How much do you need to nudge events in the Korean war to get nukes dropped on China? Perhaps all you need is a general being a bit more persuasive in some meeting. Then you have a nuclear US-China war in the 1950s. — Echarmion

Yeah, perhaps if General MacArthur got his way...

Had Kennedy not been assassinated, I don't think we'd have seen some hugely different policies in the US. Nor does it seem likely that social trends in general would have been much altered. Certainly the appeal of conspiracy theories seems independent of any specific one.

On the other hand it might easily completely change the entire list of presidents from Kennedy onward. Elections are responsive enough to the moment to moment circumstances that all the results might markedly differ. And that could have let to different decisions in various crises. — Echarmion

Yes, for sure it's almost impossible to see where counterfactuals would have led with the web of causality involved. The polarization you see in politics however, seems to be a reality of the political landscape. Certainly the 60s shaped this.

I think it was mainly the baby boomers driving that rapid change. I also think that the best way to chronicle the transformation is through the evolution of rock music, which dictated attitudes, fashion and politics. Between 1962 and 1969 rock music reinvented itself on a yearly basis. Given the fact that the oldest boomers were in their late teens when Kennedy was assassinated, it’s not surprising that 1964 seems to herald a sharp acceleration of musical and cultural change. After all, innovators like the Beatles and Bob Dylan were just starting out in 1962, and reached their creative peak around 1966. I think it’s pure coincidence that this seems to come on the heels of the assassination. — Joshs

Indeed. Bob Dylan and the Beatles are good places to start as to the shift in culture. Certainly, Dylan was already writing more sophisticated songs about government and the inner psychological sphere. It pushed the folkie sound beyond either traditionalist songs or political rallying songs (Pete Seeger comes to mind for example). Now some people might say the Beatles creative peak was a year or two later :wink:.

Yes, there were certainly social and generational factors already in place. Perhaps the distrust factor though, would have been less sharp, however.

What President wouldn't have been disappointed after the Bay of Pigs disaster? Yet here I wouldn't go all 'Oliver Stone' and make the dichotomy of there being the hawks inside government and JFK. — ssu

"all 'Oliver Stone'" :lol:

That basically nuclear weapons are only a deterrent and you cannot actually use them for anything else started to be quickly obvious from the 1950's. — ssu

I think of the downfall of Douglas MacArthur in Korea here :grimace:. But yes, 50s seemed to be quiet coups and Mutually Assured Deterrence (MAD). Kennedy was about countering the numerous communist liberation fronts. However, again, he seemed more interested in soft power. I consider "advisors" soft power as they are meant to build up the country's military internally. Like Eisenhower, he did not want to deal with hot wars. If anything, small commando-style teams would be the dominant military force.

Erosion in the confidence of your government isn't anything new, actually, very famous event was the Dreyfus affair in France in the 1890's where the hold modern thought of 'the government is lying' and 'it shouldn't lie' resulting in the erosion of trust in the government. And let's remind ourselves that the notion of the "deep state" actually came from Turkey! — ssu

Good points. I like how you traced some of the history there. The Dreyfus Affair is a great example of a government hiding evidence (for real, not conspiratorially). What I find ironic about the American conspiracy theories of the deep state, is that the mistrust of the FBI and CIA used to be leftwing ideas. Now they are more associated with rightwing ideas. The Democrats have shifted to the more globalist party since Trumpism. This is more a call back to the 30s or maybe even the 1910s. Think here of a Woodrow Wilson or a Teddy Roosevelt (robust American power abroad), versus isolationists like Robert Taft and pseudo-fascists even with their America First Committees endorsed by people like Charles Lindbergh. Even more ironically, Joseph Kennedy, John's Kennedy's father, was avidly isolationist right up until the beginning of the war.

Americans I guess all the time have had doubts about Central government (and central banks, btw) and also before, against standing armies. That is quite American. — ssu

Indeed, the intractable 2nd Amendment for example, whatever you may think either way, is more a symbol of this suspicion than anything else.

Yet what if the assassination was only a hitjob from the mob and nobody in the government had nothing to do with it? The Cosa Nostra had back then still quite a lot of power and had only surfaced to being a country wide network only in the 1950's. It was only tackled decades later. Yet thinking about it this way, and you have all the actors like closet-gay Hoover and others looking quite different, just pathetic and simply botching up the intelligence. — ssu

Indeed, to conspiracy theorists, there was intent from everyone. It seemed the Mafia was involved in almost every version of the theory. It could be Mafia alone. It could be Mafia acting on behalf of the CIA, etc. Remember this too, Robert Kennedy was using the FBI to prosecute the Mafia during the JFK years, and this didn't sit well with them. There are some theories linking Mafia ties with the father Joseph and helping JFK win elections in Illinois. So Robert Kennedy's campaign against the Mafia, not a nice thank you gift...

For the conspiracy theories usually the most enjoyable are the ones that are the most sinister. And these overplay the abilities of the "deep state" and create this huge web where nothing happens by chance or accident. Yet now conspiracy theories have become mainstream and in elections they play a huge part. When visiting with my family Washington DC, I went to Capitol and listened for a while some Republican member of the house speaking what a threat the FBI is for the United States and it's citizens.
That brought it home to me how lunatic US politics is now. — ssu

Indeed. Conspiracy theories are part-and-parcel of Republican politics now. If all politicians are corrupt, if media cannot be trusted or always sourced from a "better" source, then nothing can be trusted.

