Exactly.

So, maybe be less ready to accuse others of intellectual dishonesty since you are not interested in supporting your own opinions.

I sense a lack of interest in my challenges.

How does that reference relate to my challenge regarding your use of the term Neoplatonist?

I am curious enough to check him out.

If you are not interested in explaining your idea, I am not interested in such a leading question. For all I know, you are reciting opinions rather than responding to texts you have read.
There is no way to tell.

You have an idea that needs clarification if it is to be observed by others.

An academic approach to Plato would not settle in any one interpretation, but would just explain what we know about the times and the various ways Plato has been interpreted since. — frank

This aspect of history makes it confusing to hear your use of "Neoplatonist" against the way the term is commonly used to refer to philosophers in the "Hellenistic" period. Your interpretation of what is religious or not requires as much from you that you ask from anybody else.

The mirror processes are probably important to ego development — Jack Cummins

I was apprehensive about bringing Lacan's work up because I don't think of "ego" as something that can be referred to as a normative fact. It plays a role in various models and is a different agent in those different contexts. It needs to be used like walking a tightrope stretched between specific locations that won't be helpful between others.

Neoplatonism isn't one line of thought. It's any interpretation of Plato that fills in the blanks in a certain way. — frank

Does this make Aristotle a Neoplatonist?

Which brand?
I am pretty familiar with Plotinus and Proclus. This statement, for instance, would be strongly rejected by both.

Plato’s ontology must remain radically incomplete, limited to but not constrained by what is thought. — Fooloso4

I am wondering about the way in which human identity is established, with potential soliptist or narcissistic aspects. How much are we influenced by others' minds and intersubjective meaning. Buber wrote in, 'I and Thou', how people see thou as God or in the communication with the other. — Jack Cummins

From the point of view of developmental psychology, the question is whether the experience of 'ego' is an activity that appears in the individual at birth or is the result of something like the 'mirror stage' as formulated by Lacan (given in separate paragraphs):

This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infant stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores it, in the universal, it functions as subject......

These reflections lead me to recognize in the spatial captation manifested in the mirror-stage, even before the social dialectic, the effect in man of organic insufficiency in the natural reality---in so far as any meaning can be given to the word 'nature'.
I am led, therefore, to regard the function of the mirror-stage as a particular case of the function of the imago, which is to establish a relation between the Innenvelt and the Umvelt.
In man, however, this relation to nature is altered by a certain dehiscence at the heart of the organism, a primordial Discord betrayed by the signs of uneasiness and motor unco-ordination of the neo-natal months. The objective notion of the anatomical incompleteness of the pyramidal system and likewise the presence of certain humoral residues of the maternal organism confirm the view I have formulated as the fact of a real specific prematurity of birth in man.......

This development is experienced as a temporal dialectic that decisively project the formation of the individual into history. The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation--And which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic ---and lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development. Thus, to break out of the circle of the Innenvelt into the Umvelt generates the inexhaustible quadrature of the ego's verifications. — Lacan, Écrits

Lacan proceeds from this starting point to build his theory of psychoanalysis. The issue at hand, however, concerns a number of 'structuralist' views of development ranging from the scientific method of Vygotsky to the phenomenological one of Merleau-Ponty.

If the revolution was a staged event, and can be shown to be so, this will undermine the authority of Ukraine as an independent nation.
— Paine

I don't see how. High quality elections have taken place since then. What it proves is the US's meddling in the region. It puts the lie to the idea that the US are only involved because of the Ukrainian people's sovereignty — Isaac

The matter is not about the purity of U.S. intentions. It is about whether the revolution was a struggle between people in Ukraine that led to the present state of the nation or a trick to make people feel like that is happening.

I am heartened to see you recognize the elections afterwards as a hint of Ukrainian agency. It is an improvement upon your insisting that Ukrainians don't exist as a group acting on that basis.

Yep. "always opposed to the previous war, never the current one". That way the war machine can just keep trundling on and everyone gets to pretend they're not supporters. — Isaac

I have actively protested against every war the U.S. has ventured upon since Vietnam. I wasn't sure about Vietnam because I was a kid holding a draft card.

It's often decades after the event that we find out the sort of details you're using the lack of to exculpate the US — Isaac

I am not trying to "exculpate the US." I am trying to introduce the perspective that things happen outside of it.
It is true that many details stay hidden for years. On the other hand, there are many cases where suspicious activities were reported and became the source of scandal.

If there's even the slightest sign that the US are repeating the same abuses of power that we know for a fact they've done before, then it matters that we kick up a hue and cry about it. — Isaac

Then you better get to work and find this sign. The political discourse in the U.S. is not going to recognize or smell a "barest whiff of abuse of power" without something to chew on.

Hopefully make of it exactly what it said. Hurt feelings are less important that holding power to account. — Isaac

If the revolution was a staged event, and can be shown to be so, this will undermine the authority of Ukraine as an independent nation. Compare the situation to when other regimes were created by foreign powers. From your extensive commentary, it is clear that you take this lack of legitimacy as a starting place rather than something that can be confirmed or denied by a consideration of facts.

