an I and just let experience happen.

The self is one of the players and part of the play or scene, precisely because it is identified as being something/someone. Once that is rejected, it is simply obvious that awareness is everywhere the same emptiness, and we are like bubbles in a foam of life. — unenlightened

This is an example of part of what I am missing. How does awareness being empty get us to being one of many on an even grander stage?

Perhaps you can share, if interested, why are you speaking about the primacy of awareness when OP wants to explore Self-Abnegation. Seems like you are equating self with awareness, is that it? — skyblack

I'm not sure what your background is, Skyblack (not that it matters particularly), but I'm curious whether you think that there is a self more fundamental than our self that is aware? Are you hinting at Atman or something similar?

Isn't the self now simply imagining it is not there? So where does that leave us? With our imaginations? — skyblack

Non-sarcastically, I appreciate the detour down Hindu history in case my post was mistaken as an appeal to antiquity, tradition, or enlightened interpretation of a particular text. I am not sure that the ancients understood non-existence in quite the same way as I (or maybe we) do, so their language must be invoked carefully in order to avoid bringing too much baggage along. I was merely relating a story of a friend of mine who used one of the upanishad's in his therapeutic practice to positive effect with a patient. Perhaps it was this one:

IV-65. Devoid of all particular the stainless, pure Being is one vast essence - That is held to be the abode of (immutable) existence.

IV-66. Rejecting distinctions like the being of time, the being of instants, the being of entities, be solely devoted to pure Being.

IV-67. Contemplating but one unqualified universal Being, be omnipresent, full, supremely blissful, filling up all space.

IV-68. The pristine inconceivable Status, without beginning and end, that remains at the fringe of universal Being, is causeless.

IV-69. Cognitions dissolve there. It remains beyond the possibility of doubts. A man who reaches That returns to pains no more.

IV-70. It is the cause of all beings; itself has no cause. It is the quintessence of all essences; nothing is more quintessential that It.

IV-71. In that vast mirror of Intelligence, all these perceptions of objects are reflected as the trees on the bank are reflected in the lake.

IV-72. That is the pure un-obscured Truth of the Self; when that is known the mind is tranquillised. Having, through knowledge, won Its essence you become truly free from the fear of samsara.

IV-73. By the application of the remedies mentioned by me for the causes of suffering, that (supreme) status is attained.
— Annapurna-Upanishad

In any event, I am no Hindu (or Vedic) scholar, and outside of a gesturing in that direction, I would be lost if you wanted to have any serious discussion.

Your questions are good, but have answers that cannot be given. I find enlightenment to be a lot like the quintessential example of the no true Scotsman fallacy - anyone who says they are enlightened isn't and identifying someone who is can only be done by those that are. Is my being OK with the non-existence an illusion? Perhaps. I express it as certainly/passionately as I do anything else. The difficulty is not in accepting that they don't exist, but in non-attachment to their non-existence. That they exist is important to me even if I know that they do not. Where would I be if I acted as if nothing existed in the same way that I acted as if things do exist? I cannot say, but I haven't tried and feel pretty committed to not doing so. Sometimes I come closer to moving towards the stillness, but somehow that movement strikes me as self-defeating.

Can the non-self self imagine non-self? Maybe that would have been a better title for the thread, but I was brought up in the cogito context and fights about non-referential indexicals. My assertion that the self strikes me as fundamental was rejected by unenlightened, so there may be some people that think the self can abnegate. Death and the after-life appear to be a response to some group of people's failure of imagination regarding the return to the void.

The answer to some metaphysical questions is found in actions and not in words. So yes, self-abnegation comes across as pretend play of the non-self self imagining what it would be like to not be all the while engaged in a performative contradiction. I am imagining. I am asking. But that is what I am trying to flesh out here - besides the nothingness that comes along with not-being, can we find something in not-being that informs us now? If we can't even act as if we don't exist, what am I searching for when I reach out to touch what is not there?

Much ink has been spilled about the non-self. Why the fuss?

This thread is born from what seems like the triviality of the non-self. It is self-evidently the case (even if that self-evidence takes lots of creative thinking). I see people who express the awe that comes with tasting the non-self, but I lost that feeling long ago. People (more frequently than you'd imagine) try to relate the epiphany of non-self to me, but I'm like, "Yes, and?" So I am asking you all.

So it looks like it is an illusion that there is a difference, caused by the limited range of awareness, and weakness of the linguistic and sympathetic connections between us. — unenlightened

I don't see how this avoids agency. Absolutely, the I that is me has privileged access to the stuff that is me whereas my I lacks such access to the stuff that is you (outside of what I can observe about you or what you disclose to me). Though I can imagine mind reading (or perhaps simply being an I that has access to disparate me stuff), it feels like self-abnegation is about acknowledging that not only does my I not have access to me stuff, but that there is no I to have access to the me stuff or you stuff.

Perhaps I don't really relate to/understand why destruction of individuals leads to expanding awareness/compassion rather than exact same spot we started. Yes, the metaphor of non-self can motivate one to feel a greater connection to the oneness (or interconnectedness), but the metaphysic of existence being an illusion seems to cut deeper than that. I guess I'm concerned that I've missed the point - from challenging abstraction to benign tautology that informs nothing besides bad cocktail conversation. I'm looking for an exit from the treadmill bound for aesthetics and will. Enlighten me unenlightened.

Yes. I cannot understand what it is to not be I, but assuming that I could, is conversation/action/etc. imaginable? I am totally OK with the whole non-existence thing, but outside of it being true, does it add anything to our understanding of now? Maybe you can think of it like a functional/pragmatic exploration of the non-self. We (maybe not you) spend so much time exploring the self and world (whatever the metaphysic of those things), but I figure I'd see if anyone had something interesting to say about the alternative. For instance, maybe process metaphysics solves the problem of non-being in a novel way I hadn't considered.

The cat is on the mat (even if it isn't) and we all act as if quite nicely. I'm trying to imagine what it looks like to act as if the cat isn't on the mat (because the cat, the mat, and you do not exist).

when you referenced those who might refuse to consider your group a religion as being petulant. — Hanover

The point there was that there are usage conventions that can be gestured to even if not well defined. It would be like someone saying that a game of soccer is not a game of soccer because the ball was wrong (too big, too small, not quite round, not the right pressure, etc.), the field inappropriate (not on grass, wrong dimensions, etc.), players wrongly constituted (number, positions, etc.), and governed by incorrect rules (no offside, no strict boundaries, etc.). Like all of that can be true, and still a group of kids kicking a ball around and scoring by shooting through two garbage cans qualifies as soccer. The same is true if a kid is playing FIFA on her TV - not actually soccer as envisioned but never-the-less a game of soccer. At some point, if you are dealing in good faith in conversation you simply acknowledge the obvious - that people are using a word in a way not quite like you might have imagined, but sufficiently within the ballpark that its use is more informative than misleading.

Or perhaps differently, it is ultimately a language community's judgment that decides which usage endures and/or is acceptable regardless of a particular individual's willingness to accept it.