he homemaker does so much more than change diapers and feed children. — Athena

My son's life and career were disrupted by the pandemic, so he is going back to school to study for a new career. His girlfriend, on the other hand, is a very high-paid professional who works 70 hours a week. Since my son's schedule is much more flexible and open, he has taken over the "homemaker" job - cooking, cleaning, shopping, getting cars worked on and refrigerators repaired... She is so happy to have him in her life. He's made her life easier and better by making a home for her, for them. And that's without children. It doesn't hurt that he's a great cook.

Seems as you are having trouble following this. What it has to do with the Taliban is quite beyond my keen.

Again, your comments are frenetic. — Banno

You're just being you usual gadfly self, nipping and biting without adding much. Whether or not I agree with him, what @Apollodorus is saying is pretty clear.

Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.
The most beautiful among the beautiful ... — Gus Lamarch

While I was reading this, I thought of this:



Which you posted in the "Beautiful Things" thread a few months ago. I think I see a connection between the two. Am I wrong about that?

And can "emotions" be understood and explained? In fact, if we are debating "instinctive and/or biological emotions", they can be objectively detailed so that in a basic research, all their causes and effects can have a rational and logical conclusion. — Gus Lamarch

The sonics and harmonics of a piano, the anatomy and physiology of the ear, and the neurology and cognitive processing of the nervous system can be explained. Is that the same as the experience of music?

However, if we are discussing a philosophical concept of "emotion", which, as it is already a "concept in itself", includes metaphysics in itself, something that can be "experienced and expressed" being pre-mediated by an idealizing conception must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension, whether this understandness is subjective or not. — Gus Lamarch

I don't see any reason to believe that emotion is or must be "pre-mediated by an idealizing conception," or that it "must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension." That certainly is not the way I experience it.

How might the utility of an idea be measured? — Josh Alfred

In engineering, the utility of a particular action or actions to meet a particular goal is often determined in a feasibility study (FS). The steps in the process include the following:

• Describe existing conditions.
• Identify the problem/goal.
• Identify, describe, and specify several actions or groups of actions that may be able to achieve the goal.
• Evaluate the relative performance of the identified actions on the basis of standardized criteria.

A typical set of evaluation criteria might include the following:

• Difficulty of implementation
• Effectiveness in meeting goals
• Consistency with laws, regulations, and required permits
• Safety
• Cost

Not sure if that's the kind of thing you are talking about.

In that case, I'm assuming that the remainder are women. 34% of Federal District Court judges is not negligible. How many are there under the Taliban? — Apollodorus

I didn't say it was negligible, and saying we're better than the Taliban is damnation by very, very faint praise.

Metaphysical ideas are to be played with, and inspired by, not to be clung to as Absolute Truths. — Janus

I agree.

There are female police chiefs, judges, civil servants, and politicians (including presidents or vice-presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors). — Apollodorus

According to the web, 87% of police officers are men. As of 2017, 66% of US Federal District Court judges were men...

What is it about the world being an instantiation of the forms which must exist of necessity? — Ennui Elucidator

Although I think the Peter Principle may be a plausible explanation for the behaviors and performance of some people in hierarchical institutions, I don't think it is self-evident, or as you call it, "an instantiation of forms." It is a generalization from observations.

I don't think having to leave children in a daycare center and working like men to support the family is liberating women. — Athena

As I said in my previous post, I can only go based on the attitudes of the women I worked with and my female wife, neighbors, and friends.

You might notice how much the function of government has changed since women have filled the seats of government. — Athena

I'm not sure that the increase in women's role in politics has had the effect you're describing. I'm not even sure your description is accurate.

I am absolutely blown away that we are now talking about how women can not work unless someone cares for their children so the government needs to provide child care. — Athena

I'm sixty-nine years old. When I was a kid, my mother stayed home and my father worked as an engineer. My wife was a nurse and I was an engineer. With me working full time and her working half-time, we had just about the same way of life as my mother and father did. I'm not complaining, I feel very fortunate, but today, you need two people working just to maintain the standard of living that our parents had.

"liberating women" to work in the industries just like the communist did long before the US "liberated" women. — Athena

I've worked with and for a lot of women in my engineering career. It is such a drag to just work with men. That's not an insult to them. A mixed work place is so much more human. The women I worked with were mostly professionals - engineers and scientists. Very few of them would have liked to be full-time homemakers. At the same time, most of them, and many of the men, would have liked more flexibility to fit their work in with their home life. That's true, even though I worked for companies that were supportive and flexible with their workers.

women are subordinate to men, is that the reality is we all take orders from the police, courts, civil service, politicians, etc., and are subordinate to some authority or another. — Apollodorus

I think a feminist might say, with some justification, that the police, courts, civil service, politicians, etc. are all institutions controlled by men.

