I would interpret you, within the idiom I'm attempting to phrase this in at the moment, as believing that there is no real hole in the ground. — Moliere

Not at all. Fall down the hole to discover its reality. The confusion of reality with materiality is where we're at here. Space (and/or time) is real and it is the relation that material has to itself. Stuff and structure - not two things, but the dual aspects of reality. If you want me to deny something it would be stuff, not structure - the ground, not the hole. The ground is nothing but a stubborn refusal to let you fall.

It's bloody ducks in a row all over again. 3 ducks exist and when you get them lined up, there's a row. Ducks in a row, not ducks and a row. Stuff exists and arrangements of stuff exist. a hole or a row is an arrangement. Or a relation, rather like a punch is a relation between a fist and a chin. If you're not sure that punches exist, get your wife or friend to do the experiment with their fist and your chin.

It might turn out that stuff is an arrangement of weirdness (another arrangement). Try not to panic.

You can't fool me. that's obviously a trans-pigmented long necked crow.

Too black for swans. and they don't live on the Thames.

They're long necked crows, dude. Swans are white.

That is in my chromosomes in every part of my being, in all I am. — Iris0

Well then I am confused. How can that be troubled by another? If your identity is secured at the cellular level, then it is secure and untroubled by another's odd behaviour, surely?

Mockery, yes I think I understand. In my youth, I think many men felt rather the same way about gay men. Being accused of being gay was the one insult that absolutely demanded a fight by way of denial. How could one be a man and not attracted to women? It was a contradiction. Ridiculous. A mockery.

Strangely, or perhaps obviously, the same did not apply to women and lesbians. Because to a sexist society, what women wanted was of no importance. Even to themselves.

they are at the very depth of who we are it is more than just an identity it is the entire being we are — Iris0

That is what identity is; the entire being as identified by the being. I wonder, if you can share a little, what it is about a transsexual that is a threat to your own identity? I'm thinking I suppose that if I have achieved something - some social recognition, a PhD or whatever, and someone else gets the same accolade for nothing, it devalues my identity. Is it something like that?

Has anyone read The Wasp Factory?

Have a look at what humans commonly do.

1. Club foot. A natural condition that without surgery and corrective plasters etc would leave the patient crippled for life. Few would argue against 'corrective' surgery in infancy when it is easiest and most effective.

2. Cleft palate. A natural condition that has some long term health implications, but huge social implications. Surgery is again much easier in infancy but is more 'cosmetic'. Likewise, the amputation of extra fingers or toes, or webbed digits.

3. Unusually heavy breasts A natural condition the appears at puberty and has some health implications but 'corrective' surgery is mainly carried out for cosmetic reasons.

4. Circumcision. A cosmetic mutilating amputation carried out for social and religious reasons.

5.FGM. A cosmetic mutilating amputation carried out for social and religious reasons.

6. Castration. No longer much practiced.

7. Dentisty. Universally practiced in the West for health and cosmetic purposes.

8. Skin-lightening. a non surgical intervention carried out for cosmetic social reasons.

It is surely clear that the distinction between health benefits and purely cosmetic reasons is blurred. It is surely clear that it is normal practice to make some surgical interventions in infancy for reasons of social conformity.

It is clear that humans spend a great deal of time, money and effort in the manipulation of their own and each other's bodies, mainly for reasons of tribal conformity and tradition, and (not separate) sexual identification and attractiveness.

There is a strong demand - social pressure - for gender conformity. This leads to the deliberate exaggeration of sexual tendencies, to the extent that, for example, a bearded lady is regarded as a freak and women go to great lengths to remove any trace of hair from face and elsewhere. And so on and on.

Folks here talk as though they are not immersed in this global cosmetic culture; as though there is no need to conform; as though it is not mandatory from childhood to hide one's genitalia and yet display by coded signals one's gender at all times. As though not being clearly identified as to sex were not seriously deviant behaviour.

Questions arise.

What are the limits of surgical and related interventions in infancy?
At what age does body autonomy prevail?
Are there any limits to individual's freedom to modify their own body?

And so on. The interrelation of personal identity and autonomy with social identity is fraught

Not all women can gestate or give birth, so being able to gestate or give birth is not what it means to be a woman. — Michael

My first wife killed herself because she was unable to give birth and felt that she was a failure and "not a real woman". Gender and sexuality are not just a matter of physics or of definition, but of identity. "What it means to be a woman" is always contested. It changes. But @Andrew4Hande articulates a feeling that women (and many men, vicariously,) often have, largely socially and historically formed, that means that they define femaleness primarily as childbearing.

