that natural persons are born innocent. — Wayfarer

More so, I object to the notion that innocence is any kind of virtue, or bestows any kind of entitlement. It is no achievement and merits no reward, not even temporary existence, for which and to which it already owes its life.

the mark of what I mean by voodoo economics is that money is made for the market makers at the expense of the real economy. So junk bonds, asset-stripping, war-profiteering, etc, as distinct from straight economics where there is production or services that folks want. The cost is paid in social cohesion, social provision, and trust in social institutions. Sooner or later collapse of such a system is inevitable, and the trick is to emigrate with one's stash before the guillotines are activated.

“ineptness”. — ArielAssante

The tradition has been to favour the theory of cockup over conspiracy. But times have changed, and although partly we are seeing the shit that has always been going down but we didn't know it, because internet, we are also subject to voodoo economics and voodoo politics. It used to be that 'divide and rule' was the rule, but now it's become 'divide and exploit chaos'. The social capital of the last couple of millennia is being squandered for a momentary advantage in the coming total collapse of civilisation. The masses are no longer needed because robots are cheaper, so they are being scrapped.
They're all going to fight for freedom until they're all dead.

I suspect that Russia is not included in Russel's 'domination of the White Man'
— unenlightened

I don't see why it should be. — Apollodorus

Only the skin colour.

The domination of the White Man over the rest of the world since the sixteenth century is coming to an end. It will not go on any more in Asia which is awake. [...]
India belongs naturally to other Asiatic countries rather than western. Her ties with Britain are more artificial than her ties with China. The domination of the White Man over the rest of the world since the sixteenth century is coming to an end. It will not go on any more in Asia which is awake. I am convinced of that. Our domination came into being as a result partly of our voyages, partly by a skilful use of commerce and partly as a result of science. As India develops industrially she will also develop as a military power.
It is for Indians themselves to settle their differences. It is not any of our business. I should, therefore, announce that twelve months after the Japanese war we shall abandon our responsibilities for India. I do not think we ought to insist on Dominion Status. The idea that India should become a dominion is futile and quite contrary to her geographical necessity. Other dominions had historical affinity with us, but India culturally has not and will not belong to us. Her affinity will be with Asiatic countries. Her history and culture are contrary to ours.
The era of White domination will not last. It cannot be revived. White domination has made it impossible for a stable world. You cannot have peace in the world secured as long as some people want to keep themselves in power. There will be hundred and one injustices in the world as a result of this domination. The other side has a feeling of hatred and contempt for those who dominate. Until you get approximately an equal standard in East and West you cannot go on.

Bertrand Russell, Promise Freedom to India after War with Japan, Bombay Chronicle, 10 March 1945

When a philosopher's vision extends over several centuries, one must not quibble if his predictions are a little slow in coming to complete fruition. I suspect that Russia is not included in Russel's 'domination of the White Man', but is part of 'the rest of the world'. And I suspect he had not given enough scrutiny to the American White Man either.

There is a not terribly old expression of uncertain origin: -- "To the privileged, equality can feel like oppression."
Which one can turn around. To the oppressed, equality feels like a privilege.

But life is complex, and everyone is to an extent privileged and to an extent oppressed. One might feel one's privilege and be grateful, or in the same circumstances, feel one's oppression and be resentful. It is more pleasant to feel grateful than resentful, I find.

Thanks.

That's a really useful analysis by the old Greek. So it would be silly to deny that these are my hands and this little cut on my thumb is an irritation for me,that I need to keep clean and no one else need be concerned with at all (except for the purposes of philosophical illustration); whereas the opinions of me had by others are their own business, and I do not need to keep them clean at all, though I might offer them a cloth, as it were, in passing.

Although, in practice, If Putin thinks you're a nazi, or Biden thinks you're a traitor, you might want to be somewhat more concerned.

I quoted what and who I was responding to, which was Ennui and you. Why is that not already clear from my original quoting? Look I don't understand what your problem is, and I'm not going to continue this unless you can explain it. I have apologised for upsetting you and assure you that it was completely unintentional and I still have no idea at what you have taken offence. I can say no more.

I honestly don't know what your problem is. I'm contributing to the thread topic along with you, and I think we are discussing it together with other people. If I have offended you, I apologise, and I will not quote you in future as it seems to be problematic.

