The previous pandemic and the response of governments, left and right, proves there is little difference between the two in terms of their statism and their quickness to abuse power. Communists, liberals, conservatives, progressives—all of them seized control of their economies, restricted movement with police force, engaged in censorship, and violated other fundamental rights when the going got tough. We find that all State systems tend about equally towards the same end of state slavery.

Of course “the left” stands a chance, and like all political careerists, they’ll leave us with the same mess they left the last time. As Paine said, “the trade of governing has always been a monopoly of the most ignorant and the most vicious of mankind”.

No. Just a thing that exists. It doesn't matter where it is. the network analysis is the same, it's based on data flows, not location. The estimation of hidden states by nodes inside a Markov Blanket excluding those states is just a mathematical expression. It's irrelevant where anything is in the physical world.

If it exists it has a position. We ought to be able to point to it.

I’m afraid I’m terrible at math. What would the Markov blanket be in biological terms?

Your claims treat experience as a thing that exists somewhere within the human body, with other things (“nodes”) between it and the tea cup. Yet the only two objects in your scenario are the person and the tea cup. This poses a problem for me that I cannot get past. No amount of neuroscience can force these objects into existence, put distance between them, and pretend other objects interfere in their interacting.

What the latter shows is that direct connection is necessary to experience a thing. It does not then follow that all things we experience are external world objects, nor that we experience all external world objects.

For your argument to hold it is necessary to show that the causes of our sensations match the objects we experience since the 'direct connection' you theorise is between an external world and a sensory receptor. But I do not experience 200,000 firing neurons when I lift my tea cup. I experience the lifting of my teacup. So the object of my experience is the teacup. You've yet to show that this teacup is also the thing in contact with my nerve endings.

The direct connection I theorize, and can observe, is the skin touching the tea cup, the hand grasping it, the arm lifting the hand, the light hitting the eye, and so on.

For me, the object we experience and the cause of our sensations is the same thing. This can be observed. So I think it is you who needs to show that there are in fact two different objects, because it isn’t immediately apparent that this is so.

I'm not asking about the TV. I'm asking about the rock. When I see a rock on a TV screen, am I seeing the rock directly?

You’re seeing everything in your periphery directly. A picture or video of a rock is a rock seen indirectly.

That doesn't make it direct. There are real, physical connections when a rock is seen in the reflection of a mirror, but I'm not seeing the rock directly. There are real, physical connections when a rock is seen on TV, but I'm not seeing the rock directly.

I wouldn’t say you’re seeing the rock directly.

I mean to say we can only experience that with which we are in direct connection, not that that which with we are in direct connection is that which we experience, if that makes any sense.

I don’t think I need to show it because it is observable. If someone is to experience a doorknob he must see it, touch it, turn it, etc.

That shows only that we contact the world directly. To show that we 'experience' the world directly, using that argument, you'd have to also show that what we call 'experience' is the sum total of all processes from the sensory receptors onward.

I’m not sure I understand. When I observe people interacting with the world, I assume they are experiencing it. Do you mean to say that only a part of them are experiencing?

I'm saying that it doesn't follow from "the painting is of a woman" that there is a direct connection between the painting and the woman, and similarly that it doesn't follow from "the experience is of an external world object" that there is a direct connection between the experience and the external world object.

It does follow that we experience the world directly and that there is a connection between oneself and the object for the same reasons I stated earlier. Real, physical connections, for instance light touching the eyes, hands touching the object etc. occur in these interactions.

You need to do more than just say "we experience external world objects" to make a case for direct realism. If I see a rock through a TV screen then I'm seeing a rock, but I'm seeing it indirectly. So it can be that we experience external world objects and that indirect realism is the case.

You’ll need to figure out a better argument because you’re still viewing the TV screen directly.

So if I see a rock in the next room through a TV screen and a camera feed then I am not seeing that rock indirectly? Then it's not entirely clear to me what you even mean by seeing something either directly or indirectly. Because that seems to me to be a prime example of seeing something indirectly.

My distinction between direct and indirect pertains to viewing the world. The TV screen, being in the world, is viewed directly, as is anything else in the periphery, like the TV stand. An indirect view would be representationalism, the assumption that we are viewing a representation of a TV.

Yes, and we paint people and write about history. But it doesn't then follow that there is a direct connection between the painting and the woman or the writing and the war. So it doesn't follow from us perceiving external world objects that there is a direct connection between perception and those external world objects. The grammar of how we describe the intensional object of perception says nothing about the (meta)physics of perception.

I don’t understand. The only direct connection I am speaking of is the viewing of the painting (along with everything else in the periphery), not that there is any connection between a painting of a woman and a woman. The connections and contacts are real, not figurative, for instance light hitting the eyes.

