I don't feel more or less polarized, myself, having discussed it here for instance — Moliere

It's not something one would feel, like an attack of radicalism or something, but something one sees out there - suddenly there seem to be a lot more people I cannot talk to, that I can't find the basis of agreement on which to disagree.

For instance, one might expect at least a proportion of Christians to be socialist seeing as Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick hung about with prostitutes lepers and outcasts. But the perception at least is that Christians are all right wing. One might think that it would be natural, if one was against abortion, that one would be for child support, and support for single mothers. One might think that an ardent Zionist would not be allied with a neofascist, that regions suffering poverty and decline and receiving EU subsidies would be pro-Europe. This is polarisation, where one issue becomes all issues, where an orthodoxy becomes the whole religion. It's never something that the individual suffers from, it's not a change of view, what is polarised is alliances. Who would have thought that generosity to immigrants was UnAmerican?

In general, I have always been left wing, but I used to be able to find some virtue in conservative values, and have some criticism of labour policies. That doesn't seem tenable these days, but not because my views have changed - it's them, isn't it?

I don't see how you come to a compromise when dealing with such a personality. And there are various other sorts of people who I lose respect and trust for that I would say merit treating distantly -- and, at lamentable times, with war. — Moliere

Sure, some people are impossible; there have always been such. But the topic is hyperinflation. It's as if half the world has become bullies, and the other half victims, but each half thinks they are the victims and the other lot are the bullies. That is polarisation.

Should we start talking about the archetypes? Mass psychology? Should we note the similarity between belief in God and belief in conspiracy? Is there even a way of talking about what's happening that doesn't participate in and partake of the polarisation?

The Judao-Christian tradition...

... is a strange and warped POV. — Posty McPostface

you might think the end is near. — ssu

I do. Even though I have been hearing the stories for 50 years. Even though I know that millennialism and doomsayers have been around forever. It seems to me that the scientific consensus makes a better prophet than biblical calculators of the second coming, as it is based on trends that are actually observed to be happening. Like this: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity-wiped-out-animals-since-1970-major-report-finds?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Facebook&fbclid=IwAR2cdzQn0hOHRWG1npyDI_fNpzCjvoEWwTLLpeJfRpG8biCkTwsZJTtsImA

Here's some advice that comes from a philosopher, and works for readers, posters and debaters alike.

The Crisis of Civility in Public Life
DR. JACOB NEEDLEMAN·MONDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2018
Not long ago I was a guest at a presidential State of the Union address in Washington D.C. After the speech, at a private home a stone’s throw from the Supreme Court building, I met with some members of Congress to talk about how a philosopher sees the heart-wrenching crisis of incivility in American public life.
I had just finished describing how in my philosophy classes I make use of what counselors and mediators sometimes call the practice of “mirroring.” In that exercise two people holding passionately opposed opinions about an important issue debate each other under the following strict condition: they can express their views only after they have faithfully summarized what the other has just said. I treat this exercise not so much as an instrument of reconciliation, but mainly as a means of studying and understanding what it really means to listen to another human being. The result is often nothing short of miraculous, even to the point of bringing tears to my eyes.
This exercise holds lessons that are desperately needed in our public and private life. In absolutely every case, the two participants come away with the profound realization that they have been disagreeing with an opinion held by a real living human being. They have been denying each other’s views, not each other’s humanity. Even to the point of walking away arm in arm—and even though their views have not been changed!
And furthermore, even though their views have not changed, they have been compelled for a brief moment to take a distance from their passionately held opinions in order to be able to summarize what the other has said. And this has enabled them to think more clearly and deeply about their own views. And so, this exercise is also an exercise in the work of thinking, thinking together with another human being.
The life of our democracy depends entirely upon the lessons of this exercise. One could even say that the life of our world depends upon learning to do the work of listening. To listen to another requires far more than simply waiting for a moment to put forth one’s own views or attack the other. It means allowing the other person into one’s mind, receiving their thought. It does not mean agreeing with the other—that is not the essential element. The essential element is making room in one’s mind for another’s views-- and that requires the effort of separating for a moment from one’s own thoughts. The result is a new relationship between two human beings, something far, far more important than winning or losing an argument. One discovers that one can respect, or perhaps even love, another person who holds views that are diametrically opposed to one’s own!
When I explained this exercise to the members of Congress, I said to them (knowing full well what their response would be): “I imagine that when you are trying to decide issues that will affect the lives of millions of Americans you try to listen and think together like this.” They looked at me as if I were crazy. “Never!” they said, sharply and sadly, “Never do we work together like that!” They went on to tell me how much they would wish to work like that—and even sometimes, privately did—but that the system—media, television, lobbyists—had now made it impossible in their public role as members of Congress.
In certain medieval Christian illustrated manuscripts, two individuals are seated facing each other and speaking. Above them hovers a white dove. The dove is the classic symbol of the Holy Spirit and in these illustrations the spirit—that is, the energy of a higher reconciling force--is descending into the hearts and minds of individual human beings speaking and listening to each other.
All men and women, of whatever faith or belief, need that white dove to descend into our common life—no matter by what name we call it: truth, love, impartiality—or, finally, peace. And it can begin to enter our lives by the simple act and fully human work of listening to each other. It is actually possible.
Jacob Needleman
Professor of Philosophy Emeritus
San Francisco State University

