Of the things you have presented from a clinical(?) setting, it seems that the preponderance at least indicate that there may be detriment to the use of the term in a general setting, but that it can be constructive with a more sophisticated audience or a more sophisticated presentation. Would you say that I have characterized that accurately? — Pro Hominem

I don't think the evidence goes that far. It could still be the other way around (the negative effects are the smaller, more specific group, and the positive effects generalise). There's nothing that I know of to tell us about the size of the group likely to be negatively affected by the term, only that the existence of such a group can be inferred from the experimental results.

The same goes for the possibility of the left being blind to the political harm the term might do. I think it's relevant to consider (hence my entry to this discussion, to point out that it's function in discourse is an empirical matter), but merely considering it does not at this stage lead to a conclusion that it is of net detriment to any political aims, only that there is an issue we need to be aware of when deliberately considering political rhetoric.

There's a difference between having an emotionally driven interpersonal conversation and a deliberately thought out political campaign. Only the latter need really consider the net political effect of using the term, in the former there should be no reason at all why people can't contextualise enough to see what the other person is probably trying to say regardless of any ambiguity or connotations.

I share your concern that it may be nothing more than a distraction. I have phrased this by saying I think it lacks utility to foster change, and that it misses the point. I think we are saying most of the same things there, but I invite you to distinguish — Pro Hominem

I do share your concern about distraction, but I have not yet reached the conclusion that this is because the phrase lacks the utility to foster change, it may or may not. My thoughts about the psychological object of much of this distraction would be well off-topic and probably of little interest to most, but it would be of no consequence whether the phrase had utility or not. For example, I think the phrase 'Me Too' had incredibly powerful utility to foster change, I still think the conversation held in association with it was largely a bourgeois distraction. I don't know if I'm taking the quote out of context, but...

I think it's time to go join the riot. — Banno

...would be more useful, I think.

"White privilege" when used in the best way, puts a white in the shoes of non whites...

Is that what's meant - or close at least - to perspective-taking? — creativesoul

Yes, that's exactly it. Perspective taking generally increases empathy and sympathy and makes system justification less likely. The exception seems to be when the context of the perspective taking exercise is system-criticism itself. If the experiment is set up deliberately to examine some system, the perspective-taking seems to have the opposite effect. It's possible that this is simply the effect of prior beliefs on belief-updating, but as yet I don't think that's been established. People tend to view ambiguous information as more confirmatory of prior beliefs if they consider those beliefs to be under challenge than if they don't. That may explain the effect, but as I say, it's not been replicated yet.

Very kind of you to say so.

As with your other posts, it is nothing but your odd ontological commitments (plus a general dissatisfaction with life) which lead to anti-natalism, yet you seem perpetually surprised that those of us with less Platonic dogmas don't reach the same conclusions.

Can you please explain to me how you see my assertions differing from the information you've presented here? My tone here is sincere, not argumentative. — Pro Hominem

The information I've presented shows that there is limited and as yet un-replicated experimental support for the idea that the term might have undesirable consequences in specific circumstances. I do have reservations about its use, but as the Xi paper shows (and as Streetlight and Banno have corroborated anecdotally), it clearly does have some positive impact in other circumstances. I've not followed your posts closely, but it seems you might possibly be more condemnatory of the net use than I am? My concern is mostly about the use of the term to distract from the real issues, which I see as the systemic necessity for an oppressed underclass. Where it's not used for that purpose, I've no issue with it.

The point @StreetlightX made about how it is necessary to respond to the toxifying of discourse by being firm about the meaning of terms is important here. If there is some use to the term, and also some risk, we need to take care not to allow right-wing exaggeration of that risk diminish the use. I've not personally found much use, and I have academically seen some misuse, but I'm not about to dismiss people's experiences of having been positively affected by the concept.

We talk about situations which never happening being better, no? — schopenhauer1

Yes. Better for the people who experience the world absent of the negative situation, not just 'better' in general. There's no general sense of 'better'. Something's being 'good' is belief within a human mind. Without human minds the concept has no meaning.

You can retrospectively and meaningfully talk about preference in its relation to never existing. You just can't actually never exist. — schopenhauer1

I don't see how. How can anyone meaningfully say they would prefer not to have existed when not existing negates any ability to experience a state of preference?

