It's just a different usage than a lot of people would use when referring to themselves of describing the skin colour of their ancestors. I'm not talking about that specific usage of "white."

You might use that just as a description of your skin colour rather than attempting to claim a history and superiority of the "white" identity, but that doesn't make any difference to my argument.

I'm talking about the expression of "white" identity as a dominating culture of the few hundred years, a culture we are a part of regardless of how we might otherwise use "white" as a description of our ancestors skin colour. It's neither lazy nor stereotypical. Just a description of a identity category expressed within our society and the West in the (relatively) recent history.

We derive our meaning as persons from many layers of experience, including religion, language, race, ethnicity, diet, altitude (sea side to alpine), landscape, education, music, and a few dozen other factors. If people want to claim that one of their layers is race, I think they are entitled to that, and they are entitled to think positively about it.

I would not appreciate you, WOD, or anybody else telling me that my religion, diet, clothing (or lack thereof), sports, or anything else -- including race and ethnicity -- were actually negative factors that I should apologize for or remain silent about. I would be inclined to invite you to go fuck yourself in some politically incorrect way. — Bitter Crank

This is where the usage of "white" that I'm talking about frequently becomes muddled with the description of ancestors. Various aspects of religion, language, race, ethnicity, diet, altitude (sea side to alpine), landscape, education, music and the dozens of other factors become bound up with thinking about our ancestors. People don't just think of them being fine for their skin colour, but that all their ideas, actions, etc., etc. were fantastic. They refuse to admit their ancestors did harm to some people.

Since people treat identity "essentially," they can't make the distinction between having skin colour and worth of action, idea or tradition. You won't, for example, admit the economically driven manifest density of the American colonisation particularly racist and unethical action because you think it reflects badly on you. It as if, by having white skin, you were the one who committed the genocide and are in the wrong.

Do I need to point how nonsensical that line of thought is? Your identity is not your ancestors. Even if they belong to the same "ethnic group (whether spoken by you or someone else)," you are not the one who committed the acts in question. Your identity as someone who has white skin not theirs. To point out their failings, including those involving "white identity," is not to say that you fail in the same way.

No doubt you might to appreciate people talking about horrible things ancestors have done and their relationship to the culture you are connected to, but that is sort of beside the point. We don't sit back and let the rich heir say that his society's tradition of Capitalism never harmed anyone, just so they can think their ancestors have a "perfection" which they inherent. It's no different for any other issue (e.g. racism, sexism, gay rights, trans rights, etc.,etc.). We don't get to ignore the harm which has been caused to people becasue we don't like to look at it.

Who are you to say "Well, that's not what black means!" — Bitter Crank

I don't. If I was using "black" to refer to the identity which was socially oppressed, it would be a different usage. One that was describing a social relationship, rather than an individual's expression of worth. Their usage of "black" means what it does just fine.

No, they don't. They describe horrors and wrongs which "white (the ethnic identity of the last few hundred years, as opposed to someone skin color)" people have enacted upon the world. To simply be "white" isn't to do anything wrong. Sure, it means to have racial advantage in the West, but that's not any sort of (un)ethical act a person performs.

I talk about the Enlightenment eating itself becasue post-modernism isn't really "relativistic." Rather it is concerned with the objectivity of our relationships as subjects. The same concerns: knowledge, reason, social improvement, individual freedom, which drove the Enlightenment also drive post-modernism-- it was born in realising the narrative of the liberal enlightenment (the free everyman individual) was not happening for many people.

If we are to value reasons and knowledge above all else, the Enlightenment was always going to dissolve into post-modernism because the universal is an inadequate description. People are always distinct. The "Enlightenment spirit," the universal story, cannot be maintained unless we abandon knowledge and reason when it comes to describing the individual. Without this ignorance of distinction, the world dissolves into an array of objective subjectivities.

We are "post-enlightment" in the sense we worked out the Enlightenment was telling us a great big lie with regards to "common intellectual faculty"; it effectively meant "rich white male." A spirit blind to how power is express on and by individuals ("colourblindness," the free everyman of classical liberalism), where there is only the stagnate facts of the world to investigate (e.g. someone has white ancestors), rather than a conflux of interacting people who each define the lives of the other (e.g. a white identity which defines how a person belongs to a social context.

