I've been hesitant to reply because I think 's response is better than I can muster.

But the OP isn't around and it's been three days and I'm still thinking about it, so I'll post anyways.

This is the bit I take the most umbrage to:

It is remarkable that men really communicate with one another only by passing through being or one of its properties. Only in this way do they escape from the individuality in which matter encloses them. If they remain in the world of their sense needs and of their sentimental egos, in vain do they tell their stories to one another, they do not understand each other.

And I feel I'm threading a needle here; there's the sense in which I do not want to deny Maritain at all.

And there's that quote up there that uses "only in this way..." -- and I think that's what philosophers often get wrong.

There are people who dedicate their lives to dancing, for instance. There aren't even stories to tell at that point, but dances to dance. It is only the philosopher who doesn't see this as a form of understanding, among all the various other ways people do, in fact, really communicate with one another without passing through being or one of its properties.

The "on the other hand..." is that I don't want to say that the monastic life is lesser than the dancers -- but it strikes me that the monastics tend to want to say that their life is better than the performers who don't commune, who are "lost" in the sounds of "bar bar bar"

(Also hesitant because this takes us astray from the OP... but, again the OP has been silent, and my mind keeps thinking...)

My view of the situation is an honest appraisal based upon what we are doing, what we know, and what we are able to do.

What we are doing is hoping the future figures it out, when we have the means to address climate change in terms of our engineering and scientific knowledge.

Or, really, that the future is the one who pulls the lever.

What I see is a bunch of adults hoping that the children of tomorrow are bigger adults than they are after they die; leaving very little of an example for our children to learn from.

Or, in the worst of cases, saying that the future will birth a bright genius who will save the world. That's a familiar story that's told in more than scientific lingo. That's asking for Jesus Christ to solve the problem: It may stave off pessimism, but it's still scientifically false.

Won't our children's children be more capable of solving the problem than us? — Agree-to-Disagree

No.

Will our children's children be intelligent or stupid?

It wouldn't matter either way; we're clever enough to see a problem, but stupid enough to want to keep it.

Won't technology become better with time?

No.

The issue of climate change is a political, not an engineering, problem. We already have the means to address it in terms of the science -- we just don't want to because we like the way things are, so we imagine that there's going to be a future invention that will save us.

In terms of science that's about as good as praying to Jesus Christ. It makes sense to believe in it, but there's no reason to do so.

But many people don't live in circumstances where an EV works well. People should be allowed to make their own decision about what type of vehicle is best for them. Many governments are trying to force people into EV's using mandates or effective mandates. Doing this is not intelligent....

There are many other problems but that is enough for now. — Agree-to-Disagree

Which governments are using force to get people into EV's?

It seems to me when you say "Don't move too quickly" I can't think of a single government that is moving at all. So I'm left wondering which specific countries are doing what specific things?

At present people are able to allowed to make their own decisions about what type of vehicle is best for them.

But note how it's not addressing the issue: CO2 levels continue to rise, and the various predictions linked to that continue to be true.

I'm going to propose a rate -- suppose we waited to do anything about climate change until after your life. That way you can choose whatever vehicle you want, but the next generation will have to tighten their belt.

This need not be read too literally. In a way what we are to the industrial revolution this future generation will be to us -- the industrial revolution inherited the benefits of "free" energy because it was later generations who pay the price of trying to figure out how to support billions of people with a resource that is finite, and which is continuing to warm the planet.

In fact I'd like to suggest that this is what we are presently choosing: To let our children's children to deal with the problem so we can have the freedom of individual choice in the market and everything feels normal.

...
There are many problems that will occur if we try to shift away from fossil fuels too quickly. The change to renewable energy will continue, but it also has many risks associated with it. — Agree-to-Disagree

Is this pretty much what your position is that you're advocating for?

Like, in linking CO2 to prosperity, and in talking about the dangers of EV's and the intelligence of people who like them -- you're thesis is "We shouldn't change too quickly because they're useful, and there are many risks associated with too fast a rate of change"

?

Ahhh OK. That makes sense. Thanks.

True.

I like Nietzsche a lot. So I'm responding in that capacity -- as the man said “The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.”

What the thread is about, however, is this moment.

