Yep, that was in my list.

Well, I personally think that the quality is not good enough. You mentioned Almodovar's films but even their films are weird and wacky. The problem is not about the availability outside Spain, because if ours films were acceptable, many translators would pay for them. I guess that some cultures are more interesting than others. For example: I see that some users put a lot of films of Kurosawa and Ōzu in this thread and they are "so Japanese" and despite this fact, their movies are over the world and translated in different languages.
I must accept (and this is true) that Japanese culture is more interesting than Spanish one, it is a fact. I understand that for a foreigner could be boring our dramas about politics and territories. — javi2541997

So, the Spanish film industry is small because of a lack of global demand (perhaps even domestic and Hispanic demand in general), and this is because Spanish stuff is less attractive, interesting, or fashionable than, e.g., Japanese stuff.

You might be right, but it doesn’t follow that the proportion of Spanish films that are high quality is lower, only that there will be fewer high quality films coming out of Spain than e.g., Japan, because there are far fewer films being made there.

Personally, I have no real preference when it comes to Spain vs Japan. Feels like I’m as likely to be interested in a Spanish film as a Japanese one.

On the other hand, I do enjoy films from unfamiliar cultures, partly for the novelty. When I met my wife she introduced me to Soviet movies, most of which I hadn’t heard of but which are massively popular in Russia and the other ex-Soviet countries.

Highlights were Kin-dza-dza and Office Romance, the latter partly because there were no subtitles and my wife had to translate, which was fun, but also because it was fascinating to see everyday office life in late 1970s Moscow, in the context of a romantic comedy.

I notice that nobody mentioned a film from Spain. I understand it because our film makers and industry are not good enough compared to America or Asia. — javi2541997

Rather than a lack of quality, it's probably because they're less available to watch outside Spain. A long time ago, the films of Almodovar used to be shown on TV in the UK. More recently, I watched a lot of the Spanish films on Netflix when I was in Spain, if they had English subtitles.

I liked these:

El hoyo
Tiempo compartido
Tarde para la ira
Handia
Errementari

I've included those last two because they were only on Spanish Netflix, though I'm aware they're Basque.

I haven't seen Vacas though.

Blow-Up — Joshs

Have you seen Blow Out from 1980, which Brian De Palma modelled on Blow Up? Another of my favourites.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.- I'm surprised no one has mentioned this — T Clark

One of my favourites too. On another day it might make my top ten.

I've enjoyed these eleven films the most (that I can bring to mind right now):

The Wicker Man
The Truman Show
Pulp Fiction
2001...
Mulholland Drive
Andrei Rublev
12 Angry Men
Taxi Driver
Stalker
Blade Runner
The Long Goodbye

Pleasant enough aye

Then I think there are two ways to look at ownership.

The more general way you seem to want to go is a question about any kind of society, because people will always have personal possessions and at the same time live with other people.

The other way is to look at the distinction I made between personal possessions and private property in the kind of societies we now have. It’s only in capitalist ideology that these are conflated, as if ownership of land and capital is just another form of personal possession.

For the first, more general question, anthropology might shed some light on it. What about this: do what you want with your own stuff (and here this only includes stuff you’re using for yourself) so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else.

What about land? — Mikie

I think it’s important to distinguish between personal possessions and ownership for profit. Everyone should have their own private, spacious shelter, but private ownership of land and buildings to generate rent, or profits from sale, is something else. The latter shouldn’t be possible, the former should be guaranteed for everyone.

EDIT: When Proudhon said that property is theft, he wasn’t talking about your toothbrush.

:up:

Nearing the end of Pynchon’s Against the Day. — Jamal

Finished it. A big fat mess. Recommended.

Next: Stephen Gregory, The Cormorant.

