And you were trying to explain why apple varieties and dog breeds were false taxonomies, and how they relate to anything we’re talking about. In so doing you’ve dug yourself into a racist hole, like Scott Adams.

You just pointed out that varieties of apples are cultivated by humans. :lol:

Would you compare human races to dog breeds?

One way subconscious biases are revealed is in snap judgments where there's no time for consideration.

So because of this you believe you hold a racist attitude towards certain out-groups.

I would avoid the equating of human races to breeds, or in your case, different cultivars of apples, because those arise through artificial selection, whereas human variation does not. We’ve cultivated the varieties of apples and the taxonomy reflects those varieties. The taxonomy of plants lack the influence of social, cultural, and political factors. Comparing human phenotypical difference to differences between breeds have historically been used to justify discrimination and cruelty.

No one said anything about intrinsic properties of evil. I explicitly said they were false, unjust, and pernicious.

I'm pretty sure that I have implicit racial biases, yes. Actually, I'm rather explicitly racist against Portagee's due to some young adult experiences.

How do you know you have implicit racial biases if implicit bias is unconscious, and you are unaware of them?

Banning "Latinx" and the rainbow flag on public property.

Public property is state property. The state decides the flags, like you get to decide what flags go on your property.

Both parties seek to ban “latinx” from use in official state nomenclature like they would any other offensive term.

1) When we perceive the world, how can we directly know the cause of what we have perceived when our only knowledge of any external world has come from the perceptions themselves.

If perceiving is an act of a perceiving agent, the act and the agent are one and the same. If they are one and the same, we can remove perception as some kind of intermediary between knower and the external world. If there is no intermediary, direct access to the external world is not only possible, but a brute fact. If we are able to directly access the external world, it means we are in the world, a part of the world. If we are a part of the world the knowledge is not circular, but open and relational.

2) How is it possible to know from knowing an effect the cause of that effect, when every effect is overdetermined by more than one sufficient causes.

I’m trying to grasp the question but am unsure what is cause and what is effect. Could you illustrate using our good ol’ tree?

Is this about banning CRT and LGBTQXN in elementary schools?

That's neither here nor there. Wounds heal on their own schedule. You can't force it by outlawing certain word combinations.

Outlawing certain word combinations… is that how you personally stop believing in something?

It’s not a sin to distinguish people by race. Is this a religious thing for you?

Did someone say it was a sin? I said it was false, unjust, and pernicious.

Realizing our implicit biases is self-awareness.

Are you implicitly racist?

Merely acknowledging race or "false taxonomies" is not the problem so if it were possible to be "color-blind" it would not solve the problem. Intentionally employing and furthering biases is done in order to manipulate the ignorant (racists who may lose more than they gain) and take or maintain the advantage over the disadvantaged.

The way to banish it is to realize what's going on and stop being manipulated, or stop being an asshole if you're one of the manipulators or one of the manipulator's bootlickers.

I said believing in it is the problem. Adopting it for good intentions or for whatever other reason doesn’t absolve one of it. It’s still false, unjust, pernicious. Saying it is implicit is simply an admission of guilt.

I don't think it works both ways. There are huge numbers of blacks still alive who remember when there was legal racism used against them. I can understand how that older group would have a negative opinion of their oppressors (Southern whites). I would be shocked if they didn't.

It works myriad of ways to those who are just. The use of these categories are unjust, and for the same reason it was unjust to use them in the past. Justice doesn’t demand that a man ought to forgive those who wronged him, but he ought not condemn with the same crime those who did not.

I think the motivation for claiming that a problem doesn't exist is to resist change, basically.

Employing and furthering the problem doesn’t only resist change, though, it compounds it. The only way to banish it is to quit using it.

We're all guilty of that to some degree, whether it be by race, sex, age, or whatever, though we can try to change our implicit biases.

Speak for yourself. I don’t see how that is possible when one doesn’t believe he can derive any valid information from such a vacuous concept. Better to learn from actual flesh-and-blood human beings before any judgement upon them can be made.

Rather, claiming to not believe in racial taxonomies attempts (badly) to rationalize the status quo.

How?

Well said.

Not to mention, the country has yet to shed its systemic racism, as observed by its racial demography in the census, or the so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" measures now in place. The Federal government is now using race as a consideration in hiring workers under the auspices of "racial justice".

Not true. A full-blown nazi white supremacist, or Scott Adams for that matter, has the ability to distinguish individuals.

I said discriminating against someone on account of their membership on in a false taxonomy is an inability to discriminate between individuals, not that individuals are unable to distinguish between individuals. Rather than let the individual inform their behaviors, they let the false taxonomy do so.

It's a bad question but I'm curious how false taxonomies motivate discrimination against others. I have no idea how you would try to explain that. Please try.

I'm assuming people are motivated by their beliefs. If you believe in racial taxonomies it gives reason to discriminate against its members on racial grounds. If you do not believe in racial taxonomies it does not give reason to discriminate on racial grounds.

There is nothing wrong with discrimination qua discrimination. We can discriminate between individuals, good and evil, competent and incompetent, skilled or unskilled, and so on. But discriminating against someone on account of their membership on in a false taxonomy is, ironically, an inability to discriminate between individuals.

