So far in recorded history, change has always happened in spite of the people who opposed change. — Vera Mont

Change and the form that change takes are two different things. Of course society will always change, that doesn't mean we have to passively accept any specific change. We cna instead replace it with a different change.

Given this, we can still argue sensibly that some change is bad and ought be resisted.

I have a theory that societies that are less hung up on gender stereotypes, will see a significant decrease in transitioning because there's a wider gamut available for gender expression so the dysphoria will probably lessen because gender roles will be less pronounced. For starters, men should be able to wear dresses instead of boring suits. — Benkei

I thinks that's very likely. I think it's behind @unenlightened's concerns (as I read them), which I share. Progress toward that end is hampered, not helped, by the promotion of the idea that one's discontent is 'fixed' by altering the offending body, not by altering the society which unjustly places such sex-related expectations.

The notion that the fault lies with the only aspect profitable drugs can 'fix' is not an accident.

I have yet to hear your proposal for the healthier, more beneficial, more ethical direction in which you want some unnamed factions or agents to steer the issue. — Vera Mont

So? What has that to do with the counterargument I'm presenting?

You argued that societal change had no ethical component because it's going to happen anyway. That's simply wrong on both counts. It does have an ethical component (there exist arguments about whether the change is 'right' or 'wrong'), and it is not going to happen anyway, its driven by our collective actions.

Whether I present an opinion about how society ought progress has no bearing on the validity of that argument.

That doesn't make the persons changing gender assignment a politically significant number; — Vera Mont

Yes it does. A number that can get a national law changed is a significant number. and you've no idea whatsoever how that campaign won the gains it did, you're just storytelling. It might have won over the compassion of the population. It might have been seen as a cynically astute move by the politicians. It might have been good lobbying. It might have downright blackmailed enough Scottish MPs, or got in the good books of the fucking Lizardmen for all we know... You've provided nothing to back up your assertion at all. If you think all laws that get passed do so because of popular support then you're even more naive than you first appeared.

It's crazy how fast you mainstream liberals will spin, it must make you dizzy. If a fracking law gets passed, it'll be without doubt the result of evil corporate powers with their backdoor dealings, but as soon as one of the new fads gets its legal recognition suddenly the law becomes nothing but a pure reflection of the people's heartfelt will.

Those who transition this way usually have to be on drugs for the rest of their lives. That's an enormous profit for the pharmaceuticals. I don't know what kind of utopia you live in, but here on earth massively powerful lobbying groups are more often responsible for changes in law than an entire parliament suddenly finding itself moved by compassion. Funny these newly compassionate individuals didn't find it in their hearts to do anything about the 50 million starving children in Africa. Maybe next, eh?

Too bad. Change happens. One group wants this, another group doesn't want them to have this, a third group thinks they should have it, a fourth says they could have this but not at our expense, etc, etc. Somebody wins an advantage, at least temporarily, and everyone who loses is disgruntled. The fact that this happens - all the time, over every issue - is not a philosophical or ethical consideration when assessing the citizen's claim to a right or prerogative. — Vera Mont

Of course it's a bloody ethical consideration. If the change is bad, it's an ethical concern. It's literally what the word 'bad' means.

You mean, Scotland didn't allow trans folk to vote or manage their own money until recently? — Vera Mont

No. I mean that campaigns to change the law are usually long and hard fought. Any campaign which gets it's way after only a couple of years is a powerful political movement, not a downtrodden, barely influential minority.

That's the target of my criticism. We are closer to understanding consciousness, it's just very complicated. Consciousness is no more special an issue in neuroscience than gut motility is in gastroentorology. It's just one of the investigations people are working on where we know some things but questions remain about others. Just like virtually every other field in science.

Your claim was not merely that it has not been, but that it could not be, explained (likened to trying to reach the earth from the moon by car).

We have not yet explained irritable bowel syndrome either. I don't hear much talk about the workings of the gut being ineffable.

Another in a tiresome series of posts confusing the poster's personal inability to understand neuroscience with there being no facts of neuroscience to understand.

I am still curious if you have a particular objection to Lough's actual argument. — Paine

This is classic example of what I'm talking about. There's no 'argument'. Lough makes two points...

Gorbachev neither asked for nor was given any formal guarantees that there would be no further expansion of NATO beyond the territory of a united Germany.

...and...

while the Russian Federation became the de facto legal successor to the USSR after the latter’s collapse, Russia existed in different borders and its security interests were not synonymous with those of the USSR.

These are both certainly possible alternative ways of looking at the issue.

One could say "only formal guarantees matter" or one could say "no, informal guarantees and implications are equally important explanations"

One could say "the modern Russia is not the inheritor of guarantees made to the former USSR" or one could say it is.

Neither are matters of fact, like gravity or 1+1 being 2. They are alternative ways of looking at the issue. So the question remains as to why one would choose to look at it that way and not the other.

