So then the question becomes what draws us to them. If all objects have matter & form, then there must be something in the composition of beautiful objects that draws us to them, that enables them to be more than they are as objects.

I think the Beautiful thrust itself at us, it thrust itself into the ways we understand our self (our taste) the many narratives which we tell our self. The relationship between matter and form becomes intense in the Beautiful, which opens up the possibility of new narratives, new ways of experiencing things.

The beauty of the film or the flower is in its aesthetic, its surface. This is what strikes us, what draws us to the flower, or to the film. So yes,

the fact that they both have a surface and so on does not make them beautiful.

but without that surface there would/could be no discussion of beauty.

The idea of quantity is basic in nature

Number sense in animals is the ability of creatures to represent and discriminate quantities of relative sizes by number sense. It has been observed in various species, from fish to primates.

Wikipedia

Perhaps language evolved out of our sense of sense of size, our ability to convert quantity into meaningful expression vs instinct. Language is largely reducible to computation, as translation programs demonstrate.

The question then becomes, what does the flower share with the film?

Both have a surface, an aesthetic, and both are made: by nature, by man (as if man is different, unnatural, mediated versus immediate, as if his cognition/mediation raises him above nature). Man learns from nature and tries to replicate the beauty he sees in it, without the beauty man finds in nature beauty itself is suspect (Hegel did not get this). Nature is Kant's ideal of purposeless purpose, it is unconsciously eloquent, it says more than it is.

Accenture, Microsoft team up on blockchain-based digital ID network in effort to reach the UN goal 2030 Sustainable Development Goal of providing legal identity for everyone on the planet. Here

Having a digital identity is a basic human right.

Imagine, if you will, a cosmic leaver; on one end, the concept of zero, and on the other, the concept of everything. As both are equally impossible, then the balance is assured; but in the middle, within the fulcrum, exists our reality. A perfect balance of yes and no.

I like the analogy, but I wonder why you think the nominal is balanced with the phenomenal or with a shade of difference, why being is balanced with seeming? I think they are connected by language, where language is thought of as a road that leads up and down the hill (to steal a very old thought), the road is the same up or down the hill and really all we have is the road, with its twists and turns sharp inclines and steep declines.

The thing is, whether it's music or buildings or poetry or people, is "beauty" one aspect of the whole, or is a summation of the whole? There are many pieces of music I love, but "beauty" isn't first in line. Sometimes it is power, or intricacy, or inspiration (as in, inspired instrumentation and melody, say). The Choral finish of Beethoven's 9th is beautiful, but as a summation of many aspects--melody, harmony, massing of voices, instrumentation, rhythm, text, etc.

I've been to the to of the Prudential Sky Bar to watch the lights go on over the city at dusk, fantastic views.

Great question BC, but you have not mentioned the interior space (or the between spaces, like the ice rink at Rockefeller Center ) of these buildings. The codes, the cost, and the interior requirements in sum the utility of the structure as a whole must be taken into account otherwise...Maybe you are looking for beauty in all the wrong places [to borrow a line]?

Perhaps the language of dignity is broader than the language of rights?

I think many of his works are like the portrait I posted, he has no regard for harmonic proportion, I think his works are an overt refutation of the harmony proportion thesis of beauty.

He is a hyperrealist who is able, by means of his technique, to convey an emotive sense into his works that I think is beautiful. His brush work, the way he forms figure using light, shadow and color conveys a sense of emotion and character that's almost erotic and perhaps impossible to achieve in any other medium such as photography or cinema, maybe in sculpture.

Yes we all live in some sort of structured society, and I think this is also true for the Native American tribes you reference, theirs is a tribal society. Perhaps there must be a privileged class in any type of society, these tribes also have their chiefs and priests.

I don't think the structure of society gets us that much closer in determining what is meant by a 'right'. However, in saying this I realize and I agree that rights must have an intersubjective characteristic to be rights, which adds to its determination (law, freedom, society). Talking about 'rights' as objects is fine, but it's an endless project.The determination of what is a 'right' must start from examples and by some critical method takes these examples, and from them, obtain the necessary and the sufficient conditions for the qualification of the concept of human rights.

Harmonic proportion

There is natural beauty and man made beauty, one of the things they share is that both are more than what they are, they transcend what they are as objects. I think that this transcendence manifest itself to us as insight, an illumination that opens up a 'space' in our imaginations revealing possibilities that did not exist prior to our experience of the work.

I don't think beauty is equivalent to loveliness, the ugly can be beautiful, take a look at some Lucien Freud's portraits. Beauty's power is more like an emotive/cognitive explosion, something that stops us in our tracks, transfixes us and can give us a new way of experiencing reality.

