You can't have an opinion about what consensus is. — Kenosha Kid

I'll just leave this rather trollish quip here for you to reflect on. And remember what I said about how certain Antifa identifying people react to those who challenge their opinions... that is to say they act like Nazis. Maybe you should look in the mirror.

Philosophical empiricism arose in response to the challenge presented by theoretical mathematical science to classical philosophy. — magritte

Of course this is among the most studied topics and questions in philosophy. I read a book (Modernity and Plato) as part of a philosophy reading group which places the blame on the history of philosophy generally. The problems begin with Stoic interpretations of Plato, Aristotle, and Academic philosophy.

You said "Empirical natural philosophy" which I interpreted to mean "empiricism". And someone obviously cares what I think since you and another person quoted me :wink:

Maybe we could turn the whole idea around and find the perfect answer, then work out what question must have been asked in order to elicit this answer, sort of like the quiz show Jeopardy.

I want to return to the OP. It suggests that systems of rights do not determine what is right or wrong. Rights therefore only function for legal purposes as principles for resolving disputes and interpretation of laws. Therefore if you tell someone "Don't do that, it's wrong!" they cannot defend their actions by replying "I have the right to do it!"

I would prefer to attack this line of reasoning by arguing against PSU, not by denying that everything has a cause but by denying that the cause must be greater than the effect. Then there is not necessarily God creating the universe, but a tiny blip, echoing louder and louder before finally fading away back into the nothingness from whence it came.

since I believe in the negative integers: …,−4,−3,−2,−1. In this case each "event" has a cause, namely its immediate predecessor, yet there is no first cause. — fishfry

I think you'd have to order them the other way. They arise in group theory as the additive inverse of the natural numbers.

If this is not sedition, then there's no such thing. — Wayfarer

Unfortunately these lawmakers will need to be removed from office according to a democratic process, which is ironic since they are pledging their support to an effort that undermines a different democratic process.

He says that everything that BEGINS to exist has a cause. — fishfry

Isn't the cause in this context the thing that brings something else into existence, or alternatively the reason for something happening? In other words, doesn't cause not merely entail existence but signify a beginning of existence? In which case something with no beginning cannot be caused.

God, as a proposed entity, is always defined as always existing. God is never defined as having a moment of birth. So I don't see where the conclusion is baked in other than perhaps in assumptions about what and which entities have beginnings -- other than God.

your argument is bunkum — Kenosha Kid

Your logic is that of right-wing nutjob shock jocks. — Kenosha Kid

Right-wing logic is demented. — Kenosha Kid

This is the exact verbal violence, meant to silence me, that I am pointing out is symptomatic of emerging fascism. You are exemplifying the exact difference between Antifa-scism and Antifascism that I am describing while at the same time denying that there is a difference not by making any kind of argument but by just blindly insisting on your own position. Wasn't it the Nazis who first perfected the art of "repeating the lie"? By your own actions in this thread you are literally making my point.

Any social movement can be destroyed from the inside by those who act against the interests of that movement. By refusing to reflect on yourself you are doing just that to your beloved antifascism. I wish to move America and every other country in the world toward an open, Democratic society. If you share that goal with me, great! But it is important that we think about our own actions and how they affect the trajectories of the social movements we participate in.

Science is a particular methodology of empiricist natural philosophy — Kenosha Kid

I think it is quite controversial to place science within empiricism. In particular, it gives too much credit to the rather weak arguments made by empiricists as to how whatever it is that we sense becomes organized into more complex ideas. To quote MacIntyre in After Virtue:

The empiricist concept of experience... was intended as a device to close the gap between seems and is, between appearance and reality. It was to close this gap by making every experiencing subject a closed realm; there is to be nothing beyond my experience for me to compare my experience with, so that the contrast between seems to me and is in fact can never be formulated. ...

By contrast, natural scientific concepts of observation and experiment were intended to enlarge the distance between seems and is. The lenses of the telescope and microscope are given priority over the lenses of the eye... Natural science teaches us to attend to some experiences rather than to others and only to those when they have been cast into the proper form for scientific attention.

