The thing has an option for reversing colors. I found it by accident.

I just use the Windows "Magnifier" that came with the PC unit. It is not perfect but does okay for me. I haven't tried the others I see being marketed.


Looks pretty effective but I understand the EULA for that can kill you.

There are apps for that.

I think there is value in Vygotsky's approach to schizophrenia. He helped form many ways of thinking of the use of concepts as the "internalization" of social relationships and processes (cf. Piaget,etc,) but also argued against the "regression to older ways of thinking" as only a matter of individual development.

His emphasis on comparing what "normal" people do with what schizophrenic people cannot is not framed in the context of individual development. The approach militates against the language of identity formation such as put forth by such psychologists as Erik Erikson. Vygotsky insisted that regression of abilities is never simply growth moving in reverse.

This website has a large collection of Adler. He was also an important developer of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The man was a scholar worthy of much respect. I just happen to disagree with his opinion on a number of matters.

By saying that the encyclopedic format shouldn't replace works, I do not mean to say that it is useless.

I am not interested in "manners". I am not interested in following people, whatever that may mean.
You have a particular animus in regards to Krishnamurti, very well then.
I have read Plato. Does that give me some kind of mark? What if I am stupid about what I read in Plato?
If this is really important to you, don't treat it as something that is self-evident.
Nothing that is important is self-evident.

I am open to the idea of challenging the statement.
But your reading of it is incredibly puerile. It is so far from the intent of the expression that you may be making fun of yourself.

You have satisfied yourself. But none of your descriptions illuminate the matters under discussion.
You refer to a set of presumably obvious factors that have no bearing to the subject at hand.
I truly cannot understand or decipher your text as a predicate.

If it turns out that you have not captured the essence of what you have so much contempt for, what does the effort amount to?

You have given yourself no way to examine the matter. It is an intellectual dead end.

Okay.
But it will take me a bit of mulling.
I only do quickly what requires no time.

There are a lot of expressions of the distance between a purported creator and resulting product that are presented as what we are living through. Making it a matter of absolute identities is kind of boring. If the subject matter only involves a certain number of syllogisms, then that is proof enough that the subject of discussion is fundamentally a mistake.

So now the arguments devolve into whether the accepted inclusion of possible arguments are inclusive enough or not.

I just lost feeling in my lower extremities. The wind is playing with the trees outside.

Then claim something for yourself. Otherwise it is all about what others fail to do.

1956

I take your request to help connect elements seriously but I am concerned that it may not be helpful.
We talked about this stuff many moons ago. I don't want to say if something applies to your situation but stay strictly in how some things help me. Your results will certainly vary.

The caustic effective agent that sweeps into my mind and turns my desires and objectives into crap is so sure of itself. It is me but also not me. So much so that I am a lot like other people that need to be put at a distance and worked around if not to gutter in their extremity.

So, the experience means there are multiple persons who play at being me and I am not the casting director. Maybe I am sleeping with the director but that is mostly a story that i cannot independently verify. I am like an undercover agent planted in the criminal enterprise of my own life.

If you understood that, you are probably at least as screwed up as I am.

Are you getting a feeling for the metrics I am trying to establish here?

Follow?

Not sure what you're talking about. — Bartricks

Yes, I see that.

Shouldn't you wait to uncork that particular vintage for someone who is actively promoting Krishnamurti's point of view rather than wasting it on someone who noticed in passing that your statements were problematic, considered on their own merits?

You equate the limits of self awareness with whether you are all that you perceive?
That's nuts.

It seems you can catch glimpses of yourself being yourself. The confidence that those are your fingers and not someone else's. You use the language of reflection. It sounds like you want to take advantage of a whole way of referring to our experience to deny an experience.

You just made an observation about your activity as an observer.

Bridge of Sighs.
Ptolemy's Brain Glow.

It is interesting that you understood my remark about taking pleasure in cruelty as a kind of gratitude. I see it more as a perverse joy in hurting things. And who is more convenient to hurt than oneself?

I am pretty sure that I learned how to shame myself by being shamed by others. But the connection does not uncover the automacy of the denigration. Is that not what you are asking about? The way it appears like a bad guest who won't leave despite many entreaties?

This is a really difficult subject.

I see the automatic quality of the self denigration. I see myself taking pleasure in it while it hurts me.

I feel that I learned this from others but none of the likely suspects are anywhere near as good at it as I am at hurting myself.

I don't have a story that explains it but see that many stories are trying to explain it.

