But in reality nothing anyone does is going to prevent this. Whether wealthy countries self isolate or not, it will not make any difference in the poorer countries, they are doomed regardless. — Punshhh

I do. It can be lessened by loosening the constriction on the global economy sooner rather than later. Meaning don’t ‘play safe’ to save our own consider the world at large.

I gave too extreme examples. There should be an area where both extremes are mitigated for everyone’s benefit. The issue still remains how to judge the limits of that area and make reasonable predictions.

Maybe a mere a 3-4 million will die this year of the virus due to extreme measures taken. Then ... the economic down turn causes massive worldwide poverty which essentially kills hundreds of millions over the following year. That simply doesn’t seem like either a morally or logically robust stance to take.

I really want to see virologists and world economists bringing this to the forefront of public discussion more quickly or we could inflict a greater loss of human life than is necessary. Whatever happens it’s a tough thing and I hope we don’t avoid measuring the value of individual human lives against each other on such a scale in favour of avoiding the burden for doctors and nurses on a potentially much smaller scale.

The concern I have being the locality of the problem both temporally and physically. We don’t want doctors and nurses to decide who lives and who dies at all ... but if they are forced into such decisions and down the line save many many more lives by allowing countries to run moe smoothly it would be an unfortunate burden I’m sure they’d be willing to carry.

Let’s just not merely ‘hope’ about this. Hard decisions shouldn’t be avoided regardless of how awful they are. Avoiding such things will only cause more harm down the line. I guess that is the ultimate test for humanity today more than ever in our minuscule history on this Earth.

I’m happy to get stuck into this more. In short Culture is viewed by Nietzsche as Culture of the Masses and Culture of the Individual as far as I can tell. To call oneself ‘cultured’ - as you alluded to with listening to Chopin - isn’t really anything like what I take Nietzsche to mean about Culture.

He is extremely contrary in places and loved to toy with his readers - call that obnoxious/bombastic or whatever, doesn’t matter to me.

I stand by what I said. TBoT is pretty important to see where he is coming from. I’ve not read everything of his (and probably never will). The core of it runs through the animalistic (dionysus) side of humanity and the rational (apollian) side of humanity. In turn they seem to be sided off against, and complimentary to, each other in terms of individual, uninhibited will and the social aspect of humanity that allows reason to bring us together. The ‘master’ and the ‘slave’ are essential to each other and religions part in this was under some scrutiny from Nietzsche. By this I mean to take what Nietzsche says (rightly or wrongly?) as stating loosely that the ‘norm’ is the destruction of creativity, the passive builds great potential and humanity as one and humans as individuals are under this constant duress whether they notice it or not - the ‘masters’ being those who are willing to face the struggle and whose followers will inevitably become ‘slaves’ to the new ‘norm’ the previous ‘masters’ brought into being. The ‘Beyond’ is recognition of ‘the Good person’ and ‘the Bad person’ as dictated by mass appeal and the haves and have nots, rather than what is actually ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ - hence the use of the term ‘Evil’ - as outlined in the closing part of the first essay of ‘On the Genealogy of Morals’ (the title of that work being a pretty loud call back to The Birth of Tragedy and his view on ancient Greek Tragedy (ill-formed or otherwise).

I think it absolutely necessary to read The Republic, Poetics and The Birth of Tragedy to get to grips with Beyond Good and Evil properly AND then follow it up with On the Genealogy of Morals. From what he himself says ‘Thus Spake ...’ is the best account of his thoughts ... I found it too cumbersome and so I’ve been working my way toward it via the route given (which has been extremely insightful for me along side other works from Schiller, Rousseau and others).

The Poetics cracked it all open for me personally, but I’m sure many others find different routes.

My fault. It does look like I meant those stats were from US when it was only the first sentence.

Just a knee-jerk reaction brought on by discussions I’ve had here before where certain people assumed everything I stated was only in reference to the US.

