↪Joshs

What's the objection here aside from him being a "moralist?" It seems like you could describe his basic thesis just as well in the amoral language of classical economics (which just assumes that everyone is always "selfish"). — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is nothing amoral about the classical economic notion of selfishness, which is why al Gharbi’s thesis is so compatible with it, and in fact depends on the same Enlightenment-era notions of the autonomously willing subject.

the defining feature of our contemporary condition is that we can no longer rely automatically on the continuity of ‘discursive enactment’ grounded in a shared normative community. We must continually renew and reinvent both our discursive practices and our conception of community. This aligns with what Nietzsche called the 'untimely'—a becoming that diverges from historical continuity. Foucault expressed a similar idea: 'The description of the archive unfolds its possibilities; its threshold of existence begins with the break that separates us from what we can no longer say and what falls outside our discursive practices; it begins with the outside of our own language; its place is the distance from our own discursive practices”. — Number2018

We can and we can’t rely on the discursive continuity of a normative community. For Deleuze we must rely on such stability for a time. We spend most if not all of our lives within relatively stable systems. Territorialization is as necessary as deterritorialization. What we cannot do is assume any one social formation as sovereign.

Your OP covers a slew of issues and connects them in a particular way. It begins with Doyle’s critique of wokism, and then lays out a Foucaultian analysis of wokism, from which vantage Doyle’s own thinking is itself a symptom of wokist power relations. This seems to drive more from Deleuze than Focault, since Deleuze insisted that only revolutionary change could break one free from the hegemony of discursive regimes, such as Capitalism. Foucault, on the other hand, was more open to compromise with the dominant cultural , since unlike Deleuze he didn’t see regimes like capitalism as monolithic entities but as already slowly transforming themselves from within their own power dynamics. This allowed him to accept a critique of Doyle from a wokist vantage that was itself open to its own transformation through its own dynamics of power.

he doesn’t understand the basic philosophical grounding for them and ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
— Joshs

This is patently untrue. I think its more likely this stems from those who share views not noticing what it looks like from the outside. For instance. many will claim that "woke" is: — AmadeusD

Patently untrue? Let’s put it to the test, shall we? My thesis is it’s a collosal waste of time to critique wokeness on the basis of specific practices that call themselves woke , and that are felt by many as totalitarian, repressive or McCarhyesque. I’m interested in your knowledge of the underlying philosohies that these practices are drawn from. You see, the practices can change and become much less repressive without significantly altering the underlying worldview that generates them. I’m not a fan of woke overreach either, but I know two things. The fundamental philosophical insights guiding it are here to stay, and will become accepted by the mainstream within the next 50 years. So I’m talking about two sorts of critiques, a critique from within which accepts and is indebted to the innovative philosophical grounding of wokism , but wants to take the next step , which involves transcending the moralistic finger-pointing which Wokism has inherited from more mainstream political theory. The second sort of critique is a critique from without. This critique has no clue what the underlying philosophies are talking about, and just sees wokists as bossy moralistic people who want to act like dictators.

To find out whether Doyle’s ( or your) critique is from the inside or the outside won’t be too difficult. Doyle has written a lot about wokism, and it wouldn’t take me very long to demonstrate that he never even attempts to analyze the underlying philosophy, except by repeating one-line cliches he picks up from others who haven’t bothered to carefully read the authors they cite.

If you're interested in the topic, I thought Musa al-Gharbi's We Have Never Been Woke was a good treatment. His main thrust was that the "Great Awokening" following the Great Recession was the result of (relative) elites feeling the need to justify their own rapidly growing wealth and privilege in the face of declining standards of living for the rest of the country (also declining life expectancy). Social justice became a way to justify one's own position in society. It also became a means for those already positioned near the top, and who had been raised in a pressure cooker environment focused on accomplishment and securing one's own spot in the elite, to secure elite status, by positioning themselves as representatives or allies of victimized groups. However well-intentioned though, these movements often tended to slide into (largely unreflective) self-serving behavior. That is, the empirical case for the positive benefits of the "Great Awokening" for its supposed beneficiaries is weak — Count Timothy von Icarus

Al-Gharbi has a thing about selfishness. Since he is really an old fashioned moralist at heart, he sees everything in that light. Nice touch there, reducing the good intentions of wokism to underlying base motives ( in spite of ‘good intentions’). I’ve read al-Gharbi, and if I were convinced he understood the ideas swirling around beneath the catch-all term of wokism I would be more enthusiastic about his analyses. No doubt the inertia of the status quo within a normative community exerts a powerful restraining force on reform, but it will not be solved by pointing fingers at individual weak will. Besides, if you put tighter a list of the top 5% by wealth you will find very few true wokist in that group. The core of the movement is to be found within academia, a cohort which is significantly less prosperous than your typical Manhattan professional. Paying lip service to wokist slogans is not the same thing as understanding the meaning of intersectionality or critical race theory.

When we engage in contemporary online or identity politics discourse, the very act of speaking subjects us to the same conditions that shape what is commonly called ‘wokeness.’ In that moment, we are often not reflecting on our deeper philosophical or political commitments. When we engage in contemporary online or identity politics discourse, the very act of speaking subjects us to the same conditions that shape what is commonly called ‘wokeness.’ In that moment, we are often not reflecting on our deeper philosophical or political commitments. Therefore, it may be useful to distinguish between our discursive practices and their deliberate interpretations — Number2018

I dont think we can distinguish between them. We don’t need to ‘reflect on’ or theoretically articulate our philosophical commitments in order to enact them, because the commitments only exist in their continued discursive enactment in the partially shared circumstances of a normative community.