This thing of being trapped in myself is oddly connected to everything else I observe. But if I turn that observation into a thing, I lose sight of the original sighting.

On the positive side, the whole experience has made me very skeptical of certain kinds of reports. I may be dumb as a rock but if I can't trust myself to get out of this mess, I don't trust myself to be the cause of it all either.

The methods for criticism are framed within the larger task of analysis:

I. The first stage of analytical reading: rules for finding out what a book is about
1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter
2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity
3. Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline those parts as you have outlined the whole
4. Define the problem(s) the author has tried to solve. — M Adler

If the book being read adopts these criteria for it own purposes, then perhaps the expository task of explaining meaning this way is not a simplification or translation of ideas into the most easily digestible form possible.

But if the book makes use of many explanations and arguments to serve a number of purposes that may not all agree with each other or to show a limit of expression, then the encyclopedic type of exposition excludes itself from participating in the conversation past a certain point.

My objection is also fueled by M Adler's arguments in his other works regarding the promotion of "common sense" articulations of philosophical thought over the uses of the esoteric. While the pragmatism of this approach is commendable as a means to improve our public discourse, it avoids the difficulties of hearing many works through their own voices.

This all sounds too prescriptive...a bit like the Do's and Don'ts of Tim's outline. — Amity

I meant to echo what Fooloso4 said about not letting secondary writing cancel the experience of letting primary writing speak for itself. Perhaps my expression of it is prescriptive. I see it more as a challenge to myself than as a rule or method that leads to particular results.

What I dislike in Adler's description of criticism is the assumption that all ideas can be stated as arguments that we can stand outside of and view together. Taken to an extreme, the encyclopedia comes to replace the knowledge it would organize.

From one point of view, I am an alien who fell to earth who spends most of her time nattering to myself about how crappy this planet is.
From another point of view I am the sharpened tool of generations making tools. I am very effective and it would be unwise to fool with me.
So, both are true.

Adler's depiction of analysis suggests a map where different ideas can be found in relation to one another. The approach has merit as a way to start talking about works. It is certainly the case that many ideas do have relationships with others. But I have two objections and one observation.

It is difficult to hear what is being said if the words already have a place in the commonly received collection of what has already been said. From that point of view, there is no reason to say anything more than has already been said. Reading should catch you alone and unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.

Listening to the new is a problem for books read many times or just for the first time. One quality pertaining to reading very familiar texts is that the words become interwoven in ways that stop being an argument for this or that formula of dispute or decision whereby some predicate can be repeated by another predicate.

Adler's depiction of criticism does not include a place for that form of life.

A while back, fdrake made a helpful comment showing one way to understand the "infinite extension" component.

As a matter of causality, Spinoza is not defining anything that comes from something other than itself to be an illusion. Our existence depends upon not being so wrong about that sort of thing that our ignorance kills us. Humans have to frame the world as means to ends. Spinoza is telling his Christian brothers that they are anthropomorphising the Creator. In addition, he was exiled from his Jewish community for expressing such views. The approach amounts to starting with one's experiences as authentic information that other people want to fool with.

I am hard pressed to imagine something further removed from nihilism.

Thorny topic. Guaranteed to piss off everybody. I like it.

It seems to me that how we talk about some one or thing being an agent is the fork in the road.
Maybe a cast back in time to William James promulgating Pragmatism is a way to start since he thought there could be some path that included both.

Please read javra's post on how logic is universal. — TheMadFool

I was not contesting the notion that "nature" demonstrates universals through the expression of individual beings being whatever they are according to some order that is given through the fact of them being because they are caused to be. So, when you ask:

So, my question can be framed as: "Why do we have rules when in fact we should be having laws?" — TheMadFool

It seems that you want to frame what is peculiarly human against a background of an existence that is ordered without provision for that possibility. A freaking fluke accident, if you will.

The emphasis upon not having others determine one's decisions constantly points to how we betray ourselves in that regard. The The Enchiridion by Epictetus is not a work that concerns itself with what provides the ultimate fulfillment to our endeavors but is a manual of training to help a fighter get better at fighting.

A knife is not a spoon.

It is easy enough to explain experiences by a narrative of circumstances that bring them about.
Unless, of course, the explanation is troubling in itself or requires much work on the part of the listener.

Whatever is the foundation of our appearance, it is only available for discussion through a story. We weren't there then.

So I am skeptical of the notion we have advanced much further than our ancestors did. My ancestors told me to be careful about this sort of thing. But now I have my own reasons to carry a stick on walks.

