Only the elite have the time for philosophy. — baker

Who are the élite?

Hey, I don't care much for Nietzsche, I think of him as a didactic humorist with a mean line in oxymora. I think he got Christianity wrong too.

The Christian in you dies hard, eh? — Wayfarer

That made me laugh out loud.

After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave - a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. -And we- we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
Nietzsche: The Gay Science

What he's pointing out, however, is hypocrisy. Why? Because when it comes to the rich, they're the first ones that benefit from a welfare state, despite professing the ideal of "individualism." When the poor ask for anything, however, they're told to take a hike.

I can't make it any clearer than that. — Xtrix

That is a pretty good argument.

This is going to be fascinating...

Maybe for some. I have sometimes advised on government policy to both political parties and it is clear that off the record Labor guys will tell you that the right has easier arguments to articulate.

Platonism, philosopher kings, ubermensch, and so on. — Banno

Yes, the use of the word 'higher' attached to so many things is curious too. I used to kick around with a lot of folk into yoga, Buddhism, spirituality, New Age, Theosophy and such in the 1980's and it often struck me how many of them were vulgar and acquisitive materialists at heart, who had sublimated their 'products' and elitisms into higher consciousness and public shows of deep understanding 'you couldn't possible follow'. But they can't all be like that...

Telling people what they want to hear has always had an easier go of it, especially with those a mile wide and an inch deep. (I'm talking about you.) — James Riley

But Thatcher did not tell the voters what they wanted to hear. What is fascinating is how neoliberalism has made people vote against their own interests, through ideas such as her paragraph above. It isn't in anyone's interests to minimize community. But the ideas grab hold of people.

proponents of neoliberalism are very good at propaganda. Was this really your only point? In that case: yes, agreed. — Xtrix

It's much deeper than this. The mainstream Left seems to have been bad at articulating rival narratives. And there is no question that Murdoch hasn't helped. I don't wish to dwell on this.

Philosophy as elitism. — Banno

Do say more.

That's different. If you want slogans and propaganda, there are all kinds out there. Plenty to rival Thatchers. "Things are better together" -- simple, easy. Strength in numbers. "We are the 99%". Resist "divide and conquer." "Come together" (to quote the Beatles). Whatever you like.

If you can't find that stuff, you're not looking hard enough. And frankly, I don't think Thatchers paragraph is very "elegant" at all. Not just grammatically but also in content. But to each his own. — Xtrix

No one is looking for slogans - did I even mention that word? Nor did I say I can't find useful paragraphs elsewhere. What I said was, I bet you would struggle write a simple elegant paragraph articulating community over individualism in the manner of that speech of Thatcher's. Whatever you may think of her she and her team had a solid grasp of communication. To this day her ideas resonate and it is not just a media and oligarchical conspiracy. And I say this as someone who is not a fan of MT.

That is one of the more enticing paragraphs I have read here.

Secondly, this nonsense about “there is no society” is laughable. Of course societies consist of individuals, just as forests consist of trees. So what? Doesn’t mean there’s no forests or societies. Any more than saying “there aren’t any individuals, because individuals consist only of cells.”

All she’s doing is creating a false picture as a pretext to shift responsibility away from collective action and the public sphere, to individuals and private ownership. Hence the policies against unions and the rhetoric about “government is the problem.”

It’s complete BS. Always has been. — Xtrix

You see my problem? The Thatcher position is much easier to articulate and is elegant to read and hear. Yours is jagged and defensive. 'Complete BS' is not an argument.

Can you write a paragraph of simple elegance to rival hers, from a communitarian perspective?

As someone who has advised governments and fought neoliberal excesses here, I have tried for years and have found it difficult.

This to me seems to be a classic statement of what is generally more an American frame of society versus individualism. I imagine it would have wide support.
— Tom Storm

Probably. But it's also complete BS. — Xtrix

Could you put up a succinct paragraph in ordinary language against this proposition of Thatcher and Hayek's?

Oh? You'd tell Plato to go seek the help of a psychiatrist? — baker

Of course, if he was experiencing psychosis and/or suicidal ideation, or other significant distress from mental ill health.

Seems to me that you have made up your mind about mental health treatment and psychiatry. You are perfectly entitled to be a pessimist.

Sounds like a good slogan. But it's quite useless, given that one gets to see only a small fraction of another's actions, and that those one does see are still up to interpretation. — baker

It's highly useful. The issue is how do we identify moral behaviour in doctors (or anyone)? We only have one way: their actions. The fact that you may not see them at work is irrelevant to the point. The point is ethical behaviour is demonstrated you can't discover it by what someone says publicly or writes about it. In the case of doctors and mental health professionals - given that they work openly with patients every day - it is actually very easy to see what kind of person they are.

Yet only psychologists/psychiatrists have the legal right to interfere with the lives of others. There's a clear power imbalance. — baker

This is factually wrong. Lot's of professions have a right to interfere - police, the military, lawyers, politicians, immigration officials, customs ... etc. I would agree with you if you said this is a responsibility that needs to be used wisely. You think it is not, based on what you have stated and I think it often is (but not always). We should probably get off this so the thread can continue.

