I'm not sure. I've heard it claimed that he walked back his position from Being in Nothingness in Existentialism is a Humanism because the existentialism of B&N is not as soft or warm and inviting -- i.e. humanistic -- as the existentialism of EiH. Thus far I agree, but I'm also at the beginning parts which are all about the self reflecting on the self, and harsh ("authentic") self-analysis is kind of the uniting theme of the beginning of the book. But there are later chapters which deal with Being with Others which I'm curious if they slot in with EiH.

That's close to my understanding of Being and Nothingness's description of bad faith. Bad faith seems to me to be a uniquely human phenomena, or at least described from that vantage point in the book, because it's all about wondering how a singular self can lie to themself -- if one says to themself that they perform like a waiter because they are a waiter is to reduce oneself to an object-like thing, which is to not recognize one's freedom as a reflecting conscioussness -- or, to frame the explanation that explicitly ignores being-for-itself in favor of being-in-itself, to use the basic metaphysical terms he's developing.

The beasts aren't being considered in the book, at least with where I'm at now. (I just finished the bit on bad faith)

At least in Being and Nothingness Sartre doesn't begin with whether or not God exists as a basis for our freedom. It's a metaphysical question which calls into question Descartes' Cogito by developing a distinction which separates the reference of "I" in "I think" from the reference of "I" in "I am" (rendering "I think, therefore I am an equivocation between being-for-itself and being-in-itself)-- so insofar that animals could use language to confuse themselves into think they are either purely an object or purely a thinking creature and therefore not responsible for their actions because of either belief then we'd be talking about bad faith and the curiosities that Sartre brings up about a being who is in conflict with itself as its being.

The question of animals would be an empirical one, I believe.

Laws are not invented wholesale. Laws are based on an inheritance. Most of that inheritance comes from a time before the United States.

I'm tempted by 's position as a negotiable middle ground.

I reduce the question of abortion to the question of personhood when we want precision in our laws and so forth: But mostly I don't think the law is well equipped for the contexts of life, and so should be permissive. In addition I believe in bodily autonomy: I don't like to phrase it as ownership, but in the legal frame I think every individual owns their body.

Further, most of the laws have been written by men -- I don't see our representative democracy as a palliative for the history of patriarchy that has dominated women's bodies so that men knew that their fucking made a kid.

Somewhere along the line the past women got treated like property, and that still echoes today. The way men look at children isn't the same as women look at children, and I bet the laws would be different if women were the ones with say on the laws (especially if the matriarchy won, but even if we simply restricted such discussions to thems who are more effected today I think)

:D

True.

Good analogue. I had similar thoughts with respect to

Though, to split the difference, I agree with

If someone points out, as @Tarskian did, that the set of unexpressed sentences is larger than the set of expressed sentences I'd agree, but would not come to the conclusion that the title of the OP states.



And I wouldn't bother with making statements about "the overwhelmingly vast majority" after that, as obviously those are the words of the bean counters who want a ledger to prove a point, which philosophy doesn't bother with (when it's good).

I like Erich Fromm's theory of love in The Art of Loving because he casts it as an art that one can learn.

A paragraph on Wikipedia summarizing:

Fromm contrasts symbiotic union with mature love, the final way people may seek union, as union in which both partners respect the integrity of the other.[24] Fromm states that "Love is an active power in a man",[26] and that in the general sense, the active character of love is primarily that of "giving".[27] He further delineates what he views as the four core tenets of love: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.[28] He defines love as care by stating that "Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love", and gives an example of a mother and a baby, saying that nobody would believe the mother loved the baby, no matter what she said, if she neglected to feed it, bathe it, or comfort it.[28] He further says that "One loves that for which one labours, and one labours for that which one loves."[29]

Also, I got many good references the last time I broached this topic, and even though I followed up on those readings the question of love is still one that is philosophically interesting to me.

I wonder if we can get past these factors? I'm framing it as a question, not as a claim. — Tom Storm

I'm hesitant to reduce philosophy to psychology -- whether or not our psychology allows us to examine our own beliefs, it's still a part of philosophy to attempt to do so. The image of philosopher here is of Love as described in Symposium

...
The truth of the matter is this: No god is a philosopher or seeker after wisdom, for he is wise already; nor does any man who is wise seek after wisdom. Neither do the ignorant seek after wisdom. For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.'