The issues of messaging, unchecked MAGA misogyny, and migrants came to the fore. The growing, global threat of greedy, powerful rich men - fascistic felons, war criminals, dictating and overturning human rights. For what? To increase their global control and their own 'rights' to the Earth and its minerals at the cost of ordinary people. — Amity

Nietzsche, I imagine at least, would be fine with these various struggles -- not that he'd like them, of course, but would accept them as the Will to Power.

Which seems to go against the idea that this moment is Medieval. The real Nietzsche would abhor our current circumstances, I believe. But his written philosophy -- in terms of what it does, rather than its truth -- supports this endless striving.

It's a lumpen-Nietzsche, but it's popular.

And, in that way, I don't think he's the best philosopher to deal with these issues.

A good question for your thread here:

But not in this thread, is all I mean.

However, this morning I read about Jackson Katz and his 40-year struggle to end violence against women. More urgent than ever since Trump became the US President. Katz has written a book about his activism; how he used his 'position of influence as a straight, white man and sportsperson' to speak out. 'Changing the culture from within'. — Amity

I'm certain that Nietzsche is not relevant to the topic -- he was not a misogynist in your terms -- but he is very much a masculine philosopher. His philosophy is from the male perspective, through and through.

Whereas this thread is talking about

The issues of messaging, unchecked MAGA misogyny, and migrants came to the fore.
The growing, global threat of greedy, powerful rich men - fascistic felons, war criminals, dictating and overturning human rights. For what? To increase their global control and their own 'rights' to the Earth and its minerals at the cost of ordinary people — Amity

Which, you probably know, Nietzsche had a disdain for "ordinary people"

There is one problem here that I can't get past. Hume's account is right to say that it is not the case that everybody's opinion is of equal value (although everybody is entitled to an opinion) but his account of the standard of taste seems elitist (and I suspect was intended to be elitist in its application). I can't let that go. So my application of this account allows that anyone may acquire the qualfications simply from being interested and opinionated and talking to other interested and opinionated people about what they see and hear. — Ludwig V

There we agree.

I wondered if it was because he was a noble that these were his prejudices -- but reading the wikipedia page on his life it looks like he's more of an elitist because he was just that smart: "there is nothing to be learnt from a Professor, which is not to be met with in Books" :D

Yeah -- quite the tragedy it looks like too. Last I heard it was asphyxiation from a gas leak, explaining why it was him and his wife and one dog.

*shakes fist at the algorithm, in solidarity*

It seemed rather odd to me, at first. Then, I realizes that I should have seen it all along. It's one of those switches in perception that happen from time to time. It seems very odd at first, but then one realizes that the writing off of taste as just arbitrary choices is completely inadequate. — Ludwig V

:)

I'm very happy to see someone "get it" -- it took a long time for me too. I dove into Kant after Hume because I was like "There is no way this is true...", and here I am...

We are so used to thinking of reason as about truth, by definition, that it takes a jolt to realize that there could be varieties - domains that should be included in it. There's more to life than truth. — Ludwig V

Yes!

Philosophy is more than the study of the predicate "...is true", to put it into OLP terms.

heh, yup! :D

By the time I got around to the book it had already gone through its pop culture phase, the movie was old, and I had seen it and was interested in the book because of all the made up words in it. I say what I say because I read that essay :)

Hume understands taste to be wider than that. For him, “taste in morals, eloquence, or beauty” assigns either “approbation” or “disapprobation” (or some combination of both) to objects of taste. — Ludwig V

That's how I understand taste, too.

That is, even if there are moral truths, it seems most human beings -- if they operate according to any kind of reasoned path at all -- operate in accord with a sort of aesthetics of morality. Passion isn't some nullification of morality or reason, but simply the answer to how human nature does it.

And it can be taken in either realist(naturalist) or anti-realist(phenomenology-as-ontology) ways -- I don't think he was clear on that because that's kind of an our-time question. He's dealing with an entirely different set of problems.

And, arguably, an entirely different set of problems from his time, since his Treatise was not well received in his time. Though the influence on Kant I think cements him as an important figure (and on that I tend to think of Kant and Hume as closer than often depicted)

I would love to see how that would play out in reality. Thinking it through rigorously is more likely to expose the errors in the assumptions underlying the coherence of the idea of externally manipulating another’s ability to choose the good. — Joshs

I don't think it would work quite as effectively as the story says -- I'd imagine some analogues to current pharmacological methods -- it's not like the environment and history suddenly isn't important because the neurons dance differently. (soldiers can be made more effective through pharmacology today, so my imagined scenario isn't quite so imagined

Yup!

