An atheist can accept that the natural vs. non-natural distinction is here referring to what is in the real nature of a thing; and so behavior contrary to it is unnatural. — Bob Ross

How do I tell the difference between natural and non-natural? Or how do you tell it? Is the sex act a joyful act or a painful duty? Is the sex I have with my 25 year post-menopausal wife degenerate, sinful, inferior, because she is not going to get pregnant? And if not, then why is the sex of a homosexual so different? What distinguishes real nature from fake/ersatz/inferior/degenerate/perverse/ nature?

But perhaps I have misunderstood, and you are not objecting to Ross' moral realism or the simple fact that he has 'ought'-commitments. — Leontiskos

No I'm not objecting to that at all. I am a moral realist. My objection is to his waffling on about essence and nature and spirit as if he speaks with authority, when he clearly doesn't have even the authority of a coherent tradition. If you wanna give us that old-time religion, at least get it halfway right!

But your side of the issue does the exact same thing. — Leontiskos

My side? Same thing? Can you elaborate a little?

My suggestion is that the allegedly "absurd view that everything a natural organism does is natural." is pretty much the Christian tradition taken from the Story of the Fall in the Bible. It may not be universal, there have been 'legal' trials of animals in medieval times, but it is prevalent, and long-standing. It is not though, a view that I would particularly defend except in a psychological sense, which is not relevant to this discussion. But the idea that the beasts act according to their nature but remain innocent, whereas man has a higher spiritual aspect, and can and should resist his baser animal instincts at times, is really not that absurd in a religious or spiritual account of morality, indeed it is more the standard model, of European traditions.

You would have to commit yourself to the absurd view that everything a natural organism does is natural. — Bob Ross

Yes, if you did commit to that, you would have to come up with some story about how humans are the exception because they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and thereby fell onto sin from their natural, animal, state of innocence - or some other equivalent.

Homosexuality is always defective because, at a minimum, it involves an unnatural attraction — Bob Ross

Nature, it seems is unnatural.

Scientists observe same-sex sexual behavior in animals in different degrees and forms among different species and clades. A 2019 paper states that it has been observed in over 1,500 species.[4] Although same-sex interactions involving genital contact have been reported in many animal species, they are routinely manifested in only a few, including humans.[5] Other than humans, the only known species to exhibit exclusive homosexual orientation is the domesticated sheep (Ovis aries), involving about 10% of males.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

Yes, but they are fully men because they have male souls; — Bob Ross

And is there sex in heaven?

Suppose we take the male sex and the social role of begetting/impregnating. Begetting is not merely a social role, but it is also a social role. If we say that social roles pertain to gender, and gender is separate from sex, then we would not be able to say that the social role of begetting/impregnating is uniquely performed by males. But that seems entirely incorrect, doesn't it? — Leontiskos

Why do you want to say that impregnating is uniquely performed by males? Why do you want to call it a role? Do you not think that women have a rather larger 'role' in impregnation than men? I'm not so much arguing with you here as bemused and befuddled. As if sex is what men do to women, and what women do is 'lie back and think of England' (other nationalisms are available). And anything else is a deviation, and thats why it's called "the missionary position".

Being male is having a nature of the procreative type that serves the role of providing, protecting, impregnating, etc. a female: it is based off of sex. Masculinity is the traits that males naturally gravitate towards, but are not traits that only males could exhibit: same for femininity. Everyone that is male is a male fully in essence but is imperfectly one in existence. — Bob Ross

It is rather difficult to make sense of all this decarative definitional stuff, because your definitions are not clearly distinguished, and at the same time fail to account for the variety of human behaviour and social relations. Males can include gays, cross dressers, celibates castrati, none of whom tend to 'serve the role of providing, protecting, impregnating, etc. a female.' The best I can understand is that your 'essence' of maleness is a moral ideal that you present as if it were a natural fact, from which every deviation is an 'imperfection' - by what fiat, I do not know.

