I am glad to see your rethink because I think it is important to not turn all of this into one goo.

In terms of the next generation, it is a large difference between encouraging a revolt versus some kind of accommodation. That involves the different agendas underway at the time but also how one is to live in the future. What we accept or reject personally involves who we care for, however we choose to understand that.

Orban hyperventilates. Maybe the band can get back together.

One aspect about the difference between Hobbes and Rousseau is how their language appears in different political messaging. There is a "this arbitrary power is better than its absence" set against "there is a better way to proceed that does not require so much power."

Imagining what would happen without X does not seem to be the singular province of anyone.

I see that you have posted your thread and will follow with interest.

In the context of political divisions brought up in this thread, the lack of moral realism is being depicted by Leontiskos as the source for one side of a divide. To put it that way makes the topic political in its own right.

In the formulations of what is "natural" for humans, the debate over kinds of authority has been the central problem. For instance, is Hobbes right that only a central authority can stop the natural war between men or is Rousseau correct that we have come from a different way of life that did not require that much power?

The difference between them is not whether morality is real or not.

Verveake has come up a lot in discussions here. I suggest searching the site regarding Plotinus to get a sense of the disputes underway and what different people make of them, specifically as the issues concern Aristotle.

I am not working that hard so will only hope you get what you are striving toward.

In the more traditional Aristotelian formulation, matter was construed not as res extensa, nor as a bare substrate, but rather as the principle of individuation and potentiality in the world. In this view, a material object is not mere matter (which cannot not exist on its own), but a compound of matter and form. The mind gains knowledge of material objects via the processes of perception and understanding (intentional acts), through which it comes to grasp the very same forms inherent in the material object itself. — Esse Quam Videri

Before the idea came into collision with modern philosophy, there is the view of Plotinus who presented 'matter' as a field penetrated by form but never completely occupied by it. All the ways to understand an "individual" had to be looked for on the side of the intellectual soul.

That does not sum up all that the 'scholastics' said but does reflect Augustine's preference for Plotinus over Plato.

Okay, I will give it a go.

From my experience, the views of 'moral realism' you brought up do not reflect how education works in families and institutions. How sharply one differentiates those from each other is a source of conflict in communities and political structures. Sometimes that adds up to one policy being advanced over another. Other times, that is an underlying feature of life in a particular place that does not get formulated in that way. From that perspective, I don't view any theory of connecting or disconnecting those aspects as important as people looking for what benefits or harms the chances of their hopes and fears.

Consider the habit of adversarial discourse in families. I was raised in one of those as was my son. I have known and worked with people who did not. That difference is a genuine cultural divide that is not simply a product of different opinions. On the other hand, it is obvious that it does influence opinion. What we all choose to do in such divergences is a personal matter of choice that theory cannot relieve us from. Tolerance is easy until it is in your face.

Seeing the aggregating function of the algorithm in action, it prompts me to wonder on the life expectancy of the inside joke or "esoteric" reference in writing. A sort of an inverse to the "Newspeak" problem because now, too much is included.

Are you asking me to explain what I said without reference to what I just said?

If the context I put forward is not germane to the discussion, it is difficult for me to imagine what is.

Will ponder. I do not have a snappy response.

I figure education is captured by an ongoing cultural war. From that point of view, any program put forward is not only a policy proposal but an attempt to vanquish some other view.

Noticing that development is not the same as understanding it.

It is not enough to note that some people seek their advantage.

I figure we were on the same page about that for some time regardless of whatever else we disagreed upon.

My comment was not to challenge your argument but to put it into the context of many others.

I was not claiming Kant as my north star, only pointing to a breaking point in a reference to him.

Well, Kant was pretty confident he was up to speed about the correct rules. I can take your point without agreeing there is no tension here.

As a matter of philosophical tradition, the problem of comparing the subjective to the objective is not being able to stand outside the circumstances in order to provide comparisons.

That you have freely given yourself this power is no reflection upon those who did not.

I have had a different experience.

My family fought on both sides of our Civil War in the U.S. The choices between what is acceptable or not is worked out each day wherever we are. Education of children is critical to what happens next.

I don't see how your disagreements with people bear upon the matter.

