The men in the "ally" group are far from embarrassing. They are secure enough in themselves to let women have authority in this context. If the women say they want to speak about something, they let them, without getting angry that they aren't the voice or authority of the moment. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is what I was talking about in my last post, about how the social justice movement is just about increasing one's status. Expounding the virtuous nature of feminist men looks like another attempt to garner status when it comes from a feminist.

Micro-aggressions remind me of sprites and goblins. Sure, they are sort of there, but, yeah, it's perfect for a conspiratorial outlook on the world. I wouldn't say that the world can't be improved, but I don't trust the radically outraged to accomplish much. In fact, I suspect they take a dark pleasure in this outrage and depend on the situation that installs them in their heroic role — Hoo

On the button. I add that the frequent appeals to "subconscious" biases and behaviors is rather convenient, rhetorically speaking.

Much of what humans do - the majority, in fact - consists of a game where they seek social status while pretending to do other things. The "social justice" movement is nothing more than this; advertise to everyone else that you have the right opinions in order to increase your status.

I would gladly do Word and Object. I have not read it, but I have a passing acquaintance with Quine that ought to be deeper.

Frege's On Sense and Reference would be good. I'd also be interested in anything else in a similar vein.

You seem to be wavering between "abandoning [the traditional philosophical method] as purveyor/seeker of universal truth" and "becoming conscious of it [traditional philosophy]."

Do you want to "abandon" the pursuit of truth, or just "become conscious" of it? You seem to be running a motte-and-bailey argument here.

We can also abandon (along these lines) the very notion of "one truth for all."

..."Radical pragmatism" is itself just something someone might try (put in their toolbox). — Hoo

Well, then I don't see any need to adopt it. Suit yourself.

EDIT: although I have to ask - what's so radical about adding another tool to your toolbox?

If the utility of your pragmatism is not universal, then there is a limit on how radical your pragmatism can be.

We should certainly be self-questioning about our motives for doing things. And one can always ask what good it is to be radically pragmatic...

I have certainly seen this process in action, but I remark that the final result of the identification-with-truth need not be bleak as the OP seems to imply. Perhaps our Platonic hero may become older, wiser, more cynical, and more willing to compromise and choose his battles. But none of this necessitates a complete abandonment of truth for its own sake.

One gives ground to pragmatism, but only for practical reasons. O:)

I'd define it at its most basic with a core lack of sympathy for basic, foundational liberal impulses among a tech-savvy and disenfranchised youth. — The Great Whatever

Right on the button, here. The alt-right's rejection of political liberalism is so radical that most progressives fail to understand the movement fully; it is simply outside of their horizon of thought.

What we can do is demonstrate a test of a purported mathematical fact, that almost everybody will agree is a valid test, and that it confirms or denies the purported fact. That would satisfy most people's definition of 'testable'. — andrewk

I drop an apple into an empty barrel. I then drop another apple into that same barrel. If you look into the barrel immediately afterward, you will see two apples, which, I gather, would confirm that 1+1=2.

I wait a month and then looked into the same barrel. Both apples have rotted away. There are zero apples there. 1+1 is not 0, so we say that two apples have been subtracted in the meantime. But why did we decide to interpret the rotting away of the two apples as "subtraction?" Beforehand, I would have assumed that "subtraction" meant "taking apples out of the barrel." Presumably, we interpret it that way because, if we did not interpret it that way, then 1+1 would be 0, and we all know that that isn't true.

It's like asking why the person that won the lottery won the lottery (what are the odds!!?!). If the world were not at least fairly intelligible, we would be unable to survive — andrewk

Say I load a gun with a blank and fire it at you. You don't know that there's a blank in the gun, and believe that it is loaded with a real bullet. After it fires, you are unharmed. You would not be surprised that you're not making the observation, "I am dead." You would, however, be surprised that you are making the observation, "I am alive."

I suppose it could be possible if you hold a view such that knowledge of the operations of a language is impossible without world-knowledge. — The Great Whatever

Wouldn't the popular view of meaning as use make this a given? You learn how to use a word by growing up around people who use it, so...

Democritus: "By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color: but in reality atoms and void." And pray tell, whence convention?

I would rather say that to be powerful or smart is to be singled out as the perpetrator of a horrible wrong. "How dare you have what I do not?"

"A cause-creating drive is powerful within him [the anarchist]: someone must be to blame for his feeling vile. His 'righteous indignation' itself already does him good; every poor devil finds pleasure in scolding - i gives him a little of the intoxication of power. Even complaining and wailing can give life a charm for the sake of which one endures it: there is a small dose of revenge in every complaint. One reproaches those who are different for one's feeling vile... as if they had perpetrated an injustice or possessed an impermissible privilege."

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of The Idols

To introduce a dissenting voice here (although I'm not playing devil's advocate - this is my real opinion), the starkness of Zen Buddhism is part of what appeals to me about it. My normal approach to such things is to get all theoretical, but Zen just slaps that out of my hands. Perhaps that's why I like it - I'm the sort of dopey person who responds only to a sound smack upside the head, and Zen delivers that, literally and figuratively.

Also, what Unenlightened said.

