What is the difference between the two arguments — Meta

They are not arguments. They are descriptions of ways of life.

What is empirical in Cern is dogmatic here in my room. What is empirical for a saint is dogmatic here. — Meta

Of course. I am neither a sage nor a saint, because either takes dedication and time and effort. So all I will ever have is second hand dogma recited from the armchair. If it's a problem to you, get out of the chair and get to work.

We can say that the river has a beginning and the river has an end, but the only boundary between these two is the river itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

We can say it, but does it mean anything? I would; rather say that the beginning and end of things are their boundaries rather than that things are the boundaries of their beginning and end. It just sounds less like nonsense.

I just stole this from wosret in the shout box.

https://www.ted.com/talks/mariano_sigman_your_words_may_predict_your_future_mental_health#t-5899

Suppose this algorithmic neuro-babble has some validity; that the nature of consciousness develops in historical time. Then there is strong evidence that the social mind is prior to the individual mind which emerges from it. And it turns out I'm not the only one after all.

I don't think so, or not quite, anyway. It seems that both the views you identify start with the ego. If I were you I wouldn't start from here.

Rather I want to question where the idea of self, and the idea of interiority come from. Once they are given, solipsism becomes possible, the other becomes possible, morality/immorality becomes possible.

How (and why) does one come to draw the boundaries of self, so as to separate self from world? It seems to me to be just as mysterious as the drawing of national boundaries. One side of the river is self, and the other side is foreign, but if you follow the river back to its source, there is no division.

It seems to make sense to say that the world is alive; not that it is nothing but life, but there is life in the world that is the world's life. So there is awareness that is the world's awareness. So from that source, how do you and I arrive at this downstream position of radical separation? Everyone wants to say that the source is imaginary, and the boundaries are real. Everyone except me.

However, this bit about suggesting that 'I' or 'we' speak (for) the collective mind seems to be headed in the direction of setting the collective mind outside the boundaries of the individual's knowledge capability. — creativesoul

Well I do, but only in the sense that I would put the world outside those boundaries. One can know a person very well, but it does not entitle one to speak for them.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenings and songs of it's own…

Another analogy - it's all analogy, trying to model of the world as a bunch of words. Thus far am I Kantian, that i acknowledge the limits of language and of thought. But there is no limit to participation.

Seems to me that from a methodological naturalist bent, the 'primitive' people, particularly those in smaller groups, have much more to lose on a personal level by virtue of another member of the group suffering. Co-dependence between trustworthy people is not a bad thing. I would strongly assert that it is utterly imperative to the survival of such groups and thus quite possibly everyone in it. — creativesoul

It is a myth that smaller groups have more to lose, we all have our whole skin in the game, and we will all be destroyed by the people, the feelings, the consciousness that we reject. Co-dependence is the reality of individuated beings, and independence is the dangerous fantasy.

My resistance is simple defence. That person, unenlightened, attacked the creative function of all individual human minds, claiming the mind is a "responsive sensitivity". It was then insinuated that as an individual person, I am not real, I am an hallucination. It is not a selfishness which I express, because defence is concerned with the motives of the attacker, not the self which is being defended.
— Metaphysician Undercover

What if there was no attack? Then what? — creativesoul

From my point of view, I am presenting some ancient but somewhat neglected ideas in the garb of modern speech; an image of man's place in the world. such an image can only be a threat to another image, that lays claim to reality; a claim that is attacked by the mere naming of it as an image.

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion. — Robert Graves

That said, the portion of my earlier reply was meant to elaborate upon the zeitgeist portion of yours. The bit about how a society gets to fascism from socialism. It's been called 'hive mentality' by some. Not everyone is capable of thinking for themselves... — creativesoul

Forgive me, but I want to jump quite hard on that 'not everyone'. There can be no elitism to this, no path to originality or individuality, no hierarchy of understanding. There is the herd, and there are stray sheep, perhaps, but the strays are not more autonomous merely disconnected. For example, the leaders like Trump that embody the rage and frustration of 'the herd' embody also the rage and frustration of 'we independent minded socialists'; it's just an inversion of the projection. The war on terror and the terrorising of warmongers are the same thing.

What I want to avoid, and for us all to avoid, is any suggestion in this discussion that 'I' or 'we' speak (for) the collective mind. Imagine one neurone claiming to have 'the answer'.