There comes a time when an issue is no longer debatable -- where there isn't some compromise that will satisfy everyone involved enough to keep on getting along. — Moliere

You are wrong. So wrong that this issue is no longer debatable.

But fortunately, we agree about some other things, and it is this conflict between our agreement on X and our disagreement on Y that keeps us peaceable. Polarisation is when we either agree or disagree about everything, then there is us, or there is them, and the conflict is no longer internal, as I agree with you about some things and agree with your opponent about some things, but if i disagree with anything, I disagree with everything. The latter is a recipe for war.

The fact is that proclaiming imminent doom and an oncoming eco-catastrophy sells in the media and is totally accepted and basically encouraged as to "get people to notice the problems and active". In 1970 George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University had predicted that “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — ssu

To make an error of prediction is not a departure from wisdom and sanity. We understand that prediction is prone to error. An error of 50 years in the timing of a catastrophe is important to those of us who will be safely dead in 50 years, but otherwise trivial.

Not according to an error theorist.

Well. Being, being being, is no being; or to put it another way, no being can be being, because being is being. While it may be true that beings be, by being they are not being. Thus we avoid caricature. — Ciceronianus the White

There will be an answer...

What's the opposite of a potato? Otatop a?

Maybe we should use different terms. One is truth, the other is agreement — Marchesk

That's a really good idea. I agree.

It's subtle, yet I managed to pick it up, because it is true that I am the wisest person on the forum. (Ain't that the truth!)

To say, 'P is true' is to agree that P.

But for 'P' to be true is something completely different, and independent of what is said.

Thus affirmation of truth is an expression of agreement, but truth is somfin' else.

We know, unless we are fucking morons, that my hate inspires and legitimises your hate.

{But morons are not actually big haters, by and large. Please try and remember that. In particular, mongs those with Downs Syndrome are very often more loving and social than the average.}

But although we know it, we spread our hatred. We enjoy hatred.

Just bite that bullet: we enjoy hatred.

Oh, I know, you are the honourable exception, but then you already understand - we enjoy hatred. We vote for it, we are excited by it, it makes us feel righteous. It justifies our privilege and explains our misery - It's their fault. You have to be incredibly smart to play this game, and we are incredibly smart.

It is incredible to me that people cannot understand that what is incredible cannot be believed.

Any problems? — Purple Pond

Yup. If we, you and I, agree about something (God forbid), we agree that we think it is true. But that does not make it true, it only makes it true that that we think it is true. Even if we agreed that unenlightened is the wisest person on the forum, that would not make it true. I can be wrong, and even you can be wrong, and in this case, you are wrong, although obviously you don't think you are wrong until you change your mind.