I think for an abstract idea of Empiricism, such as it being only a particular kind of performance, modern science is the perfect poster child. But for the actual philosophy, which has the task of formulating something other than absolute relativism, it hasn't gotten anywhere. It persists not as a tool which has accomplished anything but purely as a means of disproving everything.

The favorite technique of Empiricism is arguing that some particular argument of point of view is nonsense. But maybe what is nonsense is empiricism itself, so that anything, when rendered properly in empiricist terms, simply reflects these shortcomings back at the empiricist.

I think it's pretty clear that assuming time and space are real objects which exist outside of consciousness inevitably leads to the conclusion that there is a God. It really would take a God to design such complex constructs and moreover impose dualistic metaphysics onto us by fiat.

Who knew that scrubbing Swastikas off walls was the same as scrawling Swastikas on walls? — Kenosha Kid

Insofar as someone is just doing nonviolent, legal acts like this, meant to clean up the community, he is not an Antifa-scist, but an Antifascist. The distinction is important for my argument.

Right-wing logic is demented. — Kenosha Kid

Good thing I'm not using right wing logic.

I read Capital in the 21st Century over the summer, and it was good. I would have totally read this with you if I'd known about this forum several months ago.

I think you're trivializing Tim's argument to some degree. For one thing, since Tim started off the discussion with Kant's definition, we can presume that this thread is about the Kantian idea of freedom. In which case we could treat my argument as the one that is off topic and just consider Kant as introducing specialized language, i.e. jargon.

So one is left to conclude that when Tim talks about freedom, he is not talking about the same thing as the rest of us. We can safely ignore what he has to say about, because he is not talking about freedom. — Banno

This assumes that two different definitions cannot later be shown to be logically equivalent. For example, a circle is "a locus of points equidistant from a center" and it is also a "curve of constant curvature in a plane".

AFIAK the typical translational convention is to use "same" for situations where Plato compares two things, while "identity" refers to a single object. But I think Plato is mistaken in distinguishing these two notions from each other. There is no such thing as identity as Plato conceives of it because it has no function.

cause-and-effect (CE) is a way of modeling the world and has nothing to do with the world itself although being a useful model. — tim wood

A useful model of the world is useful because it has something to do with the world.

That throws out your notion of a force. — tim wood

Does freedom really have a more secure metaphysical status than causality? Can we be free if we are unable to cause anything?

I don’t know what this refers to. — Brett

It was directed at me, and I deserve it. I'm actually starting to regret making this thread now. I'm definitely saying a lot of ridiculous things at this point.

you need to be fact-checking yourself — Judaka

I'm not an empiricist. Consequently, I don't need to base my arguments on facts.

Animals before the frikkin market.

You mean I am free if I am forced? — tim wood

Since a cause implies an effect and an effect implies a cause, the only way to make sense of them is to have something which simultaneously determines both, which I call "force". A statistical correlation is not evidence of a cause-effect relationship because it is missing the force.

Is God free? — tim wood

I don't know. If God is a self, then he must be free. But selves are not always present in consciousness.

All the evidence goes against you, who would argue that Michael Jordon made basketball less popular? Or that Michael Jackson made people had the effect of making people NOT want to dance like him? — Judaka

I think you're using a more sophisticated theory of consumption than me. I am treating goods like "watching basketball on TV" and "going out and playing basketball" as substitutes. You are arguing that they are complementary. Ultimately we are dealing with an empirical question of statistical economics. But if seeing all of these people doing sports and dancing on TV really makes us want to go do these things, why would 73% of Americans be overweight? Are we not watching enough television to become sufficiently inspired?

Skill comes from having to do things without the proper preparation. One has to make mistakes to start paying attention. No skill appears unless somebody went through the trouble of acquiring it. — Valentinus

I think I'm talking about more than just skills. I mean that the act of setting standards and training regimens has a real harm for us. We tend to think that if kids didn't go to school they'd just remain fantastically ignorant. But there is a problem with such comparisons, because the imposition of compulsory education displaces and permanently destroys previous cultural systems for raising and educating children. Yes, certainly, making the kids work in the mine or watch the animals might not be as helpful for them to get the high test scores, but it might do more to develop their character. Just joking about that last part. I mean, more specifically that it destroys aspects of traditional family and community culture.

