@Baden -- Just reread trying to look for an "in" for discussion. And the thing I'm wanting more of is specification of these enzymatic knowledge machines: How do they interact with the independent flows of code such that in place of identification, or in combatting this?, we get or somehow are interrupted by knowledge? But that's a Kudos on your writing because it means I wanted more, basically. It's an interesting premise, and I like the theoretical set up between what I would call, for lack of a better word, two subjectivities -- the social subjectivity (operating independent of individual intent) and the individual subjectivity (that sense of being you which, due to social subjectivity, is often a process of identification-with and enactment).

A thought that comes to mind are Koans. They're meant to stop that circuit of the self in a way.

@PoeticUniverse

Icarean poet; capture it all
A breadth so wide with Being as your bride
How can you speak this Truth without a fall?
Visions from which a muse in you confide?

But do not neglect basic rhythm-rhyme
The form speaks deep from the mouth of the muse
And though we can break form some of the time
We do so to demonstrate and bemuse

The world's ineluctable poetry
rather than being said is better seen


*****

As a lover of Lucretius I appreciate that someone attempted to tackle the poetic form of philosophy. But I think that for a poetic philosophy structure is very important to pay attention to. I would encourage you trying to tackle just one of these parts and turn it into some sort of structure just to see if there's one that speaks to you -- in a way it's more a preference on my part, but also I think it'd be a good exercise to try.

I'm interested in the general thrust of your essay where you're speaking in favor of aesthetics. I'm more inclined towards a cognitivist aesthetics, but not necessarily because that's the reason we are drawn to something but rather because that's the form of philosophy, and I've noticed that by trying to articulate aesthetic attraction I notice more about the art-object and others like it than I did before -- rather than clouding I see articulations of aesthetics as a way of opening them up for further experience, to see something even more deeply.

However, and perhaps predictably, I don't see this as somehow separate from the political sphere. There's a sort of aestheticism that I can see as being politically neutered, but a proper play wouldn't want to be neutered -- politics and power go hand in hand. But it is by our aesethetic judgment that we develop the capacity for choosing when to exercise power and when to let it go for the benefit of others. In this sense I can see a place for "Play" -- in a way the totalitarian destroys play by giving us an answer to which we must conform, as it's the good answer. But in play that's not exactly so settled.

Great work @i like sushi

@Benkei I doubt you'll find this surprising, but my reaction was an answer to the question:

Why do you preach to the choir?

So that they choir will sing.

There's a character that fills shop floors that I call "The Cowboy" -- the cowboy sees themselves out in this world alone with nothing but themselves to rely upon, and furthermore, the cowboy knows they're good enough to get by without anyone's help. They'll accept the consequences of whatever comes. In a way this is an ultimate form of self-responsibility -- accepting any consequences whatsoever and adapting to said consequences. But on the other hand it's false: You're not a cowboy, you're Teddy whose worked in the maintenance shop of Parks and Recreation for 15 years and hasn't paid his dues while reaping the benefits of a union contract.

So, yes, I agree with your position and by that fact it makes it difficult for me to be critical.

Perhaps the audience here is more used to engaging with non-axiomatic content?

I have professors of philosophy and PhD holders following the work who initially reacted just like some of the comments here - but many have since come around and now advocate for the core argument. — James Dean Conroy

Cool. I do not mean to pick on this as something which isn't worthwhile, I'm only speaking my first impressions to the best of my ability (by the time I promised I'd respond). The writing felt opaque in a way that it was kind of hard to engage with for myself -- it could just be because you've condensed so much into a short amount that I'm not picking up on all the nuances on a first read. I found myself agreeing with your assertion that life must be presupposed for any evaluation to occur, but uncertain what it really meant overall -- hence the picking and wondering.

@Jack Cummins I liked that this essay was a review and kept to that role. I've noticed that it's hard for people to write a review because they over-editorialize and input their opinion on the subject matter, but you did a good job of sticking to the authors and their claims with a minimum of commentary.

@ucarr

Just as the time compression of abstract thought makes mental constructs seem timeless, the time dilation of absential materialism makes intentional constructs seem immaterial. The time compression of abstract thought is to the time dilation of absential materialism as the discrete boundaries of the particle form are to the probability clouds of the waveform. — ucarr

Your section on time is the part I found the most interesting of this reflection. "time compression/dilation", in the context of your equation for material reality, reminds me of Kant. Actually your schema generally reminds me of Kant, for that matter -- the material reality outside of the senses to the senses to the physical mind to the mental correlate to the concept to the sentence -- and were this to continue in that vein your time compression/dilation would take place somewhere in-between the neural correlates to the mental and the mental.