We don't talk this way about any other contingent states. We don't say, for example, that a painting would be more/less vibrant had it never been painted. The vibrancy is a property of the painting and so had it never been painted there'd be not entity to possess this property.

Hence edit 3. — schopenhauer1

Edit 3 still contains the concept of preference. It's incoherent without a preferer.

I think that makes sense. It's not quite my experience of the term's use, but I do think we can put that down to our respective fields or social circles. A small amount of my work is with people who've had a pretty shit deal in life, I've never really 'checked my privilege' and it hasn't prevented me from doing my job (I don't think), but maybe it's a valuable exercise in humility.

never existing might have been preferable to the waking hours you enjoy. — schopenhauer1

Doesn't even make sense. Who would be around to do the preferring? Something can't be preferable without a person to prefer it. Preferring something is a state of a concious human mind.

That it toxifies everything is all the more reason to be clear about our terms and not cede ground to them. More thought, not less. — StreetlightX

I hadn't thought of it like that. I suppose I was initially more thinking about building solidarity with those who should be united (white poor, black poor) than about opposing right-wing rhetoric, but I think in this latter respect, you're right. Not conceding ground is the only way to respond. Anything less buys into the the myth that their critiques are anything other than shallow grasping at straws. It's difficult though because the two aims conflict here. I don't want to give ground to conservative mud-slinging, but I do have legitimate concerns about resurrecting any language which lends support to a kind of rugged individualism that should have died with Hoover. we shouldn't be listing one's starting privileges and judging one's achievements accordingly, we should be looking at achievements as a whole and inferring the existence of starting privileges from any inequality we find there.

That one is able to talk about one's privilege in a critical way is precisely, a mark of it. It no doubt accounts for the fact that people like Pro are so violently offended over what they see as a nominative injustice. In my experience, the people most liable to actually talk about 'white privilege' tend to be those who have nothing to say other than to whine about it. A perfect kind of bourgeois black hole. — StreetlightX

Possibly. I suppose, again, it depends on the circles one moves in. I do agree though that 'check your privilege' can have this meta-function which is "how are you even able to sit there and discuss it rather than be compelled to respond to it?" In a sense though, this can be said of both sides of the bourgeois debate. I think what it does is highlights the fact that the 'subjects' of the conversation are often not the ones having it, they're the ones dealing with the oppression of which they are the victims. This disconnect is a problem because it removes the hook that the discourse initially had back into the reality of the situation is claims to be about, and discussion removed from any attachment to lived reality can end up castles in the air, a distraction from what really needs doing.

wondered, on reading your other post, if there might be an evidence base in the literature of psychology that leant one way or the other. — Banno

The basic go to is Lord, Ross, and Lepper's 1979 'Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence' which basically invented the idea of people re-enforcing their system-justification in the face of evidence which dis-confirms it. There's a lot of work done on what's called 'resistance' in sociology (meaning the failure to engage with challenges to assumption) primarily as a study of students within courses design to do just that. Mike Cole at UEL a few years ago produced a seminal study on this. Unsurprisingly students on such courses (I think he studies both race and gender studies) generally showed more sympathetic language use and policy leanings than before the courses, but he noted the opposite effect with a minority of 'resistant' students. It depends on your target audience. There's also a paper (not out yet) which claims to show positive relationships between perspective taking and system justification behaviour - so people who are shown other perspectives tend to justify existing systems less. Again this is generally positive as far as 'white privilege' discourse is concerned, but again the effect was switched around when system justification preceded the perspective-taking.

I think the important thing seems to be whether the challenge is framed as perspective-taking or as misinformation correcting. Whilst a few people can still be resistant to the effects perspective-taking, it's by and large a positive thing in reducing system justification, but if people see it as misinformation correcting then there's substantially more resistance among those who might be negatively affected by the change in systemic beliefs. If talk of 'white privilege' is to have any effect (and, as Streetlight rightly pointed out, there's no reason why it should, it stands fine as a critique on its own), then it will be mediated, I think, by the extent to which it's used as a perspective-taking exercise, which sounds very much the way your first article sees it, and indeed your own experience.

