The establishment’s base is resting their hopes on the word of a porn star, a lawyer who plead guilty for lying, and a political district attorney. This is their Michael Avenatti moment once again. You gotta love it.

It’s typical of his critics to erect some sort of show-trial for political purposes. Impeachments, J6 hearings (complete with a television producer from ABC), raiding his home, multiple investigations and civil suits, and now thinks he might be arrested by a Manhattan district attorney (of course). This is the deep-state dinner theater that has made Trump a folk devil in the eyes of the establishment base.

Which would still be external to the system under analysis.

And just as arbitrary.

So your argument is "if we limit ourselves to speaking about the body... then we find that all events are caused by something in the body". well, no shit.

Does talk about the will have to do with anything else? For some reason you’ve limited the discussion to “cause” only, but the body also controls, regulates, orders, directs such activity, and it does it under no other influence.

Your causal chain begins rather arbitrarily, at the point where the hammer strikes the tendon, and not in the doctors brain for instance. It begins exactly where it suits you, somewhere in the environment. But that the environment can affect the body is a given. I’m speaking about the body, so all I can say is your hammer’s impact causes the compression of the tendon. That’s it. Your causal chain begins precisely where it ends, because every causal link you can muster to describe after that is caused by the body, utterly contingent on its being, structure, function, and so on. There is no hammer in there firing neurons and constricting muscles, I’m afraid.

I’m not sure, but I suspect that you’re going to eventually say the body is like a Rube Goldberg machine, or that the body does not govern, control, or cause any of these actions. Is that what we’re getting at?

A motor neuron

But isn’t the rising of the leg caused by the contraction of muscle?

All a hammer can do is compress the tendon.

Is this you trying to say that certain reflexes are controlled by hammers, and not, say, a reflex arc?

The debate over the argument from illusion is quite extensive, already. Whatever your stance on it it’s an interesting one.

I'm not sure I see the problem. If you and me are next to each other and we are looking at the Empire State Building, I can point to it and say "that's the Empire State Building". I can only assume - all else being equal - that you will see something very similar to what I see. There's no way to literally get into somebody else's head, but, daily experience seems to show we see things similarly.

The problem is with the idea of sense-data. It leads us to believe we are not able to see the Empire State Building, only the sense data. JL Austen states it like this:

“The general doctrine, generally stated, goes like this: we never see or otherwise perceive (or 'sense'), or anyhow we never directly perceive or sense, material objects (or material things), but only sense-data (or our own ideas, impressions, sensa, sense-perceptions, percepts, &c.).”

It’s like saying we sense sense, or experience experiences.

If you are interested in how the brain works, that's the topic of neuroscience and cognitive science. You aren't going to find an entity "the self" in the brain, even if such constructions originate there - with interplay with the environment of course.

I think I may be missing something, or probably am missing something.

Right, there is no self living in the brain viewing experiences and perceptions. So indirect realism is redundant. That’s the basic point.

Are the activities of the human organism uncaused or caused by something else?

I always took “unmediated” to mean that nothing else is intervening in the relationship between perceiver and perceived. In other words there is no veil or buffer or experience between man and tree. I could be wrong on that and appreciate any other formulation.

For me, problems arise when insert some other object of perception like sense data. If we are perceiving sense-data, then we ought to be able to instantiate it. If we can perceive it we ought to be able to point to it, because for anything to be perceptible (perceivable?) it must have some scope and position in time and space. The problem is, whenever we try to examine the nature of sense-data, experience, impressions, we end up examining a person’s brain or some other loci within the body. We are invariably examining the perceiver in search of the perceived, as if they were one and the same, or one was inside the other.

Al those things you listed are the activities of the human organism. The organism regulates its activities, but it is not a "single entity" if by that you mean there is some overarching central program. You make if sound as if there is a super-organism over and above the organism, a super-organism that controls the organism

I just said it regulates itself. I’m not sure how that implies two organisms. How do I make it sound as if there is?

I can't be. Not under those conditions you just specified.

Now do you want to discuss the actual conditions which prevail in the real world? Or continue to make up whatever shit comes into your head and then say "hey, if this bullshit I've just 'reckoned' is true than some other bullshit I also reckon must be true too" and pretend that's serious thought?

