What do you think of the Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough?

Most of them felt quite lonely and I suppose they couldn't find someone to fill that hole. It reverberates strongly in Ludwig Wittgenstein's writings and personality. — Question

And yet, when you read those remarks on Frazer that Nils Loc posted, what comes across is a lively kind of fellow-feeling--a sympathy for human beings and a passionate defence of their practices, rather than any anguished estrangement from people. And reading just a page or so of it reminds you why the thought of philosophers interests us so much more than their lives.

I'd certainly like to see debates. I'm not sure about the real-time thing, but if the participants were to agree on those rules, then sure.

Okay. I don't know the questions or how you answered, so I can't judge for myself at present. But if you're in favour of absolute freedom of speech, then, by implication, you're in favour of causing needless harm. For example, shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. — Sapientia

Incidentally, this is one of our many disagreements.

Thinking about this some more...

What might work better than inviting celebrity philosophy professors, as on PF, is inviting popular bloggers or podcasters on philosophy (or politics, sociology, science,etc.), many of whom are academics of some sort but, crucially, are always ready to engage with others online.

I haven't considered it, and on old PF it seemed like a lot of trouble for nothing very interesting or exciting. Others may think differently, so I'm not saying it won't happen.

values which you'd deem to be sexist or whatever, despite the fact that they would apply equally to men and women (such as chastity for both) — Agustino

Talk about a straw man. If those values do equally apply to men and women, then how can they be sexist? Why do you think I would hold such an irrational position?

This reveals their deep rooted world view on nature, which is contrasted by conservatives, who are much more wary of nature and its dark aspects — Emptyheady

Notice how this is pretty much the opposite of the traditional understanding of these political positions. For conservatives, the status quo, e.g., class hierarchies or disparities in the treatment of men and women, is defended partly on the basis of its supposed naturalness, whereas leftists--at least in the old days--either point out that these things are social and amenable to change, or else deny that we must respect what is natural.

The confusion here is probably partly down to your American libertarian understanding of conservatism. In any case, it's one reason why I see much of the green movement and today's Left as conservative.

I'm a Leftist and I positively love cooling towers.

There's not actually many people who think for themselves, and who actually have their own views on things, not determined by what others encourage them to think. — Agustino

And that is precisely what universities ought to be encouraging: independence of mind and the free play of ideas. But that's not what's happening now. I'm at risk of agreeing with you here.

I don't recall agreeing with you in that debate. I remember you as one of my main adversaries, hence why I called you a petit bourgeois reactionary lickspittle or whatever.

So me, you and Crank are on the same page. — Sapientia

Interestingly, though, I seem to disagree with you and BC as much as agree.

Last time I did it I was about the same as you for the first two tests, maybe a bit more libertarian.

I got bored with the other one.

I think the difference is that the objects of science are described or defined entirely in terms of their measurable properties, via their effects. But to say that the cause of religious practices is the supreme being and creator of the universe, etc., is to go far beyond the evidence, i.e., beyond the effects.

I'm still on the right track here. — TheMadFool

You're not, because in saying that God has measurable effects you're assuming that God exists, so the argument begs the question. Others have pointed this out.

One thing is the problem of ancestrality (not that Schopenhauer uses that term):

Thus we see, on the one hand, the existence of the whole world necessarily dependent on the first knowing being, however imperfect it be; on the other hand, this first knowing animal just as necessarily wholly dependent on the long chain of causes and effects which has preceded it, and in which it itself appear as a small link. These two contradictory views, to each of which we are lead with equal necessity, might certainly be called an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge. — Schopenhauer, WWR

I don't know if that's the kind of thing Mongrel had in mind, or whether it's relevant to your conversation, but it strikes me as quite paradoxical.

Up North, perhaps. — Sapientia

There be dragons.

Then count me out.

The SEP takes the alternatives seriously:

What might a fact be? Three popular views about the nature of facts can be distinguished:

A fact is just a true truth-bearer,
A fact is just an obtaining state of affairs,
A fact is just a sui generis type of entity in which objects exemplify properties or stand in relations. — SEP, Facts

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/facts

I notice the land masses in the last image there are in fact orange, perhaps indicating the dominance of the Dutch in the future communist utopia.

I think that's a bad analogy, because those terms are defined strictly in physics, whereas you couldn't get all philosophers to agree on what a fact is. Thus it is essential to the philosophical enterprise here to pay attention to conventional use, to unearth what "fact" might mean in specific contexts, and to pick and choose between these uses in specific fields of philosophical enquiry relevant to those contexts, e.g., facts vs. truth in epistemology, or facts vs. values in ethics. But even in these restricted domains, of course, there is also a lack of agreement, and so it goes.

He preferred poodles to women.