Only you do go a step further and equate basically everything with material reality, even the supervening mental correlates.

That'd probably be the part that's hardest for me to wrap my mind around. I have often thought of how to naturalize Kant, but ultimately gave it up because it just always seemed to go a step too far for what is written. And once naturalized you end back in the antinomies of freedom/causation, for instance -- the noumenal took care of the "beyond" in his system. How would you account for such an antinomy using your equation? Or would it just be set aside as uninteresting?

@James Dean Conroy

Captured my first impression of the essay, and I think 's insight is correct.

- DESCRIPTIVE — it shows the structure under all value, without telling anyone what to do. — James Dean Conroy

What do you make of 's find? Is that the same as what you intend here? Mostly asking here because that paper explicitly recommends that philosophers, policy-makers, etc. adopt this attitude with respect to evaluating "systems". That looks like an ought to me. I.e. telling people what to do.

- AXIOMATIC — deny it and you contradict yourself. — James Dean Conroy

Is contradicting myself bad? What if contradiction lead to life thriving?

Everyone has a human right to both opinion and beliefs, and all opinions and beliefs are equal. Yet this is not a solid foundation for a society and would lead to anarchy. It is in the philosophical essay that opinions and beliefs need to be justified. — RusselA

@RussellA

I'm noticing throughout the essay that this is the plank on which you seem to advance your case for the philosophical essay as a necessary part of philosophy. I think you've done a fine job of defining the philosophical essay with your citations, but this is the part of your claim that I think is somewhat "taken for granted" in the essay -- not that you won't find people who agree with it. I think it's one of those commonsensical beliefs common among philosophers, so it will likely pass many on the rhetorical level -- there's nothing to argue there so there's no reason to argue the plank.

But it is the part I found myself thinking "But..." to, and noticing how though the appeal to deliberation with facts and reason is supported by the notion that any society which does not have this kind of philosophical practice will not be a society at all, but anarchy. If you could support that intuition then I think your essay would be strengthened.

Are you truly unable to see Haidt's point? Have you ever watched children at recess, playing a game and disputing the rules? — Leontiskos

Well, at the park at least.

That's very much what children do when they play anything at all.

Contrariwise, when an adult plays a video game with children, they get their ass beat, but they are never accused of breaking rules. They are just laughed at because they are so bad. — Leontiskos

Now note I'm talking about children playing with children. They do all the stuff you're describing no matter the medium -- at the park, playing wall ball, playing pretend, playing "a game", or playing MineCraft.

I think that the video game is singled out with respect to marbles because there's a kind of nostalgia for an age that didn't exist, as if children were somehow better off then than now, and our modern technology is ruining their development.

At one point it was comic books that would ruin children's minds, then television, and now video games. It's the same concern played out over and again.

So Haidt compared video games to marbles and says that the video game is inferior to marbles because Piaget would play marbles with children and intentionally break the rules to see what the children did, which was to somehow negotiate the rules of the game in order to keep playing.

There is a video game called MineCraft which doesn't exactly have rules to play by. There are rules in the sense that it is a physics engine where different simulations of objects interact within some set of rules which are apparently deterministic. But there's no reason to do one thing over the other. I've watched children play video games in the exact manner that Haidt praises the negotiation of rules for marbles -- the children are in fact still children even with different technology, and they negotiate all kinds of rules all the time.

I want to do much more than I have done so far. — Truth Seeker

Understandable.

In terms of your goals, though, I think that the best you can do is continue to do as you've been doing. Your goals are all worthy of pursuit.

They are, however, very big goals. And not just 1 very big goal, but 14 very big goals.

I'd suggest starting to look at how much one individual can achieve in the circumstances they find themselves in. There's a lot of important things to pursue, but an individual person is very limited on what they can effect in the world. As a fellow dreamer of a better tomorrow whose tried more than one thing I can tell you that I, at least, had to recognize my limit as an individual. Maybe you'll find a better route other than a kind of faith and doing what you can today for tomorrow, though it be so little.