I want to attempt to ascertain, determine, and/or set out what exactly an individual adopts from the collective, particularly with regard to self-worth, self-value, self-awareness, etc. It seems to me that that would be a good method for working towards your aim, as well as perhaps helping to explain some of the reasons why that particular style of therapy is and/or would be so effective/affective.

When members of a 'primitive' tribe visit the West, one of the things they find hardest to understand is how we can, in so much abundance wealth and power, abide that our brothers are homeless and hungry on our streets. To them it looks like an untended wound. To the disconnected individual it is not even apparent that this untended wound is the price of self regard.

If that worldview is shared by an overwhelming majority, then we have common goals powerfully packed by the multitude. That's key, on my view. Common goals. Common beliefs. Common ethics/morality. A community of people working together for what's in the best interest of the community. In the case you're examining it's the community writ large. I am my brothers keeper. Genuine vested interested in the group. Teamwork. What's good for you is good for me. The measure of the categorical imperative. Etc.

Interesting how that notion of teamwork, and all for one, is used by and in large in American society, shamefully in many(perhaps most) instances. — creativesoul

I think this is an almost but not quite response. I have a goal, and you have a goal and if we have a common goal then we have a team. It still starts from the individual as the atom from which in aggregate, society emerges. But I am suggesting that it is the individual that emerges from society, goals that emerge from relationship.

Thus there are only 'I's in 'team'. To put it another way, politics is a manifestation of the fragmentation of society, which is the fragmentation of the mind. No wonder it is the most competitive, most individualistic, most divided countries that idealise teamwork, patriotism, and so on.

Your voice is external to me, but it is external to you as well. Your thoughts are internal to you, but they are also internal to me as well — Metaphysician Undercover

Well if my thoughts are internal to you, then, ... no I'm not going there. I have to shrug and say never mind at this point.

I think the way I would go would be to say that "some mammals lay eggs," is scientific, but not a theory but a fact, that falsifies the theory, "No mammal lays eggs". This theory was actually taken to be true until the discovery of the platypus, which caused a deal of argument and annoyance to biologists of the time.

In terms of simple logic, 'Some' has existential import, which means it reports a fact, whereas 'all' does not, and reports a theory.

The discovery of the platypus by Europeans resulted in a major re-think about the classification of vertebrates and our understanding of the evolution of mammals. The story of the investigation of the platypus reveals a lot about the processes of science. Rivalries, competition and collaboration occurred between groups and across countries. Prior conceptions and understandings were challenged, and some workers were slow to accept the new contradictory evidence.

From here.

Mm. I really struggle to make any sense of this. My voice, as expressive of my thoughts and posted on this forum is not external to you? But never mind. I don't really want to pursue this further. Consider the possibility , or don't. The difficulty will be that anything that is then said on my side about sanity and madness, about the organisation of society, will not make much sense to you.

I'll listen, but as I said, unless I can determine your motivation in telling me this, I cannot trust you. I perceive a huge difference between internal and external. So you telling me that this is a deep mistake is apprehended by me with great suspicion, I have no idea what you are up to. And so I will ignore your plea, as an unreasonable external voice, asking me to join it in who knows what kind of adventure. That is, until you demonstrate your motivation, what kind of adventure are you taking me on? I suggest you proceed in making your point, then perhaps I can judge your motivation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not a snake oil salesman. I am saying what I think is true, and my motivation is that the truth is liberating. I do not want or need your trust, but I am asking you to engage that reasoning you go on about.

" I perceive a huge difference between internal and external." Ok, and here is an external (to you) voice, (but internal to me), saying that you are misperceiving. But here already is some evidence; we assume, we agree, that my voice is internal to me and external to you, and your voice, vice versa. What then is this huge difference? Externality is internality, seen from elsewhere. It seems a huge difference because it is a matter of perspective, but it is no difference at all; certainly not one to bear the weight of total trust on one side and total paranoia on the other that you seem to place upon it with no justification I can see.

So you're telling me that I should listen to the reason of others rather than my own reasoning. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, not at all. I'm inviting you to question an assumption and apply your reasoning, which I assume is not different from anyone else's reasoning.

why shouldn't I tune out those other voices altogether, and trust only my internal voice, the one true voice which I know never has the motivation to deceive me? — Metaphysician Undercover

I am an external voice, talking to your internal voice, and saying that seeing external and internal as separate is a deep mistake. I cannot give you a reason to listen, unless you listen.