From a Foucauldian perspective, wokeness can be understood not only as an emancipatory gesture but also as a mode through which power is reproduced via identity. Identity politics thus operates within the current digital power/knowledge regime, simultaneously enabling recognition and reinforcing normative expectations of being 'woke.' As Foucault put it, 'It is a form of power that makes individuals subjects—that subjugates and makes subject to…'" — Number2018

The above analysis applies to any normative community in any historical era. The OP’s critique of Doyle’s attack on wokism misses the fact that he sees the myriad varieties of wokism through a perspective that gets its intelligibility from discursive practices that belong to an older era. Through his Kantian perspective, anything woke is simply marginalized. What is emancipatory within wokism is therefore invisible to Doyle. When Focault analyses identity politics , he does so from a vantage which understands identity and subjectivity as effects of the circulation of power. When Doyle criticizes identity politics, has has no intention of deconstructing the concepts of identity and subjectivity. On the contrary, he is interested in reifying them.

Don’t the regimes of these rulers reveal distinct modes of exercising power? For instance, Orbán and Erdoğan were democratically elected, while Putin maintains only a façade of electoral legitimacy. So, what exactly constitutes this so-called 'school of autocracy'? As for claims of 'Trump’s fascism,' such assertions depend entirely on how fascism is defined. Without a well-developed and nuanced theoretical framework, labeling Trump as a fascist may become an example of a political slogan or ideologically driven discourse. — Number2018

What these regimes have in common is rule by the arbitrary edict of one man rather than by law, constitution and judicial process. In each of these countries, the independence of the judiciary, the press, opposing parties , universities and civil organizations are systematically dismantled so that they won’t present a challenge to the authority of the leader.

It would make just as much sense to say, “Occasionally I feel this strange impulse to stop smoking, but happily I've manage to combat that drive and pick up a cigarette whenever I want.”

Would it make just as much sense? People don't generally talk this way at least, right?

It would be sort of bizarre for someone to say: "I was tempted on my work trip, and unfortunately my sex drive was not strong enough to make me cheat on my spouse. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What’s the difference between saying ‘occasionally I have a strange impulse’ and ‘I have an impulse to perform an immoral act’? The difference is that the use of moral language like ‘cheating’, ‘murdering’ and ‘stealing’ as opposed to value-neutral terms like ‘having sex with’ , ‘killing’ and ‘taking from’ follows upon the interpreting of an act as immoral. And Nietzsche’s point is that we only arrive at such moral interpretations after the stronger drive has won out and we justify its success posthoc as being the ‘moral’ choice. If we don’t consider picking up a cigarette whenever we want to be a moral act, it is because the drive to smoke is in a close battle with the drive to quit. If we became fully convinced that there were no solid reasons to quit (health, economic or hygiene), then we would with good conscience consider our decision to smoke not to be the less moral choice.

Certainly, Doyle's critique mistakes the symptoms for the underlying structure. Wokeness is not simply an ideology or a belief system. Instead, it reveals the irreversible transformation of the
autonomous, rational subject of liberalism into a digitized, emotive, and aestheticized form of subjectivity. — Number2018

I would put it this way. Wokism is a loose constellation of political positions drawing from a range of philosophical worldviews heavily indebted to Hegel and Marx, but also extending into postmodernist territory expressed by anti-Marxist thinkers like Foucault. Specific interpretators of Wokism have undoubtedly been responsible for excesses and infringements on personal freedom, but Doyle’s shrill, blanket critique of wokism and identity politics suffers from the fact that he doesn’t understand the basic philosophical grounding for them and ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. At the same time, his relative conservativism blinds him to the greater dangers from the far right, leading him to claim that accusations of fascism toward Trump are “unjustifiable and untethered from reality”. You won’t find many thoughtful writers in America these days who still deny that Trump’s playbook comes straight out of the school of autocracy perfected by pols like Putin, Orban, Erdogan and Bolsonaro.

There's a sense in which I can understand akrasia -- where I've dedicated myself to do such and such, like quit smoking, that the "rational" frame makes sense of -- but I'm more inclined that Nietzsche is right in that when I quit smoking it's because my desire to quit smoking was more powerful than my desire to smoke, for whatever reason/cause.

I had to work on not-wanting in order to stop-wanting. And that was a desire I built up in order to stop-want — Moliere

Exactly. Daniel Smith contrasts the hierarchical relation between rational will and passion that Timothy seems to be describing with Nietzsche’s subordination of rational will to passion.

Now: to be sure, we can combat the drives, we can fight against them. Indeed, this is one of the most common themes in philosophy, a Platonic theme that was taken up by Christianity: the fight against the passions. In another passage from Daybreak , Nietzsche says that he can see only six fundamental methods we have at our disposal for
combating the drives. For instance, Nietzsche says, (1) we can avoid opportunities for its gratification (for instance, if I'm combating my drive to smoke cigarettes, I can stop hiding packs of cigarettes at home, which I conveniently “find” again when I run out), or (2) we can implant regularity into the drive (having one cigarette every four hours so as to at least avoid smoking in between), or (3) we can engender disgust with the drive, giving ourselves over to its wild and unrestrained gratification to the point where we become disgusted with it (say, smoking non-stop for a month until the very idea of a cigarette makes me want to vomit) And Nietzsche continues with several other examples.