As for the over/under reacting question. I think it’s extremely important to pay attention to the global implications of prolonged lockdown - especially for less developed countries who simply don’t have the economic fluidity to sustain the kind of blows nations like France, UK, Germany, South Korea and China can.

It’s a matter of picking the best of several bad choices - each one carries an element of randomness too.

At the extremes - which are useful to consider - letting the virus run rampant is estimated to cause 100 million deaths in the year (with a large margin of error). That would create herd immunity and things would stabilize at that terrible cost. The other extreme is almost continual lockdowns for 12-18 months to develop a vaccine and stave off the worst effects, which may cause so much damage to developing countries that the death toll may surpass 100 million in the long term.

I’ve been looking for papers/articles written by experts in BOTH economics and virology ... not much luck though. I guess they’re not exactly two fields of interested that dovetail too often except in terms of pharmacology and sales :(

We were talking about Nietzsche.

Basically a person without Culture, inner or outer, is a weak and dangerous person as they’ll look to disrupt others rather than strengthen themselves through toil and stress (life). — I like sushi

This a basic comment on Nietzsche’s view above. He actually has high praise for the Jews - ‘On the Geneaology of Morals’ was written to tie off any particular misunderstandings in BG&E (he pretty much states this himself from what I recall).

Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor-General of Poland, passionately played Chopin's Polonaises while exterminating Poles, especially Jews. I don't think the "Culture" prevents social dangerousness. — David Mo

The tied old attempts to parallel Nietzsche’s thoughts with Nazism are ridiculous for starters. Above you implied a meaning to “Culture” as being something entirely different from what I was referring to in reference to Nietzsche.

Note: Nietzsche actually has high praise for the Jews it was his sister who gave him a bad name - that is common enough knowledge. Well, he wasn’t exactly amiable either so dislike toward his bombastic tone doesn’t go unwarranted (a matter of taste perhaps?).

The context was Nietzsche? I wasn’t throwing around colloquial tidbits. If you look at exactly how he views the term ‘Culture’ - that’s why I referred to TBOT as a good starting point.

Sorry, I forgot the US was the all that mattered. That just reinforces my point that not enough people are thinking of this in terms of the global economy and how this will impact on the poorest long term.

Yet many here dismissed my post on this matter and hypotheticals as ‘pointless’. The very same people are now ‘washing their hands of responsibility’ in more inventive ways no doubt.

Hypothetical scenarios - when taken seriously - prepare people for unforeseen scenarios they would previously have deemed highly improbable to impossible.

You’re seriously under selling your point with those stats.

22,000 people in the US have died of the flu THIS YEAR already. HIV? How about heart disease which kills nearly 20 million a year. Cancer, around 10 million. Malaria, 1 million. Corvid ... at worst it may, just possibly, nearly compete with cancer this year. If I’m being honest I think it’s more realistic to view it as maybe competing with malaria.

The real issue is what will happen when the next strain comes around. That could be terrible - they’ve been warning about this for years already.

You made my point for me ... ? If you think slaughtering people to Chopin is a sign of ‘Culture’ ... well, I think you get the point - understanding what is meant by ‘culture’ and what role art and religion plays in this is PRECISELY why looking at The Birth of Tragedy and ancient Greek philosophy helps. Anyway, this forum isn’t for me. I shouldn’t have bothered y’all.

Enjoy and bye :)

It’s complex.

Beyond Good and Evil is hard to fathom without understanding it alongside his other work, so taking one paragraph out of the context of this particular work - AND without understanding the broader interest Nietzsche had - is not going to help much.

Basically a person without Culture, inner or outer, is a weak and dangerous person as they’ll look to disrupt others rather than strengthen themselves through toil and stress (life).

The ‘war’ is in us not out there. Generally no one wishes to admit this though as it means we’re more at fault than others, and the most cutting point is that we are prone to ignoring this in favour of blaming others: the realisation of this self defeating mindset tends to cause more guilt and therefore more refusal to admit responsibililty.

