Anyway, if there was no alternative, like you say, the question wouldn't make sense, even as you rephrased it. But it does make sense. — csalisbury

But pity those nonsensical non-beings forever not asking, 'why is there nothing, rather than something?'

Not asking, of course, because being is unimaginable to non-beings.

It's Srap's cartoon - he's tricked you with a quote from me above it. I always like this fella as a thoughtless trickster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phasmatodeamedia/File:LeafInsect.jpg

I'm never sure how best to talk about it. We can see the trick, performed by the blind watchmaker, and it seems to me that where there is a trick, there is a (mis)communication. So do I have to talk about a 'visual language' whereby these lookie-likeies speak unknowing, unthinking and involuntary? Then I could translate the insect as saying 'I'm a leaf', and the scaredy-cat of the cartoon as saying 'I'm big and fierce'. We do speak of 'body-language', and these things do have uses.

Or shall I say that the insect is deceptively intelligible as leaf, (just as I am deceptively intelligible as a philosopher)? Make a rule for me, someone.

Anyway, the matter of the beetle arises out of trickery, I'm sure of that. One only needs an 'internal' world if it is something different from the 'external'. The cat looks fierce because it is scared, and so there are the two worlds. If we all wore our hearts on our sleeves, the idea of an inner world of beetles would never arise.

I don't know what to think of your exaggerated slippery-slope appeals. I am afraid there is not a sufficient common ground for us to have a discussion. — SophistiCat

Trop Kantian pour vous?

If I feel that a psychological experiment is ethically acceptable, then pointing out that this experiment involves manipulation and deception won't change my mind — SophistiCat

Are you saying that manipulation and deception are morally neutral? It does not seem possible that you think truth and falsehood are morally equivalent, for then indeed there is nothing to be said worth anything. But if not, then deception must be justified by an utilitarian argument of greater good. This surely, is the positive argument put before the ethics committee and the justification presented in defence of all the experiments we are talking about. Deception is justified in terms of the search for truth, and manipulation in terms of the prevention of malign manipulation.

So one says that the deception is temporary and minor, and the truth will be important and permanent, and so on. And decades later, it starts to appear that gold standard world-famous experiments do not result in truth. This is not a slippery slope argument at all, but a biting critique of the ethical justification presented by the experimenters on their own utilitarian moral terms. And this is your topic, so it seems that your mind is after all open persuasion on the matter.

But I won't rehearse here the detailed critique I have made elsewhere of experimental psychology, and the central role it has played in what I see as destructive social forces playing out in current affairs.

Knowledge along with the necessary ingredient of justification is only done with propositions, i.e., in a linguistic setting. Beliefs can take place apart from a linguistic setting, and this is seen by the actions of the one having the belief. — Sam26

I know my wife and my dog knows my wife. I know which cupboard the dog-food is in, and so does the dog, and with the exact same justification, that that's where we always keep it. I can tell you about it, but my dog can only gesture. I believe you exaggerate the importance of language, and thereby underestimate the perspicacity of non-speakers (along with about every philosopher ever).

I think a belief can be justified without anyone actually justifying it. A cat is justified in believing there is a mouse in the mousehole by its sense of smell, it does not require a syllogism as well.

It looks to me that the dog knows when the cat is angry sans a common language. And I think the dog knows the same kind of thing that the 'primitive' knows when he says that the volcano is angry, also without a common language.

And I think it is readily understandable to most if I say that my computer does not seem to get angry, but sometimes sulks. Or, old-fashionedly that water seeks its own level.

Which is to point out that it is a sophistication to de-animate the world, rather than a struggle to animate others. Knowing when, or how to stop in this depopulation of the world is the problem of sophisticates already living in language. That my computer sulks conveys perfectly meaningful sensible information in animated language - that the wretched thing is unresponsive and uncooperative. Have I said anything about its inner awareness or experience? I don't think so.

Furthermore, I mean the same thing when I say that Mrs Un is sulking - that she is being unresponsive and uncooperative.

And sometimes I sulk.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/tenstagesofgenocide.html

http://www.genocidewatch.com/united-states-of-america

Think this answers the question comprehensively.