I think when we look at the 21st chapter of Clockwork Orange it demonstrates that even if we remove the power to "be good" through what amounts to very effective operant conditioning -- Alex still grows up and starts to want to do good out of his own volition, rather than because he feels sickness at what he has been forced to learn as evil.

In a world becoming unliveable because of conflict, inequality, social unrest and environmental degradation, technology may hold the key to a profound solution: an empathy chip. Imagine a small neural implant that enhances human empathy, allowing people to understand deeply and care about the feelings of others. Such a breakthrough could revolutionise human interaction, reshape societies, fix inequality and potentially save the planet from its greatest threat, which is us human beings. — Rob J Kennedy

In imagining such an implant it would seem to me that we'd be able to do much more than create an empathy implant -- we could also create implants which transform people into the perfect soldier (feel fulfilment in killing the enemy), or the perfect worker (only desires to make any boss happy), etc.

That is, the science will be neutral as to how it's used.

To use the excellent example here:

I wonder if you've ever read the novel "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, or perhaps seen the film. The story explores exactly what's wrong with the idea of conditioning people to be good (or empathetic). — J

What could happen is that we could install extreme empathy chips in criminals so that the rest of us can then punish them for their crimes by triggering their empathy for others -- the empathy chip itself could be put to horrible uses.

And, given human nature, I generally think that's what will happen.

Unfortunately, given human nature, if it's possible I'm sure we'll figure it out some day.

:up: Cool. I'll let it sit there for now.

But your critique of the supererogatory was grounded in coercion and compulsion. I realize you tried to argue that compulsion can be subtle, but if subtle compulsion is monstrous, and every moral belief involves subtle compulsion, then morality is itself monstrous. — Leontiskos

Isn't that part of the tension in the OP?

I'm thinking of the teleological suspension of the ethical here...

Ergo: those who think humans should try to be better are monstrous, which strikes me as absurd. — Leontiskos

And yet it may be true.

This is a very well written contemplation. I loved reading it.

I believe I'm sympathetic to its conclusions -- in philosopher terms it makes me think of Kierkegaard's tension between Abraham as a Knight of Faith or a moral monster. I get the same sort of feeling here between two bad choices, hence a dilemma or paradox.

@Mikie

Restart the thread with that title in the lounge?

i.e. "Agree-to-Disagree deniers" -- seems pretty clear who is invited

Must it?

Or could it be a place for people who disagree with you to talk amongst themselves?

Post away, of course, but no one need reply.

Alas, spending the suffering of future lives for our present pleasure is the morality we oossians have decided to bathe in.

And @Amity @Wayfarer

I've appended these guides to the original post. Are they sufficient for you Christoffer?

I'll take up the role. Thanks @fdrake!

Is there any way to avoid writing on something too similar to someone else given the anonymity? Or do we not care? — AmadeusD

We don't care -- it's more important that the writer wants to write it because that'll be the motivation for finishing it and also looking it over a bit.

Oh I was thinking about the relationship between science and history and religion, and the place of scientism -- I can see how there's something related there, but it's not clear enough yet.

For one, we use "scientism" differently but from similar resources. And I'm still puzzling through that one. For two you prefer to start on the ontological side where my habit is to start on the methodological side.

This relates because the Bible, if we take it from the perspective of the writers, is written before "Science" was really a genre at all, or at least not recognizably so. So things like method and ontology are devices we're bringing to the text to make sense of it more than what the writers were thinking about in writing.

But that takes it up a level of abstraction and out of the more down-to-earth arguments you're dealing with here. It also makes it less philosophy of religion and goes back to philosophy of knowledge, more.

Hegel's a trip. :D

But I suspect he's basically a rationalist crank, at bottom. A very good one with great points, but as you ascertained I am a skeptic :D

My relationship w/ Hegel is love-hate.

Well, technically speaking, it wouldn't be a belief either. It would be a divine revelation — Arcane Sandwich

Or, on the other hand, a preference I have: an opinion that I care about.

Because we like to has satisfactory stories that make sense to us.

It's a just-so story which goes alongside the divine just-so story. Why do we find religion everywhere? Well, in one just-so story it's because there's a divinity within us all. In another it's because those are the social organisms which survived the process of primitive accumulation.

The work of putting together the science or the history is something which no individual can do by themselves -- it's already a collective effort by the many who have come before. But I still have to live my life and in that process I tend to acquire beliefs and answer questions even if I can't attend to those at the level of scientific or historical discourse.