Go for it.

Do you think we stop seeing when we sleep? That we close our eyes and find darkness in order to sleep suggests we might not. The whole time we are staring at the back of our eyelids. Perhaps dreaming serves to distract us from our senses.

The control the human body has over itself is near total. Every action, weather it’s the heartbeat, the creation and secretion of hormones, the production of white blood cells, hair growth, breathing, talking, eating, walking, sexual arousal, digestion, is controlled and regulated and caused by a single entity: the human organism. Under these conditions, how can the will be unfree? What else in the universe controls the will?

Thus we fracture it into mind/body, involuntary/voluntary, conscious/unconscious, and posit ourselves in one and not the other. This, here, is the fundamental delusion.

It organizes the affairs of whomever captures it, capitalist or otherwise. All that changes from one ideology to the next is the class of beneficiaries and the extent of its exploitation.

The bulk of GDP is produced by business because government doesn’t produce anything. Its only means of subsistence is the exploitation of its own people. But we should remember that government, too, is an employer par excellence. Over 15% of the American workforce are involved in military, public, and national service at the local, state, and federal levels. That’s to say nothing about those employed in its orbit, like lawyers and contractors of various sorts.

I’m afraid the industrial scale of this exploitation goes largely unnoticed.

I do think the state is inextricably bound to the economy, much to my dismay. It intervenes in trade on account of its preferred beneficiaries and plunders from its subjects their property, their labor, and the fruits of it.

So if we, like Marx and Engels, are to distinguish people by class, between oppressor and oppressed, it seems to me the proper distinction lies between the State, those who seek to capture the monopoly on violence, and the rest of us—workers, employers, sole proprietors, or anyone who is legally deprived of his efforts, and legally forced to labor for another’s benefit.

I think you’re dead on about how the individualism/collectivism debate obscures things. Ironically, individualism is a more inclusive form of collectivism. It considers every individual of any collective, which means the entire group. Collectivism as it has traditionally manifested subordinates the individual to group interests, which is always decided by a powerful group at the expense of the rest. The myth of the “common weal” or the “common good” is used to smuggle this conflict past the customs. Perhaps this is an example of another magic spell, something to be enchanted by.

To be fair to you I do have a mild contempt for most statisms, whether it be socialist, conservative, liberal, or fascist. The only difference between them is who ought to benefit from State power, the rise of which increases in inverse proportion to social power. In my mind, until State power decreases social power will never increase, and I think that makes me more socialist than I care to admit out loud. Unfortunately I lack the brain wiring required to accept any kind of collectivism.

I wonder if since N's time the idea of the "industrialist" and "commercial magnate" has gone under the sort of makeover required to form him into a being more interesting, that a worker might follow him as obediently as a soldier would his general. There are definitely obsequious and servile workers, but then again I'm not sure the stereotype of the industrialist has been altered too much since those days.

On the other hand, and despite the atrocities of the 20th century, State prestige has only grown in accordance with its power. Petitioning the state, taking part in its elections, and casting ballots is now the only means by which we can secure any right, which the state gets to confer at its whim and fancy. State power, then, becomes the means of salvation. That's why I would argue that the replacements for the old enchantments of religion and the divine right of kings is the State.

As you know, Nietzsche is no fan of socialism. I only consider what Nietzsche previously wrote of socialists and assume it in this aphorism. He mentions “socialists and state-idolaters” in the same book, but it goes further back, for instance, in Human All Too Human. Their desire for state power is unavoidable.

Maybe I’m wrong but my reading is that Nietzsche was psychoanalyzing the socialist, criticizing how he dehumanizes the employer. The employer is unknown and uninteresting. At the same time he is a cunning, blood-sucking dog of a man, while everything else about him—his name, shape, manner, reputation—no socialist cares about. In my mind this is dehumanization.

But, in an extra little slight upon the socialist, following a tyrant into tyranny isn’t as painful, and if “the nobility of birth showed in [the employer’s] eyes and gestures, there might not be any socialism of the masses.” Perhaps this is why, historically, socialists have followed tyrants and demagogues.

