Does one build the compartments or does one merely fail to build the generalised coherence? — apokrisis

I don't know. Interesting questions though.

The tougher thing would be to be completely systematic in your thinking - to assimilate everything to a thought-through universal structure. — apokrisis

Yes, how do you achieve that systematic whole without having to resort to the compartmentalization of concepts or things?

So it is not that people have to construct a lack of coherent connections. They just get away with not having to live life according to a generally coherent philosophical position. — apokrisis

So, you think it's a matter of performative utility to resort to compartmentalizations of concepts or things?

My condolences, Tiff.

Aside from the charges that economics is a failed science, what can be said about the philosophical conception of 'rationality'. I don't think it's useful to dismiss the entire field of economics, as irrelevant or stupid. There seem to be some issues with delineating the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics here, at the very least.

The cat is out of the bag. I've been uncovered.

*hides*

Yes. Disidentification is a mystery of appreciating the non temporal if I'm reading correctly.

It is what it is.

Disidentify that!

Or as I like to say, whatever floats your boat.

Wait a sec... maybe you have something there! — 0 thru 9

Haha, I can see your point. But, I think I just moved on from thinking incessantly about depression and trying to disidentify with it. Instead, something else became the interest of my mind. Maybe this is the point of disidentification, and I got it all wrong?

I still feel depressed about some things; but, I don't ruminate over it as much though. So, win-win?

My point about compassion being an antidote to solipsism, is simply that the essence of compassion is 'feeling-with' - seeing yourself in others and others in yourself. — Wayfarer

I understand that much. I just was positing that it's possible to be a solipsist and be ethical under the guise of enlightened self-interest.

How could it not be? — Wayfarer

What about enlightened self-interest? Would that qualify as something that leads to the same conclusion, although via different means?

Just an update on the whole disidentification thing.

I stopped trying to disidentify with depression due to the nature of disidentification being that one is cognizant of X in order to disidentify with it. So, basically, I became obsessed with my depression and was trying to disidentify with it. Kind of got stuck in a loop.

Compassion is the antidote to solipsism. — Wayfarer

Is it?

I feel as though Wittgenstein was trying to dispell the egotism of solipsism. He remarks many times about the mystical aspect of being itself and ethics. A transcendental solipsist would be concerned with aesthetics and the ethical (which are one and the same according to Wittgenstein), due to their mystical nature.

I'd answer you, but I can't express the answer. :wink: :up: — Pattern-chaser

You win, good Sir.

I miss the community feel and the freedom to talk casually to others. Call me silly but I appreciate that human connection. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Yes, and people missed my birthday party in the shoutbox. How rude. More seriously, I think it's tilting at windmills at this point, so I digress.

Did @Pseudonym leave? He's now has a 'guest' status.

Seems like nobody cares or wouldn't mind.

So, Shoutbox on the front page, yes, no, maybe?

Thank you for asking Posty McPostface — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Yeah, no problem. :grimace:

There weren't that many fat people 60 years ago, so I guess the fat rat inspired over-eating. — Bitter Crank

:lol:

It was like designed to create mediocre students for higher education. — ssu

We do boast the most esteemed colleges in the world, so I wonder too how is that possible given such a dismal primary and secondary education system. Why is there such a discrepancy here in the States with regards to primary and secondary schools and universities?

I think they came closest to what you are looking for in education (perhaps). — ssu

Not quite. I'm advocating for more social conscious individuals, which as you mentioned tend to promote social cohesion, which I think it does. How to encourage people who care about the environment, politics, the drug war, and crime, should be topics worth pursuing and talking about in schools.

It's almost as if there was a stigma with doing that to some degree.

The little red school house isn't there to train people to vote for or against particular candidates, even if the school teachers find a particular candidate to be thoroughly loathsome. — Bitter Crank

No, but if one had values that they held dear, such as treating women fairly, which isn't too much to ask for in our modern day civilization, then he wouldn't have got elected.

Why is Trump a serious candidate in the US up for reelection (which I think he will be reelected), otherwise in Europe he would be dismissed as a fringe political entity?

Most children are reasonably well socialized with reasonably decent values. Alas, not all. — Bitter Crank

So, are we creating a better future for them with our current educational system in America? I wonder.

no

:razz: :up:

Then again, no one can be perfectly educated, and the ambition to become better educated is always a good thing for, well, typically, at least those individuals that are educated. — javra

Thanks!

I feel as though the discussion is devoid of an example. Let's take Trump's presidency and ongoing support as an example of the failure of the American education system. Would one agree with this?

With all that said. The claim that I'm creating a straw man here may be entirely justified on how educated you are.