I'm saying what I said above: that experience is a mental phenomena, that there is no direct connection between mental phenomena and external world objects, and that the qualities of mental phenomena are not properties of external world objects.

To me, the phenomena of the brain are the biological movements of the brain. These are observable with certain scans, and therefor phenomena in the sense that they can be witnessed to occur, but I suspect more evasive means could provide more detail. I’m not sure what mental phenomena are, to be honest.

Then what do you think consciousness is? Some etherial entity that extends beyond the body and somehow "contains" or "touches" the external world object that is said to be the object of perception?

Adjectives describe or modify nouns. Though it is certainly unavoidable, I believe turning descriptions or modifications of nouns into nouns only confuses things when it comes to these matters, so I don’t think “consciousness” is the right term. Nonetheless, we can turn the word back into an adjective, see which noun it modifies, and remind ourselves what it is we are actually speaking about here.

This doesn't say anything of relevance. The painting is of a woman, not of paint, but the painting is still paint, not a woman. There's no "direct connection" between the paint and the woman. So even if the experience is of an external world object (and you still haven't explained what it even means for an external world object to be the object of perception) it doesn't then follow that there is a "direct connection" between the experience and the external world object.

Note that I'm not saying that we "experience an experience" or "perceive a perception" (anymore than I'd say that the painting is of paint); I'm saying that experience is a mental phenomena, that there is no direct connection between mental phenomena and external world objects, and that the qualities of mental phenomena are not properties of external world objects.

None of this entails the kind of red-herring grammar ("we experience an experience") that you're trying to argue against. After all, when I dream I don't dream about dreams; I dream about eating an apple - and it's all just mental phenomena with no direct connection to external world objects.

Do we not experience mental phenomena then? Because to me it still sounds like you’re saying that instead of a painting you are experiencing mental phenomena, which is an experience. If you’re not experiencing an experience, then how is it you are able to view, observe, see, feel, sense mental phenomena? Upon what do mental phenomena appear and to whom do they appear to?

I don’t know what it means “for an external world object to be the object of perception”. This is one of the issues with turning verbs into nouns, when actions performed by things become things themselves. We start to shift our focus to figments and lose all semblance of reality. All I know is we perceive external world objects. External world objects do not turn into objects of perception.

See my post here about glasses, microscopes, telescopes, mirrors, and camera feeds.

None of which we experience indirectly.

I don’t think we’re brains. So I don’t see how it is possible that an experience is in the head, and more, that we can experience such an experience. Our eyes point outwards, away from the brain, therefor what we see is beyond the brain.

The reason eyes, ears, and other senses point outwards is because that’s where the rest of the world is. We are conscious of the world, not of consciousness. We experience the world, not experience. We perceive the world, not perception. All evidence points to there being no such veil between the boundary of the self and the rest of the world. Where the body ends the rest of the world begins. There is nothing between them. The contact is direct.

They hired a big producer from ABC and aimed to show it all on prime time. It’s an obvious show trial and campaign ad for establishment candidates.

Never forget that their security executed an unarmed veteran. This sort of propaganda only justifies their evil.

I didn’t say that. Those are direct quotes of other people. When Hitler and Mussolini agree with you, it should elicit the desire to do the opposite.

We are fighting to impose a higher social justice. The others are fighting to maintain the privileges of caste and class. We are proletarian nations that rise up against the plutocrats.

- Mussolini

It is already war history how the German Armies defeated the legions of capitalism and plutocracy. After forty-five days this campaign in the West was equally and emphatically terminated.

- Hitler

This combat between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world.

- HL Mencken

Sorry, but your "solutions" sound like pipe dreams.
What you're suggesting would all need to happen from the top down. It's clear that those at the top are not going to do anything that would in any way endanger their position of power.

The solutions, if we can call them that, would require despotism to enact and enforce, exploitation to fund, and the expansion of state power and bureaucracy to govern. We have ample historical evidence to know know how all that works out.

Fair enough.

Right, we can store information in books rather than in our brains. I’m not sure what that has to do with politics.

The state isn’t an organized society. The state is the organization of political power and exploitation within a society.

Where an action begins, that’s where it was determined, chosen, decided upon. If nothing else can be shown to begin an action, nothing else can be shown to determine it.

So long as the state grows freedom and liberty doesn’t. Our political sort in life will invariably be decided upon its whim and fancy.

What do you mean exactly by "directly interact" ?

We experience the outer world directly rather than indirectly, like through some subjective Cartesian theater. We don’t experience “consciousness” or “subjective experience”; we experience independent things. If we pick up a rock, for example, there is nothing between us and the rock, and therefor nothing prohibiting us from confirming its independence. It seems to me the idealist has yet to prove what this prohibition is.

