I see. Thanks.

I am attracted to Vygotsky's model of the self as coming about from structures that are not given in personal experience but make it possible. — Paine

Like a blueprint?

I think we can only fight for things, for reality by asserting the truth of our identity not by trying to fit in with some kind of groupthink accepted paradigm. — Andrew4Handel

I see what you're saying, but maybe the dynamism we find in selfhood comes from multiple oppositions.

Consider if you woke up in an emergency room with no memory of who you are. Someone could show you your ID and you could read your name and address, but it wouldn't mean anything to you. You could meet your girlfriend, but you don't know her, so she's a stranger.

Your identity is bound up in your history, but even without that, you can think about infinity. You would still know you are someone. You just don't know who. The structure of selfhood is there, but nothing is filled in. Maybe you were born with this blueprint?

The fight for your values pits you against Das Man. A person can live their whole life and never find the will to face that. It's dangerous to do that. You lose the protection afforded those who conform. If you do it and survive, the world around you becomes beloved. It's self love.

I think I started rambling there.

Yes. How do you picture it?

But we were in agreement on the terms empirical and a priori and it was just a mixup as to which one I was referring to in making the point about Kant creating an “object” and then putting it outside of knowledge’s ability to access. — Antony Nickles

Oh, ok. So when you said:

"Of course elsewhere he puts this "thing-in-itself" outside the reach of our knowledge, thus the lack of faith in our ordinary understandings."

By "ordinary understandings", didn't you mean our assumptions about the mind-independence of the world we experience? Or what?

I am saying this general now to this thread topic and my thread on the privacy of subjective states. I don't believe mental states can be publically arbitrated meaningfully. It would seem to lead to denying one's own reality and being subservient to the mob. — Andrew4Handel

I'm guessing that some features of human cognition are innate, but triggered by socialization. Humans are different from other large apes in that we spend a lot of time looking directly into one another's eyes. I'm thinking this may be the beginnings of a sense of self:

Who am I?
I'm part of this group, and I'm this individual.

I agree that trying to have selfhood be some sort of linguistic appendage doesn't make much sense.

I'm actually pretty straight on this point. Kant did not believe we have access to a world beyond our own conditions of knowledge. To the extent that this was the goal of a British Empiricist, he was agreeing with Hume that their project was doomed.

He saved empiricism by changing the meaning of it. For him, the world we observe is the world bound by a priori knowledge.

If you disagree with this, I think you've misunderstood Kant.

Yes.

Of course elsewhere he puts this "thing-in-itself" outside the reach of our knowledge, thus the lack of faith in our ordinary understandings
— Antony Nickles

In fact, in the realm of empirical reality—that which we can know—Kant is very much on the side of our ability to know, to directly perceive and to judge objectively. — Jamal

This exchange clearly shows a case where agreeing on definitions would avoid cross-talk.

By "knowledge," Antony means knowledge of a mind-independent world.

By "empirical reality," you mean a world that's bound by conditions.

You're talking past one another.

I thought it was just biology alone. — Jacques

At one time it was mostly archeology. Genetics became a biggy later on.

I'd be interested in why communism is or is not realistic/feasible. — jorndoe

I think it's feasible because we've already done something similar in the Bronze Age. We could return to that way of life, maybe if climate change wrecks what we've got.

Maybe. Discoveries do lead to new concepts. I'm very doubtful but I'm not against people trying. — bert1

Maybe it will be like the science of human origins. It draws from a variety of sciences to answer one question.

More precisely, until now they are unable to say anything at all about how consciousness comes about. — Jacques

Maybe someday.

But, no matter, more importantly, what do you think? — jorndoe

That is the most important thing, yes. :razz:

I think Bronze Age economies were pretty close to communism. Farmers brought their produce into the temple where priests then distributed it to the people, taking their cut. There was no free enterprise, no free market. The people worked for the government and the government worked for the people.

It's a stagnant way of life. Time can roll on for millennia with nothing changing in that kind of world. That's how I imagine communism would be. The only way for communism to get off the ground now would be for the whole world to suddenly decide to do it. Unlikely.

All true.

I would like to hear what you believe China's contribution to this conflict is, that warrants being called the most significant player on the scene. — Tzeentch

They're a stabilizing force for Russia at this time, at the price of Russia's future submission to China. Biden has pitted himself against Putin's regime. Xi says no.

Well, consider the Chinese point of view, especially if what you say is true and that China is now the main player. — boethius

China has been playing the situation carefully. They want good relations with the US. Xi does, anyway. The balloon launchers apparently have other plans. :grin:

Indeed, one question I posed to the pro-US policy side to this debate is whether this was a US proxy war against Russia, using Ukraine ... or a Chinese proxy war against the US, using Russia. — boethius

Neither

I think the most significant player on the scene now is neither the US nor Russia. It's China. Russia is now dependent on China. The way Xi behaved when he visited Russia broadcast his domination of the whole region.

Biden comes from an era when the US was glaringly alone at the top. We're transitioning to a new era where China is ascendent while the US continues to recede from the world stage. Russia will settle into a position in China's domain. That's the path Putin has set his country on. There's not much he can do now to turn that around.

A most eloquent quote Frank and a great summary of Sophocles - Antigone. — invicta

Thank you!

Indeed the two deceased brothers Polynices and Eteocles could almost be twins and if the concept of self was to be divided they are a division of self.

