In other words, how does one draw the exclusion between the two statements about being depressed and having depression? — Posty McPostface

Who is asking? Is depression expressing itself? Is depression curious? Probably not. Probably, depression doesn't give a damn.

But there is not an either/or absolute, because it's a matter of what one wants to think, what one finds acceptable to be. For example, folks know, somewhere, that they are not their wealth, it is something they have, but somehow they manage to identify pretty closely with it; you don't find a lot of people trying to dis-identify with it.

The above depressive sentiment is due to identifying with my depression too closely. Now, I don't know how to (dis)-identify with depression anymore, it's been with me for so long, that I've become accustomed to it. — Posty McPostface

I wonder what you mean by dis-identify? There is some complexity here I think, because usually folks don't identify as depressed the way they identify as British, or a philosopher, or male. Rather, one tends to have depression - a black dog that moves in and won't go away. And this is already by way of dis-identification - one does not, by contrast, often say one has got happiness, but that one is happy.

Depression in your first paragraph is something you deal with, that goes away or doesn't, that you battle; it is not by these expressions 'you', but 'other'. This othering one might say is identification by negation - "I am" ... "not-depression", equates to "I have depression", or even "Depression has me". And in such case, dis-identifying with othered depression looks rather like identifying with depression.

That's already complex enough, but there can also be another form of negation, that denies the whole thing, as self or other. One might say that sometimes I am happy, and sometimes I am miserable, and it is not a thing I have, or a thing I am, but just a flow of existence. Perhaps that is what you mean by dis-identification?

Making thought into his favorite activity - indeed, into his very profession - and qualifying this activity as 'a living for death,' the philosopher simply registers the way that things are. His ingenuity consists in the emphatic tone with which he announces this rather common experience to the profane. He pretends to smuggle as a discovery and a privilege something that is, instead, actually obvious" — StreetlightX

The insistence on death as something like 'the beginning of philosophy' - rather than the far more obvious point of natality, say - has been used simply to secure the autarky of thought within itself, never inclining it to actually respect the distinctions and plurality that comprises the world: — StreetlightX

I can't work out which is supposed to be so obviously the beginning of philosophy, natality or death. I wonder if it would be more acceptable if I were to say instead that death awareness is the condition of the birth of the psyche? And then propose both philosophy and religion as attempts to resolve the paradoxes that arise from the separation of inner and outer, or self and world.

Here is perhaps a better insight, from the comments section here:

Right let me put this straight. I live in Chemnitz and last night I was there and witnessed it all first hand. You have to understand that right wing, politics is not welcomed here by the majority. Germany has a dark past when it comes to extreme right wing politics you know. The Nazi, AfD etc are right wing of varying extremes. So, we do not want to see the right rise again do we. Over last year’s more and more people have come out of the woodwork and are becoming more vocal, they for first time in years feel that they can be more vocal in slagging off Merkel and her immigration policy. They feel like they can be a bit more openly xenophobic, and target the immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers that have come into Chemnitz and Germany. The murder of Daniel Hillig here was carried out by an Iraqi and Syrian, who have been arrested and will be charged. The right have now taken this and used it as propaganda to push their xenophobic views on the world on a bigger scale. They are exploiting his death, they couldn't give a hoot about him really. His death is being abused and blown out of proportion. Yes its terrible that someone was murdered, but a murderer is a murderer independent of skin colour. Yesterday, I saw Nazis freely walk the street again. Friends who are from India and Syria were too afraid to leave their homes as Nazis had been attacking people cos they had darker skin than your 'average Caucasian German'. And you ask why the left wing was protesting?! Yes there were extreme left-wing there who are infact in a different way not, much better than the Nazis in their violent approach. But the ordinary people of the city came out to say enough is enough, this kind of behaviour is not welcomed here or anywhere, there is no room for your hateful views in society. By not turning up you show the Nazis especially, that they have a platform, that they can be openly racist again and its acceptable. By the way, the man who died, Daniel, was half Cuban and therefore had darker skin. Just the kind of person the Nazis targeted, hated and attacked on Sunday when things started to escalate, but yet they are mourning his death as if he was one of their own. I can understand where people are coming from in showing their unease at the number of unchecked and uncontrolled immigration, but to condemn the ‘Ausländer’ (foreigner) because they are not a Caucasian German is completely unacceptable. And again the irony, the deceased was not Caucasian and came from a migrant parent from Cuba.