But then Nietzsche asks: But who exactly is combating the drives in these various ways? His answer is this: The fact “that one desires to combat the vehemence of a drive at all, however, does not stand within our own power; nor does the choice of any particular method; nor does the success or failure of this method. What is clearly the case is that in this entire procedure our intellect is only the blind instrument of another drive which is a rival of the drive who vehemence is tormenting us….While ‘we' believe we are complaining about the vehemence of a drive, at bottom it is one drive which is complaining about the other; that is to say: for us to become aware that we are suffering from the vehemence [or violence] of a drive presupposes the existence of another equally vehement or even more vehement drive, and that a struggle is in prospect in which our intellect is going to have to take sides” (Daybreak

09). What we call thinking, willing, and feeling are all “merely a relation of these drives to each other” (BGE 36). In other words, there is no struggle of reason against the drives, as Plato, for instance, held. What we call “reason” is, in Nietzsche's view, nothing more than a certain “system of relations between various passions” (WP 387), a certain ordering of the drives. What then do I mean when I say “I am trying to stop smoking”—even though that same I is
constantly going ahead and lighting up cigarettes and continuing to smoke? It simply means that my conscious intellect is taking sides and associating itself with a particular drive. It would make just as much sense to say, “Occasionally I feel this strange impulse to stop smoking, but happily I've manage to combat that drive and pick up a cigarette whenever I want.” Instinctively, Nietzsche says, we tend to take our predominant drive and for the moment turn it into the whole of our ego, placing all our weaker drives perspectivally farther away, as if those other drives weren't me but rather something else, something other inside me, a kind of “it” (hence Freud's idea of the “id,” the “it”—which he also derived from Nietzsche).

“The ego,” Nietzsche writes, “is a plurality of person-like forces, of which now this one now that one stands in the foreground as ego and regards the others as a subject regards an influential and determining external world.”3 When we talk about the “I,” we are simply indicating which drive, at the moment, is strongest and sovereign. “The feeling of the ‘I' is always strongest where the preponderance [Übergewicht] is,” Nietzsche writes, although the so-called “self-identity” I seem to experience in my ego is in fact a differential flickering from drive to drive.

↪Joshs ↪Count Timothy von Icarus

That "ordering of the appetites" -- I wonder if that's absent from Nietzsche?

I don't think so, given his general appreciation for master morality — Moliere

The ranking of drives would be individualistic, and based on to what extent they enhance life and further creativity and self-overcoming vs encourage passivity, resentment and decay. The rational appetite, or will to knowledge, is itself an expression of , and directed by will to power. If it is used in a way that does not optimize the aims of creative self-overcoming, then they work against life enhancement and constitute self-weakening drives.

t's interesting that a "socially liberal but economically conservative," bloc has thrived within the GOP (the "nu-right"), but there is no parallel "socially conservative but economically liberal," camp in the Democratic — Count Timothy von Icarus

That used to define the majority of democrats in big cities as well as in the South. The civil rights movement stripped away the dixie-crats from the party, and the Democrats’ turn to post-sixties social liberalism pushed the rest of them to Reagan and then Trump.

So weakness of will involves current knowledge, what is understood to be best. If we make poor choices out of ignorance about what is truly best, that would simply be a case of ignorance. Weakness of will is a conflict between different appetites. It's untinelligible in that it doesn't correspond to the intellect. The action is not in accord with what is understood, but is instead contrary to it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It seems to be a description without an origin. Do you mean to say that whenever any of us encounter a conflict of appetites, weakness of will arises of necessity? Nietzsche would argue that whatever drive is strongest prevails, but this would not constitute a weakness.

I think every intentional act, to be properly intentional, aims at some good. In terms of theft, some good is being aimed at. It isn't wrong to seek such goods. It is wrong to prioritize lesser goods over greater ones though. And the idea would be that prioritizing wealth over virtue is a sort of misprioritization that stems from ignorance or weakness of will (both of which are limits on a perfected freedom). I guess there is a notion of harmony here too. Evil is a sort of unintelligibly in action, it is to be out of step with nature (nature as perfected) or to "miss the mark." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I understand the concept of ignorance and unintelligibility in the context of knowledge. Such limitations occur in spite of the strongest will to know, due to constraints that exceed individual intention. But what is the genesis and nature of the sort of ignorance and unintelligiblity connected to this magical thing called ‘weakness of will’? Isnt it just that, an irreducible mystery?

↪Joshs The letter you quote from makes an excellent case for why computer programs are not agents in anything like the sense a human is. Do you agree that we should try to avoid using language that appears to reify such programs as 1st-person entities? (or however you might phrase the latter idea) — J

Absolutely. I think of them as appendages or human-built niches, like a nest to a bird or a web to a spider.

We can transact in meanings with them, since they do understand what our words mean, but their words do not have the same significance and do not literally convey assertions, since they aren't backed by a personal stake in our game of giving and asking for reasons (over and above their reinforced inclination to provide useful answers to whoever happens to be their current user). — Pierre-Normand

In a letter in Trends in Cognitive Science (LLMs don't know anything: reply to Yildirim and Paul), Mariel K. Goddu, Alva Noë and Evan Thompson claim the following:

The map does not know the way home, and the abacus is not clever at arithmetic. It takes knowledge to devise and use such models, but the models themselves have no knowledge. Not because they are ignorant, but because they are models: that is to say, tools. They do not navigate or calculate, and neither do they have destinations to reach or debts to pay. Humans use them for these epistemic purposes. LLMs have more in common with the map or abacus than with the people who design and use them as instruments. It is the tool creator and user, not the tool, who has knowledge.

Linking empty tokens based on probabilities (even in ways that we are in a position to know does reflect the truth of a given domain, be it a summarization task, physics, or arithmetic) does not warrant attributing knowledge of that domain to the token generator itself.

We said above that LLMs do not perform any tasks of their own, they perform our tasks. It would be better to say that they do not really do anything at all. Hence the third leap: treating LLMs as agents. However, since LLMs are not agents, let alone epistemic ones, they are in no position to do or know anything.

Davidson's reply is that there is no law-like relation between physical states and intentions — Banno

A ‘physical state’ is a certain kind of language game. An intentional state arises within another game. Each offers their own kind of meaning. Davidson seems to be fine with settling for the physical state language game , without recognizing what he may be missing by excluding the other game.