You've made this claim a few times now. What do they have to say about incommensurability? What's the evidence? — Banno

The way forward from there then seems to be learning empirically, scientifically exactly why and how people behave, use language, learn, perceive, how brains work, etc. I've actually always thought these philosophers (Kuhn too) feel like they resonate amicably with the brain and mind sciences. — Apustimelogist

Kuhn's theory about paradigm shifts and incommensurability is a meta theory about scientific revolutions. It is philosophy of science in that sense that it is about science. However, it is not a theory of science. Davidson's theory of language seems to be an attempt at something that should be in the realm of science. That is to say, how much does Davidson's theory conform to scientific understanding of how language evolved? By scientific I mean, observable, experimental, and fits in with previous scientific framework of genetics, anthropology, neurobiological, and the rest. If it doesn't, it can be considered an interesting a priori theory of language, but is that the right approach? I am saying, for language - why it exists, how it exists, and the like, it should be tied to those empirical approaches. The more we get away from that and talk about things like "concepts" in a vacuum or "correspondence" in a vacuum, we are getting away from ways to tackle the question to mountains built on mountains built on sand. Chomsky is a good example of this in many ways. He doesn't seem to care about the empiricism except as an afterthought to he his premade ideas about "minimalist project" or anything else.

I do get the point that philosophy can be used as tools for scientists to enhance their hypotheses, but that still entails engaging with the science itself. Here is a good example of someone who does take some ideas from philosophy of language but uses empirical research to test hypothesis and refine theories, creating a more grounded understanding in situ of language:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tomasello

So in regards specifically "incommensurability" as far as it is a problem (is it? or is it Davidson's problem), the research should guide the way to how translatable people's "schemas" are, what "schemas" (conceptual schemes), would even truly "mean" in any evolutionary, biological sense, and how to resolve such problems. The science would guide the way. It would be the starting point, the substance of the debate, and lead to more ideas about how to find better conclusions within that scientific framework. More theoretical, but possibly more satisfying, would then synthesize various findings from the scientific disciplines and make a more comprehensive, if yet more theoretical framework for which could possibly be the case, with the caveat, that at a future point, the science can always destroy this theoretical framework. That is to say, the framework has to be concrete enough to be disproven, but comprehensive enough to try to answer the "big questions". If it is so abstract and lofty as to never be disproven, then it is not a framework, but an elusive moving target that can always encompass anything, and thus says nothing meaningful.

No Hitler? Someone else would have popped up. JFK surviving assassination? Not much difference in how society developed. — jgill

Interesting yeah, this seems even more deterministic actually because there are enough background sameness to basically steer the trajectory a general way. But then can there ever be huge enough event to cause significant change? And conversely, how many little events add up to the kind of intransigent determinism you are proposing?

I'm sorry, something must be lost in translation between us - both ways presumably — Apustimelogist

Perhaps incommensurability :D.

If you're saying Kuhn is non-empirical, I guess I would reply that he was more or less writing as a historian drawing on actual events and case studies in the history of science. I don't really know what other kind of language research would have a bearing on this. — Apustimelogist

I'm writing on Davidson's theory on language, not on his theory about Kuhn, so I guess I meant to refer to that, or thought you were referring to that more directly. Davidson was using incommensurability also on language with conceptual schemas, etc. I am saying, rather than theories of language that are not based on empirical research, we should be looking more at what empirical avenues say about language, not a priori theories of it. Michael Tomasello or Terrence Deacon would be more empirically based, for example. It is theoretical because it is putting multiple empirical models into a cohesive whole, but it is based on empirical models more-or-less. Being that human language is derived from human capacities as a certain animal, in a certain environment, that seems to be appropriate.

The power of modern maths is unprecedented, and I am happy to have science popularisers talking about that, but ... less happy to have them included in academia, where I think more people should be realistically considering that some of our gaps could be the result of fundamental problems with mathematics itself. — Jaded Scholar

Could you elaborate a bit on that on what that means conceptually? Are we just talking the inability to unify GR math and QM math?

Similarly, his (and Tononi's) ideas on consciousness seem like they provide interesting opportunities to quantify our observations in a sophistocated way, but if they are useful at all, I think it will be in identifying the specific kinds of mathematics we observe, and allowing us to use that to infer the underlying mechanisms - and nothing like the validation of the metaphysics used to construct those models. — Jaded Scholar

Indeed, this seems to be the weird difference. What does Tegmark mean that the unvierse IS math rather than just a model of the terrain? What does it mean for mathematical structures to be "real"?

Well, yes but I don't know what you are addressing in my post. — Apustimelogist

Ultimately though, with regard to my interpretation of Kuhn, I believe that Davidson is attacking a strawman. The whole crux of Davidson's argument is that conceptual schemes are inherently untranslatable but referring to the same world of experiences. He seems to think that untranslatable implies incomparability and non-intelligibility but I think Kuhn means more like establishing a one-to-one correspondence between concepts, something which I think you can find in many languages - words that aren't necessarily beyond understanding to us but just don't quite match any kind of word we have or use, which can sometimes make them seem weird or even artificial. Because we are so unfamiliar, we may not even be good at using them in a way that comes across as natural when we try to speak that language. — Apustimelogist

All of this is grounded in nada unless empirical when discussing real human language. If humans are animals, which I believe they are, then it should be empirically based research that the theories are deriving and I mentioned some more theoretical biologists/anthropologists/psychologists that might have a theory more grounded in that. Why should it be taken on a priori grounds that are not tied to research. We don't do that with other processes that derive from nature. Language is for sure a higher order evolutionary trait, and tied with general cognitive evolution, but that is still the sciences.