There is no referent of to the word "nothing" no relation between its expression and an entity in the real world to which it refers. "nothing"'s sense is its relations to other expressions in the language system. It has sense but no referent in real world.

The implication seems to be that exploitation accompanies city life. An injection of the wisdom of an untamed heart is the beginning of justice.

You are asserting that 'rights' arise because of blatant violations of human justice men inflict on men. I like that. So then rights and the state arise from the same source, a need for protection.

Ok, but the state also acts as the mediator for the exchange of values, laws that govern civil order, property rights and the rest. It set limits, and the state can even encourage or discourage (like by taxing) certain activities.

Our concept of right is bigger than just moral considerations, or what do you think?

Yes I think very young, pre-linguistic children come to understand that if they cry someone will typically come around to see what's up, when they hear the word 'no' while initially I don't think they really understand it, they soon pick up the fact that this sound means that they need to aware of something.

The connection between language and computation is interesting. Do you think language is reducible to computation (for the most part), I didn't think so, but Google translate seems to be a pretty good refutation of that position. Counting may be more important for survival from an evolutionary standpoint than communication . Language is thought by many to be a fairly recent achievement, estimated at about 60000 to 100,000 years old.

The little I recalled had to do with the Flood. I looked it up and read a little about Enkidu, 1st thought that came to mind is that this must be a Neanderthal that is being described. His 'natural' status was undone by a woman, 6 days of lovemaking and even the animals didn't want anything to do with him :s

Thinking of Parmenides

Universal human morality consists of the similarities between the value systems and moral codes of the world's major book religions and systems of moral philosophy. Natural human rights are specific moral claims to social equality based on a universal human need for fairness.

I agree with there are similarities, and I think there must be a way to fit it all together, but I don't know the way.

I think there must be certain aspects of humans that are species traits, that comprise what it means for a right to be a human right, and I think you have touched on one the key ingredients, the "need for fairness". I think that justice must be a key. Without rules there can be no freedom, freedom loses its meaning if there are no rules, as does any conception of human rights. To be free to act and imagine is to be human, it is our key species trait.

To "violate a right" is to commit a certain kind of transgression. But I think it's true that if black people, for instance, are not considered to be human, then they won't be beneficiaries of rights. So some expansion of the concept of humanity is part of the root of "human rights." Is that what you mean?

But other kinds of entities can have rights. Patients in a hospital have rights. A group of people can have to right to have a revolution. Right? :)

Do you suppose that because some did not consider blacks human that these people did not have the rights that we assign to all humans. Could the Nazis take away the rights of the Jews, in principal?

I am looking for the concept of right, a priori.

Later slater

If you can automatically do things just by thinking about it, then what is practice? What does that word mean to you?

No, we learn and we apply what we have learned, thoughts that make sense, [if I push that crank the dolly will appear] that can be realized in action.

I must have mixed up threads, but in any case, action and thought are not separable at this point in our lives. Perhaps the neonatal consciousness is separate from bodily control which it must learn, but that way of experiencing the world is lost with maturity. Actually, this supports my supposition that thought and action are inexorable, it took years for us to learn how to coordinate thinking and action and we all did it automatically, it is a natural biological function.

It is easy to imagine yourself doing something you never did before. It is much harder to actually do it. Are you disagreeing with this? If it weren't true, you'd be able to dribble and shoot a basketball just like Kyrie Irving just by watching him dribble and shoot, and then imagining yourself doing it just like that.

Conceivability does not equal probability, yet I can imaginatively put myself in Kyrie's place, feel his move to the basket, share his upset at a bad call, this sharing of experience is what life's all about.

Put me and Kyrie at the half-court marker and guarantee me a prize if I sink a basket before him, sure the odds are he will win, but it is conceivable and possible that I get a swish on my 1st toss.

You mean like the Grenfell Tower fire?

Thinking a little more about this. Perhaps not all thoughts end up in physical actions but rather are actions of thought....thoughts that are parts of our internal dialogue with our self, similarly, perhaps not all actions end up as part of our conscious awareness. In either case, I don't think they are separable.

You know you can think it, but can you do it? Imagining yourself doing something isn't the same as doing it. If it were then the actions take place simply by thinking about it. But that isn't the way it is. For you to manipulate anything out in the world requires more thought - thoughts about manipulating your body to cause the manipulation of other things - like pencils and balls. I could just think about moving the pencil, but that doesn't make the pencil move. Are you saying that you have the power of telekinesis?

You added this before I saw it (I think :D ) No, I thought we agreed that thought and action are inexorably enmeshed didn't we, now you want to bifurcate them?

