:100: :up: But there are always those who refuse to change their minds. I hear there are folks who, before dying of Covid, insist that Covid is not real. Stupid doctors; they must be part of the big conspiracy. — James Riley

Yes, this is astonishing and goes to show the decay in political discourse and our relying on "team mentality". It's no different - in fact likely worse - than organized religion.

Maybe if such people would've survived they may have changed what they thought. Probably not.

Well, not too different from the disconnect between political figures, CEO's and others who purport to believe in the urgency of climate change and then proceed to emit more C02 emissions than last year.

One is at a loss for words. Like what can you even say when it gets to these levels? It's way beyond insane when it gets to these levels.

I mean at a certain point, given enough experience one reaches a kind of conclusion to one's "big beliefs" about the world in general. We might think it be bad, or an opportunity, we might think that natural selection explains a lot or that there is a God of some kind, or anything else.

It takes a tremendous amount of investment to come up with any "conclusion" in beliefs and it would be a mistake if we were to change deep-held beliefs in one single conversation or one example which does not fit in with our ideas. This is why people who do change their minds later on in life, come about it, frequently, after some kind of traumatic experience.

But to explain how we arrive at the gist of our beliefs, even when several people have the same experience (in that they all witnessed the same event, say a car crash or a wedding, etc.) and reach different conclusions, is mysterious. We somehow carve out what we think is relevant and highlight this aspect over other aspects which are of (arguably) equal importance to another person.

This is in practice, not terribly difficult. But when you think of what it involves, it becomes overwhelmingly complex. Putting aside the crucial factor that our sources may be wrong or our views flat out mistaken, which is probable on many issues, the actual practice of "epistemic responsibility" is hard to spell out, a sketch looks like this:

We are interested in topic Y, we go to certain sources dealing with Y, we read several opinions of professionals on the subject matter, we look at (some) data, we assume the data is not too distorted, we take our data to be better than other people's data due to what we take to be the reliability of the relevant source, yet unless we are experts in Y, we are at the mercy of always revisable information.

But experts can be, and often are wrong about subjects (more common in the social sciences), so we have to keep an open mind while not leaving it so open that garbage gets in "woo", or otheriwse.

This all pushes the main issue at hand back for me, which is, what reason do we have to think our intuitions are correct about any topic? At this point, we begin handwaving something about "this is just a fact" or "you're insane", "read a book", etc.

So, difficult. But we do it somehow. Though it's gotten worse in political discourse the last few years.

Yes. I remember reading that part.

I find it ironic that he thought that giving examples would make his thought more difficult to criticize. As if his thought isn't already criticized (and interpreted) in thousands of ways by all kinds of people, not only philosophers.

But I think Schopenhauer proved him wrong in this respect, he gives plenty of lucid examples and writes beautifully. Granted, they differ in several respects.

There's is some merit in that he was trying to articulate some difficult ideas, but others before him who said very similar ideas, weren't much clearer.

Depends on how questions are framed, you can get right wing sounding answers or left wing sounding answers.

But a democracy often means getting a person you hate being prime minister or president. If it comes to something with ugly authoritarian tendencies, like Bolsonaro or Erdogan, then anyone has a right to protest and resist as much as possible.

For me, it's reconnecting with the non-human environment that brings the peace. — James Riley

That's good too.

Some of the were bullied. But some likely weren't. Not that you said otherwise. It's very complex, many factors involved, not least the kind of economic system we have of massive consumerism and try-and-you-get-it-all what with all these social media devices constantly engaging in non-stop competition and then you're not good enough and If I'm not good enough the others aren't either. Something like that. But many other factors we aren't privy to as well.

what is a phase (gothing out in black, piercing, etc.) and what is some real serious mental issues. Either way, I know it cannot help to have a pack engaged in dog-pilling on these kids. I hate packs. Even if the loner is an asshole who deserves to be ostracized. I like people who befriend the lonely who don't want to be alone, as well as those who stand up to the pack when they see them bullying. — James Riley

I can agree with that. Well, in a philosophy forum of all places, you're going to find a few pessimists. This is kind of the whole range of human thought, much of it inscrutable to us.

I'm similar-ish to you. Mine is more noise-reduction than anything else. My mind needs space to think, even if lots of the time it's navel-gazing. If I don't have that, I'm not living fully. Call it a quirk. :wink:

1) I don't know, I should look at some studies. Off the top of my head, my speculation would be that not all these people were necessarily ignored or abused by family. Maybe a good deal of them, but not all.