Nixon's rep also benefits from the descending quality of succeeding presidents, especially demented Reagan and Narcissico Trump. — BC

:lol:

It was the cover-up that did Nixon in more than anything else. Cover-ups are a sign of the sinner sinking ever deeper into sin, and prosecutors jump on on it. My advice: If crooked politics is your game, prepare to get caught and then confess and apologize early and often. Don't stiffen up and deny everything, unless you have buried all the witnesses and nobody knows where. — BC

It's funny cause with Trump, he brazenly says what he's going to do, does it, then knows that the ambiguities of the system will allow him to get away with it anyways.

See the difference between Nixon and say, a Trump was that at the time of Nixon there were at least SOME Republicans in the select committee, that when the White House tapes were obtained, finally had to admit that Nixon was indeed a crook and voted to move forward with an impeachment hearing. That would never happen today. The days of having the idea of fair play even if it is not your side are long gone.

What do you mean? — Apustimelogist

The later part explains it more.

Yes, I think a case can be made for this.

Has this thread been partly motivated by you asking yourself, how did we end up in the cesspit we have now?

Incidentally, have you ever seen the 1976 movie, Network? It kind of prefigures the mercenary media, reality TV, emotion driven, content free filth we are now awash in. — Tom Storm

It was actually just that November 22nd was the anniversary of Kennedy's assassination and thought it was apropos. Always interested in history and its philosophical implications, and thought it a perfect tie in, and very relevant. Also, yes, that movie does predict where things would go. What used to be called Yellow Journalism just became Journalism.

I do think there was a strangely fast break in the 60s, and though that decade is definitely the focus of many documentaries, etc. I think that the rapid cultural shift that happened can't be overstated. It is fascinating and lends itself to philosophical questions as to how much impact an event can have in the broader culture. Is it more causation or more correlation? Without going too much into how much any event can be considered a "cause", I would propose that the Kennedy assassination at least correlated strongly with a radical cultural shift that came immediately after. That in itself is something interesting.

Writer and political pundit, Gore Vidal, who was a close friend of Kennedy's and a progressive writes often about how Kennedy was a friend of the military industrial complex and was pretty keen to escalate Vietnam. Vidal thought that if Kennedy had lived it would be business as usual. But who knows? — Tom Storm

I do love me some Gore Vidal. A great writer. And yes, he may have been right.

Agree, I think the myth of Kennedy as a secular saint, the youthful, good looking, dynamic president, whose tragic, spectacular and enigmatic death led to the premature fall of Camelot is a powerful myth from so many points of reference. And sometimes cultures pivot on such myths. — Tom Storm

Indeed, I think there is something to the idea that it is hard to see the fall of Camelot failed war in Vietnam. Instead of chants against LBJ, it would be Kennedy, and Kennedy would have been the face of the warmonger leading the youth to their deaths over a conflict that seemed unnecessary, not LBJ. But in many accounts, it seems like the narrative is to put Kennedy in the light of someone who slowly realizes over time, that the pro-military advisors are too hawkish and need to be reigned in. He seemed to be more a fan of building soft power (Peace Corps, Alliance for Progress in Latin America, advisors rather than full military, grand speeches, etc.).

But I am thinking the "radicalism", during a Kennedy tenure might have been a gradual, unitary approach (more about condemning the bigots and reactionaries), than an all out "break" of a generation of people. The business suits and martinis perhaps, would have continued. The beats and the folkies would have their place.. But the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, perhaps would have taken on a different form, the youth movements would have been a more moderate liberal progression rather than mass campus riots. Media would have still had their restrictions. Since there would be no Vietnam, no Watergate, the media would have also been more "cozy" with the politicians, not reporting on personal affairs, wheelings and dealings, and Washington insider information, but just the surface issues. It would have taken longer for us to get the kind of "anything goes" media we have now that has evolved even more since social media, and the echo chamber. Technology also has a huge influence of course. Movies and tv would have possibly continued to be a kind of restricted, less grit, sarcasm, violence, sex, realism perhaps. It would have been more gradual.

Here the "everything" part is debatable. — ssu

Yes, not everything can be so reducible.

But then we are in the fairy-tale land of "what if" -alternative realities. Would the post-Houston JFK been like that? Would he have withdrawn from Vietnam and let South Vietnam fall? Cold War had it's own logic to go. Politics is still teamwork, and there were many on the LBJ team that had been on the JFK team, starting from people like Robert McNamara.

The idea of a totally different alternative universe without JFK assassination unlikely, but to be consistent to myself, we of course cannot know. — ssu

Yeah, probably giving Kennedy too much credit here, but his few years in office were supposed to be looked at fondly because of his instincts against pro-war advisors, though he did respect McNamara. McNamara was for supporting Diem, and Kennedy reluctantly was for the coup due to Diem's authoritarian policies. Conspiracy theorists might even consider that to be the basis for the "coup" against him from the powers within. You don't need the conspiracy part though. He did make a lot of enemies. He mainly trusted his brother more than any other. Cabinet and lower-ranked agencies in the executive branch probably loved Eisenhower's "hands-off" approach. He made the final decisions, but he let his advisors have much more free reign. He ran it more like a military. Kennedy was much more involved in each decision it seems, and had his own ideas.

Interestingly, McNamara and Kennedy moved away from "massive retaliation" and "first strike" to countering "liberation movements". This meant equipping the army with counterinsurgency tactics and thus developed the Special Forces like the Green Berets.

My broader question was not about foreign affairs as much as culture. Was the Kennedy assassination the thing that most pushed the nascent radical change that occurred in the 60s? Possibly. Kennedy seemed to an idealist approach and used the power of the podium. LBJ was much better at internal politics. He knew when to intimidate, call in a favor, things like this. He knew the internal workings of the Senate more than anyone. He took the heat for the major legislation that Kennedy died before enacting.