All thinking involves action, and I think our actions are structured along the lines of how we think.

To say these are not the same may be true, but it also may be the case that it is false. It all comes out to which provides a better explanation pragmatically.

we might tell them that one of their myths explains the king's right to rule. I don't know if they would understand what we mean, though.

Theological justification of the divine right of kings, this is what Nietzsche's Genealogy concluded happened, priests gained power by explaining the rule of the kings to the masses, that their rights are gifts from a divine source.

Imagine a society where the only individual is the king. Nobody else has rights.

Plato points out this may not change anything. If a society with individual rights is pragmatically superior to a society where no one except the king has any rights, the king must establish rights or his society will not function very well if at all.

Then white men who have no money claim rights and that claim is upheld. Then black people claim rights. Then women do. Then handicapped people do. Then..

Are you talking about rights in the predicative sense of the word? Like that ball is red. Sure what you have itemized is the case but it does not speak to rights in their existential sense, what is essential to be human.

As frames it:

Morality is a human universal.

, perhaps, but that does not tell us what it is about morality that makes it human. It seems to be like saying morality exists, and yes most will agree, it is saying there must be a right and a wrong, but on the application of these terms many disagree. What is morality in-itself, I think 'rights' are here.

I think "human rights" is partly the product of a progression. But it some ways it goes back to the Roman conception of rights. Even a slave has a natural right to defy an evil government.

I agree that what we consider moral has changed over the course of time and that there are very important points which can be only gleamed from a genealogy/history, I suspect that what has not changed is what is critical (which is another good reason why the history is so important methodologically)

Rights can be thought of as tools, which are recognized or not by the societies where we find our self located.

The concept of a right is a tool for addressing wrongdoing

A tool that can do this is in itself pretty awesome, it enables societies to function based on mutually agreed upon principles or laws.

You'll explain the basis of rights according to your theory of morality.

Yes, the explanation seems to be based on moral theory, utilitarian, deontology, or whatever but our concepts of rights point towards (hope towards) an ontological descriptive basis. I agree that we are socially constructed, but in that construction the same shapes seem to fit together in similar ways regardless of location.

The anti-relativism (or maybe moral superiority?) that's amply displayed in the UN's list of rights suggests to me that a certain characterization(s) of what is meant to be human ought to be included in our understanding of what a right is.

Don't most (not all) companies sponsor insurance plans, with perhaps some contributions to the plan but typically very little contribution at the level being discussed here. The employee gets benefit of a group rate, which is significantly less than if they were to try to purchase it individually. That lady was full of crap, as was the idiot making the comments

K good. Language seems coordinated by its grammar in thought and in our acts of communication...how's that.

Are you saying that we can't have thought without action, I would probably agree with that, but action is not thought.

I answered your question. I think self awareness is the result of the inner dialogue we each have with ourselves. The grammar of language is as much a part of thought as it is in whatever is written or otherwise expressed.

Talking is different than writing. Moving your mouth and tongue isn't the same as moving your hands. There are people that can speak better than they write and vice versa.

Sorry I don't see how this follows from:

How is it that we can turn knowledge and awareness back on itself - of knowing that we know, and being aware of being aware?

and this

Language, we talk with our self a lot.

Thanks

How is it that we can turn knowledge and awareness back on itself - of knowing that we know, and being aware of being aware?

Language, we talk with our self a lot.

So, my point is that investing and buying goods from another country makes your efforts to help the poor the most because it does not create dependency on government funds and brings about education in terms of job skills and creates competition that further drives down cost (in the short term). China and India are countries that have displayed profound economic growth due to the above-mentioned conditions. The amount of poverty in China has dropped astoundingly due to neo-liberalism and open and free markets.

Adam Smith's invisible hand.

by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

No, I don't recall seeing it.

Dimitrios Gounaris was PM Greece in 1915 and again in 1921, he was charged with treason along with 5 other cabinet ministers all were found guilty (scapegoats for Greece's defeat)

They shot the six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. There were pools of water in the courtyard. There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard. It rained hard. All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut. One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water. The other five stood very quietly against the wall. Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees.

Hemingway's description takes the romance out of it.

He gave Kim Tump's "Art of the Deal"

Here

I once had a dog...Sidney, a terrier, a little yappy thing, that was dumber than shit but still loveable.

But most of us philosophers are perfectly sure we can drive to work in the morning, and cook dinner in the evening, and some of us don't even call it guessing. The future may be uncertain, but not so uncertain that I don't go shopping and fully expect the nice man at Walmart to accept my money.

Which guide would you rather have, a guide who knows the way to the Walmart or a guide who has a true opinion about its location?