In the last two or so centuries, the enlightenment spirit ate itself. Reason and concern for knowledge turned to describing out society power relationships, where upon we found the "common sphere of reason" was not common at all-- the poor are missing (Marxism), people of other ethnic identities are missing (Racism), women are missing (sexism), queer people were missing (LGBTIQA+ discrimination), etc., etc.

In a sense it is not a pretty world, no longer is there the illusion of common freedom, but then when there was, the ugliness was just hidden.

I have to say, I think it is this illusion you covet. The "post-enlightment" doesn't demand anyone be ashamed who who they are per se, at least not unless they are doing something wrong (which is, you know, par for ethics). It demands we be honest about the impact of our actions on other people or how, that we recognise when we have destroyed others or taking away their power, rather than passing it off as "nature" or just giving savages what the deserve. I think it's this conflict, the awareness of ugliness and/or wrong done, which irks you. You'd rather just hide it away so people could get on with their lives rather than spending their days worrying about power relationships.

Absolutely. It's tied up in our culture and desire for superiority. The principles of knowledge, technology and domination which drove the Enlightenment and colonisation, in a sense, drive our concern for identity politics. We will be the ones who overcome, through our "civilised" culture and society, to make people's lives better. It's, in a sense, a desire of empire building.

I mean it is a bit of an accident of being the world power, in that it they who are usually concerned with the maintenance and development of power in society, but it's still the same sort of focus on building a nation greater than any other. We aren't, you know, content to sit back and live out century old traditions. The world is ours to know and improve (or so we think).

Clearly not.

People would, as you say think differently about dark people. They would not have the ethnic identity of "black" they do now. A different set of social relations and would apply to them. You've literally pointed out that the idea of being "dark" (i.e. the social significance of a dark person to society and other people)would-be different.

But the point here is it doesn't. In the situation I was pointing out, "European heritage" or "white" is a social identity category. The one of the various European societies who came to dominate the globe in the last few centuries. It doesn't mean "my ancestors were European." It means: "I am of the ethic group which colonised the world between the 16th and 21st century."

In the case of ethnic identity? Clearly not. No amount of expression will make it so that your ancestors originated from somewhere other than from where they actually did. — The Great Whatever

That's not ethic identity. It a description of where your ancestors lived. It's not subject to any sort of doubt here. The point is not that expression makes your ancestors come from somewhere else, it is that it defines how people are understood to belong, the social groups of a particular time and how they relate to others.

Yeah... that's the falsehood we are trying to get past here. Identity is not a constraint (e.g. tick these boxes and you count as X) but an expression (e.g. you are X if you express X). Who belongs to a group can change, it may expand or reduce, depending on who is understood to have that identity. All it takes is the right expression.

No... just the identity of "white" or "European heritage" (social identity category).

European descent (i.e. having ancestors who lived in Europe) is about the history of bodies and remains true.

Missing the point. I didn't say to would make black people white (i.e. change the colour of their skin). Nor did I say that "white" meant "black." I mean, literally, that black people might be considered part of the same identity category as white people, a category of "white."-- an instance where skin colour doesn't matter to belonging to the category of "white" or where it is thought someone of black skin ought to belong to the same category as someone of "white skin."

Not at all – there are different groups of people, and one of the outward signs of this is a different superficial experience, e.g. in skin tone. — The Great Whatever

Not in terms of our understanding of others. Who belongs to a group depends on whether we categorise them as a part of it. We all have different bodies, yes, but that's not enough to define belonging to a different social identity. Differences might, for example, not be thought about by us, so we just think of everyone as "human" (as opposed to "male" or "female" or "black" or "white"). We need to group people before they register in this sense. It's our action, not a pre-existing fact defined by the differences between us.