We don't have to be terribly concerned if 4% or 5% of a large experimental group who received a placebo experienced benefit. It's more a mystery when 10 or 15% of placebo recipients experience benefit. — Bitter Crank

What about when it's 80- 90%?

What’s the difference between a homeopath and a surgeon? It’s a question that sounds like a joke, and it won’t have many surgeons laughing. Homeopathy is the scientifically implausible idea that diluted substances can somehow treat disease: it has never been shown to work and any effect is, at very best, a placebo effect. It’s a world away from the glinting scalpels and cut-and-dried logic of surgery. See a problem, cut it out, sew it back up. Right?

Well, it is until you start looking for evidence of effectiveness for some operations, and then you’re left thinking that the line between the two is not as clear as you first thought.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/20/when-surgery-is-just-a-stitch-up-placebo-effect

So we know that faith healing works, to an extent, and it is supposed to be the foundation of medicine that it works better than faith. But the supposition is faith, and disentangling that faith from 'real' medical benefits is only possible if you question that faith.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/12/e009655

Here's some good news for the op.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/17/germany-launches-worlds-first-hydrogen-powered-train

If the "religion of Me" as you put it could be substantially edited for the better that would presumably make us saner and wiser, and thus more capable of successfully managing more powerful technologies. — Jake

Unfortunately, the plan to become saner and wiser, is the plan of the insane and unwise. And the plan to limit our powers, requires the powers we wish to limit. Plans and powers are the tools of science, and science works wonderfully well on everything except scientists. So another approach is needed.

Just to be clear, if you want to stop climate change, science is the key; study, plan, experiment, act. But if you want us all to behave better, science is as useless as a sheepdog to herd cats - plans and controls drive folks mad.

"So what's the answer, oh unenlightened one?" I hear you cry. And I do not quite have the wisdom to remain silent. If you look back at this thread, you will see places where it departed from wisdom and sanity, and not much can be done about that. But there is no plan for the posts that come below this one; if they are wise and sane, they will respond to whatever is wise and sane above, and if they are foolish and insane, they will latch onto and amplify whatever is foolish and insane with echo or opposition. In human affairs, a plan does not work, one has to respond.

How to save the world? Will fuel from hydrogen solve all our problems, even if we can implement it quickly? I suspect not. Not without quite a number of other radical changes. What are these changes, the ones that will/could "save the world"? — Pattern-chaser

In practical terms, much has already been mentioned here, reduce meat consumption, improve insulation, reverse desertification, seed the oceans, travel less, stabilise and start to reduce the population, etc.

But psychologically, the requirement that would make all these things happen is an end to the divisive religion of Me. Humanity cannot survive divorced from the ecosystem, and the failure of thinking that runs from the op through the thread is to assume that our love of technology - our love of our possessions does not need to be extended to the whole environment. The green world is our body, it is our breath, and an iron lung is no solution.

The Stoic says that wisdom is to know that you cannot stop the rain, but you can fix the roof.
Hume says that you have a passion to stay dry, and reason is the slave that will help you satisfy your passion.

There seems to be no incompatibility.

You cannot make friends, you cannot have friends. The nearest you can make is a robot, the nearest you can have is a slave.

Perhaps you can be a friend. Probably not a good friend, certainly not an ideal friend, but we are lonely, and not all that fussy.

Why get a stable job, a house and a family? — BlueBanana

Because it's more fun. Parties, one-night-stands, rented rooms are dull in comparison.

Children like to play with lego, but real bricks and mortar are as much more interesting as they are more difficult.

To YOU the coffee pot is empty because of 2 things

1-Senses are reliable
2-I sense a coffee pot — khaled

No, that is not how it goes.I don't make an argument. I don't make assumptions. I see that the coffee has run out, and I make more coffee. It's not that senses are reliable, it's that that's all there is. Logic can't even get me to the toilet when I want to piss. As to the schizophrenic or the genetic disorder or anyone else who finds themselves living in another world, I have nothing to say to them, because there is no commonality on which to base communication. Perhaps it is they who live in 'the real world', but I live in this one, and I talk about this one.