So there's debate as to whether transexual surgeries are harmful. Who gets to decide? — Hanover

Hopefully, we do. Debate, democratic action, constitutional consideration... the usual.

In a prior Covid vaccination thread you argued that due to uncertainties in vaccine effectiveness and the right for the individual to determine his own risks and benefits, the person directly affected had full authority to decide. — Hanover

As I've said above, I don't believe anyone is arguing that gender-transitional surgery be banned (certainly I'm not), so I don't really see how this is relevant. The individual will indeed determine their own risks and benefits. I might disagree with that determination - especially if it fails to take into account the effect of that decision on others. I might also take issue with institutions of my government advocating or supporting certain routes, as is my duty as a citizen of that government (to hold them to account, that is).

My view is that the best evidence ought be used and have less a problem imposing rational views on the irrational even if it reduces their autonomy — Hanover

This is, no offence, a ridiculous view. I struggle to think of a single course of action for which there is 'best evidence' in any clear way. Perhaps gravity, or electromagnetism. Certainly not anything medical (where replication rates for experimental proofs are barely over 50% and corporate influence is so rife as to lead frequently to criminal charges). The idea that there is, available to us, any kind of clear 'best evidence' for any medical intervention is laughable. We just don't live in such a world, even if one were possible.

We live in a world where 'best practice' is hotly debated among experts in their field and we (non-experts) are hopelessly unequipped to decide between them.

if you can show me that X is a public health hazard, I think it may need to be removed from the market, despite some still wanting to take the risk. — Hanover

This is overly simplistic. The problem is what degree of proof you'll need, what default position you take. For example, why even let it on to the market in the first place? Why is the default position that it be 'on the market' until proven unsafe, why not 'off the market' until proven more safe? If I (assuming I'm an expert here) merely suspect it of being unsafe, should it be removed first and replaced when shown to be fine, or left available and removed if not? Then there's the question of who it is we need convince of it's safety and why. The question of degrees of personal autonomy to disagree with that body and on what grounds.

Testing the efficacy (or harm) of a medical intervention is not like testing the pH of a chemical sample, or weight of an object...there's never, ever, a single clear answer. So there's always a choice about who to believe, and choices about who to believe are political, not scientific.

Who appoints the members of SAGE in the UK? Who appoints the head of the CDC? Who appoints the Director-General of the World Health Organization? ... Politicians.

In that this change might also be for the better. — Vera Mont

Who said it couldn't? People, as far as I can can see, are expressing their view that the change is for the worse. I don't read anyone expressing the view that it's actually impossible to be for for the better.

A number of people, though a quite small segment of society, and therefore not politically significant — Vera Mont

They've literally just changed the law in Scotland. Campaign groups are currently going through court to have opposing campaign groups stripped of their charitable status. several prominent figures have have their careers (or reputations) ended for holding opposing views on this... The idea that this is not a 'politically significant' group is absurd. It took decades for women (half the population) to receive the sort of legal protections that trans folk have achieved in the space of a couple of years. By that measure alone, they have been one of the most successful political movements we've ever seen.

"medical evidence/expertise has been mistaken in the past, therefore this particular piece of medical evidence/expertise is mistaken" isn't much of an argument either. — busycuttingcrap

...

Its not that great to keep attributing fictitious claims and quotes to people you're trying to have a discussion with; maybe stick to the things I actually said? — busycuttingcrap

The criticism of the U.S. is fair on many levels but it often becomes too U.S centric in itself. — Paine

In what way is this too US-centric, rather than, say, just exactly US-centric enough?

the following paragraph points to an element studiously avoided in Mearsheimer's argument: — Paine

And what do you think is the cause of this 'studious avoidance'? Is Mearsheimer losing his mind? Paid by the Russians? I mean Mearsheimer obviously doesn't think he's studiously avoided it. He thinks he's covered it (or that it's not relevant), so what's the cause of this discrepancy?

the merit of Lough's approach is that he considers developments between Europeans left out of the U.S. centric narratives. — Paine

In what way is this the 'merit', rather than, say, the flaw? Obviously Mearsheimer didn't consider developments between Europeans relevant (or he thought he'd covered that), otherwise he would change his position. Since he's more expert than you, you're not really in a position to judge whether the inclusion of these developments is meritorious or mistaken. You can only decide who to believe and you don't have sufficient expertise to do so on technical grounds.

There are several expert-informed arguments regarding this war that have been put forward, many opposing each other. None of us here have sufficient expertise to decide between them on their technical merits, so we must be doing so by some other means. I've been trying, for the last 400 pages, to get at what some of those reasons are. All I've got so far is that whatever they are, people are so embarrassed about them that they'll try literally anything to avoid talking about them.

So how does any of that defeat the argument that this change might be for the worse and we ought steer society in a more healthy direction?

Did you read the articles? — Paine

Yes. I expect Mearsheimer has too. Since he hasn't reneged on his position I assume there remains room for expert, informed disagreement. Have I missed some response from those maintaining the contrary position?