Not British, never been to the UK. However, this:

I'd like to suggest that precisely these attitudes are what fuel and keep hot the leave sentiment and the rise of nationalism. And let's be real, you're all being pretty repulsive right now (on many other things too, like claiming that older people shouldn't vote [nor,I guess, should any demographic that votes for the wrong policies]). When looking at statements like these, a leaver can genuinely ask, well, why shouldn't we despise you? You clearly hate us and have an active interest in taking away our political powers... — The Great Whatever

more or less sums up why there is such virulent populist anger in the United States and Europe right now. If you do something that makes people angry, and your response to their anger is to keep on doing the thing that's making them angry, there will eventually be an explosion, and said explosion will be aimed directly at you. You can't just keep doubling down on what you're doing in response to people getting pissed off at you and not expect a backlash!

Regardless of value judgments, the above implication holds for most arenas of human behavior. When I was a teenager, and I wanted to piss someone off, I would keep doing the same annoying thing over and over and over and over again, watching as the person in question went from mildly annoyed to irritated to enraged. This works on the scale of societies as well. Again, this is simply a fact. You piss people off with no regard to their reasons for being pissed off (besides "You're stupid and evil") and eventually, they're gonna come after you.

I guess I see crisis as requiring us to change something that was hitherto part of our essence, — csalisbury

Or maybe I iust had more insight into what I actually needed. — csalisbury

Perhaps the conflict between my down-going and my essence is a conflict within my essence, and one side will win. ;)

I wonder if it comes down to temperament. I suffer from periodic irruptions of depression which usually aren't triggered by anything in particular, so I've struggled with neat and crisp theories of joy and sorrow. They just don't reflect my experience. I'm drawn more toward those accounts that emphasize spiritual and emotional crises whereby ones values and coordinates are reconfigured - I suppose you could call these synchronic rather than diachronic shifts. Spinoza seems to put a damper on this because he's installed a rigid structure that only allow for simple x-causes-joy, y-causes-sorrow accounts where events plays out deterministically in time while everything else in the metastructure remains the same. — csalisbury

I'm not sure I can make a debate-style point here, as you're airing a perspective rather than an argument, but perhaps I can juxtapose my own perspective with yours here.

The idea that joy is an increase in power/perfection/reality and sorrow is a decrease in same is what resonates with me. I see this as a construction that can account for crises and turning points nicely - in fact, I see it as actually emphasizing the importance of such things. The turning point in a crisis, for me, would be the point at which my down-going comes into conflict with my "essence" (I vaguely suspect that one need not be an essentialist to make sense of this, hence the quotes). Either I win, or my down-going does. If I win, then joy results when I bounce back.

See, this Hippy talk is precisely what frustrates me about Spinoza.

What is mind? We all struggle with that.

So Spinoza thinks human mind is just the thoughts of God ??

That's nonsense.

We don't know what mind is, and this does not help us to find out.

It is just Hippy talk. It sounds beautiful and makes sense if you are smoking an opium pipe but only then. — YIOSTHEOY

Try reading him.

"The mind is God's idea of the body" blew me away because it sums up a very weird experience I once had while meditating and have never quite been able to express. And the fact that Spinoza managed to deduce it is mind-boggling. There have been other things, as well, such as his definitions of joy and sorrow, and his use of determinism as a psychological device with which to achieve mental calm.

Did he say anything about ethics that the Stoics did not? I suppose not, besides some minor technical details, but that's besides the point. Spinoza may be saying the same thing as the Stoics, but the way in which he says those things really brought it all home to me.

t's a matter of whether someone articulates stuff you've felt but couldn't quite put into words vs someone just saying something you already agree with (and perhaps bolstering with facts or arguments). — csalisbury

Yeah, that.

Fear and Trembling, and the Sickness Unto Death, are two of my favorites. TSZ is next on my list after my Spinoza studies. :)

Why? What attracts you to him? — Agustino

What attracts me is the fact that I not only agree with him, but feel as if I always have. You dig?

(also, thanks for the extensive list!)

The question, "Do you really need this?" strikes me as somewhat misleading. Strictly speaking, we don't "need" food that tastes good, and it might be more efficient and environmentally friendly for us all to eat tasteless, vitamin-rich gruel manufactured in government facilities. But most of us won't assent to that.

As says, nobody is obligated to provide sex to someone else. But could society be obligated? Suppose that someone opened a charity called "Hookers-4-Gimps" or something like that. All of the sex workers in the program would be ones that signed up willingly - and if you offered a decent amount of money, you'd certainly find people who would do it. These hookers provide tax-funded sex to disabled people free of charge. Is Hookers-4-Gimps a social obligation? Should they receive tax money?

How does this relate back to my comment? I didn't say that Hume's theory of perception - more specifically, The Copy Principle - is without shortcomings, but rather that it's more convincing than Plato's theory of Forms. I don't go as far as Hume in all things, and I think that Kant made some very good points in response to him.