What I would like to see is a set of laws that make misstatements of facts - lies - actionable on terms that favor the plaintiff. At all levels of society. Your widget is the best and does X, Y, and Z? Well, it had better be the best and it had better do X, Y, and Z. — tim wood

That is the law in the UK more or less. But it doesn't work very well because

Incomplete sentences - because what doesn't quite make sense is not quite a lie. Eleven out of ten. People we asked, agreed. (and they're worth it.)

Most advertising works by inducing social anxiety about smells that everyone else smells except you, disgusting bits of your body like hair or any kind of mark, or sofas or kitchens that expose you to the sniggering contempt of your neighbours. But now, Dr Foul's unique Spice will cure all your worries in just one puff. The neighbours will have to project their anxiety onto someone else when you become a spaced out zombie with Dr Foul's all new Spice.

A professional plumber will fix the pipes, I am not sure a professional philosopher will fix anything. — Fooloso4

A "professional philosopher" is a hidden oxymoron. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom and therefore necessarily an amateur.

The only professionals in philosophy are academics, and nobody would call an academic plumber to fix their pipes; you need an experienced practitioner.

So, what seems to be the problem?

I consider myself as the true guru of the Philosophy Forum. — T Clark

Well you are my guru of course, but that and our sexual relations have no place in our discussions here (outside of feedback).

The Aussie trade deals shows post-Brexit Britain is outward- and forward- looking. Farmers may have reservations, but I've yet to hear any concrete reasons why the deal is very disadvantageous. — Tim3003

I think it's more backward looking than forward looking. We had deals with the old colonies before joining the EEC as was, and the economy was doing badly. The protectionist stand of Europe wrt agriculture was and still is advantageous. Free trade between fertile plains and rugged hills doesn't really work unless there is an underlying commonality to the economy, such as a common currency and tax system.

Ha Ha. Certainly, the veneration of authority is a banning offence!

Yeah, it's a very old mod joke to decide why every historical philosopher would be banned. But as the actress said to the bishop, "You're no Marcus Aurelius.", and neither was Anand.

There's plenty of writing that's good, but doesn't belong here. And some that is poor, but belongs. Philosophy is an actual topic and a tradition, in which we participate. If you want to play gurus, there is a whole web-net of places to go, just not here so much.

Just an old modern, I think. — 180 Proof

Perhaps. Pre-enlightenment, anyway.

it makes no sense to me, or to the facts, to consider morality exclusively human, or even the consequence of conscious thought — counterpunch

The sense I make of it is the OT mythological sense. I read the story of the Fall as a psychological explanation - a fall out of the 'state of nature', where a lion or a monkey will be selfish or unselfish as its nature dictates, but always without consideration of what they ought to do or be. "They saw they were naked and were ashamed." - saw, that is, that they ought not be naked. The self awareness that leads to a moral choice is what we ancients take to be the difference between the human and animal. It is a psychological difference, that leaves the natural world innocent because ignorant. The possibility of virtue must arise at the same time as the possibility of vice as a dilemma, and because it is founded on a psychological awareness, also as a fall from innocence as the default. Hence it is is a tree of 'knowledge', the fruit of which leaves one expelled from the paradise of just being and doing into a mind-world of ought not and ought to do, and of moral judgement.

I am not modern, I am ancient. I have not recovered from the fall.

I just can't make sense of the "abstract from," but that's likely a personal problem. — tim wood

Yeah it's really radical, but kinda obvious. Your idea of me is entirely abstracted from text. If you passed me by on the street you'd contribute to my begging bowl or not according to your habit and principle, but you would never know it was me.

Personal identity is totally abstract. And I can totally identify with that being "a personal problem". :cool:

Somebody smart will be along in a minute, but while you wait... In the beginning was the text, and the text was with God, and the text was God. One might say that the Author, or even he author, is a fabrication of the text - we presume - rather as Robinson Crusoe presumed, thunderstruck, the maker of the footprint as a (savage) foot. but the experience is just a shape dented in the sand. Author as absent other.

"Imagine a topic"... imagine your professor giving two sets of marks, one for the essay and one for you, the author of the essay. Does that make sense at all? [hint: no!]

Laziness and weakness are the great civilising characteristics of humanity. They are what motivate every labour saving device ever invented, from the wheel to the faucet. The lazy and weak should therefore be venerated as the leaders of society.