I am willing to address that but how does that relate to your view of the presence of

assertions that morality doesn't really exist. — Leontiskos

I take your point about Kant putting forth a vision of universal humanism but that also came with a view of the law that was in conformity with authority that you might not like. He praised Hobbes speaking on the need for lawful authority. There is a hazard when projecting present political divisions into the past.

That read doesn't seem to align with right/left categories. — Leontiskos

I agree. Crisp is pointing to a process of accommodation where the source of annoyance for whoever tends to recede into the background of other annoying things.

So we get a vacillation between moralizing and assertions that morality doesn't really exist. — Leontiskos

I was trying to draw a broad sharp line between those who support institutions even if they often suck and those who want to shake the Etch a Sketch upside down. I am not aware of any of the former kind who subscribe to the purely emotional view you propose to be a significant factor in political discourse.

Pardon me if my last response was rude.

Rather than proclaim what is happening in my country, I will put forward a question. What Crisp is saying does reflect what is is happening here but is actively being opposed by efforts that want to have power over the next generation. Thus, all the very real dismantling of institutions that preserve the present status quo.

Is there a similar struggle going on in the Down Under?

Tolerance is a terrible word. To be 'tolerated' sounds judgemental. — Tom Storm

It is judgmental. A society accepts slavery and then stops doing that.

That is a different cultural war from curtailing expressions of personal identity.

Tolerance is a term used in many different contexts ranging from what is permitted in intimate situations to legislation that has the power to limit one's freedom. Debate about what is permissible in the latter sense concerns constitutions and the limits to state power. The right to privacy and the establishment of religion is in tension with the demand for equality under the law in the U.S.

The idea of a right wing versus a left wing is different if the aim is to deconstruct the institutions that permit that dialogue to continue. There is that great scene in Vasily Grossman's book, Life and Fate where the Nazi interrogator tells the Old Bolshevik they are spiritual brothers in wanting to rewrite the language of the world.

Amongst the charges made as to who is the real nihilist, this distinction between the worldviews is important. To ignore it is to sleepwalk into history, to borrow a phrase.

I second your motion.

I am familiar with that adversarial model.

Interesting response.

Do you regret your participation in any way?

I am a US taxpayer. I have to file my income tax with the IRS every single year. — NOS4A2

Are you a citizen of the U.S.?

I know you are joking and are reflecting upon years of participation.

I have had different times when I broke off from the discussion for different reasons. I miss some of those who have wandered off.

My room is at the back end of the motel and the car has gas.

I am willing to see what happens on your ranch before trying it out on my cows.

↪Paine, ↪Hanover, you both presume an adversarial model of discourse. Now fun as that is, it might be interesting to explore other possibilities... — Banno

I don't suppose I could argue otherwise without using that model.

Maybe you could try your idea within an OP as an experimental clinic. I am having difficulty imagining what you have in mind.

I have read the posts where he did request a ban, twice. — Outlander

In one of those discussions, I asked why he or she did not simply withdraw. The answer was that participation was experienced as a compulsion.

I get that.

How does it not become a form of arguing on the basis of authority?

Is there a modal logic answer to that question?

Very helpful quotation.

I object to that idea. I would rather have it be a resource for people who use it to supplement their limitations. Don't we all disagree enough without adding an agent that does not need to explain itself?

I just don't understand why one would posit a private sub-symbol that computes and then attaches to a public post-symbol I can see. By mentalese, I would think he would mean the stuff that precedes the sub-symbol, the computation itself, not some strange layer of first symbol to follow a second symbol. — Hanover

I wonder where linguistics, as a science, fits into Pinker's model. Before trying to map a "mental" substratum for the activity, it would be good to have the empirical study of grammar and expression established as a starting place. It is not a settled area of theory.

That is not the same starting place of Wittgenstein working out that our understanding of meaning is more than naming things we all can recognize alone. Unless, of course, one understood Wittgenstein to be reducing the problem to a set of criteria.

Glad to hear the Currently Reading thread will continue.

One way to hear the PI §329 statement is that some kinds of internal dialogue demonstrate that the thinking through using language is where thinking would otherwise not happen. It may not be exclusively "private" in origin, but it is nonetheless personal.

That would make it different from both the dialogue with others or translating a purely individual experience into words.

That is a good observation. Kant had figured that he had nailed down the uses of psychology but the time since then has proven otherwise.