This is a side issue. — Banno

Yes, I think The Naomi Zack article could even go further. The fact that white people have paths open to them which people of colour do not have have is a privilege and that cannot really be denied, and shouldn't be lost in any talk of the effect of 'white privilege' discourse, but any attempt to broadcast or use that undeniable fact in political society becomes discourse, we cannot avoid it and we cannot be mindless to its consequences.

On paper, the term ought to do the exact opposite of this - insofar as privilege is a social relation and speaks precisely to supera-individual factors that shape behaviour. — StreetlightX

Yeah, but not everyone is going to put the work in to interpreting it. That's the difference between a technical term and one out 'in the wild', you CNT guarantee an intelligent or even sympathetic reading of it.

On the other hand that also strikes me as elitist bullshit, and that its misunderstanding can be attributed to it being a favourite target of conservative identity politics, which toxifies everything it touches. — StreetlightX

Yes, I'd be inclined to agree, that doesn't mean it's advisable to keep lobbing them material. That right-wing punditry toxifies everything is nit in itself a reason to throw one's hands up and say "we might as well not give it any thought". Some things they will find easier targets than others.

In any case, as a term which simply marks the sad situation in which normalcy has indeed become a case of privilege, I believe it still has purchace — StreetlightX

As I said to banno, I don't think there's sufficient evidence to judge yet. I don't doubt there's some purchase to it, but when it comes down to it, I don't think this is the real debate here and it was perhaps wrong of me to even raise the issue as a strategic one. Social media has made politics too superficial, last month we had actual riots fighting oppression, talk of 'white privilege' is just bourgeois dinner-table chatter by comparison.

The Erin Cooley article:

We conclude that, among social liberals, White privilege lessons may increase beliefs that poor White people have failed to take advantage of their racial privilege—leading to negative social evaluations.


This is indeed an interesting point. Isaac, presumably you do not think this sufficient reason not to talk in terms of privilege? — Banno

Most importantly we mustn't read too much into the results from a single un-replicated study. There were methodological issues (there always are!) and we'd need to see some of those ironed out before drawing anything like a meaningful conclusion. The hypothesis being tested was one drawn from previous literature, however, so it's not an entirely unexpected result, but still, I wouldn't rush to any conclusions just yet. I only mentioned the paper in response to @StreetlightX's question about where my understanding of the current use of the term comes from, not by way of advocating it's results.

Hypothetically though, I would be inclined to moderate language use within a certain political campaigns on the basis of this kind of response, yes. I don't see much advantage in being self-defeatingly precious about the original intent, nor even the theoretical power of a term if there's good evidence it's not helping your cause.

The BLM movement is not like the struggle of the proletariat. The propertied class own something which they have a strong desire to own, they have a strong desire to keep it that way and necessarily exploit the workers to do so, there's a clear line of competing interests. No moderation of language or conciliatory tactic is going to work here, it's a proper fight.

The fight against systemic racism, however, is different. I see it as mostly the exact same fight (the exploitation merely taking the form of racial disparity), but partly a fight against ignorance - the ignorance of the fact that it is the same fight. In the former case there should be solidarity with the white poor and rhetoric which weakens their position is harmful. In the latter case there's potential supporters not yet brought to the cause, the battle lines are not yet drawn, rhetoric which serves to distance people who could potentially be supporters is, again, self-defeating.

All this is, I emphasise, hypothetical. I don't consider the evidence either way to be strong enough. The point I was making to Streelight was only that it becomes an empirical matter. 'White Privilege' is a term used with calculated intent, it's not a vent of frustration like the riots were, I think what works matters here more than it does in more visceral responses to oppression.

I'm not referring to any definitional origin in critical theory or whathaveyou. — StreetlightX

Ah, I see. As far s I know, it dies have such an origin in critical theory, so I presumed that was your point of reference. More interesting though, if you still get that original critical meaning from its everyday use.

What's your underastanding of it? — StreetlightX

Unsurprisingly, my interest started with the popularised Erin Cooley study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, which was premised on the assumption of white privilege being used to increase awareness and promote action. The study was specifically on the impact such approaches have on assumptions about poverty where it did indeed seem that talk of 'white privilege' promulgated 'lazy and feckless' tropes in regard to poor whites, and even generated an increased use of individualist language regardless of race (ie, talk of privilege merely ressurects ideas of assessing achievement by comparison with origin rather than as a indicator of it).

Maybe its just the rather limited circles I move in.