Colluding with Russia's interference in US elections — 180 Proof

Ah, the fragility of democracy is so vulnerable to truth isn't it? One cannot chose fairly between liars when one of them is exposed.

Are you rolling your eyes or wagging your finger at me? I may have misquoted and multiplied the misattributions, but it's the only citation in the thread. Be thankful for small mercies.

Since when has it been illegal for foreigners to collude with foreign powers?

the best legend — Olivier5

"And then they suck your brains out through your ear."

That is indeed the question! I am talking to myself in another body. :grin:

But in practice, I quoted you quoting Ennui, and commenting in a direct way.

My assertion that the self strikes me as fundamental was rejected by unenlightened,
— Ennui Elucidator

Well, since you have mentioned Vedanta we can look into what they might say.They may ask, what self is fundamental? — skyblack

Well since you invoke my name, I'll risk one more explanation of my pov. In common with probably most folk and most philosophers, I take awareness to be fundamental, and awareness of awareness be the full flowering. So being aware of the awareness that one fundamentally is, one can easily say what it is.

Well perhaps you can, but I find I can only describe awareness as having the characteristic of emptiness; it is like an empty stage on which experiences of body and environment and others are played out.As soon as there is any dressing up of this emptiness, I am not talking about awareness any more, but what I am aware of - the scenery, not the stage.

The self is one of the players and part of the play or scene, precisely because it is identified as being something/someone. Once that is rejected, it is simply obvious that awareness is everywhere the same emptiness, and we are like bubbles in a foam of life.

This all seems very straightforward and obvious in theory, but one never gets very far with it because one is always trying to explain to folks that think they are actors playing lead roles in a melodrama, that they are just part of the audience. "I don't wish to know that, kindly leave the stage."

I don't see how this avoids agency. Absolutely, the I that is me has privileged access to the stuff that is me whereas my I lacks such access to the stuff that is you (outside of what I can observe about you or what you disclose to me). — Ennui Elucidator

Well you have described the state of affairs; What "I" has access to is identified with, and that 'makes the difference between us. It's not much of a difference - I'm here identified with this body, and you're over there; I have the experience and memories of this body and you of that.

What has dropped out of contention entirely is consciousness. Ask what makes your consciousness separate from mine, we have recourse to the contents of consciousness, what we have access to - awareness and awareness of being aware have left the building, and all we have is distinct privileged access, otherwise we seem to be indistinguishable. But on that basis, I am not the same at night as I am during the day - the experiences are quite different.

How disappointing! Not a single source has been cited, leaving the reader with unsubstantiated opinions on all sides. It's almost as if there are no hard and fast rules, and while some people like to be referred here and there to related material, others want it all laid in front of them ,and some take it as it comes, or leave it where it lies...

The moving finger wags, and having wagged, moves on

The Autobiography of God: Daniel 5:5 (Omar Khayyam edition)

There is stuff.
There is an assemblage of stuff amongst stuff that is aware of stuff.
There is an assemblage of stuff amongst stuff that is aware of being aware of stuff.

Call the assemblage 'unenlightened' or 'Ennui Elucidator'.
Call being aware of being aware 'being conscious'.

In some ways the self is constructed - my hand is me to the extent I identify with it and not to the extent I don't. But in other ways the self strikes as more fundamental - it is the omnipresent subject that "I" cannot help but drag into every construction. — Ennui Elucidator

I don't think the self is fundamental. The assemblage known as Ennui Elucidator has a sensory feeling connection to 'its hand', whereas unenlightened has a sensory feeling connection to a completely different hand. Likewise, my eyes see from here and your eyes from there, and I know when this stomach wants feeding, but not when that one does.

So it looks like it is an illusion that there is a difference, caused by the limited range of awareness, and weakness of the linguistic and sympathetic connections between us.

Yeah, you said.

Yeah, you said. But it's not stealing Hilary's emails he's going to be charged with, but exposing war crimes of The US.

I don't much like the guy either. But It's really bad news for any kind of freedom of speech reporting of truth and exposure of high crimes and misdemeanours, and rank hypocrisy on the part of US and UK governments. And there is nothing much to discuss on that front.

Optimism and hope have the direction of fit from thought to word. Hope involves expectation and desire.

