If you willfully participate in the ostracization of people for exercising their inalienable right to bodily autonomy, you were never a gentleman to begin with. — Tzeentch

Congratulations, Tzeentch...you have been successfully propagandized. You seem to have subliminally bought into the ("democratic"?) concept that the species of monkey called "homo sapiens" is naturally possessed of "inalienable rights" of any description. Whence flows such an apparent inherency? Does a baboon have rights? A gecko? A snail? Do any of the ants I step on regularly have the right not to be stepped on by myself; am I a felon for so violating said rights?

Truth is, there are no "inalienable rights"; this concept is a fiction, best suited to fanatical French revolutionaries and "activists" of various types (yes, that most prolific of hypocrites, Jefferson, was wrong in his assertions within the Declaration). It is utterly illusory, a fiction imposed upon the mass consciousness by government in order to ensure an orderly society which facilitates commerce, and more importantly protects the State's basis of power: popular support.

As a matter of fact, so-called "rights" in general, do not exist in nature. All of our assumed "rights", human, civil, or otherwise, which are assumed to exist in human societies, are bestowed by fiat from the prevailing power, in the current age, whatever national government has jurisdiction over a particular person. If the prevailing power changes (and this can happen in a multitude of ways), then the "rights" granted people change with it. This means that all assumed "rights" of people are qiute particularly alienable, characterized by great changeability. If tomorrow there occurs a global thermonuclear war, and afterwards I am left alone on the planet with my good buddy "Bubba" (you know the guy...one's hypothetical prison cellmate in the nightmares), I will be sure to have whatever and only those rights that "Bubba" says I have...my previously assumed "rights" will have been alienated from myself. Might makes right, and "rights" flow from temporal power, and as such there is nothing inalienable about them.

In brief: I can accept the fact of "rights", but only as unnatural, artificial, and provisional conceptions. We should not be using the idea of "inalienable rights" in making our deliberations. Not that this materially changes your assertion as alluded to above, @Tzeentch, but one should be careful of introducing erroneous concepts into otherwise valid arguments.

In order to understand "reality", it behooves one to distinguish between objective reality ("the universe"), that which has existence apart from the scrutiny of the human mind, and subjective reality ("the world"), reality as filtered through the human consciousness, which may not be as "real", yet holds as much import for the human experience.

Wittgenstein will say we are compelled (to strip our world of any measure and replace it with a requirement for certainty). We may hope that a moral discussion will end in agreement, but the temptation is to define our morals beforehand so we are ensured of what is right. We may see the world as intelligible, capable of telling us its secrets, but not if we require that it be certain knowledge or necessarily stem from a cause. — Antony Nickles

In so saying, Wittgenstein draws the distinction between subjective, which is inherently uncertain, and objective, about which one may achieve certainty since it is composed of fact, realities

I just always want to make sure I keep my eye on the experience of poetry rather than the interpretation. As you've noted, the kinds of things you and I are talking about can deepen the experience. — T Clark

Yes, these things can enrich one's appreciation afterwards, but as you have noted, first comes the love. I will try to find more new poems for you to love, as time goes by. Have you read much Tennyson, or Emily Dickinson?

Three chords and the truth. — T Clark

Hey, I can imagine that being said in the world of Country Music, especially by the older Country musicians, who often came from hardscrabble places.

You don't necessarily need sophistication to speak from the heart. — T Clark

I agree. As you seem taken with the poem, I just wanted to discuss a couple of the things that I have noticed about it. There is a certain usual process of appreciation that happens with me when I initially read a fine poem. At first blush, I feel a general sense of profundity and awe the basis of which I cannot always quite discern. With subsequent readings, though, often begin to notice the poetic devices used in the creation of something special.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
— Michael Zwingli

Love it. Love it. Love it. — T Clark

This like of the poem relates particularly with another, let me explain my view regarding this.

Note that while the first stanza of this poem, following the imperative statement,

Move him into the sun— — Michael Zwingli

comprises a series of observations regarding the unnamed subject, the dying soldier, the second stanza amounts to an argument, made by Owen's unnamed soldierly narrator to those present with him, and perhaps to the world as a whole, presenting a rationale supporting his initial imperative.

