So what? I don’t mean that is a dismissive manner, just couldn’t find anything to say as you don’t appear to have given any context to this thought or what kind of feedback you’re looking for.

Looking at your replies I guess it may be worth pointing out that the ‘boundaries’ you talk of are necessary for recognition of any state of being. If there are no ‘boundaries’ then there is no consciousness as we’d be unable to differentiate, communicate or do anything much at all - if anything.

Think about how you’d possibly answer any question put to you without any appreciation for boundaries. A simple question like, “Are you cold?” Would never be heard by you because you couldn’t distinguish between hot and cold, nor could you ever hear the words uttered because you’d be unable to distinguish between statements and questions - not to mention silence and sound. In effect you wouldn’t have any sense of existence and little more than a vegetable.

Maybe you’re looking for some other kind of response here? If so set it out more clearly please.

Is there a chance you are referring to ‘trope nominalism’?

There certainly seems to be a ‘nominalist’ leaning here?

You’ll have to explain further the point of this thread?

It means there is a feasible potential for said person buying an ice cream. Just because an outcome is binary it doesn’t make the prediction absolute - or it wouldn’t be a ‘prediction’. Uncertainty is a necessary part of human life.

What’s the real issue here?

Nope. I never changed the use of the term or switched context. I did point out how the colloquial use can be used to present a mistaken use of the term.

You directed the post at me. I didn’t use ‘my’ definition, merely ‘the’ definition. I’m reasonably charitable with most words, but with some - in certain contexts - less so.

I’d ask him what I’d ask anyone.

What was the biggest mistake you made that you found most difficult to face up to and admit to yourself?

In this sense it would be in terms of ‘philosophical’ ideas - but I’d be interested to hear his general ‘human life’ answer too.

On a personal note, my own ‘mistakes’ would include dismissing areas of knowledge I found to be ridiculous/nonsense on the surface - especially psychology and more recently (just five years ago) economics. Generally the things in life most ‘repulsive’ turn out to hold a whole load of juices morsels that help seemingly unrelated ideas/thoughts/questions flourish more readily.

For me the hard problem that often remains a mere afterthought for these kinds of ‘schools of thought’ (ethical models, or whatever you wish to tag them?), is the fleetingly brief nature of how one is to decide upon one’s limitations.

A rigid ‘stoic’ attitude may lead to an impoverished and cowardly life for one and an overtly belligerent and careless life of needless harm for others. Whenever I’ve looked into these kinds of ‘ethical attitudes’ I find them wanting in terms of how we’re to measure ourselves against the world and too much focus on programmes.

Basically, I would prefer to see emphasis on the ‘materials of the human world’ rather than how to use the tools at hand - what use is a tool if we’re unable to discern where, when and how to apply it?

From the comments above I believe Praxis hits the hammer to the anvil well enough in an attempt to fashion a a question worthy of wielding. That is, how do we ‘practice’ - what risks are worth the risk, and how we’re to cope with failure and success.

Again, most focus tends towards the human heart and regard for the ego in terms of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. I stick to the firm ground that ANY public declaration of ‘moral’ (be it a ‘would’, ‘should’ or ‘could’) is necessarily framed in a disingenuous form as no individual can, or is willing to, bare their darkest desires. Better to understand our inner fortitude and cause yourself some distress before venturing out with claims of ‘what is better’ - even then only the hypothetical is generally able to disarm the ‘intent’ for the ‘reality’. And, further still, too many are ready to instantly dismiss the hypothetical as a dismal fake of life.

This is quite a complex matter and I’m not trying to be oblique, merely as succinct as possible.

‘Teaching’ is not exactly something I am happy about as a term. Really the best means of learning is exposure and a steady decline in protection - an almost impossible problem of human judgement that will inevitably lead to mistakes and tragedy (that is our lot though as human being trying to be more).

You think and thought, you play with it, let artistry do its thang, then present some articulated form in hope of pushing beyond comfort yet remaining - hopefully - within communicative comprehension.

The rest is scholarship - a worthy and often thankless task! I believe the bast majority of ‘philosophers’ offer more in terms of ‘scholarship’ than instigating a ‘push beyond comfort’.

doesn't allow me to take seriously any philosophy or philosophers — Per Chance

I don’t have ADHD and I don’t take anything anyone says too seriously - philosopher or otherwise (to be honest I’m inclined to pay less attention to most philosophers, yet find philosophies interesting play things).

Have you seen some of the proposed candidates? Jess Philips as ‘wildcard’? Are they serious! Haha!