The missing bit is that a description of an intentional state is not a description of a physical state. — Banno

If we’re trying to capture the meaning of a statement and the meaning is encoded in intentional terms, how does switching over to an account in terms of physical states not lose the meaning?

So the question is, do we attribute belief and desire to ChatGPT?

And the partial answer is that we do not need to do so, in order to give meaning to the sentences it produces.

Which is another argument against the idea that meaning is speaker intent. — Banno

The answer is that Chat GPT uses parallel processing A.I. chips but its logic is linear, digital ( binary) and deterministic. In about 10 years we may have A.I. architectures that integrate complex dynamical systems (CDS) models, which will diverge radically from today’s parallel architectures (e.g., GPUs, TPUs) by embodying principles like self-organization and intentionality. CDS-based AI chips may blur the line between computation and biological processes, resembling intelligent materials more than traditional silicon. The interesting thing about complex dynamical systems is that they organize subordinate linear deterministic elements via superordinate recursive intentionality. If we reduce the higher order intentionality to lower order determinism we lose the meaning of their sentences.

Science is not trying to give an account of what the universe would be like were there no observers. It is trying to give an account of what the universe is like for any observer — Banno

I would think it important to add to this ‘for any observer participating in the particular community of scientists who share a domain of study.’ Many scientist are quite humble this days about the reach of their theories. They appreciate that no overarching account of the natureof reality is possible, no reduction of all disciplines to some fundamental science (such as physics). Approaches, methods , theories , vocabularies concerning a given phenomenon differ depending on what aspect of that phenomenon is being examined, and for what purposes. In sum, ‘the view for everyone’ is a regional goal of science, not a universal one.

Williams’ approach evinces a lingering attachment to the platonism inherent in the distinction between the real world and the apparent world. I am reminded of Nietzsche’s 6 stages from Twilight of the Idols:

1)The wise and pious man dwells in the real world, which he attains through his wisdom (skills in perception warrant a more accurate view of the real world).

2)The wise and pious man doesn't dwell in the real world, but rather it is promised to him, a goal to live for. (ex: to the sinner who repents)

3)The real world is unattainable and cannot be promised, yet remains a consolation when confronted with the perceived injustices of the apparent world.

4)If the real world is not attained, then it is unknown. Therefore, there is no duty to the real world, and no consolation derived from it.

5)The idea of a real world has become useless—it provides no consolation or motive. It is therefore cast aside as a useless abstraction.

6)What world is left? The concept of the real world has been abolished, and with it, the idea of an apparent world follows.

Williams seems to be on stage 2 or 3

On the relation between Williams, Nietzsche and Platonism, you might enjoy Rorty’s To the Sunlit Uplands

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v24/n21/richard-rorty/to-the-sunlit-uplands

↪Joshs Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was saying the opposite: Self-reflexivity is virtually definitive of philosophy. I was contrasting this with what I took Antony Nickles to be saying -- that there is no difference between the problem situation of reflecting philosophically about, for instance, science, and reflecting philosophically about philosophy. — J

What I meant was that for the philosophers I mentioned, the act of philosophical self-reflection is not an inner process of solipsistic self-confirmation. Instead the self comes back to itself (constitutes itself) from the world. To reflect is to self-transform, to be thrown elsewhere. The objection to scientific thinking is its tendency toward platonism (subject-object dualism) in the presuppositions guiding it. Anthony will be able to show how for Wittgenstein traditional philosophy gives into this platonism alongside the self-conception of the sciences. Williams’ approach devices the li geri f attachment to the platonism inherent in the distinction between the real
world and the apparent world.

Philosophy may talk about science by looking at scientific criteria; the assumption is that philosophy's criteria for how to do this are not on the table. But when the inquiry turns inward, we don't have the luxury of bumping any questions of judgment or method to some off-the-table level. — J

This is not at all true of the whole lineage of philosophy arising from Nietzsche’s work (Heidegger, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida). The self-reflexivity you are suggesting is missing from philosophy is at the very heart of their method.

what if the basis of such human behavior, unlike computer behavior, lies in the unknown for a person of his own ultimate goal, and the desire to act (make a decision without a task) is based on a person's understanding of his own finitude?

this is the development of Heidegger's ideas to modern challenges (AI and machine decision making. — Astorre

Heidegger’s concept of finitude isn’t simply a reference to the chronological fact that we dont live forever. It is more centrally about the moment to moment structure of temporality itself. Each experience of the ‘present’ is finite in that the meaning contained within it cannot be logically derived from the previous present, nor be used to deduce the following moment of time. We are radically future oriented in that we reach out and transcend ourselves into the future. This is what makes experience fundamentally uncanny. We can’t design machines to be this way precisely because it is we who are designing them. This having been created is what makes them machines, and no amount of fancy hardware or software tweaking will ever give machines more than the illusion of finitude.

You ask us whether the universe has meaning and then when we say "no" you jump up and say "Ah ha! You recognize that meaning and purpose are important." Well, for most of us, the answer to the question is not "no," it's "I don't think about things that way. Life's purposes and goals are not things I think about unless someone like you brings them up." I don't ever remember thinking about life's purpose except in a philosophical context. I think most people are like me in that sense — T Clark

What do you think about, and why? Do you think about things because they are relevant and meaningful to you, in relation to your goals and purposes? If so, then maybe you are thinking about life’s purposes all the time. That is, not some single overarching purpose, but a contextually-focused network of significance that you consult as motivator of your actions. I think that is Wayfarer’s point.