Am I somewhat uneducated then?

Are you aware that there is homelessness in Europe? Slums? Drug addiction? Poverty? Crooked corporations? — Bitter Crank

They don't have opioid epidemics, their stance towards drugs is commendable, and they have less crime than the US. These are topics that most Americans going to or returning from college, are taught by news agencies instead of in school, where it should take place.

What countries would be like this? — ssu

Most West European and Scandinavian countries, in my mind.

Yet is this what the education system educates us? I think what you are talking about is more about the American attitudes towards work, career and values in general and perhaps about social cohesion. Things that I think aren't so much touched in the education systems anywhere. It's more about math, science, languages etc. in the education system. — ssu

So, why do we not instill values in the youth? Why aren't those all important topics 'touched' in the American education system or anywhere else, as you say?

Is it failing? It has failed, utterly and completely. Take a glace at public discourse, popular culture, politics, entertainment. The word that always comes to mind is misosophic - the hatred of wisdom. — Modern Conviviality

Maybe you're talking about anti-intellectualism in America? I find it hard to disagree if you adopt that terminology. I just wonder why intellectualism in America is shunned and disregarded and treated with such contempt, which I believe you're getting at?

So, why is this so?

I ask myself often why we do so little in schools to promote spiritual well-being.

There was nothing spiritual about going to school in my earlier years. College was mostly devoid of spirituality in my experience also. Given our affinity for Puritanism and Western Christianity, there should be more of an emphasis on this aspect of education, or not?

I was raised in Poland, and all we had was something called "Wiedza o Społeczeństwie." The literal translation is "knowledge about society." I guess I missed out on the home economics fun.

OK, so in the US there's something called "Family and consumer science."

Go figure.

(What? Don't they have home economics in the US?) — ssu

Wiki says we do teach home economics in the US. So, maybe the issue is non-relevant...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_economics#United_States

I'm Canadian, and this must have been, oh, a good 15 years ago. — VagabondSpectre

Will the US, always be behind Canada in socio-economics?

I mean, it already is.

Even as a male, in grade 8 I took a "home-ec" (home economics) where I learned how to bake pies and wash dishes. — VagabondSpectre

Where was this? Was this in the US?

In the same year I was given a bag of sugar and told to pretend it was a baby for a week or two.

The poor thing didn't make it. Died from cranial trauma resulting from neglect :( — VagabondSpectre

Poor bag of sugar baby...

What about character education? Or learning about homemaking or parenting. Are these things teachable? Given how important they are to the attainment of happiness, then I think they are worthy subjects to include in school.

Would that be impossible to implement?

I want to shift the discussion slightly and talk about wants and needs. We all have needs that are either expressed and inferred. The role of education thus should be the ability to create a situation or state of affairs, through education to express and realize those needs. After that ordeal has been realized, then we can look at trying to realize wants.

Yet, wants are tricky because they are temporal and changing. We also face a society where almost all wants can be realized. Nobody cares about positive liberty/freedom or doing what we ought to do. What only matters to an individual and to our consumerist society is the gratification of negative liberties.

Hence, should an aim of education be the entertainment of moral or positive liberties? So, how do we attain an equilibrium of mediating positive freedoms with negative freedoms?

To admit that the fulfillment of some of our ideas may in principle make the fulfillment of others impossible is to say that the notion of total human fulfillment is a formal contradiction, a metaphysical chimera. — Isaiah Berlin

I'll be out for a while. — javra

Cheers, thanks for posting! :smile:

I suspect also, that there's a deeper issue here. We are no longer treated as subjects in academic settings. Instead, we're a bundle of potential utility to the economy, which schools have to realize.

Is that something you would agree with?

Adults, sometimes, learn to believe that getting everything for nothing is the best way to go. And I somehow doubt these adults feel shame or guilt about it—but I do believe they yet feel empty inside. — javra

This seems to be an issue of finding meaning in one's life. I suspect it is an issue of not knowing what one wants. So, part of the aim of education should be to identify what a person wants and needs, and try to have them achieve that, within reasonable circumstances.

What do you think?

I can show you, I can't tell you. — Banno

Whatever floats your boat. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats.

Because it’s contradictory to our innate sense of merit, to feeling rewarded for successfully overcoming challenges, for doing good, and for being correct in our beliefs. It’s getting everything for nothing. And children sense that this is a vein, or empty, worth. — javra

So, in the end, do we feel guilt or shame in getting something for nothing? Guilt is a powerful motivator.

No; the result would be the dystopia pointed to by javra. — Banno

Then, share with us what aims should education promote?