Better to keep Corbyn than utterly drive the party into the ground with that ‘wildcard’.

I was talking about experimental evidence - not something that exists in mathematics.

Even so the guy who solved Fermat’s theorem wasn’t exactly happy about solving it because it left him bereft of purpose.

To be fair this is true for almost everyone - if not everyone? Granted some are more prone than others, but it’s probably better to take note of who does this repeatedly and see if you can give them a gentle nudge in the right direction.

I’ve seen devans around for a few years here and there. They are willing to learn - not scared of making mistakes. That in and of itself is to be commended, and encouraged.

It’s good to see little groups of people having discussions across threads and feeling their way around. Some will float and some will sink.

Maybe this thread would’ve hit the mark if it focused on self-criticism more. It is important to know you don’t know. That way it seems there is some chance you’ll stumble across something useful and realise it is useful.

Kind of like saying, "my definition of 'dogma'" is correct. — Pantagruel

Not really. I’m simply saying the other person is misusing the term to suit his purpose - the definition shows ways in which the context changes and I’ve made as explicit as I can what the context and definition is.

You may choose to use the term ‘banana’ to mean ‘sociopolitical’ and talk of the ‘banana influence in contemporary art’, I wouldn’t accept this as a reasonable thing to do as it is likely to cause confusion.

This all stems from my statement about ‘scientists’ being happy about being wrong whilst more ‘religious’ types are dogmatic - as in ‘dogma’ (where evidence is seen as of no value). And if we’re to talk about a ‘paradigm’ would it be right to call religious doctrines ‘paradigms’? Are they models? I guess that would depend on how willing you are to think of the context of ‘model’ in this sense, which basically means something like an adjustable set of ideas - clearly not something we relate to religions as they have the ‘true word’ at their disposal rather than a ‘model’ of something approximating a ‘truth’ (using ‘truth’ in a broad sense here to mean reality).

That site is not bereft of idiots at all. It was set up primarily as a science site and the philosophy side was tagged on later.

I tried this kind of thing on another forum where there were topics with 50+ pages ... mostly people went ape-shit when the intention was simply to lock a thread, assess how it had developed, and then provide links to new threads that continued the discussion and advanced in some way.

Such a system isn’t needed here as most of the threads don’t last more than a dozen pages before being rehashed and branched off in more manageable directions and details.

It may be an idea to have a trail run of having a minimum word count? Generally it appears the quality here is much higher than elsewhere though so it could discourage short succinct posts and make for needlessly verbose posts.

Speaking from my perspective, I suffer with the reverse problem so it doesn’t really bother me either way. That said I’m generally not encouraged to continue discussions with people who present nothing but one line replies to complex questions - in those cases I just cut my losses and move on, or maybe try and provoke a fuller answer.

Jung is not exactly taken serious by many, but he’s had a huge impact on psychotherapy. I really like his work - what I’ve read of it - but he did himself no favours in how he openly dabbled in strange areas.

The above comment I feel is him saying he saw ‘god’ as I see ‘god’. The innate part of human individuality that we deal with and investigate by ‘throwing’ it out into the world.

He’s worth reading even if some of his thoughts are dubious. There is a lot of information in there so I’d recommend him to anyone interested in scholarly work.

Landslide victory for Conservative Party. Is anyone really surprised?

I’ve given you pointers. Go look. Start with Kant’s use of ‘intuitions’.

Nothing more to add, but I’m sure others here would be more willing to engage with you in depth.

I said ‘jab’ because I thought you may have been offended by my brief mention of ‘religion’. I wasn’t taking a ‘jab’ at religion at all.

I don’t really consider a paradigm shift to be anything other than a human item, so to refer to a paradigm shift in art, science, religious thought, aesthetics, political or anything else, is not something I can quite get my head around in the context of this discussion.

I guess a good Marxist would insist that such ‘revolutions’ are part of a necessary conflict of opinions. I think it was Schiller who said something along the lines of humans being a kind of creature likely to destroy perfection out of sheer boredom - we’re ‘anti-dogmatic’ in that sense, because I believe stagnation always instigates a revolution of some kind (by way of exploration and/or death). This makes sense in terms of a ‘paradigm’, as once everyone is pulling roughly in the same direction things go swimmingly, when things ‘halt’ - a term I’ve been very interested in regarding this subject matter - anyone can shift the momentum. Maybe that is a biased analogy though that adheres to strictly to Newtonian mechanics?