One of the aspects of this poem that I have always admired, whether intended by Owen or not I am unsure, is the set of logical relationships inherent within the causal sequence of that argument. The series of lines:

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall? — Michael Zwingli

represents a sequence of statements comprising the narrator's argument. Note also the semantically induced connection made between the Earth and the dying soldier, perticularly by means of repetitive use of "clay" applied variously to Earth and the soldier, in:

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star. — Michael Zwingli

, and

Was it for this the clay grew tall? — Michael Zwingli

I have always found this very bright, and have benefitted Owen with my presumption of intentionality with respect thereto.

The final line,

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all? — Michael Zwingli

of course, is a narrative statement recognizing the "futility" of the preceding argument, tying the entire achievement to it's title.

I wonder about the lives of the people - only a glimpse on headstones. — Amity

I have found myself doing this as well.

Re: Symbolism. A particular symbol stood out. It was white and looked modern.
A perfect circle. A hole carved into the stone. Eternity.
And of course - the spiritual symbol of the Celtic cross — Amity

I have never seen a hole cut through a headstone, but love the symbolism of it. Many of the symbols to be found on gravestones are known from other sources: military, naval, fraternal (Masonic, Elks, Odd Fellows have the best), etc. Some, however, are unique to the funerary realm, such as the broken branch, signifying one whose life was cut short, or the sickle, signifying the eventuality of death.

I walk through graveyards for perspective. — Amity

Haha, and I thought I was the only one... Actually, I walk through graveyards, especially older portions of graveyards, for another purpose as well. Symbology is another interest of myself (along with linguistics, semantics, philosophy in general, "maths"...I must be the king of dillettantes), and the iconography on some of the old headstones is of great interest to me.

Hi.
I
try
my
wry
reply
hereby.
sigh,
goodbye. — T Clark

:rofl:

...there's always leeway for a good poem. — T Clark

Now, don't make me cart my copy of "Best Loved Poems of the American People" out of mothballs...

Do we agree that our government should do something about climate change, as the science community is telling us needs to happen? — Xtrix

Absolutely. Since this slide towards the end of the Quarternary Glaciacion (the climactic period within which we have existed for the past two and one half million years) and into a possible greenhouse period, we can't very well just turn our backs and shrug. The primary mandate of a national government is the protection of it's populace from harm both direct and indirect. The current climactic prognosis certainly has the potential to cause great indirect harm to the populations of every nation on Earth, and so falls within the purview of government interest.

For my part, I suspect that it might be already "too late" to reverse the trend. The climate of our planet has been alternating between ice ages and greenhouse periods for the past three plus billion years, and it's not going to stop just because a species of up-jumped monkeys holds an autocentric view of the universe. The Quarternary has appeared to be winding down, to be nearing the end of it's life cycle, anyways, and human action since the start of the industrial revolution has given the global climate a stiff nudge towards that transition. This won't necessarily mean curtains for humanity, though it definitely will for some species...the polar bears are undoubtedly done for. The Earth will not turn into Arrakis from the "Dune" franchise, with sandworms and all, but the climate will probably be on average warmer and drier for one or two million years, with more hot and dry periods alternating with less hot and dry periods, just as in the Quarternary which has had glacial periods (ice ages) and interglacial periods. Human population levels will decrease (this is not a bad thing), mostly as a result of secondary factors such as wars over water in the drier parts of the earth. The Earth itself, though, will just keep rollin' along, and a couple million years down the road, will begin to enter another glacial period, which if we survive that long as a species, will be called by humans the Quintary Glaciation. Not to worry, though, apart from the extinction of polar bears, even our grandchildren ×10 won't see any of the truly bad effects of this eventuality. Pardon the pun, but these types of climactic changes occur at a 'glacial pace'.

Despite all this, I agree with you that we have an obligation to act. Because the agency of mankind has been instrumental in seeming to hasten the end of the Quarternary Glaciacion, it seems incumbent upon us as a species to mitigate, as far as possible, the effects of our own action.