No. The phrase is a framing device. It draws attention to a feature a reality. That's all. — StreetlightX

That's fair enough, but I think its naïve to think the term in current public discourse is being used the same way as it came out of critical theory. Once a term gains any momentum outside of the field within which it was a technical term it gains both meaning and intent, and, more importantly consequences.

It doesn't properly or effectively address the social consequences of the term's use to just point to its origin. Unless you think it's not being used in any way other than a framing device, then you'd maybe be able to just dismiss fears about its misuse as right-wing bogeyman-making, but personally I don't think you could make that case.

the dissonance between what ought to be a state of 'normalcy' and it having count as a privilege is precisely the point of the term. It draws its critical power from precisely the uneasy collapse of the two. — StreetlightX

Thus is an entirely reasonable premise, but if you want that change to take place then the critical power has to be realised, not just theoretical. It's not enough that it ought to have that power, it needs to actually have it, and that's an empirical matter. It either will or will not result in the necessary change and its success will depend not on the poetic justice of a powerful literary device, but on the actual psychological effect it has on groups who need to enact change.

I don't think such evidence is yet in.

Social science is quite a well-developed field and capable of producing valid testable and reliable indicators of human flourishing, such as average life expectancy, average years of good health, years of education, poverty levels, income inequality, gender equality, crime and violence statistics, and so on. — Thomas Quine

Nothing here tells us that they are indicators of human flourishing. That's your own personal opinion. What scientific, objective fact tells us that education or gender equality are measures of flourishing? The existence of identifiable measures does not constitute proof that those measures are measures of human flourishing, you've just labelled them as such.

Notwithstanding that failure, even if we agreed on the list, which is most important, and to what degree? If a policy promotes reduction in poverty levels but at the expense of income equality (as many wealth creation policies do) how do we decide how far it is worth pursuing it?

Besides which you've failed to even address the most significant question which forms the basis of most societal moral dilemmas...

How far into the future do we extend the predicted consequences?

How much certainty do we need of some negative consequence in the future in order to sacrifice some positive consequence now? — Isaac

unless you have an objective standard of moral behaviour and an objective arbiter, there's no response to those who say, well what makes your idea any better than mine? — Thomas Quine

You still haven't made any progress whatsoever on this this.

1. Your notion of what exactly constitutes 'flourishing' is just your personal opinion. Some people think a 'flourishing' society is one in which we have amazing technological advances, everyone is wealthy, others focus on happiness, others health, some see spiritual fulfilment, some the pure measure of population numbers. Most people have a varied mix with different emphasis placed on different aspects and it is this different emphasis which causes disagreement in moral dilemmas. You saying we should seek 'human flourishing' hasn't added anything useful at all in terms of objectivity. We all agreed on that in the first place. What we disagree on is what constitutes 'flourishing', what features (and in what measure) a 'flourishing society' has.

2. It's the same with bringing in scientists. Only an absolutely tiny and insignificant minority of people make moral judgements that are contradicted by all of science, no-one seriously thinks the earth is flat, or the moon is made of cheese. Scientists disagree, and their disagreement becomes greater the more complex the system and the further into the future you want them to predict consequences. Gathering scientific evidence will serves absolutely no purpose at all toward increasing the objectivity of moral decision making beyond the state it is already in because you will simply obtain a range of opinions wide enough to encompass all the options already being discussed. Nothing in there tells you which option to choose.

With all of your examples the key questions remain -

How far into the future do we extend the predicted consequences?

How much certainty do we need of some negative consequence in the future in order to sacrifice some positive consequence now?

be careful with that - as it would be possible to erroneously infer that aspects of social structure are matters of taste ( if not brute = agent dependent = dependent upon an agent's interpretation = like "I like coffee")! Or indeed that whether arbitrary social events happen depends upon how they are interpreted. — fdrake

This is really important (here, but also for any understanding of frameworks which deny brute facts). Mere taste is a model of my own mental state. "I like ice-cream" is an explaination for the endocrinological response I get from eating ice-cream. "The police are all corrupt" may well be infused with preference, ideology and interpretation, but none of that makes it no longer a model of 'the police', some institution in reality, not my own mind.

I just wanted to emphasise it because it often gets lost and denials of brute fact get lumped in with mere taste as if those were the only two options.

