It seems to apply to any concept denoting identity that is ideologically laden somehow: national identity, religious, political, racial, gender, class identity.

In such cases, people will sometimes put forward the charge of the No True Scotsman fallacy, when in fact what is going is an equivocation, given that terms for national, religious, political, racial, gender, class identity are typically complex, multilayered.

https://socialtextjournal.org/eleven-theses-on-civility/ — StreetlightX

3. Calls for civility seek to evade our calls for change. The accusation of incivility is a technique of depoliticization aimed at undoing collectivity. We do not need to debate civility; we need to clarify, expand, and intensify our demands.

This is where they're vulnerable, and wrong: they demand. You're not going to get anything much by demanding, and whatever you do get, will be given grudgingly and aspired to be taken away as soon as possible. You're also not going to get much from someone who you believe has done you wrong. They've done you wrong the first time around, so why on earth would they not do it a second time?!

You need to, very civilly, call your attorney and, probably, your own engineer. And the town engineer and building inspector. — T Clark

Fairy tales.

They do not respond. Maybe we were too civil.

And so you know: it's not actually possible to get a second opinion on your own. We tried that, but suddenly, they were all too busy. The moment they hear you want them for a second opinion, they don't want to have anything to do with you, or they insist that it's the other party who needs to provide such an analysis.

Obviously, if it was helpful, it wouldn't be overly confrontational. But again, notice that the issue is the confrontational abuse of the other side. When you don't have the vote, you don't have justice, you don't have freedom, and those that have it are complaining that YOU are uncivil, that is manipulative bullshit in action. The incivility, confrontation and abuse starts with the oppressive society, not with those who resist it. — unenlightened

I think though that there are situations where the one in the lesser position of power loses out, no matter what they do, regardless of whether they are civil or not. If one isn't civil, those in power will refuse one on account of not being civil ("The manner of your objection can nullify your grievance"). If one is civil, those in power will ignore one.

The point is that in talking to people who would oppose a progressive cause, let's say trans rights, it isn't helpful to be overly confrontational or abusive, as the goal is to incrementally build support not further disenfranchise the naysayers. — Tom Storm

I'm certain they don't feel disenfranchized. what a strange idea. Do you know (of) anyone who opposes a "progressive cause" who feels disenfranchized?

Sure, they'll often play the victim, but I think this is a strategy on their part, rather than feeling disenfranchized.

The point of civility as a duty is to act that way even when initially disinclined to do so. Far from being redundant, it only matters when you feel someone has broken that mutual social relation and you no longer feel inclined to treat them civilly as a consequence, then you fall back on your duty to do so despite such an initial disinclination. — Isaac

Then riddle me this:

Our new neighbors built a house right below us, on a slope, they cut deep into the slope. There was and still is a danger of a landslide that can destroy our house. Back when the excavation works were being done, we protested, but we were dismissed. When I pointed out to the engineer on site that digging into the slope like they intended to could cause our house to collapse, she said "Your safety is not my problem" and when I objected, she simply cut me short and said that she "isn't going to argue with me".

Now who here broke that mutual social relation? I'm sure that for the new neighbors and the engineer, it was us, because we were the ones interfering with their work.


And just so you know, the terrain is slowly sliding, it's evident.

Can anyone think of other cases where being a kind of thing at all is conflated with being a good example of that kind of thing? — Pfhorrest

Being a true Scotsman.

... Thoughts? — JohnLocke

Do you know any society where the above is not the case? European countries have always been profoundly classist.

Exposure to alternate accents leads to understanding and acceptance. — Banno

Not at all. You should come to Europe. You'd learn a whole new definition of what it means to be a redneck.

I don't know if accent is really that important. I've never seen it as particularly important myself. — Apollodorus

Depends on where you're from. Most countries in Europe have great dialectal diversity. Within one language, a particular dialect can be prestigious, while others considered less or more lowly. There's usually quite a stigma attached to the lowly ones.

Take a look here for German dialects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects
And this for general infor about dialects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect


I myself speak one dialect at home with my family, a supradialectal variant with the extended family, a variation of spoken standard Slovene in semi-formal situations, and standard Slovene in formal situations. But that's primarily because my native dialect is on the list of those least prestigious ones, and I don't want to be discriminated against. In contrast, someone whose native dialect is a prestigious one can make it through life without ever adapting and without ever speaking anything but it, even in school (except in written form).

The dogs bark, the caravan moves on…. — Wayfarer

Now the question is, who's who.

People generally don’t get close enough to one another and perhaps mix too quickly in large crowds and social groups for there to be any effectiveness of such chemical messages. — Benj96

There is also a cultural factor in this.

In Turkish culture, for example, it's normal for parents to yearn after the smell of their children, even their adult children. And they hug eachother and breathe in eachother's bodily smell. And by this, I don't mean perfume, soap, and such, but actual bodily smell.

Just some kid doing his impression of Ayn Rand. I don’t see much point in continuing. — Xtrix

Actually, I think people like him have it really good in life. So often, ignorance in fact is bliss.