The idea is not that guessing is a feature, but rather that a game which involves rule-negotiation is superior to a game which does not. Hence Haidt's claim that, "A video game is really like the junk food of games..." — Leontiskos

I think that's an opinion written from ignorance, honestly. I play video games with my family all the time, and negotiations about the meta-rules of play are a part of that. It's not that different from a board game -- it's not like you can hack the laws of physics to make dice roll a different way. So it goes with a video game -- you can't hack the code, but you still play with others and form relationships and negotiate through them and that's what makes the game good.

↪Moliere complains that Aristotle’s “induction” is not (deductively) valid, but according to Piaget this is a feature, not a bug — Leontiskos

I don't complain about it -- I understand that guessing is a feature, and not a bug. What I noted is that there's a limit to guessing and checking due to our finitude, much in line with Kant's epistemology where science can count ofas knowledge, but not (EDIT: knowledge of the thing-in-itself, and metaphysics cannot count as knowledge, though the mind will continue to pursue it due to how it functions and desires for a complete picture.

The Ideas of Plato, and explicitly God, Freedom, and Immortality are the things beyond reason's ability to justify in from theoretical cognition. We can practically know them, but this is a kind of rational faith rather than a knowledge like we know causation.

I think that Aristotle believed you could make inductions up to that point because the universe is finite, and so even if you're wrong there's going to be a good guess out there to find. Even in metaphysics.

Kant, on the other hand, took the problem of induction seriously -- was it even a problem in Aristotle's time? Is Aristotle's topics anything other than a students guide to thinking about inference rather than a deep philosophical treatise? -- and answered it. The answer, however, cuts off knowledge of the deepest IDeas traditionally associated with philosophy, at least of the theoretical sort.

My noting that his induction isn't valid is more or less associated with his metaphysical conclusions rather than everything he ever said. I think once you're talking about God, Freedom, or Immortality theoretical knowledge can't touch it -- mostly due to Kant's influence on my thinking.

You've switched the topic. You said, "it would defeat the point of the website to exclusively do philosophy by PM, perhaps." I can see that you would have no qualms with someone who only PM'ed, but it does seem to me that the purpose of the website has to do with a forum. — Leontiskos

It's not a change of topic to note what the "perhaps" I had in mind as an exception was. Also, on the other side, "perhaps" means that there's something I could have overlooked while still saying there's nothing wrong with philosophy by PM, even by the standards of a fora. It is and has been a feature since the forums inception.

Echo chambers, so I believe, we all believe are bad. Or at least understand that to be a danger. Wanting scrutiny in the public eye, so I believe, we all believe to be good.

PM's are a means to facilitate avoiding the bad and pursuing the good.

So an OP which says, "I might also invite PM contributions," is saying, "I might invite some of you to contribute to our personal relationship"? That is a very curious reading. Usually when an OP talks about "contributions" it is talking about contributions to the thread. Surely you see this? — Leontiskos

I'd say it's contributing to the question, sure. Not just any PM -- but ones about the question. Necessarily that doesn't contribute to the thread, but it could still contribute to the forum in the same manner that my analogy meant.

So, yes, it is a forum, and the forum is a community, which comprises many sorts of relationships -- even when it's a specialty topic. Sometimes a person wants to contribute to a topic without contributing to a thread, and that would most likely be due to some relationship involved such as "I tend to see you as a trustworthy person on this topic, so..."

Okay, but what is the person who sends the PM contributing to? What does it mean to "Invite PM contributions"? — Leontiskos

The relationship between the persons. Relationships are both communal and sometimes selective -- and really these work in tandem, I think. You don't vent to your wife about your wife, but that venting to your friend can contribute to the marriage by releasing frustration. Further, sometimes your friend will see something you did not, and given the current relationship with your wife you'll listen to your friend.

 

Not perhaps, but certainly. No? — Leontiskos

Just depends on how it's done I think. The fora is what I focus my attention on. But suppose there were a person who only PM'ed for philosophy -- perhaps they are very shy or only want 1-on-1 interactions instead of the wild ride which is the public fora. I have no qualms with that.

Banno is inviting private contributions to a public thread. How would that work? — Leontiskos

I think the invitation is for people to PM if they want to, not that the PM is a contribution to a public thread. So it would work by someone PMing him.