In answer to your question, we have an inbuilt capacity which has such a function. But what do you think that this says about Plato's theory of Forms, if anything? Does it in some way that has escaped me imply that there are independent Forms of which objects in the real world are derived? I still think that he basically got it backwards. — Sapientia

Well, you'll note that I said I didn't take Plato's metaphysics in its entirety. The OP seemed to be trying to isolate vaguely "Aristotelian" and "Platonic" strains of the thought, rather than arguing between the metaphysical beliefs held by two historical figures.

My point is that, if we have some inborn capacity that allows us to derive ideas from impressions, then we've gotten into inborn capacities, a priori knowledge (at least in terms of "knowing-how"), and so on, which gives "Platonic" thinking a foothold of some sort. I think that the ultra-Humean viewpoint (which Hume himself may not have believed) that we are simply blank sheets of nothing until we have some experiences just doesn't cut it, either logically or empirically. This is the reason for my comments about the Platonic viewpoint "floating off into the aether" and the Aristotelian viewpoint "eating itself alive."

For the record, I was not under the impression that we were engaged in a fully contextualized debate yet - my thinking was that we were still in the "stage setting" phase of the discussion. That's why my comments were vague and somewhat tangential to your own. That being said, if you would like to narrow the scope and start in on the "What does it mean for us to have built-in faculties for shaping perceptions?" question, then I'd be happy to do that.

Yes, though I am tempted to say "to hell with the man on the street." Let the vulgar associate with themselves. — Thorongil

I often find myself thinking like this, although I wish I didn't. The mental image that comes up is someone sneering, "What, too good for this world, huh?" and the angry response that I want to give is, "Actually I am. What, are you insecure about something?" I feel very Schopenhauer-ish at times like that.

On the other hand, I think that, if I were to really become the wise old sage I want to one day be, I wouldn't be so spiteful toward the "man in the street," or feel all that separated from him.

I was responding more to the Humean point raised by Sap. We derive ideas from impressions - where do we learn how to do that?

Okay, okay, disclaimer: I don't really buy Plato's metaphysics, and I'm not sure if anyone, Plato included, ever did. However, the tone of the OP seemed to ask which direction respondents would lean in, and I do lean toward Plato.

That being said, if the "Platonic" viewpoint eventually floats off into the aether, then the Aristotelian viewpoint seems to eat itself alive, so to speak. This is Kant's whole schtick; how do you derive things from your senses without some means of deriving them given independently? There are answers to this argument, of course, but I'll stop there for now.

Mystical math-fellating woo-woo Plato-Spinoza Frankenstein Demon, here. Gimme your best shot. >:)

So, because of all the suffering in the world, anti-natalism is supposed to be obvious, right? But most people don't believe it, so they're either dishonest, delusional, or stupid. But there's no point in arguing with dishonest, delusional, and stupid people, so why bother advocating for anti-natalism? The brave, noble, kind, wise, Schopenhauer types should grasp it intuitively, so if you're capable of understanding anti-natalism, you already do so. And if you're not capable of understanding anti-natalism, you never will. So if nobody else will get it, then what's the point of making arguments for it?

Yes, but I wasn't really focusing on that example so much as turning it to thinking of conscience as a kind of self-coercion that is intricated in the very notion of self. — photographer

I sense irony, but I'll take it seriously because I don't see the point in continuing barbs. Can you explain this further, and its relation to your previous post? I didn't see anything in that post about conscience or self-coercion, but maybe I'm missing some background here.

With all due respect, the "taxation-as-coercion" thing is just a jumping-off point for discussing the fact that our society won't work unless people get forced to do things and forbidden from doing things, which casts some doubt on the whole idea of "minimizing coercion."

I suppose I should have picked a different example, since the knee-jerk reaction seems to have been to ignore the overarching point I've made over the last few posts (and described above) and instead recoil in horror because my example sounded vaguely non-Leftist, despite my repeated statement that I am not arguing against coercion or taxes. You can discuss the issue without becoming a mind-controlled zombie minion of the Koch brothers, I promise.

The question I'm interested in is this: given that coercion is part of what makes a bunch of humans hanging around into a society, how much sense does it make to have "minimizing coercion" as your big end-game?

I doubt that ownership was consciously invented, in the same way as a widget used to make other widgets in a factory. And what is "unconscious invention," if not tacit?

Also, I don't think "This is written into the fabric of society" implies "This is not coercive." If something coercive is written into the fabric of society, then coercion is written into the fabric of society.

If it makes things any easier, I am not arguing against taxation. Remember when I said that it's a matter of when to coerce, not whether?

Anyway...

Here it is right at the start; there is no 'your money' or your anything except by way of the social contract. We agree not to break down the fence round 'your' pumpkin patch, as long as you agree to pay 'your' taxes. — unenlightened

But ownership did not come into existence through someone suddenly inventing ownership and everyone else agreeing to it. The agreement is tacit. And taxation is not a universal constant of human societies.

That being said - we don't have to read your (and Bittercrank's) arguments as indicating the absence of coercion. You can easily take them to show that coercion is constitutive for human societies. We can only exist in human societies because we limit one another, and force one another to do things.

I disagree. Tigers don't deliberately keep me out of the jungle. A hungry one might want me to come in!

In that case, one is coerced into signing the contract, and anything resulting from the contract, including taxation, is also coerced behavior.