Right now they know can expect nothing but obsequious compliance from the likes of you so long as they don't slip up and release documentary evidence of the master plot in excruciating detail. — Isaac

It is interesting to see how small you have made me.

So on what possible ground is it right to give the most powerful nation on earth the benefit of the doubt here? — Isaac

The skepticism expressed was not an attempt to give the U.S. a 'benefit of the doubt'. The U.S. has proven itself capable of doing many nefarious things. The worst of those can be related to accounts of how they were carried out by the people involved. Nothing like that has been presented as yet in regard to the unfolding of the revolution. My observations were given to underline how difficult such an operation would be under the circumstances.

If they did it, and we let them get away with it, then we've allowed power to dictate foreign governments to suit their needs. — Isaac

If they did it, they will get away with it if nothing more than suspicion is presented as evidence.

If they didn't, and we assume they did, we hurt the feelings of the people who actually brought about the revolution. — Isaac

I don't know what to make of this trivialization of Ukrainian experience right after you say: "we've allowed power to dictate foreign governments to suit their needs."

That phone call certainly demonstrated hubris and self-importance. It doesn't shed any light on how the revolution was manipulated.

Your alignment with the Kremlin view is noted. My problem with it is that it shrinks all efforts of people to change their civil society into pawns sliding on a board game.

The cases of the US staging coups are more than I care to count. — Tzeentch

Indeed. That is why I referred to a famous example to contrast the difference of conditions in Chile and Ukraine.

I acknowledge that U.S. was an influence in the country. If that involvement included taking part in a coup, that means they had worked with those who executed it. If the coup was the result of a plan, the revolution was engineered by the ones who plotted it. That would require leveraging a huge number of otherwise different people, including some in the Yanukovych regime. Showing how that happened requires a lot more explanation than saying a foreign power threw money around.

It seems that some modicum of the burden of proof here should be on those claiming the change was caused by the U.S. instead of developments in Ukrainian society in relation to Russian influence. How was that manipulation actually carried out?

Otherwise, the notion is as vague and binary as the theory on Color Revolutions developed by the Kremlin to explain popular movements as a tool of U.S. imperialism.

There is no secret about the pursuit of U.S. interests and their intention to support ties to the E.U.

This influx of support does not show that the revolution was engineered by outsiders.

Since the violence wielded by the Yanukovych regime was a decisive factor in the growth of the revolution, your planners would have had to have been behind that as well. Pretty crafty.

The coup speculators point to associations to particular groups but do not cover the broad coalition of people who otherwise were not aligned with each other. If this was supposed be something like Operation Condor in Chile, how these very different agents were being leveraged simultaneously needs to be explained.

When Mearsheimer speaks of a coup, no effort is made to show how the revolution was managed as a project.

Well, none of that remotely resembled Wittgenstein's Zettel.

Maybe it was a chat.gpt stunt:

"AI, what combination of identity and opinion would piss off the most people at the same time given their previous statements?"

Do you have a source that rebuts her account of the participants?

I did not mean to insinuate anything about vetting; Just curious about what looked interesting.

zettel's profile says he was invited by Jamal.

I would disagree to call the Revolution of Dignity a "staged coup" starting with the Euromaidan protests. This wasn't some Operation Ajax, but naturally Russian propaganda portrays it to be so. — ssu

When considering the diversity of participants, both previously organized and spontaneously self-organized, this comparison between the 'Orange' and 'Maidan' shows the idea that they were all fronts for foreign governments very difficult to imagine.

One vital component to how quickly and far the revolution spread was the repression of the protests by the authorities. That does not come up much amongst the promoters of coup narratives.

Your choice between A and B is sort of passive/aggressive.

There is a beauty that pushes buttons other people have. There is a kind that reveals to you what you like. The latter requires a different investigation than having to put in ear plugs to stop hearing the Sirens.

The distortion of truth is not the same as its suppression — NOS4A2

I have no idea what this means. Truth is only useful as a concept if all misrepresentations count as the opposite of it. We do not possess a version of events beyond attempts to recount them. Reporting a false narrative is often done for the purpose of suppressing another.

Regarding Spanish films, Carlos Saura's Blood Wedding is fantastic:

In the spirit of remembering Beck, this album with Rod Stewart still rankles my chains.:

Brilliant.
I had no idea this existed.
A parallel of the harmony and the pacing.

It seems to be an algorithm that takes three reactions to Heidegger's language and reconfigures them to fit different contexts.

I have made several attempts to seriously study Heidegger over the years and lapsed into a coma each time. I object to a lot of his approach but now find myself wanting to defend him from the use of classifications he argued against.

Oh no! See the movie anyway. I implore you. I had to see it 3 times in the theater— a modern masterpiece on all levels. — Mikie

One thing about that movie I will never forget; Javier Bardem was entirely too good at playing his role.
I cannot watch him in other movies because I cannot unsee him from there.

Furthemore, Chalmers is part of a kind of new wave in 'consciousness studies' that is far more open to, shall we say, alternative philosophical models, than the diehards of analytical philosophy. — Wayfarer

I completely agree.