Love it. Love it. Love it. — T Clark

Myself as well. Owen served as a Lieutenant in the British Army during the First World War. Through his poetry, he was one of the major writers chronicling the horrors of the war. This is my favorite of his poems, of which I especially admire the rhyme scheme. The fact of an odd number, seven, of lines per stanza, I find interesting. Note how lines 1-3 and 2-4 of both stanzas uses alliterative/consonantal rhyme, and lines 5-7 uses true, direct rhyme. It's just really good in it's effect.

Not particularly philosophical, though obliquely expressing a philosophical outlook, I wanted to post this rhyme about the apparent futility of individual endeavor within a world made and moved by humanity. The scene is World War 1 France, the subject a mortally wounded or weakened soldier, either dead or near death. I have always found this short lyric particularly moving.


FUTILITY

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

- Wilfred Owen

man, it's not about faction...ah, forget it....

That’s the symbolic meaning of the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ in my view. — Wayfarer

:love:

Why when animals are able to form order and organisation without this does the human stand alone. — David S

I believe that this is simply a matter of (particularly frontal) brain development, which has enabled homo sapiens to develop the "higher mind", which has the capacity to ideate and idealize, and can concieve of such abstract concepts as ethicality and morality represent. Other animal species, though they evince various types of social order, simply cannot concieve of these things, much in the same way that they cannot create or discern art.

Does Exxon and the fossil fuel industry generally, who knew of climate change in the 1970s but continued on anyway, lobbying and propagandizing to sow doubt and hamstring any governmental action, frighten you as well? It should -- far more than the government, in fact. — Xtrix

They, corporations, do frighten me as well. I'm no lover of the corporate concept...just more power-seeking abstraction, as I see it.

Corporations buy off these politicians, and thus the government. They have huge influence through campaign finance... — Xtrix

Yep, but that's all politicians, liberals as well as conservatives. Look, when you come right down to it, all of our polls are filthy...it's human nature to tend to being corrupted and using your position to your own personal benefit. I view it as more loathsome, as uglier in liberals though, because of the duplicity involved, what with all their moralizing while corruptly lining their own nest. This started early. Thomas Jefferson was probably the prototype for duplicity in an American liberal politician.

Since there are very few principled men, there are very few principled politicians. The last of our presidents who appeared to be a man of principle was, indeed, (that liberal democrat) James Carter, and all he got for it was the ridicule of being regarded as a "country bumpkin" (apparently he was not duplicitous enough to inspire credulity in us.)

Libertarian socialist. — 180 Proof

Fair enough. I tend to left libertarianism as well, since a check is needed on those with power and wealth.

if corporate officers and board members were made personally responsible and subject to swift arbitrary (this being the key word) prosecution for corporate misdeeds, rather than the current practice of generally impotent financial penalty, then corporate oversight would become much easier. But of course, that will not happen, because politicians are whorish animals by nature, who only bite the hands that feed them when the event is within public view.

The Government is the only counterweight to The Corporation. It's no surprise that the Right are always harping on about 'the evils of Government', because it's the only institution big enough to hold them to account. Do away with Government and have everything privatized and run by corporate boards for the benefit of shareholders and directors. — Wayfarer

True, but need the government be so large to do this? I don't have any figures immediately available, but all the same, I'm not thinking that the portion of the federal budget dedicated to corporate oversight is particularly large. Rather, I think all the pork is elsewhere.

I wondered if U.S. alphabet agencies were down there stirring the pot and fucking with the socialist economies. Riling up and funding agent provocateurs and calling them "freedom fighters." — James Riley

This is exactly the type of thing that I resent my government doing; my government too often sticks my American nose in where it doesn't belong. Frankly, I feel the same about Iraq and Afghanistan, save for bringing some pain (killing a few people...mostly the Taliban which sheltered Bin Laden, and of course breaking some shit) to the Afghanis as strictly a punishment, a chastisement in the wake of 9/11 (maybe for two or three months or so, but then get the heck out of there). Generally, I do not pay those in my government for being busybodies all over the world, though, and can't understand where they get off so doing.

