The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election? — Top Trump

I had to laugh. The old 'why didn't you stop me mummy?' defence.

Well if you equate ignorance with over-generalisation...?

So, was Jesus in the right again to ask Paul to go back to Rome and face crucifixion? — Posty McPostface

Well he didn't, as I heard it. He said he was going himself. Demonstration, not argument.

"Take a load off Fanny
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny
And (and) (and) you put the load right on me."

Would you say that people prefer moral relativism and with it nihilism than be responsible for anyone or anything? Why is that? — Posty McPostface

I don't know how to answer that. Why would I suffer when I can make another suffer instead? Empathy? Love?

Paul is running from persecution. People these days run from commitment, from vulnerability, from suffering, and justify it with moral relativism. 'Quo vadis?' is a moral question - whatever your life is worth, that is worth your life. But even to mention it sounds like madness and fanaticism.

Nothing to sell, so not trying to persuade. I'm trying more to understand another world-view than to infect people with mine. But it sometimes happens, in the course of trying to provoke someone to clarity, that they change some aspect of their view, and sometimes I change some aspect of mine.

What value does reason then have, if we cannot relate to each other to the extent that we can persuade each other? — Agustino

If we value reason and truth, then we do not at bottom have opposing world-views. And if someone does not, there is nothing to talk about, or rather no way to talk. If reason were a mere tool of persuasion, it would have very little value to me, but it is the bridge that enables communication. 'Can we understand each other?', is my concern, not 'Can we persuade each other?'

Everybody on the left complains about the right and vice versa and then both complain the other side complains about the other side complaining about the other's complaints. It's like watching children. — Benkei

Not complaining are we? :joke:

Shouldn't philosophers at least strive to have a real world impact on society or the world at hand? If not, then what then? There doesn't seem to be much hope to entertain a proposition or thought if it doesn't change your life for the better. — Posty McPostface

Peter asks Jesus, "Quō vādis?" He replies, "Rōmam eō iterum crucifīgī ("I am going to Rome to be crucified again").

Wiki

One might think that the going, or the crucifixion, would have little impact - especially the second time around. but the point of the fable is that Peter is going nowhere; he is running away, not towards anything. One might say that the question - not a proposition - or the answer - an action, not a proposition - changes Peter's life. He turns around and heads for his own crucifixion. Is that a change for the better?

There is a world of difference between entertaining a proposition, and taking a stand, that consists of putting one's life on the line. And doing so whether or not (because one cannot know) it will have an impact.

But when you ask here, you cannot expect an answer that is not a proposition, because talk is all there is here. We meet, not on the road, but in the tavern, where one can tell any story about where one has been or where one is going. Still, you might hear something believable, you might change your life and head for Rome as a result, or you might already be going there, and in that sense, even a thought expressed is already an action, and can have an impact. It is at least a baby step in one direction or the other.

It is the fashion to proclaim that there is nowhere to go, and think this is deep philosophy, but this is because there is a fashion for running away.

That's how you break records without an organ; you can't inflate your organ, you inflate what you can. Just like you can't do anything with a pussy but grab at it.

This, I think, is what the Tractatus is doing.




Some interesting mathematical messing with the picture here, but probably a side issue, except to note that they manage to fill in the blank spot, and it contains the whole picture again, twisted upside-down, and so ad infinitum.

There is a sense in which this is an impossible picture, and thus 'meaningless' in Witty-speak, and another sense in which it is a necessarily incomplete and distorted representation of the reality that we we see that we are part of. I think this goes some way to explain the difficulty of pinning down the relation of world and logical space - gallery and picture.

A great question, and I like how you link the personal and the social, the child and the politician.

And I will follow your outline and answer first, and then try and work out what the answer means. My answer is "never".

But in order for that to make any sense at all, I need to distinguish what I want to rule out from obvious everyday necessities, from making an effort, from resistance, from struggle, from forceful intervention.

any fight usually has an implicitly agreed terminal condition, such that the fight is understood to be over when the condition is reached, although this only indirectly bears on the fight boundary question. — tim wood

I think this is crucial. The end point of a fight is its boundary, and if the end boundary is clarified, that will shed some light on the beginning. Am I allowed to declare that the end of a fight is submission? Where death and knockout are equivalent to submission. There may be violence after submission, but it is no longer a fight, but retribution or punishment - kicking the man when he is down.

Which means that a fight is a struggle for dominance. Not dominance itself, but the struggle to obtain it.