I just don't then go on to say that the belief is scientific or historical.

Yes, they do. Catholics love Tolkien. Priests even compare Jesus to Gandalf. What Church people in general don't like, is Dungeons and Dragons (they think it's Satanic). But they like Tolkien. — Arcane Sandwich

Do they treat it as the same as the Bible?

We can use another book because the point I'm making is it's not really the text but the reader. I thought you were saying "He's Catholic" as in to say "Look, no one will treat Tolkien like Mathew, because he's Catholic"

Yes, the story has a Catholic allegory to it. So suppose 2000 years in the future the Bible is destroyed and all we have is The Lord of the Rings. In that scenario I could see people treating The Lord of the Rings in the same manner -- it's got stories and allegories and all the rest of his beliefs interwoven into a compelling narrative of sacrifice.

There are even other texts after scattered all throughout our culture that mimic the tropes of The Lord of the Rings. Today we call it Fantasy Literature, but tomorrow we could compose an anthology of such literature by different authors and treat it exactly as we treat the Bible today.

I think this explains why there are so many religions with competing visions -- there's a basic human need to feel more than what one is, and these rituals are the means by which this is achieved.

Is it? Yes or no? — Arcane Sandwich

No. I don't believe it is. I'd say it's lesser than the Bible or Qu'ran or various other practices and more on par with L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology. It's entirely made up for the purpose of manipulating people.

But to them? It absolutely is. And the lessons serve the same -- basically it's origin is irrelevant to its function. The literal truth of the Book of Mormon, by my lights, is it was written by a con artist who liked being in charge of others.

But that was 200 years ago. Today? Totally irrelevant to the meaning of the text when it's read in Church by a believer.

But when it's read by me? Yeah, I tend to think of it at the L. Ron Hubbard level rather than the Biblical level.

Ok, you're a skeptic then. — Arcane Sandwich

Always :). A skeptic and a realist, though -- and thereby atheist. But this gets back to another point we haven't worked out and is way off topic from what is threatening to derail a good conversation I've been reading along with. Sorry about that, I just meant to answer the one question and then we got into a back and forth.

It would be a scientific problem to investigate. — Arcane Sandwich

And that would be your scientific hypothesis.

Can you prove it? — Arcane Sandwich

If at the level of science? No, certainly not. Not even at the level of history, except for pointing to a handful of examples I'm sure we're both familiar with. And I wouldn't even expect conquest to be the main mechanism of transfer, I'm only offering one possible alternative to the existence of the divine in human beings.

I'm a little uncertain that any of this will ever be able to be cached out in terms scientific or historical.

Please try to understand it. — Arcane Sandwich

Mkay. I'll refrain from posting until then. Good exchange.

Only to the extent that human imagination has a divine nature, not a physical nature. The imagination of the res cogitans is only the secular version of the imagination of the res divina. — Arcane Sandwich

I'm not sure about that. What if the reason people adopt a text has more to do with who controls the grain? Seems common that religions spread with conquest.

The awe of what, if not the divine? The Cartesian res divina, instead of the res cogitans or the res extensa. — Arcane Sandwich

Awe of us imagining what it was like then, of relating to a person thousands of years distant from you through writing and getting a sense for an entirely different lived world that is, somehow, still something we come to understand.

Who cares? The Catholic church is just an institution. It's a human construct. Divinity is not. — Arcane Sandwich

I mean that people would not dismiss Tolkien's works as a story only because he was a Catholic. The text can be read as an allegory and treated as the sacred texts are. People today wouldn't treat them like that. But the phenomena has happened as recently as the early 1800's when Joseph Smith wrote The Book of Mormon and created a religion -- the book reads like the fan fiction of the Bible that it is.

And yet, people derive meaning for their entire lives from it and connect to the Divine.

What's different there? The lack of a spokesperson for the text as divine, for one -- Tolkien does not say his text is divine. But you can surely see how if not Tolkien some work of fiction, today, could become a sacred text tomorrow because that's already happened before.

Then you haven't understood Ibn Arabi's ↪point, then. — Arcane Sandwich

Fair.

