The rare escapees from Nazi concentration camps precipitated dreadful consequences in vengeance reprisals, but they were still right to escape. Or so I see it. — mcdoodle

I agree with your conclusion, but dispute your premise. Vengeance reprisals are not the consequence of resistance, that is to accept the warped logic of the tyrant.

But one can still ask what makes the virtue of resistance to tyranny a virtue in the first place. Is it not that virtuous acts, a good polity is what has positive consequences in general and overall?

Indeed, I find some of that movement's attitudes highly objectionable. It's not sacrosanct. — jamalrob

Me too. But I like movements with attitude. Reasonable movements always look like square-bashing.

So if we assume that time moves at a faster rate there, i.e., let's say that change is happening at T+1000 there, but it happens only at T+1 here, there would hardly be any gap between our unconscious states. — Sam26

I imagine it as being a separate dimension of time entirely, orthogonal to Earth time, and giving rise to literal levels of consciousness, such that in my lifetime on Earth, I cannot usually be aware of the life that is being lived 'at rightangles' to it, because there is none of that time passing in which awareness can happen. Whereas in two dimensional time, an Earthly lifetime is just a passing momentary experience.

I imagine us sitting together in some celestial therapy group, and you passing a life to me, saying 'try this one next, it's called 'unenlightened' - a nice easy life between the wars.'

If someone were to damage the game console, causing it to shut down for a few moments, it wouldn't shut you down as well. You'd still be conscious, just not able to experience the game. — Panzerfaust

But that's not what happens when I lose consciousness. I experience a blow to the head, immediately followed by waking up in hospital; there is no gap in experience, because I do not experience unconsciousness. Rather, a gap is proposed or imagined to explain the discontinuity.

I go to bed at night, and the game fast forwards to morning, or if it doesn't, I complain that I haven't slept a wink. One can even imagine the 'player' pausing the game for ten minutes or ten centuries for whatever reason, and returning to it with no loss of continuity. I, as the character being played, notice nothing.

It's the weather, dude. Fly south in winter, dude.

Consequences are simply beyond our control. — TheMadFool

But they're not; not simply, anyway. Simply, if you chuck a brick at someone's window, you know what to expect; an broken window and an angry resident. So don't do it. Now we could make up some scenario where you managed by doing so to distract him from murdering his wife, and if you saw him doing that through the window, then that would justify breaking the window. But don't go breaking windows on the off chance. The Taoist still works his land with the maybe harvest in mind, rather than the maybe someone will murder him for his harvest.

You're right. Consequentialism should be based on, as you put it, foreseeable effects of our actions BUT the point of the story is that effects don't stop at a point in time; the chain of causation continues onwards. There's no reason to prefer immediate effects over remote effects because as per conequentialism. Time isn't a feature of moral theory, at least not in the prescriptive sense. Look at how people blame the US for al qaeda - terrorism has its seeds in US involvement during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. What do you think? — TheMadFool

There is an argument to had, and it is had: some say it is wrong to beat your child because it hurts them, and others say that to spare the rod will spoil he child. But both sides are consequential. I can imagine a panglossian argument that the Holocaust was a good thing because it fixed in the mind the depths of degradation to which for ever after man will strive to avoid. It's a poor argument and there's little truth in it, nor that the atomic bombing of Japan has served to keep the nuclear peace.

But again, these are consequential arguments, that bad things can lead to good, or in your example, the reverse - well no, in that case, there was nothing good in the first place that I can see.

The chain of consequences disappears into the unforeseeable future - we can agree. And perhaps we can agree too, that moral action is invariably motivated by foreseen consequences - one is not usually motivated to break one's leg on the off chance that the military will be recruiting, but only if it is foreseen, just as the farmer works his crops foreseeing a harvest. I suspect that even Abraham set out to sacrifice his son foreseeing blessings from God.

But then we arrive at the Platonic argument that every man is motivated by foreseen good of some sort. Even Hitler foresaw a world without Jews, and thought it good. But I want to say that Hitler's actions were evil, and that his motives were evil.