Nearing the end of Pynchon’s Against the Day. The mining tycoon Scarsdale Vibe, at the climax of the Colorado Coalfield War in 1914, gives a speech about workers:

“So of course we use them,” Scarsdale well into what by now was his customary stemwinder, “we harness and sodomize them, photograph their degradation, send them up onto the high iron and down into mines and sewers and killing floors, we set them beneath inhuman loads, we harvest from them their muscle and eyesight and health, leaving them in our kindness a few miserable years of broken gleanings. Of course we do. Why not? They are good for little else. How likely are they to grow to their full manhood, become educated, engender families, further the culture or the race? We take what we can while we may. Look at them—they carry the mark of their absurd fate in plain sight. Their foolish music is about to stop, and it is they who will be caught out, awkwardly, most of them tone-deaf and never to be fully aware, few if any with the sense to leave the game early and seek refuge before it is too late. Perhaps there will not, even by then, be refuge.

“We will buy it all up,” making the expected arm gesture, “all this country. Money speaks, the land listens, where the Anarchist skulked, where the horsethief plied his trade, we fishers of Americans will cast our nets of perfect ten-acre mesh, leveled and varmint-proofed, ready to build on. Where alien muckers and jackers went creeping after their miserable communistic dreams, the good lowland townsfolk will come up by the netful into these hills, clean, industrious, Christian, while we, gazing out over their little vacation bungalows, will dwell in top-dollar palazzos befitting our station, which their mortgage money will be paying to build for us. When the scars of these battles have long faded, and the tailings are covered in bunch-grass and wildflowers, and the coming of the snows is no longer the year’s curse but its promise, awaited eagerly for its influx of moneyed seekers after wintertime recreation, when the shining strands of telpherage have subdued every mountainside, and all is festival and wholesome sport and eugenically-chosen stock, who will be left anymore to remember the jabbering Union scum, the frozen corpses whose names, false in any case, have gone forever unrecorded? who will care that once men fought as if an eight-hour day, a few coins more at the end of the week, were everything, were worth the merciless wind beneath the shabby roof, the tears freezing on a woman’s face worn to dark Indian stupor before its time, the whining of children whose maws were never satisfied, whose future, those who survived, was always to toil for us, to fetch and feed and nurse, to ride the far fences of our properties, to stand watch between us and those who would intrude or question?” He might usefully have taken a look at Foley, attentive back in the shadows. But Scarsdale did not seek out the eyes of his old faithful sidekick. He seldom did anymore. “Anarchism will pass, its race will degenerate into silence, but money will beget money, grow like the bluebells in the meadow, spread and brighten and gather force, and bring low all before it. It is simple. It is inevitable. It has begun.” — Thomas Pynchon

This is the final flourish reminding us that Vibe is the arch-villain, and it’s also a concentrated outpouring of Pynchon’s anger towards capitalism. I’ve found the stuff on US labour conflicts in the book really interesting, because I didn’t know much about it. I’m guessing this history is covered in Howard Zinn’s A People's History of the United States, a book I haven’t read.

As always, we're open to suggestions, but I don't see a reason to change things at the moment. We introduced the Suspended status last year, but we don't have standard criteria for its use.

However, I think it is quite unjust to permanently ban a long-term poster who has contributed well and evenly for most of their TPF travels. — Amity

It has happened many times over the years, both on the old PF and on TPF. It normally doesn't happen without a lot of discussion first, as Hanover has described. But occasionally it does.

I know that this discussion was prompted by the recent banning of Olivier5. In that case I didn't take it to the rest of the staff for discussion. The refusal of moderation, the attitude it was received with, and his suggestion that he be banned for all he cared, are what led directly to the ban. Refusal of moderation has been a reason for such bannings before, e.g., The Great Whatever, who was a high-quality poster who refused to make a small change to his spelling habits.

What 'status' other than 'Banned' would be appropriate?
Suspended account? — Amity

As others have said, we do now have a Suspended user role, but it hasn't been used much.

That is a valid point, I think. It would be better to find a neutral term - "account closed" or some such. Not sure if the software can be tweaked? — unenlightened

I had a look and it seems that we can't change the word. We could assign the user to a custom user role that would prevent them from posting, but I don't think that would be equal to banning, since I think they'd still be able to log in, as I assume they can't do if they've been banned. Alternatively, we could delete the member, while retaining their posts.

But this brings up a question closer to the topic of the thread. If, and when, someone flags a post, thereby reporting it to the moderating team, do we have access to that information, as to who makes the report. — Metaphysician Undercover

We can’t see who flagged a post.

