Here the leader of the most powerful nation the world has ever seen cannot even face a reporter’s questions without a cheat sheet and a public relations team. It’s all a scripted show. I prefer reality television. — NOS4A2

Most powerful the world has ever seen? Eh, that's more likely the British Empire.

I'd think you'd just be indifferent to all the various politicians out there. None of them really represent you, you know? None of them.

I think Putin enlarging the conflict would be illogical, thus unlikely. — ssu

He hasn't been overly logical to this point, though.

I've met quite a few Ukrainians who've moved to the US recently, but I've now met a Moldovan whose whole family is coming soon, he said. Would Putin invade there?

True

Why seek unification instead of being content with plurality? From a psychological perspective, it shouldn't matter much. — Manuel

I think it's because the two imply one another. Unity basically means: the opposite of plurality. And vice versa. It's an opposition that can't be pulled apart without a breakdown in meaning.

I guess that's one reason property dualism and neutral monism are attractive. They cover all the bases. :razz:

Also, there's something about elegance and simplicity to take into account. One substance or thing is better that two substances, which is better than three, and so on. — Manuel

Plus in the realm of aesthetics, if you're viewing two things, there must be a single background against which the two appear in the foreground. It's not a logical implication, but it's a kind of psychological force leaning toward consolidation.

Monism: the idea that only one supreme reality exists. Why posit monism? — Art48

In addition to the reasons you listed, there's the issue of communication between the two halves of a duality. How does one substance impact the other if they're separated? Another reason is from mysticism: rational thought seems to require a duality, but the same rational lines of thought point to a transcendent unity.

I can't say I recall a single revolt in history with a median age of 55, but if you look at armed protests in the US that would be my low end estimate for age. It's weird, especially since half the nation's budget is transfer payments to seniors. I suppose it is more about social control, not economic factors though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe it's a red state thing where aging militias aren't being replaced with younger members?

You can upload them to imgur.

They haven't left America then. They're still subject to any laws America might implement. For example the modern slavery legislation in my country includes overseas labour. — Isaac

Ok?

Which ones did you have in mind? — Isaac

All the ones that moved their manufacturing overseas. Globalization, basically.

The low hanging fruit in the US and elsewhere is to reign in corporate power, as we’ve done before — with far better socioeconomic results. — Mikie

That would just drive them out of the US, leaving people unemployed and prone to vote Nazi. You'd need a global government to accomplish what you have in mind.

If you don't like the country, leave it? American corporations have been doing that for a good while now. That's one reason the ones that are left have so much power.

That's part of what I'm doing in Nothing Is Hidden. But something like public concepts seems to be necessary, because we can't start doing philosophy unless we understand one another to some degree --- and have a world together that we can be more or less right about. — plaque flag

I agree

To me this is a tempting but wrong approach. Our mentalistic folk psychology, very useful in ordinary life, gets adopted without criticism in a more serious metaphysical context. So we get dualism and the container metaphor for communication. — plaque flag

Right. Physicalism or materialism leaves us with that problem: how do meanings travel between heads? Physicalism is part of our present worldview, so that's why we're faced with the issue.

Many would like to point to social interaction as the basis for communication (meaning is use). But where behaviorism is rejected, this view doesn't really seem to do the job it's intended to do. From there, things get sketchy.

Another approach would be to start, tentatively, with what we can't do without. Let metaphysics be the tail instead of the dog.

The myth of the self? — Banno

No, the one about indirect realism.

How do you get things without facts, or facts without things? — Banno

Wasn't that Sartre's point? That the world somehow exists before being broken into pieces? I guess the way we imagine it is that we are the breakers. We impose the ideas and then learn facts from a world we constructed.

As my recent thread points out, though, this narrative is self undermining.

Language is constructed socially, and minds are as much a part of that construction as words. — Banno

Ok. So definitions are also social practices.

f we're each alone in little isolated bubbles between our ears, there's no way to tell if we really communicate or if we just believe we're doing that.
— frank
...and so that sort of perspective drops out of the discussion. — Banno

Ok.

am not sure if frank is amongst them - think that a good definition fixes the referent of the term involved, in such a way that doubt is not possible — Banno

Depends on the situation I guess. With extensional definitions, the reference is buttoned up as much as possible.

It really comes down to what you think about communication between minds. If we're each alone in little isolated bubbles between our ears, there's no way to tell if we really communicate or if we just believe we're doing that.

With a different metaphysics, like we're all connected to a universal mind of some kind, then communication would be easy to explain. We don't live in that era, though. We're blessed and cursed with a physicalist mindset. Communication is going to be a puzzle for us.

DeSantis goes to war with Disney World. Is this appealing to Trump's base? Do they hate Disney World or something?

Well that was really confusing. My work here is done!!

I appreciate you reading what I actually wrote, thanks.

Here's a definition of the set G: G=df{Frank, the North Pole, electrotherapy}. These items form a set, but perhaps not in virtue of having some universal which is exclusive to just them — Banno

So maybe all definitions are sets, but not all sets are definitions.

This is the definition of an elephant:

"a very large herbivorous mammal of the family Elephantidae, the only extant family of proboscideans and comprising the genera Loxodonta (African elephants) and Elephas (Asian elephants): Elephants of all species are characterized by a long, prehensile trunk formed of the nose and upper lip, pillarlike legs, and prominent tusks, which are possessed by both sexes of Loxodonta and just the males of Elephas."

1. This definitions is full of universals.
2. We could easily use this as the criteria for a set. If Jumbo meets the criteria, he's in the set.