Of you’re really interested in Neitzsche start at the start (The Birth of Tragedy). The problem is you’ll quickly find that you’ll need to learn a good amount about Plato (views on Art and society) and Aristotle (‘Poetics’ especially) before you can get to grips with Nietzsche - he uses the ancient Greeks as a means of expressing a number of ideas.

GL

It is starting to look very much like people are trying their hardest not to make sense, yet appear to make sense by spitting out streams of words and pretending they have full control of them.

Too many holes to poke at, too much ambiguity, and what is likely to follow is going to be either bordering on the mystical or hidden neatly away in postmodernist jargon.

The ‘mind’ exists just as solidly as a ‘cat’ exists. The point is they are both referential - convenient and frugal - communications of shared experience. We know they are shared because we wouldn’t be able to ‘refer’ to them otherwise. The hard physicalistic position of ‘mind’ isn’t there but brain is, is a pointless stance.

Nor is the approach of Derrida much use here as he’d only mock the situation and ask ‘does existence exist?’ or some other flatulence.

There is a mind, a chair, a table, a book and a cat, and the ‘isness’ of Heideggerian wordplay is only slightly less useful than Derrida’s. The ‘is’ and the ‘being’ are references of references of a referential referent ... round and round we go in a non-explanatory circle *YAWN*

Any attempt to narrow the phenomenological disposition of ‘being human’ necessarily cuts away the ‘essence’ by referring to some ‘it’ as ‘essence’. They’re there to make it known we known know as we DO NOT know what we don’t know if we can refer to it.

The mock rage I am expressing right now does make some ‘intention’ felt.

We don’t know what time is, what gravity is, nor what a bloody chair is.

Practically the thing I am currently aware of is my huge disappointment with what I‘ve read here. People tell me I expect too much, but really I only hope for something ... I’m still waiting to discover something. I just read fat upon fat upon fat, where’s the meat?

In room full of hedonists and egos what is there to learn? The most insightful moment of my life came without worded thought - the foolish part of me has been pretending since that time that I can express such an experience.

I resign. Funnily enough that is the answer of answers, the rest is just makeup on what was never viewed as an already perfect face of existing. Your hollow fruits have starved me!

Be at it dogs! May you all burn in silent screams with rictus grins defiant at your own pains and suffering. Scum floats to the top so don’t fear rising - better that than skulk in the depths with shadow puppets as a corrosive comfort of ‘meaning’.

A small point. Can geometry really be saved this way? Does Kant not need to assume that we all intuit space the same way? And how can he see anyone's beetle in their box? The truths of Euclid seem to depend on shared practices. Trying to ground science on an individual mind seems iffy. What does Kant assume without realizing it? I still think Kant is great. — mask

This is extremely hard to explain without saying ‘read Kant’. He is careful with he words - too careful perhaps - and asks a lot of his reader.

The most simplistic way to view all this is, as I previously said, by regarding a priori as the canvas and a posteriori as the paint - either alone produce no picture and it is only through the former (a priori) that we make this deduction. AND we only able to know deductive reasoning because of inductive reasoning.

From therein Kant proceeds to cut and slice away at these ideas arrives at the categories and the terminological application of ‘noumenon’ and ‘phenomenon’ to better represent these initial points (a priori and a posteriori).

Perhaps the most baffling step is getting past ‘a priori knowledge’ not being known - see introduction to deal with that point. He’s more than worth a read.

I’m mostly in that camp with your friends. He does well to make clear some of Husserl’s ideas, but overall he narrows the phenomenological interest to language alone.

He’s quite popular on this forum I believe so you’re going to get something more in line with your thinking from others.

In phenomenological terms the whole subject/object issue isn’t much of an issue at all.

Not that hard, yet numerous professors have been at loggerheads about the true meaning of his work for decades.

What happens is students go to university and their professors tell them the ‘true meaning’ of Kant. Then they meet other students who’ve been told something different by a different professor OR their professor was astute enough to let them know that COPR has been a contentious text since its inception.

