Haha!

Oh! You want a different answer to the one I’ve given? Okay ...

Maybe because they wish to experience something ‘wholly other’. Meaning, as their sense of being and self is essentially tied to their ‘will’ (choices), then absconding and giving themselves over to some ‘other’ may seem appealing. People may do this due to trauma, curiosity and or purely by accident.

Another possible answer ... mmm ...? Do you have any suggestions?

I guess they may have seen someone else do this and they simply like the look of it, or they’ve been living too rigid a life and feel suffocated (there could no end of possible reasons for such a feeling).

However I see it it’s a matter of ‘comfort zones’ and ‘exploration’ and/or the neglect of them.

So the deeper question is why people are willing to respect authority. I believe I have already outlined my view.

To repeat, if you’re completely subservient to someone then you have little to no responsibility because you’re not making any decisions and therefore nothing is your fault. If you’re in full-blown rebellion then you’re taking on all the responsibility (whether you know it or not) and anything that goes wrong is your fault.

I’m not for a second suggesting reality is anywhere near this black and white, just pointing out that we give up certain ‘freedoms’ to relieve ourselves from the heavy burden of responsibility. We don’t tend to do this willy nilly though, and shift our sense of ‘responsibility’ to an authority figure, or authoritative structure, that we deem more able to cope - our choice is never absent we simply distance ourselves from it in order to ease the stresses and strains of living.

Some people just see an easy option and go for it. Some analyze more. All vary in their attitudes dependent upon the level of import they attach to the circumstances they are in. We never get anything perfectly right, but may see a vision of perfection in ‘what has been’ never in ‘what is’.

The manner in which religious ideas accumulate over time and jump from culture to culture - and/or manifest in the same manner in and of themselves - fascinates me no end.

Maybe we’re not on the same wavelength, either way it is interesting to read your thoughts.

I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what your take is on The Holy Spirit. Needless to say it is clear enough that the narratives contained within the bible have impacted society (especially western societies).

In reference to ‘religious authority’ I can bend that, quite a way, to be referring to what is terms ‘religiosity’ - a kind of psychological ‘susceptibility’ to phenomenon like hypnosis or merely an ability to suspend belief, etc.,. In terms of authority in general I think people like someone to take responsibility off their shoulders to some degree or another. The body of ‘authority’ (be this parents, teachers, political/religious figures) necessarily lifts the burden of responsibility off of people, but by doing so limits their freedom. Some will ‘respect’ authority and some will ‘rebel’ - it depends.

I’m still interested to hear what the ‘deeper question’ is explicitly if can spare a minute to point it out and/or outline it for me.

Thanks

Actually pinprick is more on point than you are here. A false idea almost certainly qualifies as a meme, but a meme doesn’t necessarily qualify as a false idea. Our scientific knowledge isn’t inherited genetically it is ‘inherited through memes’ (so to speak).

From the horse’s mouth:

“I have been a bit negative about memes, but they have their cheerful side as well. When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes. We are built as gene machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in facial features, in talent for music, in the colur of her hair. But as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved. It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. Our genes may be immortal but the collection of genes that is any one of us is bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conquered. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king’s genes. We should not seek immortality in reproduction.

But if you contribute to the world’s culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparking plug, write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G.C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong.

However speculative my development of the theory of memes may be, there is one serious point which I would like to emphasize once again. This is that when we look at the evolution of cultural traits and at their their survival value, we must be clear whose survival we are talking about ...”

- Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (p.199)

I'm looking for people who like what it is that I'm trying to do and have thoughts on how I can do it better. It seems you don't think I should be even trying to do this, and your only thoughts are on how it's awful, with no constructive suggestions for how to make it better. — Pfhorrest

This isn’t true at all. You asked for criticism and I’ve clearly offered constructive criticism.

Anyway, you’ve made yourself clear enough. If you have a change of heart let me know, if not no problem. I’ll not be bothering you anymore than I have appeared to already.

I literally said I do the same thing (ie. Not try hard enough, and that being human is the reason for this). The little bit at the end was directed at all humans. We try to try, to keep trying to try. The :D means *joke*

I think you’re just upset because you claimed you were looking for something yet did your best to avoid it. It happens, and it will happen again to you and me both. I’m not at all sorry if I touched a nerve. Sometimes things are better said than not and if in this instance I shouldn’t have pointed out what I pointed out it’s moot now - I said as I saw fit because I get upset seeing myself and others miss what’s right under their noses.