The point is that a definition is an abstract object.

he reason I don't think it is a good analogy is that software is installed, can be replaced holus bolus and a particular software yields exactly the same results in different machines. — Janus

I wasn't presenting an analogy. I was pointing out that a reductionist would draw the wrong conclusion about a computer. If you don't know how it works, hold off on stating what must be the case.

Anyway, a thousand science fiction stories show that it's easily conceivable that human personality could be uploaded and downloaded. Again, if you don't know how it works, lighten up on the dogma.

What exactly does it mean to say the behavior of humans does not reduce to neuronal activity? — Janus

I don't know. I'm preaching forbearance, not more dogma.

But do the higher order entities in the "hive mind," have selfhood as well? Does the state for example? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the state is part of your identity. It's part of who you are that you belong to this particular group. In some cultures that state identity is very potent. In others it's weak. Where it's potent, the group can mobilize more easily because everyone is responding to the same voice, so to speak. Or dancing to the same music? I think of selfhood as being like music with themes, particular scales and rhythms, and like music, one is always progressing through an arc, and it's arcs within arcs like days within weeks, weeks within years, and years within a life.

The ideal state being one that "wills what it does and knows what it wills." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sounds like a monarch. A monarch is like a super-identity. He is the state. Everyone else has a position relative to him like branches on a tree and root is the divine.

Then again, the question "where does qualia come from," doesn't have a good answer, so this is more intuition on my part than anything else. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Qualia doesn't seem to care which self it's attached to. That's how we picture it anyway. I think selfhood has more to do with history and one's role in the big social drama.

A picture is worth a thousand words, though. Some have theorized that writing may have preceded speech, but I doubt it. We can pin point the genes that are associated with the ability to speak.

Lovecraft invented an alien who doesn't understand the earth's devotion to individual forms, so it freely combines the patterns of the living things it comes across on earth. It's the subject of The Color Out of Space, The Thing, and Annihilation, all of which of are beyond horrifying. Individuality is actually basic. We just take it for granted until we're presented with the extreme alternative.

:chin:

Ha!! Oh, what a tangled web we weave…. — Mww

We need a brain explosion emoji.

In ancient logic the idea was that a definition picks out something. A bachelor is, by definition, a person, and male and not married, or holding a first degree from a university. — Banno

Looks like a bundle of universals. An individual bachelor is a member of a set. The criteria for the set is a definition.

That’s how the myth of the self endures. Cuz the brain won’t let it not. Which is something I couldn’t possibly know, so…. — Mww

Philosophy has made you into a pretzel.

Exactly. [ As you seemed to notice, I didn't mean anything supernatural -- just culture..] And now we have crazy electronic devices for recording everything. The historians of the future are going to be swamped. — plaque flag

I've wondered about that. I read a history of a famous American guy once, written by a historian who was afraid the opposite would be true: that future historians wouldn't have much to go on because nobody writes letters anymore. So he went around collecting first hand accounts. What's funny is that the accounts conflict and the author had to explain what really happened. :grin:

That's our pseudodivinity: we've got a species-soul that's thousands of years old. — plaque flag

Thanks to story telling and writing, yes.

The conditions of the possibility of there being an argument. In this case, the perspective of the self that is actually offering the idea and is engaged in a dialogic process with an "other self" or other. — Pantagruel

Good point. :up:

The self is the personal perspective of thought. If someone says "The self is a myth," they are actively perpetuating the myth, while simultaneously claiming to deny it. In other words, acting in bad faith and inconsistently with respect to the transcendental conditions of the production of the idea. — Pantagruel

What are the transcendental conditions of the production of the idea?

Maybe the accent of very far east Alaska, the trans-Bering Straight Region? — Count Timothy von Icarus

:razz:

All I'm saying is that the body is conscious. You can lose parts of the body and it will be conscious. Lose an indispensable part of the brain and the body will no longer be conscious.

All of this we know from common knowledge derived from the experiences of others or perhaps your own experience if you are somehow involved in medicine or witnessed the demise of an unfortunate family member or whatever. — Janus

If you didn't know how a computer works, you might likewise assume that the software is somehow part of the hardware. "If the behavior of the computer doesn't reduce to the hardware, then what is it? A ghost in the machine?"

No, it's not a ghost in the machine. It's freakin' software.

But the very locution 'away from "nature" and "towards" "Spirit," Geist…' seems to indicate that there is something nonnatural about Spirit. It seems to suggest that Spirit ‘transcends’ nature and such transcendence of nature seems to imply a break with nature. Of course, as is well known, Hegel sees Geist as a sublation or Aufhebung of nature. But the term sublation implies that what is sublated, nature, is preserved within that which
sublates it, Geist. The term sublation never implies a breach. Thus Geist develops out of nature, whilst preserving nature, and does not leave it behind. Geist is a modification of nature. — plaque flag

That still affirms Geist as part of our world, it just recalls that it's a partial truth like everything else. Thanks for the source, btw. Pretty cool.

Think about what we mean by "voluntary" or "volition." How do you know a creature is moving by its own volition? Because it doesn't sway in the breeze. Because it gets up and moves to the bird feeder in a way a rock never will. In other words, volition is fundamentally identified by the way that it's counter to nature.

Normativity is also something we wouldn't expect to see in the natural world, isn't it?

It's all a very complicated diversion. They're playing to the spy satellites. No one knows what they're really trying to accomplish.

Well then the US, at least, has never been a nation-state. 'Country', I suppose, is a less tribalist term. — 180 Proof

Some political scientists say it was between the Civil War and the early 20th Century. I think some say it still is. I guess it depends on your outlook on opportunity in the US? My point was just that if it becomes more egalitarian, it definitely won't qualify.