This leads to an infinite regress. — MoK

Personally I don't really have a problem with infinite regress. :wink:

If beauty and ugliness are not intrinsic features of our experience, then we are biased and things are not beautiful or ugly in themselves. This means that something else, such as the subconscious mind, embeds the impression of beauty or ugliness in our experiences. — MoK

Isn't this false dilemma fallacy? Might beauty not be the product of both subjective and objective factors? You're suggesting there are only two options here. 1) Intrinsic experience or 2) subjective experiences. But there must be a range of other explanations. What about beauty being relational rather than inherent or subjective? Might beauty not arise from the interaction we have with an object? A phenomenological process. Also could beauty (and any general agreement we have about this) not simply be an intersubjective relationship - a contingent product of culture, experience and evolutionary factors?

Personally I think beauty is an umbrella term for many different things. We are attracted and repelled by the world we live in - by ideas, by people, places, animals, colours... we often call things beautiful when we don't know what else to say.

Nonetheless, there are conservative groups out there that do kind acts. For example, Christian—and other religious groups—that are educating children in underdeveloped countries. Look at Catholic missionaries in Papua New Guinea, for instance. I am sure they are both kind and conservative.

I know they are not perfect, but I would not call nasty to a missionary, even if his ideas are conservative. — javi2541997

Missionary work has a history of very unkind and brutal acts. Taking children from their parents (in Australia), forcing religious conversions to Christianity - that kind of thing. My school did missionary work in central Australia in the 1970's and 1980's and I remember the minister saying it would be better if Aboriginal Australians would die out. I recall the Peter Singer quote about charity - Much of what we call charity does not really address the core problems; instead, it often simply makes donors feel better about themselves. Or they are doing it, conditionally, for their idea of God and for the reward.

The idea that conservatives are unkind probably stems from their habitual opposition to protections and welfare services for disadvantaged people (healthcare, housing, etc) and for generally being unsupportive of women's rights and LGBTIQ rights (as we are seeing hints of again in the US under Trumpist politics).

Nicely done. Let's hope the people will soon get to run tours from the glass shark tank.

A supplementary questions comes to mind. Who or what replaces Putin when his time comes? Things could always be worse.

That is because it can be made so obscure and remote from life to be made uninteresting. — Jack Cummins

Not necessarily that. I studied philosophy at University in the 1980's. The head of the philosophy department once said to me, "You are not here to learn, you are here to parrot our ideas and accept our assessments of the important matters." The lectures and tutorials were interesting, but they were leading us to specific conclusions, which I experienced as coercion and took as antithetical to philosophical practice. I'm suspicious of a process whereby students end up as variations of their professors.

I have come across a fair amount of people who began philosophy courses, often not completing them, because they just found that they could not relate to it. — Jack Cummins

Do you think this might be about how the subject is taught and how institutions work, rather than philosophy itself?

Cool, thanks for that. Is it correct to consider B&N to be a sort of Heidegger-lite? I like the essential notion of existentialism; that humans have individual freedom, choice, and responsibility in creating meaning in an indifferent or even 'absurd' universe. It seems intuitively correct, even if there are pitfalls inherent in such intuitive responses. Themes like authenticity and dealing with uncertainty remain with us as central preoccupations.

I'm just surprised to see someone express a continuity between Epicurus and Sartre. — Moliere

Do people still read Sartre and take him seriously? I recall Camus and Sartre being fashionable in Australia just after the war; mixed into a kind of beatnik, socialist sensibility. By the 1980's, people were still reading Camus (perhaps because he is easier to follow) but existentialism became a bit of an embarrassment for a while - if you were an enthusiast, you were seen as a throwback to your parent's generation. Any thoughts from your side of the globe?

Thanks.

Philosophy has taught me more about life than anything I have studied, or experienced. — Rob J Kennedy

What are a couple of examples of what philosophy has taught you about life?

... lacks the arrogance of the historically most successful ALP leaders. And I can't decide if that is a negative or a positive. — Banno

:rofl:

But it's dull. — Banno

Yep.

Australians have a natural, inveterate aversion to smart arses not shared by 'mercans. I hope imitating a Trump-like campaign would just increase the disenfranchisement of their middle ground. — Banno

Yes, I think this is right. I hope he tries it and gets an electoral excoriation.

They have been sliding slowly into conservatism for a long while, and the disenfranchised middle class are retaliating through the teal independents. — Banno

Yep.