Read Kant in full. Guides are generally opinions of Kant - and there are MANY differing opinions.

It’s just a silly paranoid power play. There is no immediate threat. Russia is simply fearful of US paranoia. It has to protect its economic sway in terms of power production. The US has a living generations of people instilled with the Big Red Nasty and so even though the war is long over they still have the infantile reactionary need to crush the skull of the defeated into the dirt.

The issue is economic in terms of supplying oil to Europe. If the US was allowed to do as it pleases in Iraq, Syria and Turkey then Russians wouldn’t have a monopoly on direct pipelines to Europe. That’s just the simple fact of the matter.

At the end of the day they’re both happy to kick shit up in someone else’s backyard rather than in their own. Yeah, we’re likely going to see someone try and drop a bomb at some point in the middle east, and that is basically preferable for the main players involved - but not for Iran, Israel or any other unfortunate puppet used in these silly games.

Aa long as the region is antagonised both Russia and the US remain relatively happy about it. If the middle east was to listen to each other and work together (as Gaddafi pointed out) then things would het better for them VERY quickly ... but that ain’t gonna happen because Saudi’s are loving under a monarchy and basically don’t much care to do anything other than sit back and watch the piles of cash rise.

On the optimistic side of things Saudi Arabia is slowly, and I mean SLOWLY, going through social change that will give its peoples greater freedom.

If it wasn’t Iran it would be some other country of convenience to play some other silly game that the average citizen of most countries don’t really give a shit about.

Iran is not ‘breathing down the necks’ of anyone, nor will they be anytime soon. Nonsense! When did Iran invade anyone? MANY documents from the CIA have been made public since their contribution in the Iraq-Iran war (backed by the west).

Destroy the US how exactly? The US is under no threat whatsoever from anyone. The point is they can do as they please because their armed forces are far more deadly than any other.

They’re morons though. They’re human and most humans are moronic. The nonsense with Iran has been going on for years with the toppling of stable governments generally due to the fact that the Saudi’s and the western world have been in bed with each other for around half a century.

It’s oil. The whole Syria business and the matter of Qatar and Iraq are proxy ‘wars’ between NATO and Russia (because people have nothing better to do than play competitive games and try and ‘leave their mark’ in the history books).

They won’t literally ‘go to war’. All war since the Cold War is propaganda - Iran will lose the propaganda war, and eventually the US will turn their focus on South America. The likeliest actually ‘troops on the ground’ invasion will be in South America (likely via Columbian cooperation), into Brasil and/or Venezuela (Brasil is the juicier prize so probably the most likely target - doesn’t take too much digging to see the posturing made by Obama under the previous administration, really the same old behind the scenes bunch, and the governmental scandal involved). If you don’t know what I’ talking about look into Obama’s request to the then Brasilian president - now imprisoned - regarding cooperation/help with the Iranian nuclear programme.

Thanks for the pointless personal comment. Here’s my reciprocal contribution to the category of ‘personal pointless comment’ ;)

@Xtrix Just started listening to the latest podcast on Sean Carroll’s ‘Mindscape’ with Dennett.

From the poscast:

Wilfrid Sellars described the task of philosophy as explaining how things, in the broadest sense of term, hang together, in the broadest sense of the term. (Substitute “exploring” for “explaining” and you’d have a good mission statement for the Mindscape podcast.) Few modern thinkers have pursued this goal more energetically, creatively, and entertainingly than Daniel Dennett. One of the most respected philosophers of our time, Dennett’s work has ranged over topics such as consciousness, artificial intelligence, metaphysics, free will, evolutionary biology, epistemology, and naturalism, always with an eye on our best scientific understanding of the phenomenon in question. His thinking in these areas is exceptionally lucid, and he has the rare ability to express his ideas in ways that non-specialists can find accessible and compelling. We talked about all of them, in a wide-ranging and wonderfully enjoyable conversation.