The blithe assurances of scientific positivism—that the universe is devoid of meaning and purpose—should therefore be recognized for what they are: a smokescreen, a refusal to face the deeper philosophical questions that science itself has inadvertently reopened. In a world that gives rise to observers, meaning may not be an add-on. It may have been that it is there all along, awaiting discovery.
— Wayfarer

This is pretty outrageous. You've lost track of the fact, if you ever recognized it, that you can't answer scientific questions with metaphysics and you can't answer metaphysical questions with science — T Clark

Because a scientific stance is itself a derivative or expression of a metaphysical stance, answering its questions is already to engage with the metaphysics that guides it. A scientific evolution is likely to also constitute a metaphysical revolution.

if refutation is based on non-shared assumptions there is no way to dialectically persuade those who do not share those assumptions with arguments based on those assumptions. Under this predicament, if we want them to act in accordance to our views, then we are left with the only option of imposing our views on them by brute force (or treachery?). But if we feel JUSTIFIED in doing this, this is because we take our views to be the valid ones, and their views the invalid ones. — neomac

Why are these the only two options? Why couldn't I teach someone a different way of looking at world, the way which grounds my own arguments and facts, so that they can understand the basis of my criteria of justification? It would not be a question of justifying the worldview I convert them to, but of allowing them to justify the arguments and views that are made intelligible from within that worldview.

Men have believed that they could make the rain; why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him? And if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way. ( Wittgenstein, On Certainty)

Adopting certain beliefs and norms as conditions for validation, already implies refusing to adopt other beliefs and norms as conditions for validation. And as long as beliefs and norms do not enjoy a special status of conditions for validation, then they can be scrutinised in light of beliefs and norms adopted as conditions for validation, and possibly refuted. So I get that mutual understanding presupposes shared assumptions. But ideological refutation is based on non-shared assumptions, so shared assumptions is not a requirement for ideological refutation — neomac

One dictionary definition of ‘refute’ is: to prove (a statement or theory) to be wrong or false; disprove. If you accept this definition as consistent with your use of the word, then to refute is to access a vantage beyond ideology, an objective meta-position that transcends bias. In the philosophical literature one can find critiques of ideology from the left and the right. Critiques from the left tend to locate the concept of ideology with Marxist discourses. One can find such critiques among postmodern and poststructuralist writers. What they object to about the analysis of social configurations of knowledge in terms of ideology is not its assumption that knowledge is socially constructed, but that it can be totalized on the basis of a logic of development, that it moves toward an ultimate end.

What the leftist critics of ideology keep from Marxism ( and Hegelianism) is the notion that knowledge is only produced within social formations, and the development of these formations does not proceed by way of refutation but revolutionary transformation. Common to Wittgenstein’s forms of life and hinges , Heidegger’s worldviews, Foucault’s epistemes and Kuhn’s paradigms is a rejection of the idea that social formations of knowledge progress via refutation. It sounds like your critique of ideology is from the right, which places it as a pre-Hegelian traditionalist thinking.

If the method of validation is grounded on a set of norms and beliefs, such norms and beliefs can not be refuted, since the refutation must presuppose them (like Wittgenstein’s hinge propositions). But if we do not share such norms and beliefs, and they do not ground our system of validation then of course we can refute such norms and beliefs — neomac

If another group’s norms and beliefs don’t ground our system of validation, then we can’t refute those norms and beliefs because we won’t be able to understand them. Refutation only makes sense when it is based on normative criteria provided by the same Wittgensteinian hinge proposition as that which is to be refuted.

↪Joshs I see. Yes, we can certainly just reject his premises and standpoint. I wonder, though, whether you're able to accept them for the sake of argument, and help us see whether the argument goes through? If that doesn't interest you, no worries. — J

Williams’s position is fallibilist. He rejects the view from nowhere. There may be an absolute reality but we don’t have to claim that our philosophical accounts of this absolute can themselves be known absolutely in order to make progress in our understanding of reality. We can do this through local, embodied and situated practical inquiries.

We would like some sort of absolute knowledge, a View from Nowhere that will transcend “local interpretative predispositions.” But what if we accept the idea that science aims to provide that knowledge, and may be qualified to do it? What does that leave for philosophy to do? Williams says we should then regard philosophy as one of the social sciences, which do not attempt or claim that kind of transcendence. — J

Neither science nor philosophy provide a view from nowhere, but what Williams has done is to take applied and derivative thinking (empiricism) and mistake it for a more fundamental and grounding perspective (philosophy).

We can be subjected to all manner of physical pain from non-human causes, and yet never develop the depression that results from abuse. Why not? Because at the core of the depression lie unanswered questions concerning why the abuser did what they did. Why did they choose you? Does the fact that they targeted you speak to something broken, unworthy or unlovable in you, that you are to blame for their actions? If they were a family member, how can you trust society in general if you can’t even trust the people closest to you? Because these questions seem so overwhelmingly difficult to answer, there is a risk that we give up trying, and run instead to sources of consolation.

But there are things we know about abuse, such as that they run in families and can be passed down through generations. This tells us that there are patterns of thinking resistant to insights that can break the chain of abuse. One of these patterns involves translating all of one’s unanswered questions into bitter resentment toward the world and the need to punish those closest to one. In its extreme form, this pattern of thinking rationalizes that even someone is my own child, they must be culpable and deserving of rejection.

The best chance of stopping the cycle of dysfunctional relationships and the accompanying self-loathing is, if not to forgive others, then at least to remain open to insights about the perpetrators of abuse that can reduce this self-loathing. Forgiving oneself here is more important than forgiving others. Whether one prefers to achieve these insights in the form of psychology, philosophy or literature, if they do no more than reinforce a sense of victimization, then they will leave you imprisoned in your own anger.

We already live in a country with laws against discrimination. If you feel you were discriminated against, then you have paths you can take - there is even financial legal aid available for those that qualify. — Harry Hindu

That doesn’t seem to be enough for ceo’s of many corporations. Even while Trump is actively dismantling dei , many ceo’s are maintaining or even strengthening their DEI commitments. Let’s see what their reasons may be.

