Dali's surrealist representations of clocks and watches as flowing and ubiquitous allow the symbolic to "leak through" the concrete, unifying both into a greater whole that's psychologically enriching. — Baden

Yea, I like poetry and any kind of art that barely makes sense because of that. Life dwells in that open space between facts, if you know what I mean.

thank you

Being offended is not a substitute for an argument. Only Islam is ever afforded this level of immunity from criticism. But this isn't Starmer's Britain; it's a philosophy forum. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't care whether you understand why religious tolerance is a requirement. Just stop talking about Muslims as if they're all villains.

Earth to frank, Islam isn't a race. It's an ideology that seeks to spread itself to every corner of the globe. And it just so happens to subjugate women, minorities, and animals virtually everywhere it goes. — BitconnectCarlos

Ok. You're demonstrating religious intolerance. That's just as unacceptable. No, they don't subjugate women everywhere they go. They conform to the laws of the lands in which they live.

You're painting the whole global population of Muslims with one color. Stop it.

Israel is ground zero in the conflict between West and Islam. If Israel falls, Europe is next. Europe is already feeling the pressure. How democratic and tolerant can a society be towards those who are fundamentally undemocratic and intolerant? Such questions test the limits of western democracy. We should all be uncomfortable. — BitconnectCarlos

You're getting kind of racist here, and you're also wrong. Islam has no conflict with democracy and it is in no way a threat to either Europe or the rest of the West.

Earth to Bitconnect, you're getting delusional.

:up:

They got RFK's endorsement though. According to polymarket, they are (very slight) favourites to win now. — Baden

I wonder if they're calculating that by the popular vote or by predicting how the swing states will go. Probably by swing states.

House collapses on the outer banks:

https://youtube.com/shorts/_mQrjE74AZE?si=EkUj9uv-NYcRLmzm

Harris and Walz seem bullet proof while Trump and Vance can't catch a break. I wasn't expecting this.

The unemployment rate was still at historic lows during that time, which wasn't really a good thing from a neoliberal pov.

Yes, those churches are mentioned in that book. At first they couldn't tell if they were Christian or Buddhist.


:up:

The idea of surrealism comes from the belief that we deal with reality indirectly by pulling it apart into pieces. Maybe we can experience it more directly when the intellect is offline, as in dreams, or in poetry.

Ideas are pieces of something bigger, which is implied in the way that ideas are inextricably bound to materiality, as the idea of a horse is bound to particular manifestations. Look deep into matter, all the way down, and ideas are always there.

I am especially interested in something covering the history of Islam in more historical/anthropological terms too. — I like sushi

Religions of the Silk Road, by Richard Foltz

That it has to be pointed out that pain and colour are different shows the culpability of both your lines of thinking. — Banno

I don't what follows from the fact that pain and color are different. I might be hopelessly lost.

Political hierarchies are not natural but artificial and conventional. — NOS4A2

Since most of the human race is dependent on them, I guess that makes us artificial. We made ourselves, with a lot of luck.

Long ago, someone who has posted on this thread insisted that Mount Everest did not have a height until it was measured. Pragmatism and Pierce and stuff had led them to this opinion. — Banno

Philosophy has corrupted the minds of the young. Again.

Which concept? Current? Object? Conviction? Strained? — Banno

Current is an object like a waterfall is an object. The water flows over the rocks. I guess you could think of the waterfall as a property of the rocks, but that's kind of weird. It's more like something that's happening to the rocks. Likewise, current flows in a conductor, like iron. The flow is something happening to the iron. Anyway, we usually talk about current as a thing, not a property.

Are you going to defend pressure, heat and torque in the same fashion? — Banno

I could.

And just to be sure, I'm not claiming the distinction between primary and secondary qualities cannot be made, but that it is difficult to maintain, and not of as much use as other notions. — Banno

It's like a lens through which people see the world. Color is mental, length is not. Does it fall apart at the edges? I think it probably does, but so does every way of thinking. There is no complete package. That's why philosophy never ends.

Hmm. Not convinced. Seems strained. — Banno

I don't think you're familiar with the concept.

So are you suggesting that the electric current is known distinctly by the jolt felt? And that this is much the same way we know distinctly that some object is solid, or round?

Ok. Again, it doesn't work for me — Banno

Current is an object in its own right. It's a flow of electrons (or holes, depending on your point of view).

110v is for 'mercan big girls blouses. Real Men (or children) get the full 250v. Makes your hair stand on end, that does. — Banno

I bet it does. :lol:

I'm not sure how current is "distinctly known". — Banno

Not a member of the 110 club, then? That's people who've been shocked by 110 volts AC. I've been a member since I was a kid.

So the list of primary qualities includes electric current, speed, pressure, torque, potential energy, luminosity... — Banno

Current is measured in amps. Why do you think it can't be measured?