The point where I'm quoting Jesus is the point where I know I have reached the edge of reason, and it's time to be quiet.

This is under the assumption that everyone who is virtuous will be crucified. I disagree that this is the case. — Lif3r

Yes, it is an unpleasant religion, isn't it?

23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. — Luke 9:23 King James Version (KJV)

Could we not say that virtue is successful? — Lif3r

You can say it if you like, the question is whether you believe it yourself or just hope that others will. Personally, I find it difficult to call crucifixion success, but then I am weak-willed and self-centered.

So, how far should one go with Jesus' instruction in Matthew?

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
— Jesus

Is it a "stumbling block" or sound and moral advice? — Bitter Crank

It is well known to all that following Jesus gets you crucified. It is a recipe for virtue, not for success. That's why we tend to vote for arseholes, in the hope that in covering their own arses they will accidentally cover ours.

I'd say that's arguable. Is there a contract for model train parts, or for a box of junk? Was there a label? It's part of the game to find something that the seller doesn't know the value of, the ming vase in the box of ugly ornaments.

Seriously? — Pattern-chaser

Yes, we're all very serious about our identities. They're serious, and so am I, and so are those folk that feel to beat people up and murder them for their 'lifestyle' choices. What else is serious but identity?

You may think that "an alternative identification" is your private enterprise; yet, it should be examined how private it is. Almost any identification nowadays is a way of getting involved into a socio-political
mass movement. — Number2018

I may do, but I don't as it happens; I'm fairly conventional, in my male hetero-normality. But lose the paranoia, dude, penis amputation is not a mass movement.

This is not a deep question. Obviously the decent thing to do is to offer to return the ring. And as far as I know, there is no legal obligation to do so. What more is to be said?

Perhaps it is that the gender of an individual is set by their mental and emotional characteristics, while their sexual characteristics are physical, 'set' by biology? — Pattern-chaser

But gender is a social construct, and that means it isn't set by sexual characteristics or by what they feel, but by what we (society) feel. So an interesting question is why and when society's feelings should over-ride the individual's in personal matters.

Yup.

Hume is particularly concerned with analyzing our practical reasoning, our reasoning about how to act. Passions are the engine for all our deeds: without passions we would lack all motivation, all impulse or drive to act, or even to reason (practically or theoretically). This gives at least one sense in which “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions” (T II.3.3 415). Hume also holds that the passions are not themselves directly subject to rational evaluation. In fact, it seems something of a category mistake to think that they could be either rational or irrational. Passions are impressions – strong and lively perceptions with a certain “feel” and a direction, or impulse. Reasoning, however, is a matter of connecting various ideas in order to come to a belief; it may apply to, or even form, the circumstances under which passions arise. But reason can generate no impulse by itself.

SEP

Money, private property, justice, family, what social constructs do you want to challenge? And how does one challenge one construct - slavery for example - except in terms of another - justice perhaps? You're not making a lot of sense. One resists identification with an alternative identification; one bends gender until straight starts to look queer.

So where does that leave the argument that gender identity is not real, and therefore should be ignored?

I think the dustbin of philosophical history.

So the craziness of the trans-gender is perhaps rather a sane response to the craziness of society, and 'we' had best try and accommodate them within our social constructs.

Let's dismantle the distinction between man and woman (gender, not sex). — Banno

Good idea. How you gonna do it?

It seems to me that social constructs cannot just be abolished by pointing out that they are 'made-up.' Let's dismantle race too, and just be left with skin-colour. But as long as we haven't, which might be a while, expect the Michael Jacksons of this world to want plastic surgery to lighten their skin and straighten their nose, and poor folks to bathe in bleach and straighten their hair with hot combs.

So, if you do not believe in authenticity, why are you still a part of the game?
How can we differentiate between fake and authentic? — Number2018

That was an attempt at humour and parody. Of course it is an important distinction to make in others. And even more important to make in oneself. The serious point, though, is that trying to be authentic, trying to be anything, is faking an authenticity one lacks. But as with art, fakes can be very convincing, so I don't have a universal answer for your question. Indeed a soon as one gives an answer in any general case, it becomes another attribute that can be faked.