'But who then, Diotima,' I said, 'are the lovers of wisdom, if they are neither the wise nor the foolish?'

'A child may answer that question,' she replied; 'they are those who are in a mean between the two; Love is one of them. For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant.
... — Plato, Symposium

Where, as I read it at least, the philosopher is explicitly one who doesn't overcome their folly, but is somewhere between the state of the Gods who know wisdom and the self-satisfied fools.

I don't know how to tell exactly when that's the case, though. Symposium is a mythic dialogue, and the section I'm quoting is explicit myth-making where the philosopher is compared to Love, a god birthed.

On the whole, though, it seems that others' are more inclined to pick apart my beliefs than I am, so the idea of an individual overcoming their biases isn't even necessary because the individual doesn't do that alone.

Well there is no metric for measuring if a belief is correct or not and that is the reason why being neutral while making a decision is important because only 1 belief or a few beliefs regarding a certain topic can be correct and most beliefs are wrong and that's why mathematically being neutral and making decisions without showing baisenes towards your own beliefs is the best option in most of the cases — QuirkyZen

How is "being neutral" not a belief? Is it not a belief of yours that it is better to be neutral in making decisions?

So it seems you have a belief without a metric for measuring your beliefs correctness, in which case you should be neutral towards that belief, which would seem like you ought not have a belief at all about whether one ought be neutral, or let their personal beliefs influence their decisions, or to not let their personal beliefs influence their decisions.

Insofar that scientific description is taken as a basis for ontology: Why not make the claim that the photon demonstrates that we don't need mass for something ot be physical?

That's the attitude I try to adopt. If I find a philosopher uninteresting but others find them interesting I try and figure out what it is about them that's interesting -- usually there's something there and I've just missed it.

But, on the other hand, I can understand people making a choices because there's just a lot of philosophy, so if you get bitten by the bug you'll eventually have to decide what is more or less interesting to you.

But that seems to just come down to preference. I'm not sure there's a reason why this or that is interesting to me outside of my own background or what-have-you.

Though, upon reflection, that indicates that when I learn I learn about something.

I'm not skeptical about realism: only still thinking it through, and mostly tempted by absurdism.

If I were raised by wolves, or not raised at all -- feral children come to mind for me -- then I think my beliefs about directionality would be different, even though I believe there's a non-imaginative, realist metaphysic that I don't know how to articulate.

I think I'm tempted to put that in the same category -- unless someone showed me which was my north hand when then... absolute or relative, I would not have known it without that showing.

It may not be just something I learn, and I suspect that's so. There's a difference that makes a difference.

I wouldn't be surprised, though, if other fellow humans might have developed other ways to talk in this manner -- it's not like space suddenly got divided into quadrants after Descartes; rather, that's an idea for thinking about space (else, how did pre-Cartesians have a notion of space?)

has a point. We can never make up the horrors of the past or the benefits we recieve from it, even if they are unjust. And often reparations can be bungled to a point where the effected parties aren't even helped. (I'm not sure I know of when they were anything elsehurt, but I think un has a point in saying that reparations can be about nothing but white guilt)

The United States has paid reparations, so there is some history to consider. I'm not conversant enough in that history to say which is what; but I agree that we cannot really make up the tragedies of the past, and the only thing we can do is look at how things are now and attempt to make them better. So white people, alive today, could help black people, alive today, rather than pawning it off on some organizations or policy of good will when they have no idea what will come of such things.

What would that look like?

Well, a more honest conversation than "How much money ought the government pay to this group?" I think, though I don't know.

How does habituation work if a person doesn't have any innate sense of leftness vs rightness? I'm asking. — frank

We have to be careful about what we claim to have an innate sense of, I think.

Scientifically speaking we'd be making a claim about what we bring to the table -- but it's not like we're born with beliefs about left/right. Rather, we are rewarded within a social environment when we complete tasks, such as identifying left/right in accord with the social world, because we're a social species who needs to be able to communicate in order to continue our biological cycle.

But "Habituation" need not be biological; it seems psychological but need not be that either. We are creatures of habit in that we repeat actions and through that repetition we learn more. I'd say that I know my left from my right because once upon a time someone told me which was what -- now I have a name for different sides of my body -- than anything else.