I don’t hold grudges because I know everyone has a necessary capacity to change - for better or worse. If may ‘feel’ like I attacked you, but I didn’t attack you because I don’t know you.

I was hoping to find something like a “philosophy fandom”, that might have that same kind of collaborative creative enthusiasm for “fan philosophical” works. But from what I gather even in contemporary video game fandoms that kind of spirit is hard to find these days, so maybe that kind of hope was always in vain.

(...but I’m trying anyway). — Pfhorrest

Not trying hard enough. Maybe you’re just not ready yet and find it easier to swallow if it’s ‘the world’ that’s against you instead of yourself.

We’re all human though. I do the same often enough and still hoodwink myself for days/weeks/months at a time. Slowly less and less, it is what it is, we are what we are, but we can instill ourselves a break our own destructive patterns if we manage to stop being consumed by hidden fears for a few brief instances (and they’re always brief or insanity ensues).

GL and keep trying to try, to try trying, to try :D

It wasn’t really ‘invented’. Roger Penrose has a nice way of summing up ‘reality,’ ‘mathematics’ and ‘consciousness’ by saying they all appear to operate under different sets of ‘rules’/‘laws’ yet they are also intertwined with each other.

I haven’t come across any arguments for psychologism that don’t have gaping holes in them.

A great many mathematical discoveries are made without any regard for the physical world. Long after such discoveries people do, sometimes, find that these discoveries are of practical use in terms of modeling reality - physics and mathematics feed of each other quite a lot (some would even argue they are different sides of the same entity).

If I was pinned down I’d say philosophy is nothing to do with either knowledge or intelligence in any direct sense. Philosophy is a cultural phenomenon that I would loosely frame as ‘applied curiosity’ - ‘knowledge’ would dictate where your curiosity was directed and ‘intelligence’ would dictate your success in expressing something given in a ‘fresh’ light or something ‘fresh’ in a given light.

Note: Expressing something given in a given light would be to confirm for others, whereas expressing something ‘fresh’ in a ‘fresh’ light would be mostly unintelligible babble to others.

In this basic outline ‘science’ would be foundation upon the ‘confirmed’ and metaphysics would skirt around the edges of the ‘given’ and occasionally fall prey to mysticism if it flies far beyond the edges of the ‘given’ (in terms of both expression and heuristic).

But what happened was that, although the part of work that is actually productive has been reduced, the amount of unproductive work has increased to an extraordinary degree; to the point were many, many jobs do not produce anything. — Banno

Again, what do YOU mean by ‘unproductive’ here? I don’t know what distinction you’re referring to. I’m assumed you wasn’t making a value judgement at first then you said ‘bullshit,’ so I’m wondering if you look at ‘unproductive work’ - whatever it loosely means in this case - as of no serious value (hence the ‘bullshit’ remark).

Not trying to be finicky, just trying see if you’re talking about a general ‘gist’ or something more rigid.

Thanks

EDIT: Didn’t notice there was a link! Taking away the garbage is doing something others don’t want to do. Due to red-tape as a result of alterations to laws, ‘control’ of ‘freedoms’ and such, there are just more non-physically directed jobs that people would rather not do. Are these in excess? I personally think there is at least too much momentum in thus direction.

One thing that annoyed me when I read some of Marx’s Das Capital was his blatant disregard for the ‘human value’ - fair enough as the work was essentially about economics.

This bring up all manner of issues such as whether or not a ‘belief’ in personal industry trumps any practical value for society - as with everything it very much depends on each individual situation AND because of these various nuances in social life the becomes more, protection of ‘freedoms’ replace personal responsibilities and freedom, and people end up oiling a machine that gnaws secretly at their sense of self-worth.

With more ‘leisure time’ comes more potential for introspection. Being faced with yourself is rarely an easy experience to deal with - with age it comes though, and for some it comes more readily than others.

How much traction the idea of UBI gets over the coming decades will be interesting to see.

What exactly do you mean by ‘unproductive’ work?

Proposition with no reference has no truth value. For example: “The king of France is bald.” — Congau

Not necessarily:

Truth values have been put to quite different uses in philosophy and logic, being characterized, for example, as:

primitive abstract objects denoted by sentences in natural and formal languages,
abstract entities hypostatized as the equivalence classes of sentences,
what is aimed at in judgements,
values indicating the degree of truth of sentences,
entities that can be used to explain the vagueness of concepts,
values that are preserved in valid inferences,
values that convey information concerning a given proposition.