Deceptive and manipulative behavior isn't always a sin, and when it is, it isn't necessarily a big deal - that's my point. We do it all the time, even unconsciously, and often for good reasons: when we try to look our best, when we try to be persuasive, when we are being tactful, when we try to make someone feel good (or bad), when we avoid giving "too much information." — SophistiCat

There is a difference between trying your best in an exam, or a sport, and cheating. There is a difference between trying to look your best and putting a photoshopped picture on your dating profile. It's a moral difference.

What was so distasteful or harmful about, say, Asch conformity experiments, in which an unsuspecting subject was placed among a group of actors who attempted to influence his or her judgment of the relative lengths of lines drawn on a piece of paper? — SophistiCat

It beggars belief that you can seriously ask the question. In any other circumstances, it would be called gaslighting. It is a concerted and deliberate attempt to make the subject doubt his own experience and judgement, it is bound to lead to increased suspicion and paranoia. It leads very directly to the sort of manipulative advertising that is disguised as personal recommendation, and the machinations of fake news, to undermine and manipulate political opinion.

All your acquaintances are in a conspiracy to manipulate you. How does that thought feel?

There is general principle: if you treat people as objects, you will learn only how to manipulate them.

we already are social creatures, and we engage in manipulative games all our lives. Is it so much worse to engage in "deceit and manipulation in the name of truth and progress" than to do the same for your selfish purposes, or just for fun? — SophistiCat

I think the answer is 'yes, much much worse'. I'm not confident that I can explain it in clear terms, but I'll have a go. Firstly, a small dispute: sure we all lie and manipulate, we are all sinners, but not all our lives. For if lies were the rule, then communication would have no value. It is because the truth has value, that lies have negative value, and undermine communication. The value of crying 'wolf' when there is a wolf is obvious, and also that it is devalued by crying 'wolf' when there is no wolf. But if it was normal to cry 'wolf' when there was no wolf, then it would not mean anything more than a cough in the first place.

We understand well enough that the boy who cried 'wolf' was doing something both anti-social and foolish. If he explained that he was investigating the nature of language and social relations, and this would make us all able to get on much better, I would not believe him, but think he was adding lies to lies to justify himself.

"Wait a minute -- what the hell are you planning to do here?" — Bitter Crank

Unfortunately, that question still isn't being put to current psychologists.

https://medium.com/@richardnfreed/the-tech-industrys-psychological-war-on-kids-c452870464ce?_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJpbmRpYW9yZW5AZ21haWwuY29tIiwgImtsX2NvbXBhbnlfaWQiOiAibXk3NXk2In0%3D

Some of the follow-up comments and the author's responses are interesting as well. — SophistiCat

Here's one:

I saw Zimbardo talk (I think at APS) a few years back. His talk was designed to provoke an emotional response, I suppose. It was after his Lucifer book came out and he made sweeping statements (about torture and the Bush administration) without saying much about science at all. My personal reaction was that I found his talk repellent, although I am no fan of Bush or torture. Zimbardo's prior beliefs were primary, evidence was secondary, and contradictory evidence didn't exist.

When Zimbardo's time was up, he made comments to the effect that his message was too important to be constrained to the allotted 50 minute time slot and continued to talk. (Kahneman, who had proceeded him, had stuck to the time limit.) When someone stood up to leave, Zimbardo called him out. I don't remember the details, but I do remember that Zimbardo tried to shame him, and created a situation of immense social pressure on the man to sit back down, with a large crowd watching.

I thought the moment was supremely ironic. Here was Zimbardo, talking about the coercive power of social pressure, and how it should not be abused. And he was using that power to try to make people stay as his talk went over time.

But how could it not be the case that the psychology of the psychologist is what is most prominently revealed by his experiments? Zimbardo's willingness to use cruel and coercive methods in what he believed to be a 'good cause', are the beginning, middle and end of the whole story. And the larger story of experimental psychology is always one of deceit and manipulation in the name of truth and progress.

Birth trauma reawakened

the whole of what-is that presses in on us — frank

.

How is your proposition regarding truth being an attribute of the assertion advanced in any way by this subjective/objective distinction? — Arne

It isn't. And it does cause confusion, because people muddle 'true or false' with 'objective or subjective'. So philosophers sometimes avoid them and then find themselves talking instead about 'noumena' and 'phenomena', or 'reality' and 'appearance', or some such equivalent distinction, and they still get confused, because life is confusing.

So to tell the truth is to say 'the cat is on the mat' only when the cat is on the mat, and 'I can see an oasis' only when I can see an oasis. And then one has to allow that though there must be a cat, and it must be on the mat, in order for it to be true that the cat is on the mat, it is not the case that there must be an oasis when I see an oasis, because there are mirages.