Could you lay that out in broad strokes? I don't think a description of chirality will distinguish right from left for you. For that, you need a reference. All reference points are chosen by us for our purposes. — frank

I think you'll find that once you explore the math you mentioned a little further. — frank

I don't think you need a reference as much as a habituation -- "reference frame" is easily handled in mathematics through transformations -- that's the basis of Einstein's paper on special relativity.

The points are chosen, yes -- we can describe space with polar or cartesian coordinates -- and they're tooled to our purposes. I agree with all that.

I don't understand how this relates to left/right-handedness. I think it's only habituation, and nothing else -- nothing about space at all.

It was: how do you tell your left from your right? I don't believe that answer is found in any math, but if you think it is, could you explain how? — frank

For Kant, at least, that there is a mathematical description -- much like Euclid or Pythagoras -- then you have a priori synthetic knowledge. The form of the intuition is structured by that; chirality gives a straightforward example from math which explains how we're able to differentiate left from right.

This isn't a bodily thing, though the question of how our body is able is interesting; I'm fairly certain that my left and right are habituated for the purpose of communicating. So no I don't think I changed my mind. When I say I gravitate towards "it" I mean this pragmatic theory of directionality, and want more arguments for why it should be thought of disappearing when we all die.

I don't think I uniquely endow space with directionality. I think directions come from the fact that each person has a POV from a body that's easily divided into quadrants. — frank

If directions come from the self, or cogito, then I don't think we can rely upon things like "quadrants" -- before Descartes there was no such concept, so the cogito is relevant to note -- mostly these are thoughts that are the result of analysis. Descartes broke the world down into bits to figure out relationships between the bits, and so arrived at I think, therefore I am as the one and only certainty -- from which, to his credit, he built back up to the familiar world from this certainty.

I'd say directions come about because it's useful to be able to know where to go and tell others' the same. "Left" and "right" probably don't even correspond to chirality, exactly, but chirality is the feature of the world that I wanted to point out as both a mathematical and empirical phenomenon which can account for the original question: not that everyone does it this way, but because we can do it this way I gravitate towards it and would prefer the point which seems harder to prove be shown -- the idea that directionality is somehow inhering in us alone, and when we die it all goes away.

Conceptually I think there's something there, but linking the concept to reality is... well, something I think about.

Witt's thoughts are in TLP 6.3111. — frank

I'm looking at the TLP and don't see that sentence.

6.3 Logical research means the investigation of all regularity. And
outside logic all is accident.
6.31 The so-called law of induction cannot in any case be a logical
law, for it is obviously a signicant proposition.And therefore
it cannot be a law a priori either.
6.32 The law of causality is not a law but the form of a law.*
6.321 Law of Causality is a class name. And as in mechanics there
are, for instance, minimum-laws, such as that of least action, so
in physics there are causal laws, laws of the causality form.
6.3211 Men had indeed an idea that there must be a law of least action, before they knew exactly how it ran. (Here, as always,
the a priori certain proves to be something purely logical.)

Mkay. I'm wrapping back around to this in my thoughts:

Since you don't know how to answer:

What would make me believe that the actual world has properties attached to space because I'm the one that's in the world? — Moliere

What made you believe that the actual world has properties attached to space because you're the one that's in it?

Mostly wanting to stay on point with the question about space having properties.

A possible world is an abstract object. It's stipulated. — frank

So is the question more about "How do I make an inference from possibilities to actualities"?

If there are no people in a world, and it has directionality, that directionality is come from you. — frank

Does it?

We're talking about a possible world here, not a world. We're imagining possibilities with some pretty abstract concepts.

How could I differentiate an actual world? What would make me believe that the actual world has properties attached to space because I'm the one that's in the world?

Imagine a possible world in which there are no people. Are there directions there? Only from the point of view of someone outside that world who can establish a reference. — frank

When I imagine a possible world without people with directions then there are directions in that imagined possible world, and when I imagine a possible world without people without directions then there are not directions in that imagined possible world.

Yes. It has to do with the fact that you're peering out of a body with ears that produce a sense of up and down. Left and right follow from that. Space doesn't come with a left and right. — frank

I don't think that left and right follow from myself having a body with ears, though I know we have a sense of our own orientation from our somatic responses.