That notion of direction of fit is exactly what is needed to make sense of hope. — Banno

If I believe in science, the direction is from thought to world, but I believe in science because the direction of fit of science itself is from world to thought. But that direction of fit of science is established by the moral commitment of the scientist to the truth about the world - that is, by their belief in science.

The circle is unbroken. But it only works the one way, one cannot have a moral commitment to falsehood or believe in anti-science, except as a partial game within the real commitment to truth. To be a scientist is to be dedicated to the moral cause of extending human knowledge. To falsify one's results is to betray science.

In science as in religion one must ought to put aside personal desire in the name of principles of truth, justice, and - something else, I forget for the moment.

Consider a human neonate, if your memory does not reach to your experience of the state. No reading of labels is possible. One is in a state of helpless dependence on whoever cares, or doesn't care for one. One does not believe or disbelieve because one does not have the language to form a proposition, but one trusts, one has faith that one's cry will be heard, and for some it is not heard though they had faith.

Children trust their parents, until they learn better. Or with luck, they do not learn much better because their parents are trustworthy.

Some people have faith in democracy or justice, or the creative potential of humanity. But to have faith in justice is by no means to believe that justice prevails. Indeed if justice did invariably prevail one would not talk about having faith or belief, but of knowing from experience. Rather, this faith is manifested in action, as the attempt to make this day this affair, this act, a just one. One does not steal because it would be unjust, and thus one is faithful to justice.

One is faithful to the principles of science if one reports honestly and fully the results of an experiment and does not cook the statistics or pretend to have taken precautions one has not taken. A faithless scientist is an abomination and not to be trusted.

The more one looks at the way the language is used, the more one sees that faith has to do with an ethical life, and the evidence that supports faith is the way one lives oneself, not the way the world works.

In cyberspace, parody is indistinguishable from propaganda.

Not so much a philosopher, more a snake oil salesman taking advantage of our free site.

Things are such that there's no such thing as 'no such thing'.

Which pile of words establishes no more than that there is a pile of words.

Thus to ask why there is something rather than nothing is clearly something rather than nothing; and that is why, whenever it is asked, there is something and not nothing. Try to imagine no one repetitively asking why there is nothing rather than something. It never happens.

Perhaps stop thinking about religion as primarily a set of beliefs that become more credible in proportion to their internal consistency.

Instead, treat religions as practices in the first place, that might sometimes justify themselves with tales of other realms and other beings, and dogma of all sorts. Ask first what these communities do: do they look after the old women in their community, for instance, or do they like to set fire to them? The different reasons they give for sati or witch-burning seem less important than the commonality of the practice of setting (unwanted) women on fire.

Commendable work. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well no. That is rather the point. What I was doing politically 50 years ago had some small local success, but overall the problem of homelessness and poor housing has gotten much worse. My efforts were useless in the face of a society that does not look after its weaker members as well as a bunch of heathen tribal primitives who are by comparison desperately poor and highly irrational.

I think your praise or blame offered to me rather exemplifies the root of the difficulty. You do not even see what a terrible inditement of our society it is that we cannot, despite our enormous wealth and sophistication, even feed and house ourselves adequately to the climate. The callousness of our society comes very much out of this kind of attitude of moralising the individual, and making the relation between the individual and society one that presumes the moral justice of social circumstance, and thus blames the weak for their weakness, whether it be disability, lack of education, mental illness, addiction, or mere accident.

It's a cop-out. We do - because we use political pressure to ensure it gets done. — ZzzoneiroCosm

You know me so well. I did my stint as a volunteer for the Cyrenians, many years ago, and later formed a residents association in Leeds that succeeded in getting about 150 homes taken off the condemned housing list where they had been languishing for twenty years and got them all refurbished and brought up to standard. But now I take a back seat and seek to understand the state of humanity that needs pressure to be applied before it will treat its neighbours with simple decency. I have become lazy and apathetic.

If you understand why you don't build said houses (and instead play philosophy on the internet) then you understand why we don't. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I don't think so. I don't build roads or power stations, but we do. Building even a small house is a big undertaking for one old man, but for a town of ten thousand, 50 houses would not be difficult or unaffordable. Your logic does not work, because one person is almost helpless, but a community is potentially a whole army.