While the United States has comprehensive anti-discrimination laws like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, these legal frameworks have significant limitations that make them inadequate for creating truly inclusive workplaces:

Anti-discrimination laws primarily address overt discrimination after it occurs, rather than preventing systemic biases or creating equitable systems . The current enforcement system places the primary responsibility for enforcing anti-discrimination laws on individual workers, who must file complaints with their employer or a government agency. The complaint-driven system creates insurmountable hurdles for workers due to vast information and resource asymmetries between employers and employees .

Workers often fear retaliation or lack the resources to pursue legal action. Anti-discrimination laws also struggle to address subtle, often unintentional discriminatory behaviors that create hostile work environments but may not meet the legal threshold for discrimination. Many vulnerable workers are excluded from protections due to employer size exemptions in anti-discrimination laws . And the law focuses on proving discrete acts of discrimination rather than addressing systemic inequities in hiring, promotion, and compensation practices.

Many studies and corporate leaders cite DEI as a driver of business success. Companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean .Costco's board emphasized that their DEI efforts "enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed" . Delta Air Lines maintains that DEI "is about talent, and that's been our focus... critical to our business" . Microsoft's chief diversity officer highlighted that "a workforce strengthened by many perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds is critical to our innovation" .

Gen Z workers prioritize DEI - with one in two refusing to work at companies without diverse leadership - so maintaining these programs is crucial for talent pipelines. Ben & Jerry's warned that companies bowing to political pressure "will become increasingly uncompetitive in the marketplace and will ultimately be judged as having been on the wrong side of history" .

Apple's board argued that abolishing DEI would "restrict Apple's ability to manage its own ordinary business operations, people and teams, and business strategies". Corporate Knights notes that "DEI isn't about optics - it's about survival," with resilient companies embedding inclusion deeply into their cultures.
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I'd be interested in reading those writings of his, if you'd spare a reference for the best place to start. — Moliere

Here are some places to start:

Depression, Guilt and Emotional Depth
https://philosophyofdepression.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/guiltpaperjune2010.pdf

Experiences of Depression

The Phenomenology of Depression and the Nature of Empathy
https://www.academia.edu/3649407/The_Phenomenology_of_Depression_and_the_Nature_of_Empathy

Recommendations for how to do this? — Tom Storm

Kelly provides various techniques that help us
1) loosen our failing schemes without abruptly abandoning them and leaving us in emotional chaos.
2) experiment with alternative schemes, trying them on for size. One way to do this is to take on a role, like an actor would. The technique is minimally threatening because the person can remind themselves that it is ‘only’ a role, and if it turns out not to useful they can abandon it.
3) Once a new scheme has been formed in a loose and sketchy way, one can begin to tighten it, testing it out in different real-life situations for consistency.

On the other hand true depression is a serious and debilitating illness and probably requires treatment and the right support.
— Tom Storm

Can that treatment be found in philosophical writings or literature? Is there a possibility to understand depression at all? Because I feel that depression is very connected to existentialism and the suffering of why life is often incomprehensible — javi2541997

Others here have mentioned CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and its relation to stoicism). I want to point out the commonalities with phenomenology. For instance, Matthew Ratcliffe has written extensively about depression from a vantage that draws from Sartre, Husserl and Heidegger as well as embodied cognitive theory. Ratcliffe discusses the personal accounts of depression of such writers as Sylvia Plath and William Styron. What he concluded from these accounts is that depression is not just about feelings of despair but the loss of the ability ton discern salience and relevance in the world.

The metaphor of imprisonment is often used to describe depression, and it is easy to see why. The sufferer is irrevocably isolated from others, cut off from all sense of practical significance, and faces a future that takes the form of an all-enveloping threat before which she is powerless. World experience as a whole is akin to a form of incarceration. One of the most famous state-ments of this appears in Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar:

“wherever I sat – on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok – I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (1966, p.178). Solomon (2001, p.66), recalling Plath, describes the experience as like being “encaged in Lucite, like one of those butterflies trapped forever in the thick transparency of a paperweight”, and Styron (2001, p.49) compares it to “the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely over-heated room”. The theme of being enclosed crops up in nearly every report; the sufferer is trapped behind a wall or a sheet of unbreakable glass, stuck in a hole, or wrapped up in some material (Rowe, 1978, p.30). This enclosure is always oppressive, like drowning, suffocation or inescapa-ble darkness (Karp, 1996, p.28). The recurrent themes of imprisonment, darkness and being trapped do not convey a loss of physical space but instead, I suggest, of possibility space.

Our experiences ordinarily include a sense that things could be otherwise in signi-ficant ways. Hence they also incorporate a sense of their own contingency, an appreciation that one's current view on the world does not encompass all that the world has to offer. In depression, there is a loss of the possibilities that would have allowed the sufferer to appreciate the contingency of her predica-ment. There is no sense that things could be otherwise in any consequential way. Hence the depression itself is no longer experienced as a transitory state, a way of feeling, but as something from with recovery is impossible, a way of being from which there is no escape. This also amounts to a change in the experience of time. Without any practical orientation towards salient future possibilities, the dynamic between past, present and future that people gener-ally take for granted is replaced by a predicament that seems eternal.

One of the pioneers of this approach was psychologist George Kelly, who characterized depression as the loss of a sense of coherent belonging with respect to others. In order to maintain a healthy core sense of self as competent and connected with others, one must rely on effective and reliable ways of constructing bonds of trust and understanding between oneself and others. When that compass ceases to be effective at insuring such belonging, events lose what gives them their overarching coherence , salience and significance, and we drift though a fog of meaninglessness until we can reconstruct a new compass on the basis of which we can relate intimately with others.