As ↪schopenhauer1 points out we need empirical data, but that will not be the whole story. We also need — Banno

Just curious, this seems to be an incomplete sentence. Was there something that you meant to write after "We also need..."?

I'm always happy to see someone who admires Schopenhauer. He has played a pivotal in shaping my worldview. — Sirius

He has an ingenious way of looking at things and focuses on the big picture of philosophy whilst touching on most of the other aspects and how it fits into the system. He is a system-builder par excellance. A great foil to today's parsing of problems separately. I don't think any of the other system builders were as comprehensive whilst still being consistent and clear to a reader with some philosophical background.

An apt example is that of a dream in which you exist as one character amongst many other characters. You have a body in your dream and operate with 5 senses. But once you wake up, you realize it was all an illusion, and that all the different objects in the dream were just you.

The illusion only exists phenomenally from the perspective of those who are trapped inside it. But for those who escape it, the illusion isn't real. It's like coming across a mirage. You keep going in its direction, believing it to be real, but once you reach the place, you realize it was all an illusion. The mirage doesn't exist.

Schopenhauer's ethics is based on a feeling of compassion for others due to the fact that they are not different from you. Moreover, once you start treating others as yourself, the veils of multiplicity will be lifted. Your life will become a reflection of non-dualism, where the subject is the object. — Sirius

Good summarization of Schop in a few paragraphs. I admire the ability to be succinct but comprehensive, one of the hardest things to do when dealing with lofty concepts.

So without rehashing that thread that already had many of the arguments, I will just reiterate that one can always doubt the unitary Will. Also, I find it hard for Schopenhauer to have Will-individuated in the "mirage" without some intention or myth behind it (why is it not a nothing-unitary-oneness?).

It is a novel way to answer how it is that we have a subjective experience. It is Will mediated through a mind's space, time, and causality, objectified via pure Form into the "mirage" of a dross material world mediated by the principle of sufficient reason. It starts with Mind and works its way to Physical, not the other way around, is thoroughly Idealist. However, that ever remains an interesting and ingenious system written about and synthesized, not THE system that exists per se.

Rather, what I do take as truth from Schopenhauer is his normative understanding of Suffering. Suffering is at the heart of the animal experience. In the Eastern sense, Suffering is a sense of separation, because lack. We are not at home because we are always needing more. But I see it more as just evolution's drive. A subjective feeling of the drives of a metabolically-hungry creature. And the more complex the subjectivity, the more Suffering.

I have tried to point this out myself. — Tom Storm

As you rightly should.

I suspect that if searing is foundational to a worldview, there's not much point engaging with them about this since they will just take it as evidence of your bad faith. — Tom Storm

Can you define searing here? Like having a searing critique? I’m not sure that’s a worldview, that’s the problem. Rather, it’s a sort of bad faith arguing style to provoke ire. It’s trying to be a kind of joker that is deflating the philosophy through ad hom satire. It’s too transparent and aggressive to come off more than a type of trolling though.

A huge fan of his trust-fund lifestyle. It's easy to be pessimistic when one doesn't have to work to pay one's bills! — baker

Hey troll, read my whole post, and you'll see the irony of your trolling. (Hint: read the part about Epicurus in the post above the one you quoted).

I also found it ironic that you couldn't understand the bit of trolling that political satire functions as when lampooning people's beliefs regarding political matters, yet, all you do is lampoon people's posts, trying to find some sort of ad hominem weakness.

None of this matters unless there is an empirical element. Studying child development, neurology, physiology, cognitive psychology, evolution, genetics, biochemistry, anthropology, and the rest.

The best the "theories" can combine all these. Someone along the lines of a Terrence Deacon or a Michael Tomasello. More science than a priori linguistic philosophizing.

Philosophy of Language a priori, does best when studying its own synthetic, made-up things (logic), not so much logic-as-applied-to-human. This in itself, ironically, is a sort of incommensurability. Evolution is always about "usefulness", not about "truthfulness". How much our ability for interpreting the world in useful ways to stay alive equals truth, itself would need a third-party which can then have an infinite regress. The best we can do is explain "Why" we developed certain features such as language. However, it is an odd shoe-horn to then ask how well language makes truth-conditional statements, or if that is even the real function of language. Rather, the biology recenters these debates away from truth-finding, and more about evolutionary-biological, species-apt theories. What is it about the species Homo sapiens, being a bipedal primate with a specific branch from 2 million years ago, that brought about language? The universe wasn't say, "To formulate better truth-conditional statements". And to the extent that we have "truth-conditional" propositions of the world, and how much people's "schemas" shape them, it is all schema all the way down, but the schemas of individuals cannot be just uprooted from this biological framework, which again, has to be gotten at from an empirical perspective to understand.

By the way, you may get something from this here:

But what now impels us to inquiry is just that we are not satisfied with knowing that we have ideas, that they are such and such, and that they are connected according to certain laws, the general expression of which is the principle of sufficient reason. We wish to know the significance of these ideas; we ask whether this world is merely idea; in which case it would pass by us like an empty dream or a baseless vision, not worth our notice; or whether it is also something else, something more than idea, and if so, what. Thus much is certain, that this something we seek for must be completely and in its whole nature different from the idea; that the forms and laws of the idea must therefore be completely foreign to it; further, that we cannot arrive at it from the idea under the guidance of the laws which merely combine objects, ideas, among themselves, and which are the forms of the principle of sufficient reason.