In the sense of a paradigm shift I’d relate this more to disrupting the axis mundi (or weltanschauung if you prefer) rather than just ‘psychological fixedness’ (which sounds too tame a term for a societal shift, but fitting for individual cases). For the individual we’ve learnt a fair bit about brain functioning and it doesn’t take much to see how IOR (inhibition of return) and neural priming effects our world views. The successful communication of a new perspective is what instigates the beginnings of an evidence based paradigm shift in terms of science.

Who is more likely to say “Wow! We were wrong. How fascinating!”, and who is more likely to say, “We’re not wrong! Evidence doesn’t matter, I just KNOW what the truth is.”

Paradigm shifts open up a whole new way of ‘viewing’ the world. Some are fearful of this for various reasons, including commitments to areas now deemed worthless, financial investment (the genome project is an example of that - pharma companies bought up genes to research for huge sums, but now few think such research into individual genes is of any significant use as the whole genome is far more complex and interactive than anyone had imagined). Is that ‘dogma’? Nope. That is politics, and politicking in science causes some people to deceive others - Feynman pointed this out with his famous words about ‘mother nature’ after the shuttle disaster. Newton was hardly a ‘scientist’ by any modern standard, but none of that matters to the OP as far as I can see?

How/Why do you see paradigm shifts as important to critical thought? I can see the relation, but not where you’re going. Keep in mind a ‘paradigm shift’ has adapted its use since Kuhn.

By that logic you’re saying blind people are incapable of experiencing. I have a feeling this is a bit beyond you at the moment so I’ll just leave you alone.

Someone mention tabla rosa previously, that is probably a good place to start looking. Also, the history of behaviorism and the whole nature or nurture question may help outline the conditions for experience and knowledge better.

As an attempt to open the problem up consider what you knew about anything before you existed. That is basically what a priori means. Prior to experience there is no ‘knowledge’. Much like the concept of a ‘hat’ being nonexistent in the absence of ‘heads’.

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

Note: ‘Intuitions’ has a specific meaning beyond the colloquial use today.

I wholly oppose what you’re saying here due to the choice of wording.

My point remains the same. Dogma is against critical thought because it doesn’t care about evidence. You’ve presented why you disagree with if you actually take the word for what it means. I doubt you do disagree. It seems you were just looking to ‘jab’ at me for no good reason.

Dogma simply isn’t the same as holding bias or psychological fixedness. When people only see the world as being explained via science that isn’t even ‘dogma’. That is ‘scientism’ - a term philosophers enjoy to use when they face scientific facts they don’t understand.

Great :) tell me why you disagree

Skimmed it. Yeah, ‘dogmatism’ exists in pedagogy. Dogma doesn’t care a jot for evidence the same cannot be said of science - although some scientists, and teachers, will undoubtedly hold faster to some opinion or another (generally you’ll find this to be based on evidence not on dogma. The Deepak Chopra guys are weeded out eventually).

Critical thinking is the analysis of facts to form a judgment.[1] The subject is complex, and several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism[2][3] and sociocentrism. I don’t think he was suggesting scientists ignore all evidence.

Dogma:

An authoritative principle, belief or statement of opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true regardless of evidence, or without evidence to support it.

The point being - which I still don’t see an argument against - that ‘critical thought’ does not align with dogma. It is not possible to think rationally about something you hold as a dogma that necessarily (as a dogma) requires no evidence or explanation, other than ‘it just is’.

Furthermore, from wiki:

Critical thinking is the analysis of facts to form a judgment. The subject is complex, and several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem-solving abilities as well as a commitment to overcome native egocentrism and sociocentrism.

I think the bold makes my point more clearly here. Dogma is the antithesis of the above, being irrational, non-skeptical, biased and lacking analysis, and completely unconcerned with evidence of any kind.

I’m not willing to change the definition of a word to suit your claims. Scientists literally don’t adhere to ‘dogma’ yet in colloquial speech we do call psychological fixedness, like you present, ‘dogmatic’ - that doesn’t make their position one based on dogma.

I’m not interested in this kind of word play tbh. Have at it with someone else please.

No. A dogma is nothing like an axiom. Scientific method is basically the antithesis of dogma.

‘Dogmatic’ can be used to suggest a degree of close mindedness.

Dogma means to disregard evidence for or against. There is no ‘premise’ in dogma only absolute truth (that is how the term is used). That is what the word means. For that reason I cannot see how anything that can be considered ‘critical thought’ when there is no weight of evidence in play.