Well we distinguish the conscientious objector from the coward in terms of their motives, as unselfish and selfish, respectively, and this is the other factor that has to be accounted for. But it modifies, rather than negates consequentialism, just as foreseeability modifies but does not negate it. And just as a coward may pretend even to himself to be a conscientious objector, so Hitler convinced himself that he was acting unselfishly for the good of the thousand year Reich.

And I suppose, from the difficulty of discerning even one's own motivation, one might arrive at virtue ethics, where the cultivation of good habit is the best bet, but the bet still concerns consequences.

See also moral luck.

We can still track the causes that are meaningful, and ignore the rest. — Purple Pond

Indeed, one would have to be dealing with foreseeable consequences, but not necessarily probable ones. Thus drunk driving is an offence even though most times no accident occurs.

Unfortunately, I think there is only one solution to the paradox of identity, which may be too mystical for some tastes. So I might as well repeat myself from elsewhere...

self-consciousness, far from being an illuminating principle, as traditional philosophy has held, on the contrary shuts the human being in on himself and thus results in opacity rather than enlightenment.

Gabriel Marcel, The Existential Background of Human Dignity (1963), p. 34.

There is an aspect of truth to this, and there is an aspect of utter nonsense equivalent to the argument that because we have eyes, that are sensitive to light, we cannot see anything. There is an inevitable shutting in of consciousness in the sense that sensitivity is limited; I am feeling this body, and seeing from this point of view, and not another's. This is a feature of bodies, not of consciousness, that this body is disconnected from that body.

But in talking of consciousness, one is distinguishing the experiencer from the experienced, and if one does that rigorously, then the experiencer has no qualities, and thus no identity. One can no longer talk of my consciousness as being other than your consciousness, as they are identical featureless arenas of experience, and only the play of experience distinguishes them. All points of view are identically points, and only the view varies.

To fully understand this, to 'realise' it, which is to make the reality of it present in consciousness at every moment, is to see through the opacity of self, or rather to see that the opacity of the other is simply a limitation of embodiment; that I am also there, seeing that, and saying from the limitations of that view, “self-consciousness, far from being an illuminating principle, as traditional philosophy has held, on the contrary shuts the human being in on himself and thus results in opacity rather than enlightenment.”, temporarily blinded by having eyes.

“self-consciousness, far from being an illuminating principle, as traditional philosophy has held, on the contrary shuts the human being in on himself and thus results in opacity rather than enlightenment.”
Gabriel Marcel, The Existential Background of Human Dignity (1963), p. 34.

I like this thought, although not unique to Marcel. It explains why I feel alienated from others, from nature, and, even sometimes, from myself. — Mitchell

There is an aspect of truth to this, and there is an aspect of utter nonsense equivalent to the argument that because we have eyes, that are sensitive to light, we cannot see anything. There is an inevitable shutting in of consciousness in the sense that sensitivity is limited; I am feeling this body, and seeing from this point of view, and not another's. This is a feature of bodies, not of consciousness, that this body is disconnected from that body.

But in talking of consciousness, one is distinguishing the experiencer from the experienced, and if one does that rigorously, then the experiencer has no qualities, and thus no identity. One can no longer talk of my consciousness as being other than your consciousness, as they are identical featureless arenas of experience, and only the play of experience distinguishes them. All points of view are identically points, and only the view varies.

To fully understand this, to 'realise' it, which is to make the reality of it present in consciousness at every moment, is to see through the opacity of self, or rather to see that the opacity of the other is simply a limitation of embodiment; that I am also there, seeing that, and saying from the limitations of that view, “self-consciousness, far from being an illuminating principle, as traditional philosophy has held, on the contrary shuts the human being in on himself and thus results in opacity rather than enlightenment.”, temporarily blinded by having eyes.