Does it mean that ethnicity is literally somehow made out of words or constituted by discourse? — The Great Whatever

Yes, it does. Particular experiences, to be entirely accurate. Ethnic identity is only our thoughts and words. If people, for example, thought of black people as white people, then within our categories they would be "white."

Bodies remain what they are (e.g. white skin and black skin) obviously, but that runs on a different axis. It's a descriptive discourse of someone's bodily trait, which doesn't carry with it belonging to a particular discourse of identity. To say someone belongs within a category because of their skin (e.g. a white person has the identity of "white" and a black person has the identity of "black") is entirely a social construction, our moulding of the meaning of an individual within our community that is parasitic on states we have observed (and many then falsely proclaims that identity is defined by the existence of those bodily states).

I suspect not, at least in the sense you're thinking.

In terms of identity though, yes. Race and ethnicity are both categories or discourse, as opposed to the presence of either a cultural practice or a particular genome. We may say that, for example, that someone of Korean descent living in France has no less belonging to the category of Frenchman than either a Scandinavian or a Frenchman of European descent.

Genetics do not constitute our understanding of someone beginning to a particular category. It's just, to borrow from similar analysis on sex and gender, the body. The identity categories we use, they are our understanding, our sorting of people within our conceptual frameworks, no matter how many "factual" markers (e.g. skin color, genetics, genitals, chromosomes, etc.,etc.) we happen to use.

For sure. Do you think that makes it any better? Are native americans meant to take solace that they were disposed of their lands, had their cultures destroyed and a genocide committed against because the powerful white Americans just want to get richer, rather than prove the superiority of the white race( though that happened too, as an excuse to exploit other ethnicities for resources)?

Let me put in terms you might understand. What do you think has a greater "racist" impact? A cabal sitting around talking about how they will "prove" white people are superior and plotting instances of deliberate hate crime to rally people to their cause? Or an economic vision of manifest destiny which sees entire cultures and its people wiped out? How can you say that the deliberate killing of someone for their ethnicity is "racist," but then turn around and say that the dispossession and genocide of entire ethnic groups is not "racist" just because it was done to make someone richer? I mean the latter is the former multiplied by the thousand if not million.

Racism isn't about intention. It's about effect.

It views everyone without identity. Everyone is invisible, which is how the myth functions. It doesn't matter if you are black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, trans, etc., etc., any person is thought to be a free individual who can do anything. It is the "colourblind (and everything else too)" position. The are no issues or problems because everyone is considered a priori equal and the same to everyone else. An imagined freedom and equality, rather than a lived one.

No doubt this is not what people think in practice. They think about identity the time, including white identity ("European heritage" ), but it's not what registers in understanding of society.

But we know it doesn't make sense by the nature of God.

If God were the cause or presence behind the curtain, an existing state of some realm, they would be sullied. God would not be the Real and unchanging infinite. In existing, God would just be another illusion of the world, which comes and goes on a whim.

To suggest God might or might not exist is to insult God. It is to ignore that God is logically necesary and treat them like a finite illusion.

We aren't doing that. The "evilness" of white people is a description of how social relations have been expressed in our societies more or less since colonialismand after. It's not white skin that's a problem. Nor is it white enthic identity. The issue is a social advantage white people have had for a period of time, a description of a social power and dominance the white enthic group has had over others.

This is why some people say "white people can't be subject to racism" in the West. Not because people of the white ethnic group cannot be discriminated against, but because the don't live is a society which defines their ethnic identity as a second class citizen.

People who say white people can't suffer racism are (rightly) concerned that suggestioning otherwise will lead to an equivocation of the treatment of white people with those of other ethnic groups, leading to an invisibility to the latter.

We actually saw this in your post earlier. You treated racism as if it was merely a question of being unable to take pride in one's identity, as if not being able to say: "White people are the greatest people" belonged in the same catergoy as the dispossession, slavery and social inequality that constitutes our society for many people if other enthic groups.

You are right that (white)Western liberal culture views people without identity. The "free" everyman who's distinctions don't matter is the defining idea of the classical liberalism our culture has grown out of.