Effectively ending racism requires understanding both it's motivations and it's effects/affects. — creativesoul

Just as a matter of rational principle, it most assuredly doesn't. In order to end something one only need know its causes. There's no inherent necessity to know its effects. Eliminating the cause of a thing will eliminate the the thing, regardless of whether one is even aware of the effects.

I see. Now I understand your reference to atoms and ecosystems which had been opaque before. You're saying that Marx claimed to know how social institutions worked as entities and so didn't need to know how their individual components worked? If so, then I think your atoms/ecosystems analogy is probably a good case in point of where I disagree. Many good ecologists may have little to no knowledge of atomic theory and this doesn't hamper their understanding of the ecosystem, but I'd guarantee you there's not a single ecologists who doesn't have a good working grasp of the biology of the plants and animals comprising their ecosystem. Those parameters will be crucial to the development of any theory in their field. Your atoms/ecosystems analogy is a good example of why reductionism fails, but it cannot be taken to assume that systems can be effectively studied and modelled without even understanding the limits imposed by the models of their immediate component systems.

I'd agree with you that the result of individual systems interacting can be something which is not itself reducible to the outputs of those systems, but it's a step too far to suggest that it is not in any way constrained by them. Modelling human social institutions without reference to the human imperatives that constitute them is sloppy at best, regardless of the clear fact that the resultant institutions will be more complex than the constituent objectives.

It’s a good thing that inaction isn’t morally wrong then. — Pfhorrest

Phew, what a stroke of luck! We dodged a bullet there. I do hope whiskey remains morally acceptable, fingers crossed.

Marx needed to know how economic structures determine the behavior of social groups. Other aspects of human behavior are indifferent to his theory because they are meaningless. — David Mo

Yes, I didn't mean to imply that Marx needed to know everything there is to know about human behaviour. It strikes me as odd that you phrase it that way around. That economic structures determine the behaviour of social groups. Economic structures themselves are passive, they merely exist, they don't themselves determine anything. It's the necessities and responses of human social groups to them which determines their behaviour. It's like saying the gold seam in a mountain determines the mine.

the laws of biology are not sufficient to explain human society and history. — David Mo

No one here is claiming that they are. The claim being contested is that there's no such thing as human nature, no statistical tendency to respond to stimuli in some given way (even if that is to alter one's subsequent response and even if part if those stimuli are the previous responses of other humans).

If you accept such a position you have to concede that the nature of this response is an empirical fact about humans, a fact which, if Marx were wrong about his assumptions of it, would render his theory wrong.

Marx needs to know how humans tend to behave to make the predictions he makes.

Name any moral challenge and tell me that access to truth and evidence won’t help us resolve it... — Thomas Quine

OK.

Whether to help a friend in trouble. Two year olds know to do this, no science is required because the challenge has been resolved before we can even talk.

Whether to distribute rewards fairly. Even chimpanzees arguably know this one, certainly infant humans do. No science required.

Whether to care about the emotional state of others, whether to befriend or punish those who don't, whether to be generous in fortune, whether to cooperate for mutual goals, whether to deceive for personal gain... I could go on. All of these are developed in infancy, none require so much as a grain of scientific knowledge.

We may, at any time, require science to tell us how best to achieve these goals in complex situations, but that's nothing to do with meta-ethics, it's justvto do with efficient goal- achievement strategies, it would be no less true of an evil genius trying to destroy the world.

So the domestic turkey is an example of a species that propagates its genetic material very successfully. But can anyone say this species is growing and developing in a healthy and vigorous way? — Thomas Quine

I have literally no idea what you're talking about at this stage. Are you asking me if I'd like to be turkey? Or if farmed Turkey's are healthy? Either question I'd have no idea how it relates to my criticisms. Your argument is that all species seek to flourish and you define flourish by growth in a healthy and vigorous way. What has this got to do with the fact that turkeys are subjected to onerous conditions by a more powerful species?

The criticism I'm raising here is that if you define things like 'health', 'vigour', and 'flourish' in terms of biological markers then you fall to either measuring those think by numbers, or measuring them by human sensibilities and so begging the question. Maybe turkeys are 'flourishing', how would you know other than by judging the quality of their lives by the very feelings you're claiming to thus identify?