Your argument is not valid, though ): — Bob Ross

Oh, you mean I can be a man but not masculine? Fuck! That's weird! It's almost like they're not the same thing!

The fact that you called it feminine concedes that you do think gender is tied to biology…. — Bob Ross

It is tied, loosely. I concede the fashions are the fashions, no more. Just as lesbians and gays come in different flavours, butch and fem, so straits can likewise be more or less conformal to stereotype.
But since I am a male, and a man, and have procreated as proof, I declare that long hair and flowers are male traits and symbols, and whatever behaviour I demonstrate is by definition masculine behaviour, and therefore your symbols of femininity must be wrong.

... an ahistorical account of gender. — Bob Ross

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_history.

The very social norms, roles, identities, and expressions involved in gender that are studied in gender studies are historically the symbolic upshot of sex: they are not divorced from each other. — Bob Ross

But no one is divorcing them, just distinguishing. But still, we hippy males like to wear flowers in our long feminine hair too, and our women are martial and militant. What's the problem?

Why do we need a community? — Copernicus

I don't; you don't; but we do. As soon as you ask a question, you are in a relationship that constitutes a community. And you do keep asking questions, like a dependent child - even your rhetorical questions illustrate your dependency; stop waiting for responses to your silliness, and get on with something of your own, if you imagine you have anything at all of your own.

Why do we need a state? — Copernicus

Who is this "we" you speak of?
"We" need a state because if it is not our state, then it is anybody's state and may become their state.


Any territory (a piece of land) is in some state or other. It may be a state of wilderness, or a state of anarchy, a state of war, a state of transition, a state of tribal occupation, or even a state of the union.

So to answer your original question; The Constitution was written by a bunch of invading and marauding white men in an attempt to lend a veneer of moral legitimacy to their theft of the entire continent from the original inhabitants and the systematic persecution and slaughter of the same.

Jolly good luck with ending that immoral hegemony, but I won't be holding my breath. (I think this makes me officially an 'enemy of the people', where 'we' is 'the people' of the constitution.)

But does rational mean level headed and peaceable? It just means capable of reasoning. — Tom Storm

Well it's not completely clear. Game theory is founded on something called 'rational self-interest' and if that means 'cunning bastard' then the theory works well enough, assuming there is indeed no honour amongst thieves. But then, we ought to be talking about 'inner cunning cunts' rather than rational beings (possessed by devils).

Sorry if you are; can’t help ya. — Mww

What a sad state of affairs that is if the best of all of us cannot or will not help his fellows. All hope is lost.

Why do many people belive the appeal to tradition is some inviolable trump card?

And whence do you get your cards, sir? From the future?

Am I seeing this argument being made?

Some people get away with murder. Therefore we should not try and stop them.

the rational being known by a subject as itself. — Mww

Rational being? Speaking of delusional... Let's just say, that if we are ourselves rational beings, and yet we are at war with each other throughout history, then "rationally" we must be possessed by irrational beings that overwhelm us at every turn.

….in yourself, is the answer.
— unenlightened

Absolutely, and from which follows necessarily, it must be done alone. — Mww

No. The world of illusion is unlimited, and the harder you look for something, the easier it becomes to imagine you have found it. Meditation absolutely requires a reality check. Ideally the meditation supervisor will patrol the monks practicing zazen with a big stick, and anyone wandering into a dream will be recalled to presence with a sharp blow.

Likewise, one can try a floatation tank for sensory deprivation, but one needs a watcher, because the sense of detachment from the physical world and the body can be terrifying, and hallucination can become nightmare. You must do it, but you need not be alone, and should not be. To try such alone is already to start from a dangerous delusion that you are so special, that no one else can touch you.

It wasn't about the fruitfulness of Husserls method. On that we agreed. It was about the so called transcendental ego (t ego). Briefly, they supported Husserls Hypothesis that the t ego was the end game in any search for the self, often confused with our real consciousness. I believe that there is no self but a consciousness before [beyond] the self, and that is the real so called t-ego [true /real consciousness; i.e. before a self is constructed by joining history/human consciousness] philosophers and mystics alike are after. — ENOAH

This is not something that can be resolved by any amount of discussion. Go, and find out. Not in a thread or a book, but in yourself, is the answer.

I don't know Husserl's method, and the internet seems reluctant to enlighten me in five minutes, alas. But we old hippies have been on the trail a long time, and looking for the centre of self is very much the game we play. I can give you some tips, and some warnings. No one can tell you, no one can even help you, but do not try to do it alone.

Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

Paul Simon

How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.

I have nothing to say about this topic.

Do you guys ever experience hypobaric hypoxia from being so high above everyone else? — Athena

If I say 'yes', will it make you look up to me?

Nobody must question the medical model, because it is a scientific model. Scientists are objective and therefore mentally healthy.
— unenlightened

This does seem to be a problem, despite psychiatry being in its infancy as a discipline when compared to medical science, or other sciences. Does recognizing the limitations of the medical model address this problem, or do you see the model itself as the problem? — Jeremy Murray

I think, at least for now, the medical model is inescapable. But perhaps we can at least keep an awareness of some of the questionable features. First off, I would like to raise a question with you about "medical science" This is something necessarily very different from "medical practice", simply because the science deals with generalities and statistics, whereas practice consists of individual relationships. The practice must serve an ethic of medicine laid out by the hippocratic oath, and the science can only put that into temporary and strictly limited abeyance with the informed and competent consent of patients, without which one has something akin to the nazi experimentation of a Mengele. In the case of mental patients, this becomes highly problematic, obviously. One should bear in mind that 'good science' can be evil, when conducted on living beings.

but even if the communication I experienced with my brother was 'meaningful', it was certainly degraded and impoverished when he was psychotic. — Jeremy Murray

I cannot comment on your brother from this distance, but when someone is in the middle of an episode - schizophrenic, psychotic, or whatever - they are a long way away from the mundane world. In fact it is the incomprehension of others around that constitutes the manifestation we used to call 'madness'. One can see a person who is in distress, and yet one cannot reach them or comfort them. And that is distressing to others. I don't want to diminish the pain of these things for the individual and their family, and eventually, very often, something has to be done.

One of the things that often happens in these situations is that the individual in question is so agitated that they hardly sleep for days or weeks, and as a result, the people around them cannot sleep properly either. And so many of the crisis interventions basically address this problem by various tranquillising and soporific drugs. Sometimes one cannot persuade the person to take the drugs, and involuntary treatment occurs. It should though be troubling to all concerned at least; a mark of failure and desperation, rather as when the lifeboat is overfull and near to sinking one must fend off others from boarding and drowning all.

I find them as annoying as you find psychologists. — Hanover

Keep taking the tablets! Annoyance is a serious and distressing condition, but it can be controlled with the appropriate medication. Have you read Brave New World?

If you have a vivid imagination, it can be an aid to thinking and a boon to society. An architect's function in society is to visualise a building in such fine detail and completeness and realism, that they can give complete instructions on its construction in reality. She has to see the building that does not exist so clearly as to be able to draw detailed plans and elevations complete with measurements and materials specifications. We call them hallucinations when we cannot make sense of, or find a use for another's imaginings.

Experience includes thoughts and feelings, whereas behaviour is about how a person acts in regard to thoughts and feelings. For example, a person may experience intrusive thoughts of suicide or harming others and what is critical is the perceived risk of a person acting out the intrusive thoughts. — Jack Cummins

The perceived risk is the subjective experience of another, of the person in question's behaviour. Are you claiming that the experience of the 'expert' is objective?

