Which is the exact thing that I'm criticising in this thread as being pointless. — Judaka

Yes you are. But I am going to continue to judge foresight by whether it conforms to events and not whether it fits my analysis. As far as I'm concerned the only value of foresight is that it should turn out with hindsight to have been correct more often than not.

The problem though, is that it is only a possibility, that I am trying to deceive you. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, you've been found out.

But "speak meaningfully" does not exclude deception. So I can speak meaningfully in a way designed to support my own well-being, which will also undermine your well-being. — Metaphysician Undercover

However, my well-being does not necessitate your well-being,
— Metaphysician Undercover

If it is part of your well-being to speak meaningfully, then this clause is a performative contradiction. — unenlightened

But "speak meaningfully" does not exclude deception. So I can speak meaningfully in a way designed to support my own well-being, which will also undermine your well-being. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you escape from contradiction into falsehood. And in so doing, you undermine your own being, because it is now clear that you are not worth talking to.

How do you separate good analysis from useless analysis without assessing for predictive value? — Judaka

You analyse the predictions after the event. A good speculator makes a fortune, but you tell the good from the bad with hindsight.

Because Murphy's law, therefore fail-safe design.

Thus airbrakes are designed so that the pressurised air is required to keep the brakes off, rather than put the brakes on. If When the brake lines fail, the lorry stops.

Well if you are trying to deceive us, you don't deserve an answer at all.

However, my well-being does not necessitate your well-being, — Metaphysician Undercover

If it is part of your well-being to speak meaningfully, then this clause is a performative contradiction. 'The chap's died', implies you are talking to thin air. Therefore: -

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. — John Donne

Analysis is always with hindsight; talk requiring foresight is called speculation.

In social media, news, forums, and many other formats, things don't really work that way. The court of public opinion latches onto appealing reasoning which sounds intuitive or reasonable, especially when the recent results support that reasoning (which of course they will). So, that's where it's a problem. — Judaka

With hindsight, I would say that if you look to social media and news for analysis, you should expect to be disappointed. The weather, the economy, and politics are complex systems that are inherently unpredictable because even for a supercomputer information cannot be complete, and minute causes a butterfly's wing or a meme, can have huge impacts on the future. Furthermore, human behaviour is affected by our theories of human behaviour and a predictive theory cannot take account of the effect of its own prediction, because it would enter a vicious analytical circle. Hence psychology and economics and politics are "dismal" as purported sciences. It's as if the fundamental particles of physics are listening to what the physicists say, and and change their behaviour as a result of each new atomic theory.

It seems appropriate to put a link here to another discussion where i have been pontificating on identity at some length. It's a very long thread, I'm afraid.

But who is the “true” me here? — Baden

My answer to this question is that you are the sum your relationships to society. To understand social capitalism, I think it is useful to look at the bankrupts. If 'influencers' are the social capital millionaires, then the bankrupts are the sufferers from all the new psychological illnesses - gender dysphoria, anorexia, bulimia, depression. One might say, looking at the physical relations of these illnesses, that the virtual world is exploiting the body in the same way that modern society has been exploiting the environment. And the losers are suffering from lethal mental waste being dumped on them.

The focus on authenticity is just another turn of the screw in this context: it is like enlightenment or 'cool' - to be concerned with one's authenticity is inauthentic + authenticity is the only important thing to be. Get out of that without moving!

What's more worrying now is the distinct imbalance developing in favour of girls seeking to reject their birth sex in favour of the (let's face it) somewhat more socially promising, male form. — Isaac

Indeed, rather like the way drapetomania seemed mainly to affect Blacks. Perhaps its a new variant of hysteria.

How many of us haven't had unprotected sex with another that didn't result in a lasting relationship? And then if my ex wants to get an abortion she has mental issues. I don't think so. — Benkei

A fair number of us, actually. Are you protecting the right of your ex to choose, or your own right to be irresponsible? Sheesh I'm even sounding like a fucking republican to myself now! Look what you made me say.

Look, I'll just go on record that I am strongly against making abortion illegal. Happy? I am also strongly for making abortion not the economic necessity it all too often is at present for many of our exes. We ought to be prepared collectively to support all our many exes and their progeny, and fund child care and all the other services. How's that for a Christian ethic?