Part of the post-modern critique is this is a myth. Since people have their own identity, distinctions matter. In terms of our understanding and categories, the might only be a social construction, but that doesn't mean they are not real.

Earlier you pointed out that racial distinction is of great importance to the post-modern critic. This is absolutely true. They know that just saying the distinction doesn't matter does not reflect how people are treated.

Contrary to the classical liberal narrative, the post-modernist is saying that distinctions always matter, for each individual is distinct. If someone is living is a society, they need a place as a distinct person. Just saying the are "free" isn't enough. Distinction matters and we have to be careful of how our understanding of it impacts on people-- thus, the dominate group doesn't get go around proclaiming itself as the greatest, for it implies the exclusion of others from value.

If my suspicion of what you mean is correct (upper-class narcissists), no. Otherwise, I'm not really familiar with its history or cultural usage.

My usage was deliberate though. I thought its self-important, sneering glee at the pain and suffering of others was a fitting description of thinking shallow annoyance or offence of an opponent was hilarious.

That's what I said.

What we wouldn't have, if we didn't talk, think or understand it, is the ethnic category. If everyone looked at a white person and saw someone belonging to the category of "black person," there would be no white ethnic group identity in our culture. There would be black bodies and white bodies, yes, but no-one would be thought of as having an ethnic identity of "white person."

Yes... if we are talking in terms of understanding and categorisation. That we put people of a certain body in a particular category is always our discourse. It's constructed in how we understand people. The presence of a body doesn't put anyone within a category.

Your arguments seemed to suggest that people are mistaken for arguing racism only applies to white people. You have sympathy for the alt-right because, on some level, you think they are unjustly treated. Supposedly, we don't let them claim their homeland like any other ethnic group.

I think that comedy is deeper than that, but okay. — The Great Whatever

A lot of the time (hopefully), it is. My point is that it's quite sometimes not. People laugh to assert hierarchy, to bask in a victory over an opponent. I'm saying that you seem to fall into this a lot-- where comedy is reduced to nothing more than upsetting the powerful.

See... that's political, not comedy. Supposedly, there is this grave double standard in how racism is treated. How unjust you cry. What could be funnier than seeing those people ignorant of racism against white people ground into the dust?

I'm going to suggest that the reason you don't find it funny is that you are the overdog and hence feel threatened by it. *shrug* — The Great Whatever

No doubt, but that's to be expected here. "Comedy" is heavily tied into expressing political power. One laughs at the failure, stupidity, pain or inferiority of their opponents as rhetoric. You are (sometimes) laughing not because what you've seen is really funny, but because it hurts those who you disagree with. What could be better than taking down those ignorant students of Western hegemony?

I know, but I think that's wrong. The significance is disruption, not in being the (political) underdog. (Political) underdogs make rote and unfunny statements all the time, no matter how shocking the might be to the elite or powerful. Simply offending and hurting the elite or powerful (or frequently, less powerful, since something like protection form hate speech is distinct from an individual power) is not enough to make something funny. Indeed, sometimes it is just a vile expression of power.

You are, I think, more interested in annoying, hurting or seeing proponents of doxa get a comeuppance than in what's funny.

Watching it, I thought it could work either as a sincere expression of white supremacy or a satire criticising it, which is probably a good sign. I think it's funny either way.

As a sincere love song between alt-righters, I think it works much better than you give it credit for. There's a level of disruption, between family, identity, culture and relationship to politics, which makes it much funnier and substantial than just re-purposing popular media. I think there is disruptive a story-- I was actually thinking "How nice for them. Their fascist white supremacy will be so beautiful" watching it.

That video is hilarious... but not because of Trump's politics or policy. It's funny because being right doesn't matter. He contradicts himself, speaks nonsense and doesn't say the right thing, but all of that has no bearing on anything. On he goes, no matter how ridiculous or outrageous. Nothing is held back to save face or follow somebody's rules. Comedy isn't made on politics, but, in a certain sense, an expression of power of being who you are.

I think you feel sympathy for the alt right (at least more than others) because they are the underdog, more so than because they're particularly funny in comparison to anyone else.