That may be true of some people, but I don't think it's true of me. — T Clark

Well you are the expert on yourself around here; I have no clue at all except what you write. And if the chemicals in your brain say its chemicals in your brain, the chemicals in my brain will just have to learn to accept it.

"Are you ready for bed?" asks your significant other, presupposing that {censored}.

He is telling you that it is an absolute presupposition of the science he pursues: and I have made him a pathologist because this absolute proposition about all events having causes, which a hundred years ago was made in every branch of natural science, has now ceased to be made in some branches, but medicine is one of those in which it is still made. — Collingwood

I'm looking at this, and thinking that it looks a lot like what is more familiar to me as 'a hinge proposition'. Clearly, what is an absolute proposition in one {ahem} 'language game', ceases to be quite so absolute in another. A great undergraduate essay question, surely - "Compare and contrast Collingwood's 'absolute propositions' with Wittgenstein's 'hinge propositions".

There is no job that can possibly justify the way we waste resources and yet folks cannot be allowed the right of the security to be housed, to sleep in a bed, clean themselves, et cetera. — Nils Loc

A voice crying in the wilderness "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"

Businessmen, they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth. — Bob Dylan

How dare we be happy! And yet, how dare we not be happy?

There is a cure for individualism, which is to notice that it is impossible to be independent or self-sufficient. That depression is a social disease is demonstrated by the fact that it is greatly diminished by war.

As someone on anti-depressants who also has spent more than 50 years learning to be more self-aware and follow my heart, I think depression and spiritual searching are different, separate, but not necessarily unrelated. If that makes sense. — T Clark

The rhetoric of the day demands that this is a single bio-machine that has gone wrong - an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. But I think it is the sensitive among us that manifest the sicknesses of society, like canaries in the coal mine. It is not a happy life being a canary in a coal mine, but it is a valuable life.

It is just so that people have views on the supposed validity or invalidity of their ideas, including psychological ones, and act in accordance with these beliefs. — Judaka

It is certainly true that people have views on the validity of their views, the truth of their beliefs, and so on.

{I would suggest that they think their views are valid and their beliefs are true, and as soon as they think their beliefs are untrue, they stop believing them, and as soon as they think their view is invalid, they take a different view. I call it 'changing one's mind'. It is just so that I do it, and I think everyone else does too. }

All the above in curly brackets amounts to something we might call 'folk psychology', the first principle of which is that we all operate very broadly the same way, such that we agree about what it means to believe, or to make a judgement. And I feel fairly safe in saying that whenever someone believes something it means they think it is true.

Beliefs are can be judged by the coherency of the logic employed, their validity, their consistency and other evaluations which focus on essentially directly gauging the belief's quality. — Judaka

And I assume (as per my own folk psychology views above) you feel fairly confident in the above claim, (unless you are bullshitting). So I am asking you to judge the coherency of your logic,

the validity of your claim, and make those other evaluations as to whether or not your own belief as here stated is of any quality at all. Is it reasonable? Can you reason to it?

I didn't make any normative statement — Judaka

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that although you didn't explicitly make a normative statement, you are not just making factual statements or fictional statements at random. And thus you are actually recommending that we should do these things, at least if we want to be taken at all seriously on a philosophy site. That would be my position, anyway.

Show me an elected official who isn't slightly better off than the average American in gains obtained by holding elected office. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Venality and corruption being rampant is not a justification of it. Vote for more honest and moral officials, please.

It's a genius idea. The great thing about logical fallacies is that they can be formalised, and that means automated. The site could be run by Modbot, and all the humans could be fired. Also, if all posters were limited in this way to 9 posts per week, They'd put a lot more care and thought into them.

How Do We Measure 'Wisdom'?

We? Is this the objectification you are embarking on? The wisdom of the crowd?
The average of all gurus?

Measure wisdom by the questions it asks.

What is psychologic? — Judaka

Hmm. I wonder why that is the question. I had thought the context gave the sense clearly enough. When one talks about faculties of the mind such as 'belief' and 'judgement' one is always speaking reflexively about something one is doing and being in speaking. This makes justification of ones' psychological theories rather difficult. This is what I am pointing out that you are not even trying to do in the op; rather you present as uncontroversial a measurable, and thus scientific psychology that does not even see the judgements and beliefs that it itself presents as factual (Beliefs), with not a hint of application of
the criteria of judgement to the theory itself. This is completely usual in psychology, but a dreadfully naive piece of philosophy that largely explains why psychology always thinks that its new theory is correct and all its old ones were nonsense. In short, science presumes the observer, but psychology must observe the observer; insight is not logically the same as observation. One can even suggest that a psychological theory must either be itself narcissistic or psychopathic.