People do not tend to get together and do things without a reason. Traditional culture creates these reasons. But the purpose of traditional culture is to help everyone in the community provide for each other. If we turn everything into competition and put it on the market, economies of scale will dominate and most of us will no long even have a reason to be excellent. We won't need culture anymore, and so we won't have any reason to get together and do things. Thus we won't make friends anymore and we will lead miserable lives while paradoxically drowning in material abundance.

Excellence, therefore, has its limit. Beyond this limit it turns around and devours itself.

You've raised a valid point here. To some degree we do always perceive some as better than others. I think the harm arises when that difference becomes a kind of separation that the individual feels they cannot overcome. I think the kind of perfection we see on TV and the Internet often strikes us as unobtainable, because it is something we can't reach. When that happens, it is easy to lose hope. Many people do lose hope in part because of this.

So I think that if we are going to have things like television, we also need compensatory institutions which help us to overcome these feelings and set more realistic goals so that we can stay motivated.

What animal stops to contemplate the meaning of the universe besides us? How do you come to this conclusion? — Judaka

This just proves we are defective, like E.O. Wilson's slave-making ants, doomed to an evolutionary dead end. Either we will evolve to no longer be able to think about these things or we will go extinct.

I think that people's opinions about fascism are less due to lack of having learned about it and more due to people having not thought about it. The following comes just from me thinking about it for a while as I read the wikipedia entry on fascism:

The essence of fascism found in being opposed to certain threats, which evoke strong emotions and are perceived to be so dangerous that conventional morality must be set aside. It leads to a permanent state of emergency in which the state imposes militaristic regimentation on the entire society.

Fascism implies a rigid social hierarchy. In conventional fascism, ethics are based on social roles which are set by higher moral authorities. These moral authorities include the Church, which must be allied with the state. The highest moral authority is the head of state, who is a person who speaks for all of the people of the nation. This means that if a person disagrees with the leader, they are by definition doing something wrong even if they are making a valid point. Authority is more important than truth.

Stalinism is a variant of fascism in which all of these relations exist, except that additionally the overt recognition of this hierarchical moral authority is also prohibited. Thus, the hierarchical leadership still functions identically to in fascism, but portray themselves as merely the servants of the people. The people are compelled to participate in unequal power relations even as they must publicly say that these relations are equal.

The modern Antifa movement in America is actually a Stalinist movement, which ironically implies that it is also fascist. It is philosophically motivated by a misreading of Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies in which any person who says something sexist, racist, etc. is immediately branded an enemy and immediately deserving of being deplatformed, ridiculed, and subject to violent attack. Thus, the Antifa-scist sees in this enemy an existential threat to society and it goes without saying that this perception is accompanied by very strong emotions. The Antifa-scist sets aside his conventional morality to fight against this enemy -- he verbally and physically attacks the enemy, he destroys the enemy's property and interferes with the enemy's business. He would not normally do these things, but he justifies his actions because of the danger he perceives. Fortunately, so far in America, the Antifa-scists have not been able to take power, and so the full reality of their vision has not been realized.

If I make this argument to an Antifa-scist, however, they will claim "Antifa only means antifascist, so anyone who is against fascism is antifa". This obviously conflates the opinion with the organized movement. But it also shows the essence of the Stalinist ideology. Antifa certainly has its organizers and groups who inform their members where to go to protest or riot and who to deplatform. But to point this out is to be against Antifa and therefore a fascist. Thus, it is prohibited to mention the hierarchical nature of Antifa's moral authority. So my argument is almost complete.

It remains to prove exactly how these Antifa-scists would behave if they did actually take power. Personally, I'd rather not find out.

I know nothing about philosophy of math but I'll take a shot at this.

All you establish with

logically consistent set of axioms from which one derives a mathematics is a valid derivation from Math — Pneumenon

is that it is possible for this object to be real. It exists in the sense that you can imagine it as a unity (a single object).