I read some comments to the effect that heated conflict gets the creative juices flowing. I think this is only true in the case where there is an established underlying camaraderie, that won't be damaged by such conflict, an underlying respect and agreement. — Pantagruel

I agree with this. I also think that those comments in favour of heated conflict were based on a basic misunderstanding. Even if there are some people who enjoy that kind of thing, it doesn’t mean it always results in a productive debate, one that is worth anyone else’s while to join or to follow. In fact, abusiveness produces, at the very best, low quality debates that revolve around who misquoted whom, who took the other out of context, and so on.

So as I see it, it’s not just a matter of hurt feelings and thin skins, as those commentators seemed to imply. It’s about how enjoyable, productive, substantive, and welcoming a debate is.

Does this work for anyone? I don't see any way to check or uncheck a category on the Categories page. — SophistiCat

Yeah I think that one's outdated, so I'll remove it.

Instead, if you open a particular category page, at the bottom of the discussion list there is a faint eye icon. Clicking it will toggle the visibility of the category on the All Discussions feed. — SophistiCat

Yep, that's item 12 (soon to be 11).

What thread are you talking about? Is there a link to the examples of the alleged trolling? — Amity

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13850/why-is-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-so-hard

I don't think he specified which posts he considered to be trolling. His point was that anyone arguing that the hard problem of consciousness is not actually a problem is trolling and should stop posting. He was at risk of derailing the discussion and turning it into another flame-war, so I deleted the post. This led to him posting the same thing, only worded differently, whereupon I asked him to stop, whereupon he called me an idiot, and so on.

Banned @Olivier5 for persistently attempting to derail a thread with accusations of trolling and so on, refusing to stop when I asked, calling me an idiot and refusing to take it back, and then suggesting I ban him and saying he wouldn't care if I did.

He would disagree with parts of that, but those are my reasons.

Well, if a scientific paradigm has no place in discussions about consciousness, then will everyone please stop going on about neuroscience (the failings thereof) in relation to it. — Isaac

I’m in agreement with a lot of what you’ve said in this discussion, but I think it’s worth pointing out why people do this. I think it’s an understandable reaction to the claims in popular science to the effect that consciousness has been, or will soon be, explained away by neuroscience. That is, a scientism that thereby devalues our stories. Do you recognise that this is a thing?

:up:

will their be an insistence on niceties such as that when someone is mentioned they are linked, and that quotes have an attribution? — Banno

Insistence, no. The Help section is to make it easier for people to find out how to use the site.

Whether people want to use the @ mention functionality is up to them. It’s easy to use and Wayfarer might cover it in his how-to series, but we won’t insist on it in the guidelines.

when the person is Bartricks — Metaphysician Undercover

Normally I consider the celebration of a ban unseemly, but in this case I encourage it.

It appeared to me from looking at his posting history that he was unpleasant to nearly everyone, usually without provocation. Whatever caused this behaviour, it wasn’t you.

Incidentally, he had been warned about it twice, once around the time he joined, and again recently.

Banned @Bartricks for a consistently disruptive and insulting attitude. Long overdue really.

:up:

So the entry in Britannica under Noumenon is wrong? — Wayfarer

Yes and no. They’re certainly not synonymous, as Britannica implies, but things as they are in themselves and noumena are closely related. Both are only thinkable, though some metaphysicians have also claimed that they can be actually apprehended directly, that is, through reason alone.

There’s no substitute for reading the thing, but there are also some good secondary texts.

I'm still investigating what becomes of 'form and substance' in Kant — Wayfarer

As I recall, these would either both be elements of the understanding (judgements or categories) or else, in the case of form, either an imposition of the innate structure of the mind's faculty of intuition (space and time), or this as it is applied to the phenomenal and particular (according to the schemata?).

That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them — Wayfarer

The universal is listed in his table of judgements, so it's a pure concept of the understanding, seen as independent of the objects of experience and thus a priori. I'm not sure that addresses your questions about the problem of universals, and I'm not sure Kant comes down fully in either of the nominalist or realist camps.

By the way, I can't remember the last time there was a Kant exegesis thread, so thanks! :up:

I can't promise I'll contribute much more though, as I don't have my copy of the Critique any more, and it's quite a commitment. I hope @Mww joins in.