I'm not saying it's not physical, although I do believe this to be a category error. I'm saying that unlike flying it's not uncontroversial to say that it is physical. There is room for the p-zombie argument precisely because we don't know how to account for consciousness.

Generally, I think that when we talk about the mind or about consciousness we are referring to the same thing people referred to back when it didn't occur to anyone to equate it with brain states. Physicalism purports to account for something that we already talked about.

Too confusing. Physically identical flying pigs are uncontroversially inconceivable. It is a contradiction, since by flying we just mean, and have always meant, something physical. This is not the case with consciousness and the mind.

Back where we started.

But Michael is right, and you have failed to get your point across.

I take your point to be that one would only affirm that p-zombies are conceivable if one believes that physicalism is false. I'm sympathetic to this, but you have not properly argued for it.

Michael is defending the classic p-zombie argument, which is not question-begging without further analysis to reveal hidden premises, because the conceivability of p-zombies does not obviously, or on the face of it necessarily, rest on a denial of physicalism.

But it's true that the notion of conceivability in Chalmers' argument is a bit troublesome. It positively invites the charge of begging the question, because it is so easy to confuse "We can conceive x", with "I believe there could be an x", where the latter obviously rests on one's philosophical commitments.

But the relevant notion of conceivability is something more like logical possibility. So, roughly, you may find it difficult to conceive of flying pigs if you are deeply familiar with evolutionary history, and yet the thought is not a contradictory one, and thus flying pigs are conceivable in the relevant sense.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you're not obviously right.

Well like I say, that's where things get interesting. (Y)

Hello and welcome @dclements. I'm here 8-)

In case you don't know, we set up this forum specifically for PF members when it was sold back in 2015. Many of us suspected things wouldn't turn out well over there.

So does that make truth relativistic? One can believe something; but, it may actually not be true. — Question

This speaks for truth not being relative. Something is true whether you believe it or not.

And what BC sees as the relativity of truth is just the ambiguity of his example statements.

1 gallon of H2O weighs 8 pounds always and everywhere is true — Bitter Crank

But it's not, and adding the word "here" shows that you know it. On the other hand, "1 gallon of H2O weighs 8 pounds always and everywhere on Earth" is true. There is no case for the relativity of truth here, unless you just mean that a statement can turn out to be either true or false depending on how clear it is, or depending on your interpretation. Interpretations are relative, but interpretations are implicit reformulations--which is where things get interesting.

Yes, it's not a "being" (in the sense you're using, viz., having an inner life). That's a stipulation of the thought experiment.

Oh yes I most certainly do, but there is some entertainment to be had in saying why. But I am still at a loss why so much ink is spilled over the question. — Wayfarer

Well, the primary use of the concept of p-zombies is an argument against physicalist theories of mind. If p-zombies are logically possible then consciousness is not identical to brain-states. So the argument goes (roughly).

Thanks. Been meaning to read them myself.

what do you think of it?

From your perspective, in terms of your first person experiences with her ... You literally cannot, in-principle discover whether your wife is a p-zombie or not. — dukkha

This is the point of the thought experiment.

According to physicalism, subjectivity must be a software feature. — tom

I don't think physicalism entails functionalism or the computational theory of mind, although they're compatible.

So what's your stance here? That we are not emotionally manipulated in ways that are not good for us? Because if it's just that we are not "mere puppets", I'm sure we all agree. — Baden

I'm not sure I have a stance on that, though I feel like I want to question your statement. I was talking about ideology, or about the changes in political ideas that I believe importantly frame these debates, rather than directly addressing the OP or your own points. Thus many of the positions that I imputed to my opponents might be exaggerations or simplifications that don't accurately represent the positions to be found in this discussion. Still, I thought my post was kind of relevant. It's what I'm interested in, at least.

I have great distaste for this frolicking over material conditions. — Agustino

I know, and I'm not interested.

Sorry, kind of.

Where that's done well, a movie can work and be a healthy engagement. It rarely is. Maybe Cronenberg. — Baden

Much as I like his movies, "healthy" is not a word that springs immediately to mind.

Like csal, I'm a bit suspicious of all this anti-consumerist talk. I'm going to ramble on and see what happens. I'm not sure how relevant it'll be.