Depending on their particular use, truth values have been treated as unanalyzed, as defined, as unstructured, or as structured entities.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-values/

Red Wibbles eat Lemons as a propositional statement is considered to be either true or false regardless of what Wibbles are. The same goes for a French King or you may as well argue that there is no clear line between having hair and being bald therefore ‘bald’ has no meaning.

Pick a map to work with and let those you’re speaking to know what map it is.

Join in or don’t join in. Your choice :)

On the other hand, it must rely on the fact that people actually want to respect religious authority, which opens a deeper question. — ernestm

Remove the ‘must’ or the ‘religious’. What deeper question?

Depends on the person. You’ll get the same from me either way :)

I imagine critiques will vary depending on how serious people are about it. Some people may not feel comfortable exposing themselves, but if they do they have to accept whatever cones their way - at least it’s practice if the critique they get isn’t useful to them.

This is an open forum where anyone can critique anyone as and when they please. This is merely an exercise for direct and sustained criticism over several weeks/months if there is enough interest.

All, any, none or whatever. Join in by writing and/or critiquing how ever you can.

I’m sure people will have different ways of doing things and this will trigger debates and discussions. If you just want to offer critique rather than write a piece that’s fine by me. I’ve just come up with an idea of what to write about now I just have to decide how I want to present it so people can possibly get some use out of it - if not, back to the drawing board no biggie! (There is always next week).

@Zophie

7 days. Go nuts! The word is ‘Chair’ go with it any you see fit :)

Honestly I’m just going open my dictionary every week and slap my finger down (just did it for a laugh and got ‘duodenary’). It doesn't really matter much what the word is really. The point is to write something and give and/or receive critique regarding how well written it is and/or debate the ideas embedded.

Personally speaking I’m doing this to improve my writing and critiquing. I’m interested in seeing what people come up with and I’ll comment about their ideas too if I feel like it, but my main focus is on how not the what. Communication skills and such. Rhetoric? I guess so if you want to put it like that. I just call it practice :)

A couple of people here have said they want to collaborate and exchange critique and so do I. This seems like a reasonable stepping stone toward something that could possibly be a lot more than it starts out as.

I’ve tried before. Maybe 200-1000 words would be more reasonable to encourage more people? Fewer words is usually harder I find.

As far as I understand Hedonism it is that life should be judged through pleasure and pain - obviously with the aim of maximising the former!

I’m here for punishment :D

@Pfhorrest@Gnomon

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8190/collaborative-criticism

Halfway through rereading the chapter now. Nope, it’s not merely ‘superstition’ either.

Like I said, it is about ‘culture’ in general - as in we don’t have ‘genes’ for science but we certainly don’t say science is a ‘superstition’. ‘Meme’ comes from ‘imitation’, we chop and change things - fashions - and some ‘memes’ manage to survive longer than others.

The main difference between memes and genes is that memes are seemingly irreducible.

Our genes allow us to have memes, but our memes don’t allow us to have genes.

Memes as conceived by Dawkins are not knowledge but propaganda. — unenlightened

That’s stretching the concept a little and then holding it in the corner. Generally speaking they are cultural markers that propagate due to our propensities to novelty and also our contrary reaction to normality.

Propaganda is the purposeful manipulation of the public to bolster certain political ideologies. Saying memes are propaganda is like saying all birds are swans. There is a relation for sure. I don’t believe Dawkins even mentions propaganda in the chapter on memes does he?

When there is conquest or rebellion there is death and destruction. I don’t think there is likely more to it than that.

If it was premeditated then is it the equivalent of modern ‘book burning’ and a cultural cleansing. History is strew with cultures being wiped of the face of the Earth with little remaining other than a few shards of pottery. Thankfully we have actual written accounts from the period that have survived and to my knowledge there isn’t anything substantial to suggest that it was done for any particular ‘point’. Much like Christians loping off cocks from ancient statues.

the most deadliest kind of barbarism usual comes under the guise of ‘civil society’. Such is the stupidity of humans - it’s not all death and destruction though! :)

Basically it means that purely objectively all choices are random and meaningless. Then with subjectivity we can express feelings about what the agency of the choices was. — Syamsu

Do you at least accept that these choices have nothing to do with what happened though? You may believe for example that you are patient and polite individual when you’re actually obnoxious, condescending and plain stubborn.

A non-naturalistic perspective of ‘the world’ is certainly revealing in terms of individual meaning. We all to some degree possess our own personal ‘mythos’ - full of thoughts and feelings that we’re unable to articulate and grapple with from day-to-day (directly or otherwise).