I do not know who it is but I know it is not me.

If there is a person in a position to make a final determination of true/false, calling the decision subjective/objective does not make it any less true/false. — Arne

That's right. It's a different distinction. Pain and pleasure are subjective. Legs and vaginas are objective. Nothing to do with truth and falsehood. Truly, amputees commonly feel excruciating pain in the limbs they do not have for several years, on and off. The object is missing, but the pain is felt.This has already been determined and agreed by medicine. Phantom limb pain is real pain in a phantom limb. There are subjective truths.

it seems to me that your subject/object distinction could just as well be handled by saying some people are simply not in a position to make the true/false call. — Arne

Well who is in a position to make the call for the pain in an amputated leg? We all agree that the amputee does not have the leg any more than you or I have it. What position counts as a position?

I restate my notion: an assertion is true if the entity toward which the assertion is directed shows itself to be as asserted. — Arne

What entity is this assertion directed towards? I need to see if it is as asserted, before assenting to it.

It is rather a problem for such theories of truth, that one needs to judge whether or not they are true, and one only has the theory by which to judge the truth of the theory. So I prefer to say at the outset that an assertion "S" is true iff S, and leave it at that, which is close to what you want to say, I think.

I am uncertain as to what subject/object adds to the discussion. Feel free to enlighten me in that regard. — Arne

Well sometimes Like to talk about myself. If I say my back aches, I might be telling a falsehood, or I might be telling the truth. And if you saw me doing gymnastics without grimacing you would be justified in doubting me. Still, it is convenient to distinguish such claims about the speakers' experience from those about potentially common experience - you can find out directly if the cat is on the mat or not, by looking to see where the cat is. And at this point it is usual to go into a long discussion of phantom limb pain, where an amputee can have a real pain in a non-existent appendage. 'Objectively' there is no leg, but that does not stop it really hurting.
Pain is subjective, but legs are objective. True pain in false leg -- and low, we arrive happily at a distinction between experience and reality. Gotta love that.

Truth(or falsehood) does not depend on assertion, it is a property of assertion. And subjective/objective is another property of assertions. And if there is nothing asserted, then indeed there is is nothing of which it can be further asserted that it is true or false. One does not consider a rock to be true. But then one does not consider a Scotsman to be true either, if one has any sense. But I'm not sure what you're even disagreeing with?

That's interesting, I haven't come across him before. But the exposition on wiki is a bit of a dog's breakfast. It's fun though that you can come up with a psychology at the drop of a hat with a few posited psychic entities, and a couple of broad principles. And then start a school to implement them.

Don't panic. Student doctors often think they have whatever illness they are studying. Presumably because we're all self-obsessed narcissists to a degree. It's kind of like astrology character descriptions, so vague and universal that anyone can identify with them.

A sense of self could be a by-product of receiving attention. Attention is like food to a developing ego. An ego that doesn't get a normal amount of attention becomes... what? — frank

Narcissistic. Trying to parent itself, attending to itself, it becomes both hyper-sensitive and vacuous. Ever-demanding, and ever dissatisfied when it gets what it demands, because while has to attend to its own needs, it not only cannot fulfil them, it cannot even properly identify them.

You're giving him what he wants and getting nothing in return.

So giving them "all they want" effectively only really equates to setting up talks and then talking. — raza

I'm not going to talk to you about it any more.

Define what is "all they want". What have they got at this point and is it everything they have ever wanted?

You've made what appears to be a simplified conclusion so I presume your answer will be straight forward. — raza

Oh it was just a stolen quote from facebook, not a philosophical thesis. It has already been alluded to, that what they want is largely a matter of status, where status confers power.

If I identify my needs apart from wants, I think that's a better way of treating life, and knowing the limits of what is attainable or not instead of living in some fantasy world of some sort. — Posty McPostface

I think I can agree with the general sense of what you are saying here. Our dispute is more a matter of how to think about things, and how to name and classify. So when I say 'fantasy', you think of a disconnected dream world. I m calling that 'impotent fantasy'. A common entrance to such an impotent fantasy is the question, "what would you do if you won the lottery?" A fairly harmless and enjoyable fantasy to indulge in now and then, as long as it does not fill up time that ought really to be spent making plans for more likely life-events.