Funny how talk of deficits and the national debt only get pushed by media, and then echoed by people on the internet, when anything that's good for the country is proposed. Never any money for that. Plenty of money for tax cuts for the rich, fossil fuel subsidies, and trillions for wars and defense budgets. Just a reflection of priorities, I guess. — Xtrix

What gave you cause to seemingly put words into my mouth? No, I don't want tax cuts for the rich, I want tax cuts for everybody, right across the spectrum, and for the federal government to shrink by about 40 percent, and state governments by nearly as much. Don't entertain the idea that I am a Republican, or a wacky nationalistic "Trumpist"/"Trumpite", or whatever you might choose to call it. Rather, like @180 Proof and others on the site, I am a libertarian (in actuality, an anarchist who despises the state, but begrudgingly admits that we need it in the present technological climate). I personally envision the best world as one without government or nation states, or being more realistic, as one with as little government as possible. The size of our government doesn't bother you? The fact that it constitutes over one third of our outsized GDP? It does more than bother me, it frightens me...a gigantic monstrous abstraction claiming power over my liberty and even my life. Governments in general frighten me, as I view them to be working in no interest but their own, which is typical organizational behavior. No worry that the government debt to GDP ratio is over 100 percent? You know what happens if I do that? The folks at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion put asterisks next to my name.

Of course, these days, AI technicians know no end of ambition, and arrogance... — Gary M Washburn

Haha, they'll learn when they're plugged into the Matrix...

For someone who doesn't give a fuck you sure seem worried about the economy. — James Riley

Haha, that's only because I'm stuck here for the time being. The thought of joblessness, bread lines, and all that shit kind of sucks, so I don't particularly want to see our fearless leaders completely fuck things up.

But as one wag recently said, this exercise has taught us that we are not an economy, we are a community. — James Riley

Sure, but we have an economy upon which our welfare is dependent. Venezuela is a community as well, (if you can really call a large, modern, diverse nation-state "a community", anyways), but the economy is all fucked up. I don't think either of us would want to live there right now.

I say throw caution to the wind. Debt shmedt. Or, as we used to say, fuck around fuck around soon you won't be around. Republicans can go suck a dick. — James Riley

I don't like deficit spending by Republicans any more than by Democrats. In my view, both parties are utterly corrupted, and all but worthless to us. These two identifiers have become no more than ways to choose your poison, in my view.

Besides, tax revenue has never funded the U.S. The U.S. rides on the world's use of the dollar and we have the printer. — James Riley

This only works so long as the dollar is used and trusted by the world. One big fuck-up, one default, and that could easily go out the window. Don't forget, the "American century" is well in the rear view mirror, now; now there is fiscal competition for us.

Okay, I might be a little out of my league in this discussion, but I have some thoughts upon this issue, nonetheless.

An unself-conscious and unaware organism that acts as if it's self-conscious and aware in a way that cannot be detected either physically or by observing its behavior is conscious and aware.
— T Clark — TheMadFool

The "p-zombie" is an obvious impossibility. An "organism" cannot behave as if it is conscious and aware if it is not conscious and aware. Such a situation can only pertain to advanced computer architecture, that is, to AI.

The Turing Test

If a machine can fool a person into believing that it itself is a person, it must be considered as AI. — TheMadFool

Sure, okay...

In other words, AI is a person. — TheMadFool

Slow down, please. This, so long as the AI can be rendered, can be made to be, sentient, that is, can be made able to experience rational thought (check), sensation (probably, in some senses), and feeling...emotion (this is doubtful to me). I doubt that AI can be made to experience emotion, but rather to experience the semblance of emotion. AI architecture can be made to replicate human neural, bioelectrical anatomy, and so produce rational thought in quite an efficient manner. The human experience of emotion, though, is more dependent upon brain chemistry than upon neural architecture, and I am doubtful that this can be replicated in AI. Without the experience of emotion, I am not sure if you can characterize any subject as "a person".

The premise underlying the Turing Test is:

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's the principle of the identity of indiscernibles which, unlike its converse, the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, is, last I checked, controversial.