Both dead of course and so Antigone doing rightly wants to bury both not just Eteocles as the king ordered. — invicta

Makes sense.

Yep. That's not what was happening here. — Banno

Oh, I see. Right, that's illegal.

That link wouldn't load for some reason. It's illegal for non-indigenous people to pass their works off as indigenous, but indigenous people can make whatever they like and call it indigenous.

How do you classify words? I think you could picture them in such a way that it's absurd to say they have the property of being definable.

I had a brief chat with an economist yesterday about art. There is an amusing fiasco emerging in Australia's art business in which it seems that white fellas have been "guiding" indigenous artists so that they produce more saleable work... — Banno

It's called "dots for dollars." You probably already knew that. Art doesn't have to adhere to traditions. It can evolve and it would really weird if Aboriginal art didn't change post exposure to the outside world. Those who insist that their paintings should be telling some sort of story (as opposed to just standing for the kick-ass modern art it is) are just arrogant.

I recognize and sympathize with the idea that the self is an illusion, but only in the sense that everything is an illusion. — T Clark

Okey dokey.

Of course, the other way to write a dictionary is on historical principles; as an account of the development of the language over time.

But it's a big dictionary. — Banno

Cool. Nietzsche was an expert on that btw.

Then there is the mother, or indeed any close carer, of a baby: she recognises a something in the baby that is very particularly that new human being, a unique identity in the movements and eyes and responses and 'personality' that soon merges: if this were true, the self would be no myth, at least, not to others. 'Why is he acting that way?' 'He's just being himself.' — mcdoodle

That's a good mother who realizes the baby isn't part of her. She's willing to let it be free. That's healthy. :up:

The self only is to the degree that it opposes the Anyone. — plaque flag

I am what's left when you subtract out the Other, yes.

Some member of the chorus has to step forward and become the doomed hero. — plaque flag

Right. Antigone hangs herself. The point is that this devotion to the higher good (higher than society's understanding, anyway) is worth dying for.

The Self appears along with such fierce devotion to the Good that the Self can be sacrificed for it.

I had an old American Heritage Dictionary. In the the front there were two essays giving opposing views of what a dictionary is.

The first was by William F. Buckle and he said dictionaries set out proper language use. He emphasized that they get credentialed experts to write dictionaries so that the poor stupid people will know how to comport themselves properly.

The other essay said a dictionary is where words go to die. They don't tell you how words are used now, but rather how they were used last year. It's the poor crazy street people making up new words out of their schizophrenic day dreams who give life to language.

Those are paraphrases, anyway. Thoughts?

Perhaps the idea of a ‘collective psyche’ or ‘hive mind’ needs to be shelved along with that of an autonomous, identical self. In their place we can substitute the perspectival consistency of a point of view. Point of view is itself a multiplicity of selves that are produced within the collective called a person. The collective selves forming the changing person participate in the social group via the vantage of an ongoing perspective. — Joshs

I'm not sure what this means. A point of view without a viewer makes no sense.

Wow! That quote says it all!

if not, then there is more to consciousness than "phenomenal consciousness". — Banno

There's definitely more.

It came from ideas about the order of the universe. Women were supposed to be lower down on the cosmic scale, so the act of penetration was a symbol of domination. If a man experienced penetration, it was seen as a perverse rejection of the divine order, so a kind of blasphemy.

Rorty jokes about us always finding Hegel ahead of us on the path. — plaque flag

Really? It's true, Hegel's mind was gigantic. Nobody knows how he got it all crammed into that little skull.

It is good to have Josh-whisperer. Sometimes I think I also speak that dialect, but maybe not always. — plaque flag

Just riff on Hegel and it's usually right.

You’ve got it in you, I can tell. — Jamal

Oh good grief.

We're not here to read your genius posts. We want you to read ours.

There is really no reason to fracture the body in any abstract way, or include some sort of intermediary, in order to better understand the body's mysteries, especially when all conscious humans are by-and-large whole. — NOS4A2

I think most parties in philosophy of mind would agree with you. They really are respectable philosophers, not shaman shaking rattles the way we on this forum depict them.

The standard approach right now is non-reductive physicalism. And that's basically because reduction just doesn't work.

The p-zombie argument is an answer to functionalism, which is a rare, now defunct approach. The point of that argument is a subtle, logical wedge into functionalism. If you weren't an advocate of functionalism to begin with, you don't need to worry over p-zombies.

Indirect realism is part of our philosophical heritage. It comes from the days that originally defined the word "physical" for us. That word was originally a medical term that distinguished physical ailments from mental ones. Don't be offended by the way they categorized things. They were doing the best they could.

I speak Joshese. He's saying that Becoming is primal. Being presupposes the Spacious Now, and so the Grand Dramatic Arc from the Eternal Past to the Eternal Future.

Who says we don't have them. The argument is about the kind of thing they are, not whether they are. It's about whether 'experience' describes a set of mental events, an epiphenomena of human fancy, or a type of thing the relationship to which neurons have needs explaining. — Isaac

Chalmers has no particular viewpoint on the constitution of experience. I have to explain this every time his name comes up. :confused:

No one is saying there's no subject matter there at all.

We 'talk about' life-force, luck, auras, God, unicorns, gut instinct, premonition... Doesn't mean they all default exist in any particular form. — Isaac

Cool. So you've accepted that experience exists in some form. You've taken up the burden of explaining what we refer to when we speak of it. I'll call yours the Unicorn Theory of Phenomenal Consciousness. :strong: