Yeah, probably a losing battle on my part. But I'd like to see more pushback against the easy acceptance of the fiction that a program is an entity or even an agent. With a name! Who starts sentences with "I . . . "! — J

But if you're talking to a computer, you aren't talking to the program. The program is formal. Strictly speaking, your voice is being sampled and that data is being manipulated by the hardware according to directions in the software. It's all dynamic. It's actually so similar to what happens with a real human, that the only thing missing is awareness.

Computers were originally developed to take the place of humans (with regard to basic math calculations). I think going forward, the dividing line will become more and more blurred.

It means some drugs will cost more. I guess the goal would be to inspire more pharmaceutical production in the US.

Your behaviour is dependent on their behaviour. Presumably. That's why you ask, isn't it? — Banno

Yes. It doesn't follow that the answer to my question is identical my subsequent behavior. That doesn't even make sense.

The discussion of relative levels of pain is what decides your next actions. The doing is the thing. — Banno

Their act of rating their pain is not the same thing as what I'm going to do with the information. They have no idea what I'm going to do with it. So whatever the pain is (kind of a weird question), it's definitely not identical to any portion of my behavior.

Rejecting intentional attitudes as private objects does not entail rejecting intentional attitudes altogether. It is instead to reconceptualise them. Not being objects, they are not how things are in a hidden noumenal world, but normative constraints on how we want things to be. They are not objects we detect, but commitments we recognise and undertake. — Banno

I'm not sure how this comes in for a landing in the real world. I don't think of pain as an object, but I regularly ask people to rate their pain and/or difficulty breathing. I even ask them to rate how it was two hours ago, and how is it now? I need to know what they're perceiving. I assume they're perceiving something, and it's not a normative constraint or commitment. It's something consciousness is doing with nervous discharges. It's something the brain stem is creating. They're feeling it.

What is truth?

There's a big sign near my work place that was once a Trump campaign poster. People keep painting new stuff over it in a kind of billboard war.

Today's fresh coat of paint announced:

you voted for a PEDO

In Alaska (which is an American territory — Outlander

It's a state, not a territory.

I think in my world there are opposing ideologies that both justify aspects of the status quo. Sometimes it seems like the real difference is just a matter of tone... the vibe.

Even so, a pure unideological standpoint is not possible; critical thought is itself produced by the society is critiques. — Jamal

Maybe sometimes trying on someone else's ideology would help. By help, I just mean loosen the grip of my own ideas so I might see something I've been ignoring. Or just realize that if I don't take a grain of salt with my ideology, I can end up reacting to a dreamworld, because all I see is my biases.

Maybe kin to ND would be trying to see the world without an ideological lens?

SO back to the point, that the notion fo the trinity is incoherent. — Banno

It comes from Neoplatonism. These days we call it mysticism.

:lol:

In this case, “is” doesn’t mean numerical identity (as in "Clark Kent is Superman") but rather participation in a common essence. — Wayfarer

This is incorrect, but I'm not going to debate it. This is Christianity kindergarten.

I've read that it looks like a contradiction if you assume “is” means numerical identity. In Trinitarian theology, “is God” means shares the same divine essence, not is numerically identical — Wayfarer

The Trinity is explicitly a mystery. You're not supposed to make sense of it. The hypostases are separate, but each one is fully God.

This is not a matter of opinion. It's doctrine.

That's three contradictions.

So you're making up your own religion?

There is no meaningful socialist movement in the US, — Hanover

To the extent there s a socialist movement in the US, it explains why Trump won. — Hanover

:chin:

. The focus on the power of language and material structural aspects of social practices to create and sustain implicit bias derives from Critical theoretic and poststructuralist sources. — Joshs

I wouldn't knock their contribution, but slogans like I am somebody come from the experience of the oppressed with the devasting effects of a negative identity. This was a theme from at least the 1940s onward. I don't think there's any reason to try to locate the wisdom in it to one set of actors.

What the Civil Rights Movement in the US fought for or labour laws in my view isn't anything to do with woke or wokeism. Just as isn't the shortly lived protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. The proponents of DEI surely might see them as the continuation or those that continue to further these past political struggles, but in fact they are not.

The US has a real political crisis with Trump's actions and is on the road for an fiscal, monetary and economic crisis ....sooner or later. — ssu

Wokeism, as it's related to identity politics, is specifically not about addressing economic instability. It's about uncovering sources of social injustice.

Typically as socioeconomic conditions drop, things get worse in every regard, including accidental shootings or failed attempts to thwart attackers. — Hanover

So on top of being poor, I'm more likely to accidentally shoot myself. :confused:

I'm not sure how wokeness is different from an agenda of conserving grudges, as if we lost the momentum and are now losing all the gains from the Civil Rights Movement. We've landed back in the 1960s and the only way forward is to demand corporate virtue signaling. I'm detecting a lack of underlying meaning.

:lol:

Blessed are the cheese-makers, for they shall inherit the earth.

About 60% of incarcerated people in the US are poor people. Maybe better education and job opportunities?

I guess that myth-makers create their god-stories for the same reason parents tell their own children about the tooth fairy : to get compliance without argument. "If you do this, something good will happen, But if you don't . . . .". Gods bring the goodies, or not, depending on your obedience. — Gnomon

True, and the sacrifice of Jesus has clear magical connotations: sacrifice this human, get good crops. So the sacrifice is celebrated at Easter, around the time of the spring equinox, which vaguely coincides with the last frost date in temperate zones. It's a fertility rite.