Your claim, remember, is that all species seek to active this state called 'flourishing'. You've dismissed pure population size as a measure of flourishing, you've dismissed human values as a measure of flourishing. You've trued to imply that its something to do with biology (but all that leads to is that 'flourishing' is that which a creature strives toward, which makes your claim tautologous).

So, as clear as possible, what is the commonality in the term 'flourish' as you're using it? One minute you seem to suggest it's common to all creatures, the next you're invoking how awful it would be to be a turkey to argue that they're not 'flourishing' as a species. Do you think bacteria would care uf we treated them like turkeys?

That seems irrelevant, it would still be human nature. — Isaac

It is not irrelevant, because in one case one type of law will apply and in another case different laws will apply. Only if there are laws in history. — David Mo

By what force do those laws apply? The only actors in human history are humans and their environment. We either respond to that environment in a predictable way or we respond to that environment in a random way.

If we respond to that environment in a random way then no suggestions about how to effect human well-being should even be considered, we might as well toss a coin, manipulate the environment in random ways because our response to it is random and unpredictable. If this is the case then we might well institute what Marx suggests, his predictions might well be right, but if they were it would be by chance alone.

If, on the other hand, we respond to the environment in predictable ways then we can both predict the course of history, and we can make useful suggestions for how changes to our environment will have positive/negative impacts on us. Only in this second case is prediction and policy-making of any use.

In this second case, however, we have acknowledged that there is such a thing as human nature - the tendency to respond in some given way to some given environmental stimuli.

None of this is contradicted by the fact that one of those environmental stimuli we respond to is the actions of others, nor that one of those responses might be to learn/habituate a new, different, response. These are still themselves stimuli and responses, our malleability is still a facet of human nature (it could have been otherwise) and it has limits - themselves a facet of human nature.

If we are completely malleable without parameters, then there is no point in carrying out (or advocating) any policy over and above stoicism. We might as well simply train ourselves to be happy with the way things are, why bother trying to change them?

I think you're arguing against a point I'm not even making. It's very simple - any prediction about the response of human social groups to some environmental condition (including the activities of that social group, and including learning to respond differently) either presumes there is a 'nature' of such groups - a tendency to act in certain ways in response to certain stimuli - or it is left with no mechanism by which its current state is predictably transformed into the future state.

I take it that there are two ways of interpreting your objection to the use of formal systems. One is a ban on the significance of formal systems tout court---they are merely a game. The other is a ban on formal systems as tools for interpreting ordinary practices. — Nagase

Neither really, just that (as you later allude to) as models they need to have something to hook them back to the thing they're modelling. In models of physics, for example, that's experimental hypothesis testing. I have no objection to models in principle (I'm pretty much a model-dependent realist so models are my building blocks of reality - quite important). I also have a great deal of sympathy for the work of Nancy Cartwright as a consequence. It's just that logical models of things like truth make what, to me, is a massive assumption about the way language works in psychology which is largely unsupported by the evidence in that field.

When we assign a truth value to a proposition, the assumption goes, we're performing some analysis of the syntax, the semantics of the actual proposition and the result is some binary value (true/false). But this is not what we see happening in the brain, nor do we infer it from behavioural experiments.

When reading a sentence with a semantic mismatch "my dog is house" fro example, there are N400 elevations associated with language comprehension which do not trigger responses in higher cortices. We dismiss, or flag such sentences as being 'untrue' without recourse to any logical processing whatsoever. that a dog can't be a house i just part of what learning how to use the words 'dog' and 'house' entail, it's has nothing to do with the logical truth value of the proposition - these processes are virtually identical to those seen with syntactic mismatches "my dog is quietly".

Semantic mismatches produce the same neural responses here regardless of the truth of the proposition being assessed.

There was a key study done in Germany a few years ago which presented subjects with opposing groups of sentences to assess - true/matched "Africa is a continent"; true/mismatched "Saturn is not a continent"; false matched "Saturn is not a planet" and false/mismatched "Africa is not a planet". What they found was that the truth evaluation method used was context dependent. Those tasked with evaluation (rather than sorting) engaged a different process despite earlier experiments showing the n400 response to sematic mismatching.

Basically sentences which are meaningless by lack of sematic matching are processed as such prior to, and independent of their truth evaluation. "This sentence is false" doesn't strike us a odd because we don't know how to evaluate the truth condition. It strikes us as odd because there's a semantic mismatch (sentences alone aren't the sorts of things that can be false).