2) Finding causality in these things is really hard. What I want to highlight, is the fictitious element in "loner-ism", which I partake in frequently. If these fictions begin telling someone that life is totally meaningless ergo I have to kill people to prove the point, then it's a problem. It needn't even get that far, but these ideas can be deranging. But groups inflict that too, as you point out in Jan.6 as an example.

3) Good question and fair point.

One of the few things on Earth that I am afraid of is the pack. When I see a loner, I don't see a serial killer or a whack job. I see someone minding their own business and someone who presents no threat to the security of a free state. It is people that present the threat. — James Riley

Mostly agree with what you say.

This quoted part though can be tricky. We also know of many "loners" (or whatever word we want to use) which end up shooting people at school. They'll do something perhaps analogous in other countries, less scale involved, but destructive acts nonetheless. So I wonder what word to use for these cases.

The trick is how to be in your own world in a way that you don't harm other people while worldmaking.

A balance is likely best for most people. You see all kinds of destructive behavior in both groups, though I think you have to admit that we were born to be in groups. Modern society is now built were this is sometimes not as needed as it used to be, and this is good and bad, like most things relating to technology.

I personally tend to get lost in space (my head) when I'm around a group of people and the talk is not engaging. I can't help this after a while. But then I tend to force isolation to a excessive degree. However, given both options, I prefer the latter. I can't deal with noise too well.

I cannot imagine having no room for being with yourself for long periods of time, or maybe never, outside of sleep. That is also pretty bad and limits growth.

In short, it's all quite complex, despite "general rules": exercise, diet, socialization, commitment, etc.

That Irigary quote... The fact that it can exist at all, and the author not laughed out of academia, but rather be taught and celebrated, speaks to a deep corruption and dishonesty in academic humanities.. Which ruins the discipline for everyone, and deserves all the hate it gets. — hypericin

:100: :clap:

Experiments on monkeys kept in a monochrome environment showed that they were unable to see colour when later exposed to it. Their eyes and brain had not developed the capacity. — Banno

Interesting.

Do you have an article you could share on the topic?

Many of his terms fly in the face of conventional understandings. For instance , his use of soul, spirit , ego, intention. As is the tendency among Continental philosophers, he dipped into older uses of such words , going back as far as the Greeks. — Joshs

And that's fine.

So you do have to learn essentially a new vocabulary with Husserl and Heidegger, but once you have done so, you may come to realize that it is actually a much richer use of concepts than the flat and narrow technicalization of them that we see in analytic writing. — Joshs

I can speak about Heidegger, I was quite into him several years ago. As far as I can see, he uses an interesting type of language to understand everyday life, which often evokes a kind of mystical experience, which I find valuable.

It's quite deep in this sense. But I find more senses of depth in other writers, such as Schopenhauer or James and even Russell in parts of his analysis of common sense conception in relation to physics and physiology.


Heck I find Whitehead more deep than Heidegger (in the latter sense of depth), and Whitehead is as hard as they come in some parts. Peirce too.

But Whitehead could has been much clearer, while still retaining complexity in thought.

The left is like herding cats and they disagree with everything and conflict with each other as much as they conflict with the right. — James Riley

Yep. 100,000%

Zahavi writes ‘clearly’ about Husserl. He is also a lightweight in comparison to Husserl who I think misses vital features of Husserl’s work. — Joshs

You know much, much, much more about Husserl than me. I ask for a clear exposition of ideas, that can be done. It's another thing if you get technical and develop a description which is sophisticated, that's fine, it's a part of professional philosophy.



Russell was sympathetic to certain aspects of Wittgenstein's early work. But he is much broader and covers many more topics than Wittgenstein. Doesn't mean he's better for it, but that's a fact.

I can see why phenomenology is a work of constant renewal and why Husserl was constantly refining his ideas. That makes it interesting too. But I don't think the expressions he uses easies understanding. We'll have to disagree on that part.

Where I am currently? No. Not that I'm aware. Political parties here barely have differentiating platforms. I don't know if some belongs to left or right.

But, the possibility of some kind of fascism always lurks in any place. Just look at Brazil.

It's messy. And it also isn't easy to make as strong a case for leaving for the left as there is for the right. There were leftists who wanted to leave and presented decent arguments, but they could not organize effectively enough as the right did.

Thing is, a portion of "leave" people were probably not thinking much about left or right.

Much like in the US, people who voted for Obama ended up voting for Trump, especially in the rust belt.