My "left" could be your "right", depending upon what my culture taught me as I grew up. It's not so much individual-body, but the social-body which these distinctions depend upon to my mind. (consider the case of feral children -- what "left" or "right" did they have? And doesn't chirality -- left and right handed objects -- still exist in their world without being able to utter it?)

Fair question, though that's sort of the thing I puzzle through still. I don't have a direct answer. I might even bother to write that one down if I had a direct answer.

"Left" and "Right" seem very obviously conventional, just like "up" and "down" -- anything relative to a speaker. It's more like a name for a direction from yourself -- like an angle, but less precise -- than an ontological category.

I'd say it's convention. I was taught which was what.

I'm not sure that has ontological import though.

Ahhh x-posted your link.

I don't think points have chiral properties. Only some geometric shapes have chiral properties, and these are close to some of the things we consider to be real.

"Space" is an odd duck, conceptually. But I'm not sure handedness is the right avenue given that there are even mathematical descriptions of chirality -- the mathematical description would satisfy Kant, I think? Though https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23274573/

This looks far too rosy to me.

You ever plot something you think is linear and found out it ain't?

The problem with such predictions is a change in one thing leads to a change in rate which is connected to another change of rate which might not be about the linear relationship being described (and often isn't)

I signed up. (it's definitely an easier way to do voice conversations, as we've been floating but failed to accomplish)

but did he also make the parallel with “Existence is not a predicate”? — J

I'm not sure if it predates Kant, but Kant is famous for making this assertion.

Thinking about a unicorn I know what properties it has, but thinking about a unicorn that includes existence as one of its properties adds nothing conceptually: the unicorn has to be "given", and so "existence" is not a predicate.

That's a very good test. It's not perfect. Some people have very poor imaginations and worse memories. I remember, in the small town that I lived in a while ago, there was a recession and a number of people lost their jobs. They got very annoyed about the welfare system - not much money, ill-mannered and unhelpful staff. When they got jobs, they forgot all about it and reverted to moaning about high taxes and the idle poor. — Ludwig V

:D -- Yeah. That seems a case if the fundamental attribution error -- those people are poor because they are lazy, whereas I am poor because of circumstances outside of my control: Character for thee and circumstances for me.

I'm still trying to work out what that refers to. It doesn't reflect anything I know about and I can't find anything obvious in what the reference sites say. — Ludwig V

For myself I was conceding the point to say how even if it's true I know that if I were one of the Greeks -- at least in the Veil of Ignorance type sense -- that it's pretty unlikely I'd think being dominated did me good.

Like you said here:

The Romans, therefore did not bring peace and prosperity - the Greeks were doing quite nicely on their own, thank you. — Ludwig V

More generally I'm skeptical that entire empires or cultures can take or give to one another in any sense other than a historian's narrative -- while I think there are social entities, and social ontology is one of the things I puzzle over, I'm uncertain that there really is such a thing as a whole Empire with its own properties as much as historical evidence can be arranged empire-wise. The story, in that case, has more to do with the storyteller than the events.

Though, at the same time, we can't do without this narrative aspect -- it's the sweeping, big narratives that I'm skeptical of here; so in some sense to concede that Greek Culture was given a Mediterranean empire for free because their culture was absorbed and spread across the Mediterranean after being dominated is to say, sure, we can put the story this way, but if I apply the Veil of Ignorance thought experiment in thinking about the being in the Greeks position I don't believe it matters too much if some historian later down the line comes along and synthesizes a big narrative which happens to include my culture as a character in it.

Basically the cost of being conquered isn't worth the prize of being a main character in a history later down the line, at least when I think through it from the position of the veil of ignorance.

That seems reasonable. But I feel that they are rather weak on the role of co-operation in making life worth living. — Ludwig V

I'd say anarchists are more pro-cooperation than liberals tend to be, but I'd contrast this with liberalism's ability to build lasting social institutions.

Liberalism not only preaches individualism but reinforces it through its distribution of individual property rights.

Anarchists believe in individual needs and individuals, but that they are a part of a wider community -- rather than a bundle of self-interested individuals anarchists build collectives of cooperation which are intentionally built through collective decision-making and consensus building.

We cooperate for the same reason any human being cooperates -- because you can do more together than you can all by yourself. The anarchist only wants more freedom for everyone in building that "doing more together".