So the notion of primary and secondary qualities has faded somewhat, and we can ask if this is because it has become so ubiquitous as to be taken as granted, or if it has been shown to be too wanting to be of much use. I think it's the latter. — Banno

I think it faded from philosophy because Kant showed that knowledge of the categories of primary qualities is apriori. The old way is still the prevailing one among regular people. Most still think of an object's girth as something that's mind-independent, while its color is not.

All this by way of showing that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities might not be as foundational as ↪Wayfarer suggests. — Banno

I think he was just saying that it's the way most people think.

Well said :up:

When something is working so relatively well, folk can just take it for granted. Then as things start to go wrong, it can take those who have become disconnected from the realities quite some time to understand why. — apokrisis

Could be. Or I was thinking it might be a problem with aggression during peacetime. We turn on each other.

Can you lay out a case? — Moliere

The case is basically what you've said, just with some Nietzsche added in. The outcome is the so called dark enlightenment philosophy. It says that democracy is not the pinnacle of social development for humans. It's just a tool, and it's now failing, so it's time to ditch it in favor of authoritarianism. Its fans include Peter Thiel (pronounced Teel) and JD Vance.

I look at it more in terms of where social currents are headed. Authoritarianism has become appealing for a reason, right? In spite of being the most comfortable humans in history, there's a loss of faith in democracy. It's been highjacked. That's how people all across the political spectrum feel. They point at each other as the highjackers. The question for me is: why is this happening now? What does it mean? Historically, democracies and republics tend to end in monarchy due to crises like war. I wonder if I'm watching how the stage is set for the transition prior to the crisis. People lose faith in themselves for whatever reason, and once the crisis happens, people close ranks around a powerful leader. That part is just human nature.

I'm laughing but I suppose I'd go to Rawl's Veil of Ignorance: the likelihood that I'd be a King is very low, so it's simply not attractive. — Moliere

I guess I take that question more seriously than you do.

I think democracy is more of a levy to capitalism than an accelerator: democracy, thus far, has happened to help capitalism, but that's because democracies are overwhelmingly not democratic even in the representative sense. The people there come from money and so vote for things that help thems, like all humans do. (this is a big problem for representative democracy: since humans vote for themselves, by human nature, you can't build representative systems since the apes that get the office are no better than the apes at home, and will vote for themselves) 

But if you build in more steps for scrutiny then this gets tampered as the individual decision becomes collective. — Moliere

Why not just go straight to monarchy? That's where ancient Greek democracies always ended up.

So you can explicate and maintain the distinction between primary and secondary qualities? I'm not so confident. — Banno

John Locke did a pretty good job. Kant showed how he was wrong, but Kant isn't exactly our worldview, is he?

Humans were originally nomadic because they followed migrating herds. They probably didn't have much corruption. There wasn't much to corrupt.

Abraham and the Exodus are folklore. The Israelites occupied a specific area.

Muhammad had a number of occupations. The Arabs weren't nomadic.

The Torah and the Quran emerged out of nomadic shepherds. — Tarskian

Just happen to be reading a book about the early Iron Age, and the Israelites weren't nomadic. Arabs weren't either. I can see how you'd get that impression though.

But the point is, that the division between primary and secondary qualities is basic to Galileo and to early modern science and philosophy generally. The fact that this keeps coming up is due to this ‘bifurcation of nature’ (Whitehead). It’s not due to the predilections of individual posters or some newbie mistake on their part. It’s deeply baked into our cultural framework. — Wayfarer

This is true. The conundrum is coming from a worldview that says people are isolated consciousness bubbles. You can't see inside my bubble. The most extreme consequences of this is a complete breakdown in meaning as described by Quine and Kripke.

If that's so then we could make the economy better even if hierarchy is inevitable. — Moliere

In a capitalist society, wealth becomes concentrated, then redistributed by economic crisis. It's happened over and over, no matter who was in charge. The secret to the endurance of capitalism is that it's incredibly creative. In a sense, it created all of us.

The only part democracy plays is that it provides the freedom capitalism needs.

You are thinking of Lucid dreams? I've had them a few times. No, I'm talking generally - we differentiate between dreams and wakefulness. — Banno

Not when the dream is happening, though.

I thought the Fed was apolitical and does whatever it wanted? — Mr Bee

Yes. They still try to avoid screwing with the economy when an election is close.

I mean Trump and the Republicans will be mad at a booming economy if it helps their enemies but let's be honest Trump would be harassing the Fed every day to cut rates if he were president right now. — Mr Bee

He'd have to install mechanisms for overriding the chairman. I guess he'd give it his best shot.

But we can tell when we are dreaming. — Banno

That's not very common. It's only happened to me once.

Can you elaborate on how you feel i've missed the Geiger counter? — AmadeusD

I was just kidding.

I'm an ontological anti-realist. Both direct and indirect realism are facets of our present psychology. I can't take either seriously because I don't have a vantage point from which to determine .

Plus I think you've overlooked the Geiger Counter.