I connect this vaguely to our atomization. I get used to walking by the homeless lady who just settled on the sidewalk a block from where I live. I go on my own little way, minding my own business. This isn't all bad. It's connected with a vivid and differentiated society. But it's dangerous, for reasons you've emphasized. — igjugarjuk

Here is a nice piece of anthropology about this crazy tribe who worship The Duke of Edinburgh. Hard for us to understand that, but when they visited us, they could not understand why, if people were homeless, we did not build houses for them. And I cannot understand it either. In fact in my town, during covid lockdown they did provide little homes prefab in the town carpark. But now they've removed them again so the cars can have their home back.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/meet-the-natives

I hope you will be able to access it.

In the US there's a strange terrible background of hate and yet for the most part the usual scene at the grocery store. So I like to think that it's still just a morbid minority that's completely lost that basic trust and therefore trustworthiness, since the paranoid can 'justify' extreme measures in the light of the misperceived extreme threat. — igjugarjuk

Elsewhere I have suggested that hatred is a secondary emotion, typically a response to a primary emotion of hurt or fear. I imagine that fear is ever-present at the store and at the school, and at the council office over there, judging by the news we see of shootings. It seems, rather like global warming, that there are tipping points into a positive feedback loop where the lunatics take over the asylum, and the crazies drive us all crazy, to the extent that armed teachers in primary schools looks like a sensible policy. Though the bombs are falling, yet we still need groceries, and even that becomes mundane.

I don't understand how you're connecting trust and truth here at all. I might trust implicitly someone who is not telling the truth. The two seem unrelated. — Isaac

Yes. Trust is the default because we are born helpless and have to trust. And this continues to be the case even when we are betrayed. You can trust me that I have made the connection even if you cannot quite see it:- until you find out that I have made it up in order to deceive you, at which point you stop attending to what I say if you have any sense. Because the betrayal of truth has become so commonplace amongst advertisers, politicians, and the media, we no longer trust them and their messages lose their meaning. The language itself starts to lose its meaning. Paper money is a written promise that the bank will pay the amount specified, and if the promise becomes a lie, the money has no value. Economists call it "confidence". Folks have to tell the truth to maintain our confidence; the government governs be being believed when, for example it makes laws and specifies penalties.

I am saying, not that truth and trust are the same, but that truth is required to maintain trust. The foundation of society is in flows of information and mutual support that is founded on trust, and when there is no trust, there is no society and no government, but only mafia gangs and paranoid individuals.

Philosophers have thrown away thousands of years of laborious effort in building societies through the development of moral systems that include formal and informal controls to inhibit dishonesty and to foster trust. We cannot communicate without the trust that folks mean what they say, but we have to painfully relearn that sometimes they don't. And relearn also that the best response to this is neither to resort to torture in the vain attempt to force the truth from a liar, nor to elect liars to high office.

I cannot see any way in which trustworthiness somehow gives one access to the truth. — Isaac

Trust give access to another. Trust me, because otherwise nothing I say has any meaning; tell the truth, because otherwise nothing you say has any meaning.

Why do people seek their own repression under authoritarian regimes when it is clearly against their own self and class interests?

It must be clear to anyone with eyes that Reich's psychology of fascism applies to left and right equally.

Using psychology to manipulate is a betrayal. It exploits something intimate and innocent. — Tate

It is a betrayal of the whole of civilisation, and the whole of community, because it destroys communication, which is the foundation of every social enterprise. Money, at least paper money and digital money consists of promissory notes, and has the value of the trust that is invested in it. Trust is the primary value.


It is not just psychology, but even more so, philosophy, that has betrayed ordinary people by allowing moral nihilism and subjectivism to become dominant in society. The myth of the free independent individual, who does not need society because he has a bulging wallet; it's a joke really, because the bulging wallet is made of mutual trust in what without it would not even make good toilet paper. And with that paper the independent individual buys all the thousands of goods and services of society on which his whole life depends, from farmers, cooks, mechanics, plumbers, tailors, security staff, etc etc.

If it is clear, that even the very special people are totally dependent on the whole fabric of a complex industrial society, that has a medium of exchange founded on trust, then the betrayal of truth by manipulation can be seen as an attack on the very foundation of society.