A more likely life-event is that I will arrive at the crossroads, and I might consider "what will I do when I reach the crossroads?" This is a potent fantasy, because I am very likely and quite capable of getting out of the chair and getting there in less than a minute.

Perhaps you would be happier if I was talking about 'possible worlds' and 'modal logic'. Possible worlds are unreal worlds.

So, then he had an actual need, then that was never realized? I don't see how you can frame this issue then as a fantasy. — Posty McPostface

Right, I see what you mean. There are physiological needs, food, air, water, shelter, required to sustain life, regardless of what anyone thinks. Reality is such. This is an external view. One might equally say that a car needs petrol and oil and air to function. The thing doesn't work otherwise, in space, or under water.

Or, and do consider it, we could say that we can manage to function without a car. The car has no fantasy, it merely functions or does not function, just as the desert has no fantasy and no needs of its own.

I need me to live, therefore I need me to have water. Do you see how this is a different sort of thing? Externally, I don't need water, I can perfectly well die just as a car can run out of petrol and simply stop running. There are necessary (needed) conditions for life but life is not necessary for anything things are necessary to life.

What is needed for anything is a matter of fact, of limiting conditions. What is needed by someone is an internal condition.

Again, solipsism. — Posty McPostface

No really, you can go and look at his bones, he needed water but there was no water; he died.

A man dying in the desert out of dehydration has a legitimate need for water, not a fantasy. — Posty McPostface

Of course it's legitimate, if he doesn't get water he will die. But there is no water in the desert, so he dies. The water that he needs is a fantasy - there is no water.

... needs aren't fantasies, puh-leeze. — Posty McPostface

Yes they are.

X needs A, when X does not have A.
One does not say, while eating a sandwich, "I need a sandwich to eat." One's need is for something that is not there, except in the mind - which is called a fantasy. Thus one goes to the kitchen, or the shop, and realises the fantasy. Or, if one has no money for the shop, and no kitchen because one is homeless, then perhaps one's need remains unrealised, and one dies. It is the same when an architect draws the plans for a building that does not exist, and then employs builders to realise his dream, which he communicates to them with 'working plans'.

Fantasy is important, it runs reality for humans to a huge extent.

No, fantasies can be shared. Let me tell you about this psychological theory I made up, for instance. (Hope you liked the Witty format). I was going to put in your thread, but I thought it might get too confusing.

Anyone want to factcheck this timeline?

1985: North Korea signs Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty
1992: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#1)
1994: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#2)
1999: North Korea signs historic agreement to end missile tests
2000: North Korea signs historic agreement to reunify Korea! Nobel Peace Prize is awarded
2005: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2005: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program and "denuclearize"! (#3)
2006: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2006: North Korea again support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2007: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#4)
2007: N&S Korea sign agreement on reunification
2010: North Korea commits to ending Korean War
2010: North Korea announces commitment to "denuclearize"
2010: North Korea again announces commitment to "denuclearize"
2011: North Korea announces plan to halt nuclear and missile tests
2012: North Korea announces halt to nuclear program
2015: North Korea offers to halt nuclear tests
2016: North Korea again announces support for "denuclearization
2018: NORTH KOREA SIGNS A VAGUE DOCUMENT ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF DENUCLEARIZATION..... AND THIS TIME GETS ALL THAT THEY WANT.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, a left-wing environmentalist sandal wearing namely-pamby thinks the Don is right about something else.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/13/trump-nafta-g7-sunset-clause-trade-agreement?CMP=fb_gu

If we talk about needs as involving fantasy (the fantasy of having our needs met) then there is an unreality involved. But then you could even call oncology work unreal in the sense that cancer sufferers have a fantasy of not having cancer. — csalisbury

Exactly so. If I have cancer, then my not having cancer is a fantasy. It is not real, because really, I have cancer. Me and my oncologist have the same fantasy, and he has a fantasy of our behaviour (him giving treatment, me undergoing it) that he hopes and expects to realise our fantasy. If he is a competent physician, his fantasy will be potent, whereas my fantasy is impotent, because I have no idea how to realise my own fantasy.