If it isn't the belief in racial groups that motivates the discrimination against their members, perhaps you can name something else that is.

Do you think we confuse the act of perceiving with the object of perception? Maybe our language doesn't permit us to do otherwise. I honestly do not know.

Most probably, you mean an entitity, a living organism. Which is a special case. You can't generalize it and apply it to inanimate things, can you? This is what I meant.

True, that's what I meant. Anything that is incapable of perceiving would not be able to perceive us.

I'm not sure it is the case that we perceive perceptions any more than we see seeings or hear hearings or digest digestions.

It seems obvious to me that I perceive a tree. It doesn't seem obvious to me that I perceive perceptions, representations, sense-data, or any other such entities.

Yes, a perceived object can perceive me so long as it is capable of perceiving.

What’s wrong with it? that most people, including yourself, believe otherwise?

Discriminating between individuals is one thing; discriminating between false taxonomies of human beings is quite another. I don’t think your point approaches the issue at all.

Call yourself what you want, but both apples and oranges are fruit. So applying your “reasoning”, discriminating between both light and dark-skinned people is humanism.

Race does not exist in any biological sense, though. So it’s a superstition. So what exactly are you acknowledging? That it has been used to propel false theories? That’s exactly my point.

Apples and oranges are different species.

To classify is to discriminate by definition.

Statehood is something that's deeply embedded in who we are as a species now. Does it have a downside? Of course. It's like our knees: they cause all sorts of problems, but we can't very well stop using them.

Slavery was once considered in a similar manner. Nowadays we could never think about going back to it.

Yes. The belief in and proliferation of bad ideas can be held by anyone, regardless of what they look like.

The hyphen was to differentiate between the root word and the suffix in order to illustrate what I think is the definition. “Race” means the taxonomy of race. “-ism” means ideology or doctrine. So I intend race-ism to be racism.

I’m not sure any man can occupy a higher position over and above others if there is no such position. The failure of egalitarian causes is that they wish to occupy such positions, for whatever reason, thereby placing themselves over and above others. The problem is the existence of the State.

Except Dilbert never mentioned the inferiority or superiority of any race, at least according to the article.

Race-ism. The ideology of race. It is the fundamental idea motivating every racially discriminatory act. One has to racially discriminate in order to formulate the question, ask the question, record the results, etc.

Race-thinking is the problem to begin with. The poll, the question, the answer, Dilbert’s reaction, his cancellation, is all racist. Not only that but the question “Is it ok to be white?” is bloody weird.

If only 53% of white people polled believe it is ok to be black, would a black man be justified in saying that blacks people should stay away from whites? Or would we cancel him?

Racist polls invariably lead to racist reactions.

The self is always in reference to a particular living organism. It cannot be otherwise.

This sounds just like John Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment to show computers have syntax but not semantics. In this case, Y is just “moving” symbols around.

I suppose there is a parallel, but I don’t think it is says anything about the listener, who has semantics.

So what you are saying is that, in addition to whatever is encoded in the sentence, there is an additional element which only exists in the actual communicative event?

I don’t think anything is encoded in the sentence. All of it is encoded in the interlocutors, so to speak. It seems to me the interlocutors, and not the sentences, should be paramount in any theory of meaning. Speakers and their expressions appear frequently, but not so much listeners, who express nothing.

I think I would be differentiating between meaning and information.

I think so. It seems I'm a legal positivist. I think the use of the words "law" and "rights" result in confusion, and the law is distinct from morality. I favor legal rights as I think they serve to put limits on governmental power. But rights which aren't legal rights are what people think should be legal rights if they're not already.

I favor virtue ethics and other ethics which aren't based on concepts of individual rights. People claim so many rights.

The words do cause confusion. The idea that nature or God confers rights is untenable. Only men confer rights. As a play on words, it is man’s natural right to confer rights; or in Spinoza’s terms, conferring rights is coextensive with his desires and powers.

But if this is the case, the idea that man can only confer rights or develop laws so long as he does so in some official form is equally untenable. Who gave them the right to do so? Neither God nor Nature, of course. But if positive law gives positive law the right to develop laws then my law gives me the right to eschew them. Positive law is ungrounded. It can appeal only to its own tradition, not unlike the Bible.

This is why the Nuremberg trials appealed to natural law and human rights, for instance. The Nazis were following the law, such as they were. Of what are they guilty? Of not being virtuous enough?

It is the case that we confer rights based on principles developed through a general understanding of universal human nature, whatever that may be. Some positive laws, too, have developed from this understanding.

Then what can you say you do with the visual components of your dreams? With the auditory components?

I’m not sure. I’m asleep. My eyes do not point inward so I am unable to verify what goes on behind them. Supposing that it is possible, my only hope would be to ask others what I am doing, what sorts of movements I am making during this period, however subtle they may be.

Fine; I dream things in my dreams. I cannot say I see them.

@Dfpolis has published papers, given lectures, and written a book. By chance I happened upon his work long before I became a member on this forum. I think he was a theoretical physicist, though.

Basically the same place as the visual representations in your dreams. You see things in your dreams, right?

I dream dreams, certainly, but I couldn’t say I see them because my eyes are closed.