↪Joshs

Nature isn't equitable. The problem with these DEI initiatives is that they focus on limited intersectionalities in a world with countless intersectionalities. It creates resentment and prompts the excluded to ask, "Why aren't my intersectional identities being addressed?" And then there's the matter of weighing them up and comparing them - an impossible task.

Come to think of it, even if we were all the same race and all from the same class, I don't believe we'd have made any progress towards genuine equity — BitconnectCarlos

What we want to keep , and will keep, from concepts like intersectionality and implicit bias, is that there is no such thing as a neutral playing field because we implicitly prefer what we are familiar with, and thus what is most intelligible to us. When one group dominates the other on the basis of numbers, wealth or political power, this preference will lead to stuctures which ingrain and perpetuate the biases. The best we can do is recognize that we are prone to such biases based on lack of contact and familiarity with other groups, and strive to increase opportunities for mutual contact and reciprocal interaction through policies that encourage inclusiveness. It looks like DEI in some form or other is here to stay, since even when the government attempts to ban it, companies re-establish it under different names because they find it strengthens competitiveness and innovation.

Identity politics focuses on the characteristics of individuals that the individual, nor society, had no hand in making - genetics. People that criticize identity politics focus more on defining people by the characteristic of their actions, not their biology. One might say that a racist nation, like the U.S. in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, was a society based on identity politics - treating people differently based on the color of their skin and their sex. The U.S. has evolved since then, but it appears that there are some that want to take us backwards by pushing the pendulum back to the opposite extreme - where another group receives special treatment at the expense of others to make up for the way things were while ignoring how things are now — Harry Hindu

I’m sure you’re aware of how the left might critique this view, but let me mention the main points. First, Identity politics isn’t just about biology but also about historical and systemic power imbalances based on culture-based differences in behavior.

You say people should be judged by actions, not biology (implying we live in a meritocracy, but if systemic biases exist (e.g., school funding disparities, hiring discrimination), then judging people purely on "actions" ignores **unequal starting points. For instance, a poor student who works hard may still have fewer opportunities than a wealthy legacy student at Harvard, and a blacknman with the same resume as a white man is 50% less likely* to get a callback (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2023).

You argue that modern identity politics is a pendulum swing to the opposite extreme of historical racism/sexism, but most modern identity-based movements seek equity, not supremacy. Reparations or diversity initiatives aim to reduce disparities, not establish a new hierarchy.

Two things: first the diagnosis of depression is separate from the emotion of sadness and therefore the OP is akin to asking about the philosophical perspectives on diabetes. — LuckyR

Yes, but the diagnosis of depression gets its sense form a set of grounding psychological hyptheses, and one can then delve into the philosophical underpinnings of the psychological theory.

And note what I said about the way social analyses of the left become an accepted part of the conversation in the very resistance of the right. Something like lgbtq is now a fixity, or "rainbow coalition," even if it is prefaced with "so called" by the opposition. — Astrophel

This reminds me of Foucault’s research showing that the Victorian era, which many see as a time of the repression of sex , was also time of incessant talking about and interest in sex. The repression of sex and obsession with it went together. The sexual revolution, then, was not simply a liberation from an anti-sex position but a furthering of a sex-oriented culture established in Victorianism.

“Without even having to pronounce the word, modern prudishness was able to ensure that one did not speak
of sex, merely through the interplay of prohibitions that referred back to one another: instances of muteness which, by dint of saying nothing, imposed silence. Censorship. Yet when one looks back over these last three centuries with their continual transformations, things appear in a very different light: around and apropos of sex, one sees a veritable discursive explosion.”

Suppose we put two identical nothings side by side and assert a difference between them. We could write it like {|}. No jokers to the left, no clowns to the right, but here I am. Now we have something, we can put to the left of nothing {{|} | } or the right of nothing { | {|}}. And that's how you make 0, 1, and -1, as surreal numbers. Then you can reverberate to infinity and beyond. — GrahamJ

Notice that you start with the assumption that 2 entities are identical on some qualitative basis, even if that basis is merely imagined. Then you place them side by side, which allows you to count each of them as instances of the quality they share ( they comprise 2 nothings). Deleuze is saying that when we think we are generating a qualitative identity, or two instances of that identity, we are actually transforming the qualitative sense of the first as we arrive at the second. So there are in fact no two instances of a single qualitative meaning, whether we call it nothing or something. ‘Nothing’ is not a neutral placeholder, because there is no such thing. Mathematical was developed to apply to self-identical objects, and so presupposes the existence of these qualitatively self-identical objects. Deleuze argues that extensive calculations of self-identical quality is an illusory surface effect of what he calls intensive quantity, or just intensity.

“An intensity, for example, is not composed of addable and displaceable magnitudes: a temperature is not the sum of two smaller temperatures, a speed is not the sum of two smaller speeds. Since each intensity is itself a difference, it divides according to an order in which each term of the division differs in nature from the others. Distance is therefore a set of ordered differences, in other words, differences that are enveloped in one another in such a way that it is possible to judge which is larger or smaller, but not their exact magnitudes. For example, one can divide movement into the gallop, trot, and walk, but in such a way that what is divided changes in nature at each moment of the division, without any one of these moments entering
into the composition of any other. Therefore these multiplicities of "distance" are inseparable from a process of continuous variation, whereas multiplicities of "magnitude" distribute constants and variables.” (ATP)

OK. Mischievous questions. Does the totality of relevance include what Derrida calls bricolage (which I understand to mean, roughly, non-standard uses. Using a screwdriver to fish out a small object that has got into a space I cannot get my hand into. Does it include accidents, as when I trip over a screwdriver or drop one on the cat? — Ludwig V

This is where Heidegger’s idealism (and Derrida’s) becomes conspicuously notable, in spite of the fact that his work moves beyond a traditional idealism-realism binary. There simply is no aspect of experience that excludes itself from the encompassing web of intelligibility by which we are understandingly attuned to the world as a whole. For instance, Heidegger talks about breakdowns in the use of tools as events which bring to the fore and light up the chains of ready to hand interrelations which are normally not paid attention to when the work is going smoothly. In other words, breakdown only makes sense in the context of a ready to hand involvement with tools. The same thing is true of accidents. A. accident only has meaning as an accident in the context of that activity which it subverts and surprises. If we use a screwdriver for a purpose other than the usual one, there must be some context of sense that bridges the gap between this new use and the normal one.