It's unsurprising that some experts support the US's position. It would be positively alarming if every expert on the planet opposed their actions.

So all we have is some experts supporting one narrative and some experts supporting another. The only matter for debate then is why you believe one and not the other.

It can't be persuasiveness, unless you want to set yourself up as being even more expert that the experts such that you can judge between them on the merits of the arguments.

So what is it that draws you toward these two?

No one is arguing gender-surgery ought be forbidden, so the distinction is irrelevant. — Isaac


No-one is arguing that? I'm surprised. — Vera Mont

I've not read any arguments to the effect that gender alteration ought be made illegal. Only varying degrees of concern about it's promotion.

Potential harms to others? — Vera Mont

Yes. Unless you seriously consider that after barely a few years of this change in approach all the evidence we'll ever need has been gathered and collated, then yes, all harms and benefits are 'potential'.

Do you mean that attitudes might change? Organizations and social structures might change? They will anyway. — Vera Mont

Yes. Are you suggesting it is impossible for such institutions to change for the worse? Or are you suggesting that we're powerless to steer changes, they're imposed on us by...?

Not sure I can see it as harmful. — Vera Mont

No. That much is evident. Others can, hence the discussion.

There is a distinction between discourage and forbid — Vera Mont

No one is arguing gender-surgery ought be forbidden, so the distinction is irrelevant.

What is the harm, to whom? — Vera Mont

I've already outlined the potential harms, as have others. If you don't intend to address them then there's little point in my repeating them.

The point wasn't that it couldn't happen. The point was that you've given no credible reason to apply the notion to one 'side' and not the other. The pro-US position you and others espouse here is repeated no less fervently, no less hopeful that contrary voices will simply leave, no less seeking to dominate the space of discourse with a single narrative. You've all employed precisely the same tactics (if not worse) labelling any dissenting opinion as 'pro-Russian', dismissing sources other than your preferred ones as 'biased', treating views as 'beneath response' to try and maintain a sense that only your opinions are the 'serious' ones. These are all pretty much the standard tactics you describe.

The perennial 'discussion' is about what what we should allow other people to do with their bodies. — Vera Mont

So out goes drinking ages, drug laws, ages of consent, euthanasia? We discourage people from doing what they like with their own bodies all the time. We do so because society is not (contrary to increasingly popular opinion) just a collection of individuals. We affect each other, our decisions form part of trends, peer pressure, shifting norms, social boundary changes, and political influences which affect all of us. I don't doubt in some neo-liberal utopia we're all free to do exactly what we want without having to consider our affects of others, but here in the real world we ought do exactly that.

The argument that gender affirming surgery is harmful is not cut and dried, but it can't be dismissed by such gross oversimplification as 'it's their body, they can do what they like with it'. The choices we make influence others and we ought be mindful of the effects of that influence.

gender dysphoria, like homosexuality, used to be classified as a mental illness only to have that classification subsequently corrected, and now is not considered a mental illness by credible health organizations or professionals — busycuttingcrap

Misgendering trans people is engaging in falsehood and deception — busycuttingcrap

If your position is simply 'everything we're told is true' then you're not responding to the arguments you're simply not engaging. Medicine is political, your 'credible health organisations' are political, language is political. The decisions made in these fields are not made from some Solomon-like position of detached wisdom, they're not made by Plato's philosopher kings. they're made by humans, affected by and forming part of the culture they're in. The critique of the transgender movement is a political one, it includes the cultural changes within the medical establishment, the linguistic changes with our communities, and the cultural changes in the next generation. You can't argue against those criticisms by citing the very agencies they're criticising as if they were unquestionable authorities.

I honestly despair when I read this kind of response. Whatever happened to holding power to account? Do we just lay down an accept whatever we're told now? You said yourself...

gender dysphoria, like homosexuality, used to be classified as a mental illness... — busycuttingcrap

It used to be considered such by the very medical professionals whose current opinion you're now treating as gospel.

it actually has no justification. — frank

Yet...

the basis of his belief that explanations must be as simple as possible. If you start explaining things in complex terms, using compound objects, you're really just off in the realm of imagination, not describing the world as it is. — frank

A timely example...

https://jacobin.com/2022/12/canadian-military-train-ukrainian-fascists-azov-centuria/

Don't like the data? No problem. Just call it 'Russian disinformation' and watch as it disappears in the righteous book-burning.

Almost forgot. 140 odd character summary for the Twitter generation who can't make it through a whole article without breaking into a sweat.

while some have managed to still acknowledge the existence of fascist groups in Ukraine that exert outsize influence relative to their size, others have simply downplayed or denied facts about them altogether. This comes amid a disturbing politicization of the concept of “disinformation,” which some dominant media, academic studies, and state institutions have used to conflate empirical falsehoods with dissenting opinions and inconvenient facts.

we can ask if maybe, just maybe, climatologists have thoughts on these arguments, and spend 30 minutes on their words. — Mikie

Why would we ask climatologists about economic impacts?