How is it that I have this very strong unity within myself, which society does not have? This unity which makes up society is deficient compared to the unity which makes up myself, because it will allow different parts with competing ideas to attack each other, but my mind will always use reason to work out such problems without resorting to the destruction of myself. If I were to fall to this level, then clearly I would be ill, but that supposed unity of society is always at this level. Why would I accept this unity of society as a higher unity than the unity of myself? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that is the question, how come the unity of self?

But when you ask "Why would I accept this unity of society as a higher unity than the unity of myself?" your reason, which you say is the governing factor, has led you astray. The 'I' that is not accepting the unity of society is like the hand that refuses to accept the unity of the body. 'Why should I work with that bloodthirsty hammer-wielding right hand?'

Given the boundary of self, self-centred behaviour is rational behaviour. But I have removed the given, and suggested it is an hallucination, as the voices some folk hear are said to be hallucinations. So far, your reason has come up with the equivalent of 'why should I doubt the voices?' and 'the voices are very strong'.

By the way, I really don't see the relationship between seeing oneself as an individual, and the desire to organize conflict. I see organized conflict as the product of things like nationalism, in which individuals see their group, "us" as being opposed to the thoughts and expressions of another group, "them". Organized conflict is not the result of personal differences. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, let me try an analogy. Left Hand cooperates with his brother Right Hand to bang a nail into a post to hang Stomach's tucker bag out of reach of the ants while Brain and Eyes go off duty for a few hours. Unfortunately, Right Hand accidentally hits Left Hand's thumb with the hammer. Fortunately, Left Hand and Right Hand do not suffer from the illusion of separate identity, and therefore no fight between them ensues. If you have ever hit your thumb with a hammer, this is a familiar and true story.

If my limbs fail to cooperate and coordinate to any great degree, then I have an illness - parkinson's, perhaps, or motor neurone disease. If the fingers of my left hand went to war with the fingers of my right hand, it would be a body gone mad. "We are the Left Hand, Death to the Right Hand digits." The group arises because there are individuals, and groups then conflict. And the claim is that the individual is the real. But What is the reality of it? Is my identity more real than the identity of my left hand?

Mind is responsive sensitivity, and the fundamental unit is the relationship, not the organism. — unenlightened

Isn't this a lie though? We experience ourselves as individuals, with our own individual thoughts, with freedom to think what we want in secret, fundamentally, and much more so than we experience ourselves as a part of a "group mind". — Metaphysician Undercover

Well some people hear voices, and some people think they are alone. "We experience ourselves as individuals" Is this not performative contradiction? Who is this 'we' that is being given voice to? I am asking you in good faith to at least imagine the implications of it not being a lie, one of which is that the experience of individuality is an hallucination - that what we assume to be normal is itself a madness. Then one has an explanation as to why a social creature spends so much time organising conflict.

I've learned to accept the gap, and make efforts to understand others. But this doesn't let the others into my mind, it just allows me to maintain relationships. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, we have been taught it all our lives; the gap is central and essential to capitalism, to competition, to the whole of society for thousands of years. You have been taught that it cannot be questioned. But how do you maintain relationships? Do they not depend on what is beyond the gap? I'm asking a lot here, and I don't have that much of an argument, but only an experiment - to entertain the notion and see where it leads.

Truth and trust underwrite every bit of this, and the role that they play in thought/belief and language is imperative to understanding the efficacy of talk, and how many become distraught and/or mentally ill.

I want to say quite a bit more, particularly regarding the importance that honesty has in all of this. The way that it has been framed heretofore bears witness to an inadequate criterion for what counts as honesty and/or being honest. It is inextricably entwined with trust and truth within one's worldview, without exception. Here, it is appropriate for me to remove the hat of unapologetic criticism and don the pen of a much more considerate and therefore approachable public assistant. That seems to be the intended spirit underwriting the thread. — creativesoul

That's the sort of trance I prefer to get into with my interlocutors. — Cabbage Farmer

I'm glad this has gotten revived. Just suppose, that we take a really radical, far-out psycho-ceramic view of psycho-ceramics ... entertain it for a moment ...

There is in the first instance, no such thing as the individual mind. One is always 'in' some state or other 'with' others. Mind is responsive sensitivity, and the fundamental unit is the relationship, not the organism. The individual is an epiphenomenon if you like, of the group mind, or perhaps, mind is the product of culture, rather than culture the product of mind.

