↪Pantagruel OK, what does that have to do with one of my positions? — Coben

I guess it contradicts it.

. I am just saying the torturer can force X. Can make x happen — Coben

I don't know what the context is of someone intending to submit to torture. — Coben

If someone intends to be made a martyr, for example.

this is a perfect example of poor torture — Coben

This is a perfect example of the fallacy of equivocation by persuasive definition. It's only 'real' torture if it conforms to my definition...for which there cannot be counterexamples.

If someone specifically intends to submit to the worst effects of the torture, then torture must be ineffective. Torture only succeeds where the human will fails.

Hello handalf.

I think that aspects of culture could be said to be limitations on freedom of thought. For example, being a member of an academic community may restrict the direction of one's research. But I think it is equally important to recognize that our minds and ideas are the products of culture. Arguably, one of the key features of mind is its reflexivity (self-knowledge). So the comprehension of history and culture becomes a way of the mind thematizing itself.

So what you describe as limitations could equally be conceived as directions.

Not sure that it implies that anything requires an explanation? Heavy metals are "rare" due to the way that they are formed (with respect to the rest of the cosmos) and likewise fulfill the rare functions that they fulfill because of their "ontological matrix". I think assuming teleology is unwarranted, but also perhaps unnecessary. A carbon atom is no more mysterious than a hydrogen atom, but opens up a whole universe of new possibilities.

Heavy metals are (relatively) "rare" and they are also "significant". Are they significant because rare? Certainly organic molecules could not form without carbon. Typically one reason things become viewed as "significant" is because they are unique or special in some way.

There are non-religious versions of the "rare earth hypothesis" based on the accumulation of unlikely events that had to conspire to result in the evolutionary apex we apparently enjoy. Life, especially highly-evolved conscious life, appears to be fantastically rare. I don't espouse the belief that we are somehow a unique and significant manifestation of the universe, but I don't discount the possibility either.

We have a much wider milieu now in which our awareness/understanding of reality can unfold. Descartes was a genius of immense proportions, but he lived in a universe barely beginning to be comprehended in a Newtonian-mechanical sense. Up until 1920 the best minds in the world thought our own galaxy was the extent of the universe. Consciousness is unfolding at an unprecedented rated.

:ok:

Finally finished the Critique of Dialectical Reason; not an easy read.

Now for the really big project: Capital, Volume I. I have been keen to start this since seeing a thread on the forum suggesting a group reading of this work.

I think it is an a fortiori situation. If people cannot be bothered to challenge their own fundamental beliefs, why would they every think that that someone else might be persuadable?

And yet the "mechanistic nightmare" is part of the real dialectical process whereby serialized praxes condense to form the groups and institutions that in fact do direct future progress. Then the whole concept of progress can be interpreted in a schema of 'communicative action' oriented around the development of rationalization and concepts like reasonableness, and effective action (Habermas).

I think an equally interesting question is, can/do people change their own deeply rooted beliefs?

Just entering The Old Curiosity Shop now.

Dickens' Hard Times

It's a very cool "Longman Cultural Edition" I found on a recent trip. It has a huge section called "Context" covering the social, political and economic conditions in England at the time of writing.

For the organization of democracy, that is not what this thread is about — Athena

Exactly. I would act morally whether or not legislatively required to. I internalize normative authority, as I'm sure do many people. Traditionally, the internalization of moral authority is viewed as a normal part of socio-psychological development.

Belief is our way of giving meaning to life or any phenomena in it — Bilge

I like this characterization a lot. This sounds like a philosophy of "enaction," which I very much espouse.

I would love it if you responded to all my thoughts, not just the words you want to argue against — Athena

Here's the problem I have with your position in general - it is too ideo-centric. You don't seem to have a healthy sense of cultural/normative relativism. There is no limit to the possible number of ways to solve a problem and core institutions are precisely what need to be reformed from the bottom up. Democracy, socialism, these are just labels, not recipes. The solution required needs to unite many different domains, economic, social, spiritual, political. If the political dimension is going to be "democratic" then it will certainly have to be a different brand of democracy than I have seen in operation. I like the way many European democracies work, however, coalitions of parties. That seems to me a good model of co-operation.

What you are describing is the situation in which social-normative ideals shape democracy. What in fact has happened is that democracy has become assimilated to systemic structures (economics, politics) which in turn have replaced the governance and direction of our society by normative rules. This is what Habermas calls the "paradoxes of modernity". We created something to free us, and it ends up enslaving us through over-rationalization and the bureaucratization of institutions.

Democracy is about discovering truth and basing life decisions on truth — Athena

Your position smacks very much of the social problem that is criticized in the book I just started reading, Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action.

Basically a fallout of the Enlightenment, when people came to have an unreasonable belief in the inevitable superiority of the rationalist-reductive approach, inspired by Newton's accomplishments. Culminating in the dreary technical anomie of our modernist world.

"The progress of societal rationalization...turned out to be, according to Weber, the ascendency of purposive rationality....not a reign of freedom, but the dominion of impersonal economic forces and bureaucratically organized administrations"

So much for the ideal of democracy as an ideal of rational human excellence.