Sounds like it would interest you. I’m just 15mins in up to now.

Picture, Canvas and Paint would be a decent analogy.

The Picture painted only exists due to Paint and Canvas. We cannot see the Picture if only one or the other is present. We need both to acquire ‘knowledge’ - the question is more or less about the limit of inference.

This shit is all very hard to speak coherently about: hence the disagreements and misunderstandings. — Janus

Key point! It is not really worth claiming this or that is ‘correct’ when it comes to interpreting Kant. The great value is in understanding why and how different interpretations exist.

The reason I always recommend this work to anyone with any serious regard for philosophy is precisely for this reason - it forces you to question your own position and come to understand other positions.

Complete agreement about what Kant meant is not necessary. Taking onboard different views surrounding Kant is an extremely fruitful and intriguing exploration.

Never said they were. Anyway, I’m outta here. It’s a bit like Groundhog Day for me when it comes to Kant :)

I may start something up elsewhere regarding what is meant by ‘transcendental’ one day.

It was my quote ... it was massively taken out of context though.

Er ... I was advising against relying on secondhand material. I believe you posted a quote from wiki not me?

The source is always best, and even better if read without someone telling you what to think the first time round.

Editted: Sorry, it was wayfarer not you. Still, bizarre given that what I wrote ...

The problem is that people attribute to noumena some reality it doesn’t have, and the thing-in-itself is given no reality when it is actual quite real. — Mww

That’s called naive realism. I’m not one of those.

It’s a tricky topic that deserves its own thread.

Don’t know how he could say so, given it would seem pretty hard to define a thing when we know absolutely nothing about it. The thing-in-itself is not defined by its relation to sensibility because it doesn’t relate to sensibility at all. The “thing” does, the “thing-in-itself” does not. — Mww

This is a another confusing point. The matter of the fact is Kant refers to some ‘thing in itself’ only because of pure intuition. Remove intuition and there is nothing to say, yet to refer to some item, any item - be it of thought or knowledge - must necessarily mean there is an attachment to sensibility and intuition (space and time). The number one is only given as a concept via sensibility, without sensible experience of a multitude of differentiated items of experience there would be no ground for the number one; or rather numbers in general.

The leap is identical from the referent of ‘thing’ which we view as ‘phenomenon’ and delineate between said phenomenon as ‘cat’ rather than ‘dog’ or ‘table’ rather than ‘chair’. There is no ‘chair in and of itself’ and there is no ‘thing in and of itself’, there is phenomenon that is given through sensible experience due to limitation.

Kant went back and rewrote an entire section to help elucidate what he meant - although by doing so he likely fell prey to his previous warning of ‘in trying to be too precise the writer can fall into ambiguity’ (to roughly paraphrase!)

My point about the bit in bold is hard to grasp as we’re immediately doing precisely what Kant warns against - claiming there is a ‘unknown’ we can refer to sensibly. The point here is that we can set up this logical illusion of referring to some ‘unknowable’ and believe we have it nailed down and sewn up neat and tidy. The thrust of the point is we’re limited.

Noumenon is ONLY ever applicable in the negative sense and to talk of noumenon in the ‘positive’ sense (the thing in itself) is an illusion only which Kant willingly partakes in to reveal that the most obvious statement there could be, along the lines of ‘What we can in no way ever know never exists for us no matter how many times removed or distant - such a ‘thing’ is not a ‘thing’ at all. It is, in its nonsense, a concept that is pointing out a limitation,’ or simpler still, ‘We cannot know what we cannot know.’

The positive sense of noumenon (as uttered) is necessarily negative. By revealing nothing Kant reveals the lay of the land not some striving across empty oceans for lands that don’t exist (as he put in his rare analogy).

The relevance to the thread here is likely the miscasting of what can reasonably be called ‘outer’ that isn’t a merely anything but ‘inner’. The phenomenon is all, what more is expected of being other than felt experience? It appears we’re prone to projecting ourselves bidirectionally through time.