The notion that everything we do is predetermined (by prior chains or networks of causation) is difficult, if not impossible, to parse other than in an attenuated, abstract way. — Janus

I don't have any such difficulty. The choice I'm going to make is the one I think best and the values by which I'll judge that are already in place prior to the choice, so it seems very intuitive that the choice is predetermined.

The alternative is thinking that I might suddenly choose an option which I don't think is best, that is what seems impossible to parse. The very act of 'deciding' is one of judging some option to be the best relative to my values, and my values must already be in place prior to that judgement, so the option which most aligns with them is already determined.

This thing being sipped will always be the same coffee experience iff the sensation of the thing being piped sufficiently replicates the sensation by which coffee became known. — Mww

Sufficiently?

Coffee with sugar will always be experienced as coffee with sugar — Mww

I don't think even this is the case. On a nice day it will taste better than on a bad day.

It manifests in how a thing elicits a feeling. — Mww

But surely how a thing does something is the result of an investigation, it's not just given to us. We don't get to see how the engine works unless we look under the bonnet.

There are so many wonderful ways in which humans beings can talk about what matters to us , what is relevant and how it is relevant. For instance , harmonious, integral, intimate, consistent, similar, compatible, intelligible. Of all of these, ‘true and false’ are
particularly narrow and impoverished. — Joshs

I agree. Talk of 'true and 'false' can very often be imported into discourse in which they don't belong. I've argued elsewhere at length against the use of '...is true' as a cudgel. But this isn't addressing the issue.

The issue here is simply one of theorising and the incorporation of data into those theories (whether one uses true/false, or harmonious/disharmonius, or intelligible/unintelligible scales). None of this answers the critique. No matter the scale used, the question is one of what constitutes a move in the direction of greater valuation as opposed to the lesser (more true, more harmonious, more intelligible...) from where one started. If one starts with "this is how things seem to me" and then conducts any kind of 'investigation', one is implicitly affirming that the way things seem to one is lesser, by whatever measure, than the potential result of that investigation. Less true, less harmonious, less intelligible - whatever.

So the very nature of an investigation has, at it's core, an acceptance that the way things currently seem to one is flawed in some way - in whatever measure you're using to judge the model you have.

Once one has accepted that the ways things seem to one is potentially flawed, one cannot rationally, at the same time, use "but that's the way it seems to me" as a counter to any alternative model put forward. we've just accepted that the whole reason we're undertaking an 'investigation' in the first place is because of a lack of certainty about the way things currently seem to us.

Does what too? — Luke

Triggers one of a number of neural networks associated with reports of 'smelling coffee'.

I'm baffled as to why this is causing such confusion.

Several different neural events result in us reporting we experience 'smelling coffee'

There's no single thing connecting all the different events other than that they all happen to result (sometimes) in reports of 'smelling coffee'

Since there's no biological link, and no external world link, the only conclusion we can reach is that it's our own post hoc construction to conceptualise any given neural event as 'smelling coffee'.

before you explicitly said there is no one-to-one correspondence, now you explicitly say there is one-to-one correspondence? What are you really saying? — Metaphysician Undercover

Read more carefully. I can't comment of stuff I haven't said.

How could it, if I call it the same drink? And conversely, if I have different experiences, how could I say such experiences are of the same drink? — Mww

I meant the same as in 'wine', or 'beer', or (on topic) 'coffee'. To claim there's such an entity as 'the smell of coffee' requires that coffee produce a consistent experience, but it doesn't seem to.

These are aesthetic judgements on an object already perceived, not the sensation itself given from objects themselves as they are perceived. — Mww

Where is that sensation? What are we using as evidence (rational or empirical) that such a thing exists? It's certainly not identifiable in the brain. I don't find it through interception. I don't even find myself to have an intuition that it exists. It doesn't seem to need to exist rationally. Is it just a gut feeling?

Phenomenology shows... — Joshs

How can phenomenology 'show' anything? The term denotes the revealing of what's 'really' there, but if there's not right or wrong it cannot show. It can only invent, same as everything else. No better, no worse.

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim there's no 'way things are' and then say "the way things are is that there's no way things are".

If your claim is that phenomenology correctly shows us how things are, then there must be some way things actually are, some true propositions opposing false ones.

It's not you or I, our friends, our work colleagues, relatives, people who we know that are banned. That's what I meant with very, very rare. — ssu

Speak for yourself. I've had colleagues who've experienced several situations like the ones I described.

Besides which, I don't much care if you or I are banned. I care that experts are prevented from discussing important matters.

it seems like there must be some method by which a sip of this liquid gives the experience with this name, and no other, — Mww

Why do think that? Have the same drinks not given you different experiences at different times? Did wine taste the same to you at five as it does at 50? Does water give you the same experience when thirsty as it does when added in excess to your whisky?