I'll set aside the obvious objection that each of these derived-from-math objects would imply there's more than one object, since you seem to think they are really just aspects of the single object, Math, as it appears in different ways.

By the way, some countries in the world don't say "Math" they say "Maths".

Some of these questions will have multiple answers, because they are context dependent. For instance, if I ask "What is color?" The answer could be a physical account of light striking the eyeballs or a Bob Ross answer about how to balance colors in a painting.

I will consume whatever is legal for me to consume without guilt. But I will advocate for changes to the economic system.

We are playing a game with each other. There are clear winners and losers. I won't compromise my position for the sake of ethical abstractions.

The last chapter of Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature sort of says what I am saying here. He seems to be saying we should conduct philosophical discussions without any methodology or criteria.

Participation is important for the reasons you state, but the quest for excellence seems to be something important to us, maybe essential. — Brett

There's a trade-off. Like, we need to be able to defend ourselves, but if we build too many weapons and research too much technology, we are more likely to invade other people. We are the monkeys and rather that pretending we won't launch the missiles, we shouldn't build missiles for monkeys in the first place.

Once fewer people die of disease than in war, we should ban the development of new technologies. We would be far past that point if not for World War II.

The master conservationist no longer spends an extended period of time admiring a single rose, not because he lost appreciation for it, simply because he knows his time is better spent protecting the garden so that others in the future may enjoy the gaze at the lone rose that perhaps first inspired him. — Outlander

I think there's a distinction to be made here. Doing something clever because you're lazy is OK. But building a fancy rose garden because you want to outdo your neighbor is not OK.

Well, according to what I am writing:

Freedom is a force which simultaneously determines both self-as-cause and self-as-effect

We can only feel free when we desire something, and upon experiencing emotion related to that desire, realize that our reasons for feeling this way are inadequate. The emotion that is felt falls back into an unexplained form, and consciousness is finally able to ask itself what it truly wants.

We continue to feel free as we plan out or new strategy either to desire something else or to go about getting our desired in a different way. But the feeling of freedom quickly breaks down after that and the thought process after that is indeterminate. Lots of things could happen, like getting frustrated, realizing you didn't really desire that end after all, satisfaction, simply getting distracted, or resignation.

But in that moment, we feel that we are causing whatever happens (self as cause), and that however it affects us is also in our control -- we have a predetermined notion of what will happen, not in the sense that we know exactly what will happen, but we've already made up our mind about how we will let it affect us (self as effect). Imagine a soldier summoning the courage to charge out of the trenches. He might die or might live, but he believes in that moment that he can accept whatever happens.

But isn't it also intuitively true that freedom involves the freedom from outside influences? From hunger, outside pressure, social norms? And can we not then go further and conclude that freedom also implies absence of motivations like fear or anger or any equally influential emotions? From there, it's only a small hop over to desires. — Echarmion

See! This is where Kant is sneaky. I'm not an expert, but I bet if I say that duties arising through the Categorical Imperative are outside influences, we would find that Kant insists this is all a principle of our reasoning and so is an inner influence of some type and not impinging on our freedom.

But actually maybe Kant's idea here is correct, or almost correct. Because I don't think any emotion can be understood without considering what consciousness thinks is good. In fact, our empathy for others doesn't depend very much on reading facial expressions but on predicting the motivations and intentions of others. Maybe if we don't do what is best we won't be free because we'll feel doubt, guilt, remorse, paranoia, etc.

Then what cannot exists has existence as the thing I'm describing.

The Egyptian trinity is more like we are spiritual beings having a human experience. One part dies with the body, one part goes on to be judged and may entire the good life or not, and always the third part returns to the source. — Athena

I think the ancient peoples had a better qualitative experience of death since they lived in closer-knit communities and there was just more death around them all the time. We modern people never even have to slaughter our own animals to get meat. If we live without being alienated form each other, we start to see the universality of being alive and of being human in relation to other forms of life much more clearly than a person can today in a big house surrounded by material objects that are nonliving.

The notion that "death is when the soul leaves the body never to return" is a phenomenological description (as much as anything else) since the ancients regarded the soul as the animating factor -- in other words the living creature has stopped moving, growing, etc. Treating the "soul" or "spirit" as having any actual existence requires an idealist or dualist worldview since such an object would have been observed by now if it had a material composition.

Even in an idealist framework, I think its safe to say that some aspects of consciousness end with life. Admitting something like eternal intellect or God, if this being has all knowledge, it cannot make a decision, and so would have no active or deliberative consciousness. Similarly, a spirit has no memory or senses, so cannot be aware of its own thoughts or sense anything in the world. Thus, a spirit has no passive or sensational consciousness. So whether or not we join with God when we die, we lose something precious.

This thread is too long.

Also this Zizek article didn't age well:

https://www.welt.de/kultur/article205630967/Slavoj-Zizek-My-Dream-of-Wuhan.html

The post is not about nothingness; I thought I made it clear it cannot exist. — Daniel

Can I try to describe what cannot exist or am I unable to even try?

Likely most of us are aware Kant held that acting on desire is acting subject to desire, and being subject-to meaning not free. The "freedom" in freedom from being not the same as in freedom to. Not much, then, of our time is spent in exercises of freedom. The rest his mix of morality and reason. — tim wood

I'm of the opinion that Kant's entire philosophy is built on defining certain things as precisely what they are not, and maybe freedom is one of the best examples of this. I mean, intuitively, there are few things more oppressive for our emotions and our feeling of being free than having some duty imposed on us, especially a duty which we do not also desire to do. Isn't that what you're trying to get at with your helmet example? You have a duty to wear the helmet all the time, but it's unbearable because it restricts your freedom, so you cheat sometimes and take it off. Or is it the case that because there's a law, you don't even have a duty anymore because you are acting under the threat of being punished?

There is no universe. Therefore it didn't need to be created. And when we think that we exist, we are not actually thinking, nor do we exist.

I don’t see how your “marketism” stands apart as its own thing — Pfhorrest

I see theories of rights as arising from preexisting rights as defined in law and jurisprudence that go back into history. Philosophical rights are attempts to find generalities or unifying principles to justify various existing legal rights. From this, the consequence of the principle either strikes the philosophical community as absurd, in which case the principle is revised or scrapped, or it is used as the basis of argument for changes to existing law. One example of this expansion is the notion of human rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The thing that groups these theories of rights together in my mind is how they arise and can be integrated meaningfully into debates on public policy. Because they are based on existing law and jurisprudence they are typically pertinent and meaningful in debate. The average person can recognize and even has basic notions of fairness based on rights. For instance, many people are stunned to find that, in many US states, they can lose their job for something like participating in a political rally. They exclaim "I thought I had the freedom of speech!"

Now, extreme ideologies which might use the term "rights" can't fit into this debate. If a libertarian starts screaming "taxation is theft!" or a Marxist describes labor in terms of theft of surplus value, they aren't so much as weighing in on policy options but calling for a radically different system than the one we have. Because their point of view is so different, and because they propose such huge changes to the system, there is no way for even the best academic, let alone the typical voter, to imagine how the world would be if these changes were made (spoiler: it would suck).

A debate about policy can't exist under such conditions because in order for a debate to actually be about the policy, the debaters must agree about many things in the status quo. Two libertarians wouldn't debate about whether a public option should be included in the healthcare bill, because they already agree that there shouldn't be a healthcare bill in the first place. Similarly, if Bernie Sanders was debating that libertarian, the reasons the libertarian provides wouldn't be specific to that public option's merits but rather deal with the more general question of whether Government should provide healthcare regulation at all. Thus the debate would never even reach the policy in question. The same is true for Marxists and the like. They will not debate the issue, but rather repeatedly call into question various prior principles.

Indeed, the reason why I must separate them from traditional conceptions of rights is that they cannot be analyzed according to the criterion of absurdity, because if judged according to conventional sentiments they immediately suggest many absurd things. They also reject the notion of steady improvement to existing institutions in favor of rebuilding institutions from scratch, meaning that some essential groups among existing experts in law, bureaucrats, managers, etc. are treated as useless by these theories. Thus if libertarians ever seized power anywhere (and actually went through with the policy changes their ideology demands) it would be a disaster, although admittedly not as bad as communism was, because libertarian dysfunction develops over time while communists create their dysfunction at the beginning.