Fossil fuels protect people from heat waves. — Kasperanza

Where?

Oh, wait, all those people in those hot African countries, India, and so on, they should just move elsewhere.

Why do you think this vagueness of the predicates such as a "heap" or a "hole" arise in language? — Shawn

They are indefinite quantifiers. They seem to arise because the level of precision they express suffices for certain purposes.

"Tom is so popular, he has a heap of Facebook friends! Wait, let me check and give you the exact number ... yes, he has 23,456 friends on Facebok!"



As for transforming a non-heap into a heap: this has got to depend on what is being counted and what the standards are as to what counts for "a lot" of said thing.

If you need four of your teeth repaired, then you have a heap of teeth to repair.
If you have four FB friends, then you do not have a heap of friends. By some people's standards, even a 100 FB friends isn't a lot.

That’s because you’re completely ignorant about this topic. If you continue to choose not to take 10 minutes to read about it, please stop trolling this thread. — Xtrix

Bu that's just it: If he read about it, it would be yet another thing he read. And as such, easily dismissable.

Climate is not weather, but it disrupts the weather. We’re seeing it happen before our eyes. The pattern is obvious, provided we can read a graph. — Xtrix

For most people, this is too abstract. It seems to me that unless people experience climate change directly, in a way that doesn't depend on trusting others, they can't really relate to it.

For example, those who have had a garden for at least 20 years, and, of course, crop farmers know climate change first hand. But how are city people supposed to relate to it?


We've had a considerable garden for 40+ years and we try to grow at least the seasonal vegetables for ourselves. Up until some 30 years ago, it was barely ever necessary to water the plants, there was enough and evenly distributed rain. Now, it's impossible to grow anything by relying solely on rain. Also, most of the rain now is torrential, making erosion a major problem, so we had to build terraces and frame all the allotments. In the past, torrential rain was so rare that it was possible to maintain a classical garden on steep terrain. We also need to use ground covers, we had to adapt in terms of choice of varieties, and so on.

The upshot is that in the modern age, polarising available narratives might be just too easy and so not really apply the pressure they used to. It's just too easy to find a group to join these days so little pressure to join one slightly outside of your comfort zone. so we need more real-life social groups rather than virtual ones as they are less flexible, and so more able to pull in the direction of social change. Can't see it happening though... — Isaac

With the popularization of right-wing politics, joining a group that isn't in line with the right-wing government might just be the right kind of pressure and might make people take such group membership seriously. But because the real-world consequences of such membership are likely going to be severe (e.g. losing your job), fewer people are likely to go through with it.

I think you're discounting the psychological effects that very visible movements have. — Echarmion

Not if the government is right-wing. Recently in Slovenia, a right-wing government politician called the protesters "rabble" and another such politician called them "pigs".

I think of civility as akin to table manners. — tim wood

You think there's a civil way to talk to the person robbing or raping you?

And that if they remind you that you ought to be civil to them, they are fully justified to do so, and you, as a proponent of civility, should oblige?

*sigh*

Oddly enough, if that attitude is prevalent enough, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Xtrix

Of course.
It seems to me, though, that an effective climate intervention would need to be more fundamental, one that only indirectly or as a consequence has to do with counteracting human-caused climate change.

From what I've seen, the usual liberal, democratic proposals in favor of ecology are politically correct in regard to what drives human consumption to begin with, they touch upon greed only superficially, if at all. That's why they can't possibly work. What would need to change is people's most fundamental beliefs about the meaning and value of life. And this cannot happen in a democratic society. The solution isn't in reducing consumption or using different products, rather, it's in changing the why for using things.

Follow this to the pdf. Worth the read. — tim wood

Oh? What makes you think I haven't read it?

If corporations knew they could never be held liable for it, then moving past the propaganda into collective reality might be attainable. — Cheshire

What do you mean? Of course corporations know they could never be held liable.

People who are opposed to fossil fuels, are against a cheap, reliable, and powerful source of energy. — Kasperanza

And when the fossil fuels run out?

I don't fear equivocation. — NOS4A2

No, you just use empty filler phrases.

It says more about you than it does about me.

Again, with all the words! Accomplishing things!

Then that's what you fear. Look, words made you do it!

however I'd like to know a few tidbits of wisdom you guys have gleaned out of the story. — theUnexaminedMind

It always struck me as patronizing.


Also:


https://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php/Closer_to_truth


So many people love to assume that they are out in the light, while others are still in the cave and yet have to come out, to finally see tha truth.

I shook hands with a man who shook hands with a man who knew Oscar Wilde. — Tom Storm

Awww. :hearts:

Philosophers have not shown, but surely some have said, that speech has power. But if it is not physical in nature, how can this “power” have physical consequences? This is action at a distance, or worse, magic and sorcery, and without a viable theory to explain how speech can manipulate matter that’s the kind of superstition it shall remain. — NOS4A2

Yet here you are, talking relying on the power of speech.

But then again, hot air lifts baloons!