I see no problem with doing philosophy by PM, though it would defeat the point of the website to exclusively do philosophy by PM, perhaps. Still -- people are allowed to erect boundaries around themselves in any social situation, and it's the same here.

I don't mind putting my ideas out there for all the reasons thus far stated. But I can see an occasional use for philosophy by PM. One of them being asking someone you know who you share some perspective with to ask them to review their argument and make sure they aren't missing something that they are.

And sometimes I really only want to hear one person's take on a particular subject because of some past interaction. It could eventually be formulated into a whole thread, but I know that my interest is so specific at that time that the thread would be a non-starter.

I don't think it's so nefarious as you're imputing. Obviously if one wants to have something challenged then the public posting does that -- but sometimes you just want to leave as assumption alone to work out something else, and it's easier to do that with someone you have a good history of communication with.

Ahhh, OK. That'd be an interesting conversation to tease out. Generally Srap and I agree and I admit I only glanced over the post you linked. I was thinking about our recent conversations about science, though it looks like we'd disagree on history -- or, perhaps, not disagree even, but would probably try to find out what it is about what example that leads us to say the things we do just to see if it's a substantive disagreement or more an issue of terminology.

No, history isn't a soft science. If you compare sociology, say, to history you'll see that the methods are quite different. Where sociology tries to explain social phenomena through theories which, in the ideal, are predictive history deals in causes from a narrative standpoint: When a historian talks about the causes of the civil war they may reference some economic or sociological theory to justify their telling of the story, but another historian will choose some other theoretical device and tell the same story in a different way, and though the causes and stories of the civil war are different between the historians -- i.e. both could not be true of an object -- they are both legitimate historical papers. That diversity of the story is what fleshes out historical events. In addition the attention to the particular, to the experiential is widely different from the sciences -- individual stories and anecdotes are the body of evidence on works with, and there's no "resetting" the war to see if you modify one thing -- say that Franz Ferdinand was not shot -- to see if that was the root cause of said war.

But with a scientific account you attempt to get down to the root cause (if it is possible), and if it's not possible to try and simply as much as you possibly can. You also get to repeat things under conditions to see if you're right. The assumption there being that the world is not just objective and real, but there's an element to the world that allows us to see a sort of rational order to it -- where our idealizations begin to appear more than idealizations, but rather abstract instantiations of a higher order. So the sociologist or the economist of world war 1 will look for trends in population data that predict wars of the sort that world war 1 was. Think Emile Durkheim here who very much wanted a positivistic science of social organisms -- also Karl Marx sort of fits in here, who thought that history could be studied in the "scientific" manner and also treats social organisms in the same manner that a chemist treats chemicals.

But the historian will look to the stories of the people that lived through it, the government documents left in archives, and -- of course -- other histories of the event to attempt to tell the story of world war 1.

And there is this temptation in both disciplines, I've noticed, to "universalize" these methods to a kind of ontology. I think the ontology you get with science is some kind of indirect realism that the guesses approximate towards, at least with respect to our representations (know-that) rather than know-how. I think the ontology you get with history is like a constantly evolving reality that's never still.

Just to give you an idea of what I think, at least. I'll be real and say I'm not too interested in convincing people, but will share what I think and why. Ultimately though I'd just point to some textbooks because some of the "why?" isn't so well formulated as to be a philosophical theory, but rather is a beginning of philosophical wonder for me -- it was a surprise to me when I started to realize this difference.

Of course I could just be wrong about the difference and then all of this is bunk. But I'm not persuaded ;)

I think soft sciences, whatever we happen to include ( and could argue about if we wanted), are just as scientific as the so-called "hard" sciences. What unites them are assumptions in methodology, but then the particulars of that assumption -- the stating of the assumption within the research program -- will differ dramatically from other sciences. The "general" description of science doesn't really say very much at all so it's easy to group all of these together and say "Yeah, they're pretty much science"

Sticking with particular examples: If you look at Gilderhus' History and Historians and compare it to any of the scientific papers out there now you'll see that the methods are not the same.

I think they're using "science" in the old way of "an organized body of knowledge", rather than the 19th c.-contemporary way of "performing experiments to generate data to test hypotheses" -- i.e. before people thought science was distinct at all.

Oh, an argument? If science were history then they would be in the same department at the university. They are not in the same department at the university, therefore science is not history.