I don’t regard ‘dogma’ as incremental. It is not possible to gain knowledge if you’re closed off to it - that is what dogma is. I don’t see how using critical thought to decide who to believe in, can be called ‘dogma’. With dogma there is no decision to be made only rules to be adhered to.

That just doesn’t follow. ‘Dogma’ means belief without doubt. It is hardly possible to be critical if you cannot doubt. I would argue ‘critical thought’ requires the ‘will’ to be critical.

It doesn’t make sense to me to suggest an absence of skepticism falls in line with ‘critical thought’.

I’m not willing to discuss religious conspiracy theories - flagged.

Dogma goes against ‘critical thinking’. Dogma basically means to accept as writ without criticism - ergo it is probably more likely to induce a lack of critical thought rather than broaden and refine critical thought.

Those open to shifting their world views are more open to taking criticism on board. I wasn’t saying for a moment that scientist, philosophers or pious people are automatically one more than the other, only stating inclinations instilled in them.

Violent revolutions won’t solve the underlying issue. — leo

If it’s violent enough it would wipe the slate clean and allow a new system to form.

I’m pretty damn sure what the underlying problem is, but it’s hard to see an applicable means of countering it. Capitalism is in its death throes and I expect applying band-aids will help transition to something else because there needs to be a social paradigm shift toward what is regarded as ‘meaningful’ for most people.

I honestly don’t see this happening for an economic model anytime soon, and once it does happen it’ll likely be a few generations before such a model is instilled on a global scale. Violent conflict appears to be the most likely outcome - perhaps being aware of this will help people to dig to the heart of the problem.

Tories have it by the looks of things.

On the bright side maybe it will take things to get much worse before they get better. At the moment the choices are pretty terrible, but that said they’ve never been great and the only sensible leader I’ve seem in my life time was Paddy Ashdown - he was too honest though (people hate the truth).

Any other possible guests in the horizon?

I wish I could agree. I do at least have a better understanding about his views of science. I was expecting more depth in the answer and hoping for a follow up. He basically said there are limits to heuristics - nothing special about that point.

The thrust of my point was that ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ are false dichotomies and that framing these terms as ‘dichotic’ is convenient for experimentation, but not really a clear demarcation. That said I didn’t do the best job of framing Husserl’s view as I had limited time and was gambling on him knowing something of Husserl given his prominence in this area (limitations of science and his influence that runs through Heidegger to Sellars).

Fro my narrow understanding he seems to be more inclined to frame items as ‘scientism’ and avoiding ‘philosophism’ (probably because he is more bound to a ‘philosophical’ perspective). I asked the question I asked hopeful he’d read Husserl in depth - it doesn’t appear he has and I cannot blame him for not doing so as no one has time to read anything about every single philosopher. Husserl was very much about how objective perspectives relate to consciousness and what subjectivity does in terms of psychology.

I’m not at all inclined to look much more into what he says unless I suddenly feel the need to explore the modern sense of ‘stoicism’. I was looking forward to hearing more about that, but I guess - as has been said - he simply doesn’t have time to contribute more.

I doubt I’d participate in discussions on stoicism much but if you’ve gained interest in this person’s work I hope you can create some threads about it for discussion :)

Hopefully we’ll get another figure to contribute something in the near future?

It may be more a case of lack of ability to make the best of the empathy we have. Maybe if we had less empathy we’d be better able to manage ourselves.

More isn’t always ‘better’.

Immanuel Kant - Critic of Pure Reason.

It’s heavy weight stuff, but if you really want to establish the kind of lexicon used in this sort of discussion that is a place to start. Unfortunately it is not something you can ‘read up on’ overnight. Tackling it seriously would take a year, merely reading the words won’t do much as you have to think while reading.

Note: You could easily supplant some of your terms with philosophical perspectives like ‘physicalism’, ‘empiricism’, and ‘idealism’. Good luck :)

Completely. Perhaps many assume they are offering ‘critique’ when they’re doing little more than expressing an uninformed opinion.

Critical thinking is certainly dangerous without large doses of humility.

Was chatting about this sort of thing recently. The reason why ‘scientists’ are generally more capable of critical thought is likely because they are happy when their ideas/theories are proven wrong - that is exciting for them. When it comes to more dogmatic areas of interest (where ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ don’t fit so readily) the opposite is sought out: that is people look to be shown right in order to develop a sense fo ‘understanding’. At the extreme end the dogmatically religious types seek proof to rest on and do their upmost to deride any contradiction.