Hi there, welcome to tpf. I'm having difficulty understanding your language, partly because I need to educate myself re Wilderson, which I'll do a bit of later. I'm an old white dude in a mixed race family in the UK, and my education stops more or less at Fanon and Friere.

There, and with the experience of my daughter at 4yrs demanding to be collected from school by her white father, not her black mother, and cutting off her 'unacceptable hair' and hiding it under the bed. And today, Christmas eve, as she heads out to her job in retail, aged 25, with straightened hair, the same instruction - if we need milk, send me not mummy.

Such is the inescapable reality that becomes the inescapable psychology, what one can readily call 'impersonal identity'. When the Nazis declare you to be a Jew, it doesn't matter how you see yourself in the least. Or rather, it is most important. You had better understand that this imposed reality cannot be denied, cannot be transcended, cannot be resisted. Seek refuge or die.

We laugh, amongst ourselves, at the stupidity of it all - we, the family - and we adapt to the real unreality of impersonal identification that divides us, me as oppressor, my wife and children as oppressed. And sometimes we cry, because we are caught in our most intimate relations, in our personal identities, in this same contradiction.

And then, there is another layer. We live in Wales, which has been called 'The oldest colony'. My wife is Welsh, in the sense that her mother was a welsh-speaking white woman, in the sense that this is her home. Yet the reawakening of a national identity as it manifests in the community, excludes her again. I am irredeemably English, and so consistently an oppressor, but my wife finds herself excluded from the oppressed Welsh, and identified, all unwilling as part of the English oppressors and colonials. And so we arrive at the wonderful world of competitive identification as oppressed. And we find that the oppressed become in fact ( by impersonal identification) and by personal identification as oppressed, themselves the oppressors.

In this looking-glass world, I find myself concluding that identity is oppression, even, and especially, identification as oppressed. The revolution keeps going round and round, liberators become dictators, as if there were no fundamental division between oppressor and oppressed, as if the poor were as greedy as the rich, as if we were all the same human race.

And then you get shit like this: and you think, no, sometimes the oppressors have such a fantastic line in bullshit that they must be a different species - lizards or something.

The girl kissed the boy who delivered what? The pizza? Her baby?

It's not rocket-grammar is it? Just word order, mainly.

Or: What did the boy whom the girl kissed deliver?

'What did the girl kiss the boy who delivered?' is not nonsense, it is ungrammatical, but decipherable in context. It doesn't seem to involve those deep categorical structures that might or might not e partially assimilated genetically, but more an ad hoc means of disambiguation like the BODMAS rule in maths.

We know a song about that.

I regard philosophy more as a hole one falls into than an edifice one constructs. If one has facts and truth, there is no need to philosophise. It is when what one considers to be facts and truths lead to conflict, confusion and contradiction that philosophy begins. That is to say one begins in the middle of a muddle, and tries to clarify.

I start reading and immediately get distracted. It's like the filters in my brain never developed. (I think it has to do with mental illness (schizophrenia). — Purple Pond

I think it has more to do with the nature of philosophy. Because one is dealing with root ideas, one paragraph can require one to rethink one's whole life in order to understand the implications fully.

I have a thought disorder.
Therefore my thoughts are unreliable.
Therefore I'm unworthy to post, and all my thoughts are a distraction from more worthy thoughts of proper philosophers.

I don't think you can rely on this kind of argument.

Suppose that the above is the thought that constantly undermines and disorders my thinking. This is the thought that interrupts every thought before it has finished; the thought that wants to control and put right my thinking is the one that prevents my thoughts becoming ordered. Thought is ordering, let it get on with the job, and stop interrupting.

The demand for order is disorderly. (And don't trust the cops either.)

why the laboured histrionics. — StreetlightX

Just playing with subtext by way of poetic demonstration - trying to add a virtual dimensionality to the string - handwaving. Should have added a mystification smilie, but couldn't find one.