The reason I lump all these theories together as marketism is because of these concerns. But it isn't really important to my argument, so grant your point. We can consider them functionally to be various rights theories, just not ones that generate meaningful public policy debates.

Also, both Kantian ethics and rights-based ethics are part of the same category of deontological ethics. — Pfhorrest

The Categorical Imperative, in its "universal law" formulation is extremely ambiguous as to what it really defines as Ethical as Kant envisioned it. Zizek has attacked it as being as much a principle of good as of evil since you could also formulate universal evil rules. MacIntyre argues that Kant has left something important out of this formulation, citing maxims like "Always persecute those who hold false religious beliefs". It is not what Kant meant. Kant's alternative formulation to treat people as ends rather than means is much stronger, but perhaps too strong. If I pay a person money to do something for me, I'm certainly using him as a means. All I can do according to Kant is to try to convince him to help me by outlining the merits of my business. In this sense, Kantian philosophy is essentially anarchistic.

This is why I follow the "veil of ignorance" approach which Rawls uses to resolve the problems with Kantian ethics. But that results in a form of maximin utilitarianism. Thus, for practical purposes related to American Politics, I would prefer to exclude Kant, and if he is included, treat him as a maximin utilitarian.

I see the role of these fringe ideologies as emerging from the confluence of two social factors.

1. The myth of the "Real American". It is arguably the basis of the Tea Party movement and the distinction between "working" and "not working" people which fueled Trumps populism (Source, Source). In fact, this myth has been invoked multiple times throughout the history of both America and Europe. The short-lived period of success of Fascist Vichy France, along with its reactionary politics, was based on a myth which has chilling parallels to what many Right-Wing Americans espouse today. The form of the myth is that the "real people of the nation" are the ones living outside of the cities, doing the real work and leading hard and pious lives. In contrast, those in the cities are the Jews, Socialists, Communists, Blacks, Foreigners, and their collaborators, who do not really serve any function are are living off of the surplus (Marxist term used ironically) that is produced by the real people. This ideology led to policies which went beyond what the Nazis demanded. Source.

2. The diminishing importance of social roles in our concept of ethics. The Ethics which underlies the "Real American" is essentially Aristotelian. Nichomachean Ethics argues that the best life a man can live (Au Zen, "living well") consists in him effectively performing all of his social roles. These roles were determined by the various social relations a person had, as a friend, a juror, a soldier, a member of a household, etc. I am not here suggesting that Aristotle would be a Republican if he were alive today. Instead, I simply wish to emphasize the parallel between this role based "Virtue" Ethics and the thinking of conservatives. This way of thinking has its greatest champion in the Church, with the Catholic Church being the most prominent in its intellectual contributions to this body of thought. However, it is not the Ethics of the Enlightenment and as such has been challenged and is in decline as the relevant Ethics of public policy today. Nevertheless, conservative society is still marked by these essentially Aristotelian attitudes, which proscribe roles for everyone based on identities which must be externally obvious and at the same time relatively unchanging in order for everyone to know everyone's role and therefore collectively enforce the dominant ethic. Evidence that conservatives do think this way is almost unnecessary -- such attitudes are written into the definition of conservatism (unfortunately I'm unable to provide actual evidence at this time).

As the power of the Church has declined over the years, so has the influence of this way of thinking. It contrasts especially with the ethics of the market, "Marketism" (Or Marxism?), in which value is not guaranteed and instead is only what others are willing to pay. Americans who engage in market competition, either as poor workers or as business owners therefore encounter this ideology. The proponents of this sort of Ethic often champion freedom in one form or another -- we can count among them Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, and Karl Marx to name a few.

Virtue ethics also contrast with Enlightenment theories like Utilitarianism and theories of rights. These are what are taught in school and the basis of modern jurisprudence as well as the tools which are used in public discourse on current events and public policy. I'm intentionally omitting Kantian ethics from this list since nobody knows what he is really arguing and attempts like that of Rawls essentially lead to similar policies as utilitarianism. There are so many authors writing in these traditions that I can hardly list them, and because I haven't researched it, I don't actually know which are the most relevant.