For Husserl the existence of the world as an independent fact is not a founding presupposition but a preconception which can be bracketed. When one does this one has the opportunity to reveal... — Joshs

This is the issue. One cannot 'reveal' something one did not previously think without the concept of one's thoughts having previously been wrong on some matter. If it is possible to be wrong on some matter, there must exist some external state against which one is comparing one's thought to determine it's wrong.

It's not about 'external worlds', it's about external states - information, not matter. It's merely a description of a system. Any defined system must have internal states and states external to it (otherwise it's not defined as we can say nothing about it - it's just 'everything'). Any complex networked system must also have boundary states (otherwise it would either be a single node or linearly connected). This means that internal states have to infer the condition of external states from the condition of boundary states. We've just described a system. There's no need for any commitment to realism, all this could be taking place in a computer or a field of pure information. It's just derived necessarily from the description of a system.

Phenomenology appears to me to be saying that the internal states can infer the condition of other internal states. They could, but there'd be no reason to change any first inference. There's no 'revelation' no 'investigation'. You might one day feel one way, another day, feel another. There's no reason to prefer one over another. One is not 'investigating' anything, one is merely changing one's mind arbitrarily.

If you smell something new, it smells like something. — hypericin

Just restating the claim doesn't make it true. This is the central claim that I'm denying. Smells don't 'smell like something'. There's no other thing. There's the smell, there's your response to it. Nothing else in between - no 'experience of coffee' in addition to the coffee and your response to it. We've looked really quite hard and failed to find any such thing. I don't know what more evidence you want.

We have immense neural machinery to process sensory data. Did all this come after language use? Then why do other animals have it too? — hypericin

No. Why would it?

Every animal recoils from pain, and manifestly finds it unpleasant. Only humans have to be taught this? — hypericin

No. Firstly, we don't recoil from pain. There's zero evidence we recoil from pain and in fact, I can pretty much trace the signal from nociceptor to muscle and prove to you that we don't recoil from pain. We recoil from stimulated nociceptors. We decide afterwards that what just happened was 'pain'

In fact we don't even need a cortex at all to recoil from nociceptors, we can recoil from nociceptors and have not the slightest idea that anything has just happened at all. You're better off trying to make 'essence of coffee' a thing than you are 'essence of pain'. 'Pain' is definitely not a thing. There's no doubt about this at all. People's reports of being in 'pain' involve interactions between at least eight different major brain regions, three of which aren't even cortical, and there's no consistent pattern of involvement in any combination of these regions, fro example the anterior insula can even create 'pain' in the absence of any nociceptive stimuli, the valence of pain has even been experimentally shown to be modulated by areas as obscure as the face-recognition areas of the fusiform face area via the amygdala. There's absolutely no one-to-one correspondence between the 'experience of pain' and any neural goings on. We infer that we're 'in pain' from a whole ton of unrelated interocepted signals, and most of that inference is culturally modulated.

Animals and babies are deemed to be unaware? In spite of having the behaviors we correlate with awareness? — hypericin

There is a difference between being 'aware' and being 'aware of..'

It is far more reasonable to believe that sensations are abstractions of specific neural activities, and that this abstraction is built in. — hypericin

It's nothing to do with 'reasonable', it's to do with ignorance. It was 'reasonable' to believe the sun went round the earth... until we found out it didn't.

My dog strongly disagrees. Scents carry information on where food is, what is safe to eat and what is not. The purpose of being aware of your environment is not to just communicate, it is to be able to act on it, in a manner more sophisticated than reflexive instinct. — hypericin

And what need is there for any groupings in this description of behaviour?

I can only imagine that the findings that there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence comes from testing subjects’ neural activity while they are smelling coffee (or while they are “in the presence of coffee” as you originally put it). Therefore, what is in common to them all is that they are smelling coffee. — Luke

Nope. Thinking of coffee does it too. Smelling something you think is going to be coffee but isn't, expecting coffee...

Isaac, you might be interested in my comments here and here, which address why I think this characterisation of science misguided. — Banno

By coincidence, I've just replied to @Joshs in almost exactly those terms... I put it in terms of information systems theory - no need even for a material world to exist, it would be the case inside a computer too. Any defined system has to have states which are external to it and to resist entropic decay, it has to infer those states to act in a distribution gradient against them. Internal states merely investigating other internal states makes no sense at all.

It seems to me little more than laziness. Science gets complicated so people recoil and think they can 'investigate' stuff they're less likely to be wrong about. But I'm increasingly uncharitable at my age...

What you said is that there is a lack of one-to-one correspondence, and then you described this as a gap. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nope. Read again.

in order to say that a specific collection of neural activity corresponds with smelling coffee, this must be a one-to-one correspondence. Otherwise that activity could sometimes signify something else, or smelling coffee could occur without any of that neural activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Indeed. It does exactly that.

In addition to communication, what’s common to many instances of the collection ‘smelling coffee’ is the smelling of coffee. — Luke

That argument is circular. If you decide that some collection of neural activity is called 'smelling coffee' then obviously 'smelling coffee' is going to then be common to all, you defined it that way.