Thus we see already that we can never arrive at the real nature of things from without. However much we investigate, we can never reach anything but images and names. We are like a man who goes round a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the façades. And yet this is the method that has been followed by all philosophers before me. — The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer, translated by R B Haldane and J. Kemp Second Book

And being a huge fan of Schopenhauer's estimation of things, regarding his metaphysics, I would say this previous post has most of my critiques and question of his metaphysics in one go:

But again, as poetic as this looks, as I indicated in that quote, it loses any explanation outside of theistic speculation. Theism would denote that God (All-Will) wanted to reveal himself to himself and thus individuated himself via emanations into lower worlds via some Platonic unfolding from universalized Forms to gross individualized forms in the world of time and space. This is all Platonic/Neoplatonic.

Schop is advocating for non-theistic All-Oneness that individuates into multiplicity. That is harder to explain intelligibly as to how All-Will can become multiplicity. This in the end, for all his awesome ideas, becomes a mere assertion. All he can do is point to other non-helpful assertions such as the Vedas/Upanishads whereby the idea of Maya and "illusion" enters the equation. All is one, but we don't realize it. But then the illusion becomes the thing to be explained. Why is the "illusion" so complicated in its phenomenal form if everything is at base oneness? If anything, the more complexity of scientific discoveries reveals this. You can superficially say that physics reveals a sort of "oneneess" in something like a Unified Field Theory, but that is very superficial as that itself is gotten to because of complex mathematical formulations that reveal that, not because it is so apparent because of its basicness to being.

Rather, being seems to be interminably complex and individuated, contra Schopenhauer. He (and others) take the idea of things like "ego" (individual-selfish-drive) and "compassion" (the drive to feel empathy and help people despite one's selfish pull), as some sort of reified unity, when in fact they are just dispositional psychological attitudes, nothing more. They are complex pheonemona and it's often hard to tell what is purely ego and purely compassionate. One can twist those two concepts to variations all day (loving myself is loving others is loving everything is loving myself again, etc. etc.). But this is all just word-play and concept-games at this point, not true metaphysics.

It is yet to be determined why illusion would enter the system at all for Schopenhauer. My way to try to recover this is to emphasize Schop's idea of Will's immediacy and not it's transcendence. That is to say, there can never be a prioricity in his system. This World of Appearance is literally Will-objectified/personified. There is no Will and then appearance. But again, that doesn't say much either except what we already know, that the world appears to us a certain familiar way and that there is another aspect of it that is mere unity. That doesn't explain why unity needs appearance.

Perhaps the only answer is a quasi-theological one. Will needs appearance to be its double-aspect because Will wants it in some way so as to have a way to enact its striving nature. Striving without objects, is basically nothing. But then, here we go again with a theological explanation of some sort of logos, desire, reason, etc. — schopenhauer1

But what now impels us to inquiry is just that we are not satisfied with knowing that we have ideas, that they are such and such, and that they are connected according to certain laws, the general expression of which is the principle of sufficient reason. We wish to know the significance of these ideas; we ask whether this world is merely idea; in which case it would pass by us like an empty dream or a baseless vision, not worth our notice; or whether it is also something else, something more than idea, and if so, what. Thus much is certain, that this something we seek for must be completely and in its whole nature different from the idea; that the forms and laws of the idea must therefore be completely foreign to it; further, that we cannot arrive at it from the idea under the guidance of the laws which merely combine objects, ideas, among themselves, and which are the forms of the principle of sufficient reason.

Thus we see already that we can never arrive at the real nature of things from without. However much we investigate, we can never reach anything but images and names. We are like a man who goes round a castle seeking in vain for an entrance, and sometimes sketching the façades. And yet this is the method that has been followed by all philosophers before me. — The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer, translated by R B Haldane and J. Kemp Second Book

Certainly @Wayfarer has much to say on these matters. You may want to revisit that thread actually and pull some things from there as Schop's ideas have been discussed and are pertinent to your question about asceticism:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/831351

It comes at the cost of no longer identifying with all that is healthy, good, beautiful and pleasurable in life. How many of us would give up good food, beautiful women, a big library and a great music collection for a life in the monastery ? — Sirius

That’s why I advocate not starting life. But also Schopenhauer, the great pessimist. What you speak of is the hedonic treadmill that the ascetic refrains from. The you have, the more you need to maintain and keep it going for the next hedonic kick.

But let's look at the hedonism of Epicurus. His idea was a communal society of friends enjoying a bit of wine, gardening communally for food, laying next to the river and trees, and being okay with philosophical conversation for higher entertainment. That was it. Materially, however, his culture relied just as much on a large Mediterranean trade network. Not as global as today, but still widespread. He too, had the appearance of an optimist who thought that a commune amidst a larger network was possible. But that's just it, communes only exist because the larger network of economic output outside it allows them to live that lifestyle. So oddly enough, it is using the drudgery labor force so one can maintain an internal idealized labor force.. Rarely does a commune use everything from its own output and only its own output. I am sure the pottery, they used, for example came from far off. Perhaps they only live on oil and wine from their own vinyards, perhaps.. But not likely.

Anyways, moving on.. Pessimism is Buddhism/Hinduism/Gnosticism shorn of its mythological trappings. That is simply seeing the world as a burden, and thus rebelling against the burden.

10 years later this clinging to the one true reality had been defeated. The counterculture motto was to proudly let one’s freak flag fly. — Joshs

Indeed.

Lsd was legal until 1966, and in the the early ‘60’s was given to many volunteers on the West Coast as part of CIA mind control research. — Joshs

Funny how the CIA keeps popping up. Not to stoke any conspiracies.. But this one is just pure cause and effect. Soon after its invention by scientist in Sweden, it is tested in CIA around the Bay Area in California, and soon becomes an underground "hit" (no pun). Then, it explodes into the broader youth culture by 66-67. Even more so after its federal illegal status.