Probably. A large part of it feels to me like a "fuck you" to the establishment, which is understandable.

But many factors involved in that.

Yeah. I'm not going to pretend that the EU become an example of direct democracy overnight or anything like that. But I think the totality of its citizens should be able to elect people to represent them in a manner that actually affects economic policy and foreign policy.

Granted, that is not going to be easy at all, given different countries, cultures and the like. But a political (not solely an economic) "union" merits that name if citizens could have a say in what laws they'd like, to some extent. Right now, it's extremely little, in my opinion.

Well, that would be a step in the right direction. As far as I can recall, you can only do this for the EU parliament, which has no power though.

I'd prefer that by "democratic", the EU would follow the will of most of its participants when it comes to policy. That's still a long way off.

I'm not at you, but sometimes a spade is just a spade. — thewonder

We agree that reducing suffering in relation to babies being born through slight genetic manipulations. And you've said that that's not social Darwinism. OK.

But the feminists you are speaking about are a minute portion of the feminist movement, like a fraction. So why would you pay attention to them?

What is red? It's the eye's way of perceiving 750 (nm). It's like a way of looking at something, a perspective if you will. The ears perceive of 750 (Hz) differently. Translations, back and forth, between languages (of the senses). — TheMadFool

That's the wave length of red.

That's not the answer you get if you ask any person to point to you to something red.

If you ask a scientist, then they'll speak of wavelengths.

Red is the colour of blood, or certain apples or of fire hydrants.

Well.

I tried.

Oh they will.






When there's no food to eat or when they have to move to another country - if they even can.

Red is 750 nm (wavelength of red light). It's (750 nm) what red actually is. The color red is what 750 is in eye language. We can translate red (750 nm) into sound, a note that has a frequency of 750 Hz and this can be done for the other senses too. — TheMadFool

Red happens to be quantifiable to that wavelength. But a quantity is not a quality.

I have a hard time understanding how people could really believe the opposite. I mean surprise because all you have to do is look around your room or Google "red" and see a picture.

That's the experience. I mean, how is this a number?

We are speaking of two different aspects of phenomena.

He reformed the field to be more so concerned with the prevention of reproduction. I think that it's fairly clear that sterilizing people with genetic disorders in the interests of an ostensive purity is just kind of implicitly totalitarian, but, should anyone think that merely preventing them from reproducing isn't all that bad, I will ask as to just what it entails. — thewonder

Well this is (in my case now) abstract theorizing, but I think we should at least make the following distinction:

1) Those people for whom it might not be a good idea to have a baby from
2) The people who shouldn't have babies but had them anyway

The case of 1 would be along the lines of people that have rare genetic disorders that may guarantee a miserable life for there kids. Similarly those people who aren't in the condition to be able to take care of a baby at all, etc.

In no case do I think there should be a law to prevent 1. Or virtually no case that comes to mind. That's just life.

In the case of 2, we'd want to provide the best services available to prevent tragedies from occurring. There are existing laws that protect children, but these might need be amplified. How to do this is very hard, because it does enter and clash with privacy concern and over-reach of power.

When I am certifiably "insane", what reason do I have to consign myself to failure? If you can not answer that question, then you can not convince me otherwise. — thewonder

I don't think you should. Nor do I aim to convince you otherwise. I think you have abilities that compensate for whatever lack you may have. Many of the greatest artists were labeled "insane" too, so there's a lot of territory to explore as insanity covers many aspects of human behavior.

The point of the thought experiment is to uncover as to whether or not the theory can be abused. The caveat, "to support Social Darwinism", is there to sidestep this debate on Eugenics. It's just designed as a litmus under the assumption that, if an idea can be misused, then, it will be. — thewonder

Then I think you should modify the title of the thread or the gist of the OP, to something like: are there circumstances in which modifying humans or preventing diseases lead to consequences like eugenics, if taken far enough?

Or speak of a "gifted scientist", so as to not taint the discussion before it is had.

Because although now you are clarifying what you mean, in the OP it does seem as if you'd want someone to defend Eugenics in the social Darwinist vein.

Well if by attempting to create a healthier baby leads to this kind of thinking, which I haven't seen yet, then there's an argument to be made that gene alterations should be limited only to preventing illness.

Neither of those things, however, have anything to do with Eugenics. — thewonder

Fine. I will shelf my "improving" babies comment. As it has not gotten to a point in which we can say that this the equivalent to eugenics.