In the case of religious beliefs, professional priests exploit adults for their inborn trust in authorities*1, in order to get political compliance without rational arguments. Even adults, when they reach the age of reason, may begin to doubt the official stories. But when everyone they know seems to believe the myth, they may go along to get along. — Gnomon

For some reason, the belief in Hell is particularly potent. I'm not sure what psychology its tapping into, but the original Hel was a Norse goddess. She was just the ruler of the field of the dead. There was no torturing going on.

Moreover, communal myths*2 tend to bond individuals into team players and tribal roles. — Gnomon

And this is definitely true of Christianity even now. Christianity was a base for reformers like Martin Luther King Jr. As somebody mentioned earlier, maybe community solidarity can be more important than the details of the dogma.

You're free to sacrifice your life at anytime. There's nothing moral about that.

That’s horrible. You are saying that if you naturally need to do something then it is automatically permissible to do. If there were a species that needed to eat people to survive, would that be permissible to you? What if there was an alien species that needed to torture people from other animals or else they would necessarily fall into deep, deep depression to the point where they necessarily would kill themselves? — Bob Ross

If you have to do it to survive, it's amoral. It's neither good nor bad.

Yes, and they were wrong. We don’t need to reject God’s existence to accept that that was wrong. We don’t even need to reject Jesus to accept that.

The catholic church has done a lot of immoral things: that’s true. — Bob Ross

I wasn't using it as an argument for the non-existence of God. I was saying please, please, please, don't use a dignity-scale as a justification for killing. It's ok to kill rabbits and eat them because you're an omnivore. Your brain is a obligate glucose consumer (which means there's no way to turn off its demand for glucose). You're evolved to eat meat because your survival could depend on it. And plants don't have less dignity either. They're living things like everything else. We eat them because that's who we are: plant eaters.

:smile:

Farming, like heavy production, is such a fundamental process. They are not created in one day or one year and are calculated for a long time. It's painstaking, slow work that doesn't like swings and change. For this category, a dynamically changing world is a challenge. — Astorre

I was going to say something along these lines. There's a Roman story that some Roman was out farming and some foreigners came over the hill to attack. The Roman put on his armor, went out and kicked ass, and was back behind the plow in 16 days. Farmers need stable borders. They aren't looking for adventure. They aren't trying to save the world.

The whole message is quite powerful. — boundless

Give it meaning, and it will give meaning back to you.

That’s the problem, you see, Catholicism. Maybe we could try Quakers, or Shakers. Although, I admit it might not translate well via the keyboard. — Punshhh

I used to know a Quaker. Awesome guy.

Yes. In broad outlines, the Christian narrative is that God sacrificed his Son to save the human race from something. That alone captures the oddness of the narrative. That Christianity has survived about 1600 years with that narrative intact testifies to the ability of Christians to accept it. Whether they ever really make sense of it is another matter.

Maybe it's like a I Ching poem.

Then why all this focus on Catholicism?
All these doctrinal abominations you and Banno are going on about are just over reach in the Catholic Church. There are other religions and theologies. — Punshhh

I just used Catholics to pin down the narrative about the meaning of Jesus' death. If you say Christians believe x, there's going to be an exception somewhere.

That most Christian of Western nations is the one that still allows capital punishment. The acceptability of retribution, indeed the equating of retribution and justice - hadn't thought of that as a Christian attribute. — Banno

The United States was involved in the Atlantic Slave Trade at the level of about 7% of the total. Portugal started it and after a few centuries, was by far the largest participant. Most of the proceeds went to the Portuguese Crown. The second biggest participant was the UK, masters of the triangular trade, involving the British Caribbean. At the bottom of the list are the Spanish, the Dutch, and last is the USA. The US ended importation of slaves from Africa in 1808.

The greatest portion of the crime of the Atlantic Slave Trade is not celebrated in films, or discussed every year during Black History Month. The huge number of people who died miserable deaths should be more well known. Those unnamed victims should be brought into the light of day.

That you assume the Pope would have blessed importation of slaves to the US is a testament to that country's fearless admission of guilt. I for one, am proud of that.

ps. Americans wouldn't have looked to the Pope for guidance. They were mostly Protestants.

retribution is evaluated primarily based off of the dignity of the offended party (hence why shooting a rabbit illegitimately is lesser of an offense and deserving of less of a punishment than shooting a human the exact same way). — Bob Ross

There was a time when black people weren't thought of as having the same "dignity" as white people. Hence, it was ok to enslave them. This is another example of how doctrine blinds people to what's moral. The Pope gave his blessing on the beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade, one of many cases of all out moral failure.

As if blame were genetic. The story of original sin appears morally indefensible. Theology is that defence. — Banno

If a child was not baptized, it wouldn't be buried on sacred ground, and the mother would be told it was in Hell. Horrible.

The idea that children should be held responsible for the sins of their parents is also... problematic. — Banno

It partly comes from primitive intuitions about inheritance. You have your parent's physical features, so wouldn't you also inherit their sinful nature? On the one hand, telling people that they're born flawed can be psychologically devastating. Catholics even have a name for a condition where that belief becomes overwhelming: it's called scruples.

But on the other hand, it can be liberating to know that certain mental health issues and alcoholism have genetic components. It's not a personal failing. It's a link to your family tree.

But the higher point is the methodological one made above, that theology consists in justifying a given series of doctrines, not in their critique. — Banno

And I think that's how religions die. They become rigid. Life leaks out and goes looking for better metaphors.

Yes, and there was no need for torturing himself as well! — MoK

True.

Instead it's all snakes and apples. :grin:
— frank
What do you mean? — MoK

In the Garden of Eden, there was a snake and a couple of fruit trees.

Correct. God, for example, could remove the tree from the scene. All problems solved! — MoK

He could have had a tea party in the Garden. Instead it's all snakes and apples. :grin: