Are well informed rational people better than ill-informed irrational people?

When science has replaced philosophy, such questions will no longer be asked.

But man must eventually learn right from wrong good from evil and hence morality. — invicta

We usually say that the beasts are innocent; that their kindness and cruelty are innocent because they do not know right from wrong. Man knows already, and having lost innocence, is always in the moral conflict, choosing now one, now the other. Another way of putting this is as a split in consciousness, such that one second guesses what one has the urging of desire and fear to do, with ideas of what the m(other) requires one to do.

"Eventually", man will move 'beyond good and evil' through enlightenment. This is a reintegration of consciousness that resolves the conflict of good and evil in similar way to the way that the innocent awareness resolves the conflict of desire and fear. But the worst evil of all is the pretence that it has happened when it has not.

I think it is an Indian tradition, but it describes my own theory of child rearing — that the way to treat a child is as a distinguished emissary from a distant land to be at all times respected and deferred to, and allowance to be made for their unfamiliarity with local customs and language. Toughening up is for a young Rhinoceros, not a human. No human is self-sufficient nor should they be. One seeks to understand ones' child, and in that mutual learning from each other there is only the burden of an expanding self.

So, 'no', is my answer. The difficulty I have experienced, though, has always been in trying to discourage my children from education. It takes the resources of a government to manage that!

True, the same word may be defined in many different ways. The Merriam Webster dictionary for "fire" lists almost 42 different uses. — RussellA

I can well imagine an audience of philosophers looking up the word in Merriam Webster and discussing back and forth which of the 42 definitions applies in the particular case while the auditorium burns around them. Not.

First language, then definitions. Let us talk about language before definition, before dictionaries, for a moment. The language of a child. For example: my daughter would hear us saying things like "Can you do that on your own?" And being independent minded, she soon started to demand, "Let me do it on my rown!." Now you will not find "rown" in Merriam Webster, but we knew what she meant, as does everyone reading this.

For example, if something is fully X then it is not not X. — schopenhauer1

Where X, with deep irony, stands for anything at all. And what is this "not"? It must be an unsaying, like the all clear after an air-raid warning. Panic over!

When one shouts "Fire!" in, say, a theatre, one does not mean merely to refer to "the rapid oxidation of a material (the fuel) in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products."

Rather, it is a call to action in a matter of life and death. One means 'evacuate immediately, bring an extinguisher, call the fire brigade, wake up and stop watching the play, Sauve qui peut.

In the trenches, it means something else again.

In another thread, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14286/a-potential-solution-to-the-hard-problem, the beginnings of consciousness are posited as being in evaluating sensations. I propose that not naming, but evaluation is the beginning of language; the first word was something like a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

I would ground meaning and language in the same giving-a-fuck-icity. The Boy who cried 'Wolf!' is not a tale of someone describing the fauna, but of someone calling falsely for help, and how that falsehood undermined himself as a communicating member of society.

And when we hear that "the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" we should understand that the word 'wolf' is being used in the same sense, with the same urgency of meaning, and not merely "... the largest extant member of the family Canidae, and is further distinguished from other Canis species by its less pointed ears and muzzle, as well as a shorter torso and a longer tail. Wiki.

Analiticity surely comes much later, when wolves are not much problem any more, and we can start measuring the length of their tails. Certainly one does not begin with Euclid's Elements.

The sound of the dinner gong does not indicate a concept, it is a call to arms.

I'm not familiar with Adorno, but going by this crib-sheet, he seems a bit unenlightened.

Adorno’s moral philosophy is similarly concerned with the effects of ‘enlightenment’ upon both the prospects of individuals leading a ‘morally good life’ and philosophers’ ability to identify what such a life may consist of. Adorno argues that the instrumentalization of reason has fundamentally undermined both. He argues that social life in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. What has replaced morality as the integrating ‘cement’ of social life are instrumental reasoning and the exposure of everyone to the capitalist market. According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are fundamentally nihilistic, in character; opportunities for leading a morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to instrumental reasoning and capitalism.

https://iep.utm.edu/adorno/#:~:text=Adorno%20argues%20that%20the%20instrumentalization,societies%20lack%20a%20moral%20basis.

So a movement of resistance to the dehumanising tendencies of 'the establishment', as arbitrary rules about hairstyle, sex, venal politics the Bomb, The Vietnam war the cold war, the prison of consumerism and suburbia, etc, could not sustain itself, and dissolved into the same greedy and unprincipled mess that it had set itself against.

Adorno argued that a large part of what was so morally wrong with complex, capitalist societies consisted in the extent to which, despite their professed individualist ideology, these societies actually frustrated and thwarted individuals’ exercise of autonomy. Adorno argued, along with other intellectuals of that period, that capitalist society was a mass, consumer society, within which individuals were categorized, subsumed, and governed by highly restrictive social, economic and, political structures that had little interest in specific individuals. For Adorno, the majority of peoples’ lives were lead within mass, collective entities and structures, from school to the workplace and beyond. Being a true individual, in the broadly Nietzschean sense of that term, was considered to be nigh on impossible under these conditions.

Rejecting the great god Mammon, the hippies became mere thieves, no different from their forebears. As the poet put it at around the time—

Well, six white horses that you did promise
Were finally delivered down to the penitentiary
But to live outside the law, you must be honest
I know you always say that you agree
Alright, so where are you tonight, Sweet Marie? — Absolutely Sweet Marie

I'll leave this here with little comment, as it hits that personal blindspot where I cannot distinguish wisdom from folly.

https://oscillations.one/Assets/Publications/The+Holographic+Sky

But if your bullshit detector hits the red, you can retreat to the safety of Penrose's theory:

https://richardvnd.medium.com/conformal-cyclic-cosmology-is-the-end-of-the-universe-the-beginning-b8bd70b5b712

But it seems to me that Kant had it about right in pointing out a peculiar difficulty with conceptions of time and space, whereby one cannot conceive of a limit without conceiving of 'beyond the limit', and neither can one conceive of the absence of any limit. Time and space are the conditions of thought, that thought cannot contain.

Hence the seeming identity of deep theoretical science and psycho-ceramics, and thus my blind spot.

I find it amusing. If one were to speak of a spirit world from which we descend to be incarnated in the mundane to -say - determine or build our characters, and whence we return on death, one would be banished to the religion forums and not even the philosophy of religion forums. But this is speculative science!

None of the people I'm accusing of laundering money even live in my country, so all local police needed to do is forward the evidence to the Financial Intelligence Unit who would forward it to Interpol. It's a lot more effort to (as you point out) to write hasty analysis that can be easily proven false. — boethius

Now it comes a bit more clear to me. It's nobody's business to care a damn, and you are making work for them that they will get no credit for. So they set the village idiot to write a report that looks like a whole load of wild accusations with zero evidence, and there we are, Boethius is paranoid, case closed, time for a long lunch.
There's not even enough sense to prove false, and if the worst happens, the village idiot gets a reprimand. It's a very familiar scenario, that Mrs un and I have been through a few versions of. Whistleblowers tend to be accused of something to shut them up. Nobody wants to investigate middle class and upper class crime, it's too close to home.

Yes, it's badly written, which is another point I've made which is just "how do we even know what's meant?" — boethius

What is shocking is the lack of clarity about what are undisputed facts and what are your claims and what are 'their' claims/interpretations. This is so basic and important in matters legal, that the report is actually useless and uninformative. I don't think the quality is good enough for it to be a big conspiracy; it looks more like like some half-educated rookie saddled with making a report to close the 'case', that was never really opened, and no one was ever going to look at.

I'm a native speaker, not a lawyer, but somewhat familiar with formal language.

[Boethius] has justified cause to believe that the police is planning to murder him due to the reports he has filed. — prosecutors in my country

This is ungrammatical; it should be "police are planning". That strongly suggests that this was not written by a native speaker, or at least not an educated one.


In several emails sent to different recipients, [Boethius] has stated that the police have committed a number of different offences. [Boethius] has stated that he has reported the offences he suspects, including but not limited to money laundering, aggravated fraud, aggravated extortion and a variety of offences involving business operations, to several parties. He has contacted the [baddassery] Bureau of Investigation's Financial Intelligence Unit last April, but did not receive any reply or enquiry regarding the evidence he presented. He has also reported the matters in person at the [baddass] police station, the [baddassery] Bureau of Investigation, the [badder ass] police station and the [baddest of all asses] police station. He was ejected from the [badder ass] police station. In addition to the police failing to investigate the matters he has reported, [Boethius] has justified cause to believe that the police is planning to murder him due to the reports he has filed. The investigations against [Boethius] himself are groundless and caused by the reports he has lodged. The police, prosecutors and judges are covering up corruption and are thus involved in the offences, such as money laundering and corruption. In addition, [Boethius] suspects that police documents are being edited and/or deleted. In his emails, [Boethius] mentions by name [Beevus], [Butthead] and [Squeebo], among others.
— prosecutors in my country

The whole thing is badly written, the first two sentences both report what B has stated explicitly, firstly in emails, and secondly in an unspecified way, that might be verbal, or carved in tablets of stone, we don't know.

the third sentence, beginning "He has contacted..." would normally be taken to be reporting what B has done, and not be a continuation of things B has stated. And certainly the implication of the phrase, "[Boethius] has justified cause to believe that the police is planning to murder him due to the reports he has filed." cannot in formal English be construed as being that B himself states that, but rather that the reporter is reporting it. But what reporter would report that with no detail on the justification or any supporting evidence?

However, given that it is badly written by a non-native speaker, it has the general look of a report intended to entirely be of claims by B which were expected to be treated as fantastical. Hence - no further action. I'm wondering though why a dismissive report would be written in English at some trouble, and done so badly. Is it possible that your complaint had an international aspect and that this was a token arse-covering report to Interpol or someone?

Chapter 2.

In which it is discovered that not all words are nouns, and the discussion becomes 'heated'.

Perhaps an expedient question to ask would be, when was the last time US party politics had a significant influence on matters that also greatly impacted the 'powers that be', ergo the BlackRocks and Vanguards, the large banks, the US military-industrial complex, etc.
— Tzeentch

No one? — Tzeentch

I think I could make a case for this:

Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States. — Google

It’s clearly not a one party state otherwise it would be dictatorship but it’s evidently a constitutional democracy, and to claim that this democracy is illusory is to be dealing in conspiracy, simple as. — invicta

Now that's what I call polarised intolerance. You disagree? you must be insane!

Noam Chomsky maintains that the US is a one-party state. The Business Party rules, and maintains the illusion of a two party system through the continual jockeying between its two very similar wings. — BC

I wonder if anything more than the illusion is even possible, short of civil war? The US and the UK versions of democracy effectively limit parties to 2. Multi-party systems are available, and may be more 'representative' of the diversity of interests and views. It would clarify the argument if Chomsky could point to, or at least provide criteria for, a non-one-party state.

I think conflict theory is a useful way to look at societies. The assumptions that there are always conflicting opinions, loyalties, and interests in any society to do with issues of class, race, culture, religion, gender, profession, age-group, etc. The recipe for a peaceful society is that these conflicts are internalised within each individual, such that the individual identifies with many different groups according to the particular issue.

Violence becomes more likely when the society becomes polarised. That is when there is a strong correlation between various divisions, for example when one race is overwhelmingly poor, of the same religion, working class, they will form a faction that agrees with itself about everything and opposes a similarly factionalised polar opposite group. When a society is polarised, people live more in an echo-chamber of similar views, and become more intolerant of what they think of as deviant views.

In these terms, to claim that the US is a single party state seems to suggest that it has become polarised and intolerant, and that the same faction controls both parties - in this case white, wealthy, male, Christian, old ... leaving the 'two' parties bickering furiously about which end to open their boiled eggs.

Taxes are necessary for any regime that cannot generate its own revenue. — NOS4A2

A communist regime owns the means of production, and generates income thereby, It therefore does not need to tax, like the kings and barons of the good old days. Once everything has been privatised, then taxes are needed.

But, but but,... is not tax only possible if there is private property? And therefore a feature of non-communist regimes?

it's about whether the chance of achieving those preferences by use of conventional land war is worth the cost. — Isaac

That's a difficult calculation, and no one can be sure of the numbers that lie in the future. But given the particular history of Ukraine under Soviet rule, I can understand any Ukrainian's calculation that a few million dead is a price well worth paying. And if that was my history and someone was offering me some arms, I wouldn't be questioning their motives before accepting the offers.

The hiddenness of nothing is what allows movement and interaction. Thus the more one fills the emptiness of awareness with the images of self, the less emptiness remains for the world to unfold itself in.

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use. — Lao Tzu

As for consumerism it cannot be stopped i — invicta

Nay, lad. It will stop, and that right soon. And if the politicians cannot manage it in good order, it will end perforce chaotically, with much suffering. It would help if we could stop electing bullshitting narcissists and bullies though.

Or, perhaps it is the imagining self that dies. — Fooloso4

The imagining self is the imaginary self. That's what it means to imagine oneself.

Waves don't think. — Heracloitus

Hence the technical instruction – "Imagine ..." It's a brain exercise achievable only by the fleet of mind.

Unfortunately, humans can think, and because they make an identification of themselves as individual beings, they find themselves with the prospect of dying. This gives rise to anxiety and suffering. Fortunately it is only the imagined self that dies.

as I recall Slavoj Zizek once warning the Occupy movement: you need to know exactly what you are doing if you want to make radical changes - even if those changes seem, or really are, necessary. — ToothyMaw

I wonder why he said that to the Occupy movement, and not to their opponents, that they are already knowingly making radical changes to the environment that are clearly not necessary or desirable?

I have not proposed changing consumerism at all — invicta

Well you should start proposing it.

Governments are well used to using the tax system and regulations to rebalance the economy and change people's behaviour. If they cut the taxes on insulation, subsidise recycling, subsidise public transport and penalise private transport; subsidise the provision of allotments, and tax asphalt and concrete upgrade building regulations to net zero energy, and subsidise the building of new homes away from floodplains, they can incentivise a population-wide change in behaviour, that would make a deal of difference. They don't, and haven't, and show little inclination to begin. Instead, they subsidise oil companies and then further subsidise consumers to use the expensive energy and throw-away products produced.

Hey, let's ban single use batteries from next year. Instead, install charging points in cafes, banks, and charity shops, and offer a few pence trade in on dead lithium batteries so school children will collect them for pocket money. It's really easy to change people's behaviour en mass, with simple incentives and disincentives, and simple changes to the rules of the marketplace. But the governments are too busy persuading us to blame the climate refugees, and finding ways around the annoying human rights act.

It's idiotic expecting individuals to make changes that the organisation of society has arranged to be difficult and expensive. That is why environmentalists are better employed making protests to government than agonising over their individual carbon footprint.

These days, I say we put them in the world. — plaque flag

Yes, quite possibly. But not phenomena. If you go putting phenomena in the world, what are you going to do with the noumena?

It's all Kant's fault. It's nearly always either Kant or Descartes, But this is Kant. The whole point of talking about phenomena was to be as vague as possible about what he was talking about; that is to say NOT to make any assumptions. So I talk about a phenomenon that occurred in the desert, that might have been an oasis, or might have been a mirage. If it was a mirage, it would be odd to ask where it is.

What phenomena are in the brain and if so how? — Andrew4Handel

When one locates something, it is not the phenomenon, but the cause or origin of the phenomenon; which is to say the noumenon. the phenomenon is the appearance, and has no location. The rainbow is not in your head, because then I could not see it, but nor is it there where we see it, otherwise we could find the pot of gold at the end. It's 'a trick of the light' – a phenomenon.

A vivid memory of a deceased relative can be so vivid that one seems to see them in the world, or hear their voice, or catch their scent. Call them a 'trick of the brain' if it pleases you, or be satisfied to call them phenomena, but I would say that the phenomenon is no more in your brain than the phenomenon of the tree I can see at the bottom of the garden is in my brain. Brains are wrinkled rubbery phenomena, not recommended eating.

"Where are hallucinations?" is a wrong question. One might want to say that they originate in the brain, but they are not experienced in the brain but in the world. Yet they are not in the world either, they are nowhere - they are hallucinations.

Mirages, rainbows, memories, trees, brains, movies, hallucinations phantoms, as phenomena are appearances that are if anywhere, exactly where they appear to be and what they appear to be; the function of talking about them as phenomena is to talk about the appearance of things and not the reality of them.

That's called 'leaving the work for someone else" better known as laziness. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thank's for the compliment. Laziness is the engine of civilisation. The wheel was invented by someone who found dragging stuff a drag.

I don't know much about souls... — Average

Well nor do I. I'm waving in the general direction of how you might feel about this

there is something I am supposed to do with the life I have been allowed to enjoy. — Average

I understand. But the way you put it is as if there is someone - God? - who has allowed, and who supposes you. I think it is rather difficult to talk about purpose without something of an implication of 'beyond' the mundane world. But I'm just exploring something that is maybe quite nebulous.

Perhaps we can call this thing instead a moral sense of owing to others a duty to improve life for everyone, or even a duty to the environment – to life itself – I don't know if any of this resonates with you at all? or perhaps there is a duty to oneself to live one's best life what ever one finds that to be. I think in general I would put learning to love at the top of my list. That's an all day thing that I fail at nine minutes out of ten. But perhaps you have a particular vocation - I envy such as musicians or doctors who find their purpose and never hesitate.

Anyway, there is a philosophy that will declare any talk of purpose to be nonsense, though, what the purpose of following such a philosophy might be, I cannot fathom. So let's ignore that at least, and get on with whatever we can discern to be of value, to ourselves, or others, in this world or the next.

I've come to the conclusion that my life has a purpose. — Average

That is interesting, I wonder if you can say more? I can imagine at least two different scenarios in which this makes sense. the first is the sense in which, for example, Winston Churchill felt he had a destiny to fulfil for which he spent probably most of his life preparing. In such a case, there is a purpose in the world and for the world. The other scenario presumes a soul incarnation to experience a particular life as a learning and development of the soul; thus a purpose relating to beyond this world.

for my own part, I have long felt i was here on holiday, and the real work will begin post mortem.

Why, is a matter of poor philosophy no doubt encouraged by powerful interests.

Oh wait, you mean why do I think differently? why do I question accepted dichotomies at the heart of the thread and the usual parameters of political discourse? I don't know, perhaps it's the influence of T.H.White, or George Orwell, or Aldous Huxley, I'm really not sure.

As per usual, the state (the collective) is the problem, and not the cure. — Tzeentch

I think you're confusing the collective with the state. As per usual the individualist denies their responsibility for others and ignores their dependence on others. Social networks are the collective, as is "the market". The state is just the controlling interest of capital.

I think communism is opposed to individualism, not to capitalism. Capital does not mind who owns it, government, mafia, narcissist or philanthropist.

What we are suffering from is the cult of the individual masking itself under the guise of democracy. It's the fucking enlightenment again Sam. The individual cannot survive. Even Bear Grills cannot last a year without a camera crew, support vehicles, the global network of trade in survival equipment and a large audience to finance his exploits.

And yet, the very idea of collective action is considered treasonous. Until it's time for war. As soon as one takes off the blinkers of political rhetoric, it is obvious that individuals are powerless, and communities are powerful. Individualism does not work and cannot work and will never work. Communism is all there is to politics, and its just a question of who runs it.

And so on. — Banno

Literally disproving the metaphor.

Next you'll want to demonstrate that rivers do not actually have mouths.

Because, (private language argument) the subjective (private) end of the relation of observer and observed can only be spoken of by means of simile and metaphor. If you see what I mean, it may be that that seeing is conducted via a text to speech synthesiser, because you are blind. But to suggest that the blind cannot see what someone means is ridiculous. Not that folks generally are not prone to take their own experiences literally, and mistake hypoxia for insight, but not all who wander are lost.

We all got fed up with drinking hemlock, and caved in to the polis.

Engrossing means you are not content now, but you need to "catch the rhythm" to go with your music analogy. — schopenhauer1

Indeed, but that's not how it happens. If you set out to become engrossed, you never are, because you're always thinking about being engrossed, like Bart Simpson in the car endlessly asking, 'are we there yet?' There is no thought that will end the train of thought, but the train of thought can end.

That was an interesting video. I'm not usually excited by the recitation of a series of big cheese names and the ascription of -isms. But I like the way he is generous and respectful to everyone he mentions, and even-handed in his criticisms. I also find much resonance in the project to integrate ethics into the understanding of language, something I have been incoherently banging on about for some time. The idea of the language game - the use of it, must be to communicate the truth and not to deceive, in the sense that though the business of a stick insect is to project "I am a stick", the business of the predator is not at all to understand, but to see through the visual claim.

But in relation to the topic of this thread, it is evidence that philosophy has not at least gone more wrong than usual. "Naturalism" to my understanding is a position that denies the meaning of its name, in the sense that the claim his that everything is natural and there is nothing unnatural or supernatural. This reflects the sad fact that one needs ones' enemies to maintain one's identity.

And hence, every philosopher who wishes to say something, must begin with "where philosophy went wrong". My own position is that the rise of patriarchy was where it all went wrong, about 10,000 years ago. :blush:

And here's a new article: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/what-the-discovery-of-massive-early-galaxies-could-mean-for-cosmology/

In which it becomes clear that the standard model of cosmology is already in trouble over the Hubble constant, not to mention the dependence on dark matter and dark energy. So we might be almost ready for a whole new model. When you have constants that won't remain constant and undetectable matter and energy inserted to make the numbers come right - you have a problem, Houston.

God did it.

Just for balance, this is not a new problem. This from Jan 2021 —well before the launch of JWST.

The number of elements in C1-23152 that were found to be heavier than hydrogen and helium—which astronomers collectively refer to as “metals”—hinted at its strangeness. Metals are produced by star formation, which jettisons them into a galaxy’s interstellar medium through supernovae—making them available for next-generation stars to use. More metals equal more cycles of star formation, and it took present-day massive galaxies many billions of years to become metal-rich. C1-23152’s spectrum revealed the galaxy to be a veritable metal bonanza back in its early days, which means it made a lot of stars very rapidly not long after it first formed.
How rapidly? The spectral features of stars can answer that question, too, because they reveal which ones have elements typical of younger or older stars. The youngest stars in C1-23152 are roughly 150 million years old. The most ancient are about 600 million years old. That means the galaxy made some 200 billion solar masses in just a half-billion years—a rate of 450 stars per year, more than one per day. The figure is almost 300 times greater than estimates of the Milky Way’s current output. If most galaxies are slow-burning log fires, with new flames popping up every so often, C1-23152 is a gasoline-soaked bonfire.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/giant-galaxies-from-the-universes-childhood-challenge-cosmic-origin-stories/

something [that] cannot be experienced and cannot be exactly defined, — ClayG

Is that an exact definition?