Again though, getting to grips with what is meant by ‘transcendent’ and ‘transcendental’ is a matter for discussion I’m willing to partake in in a separate thread.

This subject matter often turns into a big old mess as there is often a lack of willingness to appreciate different interpretations of Kant regardless of agreement. His work has remained fresh because of the divides in opinions about several areas of his work.

I wouldn’t waste time using any distilled secondhand summation of Kant’s work as a means of coming to anything conclusive.

The same can, and probably should, be said of other major philosophical works. In my experience many students of philosophy (who’ve actually attended university) tend to have to rely mostly on secondhand accounts as tackling the works in and of themselves - in completion - is simply not viable within a few given years of youth (and generally speaking most students of philosophy attending university tend to be too inexperienced in life to grasp the broader implications posed by people who’ve lived a full life).

Wiki and stanford or britannica ency. are all decent ways of finding items of interest though.

As an example I remember someone expressing their opinion about Nietzsche to me many years ago. I was very interested and asked what they would recommend I read first ... then they admitted they’d never actually read anything of his other than a couple of wiki entries and heard him mentioned here and there in other historical references.

The reason I read Kant was because someone online kept harping on about him saying I had no idea what I was talking about (not that I was talking about Kant), so I read COPR and then confronted his views about Kant and questioned them ... he then admitted he’d never actually read it at university and only covered it via other philosophical commentaries that summed up his ideas.

Such is realm of academic philosophy. A great deal of it is merely parroting what the tutor says, or doing scholarly work (the latter has value the former just distances the actual work from the reader).

I think I see the problem.

The issue seems to be if we’re to only apply the term ‘noumenon’ in a negative sense (because it’s tangible), but at the heart of it the use of ‘noumenon’ is equivalent to ‘the thing in itself’ as neither are ‘objects of sensibility’ they’re only limiting factors of understanding (and necessarily limited).

The thing in itself is ‘positive noumenon’ - noumenon serves only in a negative sense, which is obvious enough given that we cannot know of anything beyond our sensible limits.

If we ask ourslves what is meant by ‘the thing in itself’ in a positive sense and in a negative (limiting sense) perhaps the similarity will become clear.

The subtler problem is addressing the concept of ‘noumenon’ as essentially unknowable as a known concept - that is where the seeming contrariness comes into play alongside the meaning of ‘transcendental’.

@Xtrix What does the OP have to say? Where are we to go from here? I still don’t quite grasp the intent of the OP regarding the direction this thread is meant to go?

like I said, we’re not going to agree - which is usually something that makes for a good discussion, but I’ve been down this road too many times already. I get far more from reading Kant directly than I do from wading through rigid misconceptions that general stop the flow of any given discussion not specifically about Kant.

It’s naive of the OP to assume everyone is going to come to agreement about Kant’s work. The reason it is still regarded today as one of the best philosophical works ever written is that it does throw up so much discussion a debate. I imagine we agree there at least :)

I can see why you think what you think. I just believe you’re wrong and I’m right. If he literally refers to a thing in itself being noumenon (on more than one occasion) I’m happy to assume he meant it. Personally I find the issue of framing the meaning of Transcendental as more problematic.

A thread on COPR would be a monster ... maybe it’s just too much to take on though (and pointless for anyone who hasn’t literally read it cover to cover and put hours of thought/study into it).

I don’t agree at all.

The thing in itself, however, is not defined by its relation to sensibility. — StreetlightX

It is, and he says so. He must, necessarily, use sensibility to talk of any proposition. That’s the hard part to grasp.

I don’t think we’re going to agree here so I’ll just move on. It’s a tiring subject if we both think we’re correct.

Wrong ... keep reading (A256/B311,B312) and (A289/B345) The point of using ‘thing in itself’ alongside ‘noumenon’ is to show they are one and the same.

