@darthbarracuda

I sympathize deeply with your post, tho also share some of the concerns voiced by others.

Those who love truth for the sake of truth are at best fools, at worst, narcissistic megalomaniacs. Alternatively they may also be masochists. — darthbarracuda

They may also be both of these in part while also being, just as much, people wounded by a confusing and unpredictable world which has led them, understandably, to seek refuge in the one constant they can find, an inner-space no one can take from them. It may be that all three parts work together. The megalomania and narcissism are the attack-dogs, keeping away anyone who would storm the gates and take the citadel. The masochism is the poker-faced advisor, avatar of the fortress's spirit, ensuring the advisee is too beaten-down to disregard his counsel and leave. (Frollo, to Quasimoto)

The best chance the advisor has at securing his position, if he suspects his influence is waning, and the advisee is in danger of leaving, is to bring the attack dogs into the citadel, keep them menacingly at bay, and then validate the advisee's suspicions, but with his own particular inflection. In this way, the glimmer of hope latent in the advisee's suspicions is rendered into a further rationale for remaining in the fortress. (here is what lies behind the liar's paradox@apokrisis mentioned - the weird way in which much of what you're saying repeats the thing it decries.)

What the advisor cannot abide, and fears, is that some kind of compassion or forgiveness will mingle with self-knowledge. Even worse: what if the advisee forgives the advisor and acknowledges that, in his own way, he was trying to provide security? The advisor's power would vanish in a flash. His strength is utterly dependent on the illusion that he understands the stakes best.

@Hanover

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

We don't realize the distinction between things as we think they are and how they actually are until we engage in some amount of introspection — Hanover

More frequently: we realize the distinction after we experience things behaving differently than we would have anticipated them to behave given what we thought they were. Or: Someone, whose word we trust, tells us that a thing isn't what it appears.

. It takes someone who is willing to examine the nature of reality some effort to convince himself that there might not really be a rock before him. And so Descartes' contribution was to examine this question and to doubt everything and then to locate which could not be doubted.

Your reconstruction makes it sound as though Descartes began in a climate of certitude and, through thought, was able to shake that certitude (in order to rebuild on stabler ground.)

But the opposite is the case. Descartes was living at a time of radical uncertainty and doubt. Everyone was stoned, didn't know how to quit, and he was just the king-stoner who smoked himself sober.


But anyway the point is: the distinction between things as we think they are and how they really are is common, really common, everyday-language common. Even Forrest Gump will tell you, re: his box, that you never know what you're gonna get. Sellars is trying to examine the real conditions of possibility for such a distinction in order to understand it better.

The trouble comes when the distinction is too-quickly put to metaphysical work, without first understanding why and how it works.

So:

The problem with getting from mere appearance to reality is that of incoherence. It is not possible to describe an object without reference to appearance (or some other sensation), so to ask how can I know the rock without reference to how it looks, smells, or taste seems nonsensical. The problem then isn't that we can't know reality prior to appearance, but we can't even discuss a reality without appearances.

This, as you point out, is a mess. What is even meant by 'reality' 'object' 'knowledge' etc at this point? Something's gone really wrong. Sellars' analysis goes part of the way in figuring out where we lost the plot.

For example: a lot of the weirdness in that last quote revolves around the relation of knowledge and description, as though to know a rock, to 'get from' 'mere' appearance to 'reality' would involve describing a realer sensuous rock that lies behind the sensuous rock we describe. Compare to: I know the pythagorean theorem. I know that the Capital of France is Paris. I know that 'tsp' is an abbreviation for teaspoon.' I know that glass breaks when dropped on a hard surface. etc etc.

That I don't know. The people I talked to weren't in a state to give an objective account of their history. I can say that there was a very wide spectrum, age-wise.

But again, I should probably re-iterate that you only wind up in a psych ward if your symptoms have become overwhelming. So there could be a kind of selection bias, here. It may be that I didn't meet many people who were open to standard ways of treating their condition, because the people who were able to integrate that kind of treatment didn't need to go to psych ward. Hard to know.

True, just a minor quibble. I thought you might be characterizing schizophrenia as in in essence a failure to adapt, whereas I would characterizethe failure to adapt as a consequence of schizophrenia.

'failure to adapt' seems too broad to me though. There's a lot of ways to fail at adapting that aren't schizophrenia.

Most were paranoid about them. Some would deal with them through a particular kind of obsequiousness (this is describing stuff on the psychiatrist's terms) others with hostility, others with a kind of blank indifference.

It's a Tibetan Buddhist thing as well. — frank

yeah! I'm more inclined to approach these themes in eastern terms, or at least western mystical ones (I like gnosticism a lot) - I feel like the christ drama is like a satisfying 'pageant' or something dramatizing a less tangible thing.