Oh, not by choice -- not a priori -- but a posteriori I started to note how they're different.

It's certainly odd. I recognize that what I say is odd.

As it turns out it seems reality is odd. The absurd, rather than the coherent, marks reality better.

There is simply no argument here to the effect that "science" and history have no common thread. — Leontiskos

I did note that argument doesn't lead to truth. I gave two examples to talk through together.

Arguments will be used along the way, but I noted the things that differ between them -- time is more questionable, but causality is easier to establish.

Though "science" in scare quotes makes me think you have something else in mind, and the examples are not persuasive.

I'm fine with them not being persuasive -- I only said what persuades me.

Oh, I'm in favor of the nitpickers, so pick away anytime.

What said

Ahhh. Well, if someone were to say that to me, at least, then I'd ask more about what they mean and we could proceed, if they wanted to anyways. I don't know if I'd rule it out on principle -- since it is just from my context that I see these things.

Doesn’t it take a contextless, baggage-less posture to be able to say what you just said above? — Fire Ologist

I don't think so. In the context I find myself in no one has ever been in a contextless position. What's wrong with that?

Yeah, I recall us having this exact conversation before when incommensurability came up :D -- something like it at least.

I've still not read Goodman, to my detriment. But your description of him here looks similar to what I think. We should celebrate these different ways of knowing, and it even opens up a reason for philosophy to exist at all -- because no matter how much a person may know in a certain area it will always be worthwhile to talk to someone else that knows more in a different area, and the nit-picky philosophy is what's particularly good at finding the confusions in attempts to translate two different worldviews.

Not that it needs that to be good, of course. Everyone's just always (annoyingly ;) ) asking "What's the point of this philosophy?"

In general I wouldn't define it onone way or the other but would leave it to the particular referent (the particular case of incommensurability) -- but I do think the more interesting case would be when we say "No, not even one strand relates but the referent is the same"

For this I just go to science and history -- they both speak about "the world", but in their own particular idioms and ways of making inferences. They both mean "reality", and they mean it in a realist way such as "reality outside of my particular opinions about reality, but rather what the best methods/values which produce knowledge say"

At least that's the example which impresses me the most because even theories of time and causality differ, but we're both talking about the same world, and we're talking about it in the realist sense where our ideas are supposed to conform to the world in some way, and our particular opinions about the world aren't what determine the truth -- in short, both easily lend themselves to a sort of objective realism about the world.

So the way I resolve that is to say they are different ways of knowing about the same thing. It'd be foolish to say either scientists or historians don't know anything because of the universalization of the standards of science or history exclude the other. Much better to shrug and say "I'm not sure how these guys relate -- perhaps we don't translate one into the other, but are about the same thing, and so demonstrate different facets of the same reality"

Oh, so as in -- one standard that was there before the paradigm shift and one that was there after the paradigm shift such that we know that the new paradigm is better than the old paradigm due to the standards external to the paradigms of evaluation?

If so then "not always" is what I say -- and really I'd only focus on the cases where there's one set of standards being switched for another set of standards such that there wasn't some over-arching agreement which can settle which is better after all. Else you're just talking about disagreement within a set of standards which doesn't exactly do the work that "paradigm" is supposed to. There's nothing radically different about two rationalists disagreeing with one another over which is the better inference. The notion is that the ideas are different enough that such a path of disagreement fails. It's the ideas themselves, or the standards, which are in question rather than whether a person has followed the proper inference within an accepted set of standards.

So is it possible to set aside all worldviews, frameworks, and schemes, by the use of reason? (To achieve, in that much-reviled phrase, a "view from nowhere".) Is reason the crucial means by which one jettisons the current framework for a new one? Or is there something other than reason that can allow such transition or liberation? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't believe so, but this isn't fatal to knowledge or philosophy. It even helps explain their use -- we'll always have some perspective so it's good to hear what others think. Their view may be better than yours in certain circumstances, and I can't think of any other way to be somewhat cognizant of one's own worldview without having encountered ones that are sincerely held but different.

Also I'm wondering why we would want such a liberation? What are we liberating ourselves from in stripping ourselves of a worldview?

Q1. Are there context-independent standards? — Leontiskos

No.

Old2. Are there context-dependent standards?

Yes

Q2. Is there some mechanism available for prying yourself out of a given scheme/worldview/framework, and is that mechanism the use of reason?