To say that they are not things because they are the basic blocks to build things with is akin to saying bricks are not things because they are just the basic parts of a house. — Sir2u

No, it's to say bricks aren't houses. but that is not my point. It is not a mere matter of classification, but the discovery that 'thinginess' as in having a definite size, shape, position, these are emergent properties, not fundamental ones. But perhaps I'm exaggerating W.'s engagement with the frontiers of physics.

"The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages. And in fact both were right and both wrong; though the view of the ancients is clearer insofar as they have an acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained."
”
— Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.371-2

But perhaps you are right that his project with his 'atomic facts' is an attempt to reify thought, and hence his concern to dissolve or defuse solipsism.

Can I urge y'all to watch this video. It might cast a different light on the structure of victimhood.

Also, just because something is immune to change regardless of what you think of it does not mean that what you think of it is actually the case. — khaled

Of course not. I thought there was more coffee, but I was wrong. Having looked, and maybe tried to pour a coffee and drink it if I doubted my eyes or the room was dark, I was forced to change my mind. Since you are not here, if you do not believe me, you have no other evidence. You cannot see or feel or taste the coffee anyway, so it makes no difference to you, except as an exemplary tale. What is exemplary though is that there is no argument between me and the coffee pot; the pot does not argue that it s empty or prove that it is empty, it just is, and I just find out through the same senses that make me aware of there being a coffee pot. The whole thing might be an hallucination or a dream or a story I've made up, but it is a dream or story of an empty coffee pot, not one with coffee in.

It may be that this life is but a dream, but the dream is the dreamer's reality until he wakes, and he makes what sense of it he can, of necessity taking it for real, until his awakening. In the dream, the coffee pot is reliably empty until I dream making more dream coffee; this is not logic, this is just the way the dream goes - in this dream, coffee pots don't fill themselves.

I'm not going to even try and convince you about morality until I have convinced you about coffee pots.

And if I happened to choose to denounce all culturally defined moral virtues and go on a killing spree you can only tell me I'm wrong relative to the culturally defined morale virtues I denounced (which is why it's near impossible to truly reeducate criminals). — khaled

No, I can tell you you are wrong absolutely and objectively. You may not believe me and I may not convince you, but I could try... You see in my world, I can choose to make more coffee or not, but I cannot choose that it has not run out when it has run out. The coffee pot tells me about that, and ignores what I want. So I call the coffee running out 'objective', because it refuses to do what I tell it, and I have no choice in it.

The unstoppable force is stopped, and the immovable object moves.

This, by the way, is an unthinkable thought.

you are actually endeavouring to deal with a difficult question, which I think unenlightened has addressed with admirable clarity. — Wayfarer

Well thanks, but I am just about at the end of my rope now.



What you seem to have shown, with a charitable interpretation, is that logic and language are inadequate to the world. Logic can structure our language, but cannot tell us what to say. And the way things are is largely independent of what we say or think. All of which I agree with.

Evidently, the coffee has run out, and seemingly I have little more to say. There is indeed no way to logically choose, because logic necessitates or does not, it never chooses. But I choose, and my choice is to go make some more coffee, and logic will have to deal with that or not.

whose truth value can only be verified when logic is applied. — khaled

This is how you get down your rabbit hole., I think. Most of the stuff people are interested in talking about can be verified otherwise. I verify that the coffee has run out, not by applying logic to self-evident truths, but by lifting the lid of the pot and taking a look. If I was blind, I would do it by touch.

What doe this mean to you? — Posty McPostface

What are the facts about?
I can only see one answer. — Sir2u

I would say it is an attempt to come to terms with modern physics; substance dissolves under the microscope into fields, probabilities, relations. Things are made of atoms, but atoms are not things. Process and relation are the new 'substances', and so 'atomism' becomes a theory of human understanding (logic) rather than a claim about the world.