As for capitalism, there is no system that does not consider the management and segregation of capital. In that sense, all economic systems are invariably capitalist, socialist or otherwise, the only difference in being who controls it, private or the State. Had socialists named it something else, like the Monopolist system, we might well have been passed it by now.

I'm not sure how this fits into your thread, but if I have strayed too far, I apologize.

Great thread. Good read.

The divine right of kings was at least more consistent than the divine right of politicians. Given its premise and the prevailing beliefs, there was perhaps good reason for the passive obedience to a king’s will, whereas for the politicians and leaders of today there is none. In the absence of the divine right of kings some philosophers supplied the legitimacy of power with newer, but just as baseless myths, like the Social Contract or the right of some majority to determine who has authority over whom. In a sense people continue to hold in fact doctrines they have rejected in name.

So it is with Nietzsche’s socialist. He is unable to legitimize the business owner’s authority as he once did the leaders of a superior kind, those militant types who hitherto governed them with force and subjection. The act of submitting voluntarily to someone who is neither superior in class or race was too foreign to him, I suppose, so the socialist runs, serf-like, to the politicians and the State.

I would say the magical forces do not manifest as economics and economy, but as politics and the State. The relationship between employee and employer rises from the Law of Necessity (in Nietzschean terms) whereas the relationship between man and state is one of unbridled superstition.

I think you guys are just mad at the guy because he exposed the extent of the propaganda you’ve been fed for years in one single segment. So you have to sift through one or two out of context texts for gossip. No matter; I’ll listen to the worst propagandist before I consider a peep from any busybody.

Sounds like hell, to me.

Oh sorry, “Centres for National Resilience”. It’s right next to the Ministry of Truth.

I agree with your general point. “Slipping back” is progress of a kind, after all. To where and to what we are progressing is never mentioned. I wager we could even progress too far, off a cliff, right back into those “primitive conditions” or something far worse.

Not sure what that means.

No, it’s the govament. Speaking of which, they just forced Americans to be prisoners in their own homes for over a year, wear masks etc, and all the 393 million guns in the nation did nothing to stop it. Australia’s Covid response was similar in strictness. What needs to happen before the guns come out? Death camps?

I’m pretty sure that if the government sent goons to an American’s house and threw them in a quarantine camp like they did to their own citizens in some Aussie states, there would be some violent standoffs. But the US has a Bill of Rights.

His measure is not whether it is from the past, but whether these conditions have become better or worse over time.

Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull‐​wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony.

All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress.

So isn’t that the past itself is bad, but that conditions were worse than now. If his conditions were to reverse he would have to say the past is worse according to his own measure.

Pinker says “We know that countries can slide back into these primitive conditions, and so we ignore the achievements of the Enlightenment at our peril.” So it’s not clear that these conditions need be consigned to the past, only to wherever the achievements of the enlightenment are gone, forgotten, or have never manifested. But it is clear he is not speaking about the past as such, only the barbarity that is often found there.

It isn’t me who is denying you your fundamental right to defend yourself.

They probably won’t invade with the US continuing to shoulder their defense burden. But should the US step aside, an unarmed populace will have to welcome their new overlords or hide in the outback.

Damned if I know why people believe in their guns more than they believe in Jesus.

Wait until someone invades Australia. Boomerangs won’t accomplish much. A defenceless populace is a servile one.

Not only are they using Ukraine as a proxy in their war with Russia, but now a scapegoat.

New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.

U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials.

Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say

What if he does not want help?

You’re just playing word games. Dreamlng isn’t just something that is reported after waking. It’s something experienced. It’s the occurrence of visual, auditory, tactile sense data. It’s seeing, hearing, feeling.

It’s more the absence of sense data, in so far as sense data has any meaning. Lights, sounds, touch—what is given to sense—tend to wake us from sleep.

I would sell him the alcohol because otherwise he risks descending into withdrawal, which can be painful and dangerous depending on the severity of his addiction. I’ve seen people drink Lysol or Isopropyl just to avoid the symptoms.

In my mind the best thing would be to reason with him.

If the mind is the perceiver and the idea is the perceived, and the perceiver and perceived are separate entities, how can the mind ever have knowledge of the idea if the idea is forever separate from the mind?

It cannot.