Truth evaluation (as opposed to sematic mismatch assessment) is a complex process. Fluent sentences (presented in say a clear, high contrast font) are more likely to be assessed as true, even by experts in the subject of the sentence, than ones in a low contrast font. Even at expert, highly specific knowledge assessment, the linguistic aspects of the sentence (fluency, grammar, prosody, source...) play a part in truth evaluation.

Finally, even when we arrive at a fairly uncomplicated truth-evaluation outside of pure linguistic comprehension, we find that semantic processing is embodied almost entirely. Sensory-motor, auditory, visual, olfactory, etc... are engaged in the processing of state evaluation in concepts pertaining to those relevant cortices. "this sentence is true/false" would not be processed in the same way as ""my dog is green" is true/false" because the very processing mechanism for the truth evaluation of "my dog is green" relies on the visual cortex's model of 'dog' and 'green' not as logical concepts but as exterior world states to which there is an appropriate response.

Basically assessing the truth value of sentences is a context dependent involving syntactic and semantic assessments, socially mediated source judgements, emotional valence, and embodied response rehearsal. We're basically classifying these propositions on the basis of what we'd do about them, not on the basis of their logical coherence.

Logical models may well be a very positive tool in some areas, I'm not trying to dismiss their utility entirely, but when dealing with something like our mental processing, they have to be indexed to what's actually happening.

The strategy every living species uses to propagate genetic material is to flourish. — Thomas Quine

So how would we know the success of any given strategy other than by measuring the extent to which it has successfully lead to propagation of genetic material?

there are endless examples from the natural world where evolution privileges the flourishing of the species over the mindless propagation of genetic material. — Thomas Quine

Who said anything about mindless? If you could even be bothered to actually read what I write before spouting off your barely related script you would have seen that the very sentence you quoted is followed by...

the only common objective is to have as many offspring as possible which are fit enough to themselves have as many offspring as possible. Some niches will result in a complex, co-operative or even altruistic solution to this problem, others will not. — Isaac

Tell me how you interpret "Some niches will result in a complex, co-operative or even altruistic solution to this problem" as mindless propagation.

human nature would be aggressive in one way in nature and in a different way in history, if it existed at all. — David Mo

That seems irrelevant, it would still be human nature. To respond in such-and -such a way in one situation and some other way in another. I don't see how it gets around the simple fact that it is human behaviour which causes all of the consequences Marx is expecting. You're faced either with seeing human behaviour as random, or if it has statistical trends, then you'll need to know what they are in order to make predictions about the outcomes of circumstance. It's really basic stuff, you have to know the properties of the model you're working with.

All this assumes that, even if human nature exists and is violent, the impulse to exploit is like the abuse of women: it can be corrected and ultimately repressed. All that is needed is the will and the strength to do it. — David Mo

And the will and strength would come from where, if not human nature? - Space? Aliens? God? Random chance?...

If the gene for aggression exists you can't stop husbands from hitting women. Therefore, let's make gender violence be legal.
A bit strange logic, isn't it? — David Mo

Yes. Very strange. For a start if a gene for aggression existed (it doesn't) why would that make us unable to prevent people from beating their wives? They cant beat their wives whilst in prison, gene or no gene.

More to the point though, if a gene for aggression existed (again, it really doesn't), then it would, without doubt influence our strategies for dealing with domestic violence. We might screen for such a gene, create therapies known to help, we'd look into the environmental conditions which trigger it and see if they could be minimised, we'd avoid costly strategies based only on removing purely negative environmental influences as a cause.

Marx's theories are social, political, and economic primarily. They're not legal. So if he says "situation x will bring about situation y" he's relying on assumptions about the responses of human beings to situation x. It's their behaviour which will (or will not) bring about situation y, and so his theory's success hinges entirely on whether those assumptions are right.

It seems from the latest post though, that @Thomas Quine is equating 'flourishing' with nothing more than long-term population numbers.

The verb "to flourish" is defined in the Oxford Dictionary online as "To grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way." — Thomas Quine

So that would put him more in the camp of Michael Ruse (generously), or Herbert Spencer (less generously), I think.