In any case, you don't often see men in Western society with an army of women under their command, or going out of their way to "exploit" and "suppress" women. — Apollodorus

Most discrimination against women is not men "going out of their way." The problem is that the institutions are set up to do it as a standard way of doing business.

Most children throughout history have spent their formative years under the tutelage of their mothers. The rapid cognitive, physical, emotional, and social development of children occurs in their cauldron. All systems are, in this sense, matriarchal. — NOS4A2

Good, important, point.

he Peter Principle, though often thought of as a mere hypothesis, rests not on empirical observation (whether such is employed to support the hypothesis or not), but simple self evident truths combined with the rules of thought as articulated from Aristotle to the present. — Ennui Elucidator

A quibble - This is not true. The Peter Principle was developed by Dr. Laurence Peter based on his empirical research.

Nothing pleases me — Olivier5

Ironically enough, I like it.

I'll just provide my usual commentary on your theories about consciousness and then leave you alone. CEMI is an unsupported, far-fetched theory of the origins of consciousness. As far as I can tell "coherence field theory" is just another name for your attempts to use the so-called "weirdness" of quantum mechanics to explain consciousness with no scientific basis. This is not science, it's pseudo-science.

What are the benefits and the problems with patriarchy and with matriarchy? — Athena

I'll just speak about patriarchy. It's a word that has a particular political meaning in our society. From the web:

Patriarchy - A system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

This is a quote from a paper I found on the web:

Patriarchy is the prime obstacle to women’s advancement and development. Despite differences in levels of domination the broad principles remain the same, i.e. men are in control.

This is my understanding of an oversimplified example of what "patriarchy" means in feminism. Here's my translation in to T Clark-speak - Women are not responsible for the society in which they live. Or more strongly, men are to blame. My problem with such statements is not so much they're wrong, although they are, it's that they are deeply disrespectful to women. And men too, for that matter, but that's not the issue I'm trying to deal with.

As I promised, here is my more complete response to your post.

As I noted before, I really enjoyed this post. It gave me a challenge to get off my butt and try to articulate my feelings about what poetry, and by extension, other art means. My position - poetry doesn’t mean anything beyond the experience of reading it or listening to it. It doesn’t point to anything else, which is my understanding of what meaning means. It is only about itself.

In the end, the only thing I can tell you about a poem is what it made me think, feel, see, hear, remember…Much analysis, explication, criticism of literature describes definitively what the written work means. If you read more than one analysis, you often find that it definitively means different things to different people, which defeats the purpose of the analysis.

That’s not quite right. I’ve read discussions of a poem that I found really helpful, including a particular one for lines in Frost’s “Wild Grapes.” To begin with:

Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.
One bunch of them, and there began to be
Bunches all round me growing in white birches,
The way they grew round Leif the Lucky's German;

Every time I read the poem, I wondered who Leif the Lucky’s German was. I knew that Leif the Lucky was Leif Erickson, who is supposed to have been the first European to discover the new world, which he called Vineland because of all the grapes. I searched the web and found an analysis that indicates the German refers to was Erickson’s foster father. I still am not sure what his foster father’s role was in the discovery. The analysis also includes explanations of several allusions to Greek mythology that were helpful. This information didn’t change how I experienced the poem dramatically, but the additional context added color, dimension, and satisfaction.

That analysis didn’t tell me what the poem meant. It wasn’t an explication. Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite “interpretations” - It’s a god-awful analysis of Frost’s “A Dust of Snow.”

There is one word that Frost uses that pervades a certain meaning throughout the rest of the poem: hemlock. We associate hemlock poison with death, specifically the Socrates’s proverbial willful death. In the Phaedo, Socrates claims philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom) is ultimately a preparation for death. It is this recognition of death that inspires the narrator to have a change of heart: once he realizes he is condemned to death, his day takes on a whole new meaning.

The connection between hemlock and death in this poem is one I’ve come across in several analyses. The problem, of course, is that the hemlock that killed Socrates is a completely different plant than the hemlock tree, which is a relative of the pine tree common in New England. I have one in my yard.

As for the analysis of “Assasi” you included in your post… I didn’t read it all, but some of it I liked. In particular the upfront questions were useful. They could help a reader pay attention more carefully to aspects of the poem the reviewer found important. Not to tell the reader how to experience the poem, but to guide her through it in a way that the reviewer found helpful personally. That’s what a good critic, or disk jockey, does - guides you through their experience of a piece. Gives you a taste of their taste, if you will. That can help a reader explore the poem. It gives some structure to the experience without telling them what it really means.

For example, from the analysis you linked to:

The opening stanza begins by introducing the first character, describing him in some detail: “The dwarf with his hands on backwards sat, slumped like a half-filled sack on tiny twisted legs from which sawdust might run,” That first phrase, “The dwarf” immediately makes the man seem less than human. We know that dwarfism is a medical condition that causes disability, but the word “dwarf” has many other, perhaps more immediate, associations. It might make us think of characters from Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. These are fictional, mythical characters, which makes the disabled beggar seem not fully human.