Reason and critical thought must go hand in hand right? If so, we’re starting at a disadvantage as we’re terrible at basic logic in abstracted forms. I don’t think this can be ‘taught’ and probably the best means of pedagogy would involve greater emphasis in the Arts rather than expecting people to make conceptual leaps from concrete examples to abstract rules.

Like all human trait, there are environmental factor that help to nurture them. Also, some traits will necessarily hinder other traits. Quite often what many see as detrimental to X actually boosts X in the long run.

I think it’s a little strange to point the finger at prominent public figures in the billionaires world - Bill Gates especially as he’s been going around the world getting other billionaires to donate billions to help his foundation (non-profit) to solve global problems.

When it comes to Zuckerberg there is also an issue. People expect him to police the globe? He cannot do this. Should he allow only rich people access to people’s data or allow anyone to access this data more readily? Note: if he didn’t then it is not exactly difficult to hack and find this information out through freelancers.

There is no ‘law’ online. China spotted this very early on and so made blanket bans to control misinformation. The US is exporting is culture via the internet and it likes to do so.

All that said, I do agree that the US needs a large injection of socialism, but I don’t see that happening for a president or two. At some point we’re going to have to transition from economies based on a core of capitalism to something ‘new’, and the transitionary period will seemingly have to involve socialist structures - I think both have too many flaws in today’s world but a better balance between the two will be the better course for birthing a paradigm shift in terms of how economies are run.

Words do not exist independently of each other. I know what ‘primal’ means but don’t see how there can be ‘primal words’?

I can explain what ‘shape’ means to someone easily enough in numerous ways - by example, by reference, with the use of synonyms or antonyms, etc.,. Words, primarily, act to communicate concepts. Of course, once we’re equipped with a lexicon we can explore possibilities internally.

Example: triangle: the space between 3 lines intersecting at 3 points

Space, line, point and triangle are all primal. You can know what all of them are without any sensory evidence (you know them when you're born) — khaled

A ‘line’ is necessarily defined by both ‘point’ and ‘space’. I can also say ‘edge’ or the form made when the shortest distance between two positions is traversed (note: ‘point’ is very like ‘position’ but no the same thing). I can also define ‘line’ as the boundary between two different areas - real or existent. In any case I must necessarily refer to experience to understand ‘line’ and may use any day to day object as a means of describing ‘line’ by referring to the straight edge of a book or rock (not that a ‘line’ has to be straight; I just assumed you meant straight line).

While there are other words such as "Horse" which you cannot hope to conceptualize before seeing one. — khaled

Yet we’re born able to recognise a face. If the face happens to be a horse face we can recognise it as a horse face. We cannot ‘conceptualise’ ANYTHING a priori. That is not the same as saying we don’t have the capacity for experience only that we’re open to given experiences and filter our experience based on repetition and use.

By ‘evidence’ I assume you mean ‘experience’? If not you’ll have to explain further. If so you’re wrong because we can never ‘feel’ without experiencing ‘feeling’. Or more simply put, without sensory input sensibility is mute.

I think one of the main problems is associating ‘power’ with such a negative attitude. ‘Power’ needn’t be conceived as ‘domination’. I would say changing people’s attitudes about what ‘power’ means and highlighting the positive use of ‘power’ rather than attacking the negative uses of ‘power’ would be more helpful.

If your car is broken and I tell you what is wrong with it and fix it is that ‘domination’? Clearly I possessed the ‘power’ to fix your car yet you seem to be making out that someone being more skilled or able necessarily means ‘domineering’ or ‘subjugating’? This is the conundrum of the ‘individual’ and ‘ego’. We wish to be independent, yet in reality we rely on each other more than not - although there is a greater inclination towards one more than the other from person to person.

Nice thread btw :)

This is a tough topic and likely to induce some egotistical responses and appeals to a more ‘victimhood’ mentality. I do believe that whatever humanity is going to do it is doing it right now - we’re unwitting witnesses to a revolution that won’t be understood for several decades.

Note: I truly believe you mean this. Just pointing out how such a weighty word can be easy misconstrued to indicate a sense of victimhood by those who carry a weight of resentment around on their shoulders rather than applauding those who use ‘power’ for the betterment of society. Surely it is a question of how ‘power’ is used rather than dispensing with ‘power’ altogether?

This isn’t strictly a case for philosophers. Humans tend to disagree about several things or more.

I was making a straw man of stoicism in comparison to the straw man in the OP.