I don't mean to accuse you of losing sight of something but to suggest there is a gap between Husserl, for example, and Chalmers in regard to how the 'first person' is understood as the source of phenomena.

Chalmers is fighting for accepting methods of the first person as evidence in the face of the thinking/practice that has excluded them. Husserl is taking those experiences as given to him without qualification.

Heidegger is a voice of opposition to the 'scientism' he sees in society. Chalmers is militating against that view when he does not accept that science has nothing more to do with the matter of subjectivity.

Ah yes, the power of subtraction.

Like my old Sifu said while teaching martial arts:

"if you are genuinely interested in self-defense, try not being such an asshole."

Righto!
I have seen half of that list. I better get to work on the rest.

But we can't study the nature of being that way, because it's never something we're apart from or outside of (another insight from existentialism.) In the case of the actual 'experience of consciousness', we are at once the subject and the object of investigation, and so, not tractable to the powerful methods of the objective sciences that have been developed since the 17th century. — Wayfarer

I read Chalmers to be saying that consciousness could be investigated as a scientific phenomenon if the 'powerful methods' stopped insisting upon reducing it into a mechanism that excludes the need for a 'subject.'. Chalmers says the only way to avoid the problem is to include consciousness.as a fundamental property like mass, space, time, etcetera. To that extent, he is arguing against a 'scientism' that accepts the Descartes/Kant divisions as a final word on what can be investigated.

I understand the viewpoints stated by many in this thread that dismiss his framework as philosophically suspect. I just don't want to lose sight of what he thought he was doing as a point of departure.

My favorite from that album is Guinnivere:


It still feels like travelling from one place to another.

Yes, they are worthy.

Kubrick, Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini, for sure. Some I didn't see listed by others:

The Last Picture Show
Solaris by Tarkovsky
Richard II, with Lawrence Olivier
Alexander Nevski and Ivan the Terrible by Eisenstein
Koyaanisqatsi
Lawrence of Arabia
Heart of Glass by Herzog
High Noon
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

In regard to my challenge to your 'grouping' idea as it relates to having an opinion, I considered your following remarks:

You've not yet provided any reason at all why the aggregated opinion of that particular group matters to us more than the opinion of any other group.

The aggregated views of {all the people who live within that border} has no meaning. It's just a random means of stratification unrelated to the opinion being aggregated.

The comments you cite say that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian identity, history, language and culture. I've also argued that there's no such thing as the will of the Ukrainians, or the motive of the Ukrainians. I've argued that no such thing exists because Ukraine (like all other countries) is an arbitrary line drawn by powerful people based on the amount of resources they had the power to control at the time. It does not in any way 'capture' some natural grouping of people all of whom think alike. It would be no more real then me taking a quick glance at the posts on religion here and announcing that "the belief of TPF is that there is a God".

Sure, but same goes for a load of people getting together to do anything. Run a marathon. Clear mines. Save lives in wars zones. There's nothing unique about getting together to fight a common enemy which creates some moral purpose which we then are under an obligations to respect. The Nazis got together for a common goal.

Yes? What connects the acceptance that there are motivations to fight back with somehow having to pretend those motivations are more politically important that the object of the most powerful nation on earth? The former is an argument about their mere existence, the latter is an argument about their importance in determining if western policy is morally acceptable.

Still don't. There's no such thing as a Ukrainian identity. Ukrainians identify in all sorts of different, occasionally completely incompatible ways. That's why there was a civil war going on before this invasion.

Of course Ukraine does not have its own history, language and culture. It's an arbitrary line on a map, it's absurd to think it somehow contains a natural grouping of language, history and culture.

Tell me, how did the people who determined where the line should be ensure that it encompassed such a natural grouping? Were studies done, where polls taken? Because as I recall learning it, it was some politicians in a negotiating room that drew the line. Did Lenin consult ethnographers in 1922? Did Krushchev cede Crimea because his anthropologists insisted the 'culture' there belonged to Ukraine?

No country's boundaries are carefully drawn around natural breaks in culture and language. It's one of the reasons we have so many fucking wars.

In this case, you'd be blind to ignore the fact that the Russian-speaking population in the east of Ukraine have a different language to the rest, the suppression of which was instrumental in the pre-2022 war. — Isaac

After all that, it is difficult to process:

We're not talking about what opinion 'do' so I don't see the relevance of this. we're talking about the moral weight one ought give the aggregated opinion of a certain grouping. — Isaac

Just out of idle curiosity, what is a "vague wife"? I've known a few people whose normal state was "vague". — BC

I get why the summary says that but it does not reflect a careful reading of the book. With the possible exception of the son, all the characters operate in a fixated manner. The characters who are easily understood are the committed nazis. The diffuse presentation of others makes it difficult to separate a coping strategy from a clear thought of resistance. Suspicion becomes more than a thought and switches the tracks one travels upon.

We are good people, aren't we? — BC

The best of all possible people. Oh wait, a collection of soil has formed on the road outside. I will take my broom and........

.