If I say "all these items in front of me are going to be called 'bob'" it's not a further discovery that they share to say "hey, they're all called 'bob'". Of course they are, I just declared it so.

Further to...

this site is generally well moderated (censorship is limited to matters of civility). — Isaac

... It's testament to this that absolute brazen lies like...

The instances of someone being a victim of some activist cancel culture is very, very rare. — ssu

...are allowed to stand for everyone to marvel at. Well done.

Yes, of course, over the course of the Covid pandemic, the Russiagate saga, the war in Ukraine and the transgender debate social media have hardly banned or restricted anything...

... I mean there was that minor occasion where they banned even linking to an article critical of the presidential candidate during an election.

... there was that trivial moment when discussion of the origin of the most deadly pandemic for decades was banned.

... there was the very minor ongoing situation where an entire campaign group were accused of hate speech because of their views about feminism.

... the absolutely miniscule banning of an entire country's state output whilst that country is conducting a war.

... the barely noticeable banning of the sitting president of the most powerful nation on earth.

... the almost negligible ban on disputing the CDC policy on pandemic management.

... and it's, of course, barely affected anyone. Only a handful of Harvard professors, the most cited academic ever, the president of the US, investigators for the UN, a couple of award winning investigative journalists responsible for some of the biggest exposures of government corruption ever, editors of the world's leading medical journal... practically no-one really.

That's exactly the point. There's a gap between what "neural activity" means, and what "I smell coffee" means — Metaphysician Undercover

That's your claim. It's not what I've said.

If we assert that the two do refer to the same thing, then our supposed understanding is missing all the reality of the difference between what these two actually refer to, which manifests as the real difference between them — Metaphysician Undercover

It's not missing. The difference is that one's a name and the other is a

So epiphenomenalism then? Just because a correspondence has yet to be empirically demonstrated does not mean there isn’t one. — Mww

collection of neurons firing.

the thing refer to by each is the same thing — Metaphysician Undercover

You've misunderstood reference. 'The apple' refers to the apple. They're two different things (one an expression, the other a fruit). They don't both 'refer' to different things. 'The apple' refers. The apple is just an apple.

the supposed parts make up the whole, but to name the whole is to name the whole, and this in no way names the parts. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course it does. Your spleen is in the group {parts of MU}. That group was christened by naming something MU which was not a simple. You christened that group by naming the entity MU even though you do not know it's actual constituents. The point of all this being that you don't need to know what makes up the sensation 'smelling coffee' in order to name it.

To deny the correspondence is to deny the brain as the singular source of all mental activities. — Mww

Indeed, but denying a one-to-one correspondence is not, I think, the same as denying a correspondence of any sort.

What I'm saying is that we group some loose collection of neural activity as 'smelling coffee' so whenever any activity which falls into that group occurs we're inclined to think that we're smelling coffee.

It's like saying "any collection including 2, 3 and, 5 shall be 'Set A'. It won't matter if we get {3,4,5,2} or {2,3,4,5} they'll both be considered Set A because they both meet the criteria. A correspondence, but not one-to-one.

So epiphenomenalism then? Just because a correspondence has yet to be empirically demonstrated does not mean there isn’t one. — Mww

But it has been empirically shown that there probably isn't one (demonstrated being too strong a word). We have quite a lot of empirical evidence showing that more than one set of neural goings on elicits the exact same reported experience.

I think maybe my poor writing is creating some confusion here. In arguing that there's no one-t-one correspondence, I'm not arguing there's no correspondence at all, but rather as suggests, a 'family resemblance'.

But does this not leave us with a bigger problem than being unable to demonstrate how physical conditions permit non-physical activities, iff such is in fact the case? You should have already determined what all you just said means, before you can proceed with actually doing it. And for the particular you…in this case because you said it….so it is for all you’s in general, which is precisely the same as any “me” in general. Wherein lay the problem. — Mww

Eh? Sorry, you might have to unpick that a little. Are you pointing to the problem of self-referential interpretation?

Is there a one-to-one relationship between a small and variable number of chemical and physiological reactions of my brain and cultural rules of assignment? — Joshs

I assume so (the alternative being that such cultural rules are random, which seems unlikely given their coherence). Like with perception in general, the models we come up with are constrained by the external states they're trying to model because we want them to act in some way upon those external states so not just any model will do.

Does this sound like a bizarre claim to you? — Joshs

To be honest, yes. I can't make any sense of it at all, but that may just be my unfamiliarity with the text. The 'bizarre claim' I was actually referring to was the one implied by an 'investigation' into they way things seem to us without (bracketing out) the question of reality (external states). I just don't believe one approaches the question of how some thing seems to one with a blank slate. I think given almost any question at all one will have preconceptions about it.

you have Buckle's chance of achieving some sort of understanding. — Banno

So it seems ^.