This is such a radical, unfamiliar way of looking at oneself and at human nature and the whole of philosophy, that I want really to just stop there and see if it will sink in at all, if it begins to make sense of, for example, what seems to be a global Zeitgeist that sweeps us willy-nilly from Socialism to Fascism, from war to war, from atheism to fundamentalism, and so on.

One can see at once from this perspective that personal identity of the form of I am this nationality or this religion, or this race or football club, is a fragmentation of the mind, and also that a lack of truth and trust, is not just harmful to our sanity, it is the very fabric of madness. To be mad is nothing more or less than to be incommunicado, to have reached the point where no communication can be trusted - to have lost contact with the world.

Identity is fragmentation, and dishonesty is insanity. That alone is enough to rock my world.

The problem is not liberal society and it is not primate behaviour, instinct genes, testosterone, or what women are attracted to. The problem is men behaving badly. Let's stop saying it's 'natural' and also stop saying it's acceptable or that women like it really.

Because we are primates, and that's the way primates act. — Baden

'We' don't have to behave that way, and many of us don't, which is why no judge will accept this as even mitigation. Primates are quite variable, and human societies and individuals also. This is a pseudo science excuse for immorality. Bears shit in the woods, but the pope is Catholic.

http://www.bps.org.uk/networks-and-communities/member-microsite/division-clinical-psychology/understanding-psychosis-and-schizophrenia

I thought I'd leave this here just to indicate that the ideas under discussion are not light years away from the official/scientific understanding of the matter.

Me and God are pretty close, but I know better than to try and tell Him how to run His bailiwick.

I suppose so, but then this is more of a way of limiting the damage that a bad person can cause instead of preventing it. — Agustino

If that's your aim, you need to petition God, who will turn you down.

Right, but when you're say the President, you can't really expect that your employee is going to report you - you pretty much control the power structure she could report you to, or at least you have greater leverage over it than she does. Even in the student-teacher case, a student can't really report the teacher to the Principal, because the teacher has greater leverage and authority with the Principal than the student - things could potentially turn out badly for the student that way. — Agustino

Yes. There is a difficult balance to strike anyway, because given the chance, a student might use the power of threatened accusation - such things happen too. So a president needs protection from malicious accusations. One does not want to undermine the power relation. So not the principal, but a sort of official gossip monger, who probably won't help you, but might help the next kid, or the one after that. As long as we can avoid 25 years of repeated abuse, we are making things a bit better, no?

You tell me. You're the one arguing that there's something improper about power imbalances in relationships. — Michael

No I'm not. Stop being so uncharitable in your reading. Princesses should not have relationships with their servants, because they have immediate power over their lives. They don't have that power over the lives of commoners in general or other royals' servants. Clear now?

Sure, but how can it be stopped? The problem is that I think this kind of social interaction cannot be stopped. When I was in school in 12th grade I had a female teacher who slapped my butt playfully on the hallway when she passed by me and then smiled. What can you do when such a thing happens? Clearly nothing, because the other person has authority - all you can do is try to avoid them, and extricate yourself from situations where they can use that power in ways that you can control even less.

I've been in many situations where there were imbalances of power, and there really can't be done anything to stop them. — Agustino

It cannot be stopped entirely, but it can be helped to stop by having conduits for reporting and recording such incidents. One probably wouldn't want one such report as yours to lead to much action, but if you could safely report it, it might be put together with other such reports, and become a cause for action. One cannot remove power imbalances, but one can provide some protection, particularly against habitual abusers.

I don't know - what if?

I wouldn't require that a philosophy department hire every sort of charlatan before I counted it "inclusive". But I think it's irresponsible for philosophy departments to neglect engagement with the populace, even by way of the discourse of charlatans. — Cabbage Farmer

I would like to put this a bit more strongly. I would require that a philosophy department not hire charlatans. To translate this to our community, any post or thread that is not removed gains the status of being deemed at least worthy of consideration by the community. What we as a community refuse to give house room to, is more definitive of who we are and what we stand for than anything we do consent to argue about.

Well since we're sharing, I was groped while working as a childminder by the neighbour's prematurely sexualised seven-year-old girl. A highly inappropriate, unwelcome piece of sexual harassment that was mildly traumatic for me, but I imagine was an expression of a much more traumatic upbringing from her side. But since I was the person of power in the relationship, I was able to deal with it. If I had had an ounce of respect for the local child social services, I might have talked to them, but as it was, I was confident they would only make things worse for everyone.