Simply put, phenomenon is sensible experience and noumenon is not, and cannot, be experienced sensibly. The experience is given to us but the thing in itself isn’t and never can be - it is, as a phenomenal conception, useful as a realisation of limit (without which limit sensibility would be nought as if everything is sensible to us in full extension there is no ‘difference’ perceivable where there is no limit of experience).

Here are direct quotes respectively:

... Our understanding thus acquires a kind of negative extension, that is, it is not limited by sensibility, but on the contrary, it limits sensibility, by calling thing in themselves (not considered as appearances) noumena. In doing so, ti immediately proceeds to prescribe limits to itself; it admits that it cannot know these noumena by means of the categories, but can only think of them under the name of an unknown something.

And then ...

The understanding, accordingly, limits sensibility, but without expanding thereby its own sphere. By warning sensibility that it must never claim to apply to things in themselves, but only to appearances, it forms the thought of an object in itself, but only as a transcendental object. This object is the cause of appearance (therefore not itself appearance) and cannot be thought as magnitude, or as reality, or as substance, etc. (because these concepts require sensible forms in which to determine an object). Of this object, therefore, it must always remain unknown whether it is to be found only within us, or also without us; and whether, if sensibility were removed, it would vanish or remain. If we wish to call this object noumenon, because the representation of it is not sensible, then we are at liberty to do so. But as we cannot apply to it any of the concepts of our understanding, such a representation remains empty for us, serving no purpose other than of indicating the limits of our sensible knowledge and of leaving at the same time an open space which we can fill neither through possible experience nor through the pure understanding.

... Thus there remains to us a mode of determining the object merely through thought; and although this mode of determining is a mere logical form without content, yet it seems to us to be a mode in which the object exists in itself (noumenon), without regard to the intuition which is restricted to our senses.

The cantankerous one is very much correct. That doesn’t stop them being a needless impolite and obnoxious person.

Note: It is worth stating that people still disagree in many areas regarding Kant’s work. I haven’t come across many that have bothered to read Kant cover to cover and fewer that care to agree about his points. I can certainly see how one could interpret what he says as stating a ‘subtle difference,’ but I’d feel overly generous doing so.

And I see people mentioning technology as a subset of inequality. Inequality is a serious problem, but it is not final one. — Coben

It is if we’re all equally dead :D

Subject is the referent of any activity related to consciousness and/or subconscious.
Object is what is outside the subject.
Some (few) philosophers identify it, but the distinction is clear at the analytical level. — David Mo

It would be more useful if you cleared this up. If you really wish to know the difference between what I said you can google it easily enough.

You seem to have said something that can be interpreted in different ways. Is “consciousness and/or subconscious” a subject or object? What is “outside” of what?

To translate what you wrote ... Subject is the term referred to that is of any activity related to consciousness and/or subconscious (which makes said consciousness and/or subconscious the ‘object’ or another ‘subject’ - let us assume the former given what follows)

Object is what is outside the subject (meaning the ... this doesn’t work unless you meant subject means object and object means subject - thus backing up the point made in the first place, which I assume yiu didn’t intend?)

“Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

There is only phenomenal experience as that is all the experience there can be. Everything else is ‘empty’ or ‘blind’. The concept of ‘noumenon’ is deadly important so as not to fall down and never ending reiteration of rabbit holes.

A priori there is no experience (hence ‘a priori’). The ‘phenomenon’ is all we have.

So this is incorrect:

It is also mistaken to say “the phenomenon is all there is for us”, for such claim disallows the possibility for any and all pure a priori rational activity, or, that which occurs in us without any empirical intuition connected to it. — Mww

You cannot have ‘rational activity’ without experience - if you think that then I’m intrigued what you mean by ‘rational activity’ because clearly you mean something different to what I have in mind.

Technically wouldn’t that fall under political corruption? I guess there is a crossover though, so it probably does need an extra category - I think it’s an ‘immediate’ problem in terms of Terminator-like proportions, but it’s already an issue in the political sphere.

The issue is the terms have various applications in different fields of interest. We don’t perceive something ‘outside’ of us - the perceiving takes place internally.