What is claimed is that the contents of 2 are not expressible with language. — hypericin

Yes. I understand the nature of the claim. I'm disputing it. I'm claiming that the evidence we have thus far points to such a lack of neural criteria for the collection of the various activities at 1 into the grouping of 2 that we must have learned those groups. There's no other biological mechanism or cause for us to group such a range of neural activity into the category 'smelling coffee' other than by having learned culturally to do so.

We've no apparent biological reason to group the various neural goings on in the way we do. No reason to have the collection 'smelling coffee' at all, other than for communication. All other biological responses do not seem to require them to be grouped thus.

Is that not what we are doing here? Exchanging ideas about what is the case and what ought to be the case and how we feel about it? — unenlightened

Yes, that is what we're doing here because this site is generally well moderated (censorship is limited to matters of civility). That is not what is happening on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc, which is the subject of this thread as I understand it. What's happening on those platforms is that ideas about what is the case are being censored for no other reason that that they do not agree with what a particular group of people think is the case.

Discussion of the potential lab origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was banned. There's nothing uncivil about discussing the origins of a pandemic virus. There's nothing impolite about it. It simply wasn't the narrative that powerful actors wanted presenting so it was banned. It was banned using exactly the approach you're advocating where some things are deemed 'true' and others 'false' and that some body of people know the difference.

Likewise with election fraud, Russian hacking, the progress of the current war in Ukraine, the efficacy of vaccines in certain circumstances, the efficacy of cloth masks, the public health utility of lock downs, the properties of a 'woman', the origin of Hunter Biden's emails, the beneficiaries of BLM donations... all issues which have been banned in one way or another from discussion or dissemination on these platforms. None of which are anything to do with politeness or civility, racism, sexism or any other 'ism. They are to do with powerful people constraining the public discourse to promote their interests.

If you disagree with all those examples of censorship, then we indeed have no matter of disagreement between us, but you opened with...

I'm surprised that folks are so undiscriminating about speaking truth and speaking falsely. — unenlightened

...which, since people had only been speaking of Twitter, Facebook and the like, would seem an odd response if you were referring only to actual lies (matters which the speaker knows to be false but utters anyway). I can't think of a single example where Twitter have censored lies (maybe some Russian state posts might come into that category).

So we're not talking about lies here at all. We're talking about different opinions about what the truth is, and the fact that some of those opinions are being censored.

I am speaking my best understanding of the problems we have in society, and how we might improve society. — unenlightened

If you want to be treated like a decent person, then try acting like one.

you are totally full of shit in everything you say — unenlightened

...does not engender a charitable interpretation.

"Gap" is your word. Look. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but that says there's a gap between my narrative and my my speech, not between my neural activity and my narrative.

If two separate descriptions of the very same thing cannot produce a one-to-one relation, then something is missing, whether you call it a gap or whatever. — Metaphysician Undercover

What? You claiming it doesn't make it so. what is missing. I can, at any point, declare some book from my library to be 'my favourite book'. Such a collection might change at whim, it might, be constituted of a different book, but always from the same collection of books. there's nothing missing. the books, my name for them. that's all there is.

That my name is MU does not imply that my heart or my lungs are named MU — Metaphysician Undercover

No, but that's not the claim I made is it. If someone we to say ask to which person your spleen belonged, the answer would be "MU". That would be the correct category even if you didn't even know you had a spleen. Naming you "MU" creates a category of stuff which is something like {all the stuff inside this layer of skin}, so it includes a whole load of stuff the people naming you didn't even know was there. What you term 'my brain' is made up of elements you're not even aware of by naming the whole. It still contains those elements and they still form part of what you've called 'my brain' even though you're not aware of them.

Maybe a clearer explanation...

Imagine you have a box in front of you but you don't know what's in it. You refer to the contents as 'the contents of that box' If I then throw that box on the fire, you might say "Isaac has just incinerated the contents of that box". At no time need you know what's in the box, but if you later find out it contained a notebook, then you know that all along you were referring to a notebook (that's what was incinerated) even though you didn't know it then. The actual contents of the box is not affected by your knowledge of it. Likewise the causal relationship between your neural activity and the ideas you form about your experience is not affected by your knowledge of it.

You said there's a gap between the two. — Metaphysician Undercover

I didn't, you did. I said there's no one-to-one correspondence. several patterns of neural activity could be given the same name, and the criteria for such naming might change over time.

"I smell coffee" is not the name we give to neural activity — Metaphysician Undercover

It is. Your not knowing that it is doesn't change that fact. If you name your car "bob" then you are naming (in part) a carburettor even if you don't know what a carburettor is because there's one in your car and you named your car. Your personal awareness of what you do does not exhaust all it is you do.

the existence of this gap means that there is a lot missing between these two. — Metaphysician Undercover

What. I don't see anything missing. There's some neural activity and there's the name we give it. What's missing?

When you say "actual information", it starts to sound like you mean things that are true — unenlightened

No. I merely mean views about what is the case (information), as opposed to views about what ought to be the case (instructions, ideology), or sentiments about what is the case (emoting).