Yeah. I agree, even those born with the worst of diseases should be able to live in as painless ways as is possible. Once someone is given life, almost regardless of the situation they are in, will want to continue living. And that is a right that should be very much respected.

The only way that Eugenics can be salvaged is to turn it into something else entirely. At that point, why not just advocate for something else?

All of which is still besides the point, as the idea for this thread is to create a thought experiment to determine whether a theory can work in practice. — thewonder

Sure.

But then what would be a hypothetical of a "gifted eugenicist" society look like? Like babies only born with IQ over 140?

Yeah, these types of scenarios won't convince anyone, except those who already think some people are inherently better than others.

As I happen to have been declared "insane" and not to trust the Western intelligentsia, it's doubtful that you will convince me to consign to my own systematic elimination. To me, the concept of mental illness just makes the entire field untenable. — thewonder

Very little is known about "mental illnesses", not that they don't exist. We likely all have some kind of them to some degree or other. We clearly know people in real life who exhibit behavior that is not acceptable in public and maybe even in private.

But "eradication" of these won't happen. Too many variables in life can serve as a virtual guarantee that some of us will go a bit mad in certain situations.

Sure, though, family planning is a good thing, but is it Eugenics? Sir Francis Galton's theory was explicitly Social Darwinist and it did become a fundamental basis for late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century genocides. Sure, we salvaged Friedrich Nietzsche and even Martin Heidegger, but, when this theory, at best, amounts to social murder, what would the point of rescuing it from its abuse be? — thewonder

You'll always find people who believe in eugenics by another name, namely racists.

But as soon as you introduce the idea of improving a person, the slide to thinking in terms of superiority is not too far away. So it is a balance.

Obviously, as a social Darwinist doctrine, or as an idea that excludes all others are garbage, shouldn't even have to be refuted at all.

I mean, in a sense we are already heading in the direction, if only slightly. We already have medications and I believe we are beginning to get genetics advance that improves a child's abilities or at least preventing illness.

The negative side, the racist side, the deplorable side of eugenics is the idea that people already living are inferior than others. There's no reason to believe that.

That does not contradict the point that most parents would like a healthy baby.

Improving the quality of life of people should not be viewed as wrong.

It becomes problematic if in addition to that, someone says that these individuals are better in some nebulous sense. Especially if leaders begin to get behind such ideas.

That's fine in that you don't find what Russell says interesting or deep. I was only speaking about prose style.

On the other hand, to your credit, you tend to express yourself quite clearly, not in the convoluted way Husserl did. You can say that that's because he was ahead of his time. Maybe.

But then there are people, like Zahavi, who do explain Husserl very clearly.

I’m still not sure what it’s supposed to mean, other that that you understand someone’s prose. — Joshs

You don't think there's a qualitative difference in writing quality between Husserl and Russell?

I'm not speaking about depth of ideas, that's person dependent, but I'd be surprised if you said that Husserl wrote better than Russell or Heidegger than Plato. Nothing against either Husserl or Heidegger, in fact I enjoy them, but not because of style.

Yes. If you do your best to explain and the person does not understand, then the onus tends to be on the person who doesn't get it. I agree with you.

There are, however, personal factors: what you find interesting another person will not or may find it trivial or boring or pointless. That's the way it is with people.

But at the very least, I agree with him that if you can't explain the basic idea or general thought behind something, I'm going to be suspect of your (not you specifically, but anybody) understanding of the topic.

This likely does not apply to mathematics.

:lol:

I mean, it's four words, not entire sentences.

No worries man, it happens to all of us, particularly if we're emotional on a topic, which happens a lot in politics.

No I mean, read the four words prior to where you quoted.

I agree with you. It's a shame they aren't better organized and coherent. They are important for the world.

You're not butting in.

That is emphatically not what I said.

But that's not a consequence of the function of the EU but a result of the gross underestimation of the risks of a viral pandemic, which underestimation we've seen in almost every country that hadn't dealt with MERS and SARS. — Benkei

It's true that the world was unprepared. Most of it. Not Taiwan or South Korea. But as soon as Biden came to office, the US did way better than the EU in organizing vaccine rollouts.

Now that's not the case, due, in large part, to the denialism of large swaths of the US population. But there's no reason why Europe could not have organized itself much better to respond to a crisis. It's a fault in the organization of the EU, it need not happen this way.