So when the police are called to a pub brawl, they do not join the fight on one side or the other or even on their own side. If they are themselves struggling for dominance, they are continuing and expanding the fight, not ending it. Their business is to be dominant and to restrain the combatants, not to fight them. I'll pause here, because there is enough controversy already for some vigorous discussion.

But rejecting a hands-off approach to parenting does not mean embracing a "tiger parenting" aka authoritarian parenting, which has also been shown to have negative effects on children. — NKBJ

Suppose we were talking about some other relationship, and I said...
"But rejecting a hands-off approach to marriage does not mean embracing a "tiger marriage" aka authoritarian marriage."

Well yes, there are other possibilities for a relationship than bullying and neglect. Thank goodness!

What are we to make of this? — Banno

Fear of castration - "No organ."

Penis envy - "Elton has an organ"

Infantile rage - "we’ve broken a lot of records."[

Orality - "This is the only musical: the mouth.".

He's obviously afraid of his father, and afraid of becoming a woman - almost certainly a repressed homosexual.

My experience is similar to yours, and the principle i have always followed is that one should treat children as if they are the people one would like them to be. Treat them like little shits, and they become little shits, manipulate them and they become manipulators, respect them and they become respectful, in just the same way that if you speak Spanish to them, they will become Spanish speakers.

We in Europe have moved on from concentration camps, and have now instituted more effective cheaper and eminently deniable dilution camps. Get with the project, Donald, and don't be so old-fashioned.

Last weekend, 629 people drowned off the coast of Libya while trying to reach Europe. While this occured, Search and Rescue organizations in the Mediterranean were being held back at port. Since January, 1,408 women, children and men have died or gone missing on their journey crossing the Mediterranean, according to the UNHCR.
In the Aegean, since March 2016, when the EU-Turkey deal was signed, the number of people crossing to Greece has decreased. However, the journey remains far from safe. Since 2016, 513 human lives have been lost in their journey from Turkey to Greece.

Moreover, the newly arrived people we assist have systematically been arriving to Lesvos in worse condition and health. According to them, the increasing numbers of Turkish police, and their sometimes aggressive and violent tactics, has forced them to go into hiding for days, even weeks, often without access to food or water.

Because of this, Lighthouse Relief and other groups in the Mediterranean, are uniting today to protest against the criminalization of Search and Rescue activities in the area. Furthermore, Lighthouse Relief stands against the recent measures by some European states, that do not respect human dignity.

Lighthouse Relief will remain committed to preventing further catastrophes at the sea, being the only organisation in Northern Lesvos with spotting teams almost 24 hours a day. Lighthouse Relief will also remain committed to promoting dignity for those arriving to Europe’s shores by assisting all new arrivals.

Yet, there should be a sense of shared responsibility. Responsibility both, among organizations and states alike. We demand that these obligations are respected and all human lives are treated with dignity and respect.

SOS MEDITERRANEE Proactiva Open Arms Sea-Watch Refugee Rescue / 'Mo Chara' sea-eye Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) LIFELINE

#SeaRescueIsNotACrime #SafePassage #WithRefugees

My understanding is that logical space is something like digital space, an arena of representation as language, picture, thought, or whatever, and 'facts' abide in logical space. So when, as investigating officer, you say to me "Give me the facts", you expect me to tell you that the cat is (or is not) on the mat. On the one hand, you do not want me to speculate about whether that is the most comfortable place and the cat has chosen it for that reason, and on the other, more obviously and forcefully, you do not want me to pick up the mat with the cat on it and hand it to you.

The facts represent the state of affairs, and I give you the verbal representation of the cat's relation to the mat, not the cat and/or the mat. That is the state of affairs, that I leave well alone for now. Another way I could give you the facts would be to show you a photo of the cat. Or, if I opened the door, saying, " See for yourself, Sarge", I would, instead of giving you the facts, be giving you access to the state of affairs.

Can one know what it is like to be a man? Or what it is like to be a woman? How, if one can have no more than one's own experiences? — Banno

It feels entirely normal to me to feel like me. But other people think I'm weird.

Living with Mrs Un has obliged me to become aware of being white, and aware that the normality of whiteness, the unawareness of the identity is a privilege of whiteness in the culture. A non-white person simply cannot walk down the street unaware of their non-whiteness; it impinges itself by way of 'the look', which roughly translates as "who do you think you are?" It is a question that it is a privilege not to be forced to confront. Not to confront it is to feel at home.