Premise: A sensical statement with a truth value of true or false that is verifiable logically — khaled

Logic only preserves truth. So if you want to verify a premise logically, you have to present an argument of which it is the conclusion, and that will require its own premises. So the only self-evident premises one can find are those whose negation is a contradiction. But this means they tell us nothing about the world except how we have decided to talk. You example is a case in point. To say, "I am unconscious" would be a contradiction, as it amounts to saying "I am conscious of being unconscious". However, one can certainly dream that one is awake, so the recitation does not actually tell me about my consciousness. But even if it did, it is not at all the sort of statement that is evident to all observers - a computer programmed to display "I am conscious" is not conscious, and you declaring that you are conscious does not prove to me that you are.

Objective: Self evident to all observers — khaled

But this is anyway not at all what is meant by 'objective'. Rather, it means 'what is the case regardless of what any number of observers say, think or believe', or whether it is known or not. Thus, for example, the Earth is round-(ish) no matter how many flat-earthers there are. It was the same shape even when no one was around to know it or dispute it.

The concept you are using is more akin to 'necessary', 'a priori', or 'analytic'. About which much ink has been spilt that I won't bore you with here.

Unless you mean that you have never been in a dark enough place — ArguingWAristotleTiff

There is certainly that; circumstantially, I haven't lived through a war, had addict or fighting parents, serious illness, or childhood trauma, but perhaps it is more so dispositional, or genetic. I really mean it is not a personal virtue that I have achieved by my own effort, or by adopting a better philosophy. There is nothing 'reasonable' about my attitude to life, and 'unreasonable' about Schop's. Hemlock is just never on the breakfast menu for me, and it seems to be always there for him - our philosophies explain different lives, and so we have no real disagreement.

Please elaborate on this "if". What do you mean nothing is distinguished from anything else. — khaled

Always happy to pontificate.

Understanding, n.: a cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. — Ambrose Bierce

I believe in certain circles, a horse is distinguished from a pony according to size, but for children and philosophers, I will stipulate that here at least, when I say 'horse' I mean pony or horse, but not mule or other hybrid. (stipulate means 'because I say so'). I also mean not a house, a hose, or hospitality.

Likewise, when I say 'everything' I exclude incomplete collections - some things, or even most things. So in general, a term has meaning by means of distinguishing what it is from what it is not.

But I foresee an objection. We understand that a 'unicorn' is a horse-like beast with a single horn protruding from its forehead. And we want to be able to say, "nothing is a unicorn". Yet I am claiming that when you say "nothing is objective", it is meaningless.

And the difference is in the definition; 'unicorn' is defined as a compound of 'horselike' and 'horn', both of which are meaningful in my sense of carving the world into 'horns' and 'non-horns'. and 'horses' and 'non-horses'. Likewise, conveniently for mathematicians the notion of 'the largest prime number' is a compound of ideas, 'largest' and 'prime' that are well understood so we can use the term in a proof that there is no largest prime.

So if you can provide such a compound of independently meaningful terms that define 'objective' then, and only then, I will allow that you are saying something meaningful with the claim that 'nothing is objective.

any distinction you come up with between those ways cannot be labeled objective — khaled

Of course not. Distinctions are made, and the objective/subjective distinction is one such. It applies to some things and not others; distinctions are useful or not useful. But the problem is that you seem to deny that anything is objective, in if that is the case, then nothing is distinguished from anything else, and your claim that this or that 'cannot be labeled objective' ceases to distinguish it in any way from anything else. It is as if you want to say that 'objectively, nothing is objective', and that is a simple contradiction.

You have to do a bit more than "verbally" deny something in the case of pain. I'm pretty sure the guy tiptoeing on the spike bed is doing a bit more than "verbally" denying pain. He is actually no longer experiencing it — khaled

I agree, he's no longer experiencing it. So he's not denying an experience. What he is doing is what the schizophrenic cannot do, and you are pretending cannot be done, clearly distinguishing subjective from objective. And then he controls his subjectivity.