Thus, there are four Ethical theories in competition today: Virtue Ethics, Utilitarianism, Rights systems, and Marketism.

Now, it is possible to argue effectively and cogently for a complete right-wing agenda from the point of view of only Virtue Ethics. Because this Ethic does not presuppose a universal foundation, it is easily interpreted to support whatever traditional values already exists in the society, and it is difficult (or maybe impossible) to critique those values from within virtue ethics. If we divide the right-wing agenda into two parts, one being social conservatism and the other being laissez-faire economics, we find that Rights systems and Marketism conflict with the first and utilitarianism conflicts with the latter.

Right-Wing politics requires a coalition, so they will naturally bring in people believing in ideologies founded on one or more of these bases. But the pundits and spin doctors that wish to create messages that appeal to the entire base therefore have a problem: How to message in a way which appeals to people who ascribe to such starkly conflicting ideologies. The answer, of course, is to simply avoid any logical discussion at all. Instead, craft arguments based on all of the natural flaws in human psychology. Because 50% of the population has an IQ below 100, it turns out that this strategy works surprisingly well!

Messaging can't be based on virtue ethics simply because nobody learns virtue ethics anymore. But its influences still exist in conservative thinking in a half-formed and sophomoric way. Thus, Right-wingers are susceptible to messages that lead them toward thinking along the lines of how they are fulfilling their roles for society while others are not doing so or actively working to undermine America. This is already very conspiratorial, but it is not itself based on a flawed framework except insofar as Aristotle is flawed. But it doesn't draw out any real contradictions in Aristotle because it is an extremely abstract and weak understanding of the relevant ethics. Instead, it is just a form of nationalism which has the potential to erupt into populism and even Fascism. The sparks that bring about these eruptions are the conspiracy theories which right-wingers are unable to properly think through precisely because they are unaware of the nature of their own ethics.

Much of my thinking in this post was inspired by the book After Virtue by MacIntyre and the Psychological research of Jonathan Haidt.

or one, why would someone normally express "rage and hatred" for being rejected? That'd already be a sign of an unhealthy approach. — Echarmion

I agree.

For another, why would we then conclude the only possible reason people object to such an expression is because the person is "unwanted by women"? — Echarmion

Because people didn't object to this man's rage and hatred in this particular instance. In fact, they offered him support. Yes, I admit that considering the counterfactual in which he wasn't then approached by the girl requires a bit of imagination, so it doesn't qualify as more than speculation. I don't claim to make an empirical claim since I'm not an empiricist nor a scientist. But I am fairly sure that if he had simply voiced complaints at a girl he likes sleeping around nobody would have said anything nice to him.

The point of my essay is this: The substantive question about incels is what phenomena in our culture produces them. Sure, we can all get together and poke holes in incel ideology but doing so is at best a waste of time and at worst completely ignoring more substantive sociological questions. Indeed, the very act of pretending to entertain the notions of their ideology only for the sake of disassembling it not only risks accidentally legitimizing it but also fails to even search for the emotional component without which it could never make sense.

As to the definition of incel, etc. I think it is a very valid self-criticism to point out, as I have in response to your question, that I am not using incel as incels label themselves. But the nature of words like this is they are not purely assigned according to self-description. Trump, for example, does not call himself a fascist nor are we likely to accept a fascist's definition of what fascism is. So I see no reason to even bother reading incel ideology. We should decide what the incel is. To me, the word 'incel' is clearly a pejorative, regardless of whether some proudly call themselves that. In this sense I can think of synonyms for "gay" or "black" or "woman" that function similarly. And most of the other people in this thread also treat it as a pejorative since you so smugly mock the ideology and speculate on the fixations of incels not for the sake of helping them but to fantasize about how you are better than them.

Why white? Why male, even? Not saying that these adjectives don’t work here, they do, but why do people not call ‘incels’ those young females who never get laid? And whats do we call the young black males who don’t get any? Nobody cares... they are not called anything.