:up: Agree A. Thanks.

Is it? It sounds like more of the same to me. — Echarmion

Perhaps it does sound like more of the same to you. To me it sounds far less absurd than the incongruous four word slogan she has become known for by critics. I always like context - especially from people whose worldview I disagree with.

And it's a strawman. — baker

I prefer to think of it as a red herring.

I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the nature of psychological/psychiatric intervention and treatment as such. — baker

So was I. It can work and treatment has probably (for all the mistakes) provided more happiness to people than philosophy or pondering moral facts ever did.

Psychological/psychiatric intervention and treatment are inherently of a moral dimension. Psychologists/psychiatrists intervene because they believe there is something wrong with the person, that the person is acting wrongly and shouldn't act that way.

There are strict laws on this and generally mental health services get involved if there is demonstrable risk to self and others. behaving wrongly is out of scope.
— baker

How do psychologists/psychiatrists define morality, what do they base it on?
Do they believe in moral facts? — baker

Like any group they are not monolithic and hold diverse beliefs. But I am not all that interested in the moral beliefs people hold. People's actions are more significant. Banno is right on this. Met too many hypocrites. You can tell a good psychiatrist, not by what they say at conferences or by the papers they write, but how they treat people. I think this applies to all folk.

I've read it. So what? As I said there are many examples of clinical bad practice and I am not fan of the medical model - but you can make similar claims about about lawyers and mechanics too. Read The Noonday Demon about depression by Andrew Solomon, a much more nuanced book.

My point is uncomplicated. Many people are resurrected by treatment and become fully human for the first time (in years or ever) when the relentless persecution, voices, self-harm, paranoia, along with sleeping rough, using substances and eating out of rubbish bins ends. I personally have observed this hundreds of times over three decades.

But yes, hospital work can be cursory and bad and some shrinks are patronising and medication without psychosocial support is not great and the hospitals and medical services can treat people like numbers. Sure, I have also seen suicides and murders... None of that is acceptable but this is part of a much more complex story and one that also has numerous triumphs. Life is about perspective.

The full Thatcher quote is actually more interesting than the simple phrase that always gets clipped.

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

This to me seems to be a classic statement of what is generally more an American frame of society versus individualism. I imagine it would have wide support. And these days here in Australia too, as neo-liberal ideas are ubiquitous - part of the Left and right - and seen widely as a form of common sense thinking.

I don’t rate Hitchens for any kind of philosophical acuity. — Wayfarer

He would probably agree. He was a barnstorming polemicist. But he did have the occasional insight.

Science is not about "truth" per se; it's about reasoning to the best, unfalsified, good explanations of phenomena. And "art", by the way, is studied by biologists, neurologists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, even mathematicians, etc, and, last time I checked, those are (still) sciences. Philosophers, IMO, ought to propose only speculations (i.e. interpretations and extrapolations) consistent with the best available scientific theories and data in so far as their inquiries are concerned with the meaning of, as it were, living significantly (as much as possible) in the real world with and among others. — 180 Proof

:100:

“Our plan for Australia’s energy future is squarely focused on bringing down prices, keeping the lights on and reducing our emissions and these interconnectors bring us a step closer to that reality.”

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin, again? I notice an Ordinary Bloke's collection of baseball caps behind our apparently desk bound Scotty. Did he get rid of the MAGA one?

I don't know why I think of this anecdote.

1977 - Kerry Packer rings an adviser/friend: "Idi Amin has invited me to go elephant shooting with him in Uganda, should I go, or will it harm my reputation?"

Adviser: "I don't know about your reputation, Kerry, but it will fuck Idi's..."

We are so lost....

Try Ménière's disease... the God beliefs will fall right out of you as you tip over...

How would you interpret that passage? Many philosophers in the past and still now hold that God is constrained by logic, so it's still important to show why they are wrong, if indeed they are wrong.

Anyway, like I said before, we shouldn't focus on whether Mr's arguments are wholly consistent with Wittgenstein's philosophy, rather we should focus on the arguments for their own sake. — Amalac

Quick digression with apology. I am always curious that people want to work so hard to incorporate a version of God into their world. Why? Why not wait until death to find out?

Is not everything relating to the God idea man-made, fumbling mythos and speculation? The idea of God is ineffable - without words. Would it not be better to move on?

I suspect that when people don't move on it is because the romantic associations of the God idea have taken a hold of them and they are trying to fit a version of theism into their lives no matter what it takes.

I don't really know what 'ownership' exactly means. Is it used as a synonym for entitled? From a perspective of realpolitik, my intuition is that ownership is whatever you can get away with over an extended period.

One shouldn't generalize about atheists, just as one shouldn't generalize about theists. It's an astonishingly broad category of people.

There are crusty, dogmatic atheists, refective, philosophical atheists and simple, untheorized atheists. Many atheists don't employ any real arguments, they were simply brought up secular and have never thought God was a useful option. Others earned their atheism after careful investigation and hard thinking.