It's hard to put into words exactly.

So:

I've spent time in psych wards, for major depression. In those wards, I spent a lot of time around people with schizophrenia. Big caveat here: My experience with schizophrenics is mostly with those who are in the depths of acute psychosis, not with those who are managing symptoms out in the real world.

That said: I noticed that most of the schizophrenics I talked to seem to be highly attuned to the power dynamics and emotional currents of their environment. In many ways they seemed *more* aware of what was going on than the others there. Talking to them, they'd almost always speak in allegories, or metaphors. People talk about schizophrenic 'word salad' but my impression was that there was always a strange logic to their free-association. And they'd shift 'voices' or 'registers' correspondingly. But they weren't just 'in another world' - they were interpreting the world we were in, through themselves.

It's hard to put this into words: We're very used to people talking about what they feel and who they are and what's going on - we're used to people talking about that stuff in terms of personal beliefs, feelings, etc all centered around an 'I'. But these conversations - it was more like witnessing - and being called upon to witness - a kind of jazz show/tone poem/mood play, that would shift depending on what was happening. Most of the schizophrenics I talked to had a stable cast of characters (or scenarios, or voices) that would act in different ways, depending.

But most of the schizophrenics were also aware of the position of power the psychiatric staff held - one patient, who preferred to bathe things in Norse Mythology - talked about the Priests of Asgard, for example. Psychiatrists ask you to give an account of what you're feeling. You, the I, giving an account to another, the doctor. Quite like priests. This is only one way of talking, and most - not all - of the schizophrenics I knew would adjust themselves, and speak in terms of hallucinations etc. But that isn't how they usually talked to the rest of us, when the psychiatrists weren't around.

I don't know if that helps at all.

Never read him, but I did like Scorsese's Last Temptation. But - I don't know about the book - the movie focused primarily on the subjective experience of Christ, Christ-as-existential-hero. That's only one half.

In any case, even without Kazantzakis, you have Christ throwing out psalms 22:1 on the cross.

True. I guess you mean it's irrelavent if there really is any voice in the same way it's irrelevant whether we're presently in a simulation, or that the world is your mind and I'm just one of those crazy voices you hear.

Which I am, by the way. — frank

Oh no, I think it's relevant. My response to Banno only meant that I think the terminology of mental states only makes sense in the setting in which its used (if even there). Theres very real stuff going on, but 'mental states' isnt going to get you close to it.

In terms of schizophrenic voices - I just mean the voices seem more like a drama being played out through (or within) a person than a hallucination appearing (resounding?) to a stable subject.

But im much more sure of the first paragraph than the second. (And I probably shouldn't have even brought up the stuff in the second. It's not all that relevant here.)

I don't see it in terms of propitiation, otherwise it would be insane (propitiating oneself.)

It's more like: If the universe were created intentionally, then any olive branch(or rainbow) from the force that created it, while remaining outside it, would be meaningless. Any communication from outside-the-world to people inside-the-world would be condescending at best. But, if that force were to voluntarily enter the world (and if he forgets he made that choice, or at least occasionally doubts that he really is God, and so has to live out his days like the rest of us, its even better) then there is some actual connection established. It's not propitiation, its solidarity.

God became flesh. He had himself crucified in order to redeem his own creation. It's the ravings of a lunatic. — frank

Ah no, its sublime. Especially if you throw in a twist of christ forgetting he is God, or doubting it. Its a beautiful myth. Not saying I believe it (tho I kinda do, just allegorically) but either way its pretty good.

You can't actually tell by external signs that a person is experiencing an internal voice. They have to tell you that. — frank

Very true, but them telling you that is an external sign. (My hunch, having talked to many schizophrenics, is that the 'voices' they hear are not well understood in the way "hearing voices" would suggest, as though youre on your couch and an internal radio's playing some voice talking to you. But thats another topic altogether.)

apologies to @Moliere & @unenlightenedGulity of responding to the op without reading the responses first. I see I'm making some points others have already made.

Are mental states individuals?

That is, can they be parsed by constants in first-order language... — Banno

Sure, they are all the time. They were in those links you linked, for example, weren't they?

Are you asking whether 'mental states' correspond to some actual thing, a mental-state, in the person to whom they're ascribed? My guess is no, not really, tho, if youre familiar with the terms and the settings in which they crop up, you stand a good chance at making valid inferences about someone given the knowledge they've been ascribed mental state x.