But instead you attempt to demonstrate that it is something you know syllogistically. And so, it becomes something to be examined by reason not religion, — Fooloso4

Sure.
With the caveat, of course, that I can only asses the validity of religious arguments, not their soundness. The soundness of religious arguments is a grey area to me.

Athiest have been good to me and religious people too, l have also seen a fair amount of assholes from both sides likewise.

Let's stop debating generalizing atheists and religious people. — Wittgenstein

No, that's backwards.

Terms like "theist" and "atheist" are defined similarly as, say, geometric shapes, ie. "in advance". We learn that, for example, a square is "a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles)". That's how we recognize that the black and white fields on a chess board are squares.

One doesn't derive the meaning of the term "theist" based on generalizing what self-professed Tom Theist, Dick Theist, and Harry Theist have in common, but on an abstract definition that is independent of Tom, Dick, and Harry. And similar for "atheist", "religious", and so on.

Like in the Seinfeld example mentioned above:
But you're a cashier!

The unspoken part we have to infer is:
You're a cashier, which is a lowly job not deserving respect, therefore, you're in no position to reject a romantic relationship with me on account that you don't respect my stand-up comedy act.

Because they'd be excommunicated for speaking such blasphemy? — praxis

No, because I don't want trouble.

What books? If you're going to make claims like this you should be able to back them up.

Here's something from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

CHAPTER ONE

MAN'S CAPACITY FOR GOD

I. The Desire for God

27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.1

/.../

29 But this "intimate and vital bond of man to God" (GS 19 # 1) can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man.3 Such attitudes can have different causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious ignorance or indifference; the cares and riches of this world; the scandal of bad example on the part of believers; currents of thought hostile to religion; finally, that attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God out of fear and flee his call.4

30 "Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice."5 Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness. But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, "an upright heart", as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P9.HTM

Note: It says "man's capacity for God". You can infer from the above claims, as proselytizers do in their conversations with people, that "you have the capacity to know the truth, God" and that you need to rise above your biases (which are fueled by your revolt against evil in the world, the occasional indifference of the religious, etc.)

II. Ways of Coming to Know God

31 Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of "converging and convincing arguments", which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These "ways" of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.

32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.7

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8

33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. the soul, the "seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material",9 can have its origin only in God.

34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality "that everyone calls God".10

35 Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.(so) the proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PA.HTM

to live sustainably — Xtrix

I fear it's too late, that we're past the tipping point anyway.

Since the state has always been involved in the economy, there's little reason not to push for intervention in the case of energy. Government action, as you mentioned, requires public pressure -- and that can't happen in isolation. That has to happen with organization, when large groups of people come together and push for their programs. My entire objection is that this aspect gets under-emphasized when discussing climate change, or left out entirely. — Xtrix

Part of the ecological skepticism here is that these government interventions and incentives aren't effective. Laws are passed, funds are provided, projects are designed, but nothing really happens and the money somehow vanishes.


We have a referendum coming up. It's about a law proposed by the right-wing government which would allow building closer to bodies of water, thus further reducing areas along the bodies of water, those areas being vital for the filtration of water and the natural production of drinking water. The government is now painting the opposition as "You're against clean drinking water!" But as it is, people prefer right-wing politics.

We don't want the state to appear undemocratic now, do we? That would be so socialist. So we use fancy terms we don't mean.

If their arguments are vacuous then they would be invalid and or unsound no? — Janus

Or simply not to your liking, but possibly still valid and sound.
I've never seen the term "vacuous" in literature about logic. It sounds more like a Jane Austen word, a haughty derision.

I think the point about the ad hominem fallacy is that it consists in assuming that someone's arguments are invalid or unsound or vacuous without examining their actual arguments.

Sure.

What criteria should terminate Why? — Cheshire

The rotting of teeth, the passing of time. Ie. real circumstances, the real-life context of asking Why?
As in, "You ask Why?, while your teeth rot."

Pointing out to people, or to oneself, that life goes on, passes by, even as one is asking one's Why? should make a normal, conscientious person cease asking it, and focus on the task at hand.

I want to see how they actually hold up against life's hardships, regardless of whether they are theists, atheists, or whatever. I want to take them to Rhodes, to see how they jump there.
— baker

that there was some thinking on the horizon — Kenosha Kid

Unfortunately for theorists, this topic requires some real examples, to wit:

When I got home a friend asked if I'm religious now. I replied sincerely: fuck off.
— Christoffer

Not that I wished this upon you, but it would be more relevant for the OP topic to see your reaction and your attitude toward life if the accident would leave you permanently and severely disabled. If you could still be so cheerfully saying that life is meanigless. — baker

but, no, despite it being pointed out to you twice, you're still blocked by a need to be hostile, while complaining that the thread is blocked by the hostility of others.

Baffled, but I guess you never promised to make sense.

When in Rome!

Who said that? — praxis

I can't post their real names. But I'm thinking of several religious people who have advised me on religious choice in just this way, and it's also a theme I've found in some religious books. The idea that one should "look within, honestly, without bias, and then one will see religious/spiritual truth" is hardly revolutionary.