His only crime was publishing information. Any detractor or hater or persecutor is such because the information was not to his liking.

Plutocrats, commies, you name it.

State intervention in the service of plutocrats.

Your solution: abolish or minimize state intervention; keep the plutocrats.

My solution: abolish or minimize plutocracy. Keep and strengthen democracy.

I don’t have solutions, mostly because I don’t claim a right to tell others how to live their lives. Though I would abolish those who claim such rights.

Monetary expansion, demand-side stimulus, supply-side contraction, the great resignation. There is too much printed money floating around, not enough things to buy with it. Most of it is caused by state intervention.

Very interesting. But with claims such as these I am always reminded of Moravec’s paradox: “it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility”.

I believe these sorts of ventures depend on a very limited and arguably wrong sense of sentience or consciousness, namely the computational theory of mind. So not much to worry about, in my opinion.

Idealism assumes a kind of theater, that instead of observing a material world we are observing our own minds. All experience of the world is indirect for idealism. But we can watch others directly interact with things, and so need not assume that this is untrue of ourselves.

We directly interact with the world. There is no veil or space between a man and the rest of the world, and therefor no place to project and observe the contents of our minds. So rather then shedding doubt on a material world, experience confirms it. We can directly witness the coming and going of people and confirm that the world is largely unaffected by it, and therefor is independent.

A sober analysis, Relativist. Respect.

Understandable. But someone who cares about free speech might forgo the authorities and take a different approach, for instance reasoning with the speaker.

In general I sympathize with that principle. Let's test it. Imagine a progressive professor who starts referring to all of her students as 'she.' Would you have a right to complain?

Yes. Free speech goes both ways. But one should never seek to censor her.

Any word affixed with the suffix “ness” is usually a descriptor of things and is not itself a thing—redness, consciousness, happiness. Nothing, though, is a noun, so it get’s weird when you add the suffix. It still means the state or quality of nothing, I guess.

That’s fair. But as far as I can tell charity and helping isn’t common to the domain of socialism. It’s more about economics.

A rather misanthropic, defeatist viewpoint imo.
You can surrender to the dictates of the oligarchs if you want to. Meantime, we socialists will try to save you from your despondent hellish vision of ‘real life.’

Many of us do not want your help. A moral busybody is never a welcome addition to politics, and one who believes he can solve the world’s problems through political tinkering and is mad.

I made the allusion to the book The Captive Mind by Cezlaw Milosz, which described the intellectual cowardice of writers and artists in communist Poland. There are parallels worth noting.

Someone is sour that others are talking about things he doesn’t like.

It’s amazing how a simple question can strike such reticence and confusion. They likely understand that an answer that runs afoul of certain ideologies could end in forms of ostracism or even assault. It’s the captive mind.

Show us on the doll where the capitalist touched you.

If the cells are a part of me, and if sound affects the cells, and if speech is sound, then speech affects me.

Hah, nice.



Censors throughout history have pretended words have the sorts of causal effects you pretend they do, and used it as justification to murder and maim. It’s no surprise you are of that ilk.



If I was a lawyer I wouldn’t show my face, especially with any sort of pride.

So? According to your account of causation as explained above, I pulled the trigger, the gun fired the bullet, and the bullet killed the target.

If I didn't cause the window to break in the previous example then I didn't cause the target to die in this example. But if I did cause the target to die in this example then I did cause the window to break in the previous example.

Well yeah, a bullet tears through flesh, ceasing bodily function, which kills the target. So you’re right.

I don't consciously control the actions of the hair cells in my ear. Their actions are determined by the sound waves that reach them.

The cells transduce the waves to nerve impulses. The cells are a part of you. So you transduce the waves to nerve impulses. Consciously or not, you do it.

Right, so I'm not causally responsible for breaking the window when I kick a ball into it. The extent of the causal power of my kick is the ball moving; anything that happens after that is the responsibility of the ball.

The ball broke the window. You kicked the ball. Sure.

Why does that matter? It's the same principle whether the material is organic or metal.

It was designed for someone to pull the trigger and set off the mechanisms which ultimately shoots the bullet.

Neither are the hair cells in my ear. I don't know what you're trying to argue here.

The cells in your ear are a part of you and I’m pretty sure you’re conscious.

So? The sound waves cause the hair cells to move which cause the nerve impulses to fire.

The movement of hair cells. That’s the extent of the causal power of words.

The irony here is that your account of causation would entail that it is guns, not people, which are responsible for murder because it is the internal mechanics of the gun that cause the bullet to fire, not me pulling my finger on the trigger, and that the gun wouldn't fire if something inside it was broken.

Biology isn’t a machine or built like a gun, though. Guns aren’t conscious or able to control their actions.