Death is not an event in a philosopher's life. — Banno

Her own death is not, but the death of Socrates was an event in Plato's life. As you can see, raging against the dying of the light can be an event. The mortality of all men is a cliche of logic.

death *is* an otherness, But dying isnt. it involves others. — csalisbury

So there is something we can talk about and relate to, but only as the end of the known. My parents are dead, my sister's son died, and my sister died. I have also witnessed the death of a stranger - more or less - and had the excitement of performing my first aid training for real. It's not much talked about in polite society, but the responses here, of rage, terror, disgust, humour, diversion, are interesting to me at least.

But back to the elephants. Burial, in archeology is the first indication of self-consciousness, and what I am looking towards is the idea that awareness of mortality, and possibly the denial or repression thereof, is self-consciousness. I see myself as an other like a parent or sibling, without whom the world continues. Thus before Descartes, we have already, I die therefore I am, or perhaps I am therefore I die.

The social, empathetic connectedness to the dead leads to the Fall. The fruit of the tree of knowledge is this separation of self and world, such that the world without me becomes conceivable. The entrance of death into the world, psychologically, is the entrance to self-consciousness and thus to philosophy. The first act of civilisation is to hide the dead, The elephants seem to me to be on the cusp of the fall; they know there is something significant about the bones of the ancestors, but haven't quite grasped the implication for themselves - they have picked Eve's apple, but not yet taken a bite.

Not I, you or the Good Lord want you to be authentic. An authentic asshole is invariably full of shit; the project is to be fake - to fake humanity.

Faking one's humanity involves faking authenticity, which means wearing the right brand of jeans 'by accident'. I am a tremendous faker, the best faker you have ever seen, I'm so tremendously talented at faking that everyone thinks I'm authentic, except those who are pretending not to be impressed, and they really think I'm authentic, they just don't like what I authentically am, which they believe, by the way. So everyone thinks I'm authentic, and I even believe it myself. And that's what authenticity is - a convincing fake.

How do I square the circle that "to be a philosopher is to already be dead"? When an image of death can portray the ceasing of living? I am not so sure that is possible but I am open to options... — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Well perhaps philosophy is impossible, but if the unexamined life is not worth living, and the examination of life is philosophy, then it seems that philosophy can only be the view from death; one might say that life can examine itself in the mirror (of language), but still the view one has of life on reflection is external. And what is external to life is death.

death is best described as the ceasing to exist. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Well I'm not sure I agree it's entirely unknowable. — aporiap

I don't really want to go there, because that discussion is already going on in another thread. So I will simply dogmatically claim that whatever reports you may receive, whatever evidence you may collect is from the living, not the dead. In effect I define death as the end of the known for current purposes, and any who came back never quite arrived. Thus even to say that it is ceasing to exist, or ceasing to experience, is to claim to know too much.

After Finitude and Meillassoux comes immediately to mind. — Marchesk

What does it say when it gets there?

Cause precedes effect, temporally.
Therefore, there cannot be a cause of time.

Causation is internal to the world. Whatever is external to the world, where 'the world' includes temporal succession, cannot be spoken of in terms of cause. What is true of 'cause', here, is equally true of 'randomness'.

The tories have a new solution to the problems of brexit: a unilateral trade deal.

It might even work, (not really) except that this government cannot even agree amongst itself.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/22/dominic-raab-uk-wont-trigger-no-deal-battle-with-brussels?CMP=fb_gu

Madness gone stupid. I think a unilateral deal is where you agree to eat your own shit.

I'd clap you in irons for that remark if I could. But it's a fine example of weaselling, which is what I thought you were objecting to.

In this case, the base question is, as it so often is, is belief in God reasonable. If so, and your answer is yes, than by faith there is no reason not to believe in His trinity. — Rank Amateur

You mistake my claim, which is that the spiritual is unreasonable. In matters of fact, truth and reason are king and queen; in matters of faith, beauty and goodness. What extraordinary folly to be reasoning whether there is one love or three or three in one - there is no love, therefore one must believe in it.

This is what happens when philosophical literalists meddle with religion and try to organise it. Zen Buddhists are smart enough to head them off at the pass with the soundless sound of one hand clapping.