Can one know what it is like to feel at home, or not to feel at home? To be questionable or un questionable? Only by 'encountering the other'.

Let me declare that one's identity is not one's role, in any straightforward sense. There is a huge gulf between a transvestite, who prefers (sometimes) the role of the opposite sex, and trans gender identification as the opposite sex.

I feel at home in my body, but not everyone does. Where this bites folks on the bum is that in encountering that other, who does not feel at home in their body, one's own identity is called into question - the unquestioned becomes questionable; the comfortable becomes uncomfortable; one becomes aware, paradoxically, that one's identity is a role, but one that one has played unconsciously one's whole life, like one's posture, that one can change by a conscious effort - for about 30 seconds.

Men are hairy, and women are not; everyone knows that. But are you an hairy man, or a smooth man?

You presume the nuclear family. What 'ought' to happen is a much more collaborative child-rearing, shared between siblings as aunts and uncles, grandparents, and the older kids learning to look after the younger ones, and so on. What is wrong is that one can reach puberty and start a family with no experience of caring for children or anyone else.

Unfortunately when one talks of standards and qualifications one is starting from the worst possible place, that of the mechanisation of childhood.

Banishment is our friend.

Turns out Ald Don is afraid of balloons. Now how do we mass produce them?

You don't have to be mad to study psychology, it does it for you.

Now I am asking:
Is modern and even postmodern philosophies were answering and do answer the needs of humans' way of thinking and behavior to help humans cope with the oncoming vicissitudes? — David Jones

No, that's plumbing and market gardening.

It's just nonsense all the way down from this starting point. — Posty McPostface

If I put it politely for you, it is play that is the beginning of knowledge. Play is imitation, recitation, messing about. This is not nonsense at all, it is the creativity of experimentation and exploration that starts without goal as purpose and becomes purposeful. The joy of smearing mud on a rock becomes the joy of art; playing dollies tea party with mud and water becomes panning for gold, or running a restaurant. Babble becomes philosophy.

One does not go looking for Roderickite that one has no idea what it is, one plays in the sand and something different comes out of that, and one calls it Roderickite.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole that he's in
But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him. — Young Dylan

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=it%27s+alright+ma+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

We been sold this pup too many times. If I want an end to hatred, to fighting, to cruelty, if I remonstrate and demonstrate, this is not hatred, fighting or cruelty.

Also, people who are ruled by their fear do not come out on the streets unarmed to demonstrate.

I disagree with your characterization of the Cogito as 'thought constructed as real from doubt.' — frank

I think it's fair. The doubt is constructed via a conception of an evil demon; the indubitability of the self is concluded from the fact of the constructed doubt, and the reality of doubt as thought can only result in the reality of self as thought. I think, therefore I am... thought. There's nothing else to be(ing) at this point.

If only he had started with doing instead of thinking. I fuck about, therefore I am a dick. Which leads naturally to carnal knowledge as the fount of all wisdom.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — Benkei

More fake news from those wretched Republicans.

You're stuck in a loop, because you think you know what a loop is and how to be stuck in it. Don't start with knowledge at all, start with a method - the method of no method. "Fuck about and see what happens." There's your solid foundation. Then start giving names to what happens when you fuck about like this. Call that naming 'knowledge'. Only then can you even ask the question about samples and criteria. Otherwise, you are dealing with Roderickite and unenlightenedite, made up stuff devoid of meaning - so of course knowledge of it is impossible.

I think you underestimate Sellars. If "real" is honorific, then "unreal" is no less so, and 'doubt' is itself a mere fancy.

To construct thought as the real (from doubt) is to make a prison of thought, from whence nothing else can be contacted, and even God is remote. Thus Cartesian certainty is exactly the dream from which one needs to awaken.

2) The adult is still free to wonder if she might have been mistaken in her former confidence about wakefulness — frank

Of course. If I think, "all this is a dream" as anyone can, it is to hypothesise a wakefulness that is absent.
But if all this is a dream, then a hypothesis, (that all this is a dream) within a dream is doubly dreamy, not dreamily realistic.

3) Sellars probably does undermine the argument from illusion, which means we're talking about sense data, not dreams. — frank

I await with interest your spelling out the difference between sense data and dreams, without recourse to reality.