As for ‘conscious’ it would be useful to distinguish between ‘conscious awareness’ and mere ‘consciousness’ (which ate technically different). There are many issues between/within fields of investigation that cause incredible confusion - often between/within cognitive neurosciences and psychology.

Philosophers have a terrible habit of conflating this confusion for the laymen.

Show me a starving family who cares about anything other than finding food.

People who are wealthy already are the ones with the power to do something about it, and also the ones with the most to lose long term. — Pfhorrest

Some do. You’re wealthy and you care, don’t you? If you were trying to scrape by on a dollar a day and making choices between child A or B getting an education would you honestly sacrifice that choice for the world at large. I doubt it.

The point being you’re in a position to care and act, and people in poverty are not - and make no mistake you’re ‘wealthy’! (You’ve had an education, food on the table and no doubt have a reasonable access to monetary funds via employment opportunities others would, and do, literally die for - hence migration that carries mortal dangers).

A huge problem is the manner in which funds are allocated toward areas that have little impact upon the problems at hand. In many areas simply pumping money into it does little to no good at all. The idea that money solves all problems is silly, but ‘wealth’ and ‘poverty’ are not necessarily all about ‘money’. It is simply a question of ‘opportunity’ in regards to ‘wealth’/‘poverty’ - $100 in one country will go much further than in another.

If you look at schemes set up by people like Bill Gates you can see that they’ve learnt that when it comes to extremely important matters (ie. education) it is not solved by pumping money into education, as what matter FAR more is the teacher’s attitudes and passion.

So, for the sake of their own wealth if nothing else, they really ought to be paying attention to the problem, or else they're going to end up as poor as everyone else when everything that they depend on for their comfortable lives collapses. — Pfhorrest

Yeah, but we’re talking about a minority here and, as mentioned, people like yourself do care and the problems exists because not everyone in a position to do something know/care enough to do so. The poor don’t have a rational option/opportunity to live any differently.

What baffles me more than anything is the claim that we’re stopping the next ice age AND that climate change is a lie ... I’ve seen several people tell themselves these contrary lies without realising what they were doing.

The climate changes. Some people disagree about the impact humans have in the climate - it’s clear enough that we impact the environment so it’s probably better to take that approach to those who refuse to take notice of carbon emissions and scientific projections.

It is hard to deny that cleaner water, management of sea flora and fauna, protection of ecosystems, and maintaining biodiversity are worthy aims. I don’t see the point in arguing about human impact i terms of climate change as it’s a reasonably well known psychological fact that people only change their minds when they arrive at the conclusion by themselves, and that ‘battling’ them does little more than cause mental entrenchment.

When it comes to the world we live in together it’s more fruitful to look for collective agreement on matters and assist each other in those areas rather than bludgeon each other to death with words which only serve the purpose of egotistical decimation of the ‘opponent’ - find common ground and work there.

The ‘memory’ is the ‘illusion’ of ‘permanence’. We need something to ground ourselves in or we’d just be floating entities without any orientation whatsoever.

The key point is ‘orientation’. A point of reference is required regardless of how ‘permanent’ we consider it to be - hence the reason people believe x, y or z, because it forms their axis mundi/their weltanschauung (aka. ‘worldview’).

Yep. Basically it’s the root of the rest.

It has been shown relatively clearly that once people are raised above the poverty line everything else tends to get much better (all of the above although carbon emissions tend to rise with economic development - and it is up to the ‘leading’ economic nations to provide economically viable alternatives for rising nations asap). In the short term I am not pretending that mere ‘wealth’ solves any issues involving environmental pollution. It is reasonably obvious that if you’re starving, struggling to make ends meet or occupied with paying for education, that more wide reaching problems are of little to no direct concern.

Once the vast majority of people on Earth have a reasonable degree of financial stability they will acquire better education and have more immediate concerns regarding other problems.

Try this: http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/ransdell/PHENOM.HTM