A typical patient in the US is already a mother, over 20, unmarried, relatively poor and attended some college. Oh shit, it's family planning! So you rather have her make her own life and that of her other kids worse because you made it up, literally by sucking it out of your thumb, that it's a mental issue. These women are making rational choices about what's best for them and the rest of their family despite a society in which large segments frown upon it. — Benkei

You might want to go back and actually read what I said. I literally spelled out the economic and social pressures that typically make a woman seek abortion. Here is my repeat prescription:

First, wages for pregnancy and nursing women and childcare, Give the up-coming generation and its needs its real value in society. — unenlightened

That was by way of comparison with the pressure put upon gender atypical people to somehow conform such that they "choose" what I would maybe unfairly describe as 'mutilating surgery'.

What people want and what people choose is socially (including economically) constructed and conditioned. So having to choose between your growing foetus and your already malnourished underprivileged children is not a free choice. to have a free choice must include having the means to look after the child, and still have a life and a career. The issue of abortion is about child-support and family support. So maybe take off the mighty shield of righteousness and engage in some debate. I am very unsure where I want to draw the lines, so you might convince me if you do. For example, what do you think about the anorexic's right to choose to starve to death? Or the right of depressed people to choose suicide? I find these things hard to decide, personally.

Why is a woman automatically "unhappy" when she wants an abortion? — Benkei

It's not like cutting one's hair. I assume that women do not deliberately get pregnant in order to have an abortion, but that it is rather an unpleasant thing one undergoes because the alternative is even more unpleasant. Do you think otherwise?

I wouldn't swear to it, but I think before the rather recent liberalisation of abortion, one could get an abortion on mental health grounds in the UK, but of course you risked permanent incarceration. There are a lot of things I think are a load of bull, and I have been trying to provide a consistent and reasoned way of distinguishing individual medical issues from socially constructed dysphoria, aka unhappiness. If you prefer to just shout your dogma and label the opposition, you don't need my say so, and you're not going to get it.

it's been much criticised. — Isaac

Thanks. Yeah, I would not be happy with drawing any very definite conclusion from that. It looks more than a bit undergraduate to me. There is, I would have thought a strong possibility of onset of menstruation dysphoria, augmented by porn induced disgust at female body being self diagnosed as gender dysphoria.

I don't want to defend anti-abortion sentiment. — fdrake

being unwanted pregnant for 9 months — Benkei

First, wages for pregnancy and nursing women and childcare, Give the up-coming generation and its needs its real value in society. Which is near the top of the list and a long way above the defence budget. When that is all in place and pregnancy and birth are accorded the high status and rewards they deserve, then there may still be a few unwanted pregnancies, and then I will listen to arguments either way, as to whether "pregnancy dysphoria" should be treated surgically or with counselling under this or that circumstance.

It's a bit off topic, but I think these comparisons can be illuminating.

the reasons for focussing on trans issues are, as Dr Cass highlights, that the numbers are increasing exponentially. There's no precedent for that. — Isaac

Is there any model aside from the social that can explain this increase?

A1 ) Surgical transition is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A2 ) Hormone treatment is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A3 ) Gender affirmation schooling (voice therapy) is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A4 ) Therapy for gender dysphoria is permissible in some contexts, y/n?
A5 ) Counselling for trauma which has caused all this shame is permissible in some contexts, y/n? — fdrake

This all feels to me rather like the question of abortion. Given social pressures, economic and normative, on women who become pregnant, that we are not going to treat or try to change, should, abortion be legal? A reluctant yes, but removing the stigma and properly funding childcare and motherhood would be a better solution in almost every case.

To be honest, I don't have the expertise to answer, but it is clear to me that there is a need or desire to transition only to the extent that what one is, is, or is felt to be, "wrong". And that means it is a social artefact. And what is permissible is an artefact of the same society. So I suppose that what society says is wrong with an individual, it needs to facilitate them changing. But I don't have to like it.

B1 ) If identities are socially constructed, what stops shame from being an essential part of one?
B2 ) What general consequences does this "artificiality" of shame have for people who have it?
B3 ) Why can't people's characters be inherently shameful? We can be quiet or good at mathematics, but not shameful, why?
B4 ) Why is it appropriate to treat "character" as a state of nature, prior to social identity, whenever we observe someone their character's expression becomes identified? As much as socialisation builds character, it builds identity - that these two develop in tandem undermines treating one as a state of nature and the other as social artifice. — fdrake