If the perceiver cannot be found in either the mind or the brain, where exactly is the perceiver?

If human perception involves all of the components I have mentioned, the perciever is invariably a human organism, nothing more nothing less. Brains, minds, and so on, cannot be shown to perceive, and so are not perceivers.

The perceiver and what is directly perceived by the perceiver must be one and the same

The perceiver and what is directly perceived by the perceiver must be one and the same

There is X, the mind, the brain, the little man and there is Y, sense data, representation, idea. X is the perceiver and Y is what is perceived.

If the mind, the brain, or the little man can perceive sense-data, representation, idea, both the perceiver and the perceived ought to be able to stand in direct relation to one another, where one perceives and the other is perceived.

But when we take a mind, a brain, or the homunculus and place it in direct relation to sense-data, representation, or idea, perception cannot be said to be occurring by any single measure. At best we have a pile of decomposing organic material, and, well, nothing else.

What I wanted to do with this thought experiment was to take the idea of a perceiver as postulated by an indirect realist, and add to it the necessary components involved in perception, so that we can finally say "Yes, X is perceiving". If it is unable to perceive, it is not a perceiver.

A brain, for example, for instance in a jar, cannot be said to be perceiving. A brain needs vast quantities of blood, and therefor requires a circulatory system, so we add it. Still, all we have is a pile of decomposing organic material. Brains need oxygen, so we add lungs. It needs energy, so we add a digestive system, a liver, kidneys. Still no perception; still just a pile of decomposing organic material. We add the spine and skeleton so at least it isn't all just lying on the floor. We add neurons, visual, olfactory and auditory organs, but it's all just hanging there as if from a hat rack. So we add a skull, muscles, tendons, and so on. At this point he might be able to perceive, but all of it would be excruciating and our perceiver would be a poor soul indeed. So we add skin, eyelids, ears, and so on. Anyways, you catch the drift.

The point is, perceivers have most if not all of the above. Therefor perceivers are not brains, minds, or homunculi.

I'm not sure social constructs are a good way to think these issues, personally, because there are members of the society that had little to no input on how they ought to be categorized. Social constructs suggest a consensus and a collaboration, and I doubt such a thing has occurred.

One can understand the self-identification with a race, though, especially in America, where these distinctions have been pounded into our heads our whole lives, even after the unspooling of the human genome has discredited them. For many it was a matter of life and death. But nowadays it's just de rigueur.

It is a fact that people identify themselves and others with this nomenclature, and no one is saying otherwise. I’m only saying people ought not to. Race is not only the root word of racism, it is the conceptual and logical grounds for it. This isn't really novel or radical thinking, either, according to a brief look.

Stereotyping and prejudice begin from social categorization—the natural cognitive process by which we place individuals into social groups.

Principles of Social Psychology 1st International Edition

There have been a number of studies, all showing that the mere perception of belonging to two distinct groups—that is, social categorization per se—is sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination favoring the in-group. In other words, the mere awareness of the presence of an out-group is sufficient to provoke intergroup competitive or discriminatory responses on the part of the in-group.

An integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict

Therefore, ridding ourselves of these concepts is necessary, and relatively simple.

Previous studies have established that people encode the race of each individual they encounter, and do so via computational processes that appear to be both automatic and mandatory. If true, this conclusion would be important, because categorizing others by their race is a precondition for treating them differently according to race. Here we report experiments, using unobtrusive measures, showing that categorizing individuals by race is not inevitable, and supporting an alternative hypothesis: that encoding by race is instead a reversible byproduct of cognitive machinery that evolved to detect coalitional alliances. The results show that subjects encode coalitional affiliations as a normal part of person representation. More importantly, when cues of coalitional affiliation no longer track or correspond to race, subjects markedly reduce the extent to which they categorize others by race, and indeed may cease doing so entirely. Despite a lifetime's experience of race as a predictor of social alliance, less than 4 min of exposure to an alternate social world was enough to deflate the tendency to categorize by race. These results suggest that racism may be a volatile and eradicable construct that persists only so long as it is actively maintained through being linked to parallel systems of social alliance.

Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization | JSTOR

None of this entails that we need to ignore racism, its history, and the atrocities committed in its name.