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by Logic fo Opinion? I can understand it as Use of Opinion, as we all have to make certain spontaneous judgements (which is an admixture of logic and emotion - reason necessitates both emotions and logic they are certainly not distinct entities).

Note: I’m an ‘intellectual wannabe’ and an idiot to boot. I’m okay with that, clearly you’re not. Why? I’m not trying to mock you here just curious why you have this need to call people stupid and talk down to them. Why not just ignore us and leave us alone - ie. not post on forums where you repeatedly get the same feedback. I don’t walk up to three years olds in the street and insult then for being short or emotionally immature.

Here’s something for you: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tz7zxh9Bfow

I won’t be saying anymore so feel free to throw out some more insults if it helps. They’ll be no response forthcoming.

I genuinely wish you the best. Bye bye :)

This is an Issue Syamsu has been having for a long time.

It doesn’t look like you’ve taken any advice given to you previously by numerous people. I don’t see anything here that you weren’t saying a long time ago. Did I miss something new you’ve added?

I still don’t see any serious attempt at explicating your terminology. Until you try a different approach you’re just going to keep banging your head against the wall I fear.

GL

This is the moral of the story, so to speak. It's the maxim that everything boils down to. — Pfhorrest

Yet all you give the reader is this:

It may be hopeless, but I'm trying anyway. — Pfhorrest

For a novel, yes it’s an intriguing opening. For a philosophical work I don’t care for it and it doesn’t tell me anything directly ... remember this is the opening sentence. If it’s the maxim of the book then why not simply state that it is the maxim of the book?

It was a response to this:

Before I even knew what philosophy was, I was looking for something. Something fundamental. I didn’t know what to call it.

When I discovered philosophy, I thought that that field was the place where I would find what I was looking for, and that that was the name of what I was looking for: a philosophy. The right one.

I didn’t find it. But I found lots of partial attempts at it, and partially successful attempts at it, and generally, altogether, most of the parts of it. They just needed to be shaped and polished a bit, assembled together in the right way, and a few gaps filled in.

That’s what my book is meant to be: the thing I came to philosophy looking for, but never found. And it’s targeted at people like me from 20 years ago, who are looking for the same thing I was, and who have just learned that something called “philosophy” is where something like that may be found, but don’t yet know the first thing about it. — Pfhorrest

Put that in your intro then and dump the other opening because it doesn’t work (I would recommend you change one of the iterations of ‘something’ though).

I don’t quite follow your line of thinking here?

For starters wars and conflicts around the globe have dramatically decreased over the past century. You’ve made a sweeping statement that has no supporting evidence.

Men tend to be more aggressive (speaking statistically - but the difference isn’t huge). So that would possibly back up your claim. Given that there have been very few women leaders and that currently we’re living in one of, if not the, most peaceful period of modern history (last 500 years or so) I don’t see how this indicates women would’ve made any significant difference if they were in positions of leadership or not - Thatcher still went to war and so did Elizabeth I, but that isn’t a true reflection of who they were only the problems they were faced with in the times they lived.

If you have, as you say, ‘no understanding or data’ regarding how women run a country in anyway different from a man (if you had the data it would only represent a small slice of reality) and then say you’re ‘very much sure’ either way seems a little preposterous don’t you think?

I don’t honestly think having men or women in leadership makes any significant difference, yet during our current time it does have a societal impact on countries where equal opportunities are not currently present. In the far future I doubt anyone will care much about whether or not their leader is male or female, and I think that attitude is fairly well established in many modern societies already.

Oh right ... this is about history! Have fun :)

This person will interest you if you haven’t come across her already:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynne_Kelly_(science_writer)

I understand what you’re saying. You should listen to the advice given to you. Our lives and interests sound relatively similar.

I’ve always done things the hard way. Jumping in the deep end has benefits, the thing I‘ve learnt more and more, in terms of completing a project, is that jumping in the deep-end does nothing in terms of productive work (but it certainly expands personal experience and learning). They are NOT the same thing though.

I challenge you to write what your book is about in 200 words only. Try several ways of doing this, including writing with the assumption that your audience knows how you think and has your knowledge, writing with the assumption they know nothing about philosophy and don’t really care to, or write it like it’s a narrative laced with analogies and symbolism.

If you are as persistent as you say keep failing and enjoy failing.

Understand, like everyone here I am talking mostly to myself. No one cares what I write, because in reality they only care about how they can make use of what they read.

If you’re really looking for what you say you’re looking for I’m here. We can do it privately or publicly, doesn’t matter either way to me. I want what you say you want. We can pick something to write about and feed of each other (tell each other what stands out for good/bad reasons, etc.,.)