B1. Shame is ubiquitous, but what stops it from being essential is that it can only arise from comparison.
B2. This is a huge question, that I could make a whole thread on. From shame one hides oneself and tries to be what one is not, leading to anxiety of being exposed as a fraud, and from being hidden comes the sense of isolation and loneliness. Think of anorexia for an example of how social pressure creates lethal misery through body-shaming.
B3. I don't understand the difference from B1.
B4. I distinguish character and identity by crude definition thus: character is what one is, and identity is the image one has of what one is. Both develop and change due to biology, socialisation, and other environmental influences. (No one becomes a pianist or comes to see themself as a pianist without a piano in the environment.) Does this make more clear how shame operates at the level of self-image, and not at the level of actual self? How it operates though is to divide the individual into inner and outer, and all the other conflicts within psyche. Hence, in this case 'I am outwardly male and inwardly female' or vice versa. So the division between state of nature and social artifice is indeed part of the same division in psyche, and of course the individual cannot actually be divided, so some aspect must dominate and some aspect must be suppressed. Or some aspect acted out, and some aspect hidden away. and because we feel this division, we look for and cherish the imagined unity of 'authenticity', the great prize of therapy.

Speaking of anorexia, another body dysphoria, would we advocate liposuction as a treatment?

I'm sorry but I beg to differ. Take for example the homeless. Have you dealt with them? Don't they come off as the genuine saints of society, and even the target of Jesus' teaching? May, I ask if your speaking about only people in power such as leaders or priests? — Shawn

I'm describing very generally the conflicted nature of the human psyche, as an explanation for occasional violence and violation. Power, as opposed to dependence is a factor in the expression. There may be people who are not conflicted, or are never in the position to manifest their negative. Homeless folk who tell passers by to f off do not thrive. They are like infants in their dependence.

But I'll stop here, because we have drifted too far off topic.

It's during the teenage years when things start emerging as problems. I think these teenage years where mental health issues can crop up is what your talking about. Is that something that I'm portraying accurately with regards to what you are saying? — Shawn

Yes. a child is helpless and dependent and cannot resist the demand to be this or that. The teenager is starting to become more independent, more resistant to demands to be, and starting to become sexual. All of which is in conflict with being good for Mummy. So that is when there is an internal conflict developing.

I don't think people want to hurt other people most of the time. — Shawn

Yes, but it is because they don't, that the person they are busy not being because they are being good becomes the bad person who does want to hurt other people, and in a special situation it can to come out. Have you read about the cruelty of nuns, and the sexual antics of priests? The saint creates the sinner in himself.

Do you mind me asking — Shawn

Not at all, ask away. Do you mind that I don't really know the answer?

There's a phrase that haunts me; "Be good for Mummy." One is told to be something, always and everywhere, to be good, to be better, to be, God help us, authentic. And so everyone is always being something or other, which can only happen by negating what one is. And the being that is negated is angry, frustrated, and hungry, for its own life. The prisoner in one's own psyche hates the one who is so free as to say yes to everything. Does that resonate at all?

Do you think the experiment would go the same in the East?
In a small rural village or tribal community? — HarryHarry

I don't know. In a way Marina's experiment was a set up. It would have been dull if everyone had been kind, and there was no sex or violence. So there was and that is interesting, and remarkable, but it tells us that that is what interests us, and that it tends to escalate.
In my dull normal life, people are never that free with each other, even when drunk. But it's interesting that sex and violence is where the op's mind went, and it reminded me of Rhythm 0 because 'do whatever you want with me' is very close to 'say yes to everything'.

Sometimes we do collectivism — DingoJones

Roads, for example. Each individual making their own roads according to their own standard would be confusing and lead to potential conflict at every crossing. We can come to some arrangement to share the roads, maybe. Agree to all drive on the right or something, might work ok most of the time, 'til someone wants to assert their individuality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_0

When the experiment is done, the results are not nice. Such is what we are.

That's not an apt analogy. — SophistiCat

'Fings ain't what they used to be. It's less apt here than it was at the old site for 2 reasons: 1 the old was explicitly run to produce an archive of readable threads, whereas this is, as you say, more of a community discussion, and 2, there seems to be much less editing done here than on the previous site. We used to correct for spelling, grammar and punctuation - don't think that happens much here. Nevertheless, it is a form of publication, and copyright is assigned. Publishers are communities too. So it's not actually an inapt analogy, though you may not find it useful or agreeable to your understanding.

It is a voluntary community, moderated ideally for that communities benefit. — hypericin

Actually it is a privately owned site, run by the proprietor for his own purposes which obviously do not necessarily coincide with what anyone else thinks they are or should be. I suspect the community aspect is important to him, but also probably the philosophy.

Bans are indeed a punishment — Amity

People often see them that way, but I prefer to see them more as self-defence on behalf of the community, the way I ban goats from my garden. They may see it as punishment, but I like the goats elsewhere, just not amongst my vegetables.