However, if practicality and not reason is the primary motivation for a belief, then such a belief cannot be justified as true. — StarsFromMemory

"Truth" is not necessarily applicable to all types of belief. Normative beliefs don't need to be true, they just need to be effective.

I wasn't advocating faith, per se. Merely pointing out that why someone believes something is not as important as what and how one believes (ie. enacts the belief).

There is an obvious gap between the spiritual and the material. Purely transcendental beliefs (if there are such) are basically meaningless. It is only when a transcendental belief is translated into the practical sphere that such beliefs gain meaning. And the usual way this is done is through normative prescriptions.

I think that any belief, that you intend to propagate or make universal and not merely use as a coping mechanism, should be based on reasons other than pragmatic ones. — StarsFromMemory

People's reasons for believing are ultimately their own business and their own responsibility. What you do with your beliefs is the measure of their merit. So if belief in a god makes someone a better person and benefits others, who is to argue with that?

Well of course. Democracy is about discovering truth and basing life decisions on truth. Religion is not. — Athena

Firstly, that isn't even close to any definition of democracy that I have ever seen.

Secondly, it isn't about what democracy is or isn't, or what religion is or isn't. It is about whether one allows that an ideal can still exist, even if it fails to be implemented well or effectively. If Democracy can be corrupted, yet still be an ideal towards which we strive, then so can Religion.

I am always amazed how frequently otherwise open-minded people stop using reason and start reacting from prejudice as soon as the word "religion" comes up. You do know that "religion" is a generic term, and is therefore not the same as "Catholicism" or "Christianity" or "Buddhism"? Just like "democracy" does not reduce to "American republican democracy" or "British socialist democracy", etc.

Yes, I am devoted to democracy and I don't see any irony in that. Please, explain the irony. — Athena

The irony is that, in your devotion to democracy, you are prepared to defend the abstract ideal of democracy, despite the shortcomings of its implementation by specific individuals. Whereas you completely deny that exact same freedom and right to the ideal of religion.

I think the Gaia hypothesis also fits in here.

Here's a challenge: give me some example, something specific, about which you think a person might gain understanding without thought. — Artemis

Actually, what was said was

the moment of initial understanding also interrupts the process and creates thought. — Antidote

As I follow this, understanding brings something into thought, so is a synthesizing function, not entirely thought, and not merely thought. And in some cases, thinking can impede understanding (examples were given, Zeigarnik effect).

Not everything that is in thought is of thought (objective knowledge). So if understanding is conceived as the synthesizing event (which it is here) then understanding isn't "thinking," it is the event in which new knowledge (which ex hypothesi did not come from thought) becomes integrated into thought. By simple definition (in this case) understanding is not a species of thought simpliciter.

"we never learn by getting things right, we only learn by getting things wrong" — Antidote

Popper takes a similar view of learning as eliminative of error in his perspective of scientific realism.

I guess it depends on how big of a gap is being bridged? i.e. how much new knowledge is being acquired.

In that case, understanding is definitely a synthetic or synthesizing function. As to whether it is a thought or an absence of thought, there is a well-documented phenomenon called the "Zeigarnik effect" (better known as "tip of the tongue" where mental effort can impede the mental task of recollection, whereas a relaxation of effort will result in success. This has also been shown to be true of problem-solving. So there is a good case to be made for "not thinking" here.

Fascinating. You have completely failed to respond to point 1, that you have committed the fallacy of generalization, by employing the fallacy of misdirection.

Meanwhile, while you are not willing to allow religion to assume an idealized character, independent of the shortcomings of its adherents, you are more than willing to be an apologist for democracy.

Do you see the irony?

That is a serious problem with religion. It totally screws up our understanding of democracy which is rule by reason and dependent on moral reasoning — Athena

1. This attributes the faults of specific individuals who claim to be religious to religion itself. You might as well say "Speech creates a serious problem because some people lie."

2. In what world is democracy rule by reason and dependent on moral reasoning? Certainly not this one.

Are you characterizing understanding as a discrete event (Archimedes' Eureka!) or as a cumulative state (the sum total of that which I understand)?

Jurgen Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action Volume I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society
Really been looking forward to starting this

Lucid dreaming does by definition requires that you be asleep, and not awake. You can't be awake and be dreaming at the same time.

Why? Since the status of external objects is known only via the contents of consciousness, their ontological status as truly external is undecidable. This was Descartes’ problem. — PuerAzaelis

Everything is external to everything else, by definition (A is not equal to not A). The relationship of one thing to another thing has no bearing on the ontological status of either thing. Except if you allow that two things are related, then both of them "have" an ontological status (i.e. exist).

I really don't see how intentionality per se casts any doubt on the certainty of the existence of the intentional subject though. Unless all you are doing is simply saying that "nothing is certain". But if that's the case, then there is nothing to dispute either. Intentionality is "just as real as it is".

Quantum Shift in the Global Brain by Ervin Laszlo

In The Open Universe Popper presents a neat argument that, if you try to introduce the Laplacean demon into a relativistic framework, the necessary information to "predict" the future (=determinism) can never be available. So the universe must be "indetermined".

It's in section 17, "Is Classical Physics Accountable".

But anyone who asserts that they come to any of these four things through science, logic, reason, or math...is full of soup: — Frank Apisa

Agreed.