Personally, I believe in love and justice though I am confident they do not exist. So call me irrational, and snort in derision.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/22/worst-hour-for-trump-after-convictions-for-manafort-and-cohen

The outcomes also raised grave questions about Trump’s judgment. Since his election, his national security adviser, personal lawyer, campaign chairman, deputy campaign manager and a foreign policy aide have all admitted or been convicted of crimes.

At the risk of injecting a serious note into this farce, it seems to me that there is a useful distinction to be made between a witch-hunt, where you go looking for people who have committed imaginary crimes, and draining the swamp, where you investigate a series of perfectly ordinary and real crimes.

So the John that is conscious of himself is not the John he is conscious of - is that what you are saying? That consciousness entails an unconscious.

Radical improvement proposal: let's do some philosophy. :sparkle:

You need to change the heading too, as it's no longer "All Discussions". I'd suggest "Philosophy Discussions", except we still have other stuff...

How's that? I don't see your argument. — Banno

Well, perhaps that was a bit hyperbolic, but...

I think it is reasonable to distinguish the physical, the social and the personal as aspects of the world.

So, Rebecca is a conformist to social stereotypes (dress, hair, make-up, demeanour) that align with her physicality (I presume), and (a) identifies the two, and (b) identifies with/as that unity 'woman', and (c) is comfortable with that.

So her performance is of a comfortable identity of sex and gender, while her rhetoric is that only sex matters, and gender and comfort or discomfort can be disregarded.

Her performance is strongly gendered, therefore "...her suggestion that gender is indefensible is a performative contradiction."

I voted for discussions sans lounge, on the assumption that the categories don't have the latest comment/thread link of the old pf. If it were possible to have latest commented discussions plus links to feedback, politics, current affairs, lounge, that would be ideal... and assuming we can't have a proper incomprehensible shout box that only shows a couple of lines at the top like in the good old days when men were men and philosophers were educated.

This is not a reply.

In any finite discussion, someone has to have the last word. When's me, I always wonder whether it is too feeble to worthy of response, or so incisive as to be unanswerable.

I usually respond at least once if I am addressed in a serious thread, and to almost everyone in some way in my own threads, though not necessarily individually. Beyond that, it seems acceptable to please oneself, and engage only when/as-long-as it feels productive, or interesting or amusing.

Let's assume for the sake of this thread that we arrive at our personal ethical views as follows: — Benkei

Let's not. Rather, let's assume that there are values necessary to the survival of the kind of social creature that we are, and that these inclinations, preferences, values, are built in to the species as a whole. For instance, a species that has a long period of dependency of its offspring needs a loving, nurturing attitude to children. Other species abandon their offspring at birth or before to fend for themselves, but human genomes that tend in that direction die out.

Likewise, a species that relies heavily on communication through language must value truth, or lose meaning. A species that relies on complex social learning must value trust, and so on.

That is, children mimicking others is already an expression of a value.

Youtube made me...

My nomination for the next president.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/15/elizabeth-warren-accountable-capitalism-act-richest-companies?CMP=fb_gu

After I woke up I was still depressed. But I realized through this depression and through all of this how strong I really was, being able to take care of myself ALONE after I should have been dead.
I realized that these emotions that had been affecting me... I never accepted them. I never accepted their reality. I always could not come to grips with their actuality. — Blue Lux

It is well known that a lot of unpleasant physical symptoms - inflammation, muscle spasm, fever, and so on, are the result of the body's healing processes and defences. So it is quite reasonable to suppose that mental symptoms are similarly the attempt of the mind to heal itself. The question I tend to ask of a depressed person, at some stage is "what are you depressing?" And it is exactly those unacceptable, unbearable feelings that depression protects one from, at the cost, unfortunately, of protecting one from any positive feelings as well. I think of depression as a mind-spasm protecting a mental trauma.

Thanks for telling your story so eloquently.

Treason? Betrayal? Personally, my rage is not against the abusers, who I can think are themselves fucked up, and need stopping, and then helping. Rather it is those who are loyal to the reputation of the institution and betray those they pretend to serve, who really need that millstone. The crime is terrible, but the cover-up is worse, because it perpetuates and institutionalises the crime.

It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. — Jesus

"Waste of a good millstone." unenlightened.