A narrator recounts how they went from singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ to ‘We All Live in a Yellow Submarine’, marking the rise of a hybrid of activist and hippie, the Yippies, a melding of Berkeley politics and Haight Ashbury counterculture. — Joshs

:lol:

I don’t think lsd in itself was responsible for the profound changes in ways of thinking that happened in that decade. Rather , it acted as a source of inspiration for some of those who were already headed in that direction. The Berkeley documentary articulates this well. It was a generation looking to find themselves, and over the course of that decade they became self-consciously aware. For instance, initially, the goals of campus activists were restricted to narrow changes within the system. They saw themselves as connected linearly with previous generations of leftists. But over time they realized that what they were onto was a sweeping rethinking of all values, political, aesthetic, social , sexual and spiritual, touching on all aspects of life. Lsd can help loosen attachments to old ways of thinking, but only if one is already wanting to go there.
It’s ironic that younger generations now associate baby boomers with right wing thinking, which reflects the fact that only a small percentage of baby boomers at gatherings like Woodstock were really committed to countercultural ideals. — Joshs

Indeed, and again, this "gap" (both intergenerational and intra-generationally as you point out with the conservative Baby Boomers), perhaps widened due to the assassination. Within a few years it went from business suits, and martinis, to folkies and sit-ins, to full on hippie sexual and drug rebellion. That rebellion died down but the exploitive, explicit aspects remain. In 1963, you could not say fart on TV. By 1970 you had George Carlin 7 words you can't say on tv, mocking everything about the the mores of the seemingly "repressed" 1950s- early 1960s mentality. And no, I do not discount Lenny Bruce who paved the way in the 1950s and literally died for his cause for free speech. However, when he was repeatedly arrested, it seemed a matter of course because he was so transgressive. George Carlin, was sort of riding the wave that was already ripe for it by 1970. And though uppers and downers were around, as well as marijuana and cocaine, these were usually either taken as supplements, and doctor recommended, or were more confined to circles of musicians and entertainers. By the end of the 60s, it was part of being of a generation. Heroin, cocaine, crack, and such became popular in the 70s and 80s, and continue on. Then you have the opioid crisis. And you have the War on Drugs, and such.. So all of these things remained, but the "experimental" mentality of the LSD era, and linking it (however tenuously) to spirituality, gave way to just finding the next fix.

I expect there will be more reactionary moves in the coming years. They might fail (let us hope) but they will be tried. — BC

Certainly this Supreme Court is far more conservative compared to the Warren, Burger, and even Rehnquist courts.

US Congress looks like a cage match...

predecessors and successors — BC

Eisenhower increased the nuke count, used the CIA fairly frequently, and if there was anything like a "deep state", then it would be here with multiple levels of FBI headed by Hoover, John Foster and Allen Dulles taking care of Department of State and Director of CIA.

But Kennedy, in a way, represented a continuation of Cold War policies of Eisenhower, at the beginning at least. Even if he did privately discuss breaking up the CIA, he did not want to get into a hot war, even in "vulnerable" targets like Vietnam or South America. He was more about idealist visions, peace, etc. But he maintained a strong military stance when needed. He often pointed to a "nuclear gap" between Soviets and the US in the debates with Nixon, but when he became president he signed a nuclear test ban treaty.

Conspiracy theorists would say there is something of the "deep state" involved with Kennedy. They did not like his turning away from their apparatus built under the last two presidents. Ironically, it is this "deep state" as well that is invoked by Trump as trying to get rid of him for "disrupting" the system. What system does he propose he is "disrupting"? As @ssu proposed, he is simply one of them, not apart from. It is just that he doesn't hide his intentions well because of his inbuilt narcissism. That, and his inability to talk in a mature, professional way makes him an "outsider" :roll:. Is an immature narcissist without any real convictions in any ideology less dangerous than a golden tongued, seemingly do-gooder ideologue? I would say they are both bad but different beasts. Trump will use his power to exact revenge in the name of himself (and couch it poorly in some vague cause). He is transparently transactional. Quite the opposite of Kennedy's approach to being president. A long long way off. Both used their "star power" in different ways. Even Nixon, as paranoid, and dirty as he was in his campaigning, was immensely well-read and articulate on foreign policy matters. He had depth and knowledge of the position, even if his character was deeply flawed.

If you don't say how it might disagree, then that doesn't much help. — Banno

When a child is first learning language and points to the balloon and says “balloo” is that even a truth conditional type statement or just an example of joint attention seeking? What if he said “ball ball” when pointed? What if just said “look!” When pointing. I think Tomasello is saying that language starts as simply avenues for joint collaborative ventures. The content matters less than there is a form of “theory of mind” going on. That the person intends for you to see what they see and then a game ensues where the adult interacts with this, joining and making more complex interactions from there. This doesn’t seem to be about the validity of the content of what the world is about. That is synthetic and formal, not primary to “whence language”? It’s a philosopher’s take but not the empirically observed one from child development.

Hey! it wasn't a slide -- it was an ascent. — BC

Ha, funny, hopefully you also saw it in the positive sense that there was less "resistance" to change, rather than a more intractable slog.

It might have been the biggest cultural transformation that took place in history in the shortest amount of time between the years of 1963-1969. I'm trying to think of a time where more change could have occurred in that short amount of time in terms of social mores, economic and social legislation, and forms of dress and speech. Perhaps the 20s comes close.

I think Tomasello's more empirical approach might agree and disagree with Davidson on his idea of truth-condition statements and language. Rather, it is joint intentionality which can range all kinds of reasons, and is iterative. That seems to be what the research says.. Though there are echoes of Davidson's semantic triangle in Tomasello's research of joint attention.