This points to a sense of white male entitlement being at the core of the incel psychology. People who lack this sense of entitlement are apparently not developing this particular form of mental illness. So an incel is a young white male who thinks he deserves some but ain’t getting any. — Olivier5

First, I should step back from that synopsis because I hadn't thought about that essay for at least 9 months. I wrote it up quickly without looking at my own essay and didn't think it through carefully. But What exactly is the thesis of my essay? I wrote it all in one go, because I was receiving therapy at the time and my therapist turned out to be a men's rights activist who showed me the movie The Red Pill and made me read Mark Manson articles. Although I am personally a leftist, I found myself feeling sympathy for right-wing activist types and started to see them as people to be pitied rather than creatures denigrated as less-than-human as most of my (former) Antifa friends did.

So to be honest, the subject of the essay isn't incels specifically but poor, right wing activists generally.

And who or what does the incel thinks he deserves? The cutest girls of course, the ones he wanks on on his cellphone. Here is the real tragedy, because there are thousands of girls out there not getting any either... and quite a few of them because they want the cutest boys too... If only these sexually ambitious boys and girls would lower their aim a little bit (considering that the cutest girls tend to go with the cutest boys and vice versa), they would easily find a mate. — Olivier5

This is a huge question. I think that having an attractive girlfriend is a facet of the notion of "being successful" and is part of a harmful set of expectations that these men have internalized. It is roughly analogous to body image issues that women face. I know that I've personally internalized this from a young age. I feel sorry for my father having to be with my mother who is so fat and ugly in her old age. I don't see how someone could honestly say they love someone who doesn't meet some minimum level of physical attractiveness. But such a thing can't simply be explained to me, since it results from my own childhood of emotional neglect and subsequent inability to form meaningful friendships or for that matter develop emotional control.

Finally, I should mention that I'm not an incel. In fact, I'm the opposite kind of person in a way. I can't make male friends but happen to be tall, intelligent, attractive, and have slept around with a lot of women in my life.

You're making an empirical claim. About how people use a term, what they associate with it and what their motivations are. — Echarmion

Can you provide evidence that I'm making an empirical claim?

But it's not a definition. You're not saying "I define incel as a looser". You're describing how other people supposedly see the issue and what causes these views. Those are claims for which you can - and should - supply evidence. — Echarmion

According to whom? You? I don't particularly care about your opinion. So I don't see why I should provide evidence for my claims to you.

I have looked through your essay. It doesn't discuss the actual usage of the word beyond a single example. And even in that single example your explanation of what's going on is highly questionable. — Echarmion

If you can't identify any problems with my explanation other than calling it "questionable" and giving vague commands to me to clarify or provide evidence, you aren't bringing anything to the discussion and so should not bother typing anything out.

It's really quite clear that your essay takes the worldview often expressed by incels as it's starting point, and really seems intended for their consumption. — Echarmion

If you really intend to finish a series of demands that I do this or do that to help you to understand with the assertion that my essay is written for incels I don't know what to say or how to help you.

You could point out to me where you justify your view. To me it seems like a naked claim, a premise that is taken as granted from the start. — Echarmion

1. If I justify my view, I simply offer another set of premises which are equally unjustified. You may refer to Aristotle's Prior Analytics for a discussion of the possibilities involved.

2. If you ask me to justify a definition, what form would the argument take such that the definition itself is justified? Ultimately, I can only point to usage, in which case I provide just such a justification immediately above the part of my post which you quoted. Furthermore I wrote an entire essay on the subject, which you are ignoring the existence of. At this point you are arguing in bad faith and doing nothing but harassing me. Honestly you should stop.

You pretty quickly claim that when we say "incel" we really mean "looser", but how do you arrive at that conclusion? — Echarmion

It's an analysis of merit. Basically, you could take two people with the same misogynistic attitudes and obsession with punani, but it is the one who is the critic or social outcast who we denigrate as an "incel" while the one who enters a predetermined "acceptable" social channel (soldier, corporate slave, or expatriate) gets a green ticket to be treated differently.

You know, it's ironic you ask me for reasoning when you didn't bother to look at my essay.