Why take him so seriously? Greece and the other member states were collectively fucked by the banking industry, which claimed if Greece failed on its bonds it would cascade through Europe. Everybody feared that spectre and the resultant disintegration of the EU. Of course, Greece also got itself in that mess in the first place by window dressing its accounts through the use of off market swaps (courtesy of Goldman Sachs). — Benkei

Why take him seriously? He went to the EU to argue that they couldn't pay back the money they were being lent! They did not listen to him, and said what I quoted to you. What happened then? Brutal austerity. That's not a law of nature. It need not have occurred.

So really, who cares what he thinks? He probably makes some fair criticisms, I have some of my own especially around the introduction of the EUR but let's not pretend — Benkei

One only "cares" about people who seem to make some sense on what they're saying. That's the only extent to which anybody should care about what anyone says. Yes, he's overly critical in my estimation, but if you read about how the EU formed and how they dealt with the crisis based on the observations of an insider to the IMF, it's interesting and tragic.

I'm not saying the EU is ALL bad. Not having to carry passports over borders, being able to move freely and having a common currency is comfortable and good. But again, normal citizens don't have a say about what laws pass in the EU, or at least, very rarely.

Flawed democracies in the EU: — Benkei

Of course. There's no unflawed democracy at all. And the US is FAR from a political paradise. But they tend to treat each member state in a healthier manner than EU countries treat each other.

It depends on how deep you want to go with this.

If you want a good intro to his talking about innate ideas and the like, I'd recommend you see Michel Gondry's documentary about his ideas, called Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?

It has some nice illustrations about how our innate faculties react to very small changes in the environment.

It's available for free here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv66xFD7s7g

His comment is simply that the way we recognize houses is innate in us. Another alien creature could have the concept HOUSE which differed in what properties are essential to it, such as a HOUSE being though if in terms of seeing an interior first, then the front side.

We do the opposite when we think of houses.

As for the Post-Modernist comment, he has in mind people like Derrida, Lacan and the like, which he thinks are gibberish.

He only demands that people explain these ideas the way a physicist or a biologist could explain some aspects of what they work on in simple terms. Here's an article he wrote about postmodernism:

http://bactra.org/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html

I really enjoyed the Chomsky audio. I've been thinking I should put some effort into his work. — T Clark

That's my specialty actually.

If you want specific recommendations on different topics, I'll be glad to give you some recommendations.

Yes, it has all these separate governing bodies and all these fancy sounding internal organizations. How much influence does the average European have over any of this?

Virtually nothing. Yeah they can send some people to parliament, if they even know about it. It often (not always) boils down to ECB dogma.

As Schäuble told Varoufakis when Syrizia won: ‘Elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy."

Member states cannot decide how much money they should print given the specific economic situations they find themselves in - outside of a select number of countries.

Parliaments are nice, and I like that they can form coalitions to pass laws. Did the EU function well in the 2009 crisis? What about the pandemic, did the member states help each other out?

It was Cuba and China, not Germany or France, who helped Italy.

In short, the EU has a long way to go to become democratic.

Again, Mody and Varoufakis describe this very well.

But I do agree that information on how the EU works, should be made easier to gather.

It's person dependent. Some people have an innate capacity to understand certain ideas better than others, perhaps the topic at hand resonates with a specific individual.

Having said that, on the "negative side", I do think that some of classical figures are very obscure. I very much think Kant was extremely profound, but the dense verbiage used and the fact that he (often) did not refer to ordinary objects to elucidate a conceptual difficulty, makes it harder.

Then there are cases in which I have to strongly suspect that, despite finding a few ideas of some interest, the verbiage is intentionally dense for appearance of profundity.

I think the prime example here is Hegel. Even secondary literature on Hegel is just overwhelmingly complex and dese. And once I unpack the ideas, to the extent that I can, I don't see much that excuses his vocabulary.

On the "positive side", there are plenty of philosophers who wrote clearly and said interesting things. Plato, Descartes, Hume, Reid, Schopenhauer, James the popular side of Russell and so on.

Even when they are clear, which some of them are very clear, the ideas are complicated, because speaking about say, mental phenomena is extremely complex and multifaceted and nuanced. So that may be an important reason as why philosophers are "hard". The topic is very hard in a special sense.

Yes, it is true that lack of effort can be correctly pointed out. But if in good faith I try to read Hegel or Deleuze and get little for my efforts, then the accusation isn't pertinent: it's not worth more time.

Finally, even if Descartes and Schopenhauer are quite clear, if they don't resonate with you, then they don't resonate with you. No problem, there's plenty of other stuff that will catch your attention in philosophy.