Are you saying that these developing social behaviors were propelled and energized by disillusionment or that this mid century expression of hedonism was born in the face of political bewilderment and disappointment? I'm interested in your thesis but I just need to connect the dots. — Tom Storm

Yes both. The disillusionment was there perhaps, but nascent. It was the assassination that pushed it, and accelerated its effects more than if he was not assassinated. Perhaps the "Mad Men" era 50s and early 60s would have went straight on into the late 60s and beyond, no real "crack" between youth culture and previous generation as it happened.

But I did experience a 60's sense of radical change, linked to music, and to university politics, and to soft drugs, and to clever women. When I came to Berkeley in 1970, though, People's Park was locked up and Nixon was running things! (but there was still music, drugs and clever women) — mcdoodle

Indeed. I really liked your account there :lol: . Would that have been that way in some counterhistory with a second term, alive JFK? Perhaps, perhaps not.

I can imagine that for example the War on Terror would have had different effect on the young American males here on PF if they would have found themselves at an military outpost in some Iraqi town or in the mountains of Afghanistan. — ssu

Absolutely. It's that there is NOT a citizen-army in foreign wars since Vietnam that you see the decrease in radicalism. Korea squeaked by being so close to WW2, but yet, is that the only reason Korea was not protested as much? There is an interesting counterexample. The Korean War also had a draft and also killed 10s of thousands of Americans...

But back to your main point.. Vietnam was a direct result of Kennedy not pulling American advisory forces that were already there. He died before he was (probably) going to do that. LBJ immediately escalated.. So the result can be seen as very directly.

If the US still would have had the draft and not a volunteer force, far more would have served in Afghanistan and in Iraq than served in the Vietnam war, actually. — ssu

Probably.

How would one draw a direct connection between the assassination and these events? I hear about the libertine youth culture of the 1960's, but I wonder how extensive this was. All the people I know who were young back then were too busy working to be libertine for more than a few hours a week. I hear about all the things the 1980's were meant to be and although I was young then, I had no awareness of, or participation in any of it. All I could see in the 1980's was an increase in collective greed and narcissism and the neo-liberal noose tightening. — Tom Storm

I sort of tried to in the OP. Did this cursory attempt fail? Essentially, the distrust in government, the ramping of the draft, the free drugs and sex movement amongst the youth increased exponentially from 1964 onwards. Perhaps that was just inevitable based on the factors laid out in the OP and the ones that BC also mentioned...

As to today.. The drugs and sex use is around, but less of the activism. Perhaps this also addresses what @Ciceronianus mentioned about after 1975... The late 60s is felt in everything cultural since. The idealism however, has shifted as the forms of media and issues have changed, and technology in general. Isolated.. The 60s had enough and not enough technology to allow it to be what it was. Drugs, concerts, sit-ins, real life demonstrations and debates, not video games, social media, and philosophy forums perhaps.

To a non-American this seems a very weird idea. There was a schism between many young people of the 60's and their parents, but there were new bonds too: notably young white people supported Civil Rights in the USA, and in the UK young white people began to sing, play and modify black music. Young women were getting equal education in large numbers for the first time. And I remember a strong feeling of international connectedness, when as a young man I first left England to visit Europe in 1969, and the USA in 1970. We read Ginsberg, Kerouac, Saul Bellow, Sartre and Camus.

From across the sea I hated LBJ at the time for his rhetoric, and for carrying on the war till he didn't, but think in retrospect he was brilliant at what he achieved in domestic legislative change, whereas Kennedy seems like all front, looking back.

I think generalising about what 'baby boomers' in general subsequently did is a dangerous game. Over the course of a life, different sectors of a generation become important. The quiet people of the 60's became the Thatcherites and Reaganites of the 80's, while the previous radicals lost power - though the continued growth of feminism, gay rights and of advocacy by people of colour carried on in threads that didn't depend on who happened to be in power at the time. — mcdoodle

That was another question. How far did those reverberations go? This is a philosophy forum.. How influential are events in one country in the ripple effect of others? Certainly Britain (and the Anglo-world in general and Western Europe too), seems connected to the events in the US in interconnected ways...The Beatles coming to America and Elvis before could certainly be contenders for stepping up the level of cultural progressivism that followed.. but there is something about Kennedy's assassination that does seem like a dividing point.

Our parents endured that war and the Great Depression. Most of us were relatively well off, thanks to our parents. Vietnam caused some fear in us, but many were protected by exemptions. We were remarkably free to do as we pleased. We had the opportunity to experiment in new ways of thinking and acting others never had. Now, we simply want security. And money.

Look at us now. Indeed, look at us most any time since 1975. Where are the protestors, revolutionaries of the past? What "radical changes in culture" have taken place, through our efforts?

I doubt the myth of Kennedy and Camelot. JFK was a pragmatist (small "p"). He'd do what was necessary to get votes, though he might do it with more style and wit than other politicians. I don't think he'd have withdrawn from Vietnam. — Ciceronianus

But I guess my hypothesis I am proposing is that the cultural radicalism of the late 60s was precipitated more by his assassination. But that could be as I stated, "overmining" that idea. Perhaps it was minor in its contribution and it was going to go that way anyway... Certainly maybe no Vietnam, etc. So it's an interesting question. Would the late 60s look more like the early 60s without Kennedy's assassination?