It seems quite relevant. The argument against Marx is rarely "we don't want a fairer society", rather it is "such a system wouldn't/hasn't work(ed)". Since the system in question is one of governing and manipulating (or leaving free) human behaviour, it seems absolutely central to any assessment of it to question whether the assumptions about human behaviour are accurate.

Sure you can do science to human behaviors as a species, but the patterns you come up with aren’t going to be so simple as “humans are naturally x”, for any x. — Pfhorrest

Why not (for a sufficiently specific definition of x)?

"This sentence is false" has made a difference to reality by eliciting this thread. — Banno

But would "This sentence is true" have elicited any different consequence?

Let us suppose you are right and the Liar is meaningless. This raises the question: why is it meaningless? Let us suppose, for definiteness, that the liar is "This sentence is not true". It is composed of meaningful parts meaningfully put together. That is, "This sentence", "is not" and "true" are each meaningful expressions and the sentence is grammatical. So why does it fail to be meaningful? — Nagase

You're equivocating definitions of meaningful and truth. There's two potential conversations here and you can't bridge them in the way you're attempting to.

There the rules of one or more formal systems in which truth means something like [coheres with the rules] and meaningful means something like [uses the accepted syntax of the system]. In mathematics 2+2=4 is true because is coheres with any expression of the same form in the rest of the system and it is meaningful because it uses accepted syntax (in the way 2%4=& wouldn't be).

There are then the uses of the terms in ordinary language and the psychological states and behaviours associated with the beliefs they (sometimes) represent. Here 'truth' might be something more like {works out as I expected when I act as if it were the case}, and meaningful is more like {I know what to do about what you've said - it has some consequence on my behaviour or mental state that is predictable from the expression}.

The two are barely related - we simply do not consult formal systems of the type you describe to infer either truthfulness or meaningfulness, it's nothing more than a game. It's like discussing why the Bishop cannot move from c1 to g1 in chess by invoking it's restriction to diagonal movement in the rules and then expecting the result to have an effect when laying the pieces out before the game commences.

The solution to the liar in formal systems is perhaps a fascinating subject to those invested in those systems, but it has no bearing on the solution to the liar in ordinary language. You cannot invoke a system most people do not understand to explain why most people do not use sentences like the liar in their day-today speech - unless you're suggesting that we are all superlative logicians in our subconscious.

One can undermine this argument by raising valid objections to either 1, 2, or 3. It would be very helpful to me if someone could do so. — Thomas Quine

We've been through all this, so it's obviously not 'helpful' at all.

1. Is false. Living species do not all seek to flourish, they seek to propagate genetic material. If you want to use this pseudo-Darwinian approach to moral objectives then the only common objective is to have as many offspring as possible which are fit enough to themselves have as many offspring as possible. Some niches will result in a complex, co-operative or even altruistic solution to this problem, other will not. As for this flourishing constituting 'the good', I've not read a single reference to it in any ethical text, nor any common conversation. He's a really good man doesn't mean he had as many children as possible, nor that he caused the survival of as many children as possible.

2. Is also false. Divine Command Theorists do not determine their principles of the basis of human flourishing either here or in a mythical afterlife. They believe that God's commands
should be obeyed because they are God's commands -regardless of their consequence on humanity in any way shape or form. Studies in the neuroscience of moral decision-making show conclusively that we do not always (or even commonly) consult any moral system dealing with consequences before acting morally. Babies can act morally - are you suggesting they calculate the effect of their actions on human flourishing?

3. Is only true if you undermine your definition at (2), you can't have both. If you're going to include people's beliefs in a mythical afterlife as demonstrating that all moral theories are about human flourishing, then it cannot also be the case that science can tell us how to achieve it. For those that believe in an afterlife, science has no information to provide on the matter. Notwithstanding that, science actually has very little to tell us about human flourishing that could really help in any real-world moral decision. In almost all cases of complex systems there are disagreements among scientists as to the long term consequences and the vast majority of human systems (economics, social dynamics, ecosystem interactions...) are sufficiently complex to be chaotic in the long term and so beyond accurate predictability. Science might be able to tell us what is flat out wrong, but it certainly cannot tell us what is right.

How can someone enter eternity you might ask in that case. — Gregory

It doesn't seem like the sort of thing I'm likely to ask, no.