I did not dissolve the distinction. My claim was not that the causal was a a casual, but that the casual expressed the acausal. Extension (casual) expresses thought (acasual). States of the world cause each other, but they are always logically given in themselves. Causality is deterministic (X causes has Y effect), but never constraining (X and Y are defined in-themslves, not by an outside realm or state).

Indeed, the entire point here is the acasual is not the casual. An acausal force cannot do anything in the world. The logic discintion: "The disease is cured" doesn't make it so. The world needs to actually do it if it is to happen.

Logic cannot act to define the 'miracle" because that would amount to pre(determinism). The account you gave had the acasual (God/supernatural) acting to force what would occur in the world, constrain it to the "miracle cure," as if it were of (pre)deterministic causality. Rather than the world-- the emergence of a cured state out of possibility-- the cure is said to be necessary and really a result of this acausal force.

This is a contradiction and violates the possibility of emergence. If a hidden realm was always going to act to (intentionally?) constrain the world to a cure, there is no freedom in the cure. It's predetermined: caused (supposedly) by the acasual.

If it is the latter then the standard understanding is that there is a virtual acausal world out of which the probabilistically causal world somehow emerges. — John

This is an attempt to bring laws into the possibility of the caused world. You want to say that, when a casual relationship occurs, it happened because virtual acausal world forced it to happen. Emergence turned from a lawless possibility back into the a rigid predeterministic relationship.

Instead of understanding causality as an expression of freedom, that there is no reason any particular casual relationships occurs (which is why it is possibility), you still want to treat causality like a predetermined nexus, constrained to perform what ever is set out by the virtual acasual world.

Nature is not just a casual nexus. Causality doesn't have a cause. There is no state, rule or constraint which means one set of causes emerges over another. Every single state of causality is, in this sense, acasual. It's not there by some logical constraint. It was only caused because it exists. Nature not just a model, regularity or invariance. It means "to be part of what exists."-- to be something which emerged out of the lawless possibility of casuality.

The "spiritual order," the acausal logical nature of every state, is expressed by causality itself, an expression of the states which play out the lawless freedom of causality. There is no "higher order" because nature is the only (and highest) order. Every state is an emergence out of possibility. All states emerge without the action of a (pre)determining constraining law or force-- that's why states are but one of many possibilities; there is no "reason" dictating they are necessary. The acasual is not casual.

Following from my earlier response on ethics, Hume's is ought/is problem is a call to moral knowledge. An understanding of ethics which discards the idea morally is given by observing of listening to some part of the world. It discards the idea of ethical nihilism, that the world is absent ethical significance, such that some force (e.g. God, nature) has to introduce it.

Hume's is/ought problem is not moral scepticism. It's a call to recognise ethical significance itself. That the ethical is not given by the empirical we "objectively" observe (e.g. someone's command, the text of a book, the exist hence of some state), but rather by ethical significance itself.

That's the exact problem. If God is going to be coherent as a force or presence, they must make a difference. The world of God must be different than the world without. To make sense God must be worldly, else the God makes no difference. Unless God is worldly, we are just calling the same place different names-- the "miraculous cure" would only be a different name for something a person's body did. God would not be there at all.

When God is not worldly, the inability to give any sort of answer on their existence is not a coincidence. Since the presence of such a God makes no difference to the world, there is nothing to know about it as a presence or force. Evidence and knowledge of it, in this sense, are impossible.

Asking the question of whether this God exists or not doesn't makes sense. If God is Real (infinite) rather than illusion (finite), then God cannot exist and so makes no difference to the world (finite).

To take the existence of this God on faith doesn't even make sense. Since God is infinite, we know God isn't troubled by existing or not. We know God to be necessary regardless of whatever the world does-- just as such a God makes no difference to the world, the world can make no difference to God, meaning God is beyond any change, restriction or controlling force. There is nothing to doubt about God.

If God is Real (infinite-i.e. not an illusionary finite state), we know the atheists are right.