...Marxist conspiracy theorist who hates business... — Baden

Talking of Marx, let's see what he said. For him, the multiplication of needs is a saving grace of capitalism:

Each capitalist does demand that his workers should save, but only his own, because they stand towards him as workers; but by no means the remaining world of workers, for these stand towards him as consumers. In spite of all ‘pious’ speeches he therefore searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chatter etc.It is precisely this side of the relation of capital and labour which is an essential civilizing moment, and on which the historic justification, but also the contemporary power of capital rests. — Marx, Grundrisse

Also for Marx, the concept of artificial need is a bourgeois fiction:

Artificial need is what the economist calls, firstly, the needs which arise out of the social existence of the individual; secondly those which do not flow from his naked existence as a natural object. This shows the inner, desperate poverty which forms the basis of bourgeois wealth and of its science. — Marx

But since the seventies the critique of capitalism has taken on a different flavour, so that affluence and economic growth have become the target as much as poverty and scarcity used to be. You know how the story goes: advertising, Hollywood, and the Superbowl turn us from citizens or political agents into mere consumers, diverted from worthy activities and political struggle by pointless products and entertainments, which leave us always dissatisfied, when we could be satisfied with what we've got (materially).

So is there a justification for this change in the Leftist position? The traumatized Marxism of the Frankfurt School and the New Left is probably key here, but I don't want to go into that myself. Generally speaking, maybe we can just accept that while Marx wrote in a time of the immiseration of the industrial working class, today's Left operates in a time of abundance, notwithstanding the widening inequality of the last few decades. And whereas Marx optimistically imagined new needs as culturally enriching, today's consumerism is criticized as a cultural impoverishment.

To the tune of Micheal Jackson's Smooth Criminal:

Woke up this morning, need my paper, gonna jump in my car,
Down the shops on the corner, gonna drive there, I know it's not far,
My house is always heated, got no jumpers, I left all my lights on,
Dishwashers running, and so's the dryer, all my stuffs on standby,

Annie are you walking, Annie are you walking, No I'm driving baby x 4
Annie are you walking, won't you tell us that your walking?
Can't you see me through the window that I'm driving, that I'm driving my car
Won't you think about walking to the shops, or down your local?
Are you all crazy, I've got an off-road, I can drive anywhere!
Annie are you walking, Annie are you walking, No I'm driving baby x 3
You've been hit by, you've been struck by a climate criminal!

I never buy local, all my stuff comes from places real far,
I never recycle, I go on cheap flights, been on 20 so far,

Go to Chorus — Bristol anti-consumerist carol singers

https://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/736

Although this is environmentally focused, I think we can agree that this attitude is a big part of current Leftist thinking too (Naomi Klein, anti-globalization, etc).

Let's take the example of cheap flights, mentioned in the song. "Cheap flights", at least in the UK, is middle-class code for loutish working-class lads and lassies heading to the Costa del Sol to get drunk and have a lot of sex. But this is a stereotype. In Marx's time my forebears were poor uneducated rural labourers, and maybe some of them were recent arrivals in the cities, where they went to find work (it's mostly the upper class that can trace their ancestry with any certainty, so I can't be sure). It's unlikely they ever set foot outside Britain and Ireland. But here I am now in sunny Spain, having been to several countries in several continents, writing about politics and philosophy even though I haven't studied them in a university. I would never have been able to travel without cheap flights, and I would never have been able to read Kant without leisure. I'm pretty sure this is a cultural as well as a material enrichment, and it was made possible by capitalism.

What is the limit beyond which we should not have gone? When is abundance too much? At what point is the creation of new needs corrupting? Is an anti-consumerist going to say that while, okay, washing machines, despite being an artificial or false need, may have been genuinely liberating, iPhones, imported foreign food, cheap travel, and off-road cars are not? How do you separate the good from the bad here? Is it more than a matter of taste? Or is a washing machine a basic need, while an off-road car is a false one? How does that work? Who decides which is which?

I admit this is impressionistic and emotional, but--something about it just stinks. The critique of consumer culture and the influence of corporations appears to be often motivated by a contempt for the masses, or at least a superior paternalism, not to mention a snobbish distaste. (And it's pretty mainstream. Baden mentioned Hollywood and how much he hates it. But Hollywood is full of anti-corporate sentiment, and is now firmly seated on the green anti-consumerist bandwagon.)

There is a simplistic sanctimoniousness in the suggestion that we are mere puppets of the advertisers, and for me it's reminiscent of my heritage of Presbyterian sobriety. But come to think of it, this kind of Protestant puritanism is actually a real thread in the development of radical thought, from the English Revolution onwards, so maybe it's not quite true to describe anti-consumerism as a regrettable reversal--it's been in the Left the whole time. It's just that this is not the Leftist tradition that I have sympathy with. It hates capitalism for the good it has done, not only the bad.

But wait. Did I just hypocritically denounce Leftist snobbery after having held myself up as an exemplar of the culturally enriched in contrast to the loutish working-class lads and lassies on the Costa del Sol? Not quite, I don't think. I've been on holidays like that myself. That's the point about stereotypes and caricatures: they are unfair generalizations. Thanks to cheap flights, people--non-rich people--travel now for all sorts of reasons.

The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper by E. T. A. Hoffmann