'Mental states', at least of the sort described in your links, are part of a clinical language game involving

(1) finding the appropriate label for how someone presents in a mental health setting.

in order to

(2) interact with that person in such a way that they'll get better (or, more cynically, interact in such a way that one can reasonably ascribe a good 'state' to them in order to free up a bed in the clinic and have your interaction with them reflect well on your ability to treat patients vis-a-vis institutional expectations re: treatment duration)

To ask what actual thing it is 'mental state' refers to isto give the clinical game an undue dignity. 'mental states' are 'how-to-relate-to-this-person' tags determined by simple algorithmic checklists used to get the minimum [whatever] needed to categorize. They're instrumental through and through.

That the clinical game involving "mental states" is notoriously bad at the long-term amelioration of undesirable 'states' is also worth taking into account.

(@Baden @unenlightened and anyone else - Here's the Lyotard if you're interested. Best I could do was a google books preview, but the whole thing's on there.)

Admittedly, I don't know Latour that well either. I've read a few of his essays though, and didn't like them much. I have the feeling that if I hadn't encountered many of the (kantian and post-kantian) ideas in them already, his essays would have seemed so scintillatingly insightful that I would have been inclined to go along with the rest of what he says. But, having encountered those ideas before, the additional concepts he constructs from them seem like severely unjustified leaps. And, besides, he's something like the godfather of OOO which I absolutely can't stand - but that's a personal thing.

But climate-change denialists will make fodder out of anything whatever, won't they

Yeah, that's a valid point. I'm volatile on this issue, as I am on everything, but catch me on an average day, and you'll get quiet defeatism. I have little hope anything will change the course. Gaia, if there's such a thing, will be fine. Whatever happens to us, will.

This sums it up well

Also, given the state of the dispute and the current lack of confidence, we can’t just go back and state that climate change is “just a fact.”

Q: Isn’t it?

A: No, science is more complex and messy than to understand how the climate works. It is an illusion of certainty to state that we fully understand it, a remnant of the ideal of science. — the article linked

Is he right? It doesn't really matter. This is a glaring red target for anyone on the other side. If you're taking a public role as defender of the reality of climate change, interviews about this public role are the wrong place to bring up these concerns.

Latour's always had an earth-as-gaia thing, so this isn't all that surprising. It just seems like he's willing to take the side of scientists in a case where he sees them as pro-gaia, and others as anti-. More power to him, but, as someone who absolutely believes in climate-change, Latour's the worst person to have publically on your side. It's just fodder for denialists who will, correctly in this case, see his involvement as a politicized cherry-picking approach where one endorses the scientific findings that support one's personal values. Even if he's right about science being fundamentally politically-entwined, the optics aren't good.

Yeah but there's plenty of state presence in the rust belt. You can't rob a walgreens and get away with it, tho you're free to die of opioids walgreens, or other customers of walgreens, give you. Life in the rust belt, by all accounts, is miserable - but still the state holds sway. (there's also a deep tradition of extended family support subtending it). There's no room for a mafia there. If one cropped up, itd be quickly stamped out.


But in any case tomatoes are a literally red flag here. Tomatoes are cheap . Far cheaper than your tv, phone or computer. Some goods can face the sidewalk, others not so much. More to the point: work and govt checks youre willing to part with a part of for safety and the ability to continue to receive checks.

I don't know enough about the historical mafia to say this with absolute certainty, but my impression was that their cash crop was protection, not resources. Only after establishig themselves as local powerhouses did they branch out into other goods.

hooooly

. Ah see. Here the noble worker can walk in with his greasy clothes and say 'hello, im here to forget the mines through the restorative power of one refreshing iced latte" While in your case, its only monocled fat cats getting deluxe cappucinos for some unspecified use at their obscene sex rituals.

*goes back to drinking a supreme luxury latte freed from guilt*

but wth is your minimum wage - like a buck?

If I ever find out you post from a starbucks, I'm going to flag you three times over.

And I do not believe you. I believe it is because this is a neglected corner of the empire, that is of little interest to powers of all kinds. Not worth planting a bomb here, unless the forces happen to choose it for their celebrations. Too poor to sustain its own Mafia, and too under resourced to to be worth fighting over. The reality is that no one wants my tomatoes. — unenlightened

But I'm pretty skeptical the reason there's no Mafia where you live is poverty. What's the vacuum, where you live, that the mafia would fill? Do you fear that, were you the victim of a violent crime, the police would either fail to respond to your call for help, or else maybe end up arresting you instead, on some pretense?