I know. My point is that's incoherent. Any cause is, by definition, a part of nature, a state of the world which results in another. The "supernatural cause" is only ever a state of the world which does something. With respect to curing a disease, for example, a drug is no less "magic" or "miraculous" than the command of God to be healed. Both are states of the world which result in the disease being cured. If it's true, the "supernatural" is just the world.

My point is you are now (as of the post I initially responded to) rejecting the idea of physical minds a priori. You immediately read the concept of personal existence as inconsistent with a mind that was wholly physical.

For a while you were going along quite nicely, until you got to the meat and bones, where upon you began asking questions that assume substance dualism at the base. Ones which reject that personal identity is consistent with a wholly physical existence.

When Terrapin spoke about the distinction between identity in existence (the different existing person of each moment) and some distinctions of logic (the unity of meaning expessed by some states of the world--e.g. an individual over time), you accused him of missing the point. As if unity of personal identity meant someone's existence was not entirely physical.

He did not ignore the question. You rejected his answer without consideration. Certainly, it was not the clearest or most eloquent answer. As a non-eliminative materialist, he doesn't make enough a distinction between the existence of experiences and brains to make his position obvious (he sounds mostly like a reductionist), but your response was shallow one which did not even make an attempt to consider what he was talking about.

Only if you (as I suspect he would argue) make the mistake of considering this concept of personal identity as non-physical.

For the non-eliminative materialist, minds are physical. Any idea or concept we hold, the existence of a "mind" state, is a physical presence. In this sense, I'd say he would by justified in arguing that you are just ignoring any thing he says.

Like much of philosophy, you bring in substance dualism which as a first principle, that our thoughts and experiences cannot by physical, which is to completely dismiss the whole point of non-eliminative materialism. With respect to his position, the discussion can't even begin because you've rejected the idea outright. Anytime he tries to make his argument, you turn around and say: "Your argument is meaningless. Can you please say something that makes sense so the discussion can begin."

The basic philosophical ideas you understand are no doubt many, but it's clear you don't understand the one he's talking about.

But I am saying that the case for considering temperature to be objective is stronger than the case for considering morality to be objective, because the former has been demonstrated scientifically, and the latter has not, and therefore they are not analogous in that way. If not science, then what else? Because human judgement varies considerably on this, unlike with regards to temperature via temperature scales. A 'moral scale' equivalent to, or even comparable to, the temperature scales that we use has not, to my knowledge, been produced — Sapientia

The negative reactions to this are a pretty good example of how advocates of "subjective" ethics can be frequently misread as nihilists. What is Sapientia saying here? Is there a claim that ethics are somehow untrue? Or even that ethical responsibility does not apply in some cases? The objectors claiming of "objective" morality say so, but it's not actually in Sapientia's words.

Rather Sapientia is drawing the distinction between empirical and ethical knowledge. In this context, "objective " means "observed in the world." Instead of saying there are no ethics or arguing a contradiction of ethics, Sapientia is pointing out ethical knowledge is not a question of observation. We can't look at the world, at a holy book, at the God shouting at us and simply say: "Ah, that means the ethical." Ethics are not like measuring temperature or describing what someone has said to you.

Here to say "ethics are subjective" means we need something other than the observed to understand ethics: ethical knowledge.

It's worse. "God did it" is a "natural" explanation. If (unobserved or not) God changed the world, then God is causal. Causality cannot function outside itself. "Supernatural explanations" are incoherent by definition. If present theories do not describe how an event occurred, then how it happened has another description. Something else happened in reality. If "God did it," then that's what the world does.

Miracles and magic are entirely possible, but they are always only "nature": the world acting how it does. What logically follows is that if a "naturalistic"explanation is not accurate (e.g. it's a hallucination), then a different "naturalistic" explanation will be (e.g. an experience which is an ad hoc reduction of the world to a concept of "God," an entity of God speaking to someone, etc., etc.).

The same as we always had: knowledge of ethics, expressed in particular cultural discourses (e.g. various religious traditions, social movements, ethical concepts themselves, etc., etc.) over human history.

Ethical nihilism is actually an extension of the traditional understanding of ethics. One which views the world to be innately lacking in moral significance, until some presence (e.g. God, nature) adds it to the world.