Anyone who denies experience then, is a maniac and not worth talking to but only because I arbitrarily chose to employ logic. There is no logical reason for why I or any other employer of logic does this. — khaled

No. Anyone who denies experience is confused about what the word 'experience' means. And anyone who choses not to employ logic is confused about what logic is. Logic is simply the way we use language to talk sense. One can dispense with talking sense in this mundane way and have recourse to poetry, but poets know what logic is very well.

You cannot deny the existence of experience (without being logically inconsistent at least) but you CAN deny certain aspects of it with your choosing. For example, schizophrenics deny the existence of their experiences regularly. — khaled

No. You can deny anything you please, verbally. But to deny any experience whatsoever is to abuse the language, and thus meaningless. On the basis of (other) experience, I conclude that my experienced encounter with St Augustine last night was a dream or an hallucination - but it was a dream I experienced nonetheless. Conceivably, I might conclude that my experience of this discussion is an hallucination. Thus I can distinguish within my experience real and unreal, and I can be unsure whether an experience is real or not. But I cannot meaningfully deny the experience itself.

I have never experienced schizophrenia myself, but I have experienced living with a schizophrenic in full fugue, and it is exactly this ability to distinguish reality from unreality that they lose, and in losing it, they stop making sense to themselves and to others. What they don't do is deny their experience; they are unable to dismiss any experience as unreliable or unimportant, or unreal. This can become very frightening for them.

But for philosophers, to talk of experience is precisely to talk of what is prior to the distinction of real and unreal, to talk, thus of what cannot be doubted.

"Why should one believe his experience of sensing objects (as you defined them) is reliable" is a question unanswerable neither by the existence of objects nor by logic and so in order to see the existence of objects as reliable one must make an arbitrary decision to do so. No matter where you take the base on which you build an argument the question "Why should I not pick another base" has always been askable as far as I can see. — khaled

Other than experience? What other?

You needed to assume certain premises to come to that conclusion. Had I been an idealist I would have disagreed with that statement saying that if it is not constantly remembered in "the mind of God" it wouldn't exist. — khaled

I don't need to assume anything at at all, because it's not a conclusion. A bed is simply a bed, and whether it is an idea in the mind of God or a giant quark party doesn't make any difference to it being an object. And objective existence is existing the way objects exist.

It is a sometimes handy distinction to make, between objective and subjective, as pertaining to the object or pertaining to the subject, but it is only meaningful to the extent that it carves up the world conceptually, such that, say, my taste in wine pertains to me, but the alcoholic content pertains to the wine. If everything is subjective, the term loses meaning, and one simply has to start again to distinguish these aspects with another word. Philosophers are rather prone to universalise in this way, and think they have said something profound, when they have actually said nothing meaningful at all.

To accept is to keep living. To deny is to suicide. Very interesting choice we are given. — schopenhauer1

It is, to me, and probably to @Benkei, a curious, unfamiliar choice. As if I were to say to myself picking up a hammer, 'shall I hammer the nail into the wood, or my foot?' Conceptually, both are possibilities, but I never actually wonder about it or consider the choice. Or going to the restaurant, dancing naked on the table is a choice, but it is not 'on the menu', neither the restaurant's nor my own internal menu of possibilities. I genuinely do not know, from my own experience, what it is to face suicide as a real choice, though I accept it is one for some people. I choose to call myself lucky, rather than delusional, when pressed to consider it.

I think you are using "agreed upon" instead of "objective" — khaled

Not at all - we don't agree! But logic is truth preserving, not truth creating, and it has value because truth has value. Start with life, not logic. My bed is upstairs, we are communicating, you have school. Beds, schools, communications - these are objects, they are there whether we reason or not.

Then, because we value truth in communication, and must do so, or give no value to communication, then we use logic to preserve the truth in what we say about beds and schools.