Mafia-like organizations thrive in poverty, in areas that are truly of little interest to powers of all kinds. This is how Fascism was able to take roots as well. Impoverished areas, like the Po Valley, with no recourse to State Relief. are provided a second strong-arm state by those with ambitions to power, who sniff places out like this as if by instinct. Enough areas like this, the more the shadow state is strengthened, and the possibility of a political coup. Myth and Charisma are potent ingredients in fascism, but they aren't the meat. They just seem like it, in non-academic historic restrospect, because theyre more interesting than the other stuff. That's what sells to a popular audience.

They key ingredient for things like the mafia is the absence of a monopoly of power. If the state isn't willing or isn't able to enforce order, and won't seriously prevent others from doing so in their stead.

Sure, the grandkids may be really sorry too. But take away the material circumstances and social protection in which they can nurture this feeling and I'm skeptical they'd feel the same way. A whole lot of our nobler passions are predicated on our knowing we're economically secure.

Lyotard has a fantastic essay, 're-writing modernity' that attempts to show that the self-condemnation of western civ is a an extension of the same project that led to them doing what they have to apologize for. That sounds like it could be hamfisted, but its very subtle and thoughtful. I'll have to try to find a link. It's very good and not too long.

Yes, but if I imagine a rich family in my town laying wreck to my family; and then years later, as an old man, I'm invited to a party, at a house seized from my family long ago, and I listen to the grandchildren of the aggressors decrying their grandparents, while lounging on my grandmother's couch - it would give me the queasy feeling that these grandkids are so secure in the transfer of power, that they can symbolically attack it. I think that might sting worse than anything else. It's the soft-spoken 'I'm so sorry for your loss' of someone at a funeral you know contributed to the ruin of the deceased, before he goes back to the life made easier by inflicting that ruin.

Oh, I don't. I just wanted to point out that children often appear to find a rather unmediated glee in, say, knocking down another's block-tower (something, incidentally, that you see happening in sublimated form on the forum all the time). For most kids, they stop short of seriously harming another kid. And most adults find alternative outlets for their grown-up aggresion. Especially if the grown-up has the economic security to allow them a safe-space to harmlessly playact harm. But this isn't everyone.

I'm with most of the other posters in that violence isn't good in-itself. But our better angels are still body-bound to our animal passions. Which is to say you can recognize the ineluctability of violence without celebrating it.

Crlebrating not-celebrating feels like moral/security potlatch to me. Its a crime to destroy food if it means someone will go hungry, but not if there's more than enough to go around. Similarly, It's one thing to point out the fiction of absolute security when one has an abundance of the realtive kind. But imagine a community leader making that same point to the citizens of a town devastated by violent crime.

yeah

There is the game theory thing of suspicion, but it's not just a self-contained hall of mirrors, floating on air. There's real non-defensive violence, too. Violence has a material ground, if you like, which supports the formal excrescences of each-worried-about-the-other. The grounding runs that way, not vice versa (though the formal excrescences feed back into it, once it gets going.)

Some other chaps are sociopaths. And even non-sociopaths can be temporarily seized by darker passions.

Have you ever watched children play?

There's a lot of philosophy of law being done against 'philosophy of law' I mean

I'm enjoying this thread, sincerely.

But I have to say, as a whole, with regard to the OP it feels a lot like : 'I've heard of these couples who sleep *with other couples* - that's crazy right?
So bizarre, can't imagine. But, just pretending, If me and my wife were to do something like that, not that we would, but it would go something like this...

[redacted]

how dare you. The only email account I have is freebitcoinsforsensitivedataatangelfiredotcom

oh shit i totally forgot!

Basically you text your ssn to realtpfmoderator89atgmaildotcom along with a precis of your complaint and a valid credit card number (just for authentication.) They respond within 3-5 business days, unless you include nudes, in which case youre greenlit for same-day consideration

tldr: you can only ignore the meta stuff, as a pragmatic strategy, if the meta stuff hasn't already been baked into the object-level. It has been.

But are we on the shore building intellectual sandcastles here or have we actually got our toes in the water yet? The meta-game is to be above it all and imagine we're making a contribution simply by analyzing how fucked up each side is. Meanwhile society as a whole drifts towards some -ism that we, for real ethical reasons, object to but don't or can't do anything about — Baden

Yeah, that's an apt criticism, and the Selma example is a good one. I've never been very politically active (mostly because I don't know how to interact with people outside bars and small gatherings) and that sometimes makes me liable to 'beautiful soul' armchair analysis. I still think the point I was trying to make is valid, but I do need to separate the wheat from the ivory starbucks meta-chaff.

--

I think my last post was sloppy and confusingly mixed up two different themes:

(a) authentic vs inauthentic outrage

(b) What sort of missteps are grounds for legitimate outrage?

I do think these are closely linked, but nevertheless distinct. I didn't outline very well the way in which I think they're related to one another.