Reality therapy - from what I've gleaned since posty's post -focuses on getting *needs* met. The idea being that meeting needs takes place in the *world* - reality. — csalisbury

Meeting needs, and not meeting needs takes place in the world. We say I need treatment that will cure my cancer, and the treatment happens in the world, or I don't get effective treatment and I die in the world. There is a meeting or no meeting of the world and my need - which implies that my need is not of the world. At the point where it meets the world, it ceases to exist; The treatment works, my needs are met, I no longer have cancer. I need no more treatment. Or else I die, and no longer need treatment.

I deny the reality of needs in order to emphasise the importance of fantasy, imagination, the unreal. What this does, that I think is useful, is it allows me to distinguish psychology, that operates on the imagination, from politics, which operates on the world. Both can be employed to the same end, but it is not the case in general, that doctors can prescribe a raised income, though it may be the most effective treatment. There's nothing like having loads of money for getting your needs met.

So, predictably, Kim wins round one. — Baden

And here's the blow by blow analysis.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/12/trump-nuclear-north-korea-kim-jong-un?CMP=fb_gu

the empirical evidence would seem to contradict this theory. — Pseudonym

My first instinct was to say that that's not education in the relevant sense, but I have another theory, that actually spells out the relevant aspect of education that is lacking.

People vote for arseholes, because they are arseholes. That's democratic representation at work.

they don't factor into the discussion, I think. — Posty McPostface

Why don't they? Perhaps you worship freedom?

Not just silence; one would shit one's pants and starve to death.

the general philosophical idea is whether psychology and feelings can be formalized in general into a coherent manner... — Posty McPostface

I think Hume's point is that you have to give a shit (or not) whether feelings can be formalised before you set about formalising them. Feelings are prior to philosophy and prior to psychology. One might say, to put it controversially, that the philosopher worships truth. The way I put it previously is that something, some principle or other has to be at the centre of one's life, has to be the most important, and that might be truth, or love, or justice, or oneself, or nothing, or whatever. And that is one's god. Whatever it is, though, it is a matter of feeling, of passion, of giving a damn about something. That is the beginning. Even the most radical nihilist or antinatalist gives a damn, or does not speak. The motive must come first, before reason.

Here's draft op I decided was too woo for you, and couldn't think of a title for, and felt needed more or less, but couldn't decide which.

Untitled.

As Martin Luther Wittgenstein once said, 'I have a beetle...'

There will be no argument here. Some may think that where there is no argument, there is no philosophy. Hume and I beg to differ.

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. — Hume

So what follows is not an argument, and not even exactly a description, but an invocation, beetle to beetle, of the religious impulse that is alleged to lie in all men. There will be no facts to dispute, no doctrine, no prescription; feel something, or not.

Hymn.

The lesson is taken from the Gospel of Meno:

Meno: And how are you going to search for [the nature of virtue] when you don't know at all what it is, Socrates? Which of all the things you don't know will you set up as target for your search? And even if you actually come across it, how will you know that it is that thing which you don't know? — Plato

Everybody knows the secret, but we have forgotten it. Facts about the world accumulate in the mind and in books and theories and practices. And jolly useful and entertaining they are too, but there is also the psyche, and what is there has always been there, and one is mindful of it or not. Well this is a story we have told ourselves at any rate. And if one does not like the story of anamnesis in relation to science, there is still some room for it in its original place, unless and until science has discovered the good particle.

Or we could say that the source of judgement is always present, acknowledged or not, and that it is other. Other, in the first place from my desires and preferences, other in fact from my self. However, in saying, or rather feeling this, there is a danger of externalising it. The horrors of righteousness follow quickly from this objectified other - my judgement becomes the Word of God to be imposed on you. Don't go there, because that is living in the presence of the devil.

To live in the presence of the Lord is something else entirely. It is always only oneself that is judged.

Hymn.

All of science and all of religion have not saved a single life. It is sometimes proposed that it is the awareness of personal mortality that distinguishes the human from the animal, though elephants and whales dispute this. Anyway, it is there, and we are aware; we will be laid low. So from elsewhere, from an other place, one judges this to be a thing of beauty, a salvation from the suffering self. All that I needed, all that I wanted I have already, gratis - is it a madness, or is it a connection with that other?



Hymn.

I love the ambiguity, the multiple meanings. Like laying down a track in the recording studio, make something of your life, and there again, relinquish that 'me' while you have the chance. And again, have that physical relationship with your lover again, before it's too late.

I have a dream, that our dreams are entwined together... that everybody knows the secret...

I don't know the protocols for quoting — Greta

Select the text, and click the quote button that appears. Shimples.