Yes, one the things I miss from Paul's software is the transparency of moderation. Automatic notifications of edits and deletions, both by pm and publicly noted in edited posts, and the automatic ban list with brief reasons. There was even, if I remember right, a list of deleted posts... Punters could see what what was going on and off, and that reduces the conspiracy theories, and paranoia.

If I knew, or even hypothesised, what Roderickite was - say that it was heavy and shiny - I would have a method, 'panning', for separating it from the sand. And I would have a criterion for recognising it when I obtained a sample. Marie Curie hypothesised radium an unknown element as something with distinguishing properties (atomic weight) that gave her a method of distinguishing and separating it. Application of the method produced a substance with distinguishing properties, one of which was that it radiated light, and so the name, Radium.

But perhaps Roderickite is less like gold, and more like salt. In that case, the method would be to try and dissolve the sand in water and then filter and evaporate. If I have no idea what Roderickite is, then not only do I not have a method of separation, but I have no way of knowing whether any separation I might make has separated out Roderickite, or Unenlightendite, something completely different.

I think I am a dissolutionist about this problem. To pose the problem is already to have distinguished properties of knowledge that make it different, and thus to already have both a sample and some criteria and a method. To deny it is to deny knowing what the problem is that one is posing. It is to talk of 'knowledge' whilst denying that there is knowledge. That's nonsense.

I would be glad to be taught by the master himself ;) — Agustino

You have to be tremendously smart, and really the best negotiator, and just have this really slick ability to see instinctively how to make things happen the way you want, which is always the best way if you are tremendously intelligent. I'm thinking of writing a book called "The Art of the Sensible Suggestion" - I'll send you a copy.

imagine a world where electric lighting has not yet been invented. In this world, all colors appear exactly as they are. Green looks green in natural light, and so on. With the invention of electric lighting however, colors can now appear to look other than what they are. — StreetlightX

Have you seen those amusing cups that (appear to) change colour when hot water is poured in?

Imagine a world where hot water has not been invented. In this world all colours appear exactly as they are...

It's a pretty sophisticated scientific understanding that distinguishes the tie that 'appears' to change colour from the cup that 'really' changes colour. So sophisticated as to appear arbitrary., and one can imagine the talk being, "Ah, sir, this is a marvellous colour changing tie that is blue indoors and turns green outside."

It is the set up of the thought experiment that is important - "colours appear exactly as they are". In such a world, one would not make a distinction between appearance and reality because they would be indistinguishable.

If mirages could quench one's thirst, they would be oases. In this case the distinction between appearance and reality imposes itself. One is obliged to face the reality of the unreality of a mirage, and likewise the reality of the reality of the oasis as one drinks or does not drink.

Reality imposes itself.
Reality imposes itself as distinct from appearance, and it is the reality of the unreality of appearances that obliges us to make the distinction or die of thirst. One does not question the reality of dying of thirst, except from the comfort of an armchair with a cup of whatever appearance close at hand.

the problem of trying to make the move from appearance to reality is not one, insofar as they are something of a package deal. — StreetlightX

Exactly; perhaps I am dreaming - Dreaming of thinking, 'perhaps I am dreaming - Dreaming of thinking, 'perhaps I am dreaming - Dreaming of thinking, 'perhaps I am dreaming - ...'''''. It stops making sense, and so it must be a dream that I am dreaming, that I am dreaming, ... and that doesn't make sense either. Not just something of a package, but totally a package. Reality and unreality only have any sense at all as a distinction, so global doubt makes no sense, even to a lucid dreamer; to know/feel that all this is a dream is already to have a sense of reality.

If all you are saying is 'It's a pity that we have armies', I agree. But if you want to advocate for the UK decommissioning its armed forces completely, I disagree. Perhaps you are not advocating that, in which case I misinterpreted your subsequent posts and I apologise. — andrewk

I'm saying more than the one, and less than the other. Perhaps I can put it more agreeably to you. As an individual, I see the personal value, as peace and security, in eschewing personal violence and personal weapons, along with my neighbours, in favour of a designated community protection. Generally we get along quite well in the street, but in case the rowdys start hanging around and making trouble, we don't sally forth with our baseball bats, but call the cops. We outsource our defence, and our defence is not just ours, but also that of the rowdys, so we hope and assume that the cops will be even handed in dealing with the situation, and resolve the conflict with the minimum of force.