When were they tried? What consituted 'temporary'? — Amity

A long time ago in a site far far away. I think a week and then a month, but they failed to make any friends, but rather increased the conflict. This site being still smaller, is a little more easy-going, but I imagine there are still bans for low quality, and lack of language skills, which of course are not punishments at all, but simple disqualifications. The principle of moderation back then was to act for the benefit of a theoretical non-posting reader - whose opinions are never heard by definition, but might be measured by site traffic and rate of increase of membership.

It is only a concern when it is related to the 'status' of a forum member.
If you see the label 'Banned' on someone's profile, what is your first impression? — Amity

That is a valid point, I think. It would be better to find a neutral term - "account closed" or some such. Not sure if the software can be tweaked?

Time out for a re-think and for calm to prevail. — Amity

Sounds more suitable for kindergarten than a grown up discussion.

If you are thinking about justice, I would suggest you are misconstruing the situation. Think of tpf as a magazine or philosophical daily paper, staffed by volunteer contributors and volunteer editors. Because of the volume of work, editors do not edit before publication but afterwards.

Nobody thinks it a great injustice if the Times does not publish an article they send in, or indeed if they decide having published some, to stop publishing any more. Folks get banned because they make too much work for the mods; they get warned and have the opportunity to adjust. Those that do not heed the warnings are unlikely to heed them next week, or next month. Those that get angry about the house style, or the quality of the editing need to find a publication more to their taste, not keep coming back to one they do not respect.

The bar is low. You don't have to be especially literate, especially polite, especially learned or clever. A child of eleven could survive, as can many non native English speakers and uneducated in philosophy. As someone who has banned many on the predecessor site to this, I can say that one gets a deal of abuse from folks, up to and including attempts to hack the site and destroy it, and personal threats. It's not much fun moderating, and bans are no fun at all. Mods agonise over decent posters gone rogue, and even listen to criticism in threads like this. And they actually try to be fair, even to the extent that mods get fired and ex mods get banned. Temporary bans have been tried, and found to be troublesome, possibly because they foster the idea that bans are a punishment that might be just or more likely unjust, rather than the site protecting its reputation and integrity.

Every time a bird puts a twig on his nest he is incurring a debt to wilderness. — NOS4A2

And the penalty for this bad behaviour is to be shot and eaten. :death:

why you need to be this recalcitrant — Benkei

One of the mysteries of life.

My economics starts from 2 principles.

1. “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” Carl Sagan.
2. "Property is theft!". Proudhon.

Accordingly, 100 people who contribute to producing something automatically incur a debt to the rest of the world for the value of the resources they have appropriated to themselves, and the damage they have caused to other resources, ie the environment. Thus every fenced off field owes a debt to wilderness, as does every cut down tree, every mine and quarry, and every factory. This unpaid debt is now being called in by way of climate change and environmental degradation.

@Mikie actually knows this, but somehow cannot integrate it into his economic understanding. He is alas not alone in this.

Doesn't follow. Nothing follows if you can't take the reliability of your cognitive faculties for granted. The argument is so corrosive that it undermines everything, including itself. — SophistiCat

You can think whatever you please, but I find it is preferable to order one's thoughts to align with the world. Satisfying conditions of certainty come low on the list. What follows will follow, regardless of arguments. So I will continue to take my faculties for granted, except when they prove to have been at fault, which, alas, is often enough.

I think the aim of meditation is just the first bit:

I sit quietly — Art48

The rest is the usual busy-ness and recitation of thought trying to explain and give purpose where it has no place and does not help.Unfortunately with all that going on, there is no chance of any quiet sitting.

You cannot pull yourself out of the abyss of skepticism by your bootstraps using reasoning and empirical evidence if the very reliability of reasoning and observation are in question. — SophistiCat

Then you are dead.

Try again. — Mikie

You try again.

100 people all contribute to producing something. — Mikie

No.

100 people and the accumulated wisdom of 10,000 years of human civilisation and the accumulated capital of 7 billion years of evolving life all contribute to producing something. The 100 people had better go on a diet because the economic pie is way past its sell-by-date.

One cannot embed all one's reasoning in a psychological theory, including the reasonings that have led to that psychological theory. The epistemological buck must stop somewhere. — Thomas Nagel, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion

Physically, the buck stops with the world. Senses evolve to indicate threats and opportunities. They have survival value to the extent that they do that rather than entertain with celestial visions and music. They have value, that is, to the extent that they tell the truth about the world more often than not.

Language extends the senses. The scout reports that the buffalo are in the next valley, and the hunters set out. Language also has survival value to the extent that it tells the truth more often than not.