Possibly so -- though I don't like calling it a mechanism.

Q3. Is there some criterion which applies to all ("scientific") fields, rather than only to a subset of them?

No.

Q4. Are there [paradigm/framework/worldview/evidence regime/language game/scheme]-independent standards?

No.

Q5. Is there something that connects one thingy (worldview, framework, conceptual scheme) to another?

Depends on the thingy. The alchemy/chemistry example brought up shows how the two had at least some overlap since we were able to translate alchemy-speak into chemical-speak to see what they tried. So in that case it could be said that the elements were what was common to them, while their meanings about the elements diverge widely.

Q6. Is there something that enables you to free yourself entirely from the false prison of all thingies?

No.

Q7. Is there some standard that is being followed both before and after a paradigm shift?

Yes. Though they need not be the same standard. For me it'd depend upon how meaning relates to standards -- it could be that the standards changing just is the paradigm shift, after all, but it could also be more of a conceptual shift than a shift in one's evaluative tools. Also it's very tricky to define a paradigm in a general way -- most of the time it just ends up looking like "disagreement", which doesn't exactly have all of the radical implications that incommensurability and paradigm shifts can evoke (not necessitate, but evoke).

(With the discussion of pseudoscience, I found myself thinking about alchemy, and the place it is given nowadays as a crucial forerunner of chemistry; while its theory may leave something to be desired, its practice was not without merit. So how does chemistry emerge from alchemy? Was it the application of reason?) — Srap Tasmaner

That would be an excellent research question which would probably balloon very quickly and have to be pared down. So naturally I'll answer it from the top of my head without any more work:

Beyond the lore that's spoken of in standard text books I have little knowledge of that transition. One thing I do know is that Newton practiced alchemy, and some of his experiments have been replicated in the modern day -- the problem with alchemy as contrasted to chemistry is that all the alchemists wanted to keep the secret of the philosopher's stone, or transmuting lead to gold, or immortality all to themselves. So they would write in a cypher. Part of recreating Newton's alchemical experiments was figuring out what he meant and what we meant by different words. Digging more into this would naturally lend itself to the conversation evolving here -- that's pretty much an example of translation between paradigms as clear as you're probably going to find.

But all this to say that it's a very interesting question that I don't know more than what I've said here.

That's terrible news. She had a way of making a conversation turn back to what's practical.

Condolences to the family -- she will be missed here.

I gave an argument and you basically appealed to your "equality doctrine" and classed it as, "A standard way of looking at the world" - that as a way of dismissing or marginalizing it. What you should do instead is address the argument. — Leontiskos

I thought I did, but I'll try again.

We must also admit that, just as not all propositions are true, so too not all thinkers are equal. Making everyone equal prevents one from learning, because it prevents one from seeing that someone else knows something that you do not. — Leontiskos

Making everyone equal does not prevent learning. At least as a default assumption in a conversation -- I'll admit that hubris is bad, that headstrong students are often wrong, and other such mistakes -- but here we have to assume that we've all at least read some philosophy and the best way to proceed isn't teacher-student, but peer to peer. At least as a default.

Only upon agreeing to certain ways of arguing could we teach one another, I think? Even if that be "I am the student"

Okay, but is it true to view it as a problem or is such a view merely, "A standard way of looking at the world"? — Leontiskos

Here I'd be frustrating and say both/and -- but I'm still trying to find a place where we can actually talk rather than do the merry-go-round.

Okay good, this is precisely the point. "Superior" and "inferior" are relative terms for "good" and "bad." It is literally impossible to differentiate between good and bad without differentiating between superior and inferior. — Leontiskos

Eventually we'll disagree again on this. :D -- "what is superior, the beautiful or the sublime?" is the first question that comes to mind.

It's actually pretty obvious that there are universal standards for knowledge. Like truth, for instance. Knowledge is supposed to be true and not false. That's a standard for knowledge. What is the dogma that militates against such obvious facts? — Leontiskos

That's a good example, but not one I'm ready to go into in this thread. I'll concede that knowledge is true for the most part. It's that "for the most part" that I imagine we'll disagree. But I also think that so far out there that it'd take us so far astray as to start a new thread of thought.