The issue is, will the Australian population be taken in, in sufficient numbers, for the Liberal Party to gain an absolute majority? — Banno

Doubt it. I can't see a lot of energy getting behind Dutton.

What is your take on Albo?

There is also something about focused, concentrated language in poetry. Personally I have no interest in poetry but I do like music which does for me what others say poetry does for them. And I don't mean lyrics.

They are all present, funny, charming and smart... — Banno

Hmm, not the ones I have met. But it's only been a few. (edited) On reflection you are probably right.

Dutton is I think more like Abbott than Trump. — Banno

I think Dutton lacks the barnstorming showbiz persona to be like Trump. But I am thinking more about extravagant claims and blatant lies, stunts and fear mongering. They all do this, but the magnitude has escalated radically under Trump, who seems to have ascended the Parnassus of bullshit.

One of the other things that pushed me into philosophy was the characters who wrote it — Rob J Kennedy

Some of our remarkable encounters with people are via their books. I have not had that experince with philosophy but I have via essayists and novel writers (Salman Rushdie, Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal).

I'd have to put it down to me being a poet when younger. — Rob J Kennedy

What triggered that interest? Poetry does seem to appeal to many people who are philosophically inclined.

Abbott seems consumed by Jordan Petersonesque ideology and Western Civilization style chauvinism. I met him for work a few years ago and he was present, funny, charming and smart. The opposite of his public persona.

How far do you think Dutton will go emulating Trump-style politics as we head towards the election and how do you think it will play where it matters? Like many, I've generally held that opposition leaders don't win elections, governments lose them.

:up:

I'm not really a graph guy.

What do you mean by that. 100% sure? Or less than 100%? — Arcane Sandwich

WTF? I am never 100% sure of anything and I don't use percentages to qualify any ideas i hold.

Bear in mind Billabong has been a popular brand of sports wear so the name has recognition if nothing else.

Are you sure? — Arcane Sandwich

Fairly sure.

Culturally, does the Billabong have the same "status" as the bush and the outback? — Arcane Sandwich

I don't know what the 'same status' means here. I would imagine most younger people (under 40) do not know what a billabong is and apart from appearing in an old song, it is not a word used much, if ever. Outback may still be used in general conversation, billabong, not so much.

Well, I can't l say I am familiar with Patterson's work so there is that. At the time he was writing, the remote parts of Australia were also called the "Never-Never" and "back o' Bourke." One of the more famous books (turned into a film) was Jeannie Gunn's 1908 novel, "We of the Never-Never" which I read 40 years ago and have forgotten, like most novels I read.

Or was Paterson referring to both, the bush and the outback, as if they composed "the country", as distinct from "the city" as envisioned by Lawson? — Arcane Sandwich

No idea.

:up: This is a view of area where my parents built their home. But I don't call it the bush - it's too close to suburbia and cities, despite its lushness.

Do you think you are like this, or is my theory just generalisation? — Rob J Kennedy

Most people I know are not just disinterested in philosophy; many are mildly hostile about it, seeing it as pointless wankery which never arrives anywhere. Which, I must say, it often seems to be.

I think it probably takes a life event or a remarkable encounter with someone to awaken an interest - when we suddenly find that our worldview has been shaken by new perspectives. We can either shut this down or wonder some more about other things we may have missed in making sense of life. But equally a lot of philosophy seems to involve people making post hoc rationalisations for what they already believe - theism, idealism, materialism - often with a view to convincing and coercing others with their arguments

I think there are numerous ways philosophy might be of interest. Many people just pursue it as though it were a passionless game of logic, with no real connection to life. Others see it as mostly as a history of ideas. Others want to write manifestos. There are many different types: from the genuinely learned to the strident monomaniac.

When I was a kid living in Epping (a suburb of Sydney) there were corridors of bush (which I believe still mostly exist). I used to spend all day from breakfast to dinner from the age of about seven playing in the bush.

My family used to go on very primitive road trips to the outback (Nyngan, Bourke, Tilpa, Wilcannia, Broken Hill, Coonabarabran, Lightning Ridge, White Cliffs, etc, etc.). — Janus

I had pretty much the same experience - growing up in the Dandenong ranges and off to places like Broken Hill for road trips. I still can't tell the difference. :wink:

I was going to say to That if I thought about it at all, I always took 'outback' to be more remote and often barren or dry, while 'bush' implies greenery and perhaps closer proximity to towns or cities. I suspect regular travellers in Australia probably don't use the terms much and are likely to be more precise in their descriptions, as in, going to 'the remote Kimberly' or 'far north Queensland'.