We are talking of the abuse of power to coerce: 'give me a massage and I'll make you a star'. It's an indecent proposal, and it doesn't become decent if it is accepted. Nor does it become decent if it is proposed by the other side: 'make me a star and I'll give you a massage'.

Now it might be in a particular case, that there is simply a mutual attraction across the power imbalance - totally innocent - but in such cases, true love will wait until circumstances permit; change your doctor before you have sex with her, change your boss before you have sex with him. Shimples.

A bad divorce wouldn’t mean a bad marriage. — Michael

Yes it would.

It's presumptuous to assume that a relationship is abusing or harassment just because one person has more power than another. — Michael

Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position. — Monica

But the aftermath is part of the relationship, so in this case it is not presumptuous. But one ought to be presumptuous in any case. One ought to presume that power imbalances will lead to manufactured consent, as is the case in prostitution. That is why many professional bodies prohibit such relationships absolutely, such as doctors with patients, teachers with children. which is to say that if Monica and Bill want to have a consensual sexual relationship, they can do so in my book as soon as they are no longer in a professional power relationship. It is a matter of protecting the vulnerable in general from exploitation and abuse, even if some of them quite like being abused in particular situations.

We might even find it plausible that Harvey Weinstein's 'weakness' was on occasion exploited by ambitious women, or that Monica herself exploited Bill's inability to pass up a chance to play the lover-boy to further her career; one never knows. But however it works, and whoever is being exploited, there are other parties to consider: the PAs or actresses who do not compromise their virtue, and the audiences and electors who are potentially deprived of the best person to be doing the job.

So a philosopher discovers the meaning of life the universe and everything, and posts it on a forum.

Is she; (a) banned; (b) understood and agreed with, causing the collapse of civilisation; (c) assumed to be starting a joke thread; (d) sexually harassed; (e) mistaken for a man?

That's your idea of a joke? Posting pictures of me to ridicule my disabilities?

How very dare you?

Well there's a shocker. As of this moment:

About right
  0% — Sapientia

Some work needed therefore.

Applying Occam's razor, "God did it" is an economical explanation for everything.

To date, 16% say too strict and 16% say not strict enough. If these numbers cancel each other out that means moderation is 100% just about right. — praxis

Not so. People who think it is too strict tend to get banned, and people who think it is too lax tend to get bored. Natural selection ensures that most people are happy whatever the regime. In the old place we had an unmoderated section, where people who were happiest with no moderation could be happy. I'm thinking of setting up a special forum where everyone is banned, for the really exclusive among us.

My first ever essay in politics a long time ago was a D- covered in red ink aggressively scribbled by my lecturer. I got A's and B's ever since. — TimeLine

My only ever essay for the politics dept. title, "What is Democracy?" was written overnight on speed with no references or reading of set books, consisting entirely of platitudes and jingoisms. It's also the only essay I ever got an A for. I present this curious fact as evidence that my prejudices are authoritative.

The old site had automated notifications that identified the mod, the action, and a generic reason. It would be a real pain to have to do that by hand every time one deleted an inappropriate comment on the off chance that someone wants to argue the case. One of many benefits of Paul's software.

Why don't you come out of your safe anonymity as a moderator and criticize my empirical objections with your authoritative arguments? — Hachem

1. I am not a moderator.
2. I have no arguments, it is my prejudice that is authoritative.
3. I'll shut up now, thanks.

I was the most active admin for a few years on the old site, and have been fairly free with my opinions on this one. I'm happy for you to remain unsure to whatever extent you are; I'm not going to make this about me. Speak for yourself.
.

I would prefer a very good diagnosis, and not mere prejudice. — Hachem

My diagnosis is that you are spouting nonsense. One cannot argue with nonsense or present evidence against it. I am totally sympathetic to your desire for engagement, but I am not going to indulge you. But my prejudice is not 'mere'; it is considered, authoritative, and no doubt painful to receive.

As a former moderator though I recognise how hard it is to manage tone towards someone you deeply disagree with and believe actually leads to suffering in the world. — Benkei

Amen, brother. Sometimes even we saints find ourselves in a situation where frankness is incompatible with moderation. Bite tongue, deep breath, count to ten, or possibly more.

Yikes! I take back my words :P — SophistiCat

Always happy to facilitate a little learning.