(Separating the question of legitimacy from the question of authenticity opens up a category of 'authentic outrage for illegitimate reasons' which might appear troubling, but I don't think it is. I'll bracket that at this point, but I'd be willing to defending that in more detail, and will probably expand on it below)

@Hanover's post moved from diplomatic agnosticism regarding a specific example toward a broader criticism of a general climate of performative outrage. I was trying, in my post, to demonstrate that I acknowledge the existence of that climate (which I sincerely do find to be problematic) but also...

The also was this: Peformative outrage exists - moreover, illegitimate performative outrage exists, and is rampant. BUT. That doesn't mean that we should approach all outrage as opportunity to comment on a corrupt climate. People fake injuries all the time, for pills. Someone comes to a doctor, leg mangled - 'Well I can't say one way or the other in this case, but what I think is worth talking about how many people do fake."

But the other point is this: The political use of illegitimate occasions for outrage, whether the outrage is authentic or not, casts doubt on legitimate uses of outrage. Selma is clearly legitimate, whatever the degree of personal authenticity for the people involved. Whatever the artifice, it embodies an authentic outrage, but strategically. It worked.

What would work now?


So...oh but I don't know how to say what I want to say now. It's tip of the tongue.

Something like: You can argue for the pragmatic use of tactical outrage, and I think you're right, but that use will only be pragmatic as long as it actually moves people. Moves people other than the people who are already moved. If you reach a crisis point where everyone suspects that everything is politics and is inauthentic ---then that rationale utterly fails. I would argue that that's already happened (2016), and that the left, in denial, is sleepwalking to the same tune. There was plenty of tactical outrage directed at Trump. But, like a bad dream, any attempt by the democrats to capitalize on that outrage just made the rest of the country like trump all the more, ala Berlusconi.

Intellectually, ivory-starbucks, I have no problem suggesting to Hanover that he's mixing up levels. Pragmatically, sewer-thing, I think Hanover's dead right. If you want to mobilize on that level, you have to focus on what people feel - not what should they feel.

I also believe that some feign outrage as an effective tactic against outrageous conduct and it's just sort of an outrage game people play. Is that what happened in Tiff's example? I really don't know — Hanover

I'm glad you brought this up; I had the feeling this was the subtext.

There's a lot of disingenuous, weaponized outrage out there. But then there's also a lot of disingenuous "how could you ever think I was saying *that*??" indignation. When it's a game, its usually a game with two players.

In any case, the suspicion of local disingenuousness can metastasize, slowly and invisibly, frog in boiling water, into a full-blown cynical universal suspicion. Almost everyone is feigning outrage - and even if they aren't, and the authenticity of outrage is rhetorically bracketted, the 'outrage' is best addressed as an occasion for speaking of inauthentic outrage.

Same thing, but reversed, applies to the other side. 'I also believe that some feign emotional investment in the open marketplace of ideas as an effective tactic against pc moralizing and it's really just sort of 'only-saying-this as devil's advocate' game people play. Is this what [x] is doing? I really don't know [but regardless, that's what's important to focus on here]'

(I'm sure your familiar with one variant of this rhetorical move, a mirror of yours: if someone's accused of being racist, and then that case crumbles, well actually that's the point, because its important to recognize the *systemic* racism that the person is unwittingly the vessel for.)

A similar thing happens with religion. One side, snarky and less-holy-than-thou, smears publically what's of spiritual value to the other. Then the other side weaponizes their spirituality in retaliation. After a few decades, you're left with hollow accusations of ignorance and hypocrisy on the one hand, and amorality on the other.

But that shouldn't blind one to the fact that spiritual communities often provide real succor, both spiritual and material, for their members Or (from the other side) that people who don't fit that community's mold can be severely damaged by the judgments of the religious.

The spectacle of argument divorces both participants from what they're arguing about, and the cynical game-theory thing of 'he's bullshitting, so I have to bullshit back' allows each participant to justify their immersion in the spectacle to themselves.

Tldr; cotton-picking whatever is shitty, no matter how the other person reacts. Chastising an older generation for not understanding intersectionality or knowing gender pronouns v. 9.3 is bullshit. But the fact that stuff like the latter example exists, doesnt mean the former example should be tactfully and with plausible deniability waved-off.

As a meta-theory of theories, ain't that kind of vague? — apokrisis

no, its 1/crisp :lol: :lol: :100:

(Whoops. I didn't mean to be so bold as to advance a single meta-model of models there. So like ... just whatevs ... its all good, eh brah?)

'just whatevs, it's all good, eh brah? '

What voice are you trying to caricature? Is this supposed to be a stoner? A teenager? A jock?