(the 'meow' that means 'dependency!') — StreetlightX

Well your honour, sir, with all due respect to your moderatingness, and bearing in mind that some us maybe have more fluency in the social side than others, and that the language of relationship is subject to contest and change, by the 'powers that be' and 'me too', it seems clear that even considerations such as the length of sentences, not to mention such formalities and informalities as the 'tu/vous' convention both establish and confirm social relations in subtle ways that relate to grammar. I'm sure I don't need to mansplain this to you, as an example of 'internalizing context into language'.

Perhaps it is philosophical bias that leads us into an overemphasis on the formal, abstract meanings of communication. These can only be built on top of (oxymoronic) 'social communication'. Which is to say that dominance/ dependency talk is perfectly familiar and understandable to us, and that we understand the dance of cats quite well. The meow or the hiss is a mere augmentation of the dance like a flamenco 'Ole!' It would be a mistake to ask what is the definition or grammar of 'ole!', wouldn't it? But no one raises their hackles and purrs, that is surely madness or nonsense?

In principle, there is actually no difference between what a strucutral formula is doing and what a grammar does. If human language is grammatical rather than dimensional, it's probably only a matter of convenice. — StreetlightX

I may be heretical here, but it looks to me as though we could better regard talk as having its origin as an ornamentation or supplement, (perhaps having particular function at distance, or in the mist or jungle) to body language, intonation and gesture adding another dimension already to the word-worms that we deal in here.

I'm thinking the difference between a play-reading and performance, and wondering if a silent performance of Hamlet wouldn't be more nearly complete than a copy of the text?

I suspect that lions are not great talkers. But whales and dolphins are. And we do not understand them.

It's all about fish, and water temperature, and nutrient levels, and bioluminescence, and who's fucking whose blowhole. Or not. How does their grammar facilitate the stuff they want to talk about? We don't seem to have any idea.

Closer to home, see here a human language that is 2 dimensional, rather than the linear strings in which we philosophise. I wonder if this conforms to the limitations described in the op's article?

So for example in a trial court there may be an object labeled "exhibit A". What this says, is that for the following intent and purpose, i.e. the following trial procedure, this object will be known as exhibit A. And in a logical proceeding we'll say "let X be...", so that the object described is known as X. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the court instead labeled the object 'incontrovertible evidence of the defendant's guilt', then one might start to question their judgement.

The idea is that such kinds are naturally emergent, at is were, and not a function of any kind of pre-established harmony, if I can use that Humeian term. — StreetlightX

Interesting that Hume comes up, as I see him as somewhat of a champion of sentiment, which the article identifies as one of the dimensions that does not find its way into the universal grammar. So our talk tends to neglect it the more our talk becomes formal. No emoticons in logic, please! I wonder if there could be a philosophy conducted through dance or painting or music, and what neglected topics might come to the fore? There seems to be some hint of it in conceptual art, but generally, I get the feeling that as it becomes more reflexive, so it becomes more dependent on the verbal analysis of the critics. But it's not my field; anyone care to educate me?

1. Take a Spanish lover. The best place to learn a language is in bed.

2. Read translations of badly written English novels. Agatha Christie is ideal. Her prose is so cliche ridden that you only need to understand one word in five, and the other four become obvious.

The point being that longevity offers us nothing in terms of proof of value or whether it'd be better to finally abandon it and move on. — Hanover

I quite agree. But moving on does not come with a guarantee either. Seems like there's nothing for it but to think things over and discuss them back and forth and make the best choices we can. Sounds like hard work.

Your decision to reject as "nonsense" a system which has allowed ideas to persist for hundreds, even thousands of years, is not a rational decision. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's interesting. It does have some force against the comparisons some people have made with things they have made up on the spot and that have no meaning or function. But I think ideas can be persistent because they are functional without being true.

And so the difference between a system that I make up on the spot and the Catholic one is simply they came up with theirs first? — Hanover

No, stuff you make up on the spot is likely to be functionless. The stuff that L Ron Hubbard made up on the other hand, clearly functions psychologically as a cohesive force, and has attraction to outsiders looking for answers and meaning in their lives. But longevity does have its own attraction too, as advertisers know. 'Transubstantiation - tried and trusted for 2000 years. Recommended by your ancestors.' As against 'New improved religion, with added science and no nasty morals. Scientology, the only religion designed for the modern age'.