The Turing Rule is the principle of the identity of indiscernibles and it's the premise on which the Turing Test is based. — TheMadFool

This is where I have had several pertinent thoughts. As someone deeply interested in language, my first thought regarding these two principles, the principle of the identity of indiscernibles and the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, is that they do not represent conversive analogues of one another as they are herein stated in English. This is based upon a semantic distinction which I noticed immediately within the OP. This is because the nouns identity and indiscernibility are not directly analogous. The direct analogue to indiscernibility, an abstract noun derived from the adjective indiscernible would be identicality or identicalness, the abstract noun derived from the adjective identical, which nouns, both meaning "bearing utter likeness", have a much narrower semantic field that does identity which is ultimately an abstract noun derived from the Latin determiner idem, meaning "the same". Note that "the same" can mean "bearing utter likeness (to another)" or can mean "not the other, but the same one", in other words, "selfsame...the same as itself". Since this is so, the two lemmas, identicality and identicalness are more specific in their meaning, and so are the proper terms to use as analogues of indiscernibility. Of the two, I would choose to use identicality because of the morphological uniformity which it presents within the argument. Despite all this, I note that identity of indiscernibles is the terminology usually used for statement of the principle, and I only state my observation as an observation without demanding a change.

The symbolic representation of these two principles,

1. The indiscernibility of identicals: ∀x∀y[x=y→∀F(Fx↔Fy)]
For any x and y, if x is identical to y, then x and y have all the same properties.

2. The identity of indiscernibles: ∀x∀y[∀F(Fx↔Fy)→x=y]
For any x and y, if x and y have all the same properties, then x is identical to y. — TheMadFool

provides a more accurate means of stating the principles for a criticism thereof. Therefore, let the following obtain:

∀x∀y[x=y→∀F(Fx↔Fy)]
For any x and y, if x is identical to y, then x and y have all the same properties, or if two objects are absolutely identical then they must be indistinguishable from one another with respect to all of their properties;

∀x∀y[∀F(Fx↔Fy)→x=y]
For any x and y, if x and y have all the same properties, then x is identical to y, or if two objects are indistinguishable from one another with respect to all of their properties then they are identical.

My thought is that x=y→∀F(Fx↔Fy) is a valid statement, while ∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y is invalid. The argument ∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y is dependent upon the premise that x and y can be found to be indistinguishable based upon ∀F. I contend that this premise is false. I say this because of the inability of the human being to fully discern ∀F, utter discernment of ∀F not appearing to be achievable within reality. While x=y→∀F(Fx↔Fy) holds as a matter of logic, ∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y is utterly dependent upon the discernment of ∀F, which in actuality is impossible for the human being. In every case for which ∀F is not discernible, which I argue is every case in reality, identity, or more properly identicality is not discerned despite the appearence of indistinguishability. Beyond that, I believe that ∀F represents an ideal not to be found within the universe. I think that this is what Gary Washburn meant in stating that:

Identity is not an attribute. There is absolutely nothing it is "like" to conscious. Uniqueness is not a myth. — Gary M Washburn

since, therefore ∀F is not a reality, ∀F(Fx ↔ Fy) → x=y can never hold in the universe, and so x can never be the equaivalent of y in reality.

These are my thoughts thus far on the subject of these two principles, to which I have only now been exposed. Maybe all that I have to say is nonsense...

As a general proposition, I think you will run into trouble if you consider philosophy (or philosophers) to think of fact and reality as their object of scrutiny. It isn’t so much that metaphysics (ontology and the like) aren’t fields within philosophy, but that they do not exhaust the fields of philosophy. Further, I think you’ll find that many contemporary philosophers don’t really focus on facts and reality as such, but sort of assume the contingent nature of theories/beliefs about facts and reality and adapt to the circumstance in which facts/reality are invoked. — Ennui Elucidator

It is hard for me, given the way I think, not to draw a delineation between what I personally call "hard philosophy", more traditional philosophy which deals with those matters of metaphysics, and "soft philosophy", which delves into and incorporates the understanding of other fields of endeavor, such as sociology (Marx and Bentham), economics (A. Smith, T. Malthus, Marx), cognitive science (Dan Dennett, Doug Hofstadter), and mathematics (B. Russell, A. N. Whitehead, Hofstadter). I don't disparage these "soft philosophies", not intending to use "soft" in a disparaging sense. In many ways, these are even harder, as the philosopher who practices them must be an expert in the collateral field in question in order to be effective.