The concern of "but what are we left with?" shows the poverty of the traditional understanding of ethics. A stance which is wholly sceptical of ethical significance, which denies there is any expressed by the world, to a point where there must be the force of God or else there are no ethics. It treats ethical significance like it were a state of the world, something to be added or lost on the whim of a force-- nothing more than a cultural norm that lives or dies by the presence and command of God.

There is no understanding of ethics themselves. The traditional understanding fails to recognise ethical significance is necessary, true regardless of what exists or is present (either in our world or any other realm). Thus, we get this absurd situation where we have the traditionalist demands ethics won't be true if the presence they claim isn't so.

The discursive isn't only a question of spoken language. It's experience. Any understanding or awareness is a discourse, a representation of meaning, rather than a state itself. Rather than merely giving an account of what you know, it is true of any instance of awareness, knowledge and understanding, even non-linguistic experience.

If I have an awareness I cannot put into words, I know something, I aware of something, I understand something. It's still discursive. Words even relate to it-- right now I'm pointing out I can't put it into words. Not only do I know it, but I can tell you there is no way to know it by me giving description in words.

It is reflective knowledge made possible only by the kinds of categories and generalizations enabled by conceptual language. but in order to know that you know, you must first know, no? — John

Are we talking about reflective knowledge here? Indeed, how can it be said that reflective knowledge even makes sense? Supposedly, I meant to know a tree's is a tree by relying on a "category" or "generalisation," but how can this be given that any tree in front of me is not any such concept?

I mean how do even know that the object infront of me fits into the category of tree? No doubt you would point out that I can observe the tree an not that it has various attributes that mean it fits into the category of "tree."

But this causes incoherence. If I am noting the leaves, truck, etc.,etc. of the object in front of me, I have knowledge of it prior to using the "category" or "generalisation" of tree. What's more, I must know that combination of leaves, truck, etc.etc., equals a tree (as opposed to anything else), so I must know the object is a tree (i.e. these are the leaves, trunk, etc.,etc of a tree) prior to applying judgment on the basis "category" or "generalisation," else I couldn't conclude either applied to the state in front of me.

Logic shows us knowledge cannot be reflective. We can't derive it from other instances of knowledge. Any instance of knowledge must be its own state, not enabled by something prior, but given in-itself.

My comment wasn't so much on the nature of wisdom as it was the emptiness of the transcendent once things are known to be understandable. Wisdom is a bit of a different topic. It involves more than just knowing things. There are questions of actions, how people are treated and living in a way which avoids damage or suffering. In every case though, it is the self which lives these wise actions. They are given by oneself, not the transcendent. When I say the transcendent no longer offers wisdom, I mean that materialism understands that wisdom and knowledge are expressions of the self.

People may certainly have knowledge and wisdom in the practice of transcendent belief, but the materialist understands that it is them who have the knowledge and wisdom, rather than it being beyond understanding.

What you've described there is not the practice of wisdom. It's a concept of becoming wise. You've generalised and reduced wisdom to the idea of escaping unwise practices. Those who are unwise become wise by exploring and devloping new wise habits which are (as of the unwise state) beyond them (either in understanding or practice).

You are then misreading this feature of the self (and future self) as something which presents beyond the self. As if becoming wise were a matter of access something that was never you or something you grasp. An idea that the self is necessarily unwise, such that wise living can only be given by what is never a part of the self. The confusion of the unwise self for any future self. So, supposedly, wisdom can only be obtained through the transcendence.

This definition precisely the prejudice of the transcendent belief I talked about in my last post in the Living with the noumenon thread. Rather than understand wisdom as something people know about and live, you reduce it to nothing more than a narrative or tradition about becoming wise.

To be wise, you say, we must sit around thinking about how wisdom is necessarily beyond us, else we are nothing but naive fools-- believe or else you are not worth listening to and are living foolishly. What you have defined is not wisdom. It is the tradition that practicing this concept of becoming wise through belief in the transcendent, as if practicing that concept was exhaustive of wisdom. A tradition which pulls so strongly that you can't see wisdom anywhere else.