I think states could do the same thing; outsource their defence to a beefed up UN force. At the moment, every state has its own baseball bat, and it is costly and ineffectual, and breeds violence not peace. It is as though there were half a dozen privatised police forces vying to dominate the streets, and creating mayhem not security.

But I come to this way of thinking by first rejecting the idea that my violence is ok, and only my neighbour's violence is a problem, or that my country's violence is ok, and only my neighbouring country's violence is a problem, and by thinking that personal violence and national violence are not different in kind. Let's, as someone put it, have a global 'monopoly of violence', since we seem to be inescapably violent, and need to police ourselves. If there is only one army, wars will be brief and rare.

The most upsetting thing to me about the celebrations the other day was how similar it was to the enthusiasm shown to one's favourite football team. But this is not a game where someone might break a leg occasionally, but industrialised death and destruction.

Mafia-like organizations thrive in poverty, in areas that are truly of little interest to powers of all kinds. This is how Fascism was able to take roots as well. Impoverished areas, like the Po Valley, with no recourse to State Relief. are provided a second strong-arm state by those with ambitions to power, who sniff places out like this as if by instinct. Enough areas like this, the more the shadow state is strengthened, and the possibility of a political coup. — csalisbury

Like the Rust belt. I think you are wrong. It is not poverty, but decline. Mafias do not thrive by stealing or protecting the tomatoes of peasants, they go where the money is, and they thrive on the corruption of government and the destruction of community. We are not cursed with oil, or diamonds or heavy industry, and the Welsh poppy is not the opium poppy, so the big crime here is sheep rustling. And that's run by the Manchester Mafia.

There is something amiss though, which is our tendency towards violence, which is violently repressed in modern states, thankfully. Of course, the problem is we have bigger sticks and we can throw them further. — Baden

Indeed, I am the other chap's other chap. No one steals my tomatoes, and that is not the case everywhere in this country, never mind lawless stateless elsewheres. I have the luxury to pontificate on a forum rather than drown in the med as a refugee. And you are all telling me that I should be grateful for this to the state violence that protects me.

And I do not believe you. I believe it is because this is a neglected corner of the empire, that is of little interest to powers of all kinds. Not worth planting a bomb here, unless the forces happen to choose it for their celebrations. Too poor to sustain its own Mafia, and too under resourced to to be worth fighting over. The reality is that no one wants my tomatoes.

Facts can be inconvenient. But they're all we have to work with. If it was a close thing on the statistics it'd be arguable. But I really don't think it is, overall. — Baden

There is something amiss here though. 'We' stateful, and thus peaceful statistics gatherers, rock up to Australia or North America, or wherever, notice that it is stateless, and declare it part of the Queens Empire, and everyone is now a lucky subject of Her Majesty, and in the ensuing chaos, start counting the bodies and thereby prove that the natives are far better off with our kind of society.

You just have an unnatural aversion to violence, such that you don't see that it's ever good. — Agustino

I think I am as natural as you.

Violence in-itself is not a problem. — Agustino

What is violence in-itself? To me, in-itself it is always contextual. — Agustino

Nice. I think that is an absolutely classic straw man. And violence against straw men is a good old-fashioned way to train soldiers.

I was suggesting that violence is not being advocated even by you as something to be sought for its own sake, but only as a means to an end, where the end is presumably an end to violence on favourable terms.

You are not so silly as not to be able to distinguish 'violence in itself' whatever that might be supposed to mean, and 'good in itself' which has a pretty uncontroversial meaning. So are you half asleep or fucking about?

There seems to be some agreement here. No one is advocating violence as a good in itself. Everyone seems to quite like peace.

And everyone agrees that it is the other chap that is the problem. I need to protect my tomatoes from the other chap, and that's why I need a government with a defence budget and some warships and fighter jets and so on. Putin wants my heritage tomatoes. Or Binlala, or someone. Or they just don't want me to have them, and want to blow them up. Maybe Allah doesn't want infidels to have tomatoes. Or else it's the Mafia, that wants me to pay them for 'protecting' my tomatoes.

Anyway, it's the other chap that's the problem, and my violence is down to him. That's where we are, isn't it?

You are paranoid suspicious lot, so here are the defenceless tomatoes in person.

So do you take all communications of reactions which can be seen as negative or unfavourable by the other party as threats? — Agustino

No, of course not. If all my tomatoes get stolen or vandalised, I won't grow any next year. I'm not threatening anyone.

Without negotiating them, we won't be able to live together. — Agustino

We can't live together.