As far as I know, even Kant believed that it would be somewhat (conceptually?) inconsistent if there were no kind of reward for doing good deeds. — spirit-salamander

I am diametrically opposed to this view. I believe it would be conceptually inconsistent if there were a reward for doing good deeds, because it would be a matter of common sense prudence to do the deed and gain the reward rather than a virtuous act. If giving to charity resulted in a profit, every greedy bastard would be at it.

Feel free to suggest any of your own examples for discussion on this topic. — Judaka

I suggest this example.

Beliefs are can be judged by the coherency of the logic employed, their validity, their consistency and other evaluations which focus on essentially directly gauging the belief's quality. — Judaka

It is of the utmost important to acknowledge the difference between logic and psychologic. Psychologic is necessarily reflexive and self-referential. Thus the belief that beliefs can be evaluated in these ways, needs to evaluate itself first and foremost, or fall into performative contradiction.

This is to assume that this is a belief, rather than a mere observation that folks do as matter of fact, or even of necessity, make such judgements and evaluations even if there is no rationale behind them.

New Zealanders have this annoying habit of inflecting every sentence at the end to make it sound like a question. In Wales, the equivalent is achieved by tacking an actual question onto the end of every statement. The favoured question varies, by region. Thus in Cardiff, one will hear "Let's go down the pub, is it?" whereas, in the Valleys, it would be, "Let's go down the pub, aren't we?" Here in the north, it would be "let's go down the pub, aye?" or a little further East "Let's go down the pub, d'you know what I mean?"

"D'you know what I mean?" is particularly annoyingly redundant and of course, impossible to answer. The best I can translate this into philosophistry is something like "But I won't bite your head off if you disagree." In the mountains, this is important information, but not a question that needs answering, d'you know what I mean?

Words don't have meaning, rituals do. I heard it on a program on BBC 2.

The way out is just to admit there must be some causal factor at play in the world, even if we can't observe it. And science does assume this when it includes unobservables in it's theories. If there was no reason for any conjunction, then there's no need to posit unobservables. — Marchesk

As I said at the outset and @Amalac's quote above confirms, Hume is not trying to deny causation any more than he is trying to deny morality. He is showing the limits of reason. It is certainly unreasonable to demand that he exceed the limits he is trying to establish.

Hume has no right to say such things as: — Amalac

]Whoever has taken the pains to refute this total scepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, — Hume

Do you not see that he is talking exactly about the argument you are making? He agrees with you that he has no right to say such things, to the extent that you mean he has no justification in reason. However, everybody does think, say and presume such things, himself included.

Kant was just trying to save the idea of rationality as an adequate response to the world. There is no problem for science at all. Science laws are rephrased as descriptive rather than predictive, and then good old habit just carries on as before. The only casualty is the idea of 'man, the rational being'.

It's expecting that there will be such a thing as coffee to drink, which will have a certain flavor and caffein content that has some stimulating effect on your nervous system. — Marchesk

And there is no justification for it. That is what the man says. We do it, and reason cannot justify it.

Thus, although in the past the sight of an apple (cause) has been conjoined with expectation of a certain kind of taste (effect), that gives no justification for the claim that it will continue to be so conjoined in the future. — Amalac

Yes, the expectation is not justified. That's why it's just a habit and not a reason. That there is no rational justification is what Hume is saying. We expect the future to be like the past because NO REASON, we just do it habitually. What is daft is to claim that Hume needs to justify his habits when he's just said there is no justification for them.

Yes. It's nonsense though and an abuse of the notion of habit. Birds have a habit of singing in the morning. There may be a cause or many causes or none, but the singing is not caused by the habit of singing. It makes no sense at all. Even the biggest cheeses are sometimes a bit off.

Also, regardless of how one views Hume's definition of an impression, it is clear that the law of habit is a causal law, and therefore Hume had no right to use it as an explanation for how the ideas of cause and effect come about, except as a sort of “reductio as absurdum”, showing where seemingly good reasoning with sound principles has led him. — Amalac

Habit is not a law at all. It is my habit to drink coffee for breakfast. But habit is not the cause of my drinking coffee, it is the mere fact that I do. Sometimes I might I have tea instead, and no law is broken, only my habit.