If someone is already wise, and so doesn't need to go on a grand search of discovery, you claim they lack wisdom. People who come by wisdom easily, without having to go through a laborious process of self-doubt and confusion, you accuse of being naive. Those who describe wise living, and who can then present that knowledge to directly to others (stepping over the doubting and long stringing along of "mystery"), you accuse of not providing any substance.

What you speak about here is not wisdom. It's idea and tradition wisdom is only given in transcendent belief, a notion that we have to live with transcendent belief to be wise because wisdom is limited to being what we are not. A misunderstanding of the self (that which is necessary foolish) that leaves our understanding of wisdom in poverty.

My position is there is no non-discursive knowledge.

Our experiences (feelings, thoughts, intuition, etc.,etc.) are non-discursive (states of existence) which are the means of knowledge (models, representation, understanding, discourse), which is always discursive. Means of knowledge and knowledge are not the same.

I'd didn't deny there was knowledge by intuition, feeling or experience. Indeed, that is the only means of knowledge: all instances of awareness are our experiences.

The materialist claim is the knowledge of any of those means is discursive, a representation which is never the underlying reality.

I meant in the sense that what was at stake wasn't just science, but a whole logic of metaphysics. What's at stake isn't the practice of science (plenty of people who think something is a "mystery" or "inexplicable" do science perfectly well), but a tradition of metaphysics (i.e. the transcendent vs the immanent).

And it because of what you describe there. The materialist 's point is that there is nothing which cannot be known discursively. They don't mistake "mystery"as something that's meant to be discursive, they argue it's incoherent because there is no knowledge that is not discursive.

Here they agree the limitation of discursive knowledge cannot be overcome: all knowledge is discursive for the materialist. Those positing "mystery" aren't wrong for claiming discourse where it is not, they are mistaken for claiming there is knowledge outside discourse.

I'd say more than that. It goes deeper. Rather than just a empirical approach, it is a metaphysical one: materialism. When it is recognised anything may be known, transcendent philosophy collapses. It no longer has any wisdom to offer. There is nothing "mysterious" or "inexplicable" anymore. Such notions merely become our reactions to thing we do not expect, rather than a hidden realm of power or truth.

The great prejudice towards recognising the existence of the subject exists for more of less this reason. If that without empirical manifestation (e.g. experiences, logic) may be known without restriction, then the impossible is recognised as impossible. We understand "miracles" are incoherent. In every case, the are just the world doing what it does, rather than a "rescue" from inevitably terrible nature. The wonder of "doing the impossible" is lost. It's revealed to be an illusion of our limited knowledge and expectations.

You are forgetting that the knower also as an experience beyond words. The sort of emotion and nuance you are talking about isn't just reserved for the person's experiences someone might know about. It can also occur within the experience of the person who knows. When someone knows the experience of another, they do not just have a "category." They have an experience.

So while there is no doubt my understanding of what someone felt may show something different, it is also true that it may show the same. The knower's experience may be a map of another's which has a precise emotion and nuance that words do not do justice.

at the least shown to be the same as the how the interpreter is interpreting the nuanced event from the original experiencer. — schopenhauer1

This notion is incoherent because experiences do not manifest empirically. When we understand the experience of another, we never observe experience. We might observe bodies doing something, but that always relies on our understanding of experiences and their relationships to bodies. Such "interpretation" actually relies on already knowing about experiences.

Also, I don't think you understood my original argument with apo.. Apo seemed to be claiming that there is no territory.. that all is map. I was trying to say that at the least there is territory, that of individual experiences which are not a map.. they just "are". — "schopenhauer1

No, I understand that. My point is that, about knowledge, apo is right. Any instance of knowledge is a map. If we are speaking about knowledge, what is known or may be known, we are only talking about maps.

You are right about experiences being "just there," a territory (a state of existence which is not representation) which experiences of knowledge never "access (i.e. to know something is never to be it)." It just has no consequence for what may be known. To what is known, only the maps matter.