I wasn’t being impatient? Just said that in relation to your other post where you made explicit your waxing and waning on this project.

You sound like you have the right attitude as does your gf. She’s meant to encourage you and support you. I’m not here to support you and encourage you in anything like the same manner.

Again, I’m not the one asking for a critique, but you are? I gave a quick example of how to engage with the reader quickly. Given that you missed the point of it I’ll make this clearer ...

1) Gist sentence about subject matter.
2) Pose a problem to the reader and hint/show ‘value’ - things like ‘many people,’ ‘but,’ and ‘although’. Why should the reader care?
3) Questions make the subject more concrete and actively engage with the reader - rather than passively absorbing words.
4) Avoid long lists, especially in an introduction to the subject matter.
5) State position as clearly as possible before explaining why you have this position.

When I said ‘high-school’ I meant that in such essays you are writing to show comprehension. If you’re writing a book/essay you’re writing for your audience and given the subject matter you have to address the audience differently because the audience is different.

I’m still unsure what your aim is. You seem to be writing something that is an introduction to philosophy, an educational resource, your own personal philosophical view, and a critique of philosophy in general. If it’s educational (textbook) then terms like ‘I’/‘we’/‘us’ should be avoided as much as possible. I don’t need to know about your personal story or journey; I don’t care (in terms of a educational piece of writing.

If you’re going for something more like ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ though, I’d certainly go into more personal detail.

The thrust of what I’m saying is that I don’t know who this is for and I not convinced you do yet either. I’m getting mixed messages due to how it is lain out. The ‘set up’ matters a lot because people like to know what they are getting themselves into.

My own critique of my critique here would be to say I should really give positive feedback too. I like a lot of the content because I’ve looked at your essays before. I judged you to be someone less concerned with compliments and more likely to take criticism seriously if it was straight up - if you were a student it would be a different matter and I’d likely use a more ‘encouraging’ tone.

What do you mean? ;D

You probably just need a tonne more persistence and the resolve to finish a project (which will be flawed regardless of how much you try to perfect it). Even then you may feel that it was all in vain ... so what? Move on and do something else.

A collection of essays is a collection of essays. Try writing something about one particular topic in depth first. Very few people, if any, start bu writing a 500 page piece. They start small, perfect their craft, and more than likely end up writing something substantial that leaves their original ideas in the dust.

If no one cares what you write and you cannot find the experience you want take this on as the primary challenge of your life right now - think about the how and why you cannot find what you want here, or elsewhere, and deal with that first.

I’ve tried to set up groups online before where the aim was for people to write between 1000-2000 word mini-essay on a given topic and then exchange critique (including layout, presentation, style, and/or content). You won’t find anyone here willing to this, but you will find critique from others on writing forums (not here because people don’t care really, they just want to be ‘heard’ for the most part not ‘help’ - who can blame them, look at the majority of the content on this site).

I’m more than willing to start off something that can be of mutual benefit. Maybe start by writing something that is just 500-1000 words. The less you have to work with the more you can get out of it.

Have you abandoned this now? Do you understand what I’m pointing out in terms of presentation?

Note: To repeat; nothing to do with the content. The point being if you’re not engaging with your target audience then the content doesn’t matter because no one will be willing to read further.

If you want critique of your ‘ideas’ that won’t happen until you improve how to present them. It’s bloody hard work, and for the most part the process won’t be particularly rewarding or fun because you’ll have to cut away swathes of yourself as you refine and remake how you think/articulate to the point where you can be your own audience rather than simply throwing ideas at a wall without considering at better technique to make them stick.

Sometimes the fault is mostly with the reader and sometimes the fault is with the author. There is always some fault in both. You have to be honest with yourself and with your audience. Very few people will just pick something up and read it start to finish. People may select something at random, but they decide relatively quickly whether or not they are going to continue reading or move on.

The narrower your target audience the harder it will be to judge the impact of your words. If you’re writing for academia then you need to study academic writings in your area of interest. If there is no ‘area of interest’ and what you have is ‘original’ you just have to accept the fact that it’s not ‘original’ but simply ‘unwanted’. That doesn’t have anything to do with the ‘value’ of your writing though.

Note: You may find it both interesting and useful to look at literary theory, and to research different forms and styles of writing - maybe practice writing the same thing for different audiences (for early teens, adults, students, teachers, professionals, amateurs, intellectuals, etc.,.)

What are you talking about and why should I care?