With the recent even of Luigi's murder charge it makes me wonder why he didn't try the other umpteen steps to change things. Was it not a swift enough move? Was there even hope for change if he took those steps? — GTTRPNK

Do we know what steps Luigi took and what, if anything, happened?

I think there's a view amongst many people that the corporate fat cats are fucking over the world and letting people die, whilst they are lawyered up and protected from responsibility and consequences. Killing a problematic CEO may seem an irresistible way to send a message.

The average human can’t explain his own experiences, so how would he be able to design equipment, to record what he doesn’t know how to find? — Mww

Nice!

Would it not depend on the issue? If it's about bike lanes, then never. What do you have in mind?

I'm not a philosopher, but it strikes me that the word philosophy is an umbrella term for a wide range of enterprises - some of these would, as per Deleuze, develop new ways of understanding or describing the world. It sounds like you prefer to see philosophy as a creative endeavor rather than one bound by methodologies and mechanistic reasoning.

People seem to pursue the approaches to philosophy that match their dispositions and experience, and these help to form a set of habitual approaches to making sense of the world. I like the idea of philosophy as a way of trying to "undermine" our own habits, but this necessarily suggests that philosophy might need to be different things for different people. What I often observe, including in my own reflections, is that philosophy can serve as a series of elaborate post hoc rationalizations constructed to validate one's affective relationships with the world.

I am just trying to understand if I can possibly record what goes through within us at every moment. — Ayush Jain

Not sure I understand your ideas here. Memory doesn't represent what happened to us or how we felt. The self is like mercury. What we think we experienced changes which each recollection and evolves, often imperceptibly. The idea of a correct recollection of an event seems wrong. There is how you felt in the moment, which is specific to everything that came immediately before and after. It continually evolves: seconds, minutes, days, weeks, years later. I can't see how your idea would be useful. Rather than nailing down a single meaning and reproducing it over time in an attempt at a kind of synthesis, it might be better to celebrate the multiple interpretations of any event and realize that all we can do is try to make sense of our environment.

I don’t know the difference between the bush and the outback. I use them interchangeably if I have to use them. But generally I talk about going to ‘the country.’

Bushmaster" is an ironic name for an Australian tank, isn't it? — Arcane Sandwich

I thought is was an amusing name - sounds more like a Chinese Swiss army knife knock off you might find at Kmart in a grubby blister pack for $4.99.

As we keep imagining and exploring, the universe unravels itself. In your day to day life, I don't think the black hole sitting in the center of our galaxy has any direct impact. you will be indifferent to its existence.
But its there now since somebody has observed it. If nobody would have, it might or might not have existed?

All of these thoughts intrigue me a lot. What do you think? — Ayush Jain

I have no real commitments either way here but it might also be said that the universe doesn't so much unravel itself as we co-create or even invent it. Everything we see and experience is subject to our cognitive apparatus, our arbitrary language and our frames of reference which may not (and in my view are unlikely to) map directly onto reality. 'Reality' itself is a human construct, the ultimately real, the foundation, the prime mover, whatever conceptual frame you wish to insert.

There's a whole thread on this here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14685/the-mind-created-world

:up: Yep. Thanks again for the reference.

Does he need to use those words? He is obviously responding to the famous criticism of it as I have outlined earlier. The following appears to be a clear response to the CI, stating almost identically the famous critique.

“The moral principle that it is one’s duty to speak the truth, if it were taken singly and
unconditionally, would make all society impossible. We have the proof of this in the very direct
consequences which have been drawn from this principle by a German philosopher, who goes so far as to affirm that to tell a falsehood to a murderer who asked us whether our friend, of whom he was in pursuit, had not taken refuge in our house, would be a crime.”

Yeah, I live in the centre of Melbourne's CBD. It seems quieter than Richmond or Fitzroy. Nice for walks and close to all kinds of expensive shit. I like Sydney - used to stay in Potts Point. lovely place. I quite like Brisbane, but like Alain, it's been 10 years since I was there. I like Canberra too - it feels like a university campus town.

Or a lad-led wank...

Great, thanks. Now there's a direct source for this.

Most Australians I know drink imported beers like Asahi or Corona.
— Tom Storm
You're in Melbourne, then. — Banno

Yes, I'm a black-clad wanker, like the rest