Hearing voices is fairly common, and not necessarily problematic for the individual or society.
https://www.hearing-voices.org/#content
So I suggest that intrusive voices speaking of violence are sometimes made intrusive and violent by being suppressed and ignored. My first advice to someone who hears voices would be to be very careful who they talk to about them, and then to listen and respond to their voices respectfully. One rationale for this is that they are part of the person who hears them that they haven't fully integrated; some people find their negative feelings unacceptable but undeniable and so project them into the ether as some 'other' within the psyche. And sometimes, it is just the way they think about things.

But such a tendency can also be an aid to creativity, such as the novelist whose characters are sometimes perceived by them to have their own views on where the novel should go. So again, the social aspect and the external assumption that there is a problem is a large part of the problem.

But what of those that are well beyond that, like the schizophrenic, extreme cases of borderline, suicidal, seriously addicted. I don't feel any particular need to protect the psychiatric industry, but I'm not so willing to throw it out for all people if it has proven successes. — Hanover

What is a proven success in this context? If one takes the view of the addict, a steady clean supply is success, but others might consider drug free life to be success, although the latter might then consider a steady supply to be success in the case of the schizophrenic or the suicidal.

From a social perspective, I think success would be more like finding a social niche where the 'illness' becomes an asset. A schizophrenic would be suited to a career in shamanism, communication with the dead, or some other blue sky thinking - fine art? For the paranoid, a job with security, perhaps; for the anxious, health and safety. (I speak of jobs and careers here, not to recommend that organisation of society, but simply because that happens to be the current socially recognised mark of success.)

But accepting your position that the medical model ought be subject to question and not accepted uncritically, what alternative do you propose for those suffering psychologically. — Hanover

Well the immediate alternative is a social model. Rather than that you have got the imaginary pathogen of depression leading to the wrong chemicals in your brain, we would start from the idea that you are manifesting symptoms of a dysfunctional social matrix, such that you are being blamed for something that you have no control over, perhaps, or some other toxic relationship.

The late David Smail has developed this sort of model and written some nice books, and there are some other folks with related approaches that I might remember tomorrow.

To speak of mental health, and mental illness is to subscribe to a medical model of mind and behaviour.

mental health involves subjective experiences and objective aspects of behaviour. — Jack Cummins

This is misleading. All experiences are subjective and all behaviour is objective.This applies to the experiences and behaviour of clinicians and patients alike.

The medical model belongs in the first instance to the clinician, internalised into her subjectivity as a way of seeing a patient. 'Patient' is thus an identity and social role projected onto the other, which he may accept or resist. This will inform his behaviour, and thus in turn the clinician's diagnosis. Hence resistance to the authority of the clinician is commonly regarded as a symptom of mental illness, sometimes called 'lack of insight'.

Nobody must question the medical model, because it is a scientific model. Scientists are objective and therefore mentally healthy.

And because I am well acquainted with the authors being discussed, I knew that the information it was using for its arguments was not being simply fabricated out of whole cloth, but was highly relevant and based on real texts of the authors. I almost always find this to be the case with regard to A.i’s treatment of philosophical issues. — Joshs

What I’ve learned in comparing the forum with a.i. is that, unfortunately, the majority of participants here
don’t have the background to engage in the kinds of discussions I have been able to have with a.i. concerning a range of philosophers dear to my heart, (such as Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, Gendlin and Wittgenstein), especially when it comes to comparing and contrasting their positions. — Joshs

Thanks for that interchange; it was informative and insightful, and I certainly agree that myself nor anyone I am aware of here could hold up AI's end of that dialogue to that standard. But may I humbly suggest to you that what resulted was rather more like an internal dialogue of you with yourself, than a dialogue with another philosopher. Which slots right into the discussion itself as a significant fact.

Another philosopher would surely make other points, have their ownr favourite philosophers to call on, and generally be much more annoying? I would have pointed out at least that Schizophrenia and Novel-writing are somewhat late onset diseases, usually first developing with adolescence, and somewhat after the acquisition of language skills and some kind of social identity and sense of self. And I would have made more of W's demolition of 'private language' which puts the social relations as necessarily primary. 'Other-self' voices can only be heard by a language speaker.