And to this:

Look at us now. Indeed, look at us most any time since 1975. Where are the protestors, revolutionaries of the past? What "radical changes in culture" have taken place, through our efforts? — Ciceronianus

I think it is the same Baby Boomer generation that killed their own movements. When you have children you go from making All in the Family type shows about real social issues of the time, to Full House, and why did Uncle Jesse lose his cool. You go from the freedoms of your youth, the fears of your parents, and safety.. From Carter to Reagan.. From radical to Wall Street, and the rest. Look at Jerry Rubin.

It, with Watergate, helped reinforce a culture of conspiracy and mistrust in institutions which has now become rampant. — Tom Storm

Oh for sure, Kennedy's assassination, the lies about Vietnam during LBJ and Nixon, Watergate, Ford pardon (though best in hindsight) seemed to rip any pro-American unity after WW2, but it wasn't just political it seems. The Free Speech movements, and the X rights movements, the libertine youth culture of the 60s and beyond to today, seemed to start very soon after his assassination...

(That's what the Army - McCarthy hearings were about.) The commie/queer infestation conspiracy lasted well into the 1960s. — BC

Yes, and seems to been a bit more than projection from Roy Cohn and Joseph McCarthy. Interesting that Cohn is also tied up with Trump, as an early mentor on the New York scene in the 70s and 80s. It was Cohn, if I read this right, who most influenced Trump's unique talent to be able to lie, attack, and never admit fault. If you keep attacking and making even more brazen accusations and invective, you can get away with anything, and hide behind the ambiguities of the law. That is a huge aside but thought it was an interesting connection...

But there was a sense of unity in the post-war years that certainly seemed to completely crack at on November 22, 1963. The list you mentioned was certainly there, but would the slide into the hippies, and women and gay rights movements, and freedom of expression (more violence and sex in movies and media), have went down the way it would have? Would there not have been a more gradual change perhaps with a Jack Kennedy in power in 1967?

Right, so is the argument that, through an occupation of the Gaza strip, Israel might be able demilitarise it and then develop occupation policies that'll lead to a long-term rapprochement? — Echarmion

Yes.

@BC, please ignore the ad hoc ravings of certain posters here regarding my argument. They can’t bother to understand the argument, they mislabel it to poison the well. I’m ignoring the poster, as he’s bad faith arguing, not arguing any of the actual substance of the argument. Just thought you should be informed.

And how long do we talk about an US lead occupation in Germany? That ended in 1949, as you yourself said, the occupation wasn't forever. Even with this example, the difference is quite stark between the US lead occupation (and West Germany) and the Soviet occupation (and formation of East Germany).

The West Germans remember quite well how the US assisted West-Berlin with the airlift and Marshall Plan: — ssu

As I see it, you’re reiterating my points, not countering them. If you’re trying to say America responsibly reintegrated Germany and Japan and Israel should do the same, I agree.

The question is, do you think the relevant factor for their post war recovery was how thoroughly they had been destroyed — Echarmion

Now you are misconstruing my point which was AFTER they were bombed to hell they made sure that the countries were liberal democracies, friendly to the Allies, and demilitarized.

In Germany the US had already been as much a model to strive after as an object of hate. Americans and Germans did not have the kind of baggage Israel would have to deal with. — Echarmion

Because of this point that is why I don’t know what it would look like other than Abbas but he’s pretty weak. Perhaps an Arab coalition.

This idea that Germany and Japan were somehow remade out of while cloth by the allies, turning former barbarians into civilized people (as per RogueAI) is really weird. Is this somehow a result of how the history of WW2 is taught, that the continuity of either nation was permanently shattered? — Echarmion

Straw man as I didn’t state that, just facts. Allies utterly bombed the hell out of these countries and occupied them for a time.

Neither Germany nor Japan were transformed into killing machines by some evil spell, and neither nation just effortlessly switched back after the war. That the result was as positive has much to do with the integration of these countries into the anti-communist alliance, which justified lenient policies while providing a new sense of identity (very much abbreviated). — Echarmion

I mean yeah I agree so not sure why you phrase it like I didn’t think they did a good job afterwards allowing them to be reintegrated into the world community. It was still contingent on being a liberal democracy and being demilitarized to a large extent.

It would not be easy for Israel to pull off something similar. Centrally the current conception of the Israeli stated seems to me utterly opposed to giving the arabs en Masse some sort of unifying identity as a part of Israel. — Echarmion

That’s speculative. Hopefully Netanyahu gets kicked out but then again how solid was post war Germany at the beginning? However, from what seems to have been stated it’s some sort of entity that isn’t hostile to Israel but have no idea what that looks like. Again, tgst is just from what’s said, so speculation. You can do that too but then your speculation is just that too.

If the victorious allies would have had similar objectives, moving the Japanese out of their islands or the Germans out of Germany (or putting the people on reservations), I think both people wouldn't been so happy with the situation as they were now about the allied occupation. In fact, I think in that case the response 'land and the people' (or in the case of Japan, 'the islands and the people') would become central to the national identity of the countries. Hence it's quite logical why for the Palestinians for their identity the land of Palestine is so central. — ssu

But the US did occupy Germany and Japan after utterly destroying many of their cities. There’s even dozen or so US army bases still in Germany and in Japan. When Western and Eastern Germany was rebuilt, it was definitely in a new framework molded to each sides image. It doesn’t mean it was some occupied territory forever (but was for a time). It had to be a liberal democracy again though.

How likely do you think it is that Newsom could get the nomination? Would this work for the Dems? Commentators seem to think there is no chance it will happen. — Tom Storm

Perhaps it’s the same mistake as Ruth Bader Ginsberg. No one had the heart to just say your age is an issue. But then again, a moderate old man might be better than X. Newsom is from California, not a battle ground state. You need Midwest or South nowadays if you’re a Democrat.