Reason has survival value to the extent that it helps conserve truth in language.

I am not dead, therefore I can trust my senses, my friends, and my reasoning (more often than not). Reason passes the harsh test of keeping us alive. You can stake your life on it, and do, every day.

"a unicorn is running" — Agent Smith

Logically, it's a simple claim: there is a unicorn, it is running. There is no problem with it at all except it happens to be false concerning this world. And there is no problem either with "In Narnia there is a unicorn that runs" which can be true of Narnia, a fictional world.

Why agonise over this stuff? We understand - you understand that unicorns are mythical creatures and that is the reason for using it rather than a rabbit.

We need one of those signs:

The boss is not always right. But he's always the boss.

Religion is commonly based on some “sacred” writings, — Art48

Do you imagine that writing predates religion? Let me tell you a different story. I'll call it "Animism". As Mankind developed through spoken language, the awareness of his awareness that we call consciousness, he naturally assumed that everything else was also conscious, because his philosophy professor had told him not to assume he was special. Animals were obviously aware trees were clearly alive, volcanos were angry, the wind was clearly going places, and the rain was always dancing.

Writing simply organised and ossified the relationships, aided by politics, whereby whoever wins the battle has the better gods on their side.

Philosophers now pour scorn on these ideas, as if they have proved that it is not so, and that the universe is dead. And we all lived happily ever after.

Am I right in thinking you see the genesis of identity as some kind social trauma, whereas character is something innate? — fdrake

Yes. I'm saying that Any combination of male/female/no-sex brain and body, along with any combination of hormone regime that naturally occurs is bound, short of physical pain resulting, to be accepted as 'just the way I am' unless there is an induced conflict between that and 'the way I ought to be'.

In short the only possible source of conflicted identity is social. I mean who d'you even think you are, fdrake? That's just a duck! :razz:

Or is it?? — Baden

Like I said, it's a meta-theory. It describes how psychological thinking goes on, and so each psychologist thinks it describes his own theory - quite rightly.

I’d be careful in relying too much on the rep grid in trying to understand the main thrust of Kelly’s work. Here’s what Kelly had to say to an interviewer. — Joshs

Yes indeed. the statistical complexity lends a comforting air of scientism to what is a fundamentally philosophical, social-democratic, and conceptual approach. Nevertheless, I think the grid is an interesting way of self- exploration, and that exploration gives a more visceral insight into the concepts of personal construct theory. It's interesting to hear that quote though. Back in the day, people like R.D.Laing were definitely not on the syllabus, whereas Kelly was, in a slightly isolated from everything else way. He definitely got credibility from being really advanced in the statistical analysis,* without which he would almost certainly been banned for heresy.

*Those were the days when computers took up a whole building and there was one in the university and mere undergraduates were not allowed in.

So, conceptualising individuals as naive scientists or more malleable social units does not prescribe results but processes, processes which are dependent on social contexts for their functioning. — Baden

If you substitute 'psychologists' for 'naive scientists' it becomes apparent that personal construct theory is a meta-theory of psychology. It concerns itself with the terms and dimensions by which the individual understands themself and other people.

The usual tool is called a repertory grid. Imagine a grid of squares; down the side is a list of people you know fairly well: yourself, your ideal self, your partner, your fantasy partner, your child, your ideal child, mother, father, boss, work-mate, uncle, granny, mother-in-law, first lover, best friend, worst enemy, whoever, the more the merrier. So each person has a row in the grid And along the top each column has some feature of personality that has some importance to you. niceness, sociability, religiousness, selfishness, intelligence, honesty, virtue, dominance, aggression, sensitivity, sanity, fidelity, whatever you can think of. And then you fill in for each person a score for each attribute - 0 to 10 maybe.

Then, these scores are subjected to an incredibly tortuous statistical analysis that I did a few times by hand with a mere calculator to help, and have completely forgotten, and you arrive at some interesting information about the number of dimensions that you analyse people under, how extreme your self image is (by your own standards), how close you are to your ideal self, and so on. If you want to try it, https://openrepgrid.org will save you hours of calculations.

Anyway, the takeaway from all this is that one's identity, being represented by the score one gives oneself in relation to significant others, is one aspect of the way one identifies humanity psychologically. The personal construct is the way one constructs both oneself as a person and the other as a person. There is no question here of there being a truth of the matter, as in a right way to understand people, but rather the depth or shallowness of the ways we understand ourselves and each other is itself a significant aspect of such understanding. This is psychology as a way of social being in the world. Is your world full of goodies and baddies like a cowboy film? That's interesting!