Whereas 'Truth - you probably won't like it, and it'll do you no good.' is not a great advert.

It's a great paper, and a really plausible account of the evolution of language. I particularly liked the ideas that certain functions, the expression of emotion, the performance of acts such as knot tying are already well catered for by facial expression and gesture, and visual/performative means respectively, and so did not develop a role in the grammatical structure of the language. Also the way they answer and acknowledge Chomsky while they demolish him.

Says he who introduced it into the discussion. — Sapientia

But let's all stop talking about arrogance, in a discussion about transubstantiation, for goodness sake. — Sapientia

I mean, really? A single word? — Sapientia

We seem to be going in circles. I'll let you have the last word.

it would of course be in your interest to make it appear as though I support it more than I do, — Sapientia

No it wouldn't, because I am not a Catholic and do not believe in transubstantiation. You agree with what you quoted, you support it (your word) to the extent of claiming its truth, but you neither applaud nor endorse it. Fine. But let's all stop talking about endorsement, in a discussion about transubstantiation, for goodness sake. I mean, really? A single word?

Agreement, not endorsement. And what I was agreeing with was more than that one minor detail which we've been unduly focussing on. — Sapientia

Oh, the irony!

endorsement
ɪnˈdɔːsm(ə)nt,ɛnˈdɔːsm(ə)nt/Submit
noun
1.
the action of endorsing someone or something.
"the issue of full independence received overwhelming endorsement"
synonyms: support, backing, approval, seal of approval, agreement, acceptance, recommendation, advocacy, championship, patronage; affirmation, confirmation, authorization, authentication, ratification, sanction, warrant, validation, licence; rubber stamp; informalthe nod, the thumbs up, the OK
"the proposal received their overwhelming endorsement".

Let's spend a few pages wondering whether you agreed or endorsed, and whether one can declare an agreement that does not constitute an endorsement. Or perhaps not. I think I'll leave you to imagine that, and all the other details we might go into.

I'm happy to let the whole post alone as a somewhat unpleasant irrelevance. It was only your endorsement of it that provoked me to respond to it at all.

Oh the irony! Says he who brought up arrogance. — Sapientia

... Catholic Church in its arrogance ...
— charleton

Yep. That's the cold hard truth. — Sapientia

Not me! If we can't get the details of who brought up what agreed, details are going to be beyond us.

So the cold hard truth is an ad hom pontification? In my roundabout way, I am disagreeing with you that what you quoted is cold, hard or true. Rather it is heated, wet, and false. It also fails utterly to even address the question because the whole thing is an ad hom.

And what, pray tell, does arrogance have to do with who is right and who is wrong? That's what really matters. — Sapientia

You tell me, since you applauded its use as the cold hard truth.

if there isn't a God [...] then the Christian's claim is false. — Michael

And if there is, then the atheist's claim is false. I doubt we can resolve that question to everyone's satisfaction here. In which case, the best one can do is to try and understand how such positions are and are not coherent in their own terms.

It is pointless arguing about the meaning of substance or reality.
It is a plain and simple fact that the Catholic Church in its arrogance codified in ecclesiastical law a massive deception upon the people that their priests had the exclusive ability to mobilise divine forces to physically transform ordinary bread and wine in into the flesh and blood of Jesus, with the claim that failure to enter church and receive (with due payments) that sacrament would put the person in jeopardy of salvation.
This deception still holds much sway over millions of people world-wide.
— charleton

Yep. That's the cold hard truth. — Sapientia

It seems a bit heated to me. It is at least a charitable and likely assumption that most of the Catholic Church do not intend to deceive, but genuinely believe the tenets of their faith. Claims to have the plain and simple facts, and the cold hard truth at one's disposal seem to show rather the same arrogance that is claimed to be the church's.