What I do know is there are some people who resent atheism (it upsets them) and it fits into a broader culture war against secularism. Such people are often on the look out for ideas to slander an atheist's motivations or belief system.

One such slander is that atheists are all secret believers. Another is that they are Communists (very popular in the 1950's). Another is that they are afraid of God and therefore repressed theists, living in denial. Yet another is that they are egomaniacs who don't have room in their lives for someone more powerful than them. That's my favorite one.

And on it goes. I have heard most of these lazy ad hominems many times and they are generally provided when people want to avoid engaging with ideas.

Well, first, I'd be wary of 'objectivity' in this context. Objectivity is part of what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in respect to. — Wayfarer

I hear you. I meant objective subject to a chosen criterion. The hazards of that word...

Objectivity is part of what 'the transcendent' is transcendent in respect to. — Wayfarer

Yep. I guess you could argue the same about a beautiful art work. How else is this founded? Unless you go by personal taste or a set criterion of value.

Objectivity is indispensable for many subjects but it has no ultimate ground (which I think is an implication of 20th c physics). — Wayfarer

Objectivity and subjectivity seem simple but they are two concepts that have given me the pip over the years. I need to reacquaint myself with Murdoch's version of Platonism.

I was going to suggest that Wittgenstein's passage above is distinctly Platonist in character; that 'the idea of the Good' is an example of the kind of transcendent ground to which I think the passage alludes. — Wayfarer

That wiff of Plato is pretty much why I asked.

I need to be shown how you arrive at a moral fact if you don't hold some kind of Platonist account. Well, you could, I guess express a moral fact about your own beliefs.

You can obviously build a kind of objective ethical system if you first make an assumption that, for instance, the flourishing of conscious creatures needs to be the central concern of all moral positions - a kind of 'idea of Good' analogue. But how do we arrive at agreement on this?

Do you believe that if there are moral facts they can only come from a transcendent source (what's the term I need here?)? Does Plato's theory of forms contain ethics or just the values from which ethics are derived?

Sure. Thinking of oneself as, "I am defective" -- what's not to be happy about??! — baker

That is not their experience. Calling them 'compliant' would be wrong and patronizing. You seem to be a pessimist, so maybe we should end here.

I've got a cup of tea and some shortbread...

A similar dehumanization is carried out by psychology/psychiatry, where, once a person is branded with a psychiatric diagnosis, they cease to be relevant as a person and all that matters is that diagnosis, and the doctors and many interested others see that person only through the lens of that diagnosis. — baker

baker I don't disagree that this often happens, but is not necessarily the problem of a diagnosis or psychiatry as such, it can be a problem of culture or of particular doctors or systems. I have known many people who, once they have a diagnosis and are in treatment, they claim to not only be the happiest they have ever been, but feel a sense of coherent identity for the first time in their lives. Being diagnosed can also be like a form of empowerment; being known and finally understood.

Do you? Why? I don't understand the need to categorise and name - doing philosophy as if it were entomology. It's as if one reached a conclusion and only then looked for the arguments...

I'll read the substantive part of your post and try to formulate a response. But are you looking for such a critique? — Banno

I'd be interested in such a critique.

Solipsism is a terrible idea.
More than 500,000,000 Buddhists live in the world. If they are all solipsist, it’s scary to realize that there are so many people in our world who support this terrible idea. — Johnny5454

I see, so you are scared at the prospect of that many solipsists. I hear you. You know, I hate to break it too you, but there are probably twice that many arseholes...

Buddhism is not generally known as solipsism.

if they are all solipsists it would be scary. — Johnny5454

Why scary?

Cool. It was just the ought/is morality connection. Nothing deep...

Here’s my view of what happened. Of course it’s true that we all passed through the tortuous process of evolution from simian forbears. But what imposes moral necessity on us, is not an instinct, like that by which salmon return to their home stream. It’s because we became independent arbiters of what is good. We could decide, we could judge. We had possessions, things to call our own, and language by which to name it. That is the origin of the moral sense. No doubt, we evolved to the point of developing that sense, but to say it is merely or simply an adaptive necessity is to entirely mistake the existential predicament of the emerging self of h. Sapiens. When we evolved to that point, we also escaped the gravity of biology to some degree. We were no longer simply a creature, but a creature who could ask ‘what am I?’, and ‘what is this world I find myself in?’ — Wayfarer

Beautiful bit of writing, W, and I'm not sure how Sam Harris/Counterpunch will respond.

But I am curious that you made a point of highlighting possessions as a key element. Our ancestors must have had nascent empathy to even start on this journey - how else can one raise young? And I would have thought that in tribal living being able to support each other would have strengthened survival chances. Reciprocal altruism is just as likely to have emerged in a, shall we say, more transactional expression of behaviour? I feel grubby....

hat we have evolved to do such-and-such does nto siffice to shoe that such-and-such is right. — Banno

I'm inclined to do the such-and-such shoe shuffle to Dinah Washington singing Mad about the Boy...