And this perhaps answers the question as clearly as any psychological theory of sexual energy. Communication breaks down because the prevalence of lies means that no word of anyone can be trusted. One is taught to buy stuff not because the stuff is worth it, but because "You are worth it", whatever that means. One cannot trust the pension fund, the health insurance, the job stability, that the bank will not repossess the house, that the writ of law will run; the people that run all these things are unreliable and have no honour. The loss of communication and the loss of trust is the collapse of society into chaos. And in that chaos, one looks for a saviour who seems to speak the truth. Maybe it is all those Mexicans after all, there's certainly more of them than there were in the good old days. Or maybe it's the Jews. Or the nazis, or the communists, or... There is no condition more vulnerable to manipulation than that of radical loss of trust and the resulting paranoia. He who believes nothing will believe anything.

A search for truth involves pointing out problems and flaws in belief. — Art48

No it doesn't. You have come up completely empty handed on the truth front. You have dismissed beliefs you never held, in favour of nothing at all. The truth dividend is zero.

... perspectives about the purpose of education in society. It seems that there are two competing ideas — Paulm12

Education is the reproductive system of a culture.

- the idea that education should serve to teach people specific skills to be productive in society and conform, and the idea that education should encourage people to come up with new ideas and think independently. — Paulm12

Train the peasants to conform and obey; educate the leaders to plan and command. That you hear two conflicting ideas an indication that you live in a stratified society -a class system.

Everyone claims indoctrination from the other. — Hanover

As if it was a bad thing. As if there were a society or an education that did not indoctrinate its young with the traditions and mores it inherited. [Sarcasm]Like this forum, for example, which does not encourage folks to read the guidelines or limit themselves to certain topics, and forms of discussion very much at all. [/sarcasm]

Here is a song about the end of humanity in a Nuclear War. The last line echoes

Does not matter one way or the other. — Jackson

But it does so with huge passion, great beauty and sadness. In the end, it doesn't matter, we can go for a last walk together in the radioactive morning dew, But it sure as fuck matters that in the end it doesn't matter, because it is not the case that

we have brought about nothing but destruction and catastrophe on this planet. — TheSoundConspirator

Our destructiveness cannot justify our destroying ourselves. We have brought destruction and catastrophe, but also this:-

Excellent opening post. I hope this will develop.

I'm not all that familiar with Hegel or Brandom, but I cannot resist chipping in a little, and I will try to follow along and educate myself.

"bimodal hylomorphic conceptual realism" (p. 108). On the objective side, therefore, incompatible contents -- such as "being a mammal" and "being a reptile" -- cannot be conjoined in one object, whereas consequential relations between contents -- such as "being a mammal" and "being a vertebrate" -- must hold. Brandom calls these relations between objective conceptual contents "alethic modal relations of incompatibility and consequence" (p. 60). On the subjective side, one can take an animal to be both a mammal and a reptile -- because we can get things wrong, and because we are (at least to some extent) free beings -- but we ought not to do so. By contrast, we ought to take a mammal to be a vertebrate, whether we do so or not: "one is committed or obliged to do so"

https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-spirit-of-trust-a-reading-of-hegels-phenomenology/

Reminded me of Umberto Eco : https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WPyz8ikWrsEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

Lays eggs and has a beak = bird: suckles its young and has fur = mammal.

Aristotle starts with a classification system based on similarity and difference; a matter of aesthetics and a vague notion of what characteristics are more fundamental or superficial, and 2000 years later, Darwin proposes that this system is accounted for by literal common ancestry. And now we can measure that relatedness systematically such that our classification system has become the story of evolution.

It's conceivable that other animals have simpler versions of 'scorekeeping.' I can imagine a particular chimp being treated as an exaggerator or an understater. — igjugarjuk

They can lie!



This is surely the beginning of language and the beginning of morality? Communicative social representation gives rise to the possibility of deliberate misrepresentation in order to manipulate, but that possibility cannot become the norm, because the presentational meaning would be lost. When everyone lies, language simply doesn't work any more and becomes mere noise. Thus one can choose to deceive, but one cannot chose deception to be the norm, it has to be honesty.

Thee and me can see our bitterness, and our unenlightenedness because we are not entirely dead to another being. Thus we feel our hypocrisy and are ashamed. Rotten to the core is dead to the other and comes to believe their own bullshit. Shamelessness is the key to saying sorry, admitting fault, admitting being wrong, without remotely thinking that such things ought to be consequential except for the purposes of manipulating others. The hollowness is all there is.

But you should probably ask Hannah - I say what I see, and she was looking at something or someone (I think similar) in a different world.