This is not what came to mind when I read that stanza at all. When I read it, I got an effective visual image of the dwarf, but all that baloney about Harry Potter left me really cold. If the writer had just noted that this was what came to his mind when he read it, that would be fine, but that’s not generally how it’s done, as I think the “hemlock” example shows.

I’ll end there. I don’t think I’ve made my point as clearly as I would have liked, but at least it’s a start.

I can't make any sense of the idea of a musical metaphysic. For me music evokes feelings; among them feelings of the sublime, feelings of awe, feelings of reverence but none of those feelings are inextricably linked to any particular metaphysical conjecture or belief as far as I can tell. The same goes for poetry and the visual arts, but then they, being more capable of representation, can present metaphysical ideas in ways that music cannot, except more vaguely by association with the church or whatnot. — Janus

This matches the thoughts I had when I read the OP. Not to get into an infinite loop, but is the claim that metaphysics is not applicable to music and other art a metaphysical statement.

Good poem. I really love it when my old threads are kept alive.

I won't argue with your personal experience with the Tao Te Ching. — Noble Dust

For what it's worth, when the "My Favorite Verses from the Tao Te Ching" discussion was active, some people made the same sorts of comments as you are about whether it is possible to really get what Lao Tzu was saying.

What are the benefits and the problems with patriarchy and with matriarchy? — Athena

I agree with @Apollodorus, it is difficult to have a fruitful discussion if you don't give us definitions to work with. "Patriarchy" and "matriarchy" mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Are our senses the only things that make the world real to us? — TiredThinker

I would guess the most important thing is memory.

This is a really good post about something I've been thinking about for a while. I need to put some thought into my response. I'll be back.

I only seek to publicly expose nonsense — 180 Proof

Yes. You are a bit less forgiving than I am. Not necessarily a bad thing.

Poetry is fated against it's own time because it's language. It will always fade because of it's stuff. — Noble Dust

My only real experience with poetry from a significantly foreign time and place is the Tao Te Ching. I've received much more from that than I ever have from all but a very few modern poets who write in English. The minute I first read it it grabbed me. Since then, I've read parts of at least 15 translations. Each helps me build up a more complete experience.

But it does mean that there's no "metaphysic" of poetry as such. — Noble Dust

I'll ask you the same question I asked @Gus Lamarch, do music and visual art have a metaphysics? If so, please explain.

I'm familiar with Machu Picchu, btw. — Noble Dust

I assumed you would be, but then you indicated you didn't. [joke]I thought maybe you were joking, but then I remembered you are from Ohio. [/joke]

Poetry uses words, which is really problematic because it uses the same vehicles we use in our every day conversations, like the one we're having here. So it's not correct to compare poetry to music, cave paintings, or whatever the fuck Machu Picchu is. If you can speak in music or painting right now, do so; and I'll concede the point. — Noble Dust

Disagree strongly. Poetry uses words, but is not like our other uses. I know that because I feel it. Poetry feels like music. It feels like visual art. It goes to the same place inside. Poetry doesn't mean anything the same way art and music don't mean anything. This is Machu Picchu:

All we can do is appropriate it to our way of reading what we think of as poetry. — Noble Dust

Can we receive the message sent to us by Mozart? By the cave painters in Lascaux? By the guys who built fucking Machu Picchu? By the guys who built this 5,000 years ago?

There are just so many factors, even just within the interpretation of current English poetry, for instance. — Noble Dust

The messages of art, including poetry, are not received by interpreting it. They are received by experiencing it.

When it comes to the population interested in politics, I do believe it's almost entirely hopeless. There's no longer anything rational about it, and no one is acting on good faith. There's no consistency, no principles -- it's pure tribalism. — Xtrix

I don't agree. I think the values of most Americans are pretty mainstream. Discord has been intentionally engineered to keep people with common needs and goals separated.

The division and discord you have in the US is between one set of working class plebs pitched against another set of working class plebs. What you don't have is a righteous division between those with power and those without. The fact that you under the absurd impression that this works along party lines - blaming 'Republicans', as though democrats are note complicit and in fact part of the same machine - makes you exactly one of the said working class plebs. — StreetlightX

Serious question - are things different in Australia?

This is not a scientifically accurate depiction.

this means everything that constitutes poetry (and any art form) is always in flux, which prevents any grandiose attempts by philosophy to pin the caterpillar under the glass. — Noble Dust

But I think pinning the caterpillar is the whole point of art. By which I mean that, when I read Lao Tzu, I am trying to receive the message he sent 2,500 years ago. A message intended to transmit an experience from his mind into mine.

Even when we read the Sufis, we're reading an interpretation (to say the least); we're not reading the poetry as it was written. We're looking at JPEG's of Mona Lisa.