Learn to fucking read Harry, and stop trying to be a clever dick.

Thanks for contributing to the nonsense. What is the point now of having any discussions when it is all nonsense? — Harry Hindu

I didn't say everything human was nonsense, the suggestion that it is, is certainly nonsensical, so thanks but no thanks for your contribution. But as you demonstrate, there is human nonsense, and the internet allows you to broadcast it to the world and to any passing AI scraper.

You're complaining about something that has been pervasive well before AI became a thing. — Harry Hindu

But then AI was not being trained on its own nonsense, only on humanity's nonsense.

And I'm not complaining about anything; I am reporting a warning by others that some people, you included it seems, have not considered. But in a sense you are right; AI simply increases to power of the speed of computing the degeneration of internet communication that was already happening between humans.

Are you sure about that? This seems quite exaggerated. — Pierre-Normand

I'm not sure, but no one seems to be sure how much of this site is AI generated, and I may be quite exaggerating, but its use is so ubiquitous though, that it must I think it must be increasing near exponentially overall. Perhaps I am a year or so premature. I think the link I posted that suggested the danger is fairly reputable even if my numbers are wrong.

AI gets its information from scraping public websites. It does not make up its own data. — Harry Hindu

And 50% and growing of public website material is produced by AI. So it is eating its own bullshit to an ever increasing extent.

You tell me.

So stuff abduction.

Lets take a break, and wander into the beginnings of mathematics ...

I am trying to understand legitimate beliefs in Hume — JuanZu

So stuff Hume. — apokrisis

14 pages of fulmination to arrive at the blank refusal to address the topic of the thread. No one forced you to engage in a topic you have only contempt for. "It's your own time you're wasting."

If AI was disconnected from reality then how can it provide useful answers? What makes AI useful? What makes any tool useful? — Harry Hindu

Did you not look at the quoted site?

A dictionary or a thesaurus is useful, and AIs are useful. They are trained on material that we find useful, and then we use them. We use them to generate the material that they then use in their training in the next generation. We have real lives that can correct falsehoods to some extent, we do research trip over obstacles, find that our ideas do not always work in practice.

AI has none of that, so when it starts using its own material as its input, errors are multiplied like those of inbred genomes - only much faster. Half of internet content or there abouts is already AI produced, and that is rising fast. This means that all the commonplace human nonsense ideas, racism and sexism for example, having been embedded by accident, become endemic and pervasive, and that's without the weaponisation of the internet with deliberate misinformation that now happens on an industrial scale from many quarters - Russia, Israel, the far right, big oil, etc etc.

For example: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/israel-chatgpt/

I do have an exception to this: A company called 'Heat Geeks' that uses AI to design heat pump systems, and then the same AI monitors the actual systems in operation over time (contact with reality) and uses that data to update its design parameters. I dare say there are many such applications, but they are not the kind of AI we are talking about here, are they? We are talking about the internet scraping generalist AIs; breast cancer screeners and the like are different, and my and the article's criticisms do not apply, but nor will pf posters be using them to write their posts.

We may be witnessing, in real time, the birth of a snowball of bullshit.

Large language models are trained on data sets that are built by scraping the internet for text, including all the toxic, silly, false, malicious things humans have written online. The finished AI models regurgitate these falsehoods as fact, and their output is spread everywhere online. Tech companies scrape the internet again, scooping up AI-written text that they use to train bigger, more convincing models, which humans can use to generate even more nonsense before it is scraped again and again, ad nauseam.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/20/1065667/how-ai-generated-text-is-poisoning-the-internet/

I think this is the fundamental problem. AI does no research, has no common sense or personal experience, and is entirely disconnected from reality, and yet it comes to dominate every topic, and every dialogue.

Are our conversations improving as a result? Or are they decaying? Let's wait and see.