It's talking about a memory as ancient as the Paleolithic, when everyone was a nomadic hunter-gatherer. This makes it more ancient than anything anyone else has to say. Bring your favorite poets to this discussion, quote Emily D. for all I care. I believe what Pslam 22:1, part 21 says: There was a time when lions were our natural predators, there was a time when the wild oxen could kill us when we were just minding our own business. — Arcane Sandwich

Right! I agree with this perspective. That's part of the awe.

But you know that's not all that's in there. There's more to it than the Psalms. There are histories, mythologies, family trees, -- it's the very stuff of human imagination and care.

I don't know what that means. — Arcane Sandwich

It means that how we read a book makes the meaning different, and the reader is where I'd be inclined to pinpoint the difference.

No, Tolkien was a Catholic. — Arcane Sandwich

Does that mean some 2000 years later people couldn't read his work in awe of the imagination of the people of the 21'st century? Say the Catholic church dissipates in that time.

If only I had a very good distinction, then I'd have started there.

Tolkien I'd be inclined to call "just literature" -- a story for fun.

The difference as I see it is in how we approach the text. So in some future perhaps Tolkien's works could form the basis of a religion after the reality of the text's production are long forgotten.

Also I see value in trying to understand the past which we came from, so that alone makes the Bible more valuable -- it's one of the early documents. It sheds insight into human nature just by that fact.

But when we approach the Bible we approach it like it has some hidden wisdom within, and derive meaning from that reading. I think it's much the same as how we read poems and watch plays -- it's a deep interpretation between ourselves and the text. With Tolkien we treat the exercise in imagination as a game, but not so with the Bible.

Right! It's literature, not just literature.

I'm an atheist. Am I forced to agree with you? Do I have to "get along" with you, as you yourself say? — Arcane Sandwich

Nope, not at all.

Then it is worthy of worship, by the literal definition of the word "sacred". — Arcane Sandwich

Truth by definition?

No, I think it means it's what I care about, but no one else need to -- and many don't.

What's wrong with living in the clouds? — Arcane Sandwich

Absolutely nothing. It's where I see a meaningful life. But I think we have to look up to them, meaning staying grounded, and that's a lot of where I'm coming from in treating the sacred texts as literature.

It's not a move of denigration, but elevation. It's just not scientific truth, or historical truth as I see it.

With respect to the naturalistic fallacy -- "We have to get along" ought not be read as making a claim on moral truth. We certainly can, and will, go extinct.

But that general collective spirit is what I tend to think of in terms of what people want and do. People like to survive, and we can't do that by ourselves, so we have to get along insofar that we want to delay extinction.

You say that like there's something wrong with it. Is there? Philosophically speaking. — Arcane Sandwich

Only that it indicates to me that the point of the story isn't literal.

That is, to treat the text like its spelling out philosophical truths about God or Jesus seems erroneous to me. It's literature. It requires interpretation.

What would the atheist tell you? — Arcane Sandwich

No, we are not worthy of worship.

Who says that we have to get along? Creatures kill each other. We are creatures. Why should we not kill each other? — Arcane Sandwich

That's sort of the central bit I'd start with in talking about the divine: to me life is sacred, but we must kill eachother on this world. So, we live by an earthly ethic, even if individuals pursue heavenly aims like pacifism.

But that desire to be more than human? That's very human. And, as you can see from the state of the world, we don't even live up to that. "getting along" includes killing. It demands it. Those who ignore their duty to note kill are deluded, by this ethic, living in the clouds.

I'll tell you why: because it would be a naturalistic fallacy to suppose that creatures ought to do what creatures are.

Do you know who preached that truth, among other people?

Yeah. They call him "Jesus Christ".

They call him "Jesus Christ", sure. And they call Gandalf Gandalf.

The truths that are there aren't literal, if they are truths at all. I'd be more inclined to call Biblical truths so-called truths and the deeper meanings of Tolkien as somehow lesser, but in what way are they?

Even if he was a man his function in the story is to be a font of wisdom, right? So like the philosopher he's part-man, part-divine.

Are you not familiar with the the concept of the Passion of Jesus? — Arcane Sandwich

Which part of the wiki ought I look at for the specific concept? I'm surely familiar with the gospels. And in each one of them Jesus performs more miracles with each retelling. Almost like it's being told by a group of people who want to one-up eachother on just how holy Jesus was.

Why wouldn't they be? The word "pathetic" is etymologically rooted in the word "pathos", which means passion. — Arcane Sandwich

If he is then he's not worthy of worship, right?

We have to get along -- but it's an earthly existence, and not a heavenly one.