None of this is to say that some metaphysic of Poetry doesn't exist, but if it does, it's at best apprehended by the poet at the time of writing and possibly at no other time, but probably not by readers, and certainly not by dilettante philosophers hundreds of years later. — Noble Dust

Sounds like you're saying art is impossible or useless. Given your history, I know that's not what you mean.

The liberal idea that we're all in this together tra-la-la happy-happy hold-hands simply does not hold. When some corporation is poisoning your water supply for profit, the idea that one must hold equal in discourse what is unequal in reality is to side with said poisoners. — StreetlightX

In the US at least, environmental protection enforced by government is part of the liberal agenda, resisted by business, often conservatives. The air and water in the US is dramatically cleaner than it was before 1970, when the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed. To be fair, they were passed with the support of Richard Nixon, a Republican.

Division and incivility is a public good. — StreetlightX

Perhaps in Australia, but not in general and not in the United States. The division and discord we see here, with the Trump presidency the most recent example, has been building for decades. It was engineered implemented by the Republican Party to advance their particular agenda. Governing takes a certain minimum level of civil discourse. There are a lot of people in the US not interested in governing.

TClark,

In the portion of my work that you cite, I make the Popper argument. Karl Popper rejected the notion of consensus in matters of science, insisting that a scientific postulate can only be based upon experimentation and is formulated with such particularity that it is subject to falsification. Like psychology, he would rank climatology as pseudoscience. — Neri

To start with, it would be really helpful if you would quote the text you're trying to discuss so we can all figure out what post and specific text you are referring to. You can do this by highlighting the text and pushing on the "quote" button that pops up. That will open a new response with the quoted text and a tag that links to the quoted post. That's what I've done with your text.

Here's what I wrote - "If you have to make a decision about a scientific issue where there is uncertainty, decide on the basis of the scientific consensus if there is one." Consensus is not about validating the truth, it's about picking our best understanding so we can answer the question "What do I do next." Sometimes you can't wait around for certainty. That's the goal - picking our best understanding so we can act. Climate change is a good example of a situation where that is the best approach.

Also - it's hard to take the idea that you, or I for that matter, know what Karl Popper might say about this situation seriously.

Personally, I believe that every essence that constitutes "aesthetic perception" and "art", is nothing more than the method that we - beings in a conscious existence - find to project unto this existence, something that is still not comprehended - emotions.

What is "beautiful" is only "beautiful" because such an object of worship projects into existence, the substance of the concept of aesthetics - like music, poetry and visual art, for example -. — Gus Lamarch

I think you and I are talking about something similar, but the language we use is too different for us to make a connection. And I don't think art - poetry, music, visual art - are about emotions in particular. At least not just emotions. I think they're about something that can't be explained or understood, only expressed and experienced.

Usually I retort 'Yeah well, a thing has structure and the vacuum does not have any structure, therefore the vacuum is not any thing (which is why the vacuum fluctuates, or "is unstable" as Frank Wilczek says.)' — 180 Proof

Anyway, I wasn't disagreeing with you. It's just that I've never found that the quantum vacuum ends any arguments or leads to any resolution in these types of questions.

"In the beginning" was (is?) vacuum fluctuations. — 180 Proof

Sure. Ok. I've used that answer when people ask how something can be created from nothing. They just say the quantum vacuum isn't nothing.

Perhaps the poem examples you provided would read as more poetic in Persian, but in English they're pretty prosy. So I'm not sure they're very good examples.

Poetry is not generally somewhere I go for metaphysics. It kind of misses the point. There are some philosophical poets I love, in particular Robert Frost. It feels like poetry uses a different part of my mind than prose does. It goes down different pathways. I think it's more like music or visual art than it is like prose.

Serious question - Do music and visual art "support an independent metaphysics?"

However, its "projections" - understand "projection" as what one wants to make explicit in an implicit way through poetic writing - do not allow the "substance" - understand "substance" as what even implicitly, does not become projectable because it is the fundamental basis of thought transformed into writing - of the concept itself to be perceived - external to individual interpretation — Gus Lamarch

I'm not sure exactly what this means, but I think you are getting at something basic about poetry (and music and visual art). It seems similar to how I describe them - I say they don't mean anything beyond the experience of reading, listening to, or looking at them. Does that ring a bell?

I think that poetry, or poesis, is a different way of viewing the world and, in many ways, is more about intuition than logic. It also is about language to capture images and it could be seen like painting In words. It does involve subjective expression more than reason, but it can touch and grasp higher, 'truths' as well. I think that some of the poets, including William Blake, and W B Yeats, stand out as such important thinkers in their own right. But, seeing their ideas as objective is questionable, but they did create worldviews, like many novelists and romantic philosophers. — Jack Cummins

Good post. Well expressed and I agree with you thoughts.