Well, everybody accepted that. The point of war was to get rich quick. — Ludwig V

Yeah. Still seems to be the case, though I like to think that we can work on moving beyond "Everybody accepted that"; in some sense to recognize that we don't have to accept some things which everyone has always accepted as the way things are.

Of course. Nothing changes, except the way people dress up what they're doing. Hope is all there is. — Ludwig V

I do think things change, actually -- it's just not a sweeping Progressive narrative, per se. And they can change for the better. The only way I know of in which this happens is when regular people get together to demand change, though. It takes effort and planning, but it can be done.

In a way, yes. Their culture was maintained and cultivated. The once divided city-States unified completely and because of that managed to fight off Eastern invaders for centuries, when it barely managed to do so before that, in the Persian war. Basically, Greece was given a Mediterranean empire for free when, the only time it managed to do something like that, the whole thing collapsed before a single generation passed. — Lionino

Whenever I think about whether some group of people is better off or not due to a social action I think to myself: would I be willing to be on the receiving end?

I can say that as an individual I don't have deep ties to whether the Eastern invaders are defeated. If anything, these seem to be the things that are wrong with our societies: the desire to dominate will lead to endless suffering that need not be.

Greece may have been given a Mediterranean empire for free, but if I were greek I'd have preferred to not be dominated.

Though, of course, the Greeks had already accepted this sort of conquer-or-be-conquered ethos; in some sense it's deserved because it was the same thing they'd do to others.

My suspicion is that ethos still has reflections today which, rationally speaking, need not be the case.

I can wait until I have more if you'd like. I was trying to follow an old rule of mine wherein if I post to one person I'll post to everyone else by the end of the day.

I waited to respond to you last because I've been reading over your posts and thinking a lot, not out of disinterest.

You have this notion of "power" as the social good to be distribute. And you mean power in the restricted sense of the power to dominate (as opposed to the power to submit I guess) — apokrisis

No I don't mean this at all.

Power is not a dirty word. Power is important.

An Anarchist FAQ is a good resource for thinking about hierarchy in the sense I've said.

Anarchists care about power more than liberals -- though less than warlords, who want it all for themselves (in a hierarchy, one might say): anarchy is not opposed to power at all as much as wants it to be directed according to what human beings want, rather than a class of deciders.

I think what you're missing is that, in large part, they can't. — Leontiskos

Why not?

whenever a civilizer comes along somehow the civilized end up worse off and helping the civilizer live an easier life — Moliere

One of the things about using whole empires as an example is it will be terribly vague whom counts as a civilizer and whom counts as the civilized over the course of an Empire's life. The examples I've used are much smaller than these historical entities to a point that I don't think they're exactly comparable examples.

The history of empires always reads like World History to me.

I'd say my examples are more in the vein of social history.

Just to put some names out there for marking differences of approach -- I don't think we're being so grandiose as to actually be doing history here rather than talking and thinking out loud.

The first question that came to mind was: Were the Greeks better off when the Romans conquered them?

What would it mean to "put slavish souls into a biological category"? — Leontiskos

To say that slaves are essential different from masters due to the kind of creature they are. One could justify saying "this person has a slavish soul" by saying "this person has bad habits that could change", which would be a psychological rather than a biological category. But Aristotle justifies it by tying it to their essence as creatures: their whole teleology is to be bound to a master who directs them in physical labor.

Yes. They used the same argument to justify enclosures in England as well. It's a case of finding a weapon, not the truth. — Ludwig V

Yes! Been reading a book covering some of that time period which is why the example is on my mind.

"incompetence" is a legalistic term, but it includes permanent conditions like Down's syndrome as well — Ludwig V

Okiedoke.

Permanant conditions aren't the same thing as character, I'd say. "The Irish are lazy" is a judgment of a person's character on the basis of class-inclusion: All Irish are lazy. Shane is Irish. Shane is lazy.

"Shane has Down's Syndrome" is a medical classification which may entail various legal things depending on the legal system. Shane has to have various symptoms and a medical professional to prove such things for various legal entailments.

In the former you have policy-wizards dreaming up ways to change the bad character of a group of people. In the latter you have a person that needs to be recognized by a professional body in a different way.

(EDIT: At this point I've relied upon her so much I ought cite her -- https://www.amazon.com/Hijacked-Neoliberalism-against-Workers-Lectures/dp/1009275437)

Yeah.