Philosophy has taught me that in the center of our discourse there are innumerable numbers of separations between us that require levels of patience, love, and commitment to the truth that probably none of us can subtend.

Continuing, we know that every aspect of humanity, everything we do, has a pattern "resembling" the laws of nature — TheMadFool

Before confirming or denying that, the question of whether there is a human nature needs to be asked. If one posits that the language that has developed through the idea is actually a misguided interpretation of other elements, then what is understood to be "natural" is not the same nature as the one described as a special set of conditions that pertain to our species.

I have no idea how he does this, but I am certain that every thought, no matter what, is put under the microscope in his own system. — Pussycat

Hegel does not consider a lot of things. His "system" is built upon certain principles. The method makes some things more important than others. The selection relates to what he considers the issue in his idea of development. To say that means he could have an opinion about anything that anybody said is to abandon his project and just treat the work as another opinion among others.

Whether he succeeded or not in reaching the goals he set out for himself is one thing. Referring to those goals as a given is another.

"Classical Theism" is only what you decide it will be. It is not a thing delivered to a person with an instruction sheet.
If it were, then we would not have to talk about it.

One way I look at the limit of reason stuff in Hegel is that he was a horse who got out of his corral when a gate was left open.
He galloped for a while and then stopped because he expected there to be another fence after the one he got past.

Noumena is a Greek word that is plural. Which is weird if one wanted to translate it as a place where other stuff happened or not. Maybe more than one thing is "noumena."

Chances are, this is one of those topics where people tend to accept terms at cross purposes.

The pros and cons of using secondary literature have been discussed elsewhere. In other group discussions. It almost always comes up with some suggestion, or 'suspicion' that it is 'cheating' your own reading of the original text. I argue that if one is using them effectively and with a critical eye, then the benefits can outweigh any potential swaying. Indeed, reading different perspectives might counteract one's own bias or pre-judging. — Amity

I never thought about relying upon secondary choices as "cheating" or encouraging poor judgment. The tradition of reading I was instructed within recognized that translations and explanations of terms are "secondary" help to being able to encounter the writing "as is" as much as possible. I need the help because I did not get to go to the party the Symposium describes.

The emphasis upon having as little as possible stand between you and a writer is for the sake of having a certain kind of experience. The writer writes to incite a response and the reader accepts those conditions for a little while. This experience inevitably leads to the sensation that different people are reading different texts.

That is where the dialectic starts.

A modern phrase (first used before Hegel!) suffices here: "hermeneutic circle." More accurately, spiral. in simplest terms, as you go 'round and 'round with a thing, or idea, it makes the more sense. "Circle" referring variously to a "circle" of texts that inform (by successive recourse to) on the text in question. Or because the Greek root means translate/interpret, which in itself evokes a "taking counsel with," implying an other even it the other needed be found only in one's own critical awareness. — tim wood

The hermeneutic circle is a good idea to bring into this topic. It is an element in the experiences Hegel describes and also reflects how he is in the circle himself as the origin of many discussions and disputes about ontology and epistemology. In spite of those conditions, I read the Phenomenology as an attempt at escaping the circle of "avoiding learning how to swim before getting in the water." When I read that section of the Logic, I wonder whether Hegel avoided the situation he said Kant was stuck in. Does he escape the problem of being "outside" of his method?

Some of that wondering goes in the direction being explored by Fooloso4:

Another thing might be that each thing must be other than all other things. Is the whole other than itself? In one sense since there is nothing other than the whole of what is then there would be nothing other than the whole. But self-knowing requires the self to treat itself as is object of knowledge. — Fooloso4

A greater part of my wondering goes toward how "Self-Awareness" comes into being through its experiences and the role harsh necessity and "un-freedom" play in that. The negativity of the conscious individual meets the negation of the other individuals. The logic of how these events unfold leads to freedom and self-awareness. I accept that something like the structure of a Preface is needed to talk about experience this way. To see conflict as part of a process requires the use of synthesis for it to become past. From that point of view, Hegel is keenly aware of his "absorption" in his time and history. He is a major part of why we talk that way now.

On the other hand, the idea that the process has reached a kind of completion is at odds with the instruction to stay in the water. The ever expanding generations of Hegel's critics dig into the negativity he did not explore. By the turn of his own method, that points to elements and processes he was not aware of.

In my mind, it is that relationship between the dialectic and understanding that is still alive and kicking.