We must also admit that, just as not all propositions are true, so too not all thinkers are equal. Making everyone equal prevents one from learning, because it prevents one from seeing that someone else knows something that you do not. — Leontiskos

I know this is a standard way of looking at the world, especially as a teacher.

We can't "make everyone equal" in the factual sense, but we can treat everyone equally in the evaluative sense. And, in fact, I think we learn more from doing that. It's the small voices, the different perspectives, the things thought false that usually bring about some new way to answer the old questions.

Democratic culture balks at the words "inferior" and "superior," but they are apt and useful words. — Leontiskos

I think this is more in your imagination than true -- capitalism is deeply hierarchal. "inferior" and "superior" are the words you wouldn't use on the basis of the faux-equality of liberal-capitalism, but the hierarchical relationship is there. And I'd equate, in our day and age, liberalism with capitalism.

"Superior" and "inferior" are used all the time when it comes to money and power -- maybe not in those words, but they'll say something like "I'm not so sure about that person in this respect..." -- whenever money or power are at stake "inferior/superior" is a concept, even if not named as such.

Some of my philosophical superiors on TPF would include Paine, apokrisis, and Pierre-Normand.

Heh. I like all of them -- we've had our bouts before and I know I'm different from each. But I thank them for their contributions to this website and my mind. They're wonderful posters.

@apokrisis and I have a longstanding difference that I don't know how to work through. @Paine and I simply get along, so far as I know. @Pierre-Normand pursued the profession where I did not, but we've had fruitful conversations with respect to philosophy before.

I myself don't care to be a superior. But I don't want to be considered an inferior, either, unless I sign up for it. I have to accept that I must be a student in order to learn from a teacher here. In the extreme: If I did not do so then every post would be part of my belief system. I think that's the sort of thing you've been noting as bad: where the standards are so loose that you can say anything at all to anyone at all at anytime for whatever reason.

Hopefully, in this description, you see I agree that's a problem.

If you look at my discussions with them you will see that I am very deferential and open-minded; that I am much more careful and precise in my reasoning. That discrimination between superiors, inferiors, and equals is very important if one is to progress.

I don't think it is very important as much as it's a habit of philosophy. It works, but there's other ways of doing philosophy. I think teacher-student is an important relationship, but not in the hierarchical sense exactly. Or, at least, here on TPF we have no choice but to try to build those relationships without hierarchy -- we really are just some strangers on the internet who happen to like reading philosophy.

This is why J discriminates between professional philosophers and non-professional philosophers. He sees that the former have more to teach him than the latter, and hence demand a more docile and teachable disposition.

Oh, I have no problem with people wanting to differentiate between the good and the bad. We have to at some point, right? Else we'll get stuck in paralysis.

I only think that in so deciding we don't express something so universal as "Standards of knowledge for all time and space and thinkers" -- seems a stretch now. A tempting stretch, but a stretch nonetheless.

That you grant yourself the ability to contradict yourself while denying others the ability to contradict themselves would be one example. — Leontiskos

I don't grant myself that ability, though. That's your interpretation which I'm attempting to demonstrate as false.

You have your stories about why it is I do, which you've posted, but I don't believe those stories are true.

I don't know how to respond to them, though.

These are the words of every headstrong student to their teacher. This mindset is precisely what precludes learning and knowledge. — Leontiskos

It does, you're right.

So here on TPF the only way a teacher-student relationship can develop is by some mutual understanding. What I've called trust.

I trust you are pursuing the truth, else I wouldn't put up with all of this frustration that you likely mutually feel :D

Earlier I said something about the teacher-student relationship -- mostly to note that on TPF we have to start at a position of equality even if you know you know more than the interloctor.

We are all equal here, and have to build ways of learning/teaching from that paradigm, rather than the usual paradigm.

And I hope I've demonstrated my willingness to be a student at this point. There are more examples than @Banno, tho he might be the only one who cares enough to chime in on that.

You put yourselves on a pedestal when in fact you require instruction. — Leontiskos

Where have I put myself on a pedestal?

That'd be a rule which I agree with that I wouldn't want to do. That is, I'd say putting yourself on a pedestal is a bad thing -- where I somehow gain immunity to criticism and you somehow are more vulnerable to criticism.

What instruction do I require? What would that do, other than make me agree with you?

:naughty:

Glad you see it as at least consistent.

Bullets are my philosophical breakfast :)