But if you want to include a priori mathematical concepts and categories of the understanding under the term noumena, appealing to the ancient use of the term, then I'm not against that in principle, and I don't know enough about its use in Greek philosophy to argue about it.

Kant wouldn't go along with this. He would use noumena to describe, say, Plato's forms or Leibniz's monads (as well as suggestive of "things as they are in themselves"), which are purported objects in the world that are nevertheless apprehended intellectually. The a priori concepts and structures of the understanding wouldn't be lumped in with these.

So if you're right, then there is indeed a difference between the ancient and the Kantian notions of noumena, but Schopenhauer's accusation remains mistaken.

As I explained in the other discussion, I think Schopenhauer is wrong about this, for the simple reason that Kant explicitly contradicts him on more than one occasion. He takes noumena to be the purported objects of intellectual intuition, as opposed to the phenomenal objects of sensible intuition. The notion of things as they are in themselves is the unavoidable result of taking this noumenal access to reality seriously as a legitimate human faculty.

Having said that, as always with Kant, it's complicated. He varies his emphasis and sometimes seems to come close to contradicting himself, so there is some support in the Critique for taking noumena and things-in-themselves as simple synonyms. But this is by no means the dominant thrust of the concept.

I wonder what Kant would make of the modern consciousness debate. I suspect he would think it's beside the point with both sides making a fundamental error of mistaking the phenomenal physical for the noumenal. There's no point in arguing whether there's a hard problem if it's all phenomenal anyway. — Marchesk

His idea of transcendental apperception could be the key. There is consciousness of oneself as a phenomenal object, and there is a consciousness of oneself as the subject of experience. Off the top of my head I can speculate that the what it’s like emerges here as a consequence (although this is hand-waving).

But I’d have to think about it, and you could be right.

Is Kant saying we reason that the real world responsible for our senses is beyond our perceptions and reason? There is a real world responsible for us reasoning and perceiving, but it's unknowable and we can't say anything meaningful about it, only the one of appearances our minds shape from our sensory manifold? — Marchesk

My own answer is no, not quite, but this is a big topic that doesn’t belong in this discussion. I poked my head in to challenge Wayfarer’s scurrilous accusation. When you’ve read Kant, doing so is irresistible.

Yeah I don’t want to take things off-topic too much, so I’ll just say the following, because you make a good point.

Remember that intuition for Kant means very roughly perception, the representation of things in the world. Mathematical concepts, in contrast, are pure a priori products of human faculties (reason) that don’t depend on experience.

Noumena are purported objects of a non-sensible grasping of the world, possible examples being Platonic forms. Thus noumena are the elements of the metaphysics that Kant is critiquing.

So mathematical concepts are objects of reason, but not objects of intuition, meaning perception. Under this scheme, which is not so far from the pre-Kantian, they’re not noumenal.

Schopenhauer accused Kant of appopriating the term for his purposes without proper regard to its prior meaning for Greek and Scholastic philosophy — Wayfarer

I and many Kant scholars think Schopenhauer was wrong about that. At the very least his reading is unfair and simplistic.

The original meaning of "noumenal" was derived from the root "nous" (intellect) - hence "the noumenal" was an "object of intellect" - something directly grasped by reason, as distinct from by sensory apprehension. — Wayfarer

This is also how Kant used the term. The noumenon for Kant is an object of intellectual intuition (non-sensible representation of reality).

The difference is that Kant argued that such intuition is a faculty we do not have.

:cool:

he seems to be an interesting user — javi2541997

Not only interesting, but also a thoroughly decent fellow.

It’s too early in the day for vaporwave!

@Mayor of Simpleton joined at the beginning of TPF, helped in bringing people over from the old site, and shows up here sometimes. He’s posted 661 times.

What was that guy's name who took over PF just to transform it into a cesspool? — Metaphysician Undercover

Porat.

And whatever happened to that site, is it completely gone now? — Metaphysician Undercover

Gone, yes.

I never posted in the Shoutbox on old PF, nor did I pay any attention to the short story competitions. At the time it was philosophical discussion or nothing for me. Times change.