When I tell you what time the train is due, I'm providing you with 'information'. I'm not claiming it's unquestionably true in claiming that it's information. I might be mistaken, or the train might be delayed. Someone else might disagree. None of which means the type of data we're dealing with no longer classifies as 'information'.

Unless you're of the bizarre opinion that scientific investigation is somehow 'finished', then matters of fact are always in the process of being interrogated. Or at least they were, until your ilk decided that some things were just 'true' in perpetuity and questioning them constituted the new sin of 'disinformation', policed by it's attendant priesthood of 'fact checkers'.

Seems to me that we can have two descriptions, one listing the chemical and physiological reactions of my brain in the presence of coffee, and another saying that I smell coffee, and that these are two different ways of saying much the same thing. Isaac? — Banno

Yes, but the key thing that some miss, I think, is that there's no one-to-one relationship between the two, such that a small and variable number of 'chemical and physiological reactions of my brain in the presence of coffee' might be described by us as "I smell coffee". There's no one set of neural goings-on which correspond to 'smelling coffee', we estimate, make up, narrate, story-tell... We make a Bayesian inference that what's going on fits with the story that "I smell coffee". Which, of course, is where the unavoidably culturally-embedded nature of 'experiencing coffee' comes in, since we wouldn't have the rules, the criteria for what sorts of mental goings on might fit the narrative 'smelling coffee' without learning the words 'smelling' and 'coffee' (or the non-linguistic equivalent, for the dumb, or the deaf).

If there were a direct one-to-one correspondence between some neural goings on and us wanting to say "I smell coffee", then I think the 'ineffable' crowd might have a better argument (though still flawed). They might say, "well, those neural goings-on is what 'smelling coffee' is and you can't tell us exactly what's going on there". But there is no such correspondence, so they can't. We 'assign' narratives to the various neural happenings according to some rules-of-assignment, and those rules almost exclusively come from our culture.

But such an argument seems lost here, among the phenomenologist's bizarre claims.

I do think, however, that there's a possible (more charitable) interpretation of the 'gap' here which might be something more like a gap between my identifying the neural activity as 'smelling coffee' and my being inclined to describe it thus, verbally. I suppose it's possible that I might choose to do otherwise at that juncture, but I can't see what ontological consequence that might have.

The question is who you trust with the responsibility of correctly informing the citizens. — Hanover

This is what's changed, why your "'twas ever thus!" approach is wrongheaded. You (along with the general trend around censorship) want to try and tack on 'information' to civility. It's not an accidental move, it's a power play and it's a new one (basically since Russiagate/Covid era).

There's always been constraints on speech based on civility It would be wrong for me to call all the blacks in my neighbourhood criminals even if it were actually true. It would be wrong because it's impolite to negatively group people by inherited characteristics.

Likewise if I were to say "all my followers ought to kill the nearest Jew", that too would be wrong because it might cause untrammelled harm. It too would be wrong even if the Jews around me were actually conspiring to do some awful thing. That still ought to be dealt with more carefully than incitement to racial violence.

It has nothing to do with 'information' or @unenlightened's tiresome invocation of truth. It's to do with restraining one's speech to get along with others. And, yes, some people do seem to need a little nudge in that direction sometimes.

What's new is the attempt to control the dissemination of actual information by hooking it on these already existing social rules and then pretending (as you do here) that they're one and the same thing and things have always been that way. They haven't. I'm not suggesting it's never been this way, I'm not knowledgeable enough about history to make such a claim, but in my lifetime, in the UK, I've never experienced the level of information censorship we seem to be experiencing today. I've been in academia for nearly 30 years, I've seen more papers turned down, media posts flagged, expert opinion work mysteriously dry up... these last few years than in all the years before, and it's alternative professional views on Covid, transgender issues, Russia, etc which are targeted, not racism, homophobia or misogyny. Views counter to a specific political agenda, not views counter to basic politeness.


So what I'm objecting to is the politicisation of censorship, not censorship in general. It's the use of it to persuade, rather than merely gatekeep - this modern trend toward labelling every idea one doesn't personally agree with a 'lie' or 'disinformation' (getting unpleasantly common here too), and expecting to have it expunged from conversation. It's cancerous to intellectual progress. Science is conducted by interrogation, not by popular vote.

History is replete with examples of bad people convincing people to do bad things.

To the extent we can reduce the impact of those who wish to spread their hate to avoid future acts of hate, I see as a good thing. — Hanover

I assume the 'we' in your second sentence is somehow rendered immune from the 'people' in your first?

If it is the case that 'people' are prone to being convinced to do bad things by speech acts, even when those speech acts are well countered by contrary voices, then I'm struggling to see how these same people can be convinced to use censorship in a socially responsible way.

...Oh, hang on... I get it. The people doing the censorship are just better people because they're probably middle class and have a university degree... Yep, all makes sense now. As you were...