It doesn't have to be material, but it has to be some substance in the wafer that changed. If wafers have spirits or some non-material composition, that has to actually change. No one says a man changes in literal substance when married (except maybe he gets fat and gives up the notion of happiness). As I see it, you're changing from a literal to a figurative definition of substance. I'm using it literally, but I'm not committed to it being material. — Hanover

Ok. Now imagine being a moral realist. The marriage ceremony makes a real, literal, substantial, actual, change in the moral landscape.

Likewise, just as you say, the non-material composition of the wafer is actually changed: - but this does not mean that one can detect human or Godly DNA that wasn't there before.

Not that I personally subscribe to any of this, you understand, but I think I can defend that it makes sense at least, in the context of there being moral and spiritual aspects of reality.

By "substantial," I mean something changed to the actual substance of the bread and wine, or, in my analogy, the substance of the man and wife. It is not just a change in status. — Hanover

Yes, of course you do, but 'actual substance' doesn't 'actually' clarify what is meant. If the 'substance' of your claim is that 'substantial' means 'material' then I think you are substantially mistaken. There is a substantial difference between being married and being single. Plumbers marry female connectors to male connectors, and assembled plumbing is substantially different to disassembled plumbing despite the materials being the same. We call these differences emergent properties.

But again, secular examples are simply preliminary arguments that seek to open the conceptual way to a more charitable understanding of something that is not coming from a materialist perspective in the first place.

If a priest says "I now pronounce you man and wife," he has changed the status of the parties, but he hasn't changed the parties in any substantial way. — Hanover

I disagree. The substantial change is that sexual relations that were formerly sinful become a sacrament and duty. The legal aspects give a way to approach things from a secular view, but trying to understand transubstantiation without God, and without granting substance to moral condition is not really possible.

Has anyone else noticed that 'substance' and 'understanding' are almost identical? What's that about?

In law, a verbal contract confers a substantial obligation. This cannot be reduced either to a physical change in the environment, or to the brain states or beliefs of the participants, but is a matter of fact to be established by the courts. A matter of fact, but not a matter of physics. The utterance of an agreement changes things. The hammer comes down, and a bid becomes a contract and the contract becomes enforceable. I'm not suggesting that transubstantiation is this exactly, but that ritual functions in a substantial though non physical way in ordinary secular life.

I recommend you go back to things you know, such as smoking weed. — Agustino

I recommend you stop being so rude. Since you know more about this, educate us, don't just sneer at our ignorance.

Transubstantiation occurs iff communicants believe transubstantiation occurs. — ProbablyTrue

I'm not deep into the theology of this, but that doesn't seem right, though it may be MU's position. On the other hand, I don't think that transubstantiation quite amounts to ritual magic, such that physical changes occur in the material of the bread and wine.

What is left, for an atheist, is nothing. But for a theist there is another possibility, which is that God sees it differently. 'In the eyes of God' there is a difference, that we can see as a moral difference. It is a real difference, because God cannot be deceived, and hence substantial, but not a physical difference. Thus it is rather in line with holy water, consecrated ground, testimony sworn on the Bible, or the union of marriage. Ritual does nothing physical, and yet transforms the moral significance of things, not merely in the eyes of the faithful, but in the Eyes of God, such that though it might be a virtue to wash one's socks, it would be a sin to use holy water for such mundane purposes.

I'm using the power I do have - to call out chronically inconsiderate, snotty, smug, and arrogant behavior when I see it. The worst part is it's cheap shot, crappy, cowardly philosophizing. — T Clark

there are moderators who shouldn't be. They don't have the temperament and respect for the people they moderate. — T Clark

Me too.

however anyone describes the Earth shape is in error. Anyone. It is an entirely subjective point of view whatever description is used. — Rich

If it's entirely subjective, it cannot be an error. To me it is bagel shaped, and you are in no position to even disagree, but merely to report what shape it is to you - or not.

Bah!