In any event, I wasn’t intending to sound like a utilitarian/consequentialist (in ethical terms). I was speaking for myself and how I approach philosophy. — Ennui Elucidator

Aaah. :up:

is this worth the philosopher (or student of philosophy, or teacher of philosophy) "getting involved" for? Meaning becoming politically engaged? If not this, what -- if anything? Or do some still believe activism, politics, and topical issues are below the man of thinking, the intellectual? — Xtrix

These things are not below the philosopher at all, but neither are they philosophical questions...at least questions fit for "hard philosophy", maybe appropriate for "social philosophy", though. The philosopher is a man or woman with ideas and values outside the realm of pure philosophy, pure metaphysics, and he or she should be able to participate in such political debate and other areas of life without having to feel debased.

That having been said, the instant bill is garbage, as it includes provisions for the growth of deficits by over the next decade. This is not what is needed by the American government. Rather what is needed is the exercise of fiscal self-control, and keeping spending within the budget dictated by tax revenues. Deficit spending has caused the U.S. to experience the greatest national debt ever imagined, and still growing... A lack of self control, in governments as in individuals, can but lead to disaster, in my view.

Your theory would be fine, if only people wouldn't have such vastly differing ideas about what constitutes right and wrong. — baker

Yes, of course. I recognize the differentiation, but also realize that it is, along with an individual brain's ability to produce a "higher mind", precisely that which accounts for the differing abilities of the "higher mind" (Superego) to counter the inner urgings of the "primal mind" (Id). It must also be recognized that differences in percieving right and wrong can themselves have differing etiologies: acculturation, malacculturation, organic brain abnormalities, "thinking problems" (mental illness) deriving from other than said abnormalities, etc. Regardless, I think the model holds.

This might help: — TheMadFool

Thank you. I have drawn a couple of conclusions about this, but am yet thinking it over. I will post something later today.

Yes...See below — TheMadFool

I am currently chewing over...thinking about these two "principles". I have another question. Is "the indiscernibility of identicals" a proposition of Liebniz, as is "the identity of indiscernibles"?

The premise underlying the Turing Test is:

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's the principle of the identity of indiscernibles which, unlike its converse, the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals, is, last I checked, controversial. — TheMadFool

Never having read anything by Leibniz, I am assuming that the "principle of the identity of indiscernibles" would dictate that two items which are utterly indiscernible must be held to be identical, ergo the same type of thing?

Are humans evil by nature? Selfish, ignorant, violent... — Cidat

Both...and neither. Since people on here are probably getting tired of reading my posts involving the battling Superego and Id, I'll not go into it again, and direct you to read the entirety of the Freudian and Jungian corpora, as well as "Man's Search for Meaning" by V. Frankl, for a detailed answer to your question.

I thought I might help you finish what you started. :grin: — TheMadFool

Thanks alot! Between my fat fingers, and the bright sunlight on my screen, I guess I didn't know what I was doing for awhile there.

Indeed, nowadays man has a tendency to resolve one's issues in the cave, conversing with a psychologist about the shadows on the figurative wall of their troubled mind, perhaps even laying on a sofa reasoning or even rather rationalizing their thoughts and conditioned behaviors to themselves.

Why is this so? Why can't the prisoner unshackle and free himself? Why is philosophy still associated with no inherent value, or even more practically, valued so little? — Shawn

Philosophy is valued thusly today because it adds but little value to the creation of wealth, which is the icon by which all subjects are evaluated in this age. Psychology fares somewhat better, because it's findings can be used to bolster the social ideologies and power structures which allow said wealth creation to flourish. Philosophy and the humanities have suffered alike under the influence of this zeitgeist, pursuant to which it has become axiomatic that, "money talks, and bullshit walks". Most attend university today not to understand the nature of reality or to comprehend the human , which appears to them but a sideshow to the subjectively more immediate concern of preparing themselves for making alot of money. These young fellows would probably say, "damn the shackles...I'll live with 'em, so long as I have a fat bank account".