He is critiquing our thinking of it in reifying terms.
— Joshs
I don't quite see what it is that is being reified. In fact, if it is a mistake to reify it, there is nothing to reify and "it" has no place in that sentence. I can't even ask my question. Do you mean thinking of the screwdriver as an object? — Ludwig V

What you’re talking about is the issue of how our comportment toward beings is modified such that the fundamental hermeneutic relation towards the world becomes disclosed in terms of reified present to hand objects. Heidegger explains:

The most immediate state of affairs is, in fact, that we simply see and take things as they are: board, bench, house, policeman. Yes, of course. However, this taking is always a taking within the context of dealing-with something, and therefore is always a taking-as, but in such a way that the as-character does not become explicit in the act. The non-explicitness of this “as” is precisely what constitutes the act's so-called directness. Yes, the thing that is understood can be apprehended directly as it is in itself. But this directness regarding the thing apprehended does not inhibit the act from having a developed structure.

Moreover, what is structural and necessary in the act of [direct] understanding need not be found, or co-apprehended, or expressly named in the thing understood. I repeat: The [primary] as-structure does not belong to something thematically understood. It certainly can be understood, but not directly in the process of focally understanding a table, a chair, or the like. Acts of directly taking something, having something, dealing with it “as something,” are so original that trying to understand anything without employing the “as” requires (if it's possible at all) a peculiar inversion of the natural order. Understanding something without the “as”—in a pure sensation, for example—can be carried out only “reductively,” by “pulling back” from an as-structured experience. And we must say: far from being primordial, we have to designate it as an artificially worked-up act. Most important, such an experience is per se possible only as the privation of an as-structured experience. It occurs only within an as-structured experience and by prescinding from the “as”— which is the same as admitting that as-structured experience is primary, since it is what one must first of all prescind from."(Logic,The Question of Truth)

I get that. Science is not the primordial understanding of anything. The primordial understanding must be the understanding I have when I start the science. That's why I thought the present-at-hand was the primordial understanding. — Ludwig V

Present to hand objects are not primary. They are derivative of the structure of active purposeful involvement with the world.

“Equipment is “in order to.” This proposition has an ontological and not merely an ontical meaning; a being is not what and how it is, for example, a hammer, and then in addition something “with which to hammer.” Rather, what and how it is as this entity, its whatness and howness, is constituted by this in-order-to as such, by its functionality. A being of the nature of equipment is thus encountered as the being that it is in itself if and when we understand beforehand the following: functionality, functionality relations, functionality totality. In dealing with equipment we can use it as equipment only if we have already beforehand projected this entity upon functionality relation.”(Basic Problems of phenomenology 1927) “…all equipment is as equipment within an equipmental contexture. This contexture is not a supplementary product of some extant equipment; rather, an individual piece of equipment, as individual, is handy and extant only within an equipmental contexture. The understanding of equipmental contexture as contexture precedes every individual use of equipment.”

“The kind of being of these beings is "handiness" (Zuhandenheit). But it must not be understood as a mere characteristic of interpretation, as if such "aspects" were discursively forced upon "beings" which we initially encounter, as if an initially objectively present world-stuff were "subjectively colored" in this way. Such an interpretation overlooks the fact that in that case beings would have to be understood beforehand and discovered as purely objectively present, and would thus have priority and take the lead in the order of discovering and appropriating association with the "world." But this already goes against the ontological meaning of the cognition which we showed to be a founded mode of being-in-the-world. To expose what is merely objectively present, cognition must first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of. Handiness is the ontological categorial definition of beings as they are "in themselves. " “(Being and Time)

Seems to be straying into the mystical there. Requiring understanding and knowing not just through the lens of the mind. But from other parts of the being. — Punshhh

If the mystical implies contact with a faculty separate from the mental, then this is quite different from Heidegger’s intent. His project critiques the modern notion of subjectivity going back to Descartes. The subject, consciousness, the object and objectivity are all put into question by his approach.

Because the Dasein is constituted by being-in-the-world, it is a being which in its being is out beyond itself. The epekeina belongs to the Dasein's own most peculiar structure of being. This transcending does not only and not primarily mean a self-relating of a subject to an object; rather, transcendence means to understand oneself from a world. The Dasein is as such out beyond itself. Only a being to whose ontological constitution transcendence belongs has the possibility of being anything like a self. Transcendence is even the presupposition for the Dasein's having the character of a self. The selfhood of the Dasein is founded on its transcendence, and the Dasein is not first an ego-self which then oversteps something or other. The “toward-itself” and the “out-from-itself” are implicit in the concept of selfhood. What exists as a self can do so only as a transcendent being. This selfhood, founded on transcendence, the possible toward-itself and out-from-itself, is the presupposition for the way the Dasein factically has various possibilities of being its own and of losing itself. But it is also the presupposition for the Dasein's being-with others in the sense of the I-self with the thou-self. The Dasein does not exist at first in some mysterious way so as then to accomplish the step beyond itself to others or to extant things. Existence, instead, always already means to step beyond or, better, having stepped beyond."(Basic Problems of Phenomenology).