That having been said, the objective field of philosophy seems to have been narrowed by other, newer disciplines. The human mind as an object for philosophical scrutiny has been co-opted by psychology, and objective reality, to a large extent, by the natural sciences. Philosophy seems to exist now somewhere in the middle, synthesizing the findings of these other disciplines and evaluating the whole. The modern philosopher must have much more particular peripheral knowledge than his forebears, knowledge derived from these other fields, in order to properly do his work.

[

I see all of philosophy in service to a purpose with no reason to invest in an idea beyond its utility. — Ennui Elucidator

Despite felling a bit loath to indicate a percieved error in someone I have come to consider my philosophical better, I must say, Ennui, that I think you wrong on this particular point. This type of consequentialist rationale, this Benthamism, inclines towards a general failure of consensus, for while a given consequence renders increased meaning for the other guy, it may diminish my own purpose of generating meaning for myself. Bentham's utilities only pertain to human happiness as an aggregate. The thing not considered by Bentham (I tend to consider such as Bentham and Marx to have been "soft philosophers", much in the way that psychology is a "soft science", and such as Aristotle, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer to have been "hard philosophers") and his sociologically-minded ilk, is that one man's happiness is often another man's sorrow, one man's utility is another's...not worthlessness, but contemptibility. More specifically, not all utilitarian claims are as universally beneficial as the claim that "there is a teacup orbiting the sun" might be to both yourself and myself, if you and I were both in orbit within our rocket ship. The result in this world of the condition wherein utilitarian propositions have exhibited differentialities of beneficience, has ever been to fight, and so let power decide which of competing utilities should obtain. In my view, the purpose of philosophy is to aid in the avoidance of this type of process. In a world within which man can never apprehend ultimate truth, is to evaluate the truth of propositions based upon sound modes of thinking, and so to distinguish those propositions that we can know to be true from those that we cannot, thereby enabling one to adjudge utilitarian propositions based upon the truths that we can know, and so to avoid at least some cases of competing utilitarian claims. The goal of philosophy, then, should be to impose a rationale for the implementation, or not, of given utilitarian propositions rather than allowing implementation based upon a popular consensus (which might itself be based upon fallacy) to take an unwarranted effect in human society. In short, the purpose of philosophy, again in my view, is not to evaluate the utility, but what is a more basic function, to evaluate the truth of ideas and how that effects the validity of propositions, leaving questions of utility to the sociologists and politicians, latter of whom we should advise on questions of truth and validity. Am I expressing my thoughts clearly? I'm not so sure...

Insisting that people use language the same in all contexts is amusing, but misguided. — Ennui Elucidator

This is true...

In the end, facts are not about me, but about us. — Ennui Elucidator

..but this seems not to be. Fact and reality exist apart from subjective valuation and agreement, and are the philosopher's object of scrutiny.

I'm thinking the land demands per capita for hunter gatherers exceeds that of industrial societies by several hundred fold at least. — Hanover

This is a congruent approach to the situation I was considering when I said that,

I would hesitate, as well, to say that agriculture has been bad for humans in general. If anything, it along with advances in medicine and in technology generally, has resulted in our being too successful. We have overpopulated, and threaten the ecological status quo. — Michael Zwingli

The salient issue pertaining to this, is that if humans had remained dependent upon hunting and gathering their provender, then human populations would have been naturally restricted. People would yet have had many children, but all throughout history many more than do now would have died of starvation and other causes secondary to malnutrition. Such circumstances would not appear to have increased human happiness in general.

Brain size doesn't dictate brain power. There is obviously a loose connection. The cranial size doesn't tell us about how compact and interwoven the actual neural networks are. — I like sushi

There is that, as well, which is partially a function of evolution, and partially of usage. So true!

Frenemy bad. Asteroid worse.
— Confucius — TheMadFool

Haha.. wise man, he.

there is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging — Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens)

Yes, perhaps, but the important part for abstract thinking, upon which all art and science depends, namely the frontal region, has grown tremendously, while the evolutionarily less important parietal and occipital regions have shrunk.

Harari is not wrong about everything, or even about much in particular. It is just his sweeping conclusions which are questionable, which appear suspect on their face. The poor fellow takes a bit of a beating for his conclusion that the development of agriculture was bad for humans as a species, which I think does not follow from the evidence. Undoubtedly, it entailed suffering for some, or even many, individual people along the path of history. To say, though, that agriculture itself is at fault for that suffering is similar to saying "that gun killed Billy the Kid" as opposed to "Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid with that gun"; I think it involves an error of misattribution.

The old maxim, "homo homini lupus est", but becomes nonsensical when changed to "homo agriculturae lupus est". If agriculture had never developed amongst us, and so men had never been able to behave wolfishly towards their less fortunate contemporaries in the presence thereof throughout succeeding history, men would yet have behaved wolfishly towards other men while all were hunting and gathering. Point is, the cause of human inequity, and so of suffering amidst abundance (the very abundance partially resulting from agricultural industry) proceeds not from extraneous causes, but from within us, as a result of our nature.

I would hesitate, as well, to say that agriculture has been bad for humans in general. If anything, it along with advances in medicine and in technology generally, has resulted in our being too successful. We have overpopulated, and threaten the ecological status quo. The statement with which I could agree is that, "the development of agriculture by humans has had a negative influence upon the ecology of the Earth", because of the role agriculture has played in humans experiencing a special success which we have evidently been incapable of managing to best effect.

From "Advice to Lovers":

"Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.
"Whistle, and Love will come to you,
Hiss, and he fades without a word,
Do wrong, and he great wrong will do,
Speak, he retells what he has heard.
"Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget."

- Robert Graves

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"jisei" ("death poem") :

A small night storm blows
Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’
Preceding those who hesitate

—Yukio Mishima (composed as a prelude to his seppuku)

this does look quite interesting. Thanks.

I...suggest that the discovery of agriculture is one of civilisation’s biggest mistakes. — David S

Are you Yuval Noah Harari in disguise?

Sorry, just being a smart-ass... I do miss all the hunting and gathering with my chums, though.
I think that to isolate a mistake for the conundra (do not use that word in your thesis defense!) which distress humankind, you might have to regress much further in time, and discern a non-human agency. For my part, I blame it all on the faulty way in which organic molecules developed in the primordial sea. Those pesky polynucleotide chains which led to DNA, which led to evolution, which led to us having brains too large for our own good. In short, chance, rather than agriculture, is the culprit (or God, if you subscribe to the notion of a creator), and that which is to blame for all of our puzzling circumstances.

ooooh, what a cute little doggie! What is that ugly thing on the bottom?

However, we also seem inconceivably beyond the scope of our local planet. — Jerry

!?
We can mentally conceive of the universe, and consider ways, given our current technological state, of interacting therewith, but...

We can launch ourselves from the atmosphere, control particles to our whims, and capture the universe in a picture — Jerry

Ummm...how does this indicate that we are not bound to the Earth?

I think that you are giving our species more credit than it deserves; we who cannot even keep from killing one another over resource and various other disagreements, or from dangerously overpopulating this place with our species. You must realize that one asteroid strike on the order of the Chicxulub Impact, or a comet strike on the order of the Sudbury Impact, and homo sapiens may become just another extinct species... Regarding the appearance that we as a species are or may soon be no longer "earthbound", we may go to Mars within the next hundred years or so, and may even eventually establish colonies/research stations there. Even so, this Earth is the only place that we know of upon which we can live without all kinds of technological assistance, and that appears to be because we evolved upon, and so are adapted to this world. I fail to discern either the absolute necessity for, or the absolute impossibility of, a creator within this apparent history. The proposition that there is a creator appears to be one which must be either accepted, rejected, or ignored in the utter absence of evidence. The type of certainty which one might desire going either way is simply not available to us, and the acceptance of that fact, without inventing evidence, requires a certain amount of courage.

And yes, welcome!