Via intersubjective discourse, we construct concepts like physiological, biological, physical. Even though we treat them as though all traces of our conscious experience could be removed and they would remain as independent facts, they are inextricable from first personal experience.

Meanwhile , we treat concepts like the consciousness of sensation as though they were purely inner and ineffable substances or properties, the purely inner and subjective complement to the purely outer and objective physiological facts, a special seasoning added to objects. — Joshs

You're saying that in this, our Age of Mechanism, we give precedence to the physiological, and treat first person data like some sort of foam on top?

When the two are actually bound by their relationship in the opposition?

If we were to say that the brain is a third personal concept that is generated within first person experience we could arrive at a way of keeping what is implied both by sensation and biological brain. — Joshs

How about:

Sensation, physiologically, involves nervous system function.

Sensation, as the content of awareness, has properties that are absent from the physiological description.

I was talking to an ancient old woman, and I was asking how they dealt with heat in the summer when she was young. She first said it's hotter now than it was. That's actually not true where she lives. The globe has gotten hotter in the last 100 years, but her area hasn't tracked that change.

But then she said that nobody thought much about it. She said if you get used to heat and humidity, you don't notice it as much. She said people use air conditioning because they don't get used to it, so they think they need the cooler temperature. But also, they had shade trees over their houses and that keeps the inside of the house cooler.

I asked if her mother ever complained about the heat, and she chuckled and said her mother never complained about anything.

So that's one facet of the lifestyle many of us have now. We think we need air conditioning. Another issue is food. If you walk through a grocery store in the US, you'll see a totally unnecessary food extravaganza. The quantity of extruded carbohydrates people eat promotes obesity and diabetes. They eat it because it's easy to get and again, they think they need it.

In the wild, humans don't have to eat everyday. You can go a few days without food, and if you do, you'll notice the hunger goes away on the third day. This is normal. Eating giant amounts of calories constantly is not.

Another factor is travel. Cities are laid out to accommodate cars, so people really can't do their thing on a bike.

I mention these things just to call attention to the hidden dimension of CO² emissions: the wildly extravagant lives we lead, thinking all the while that this is just average.

No, it's called scapegoating. — baker

:chin: :rofl:

Such extraordinary powers ascribed to one man. Talk about the cult of personality! — baker

It's called a dictator.

Just like ↪Tate you latch onto any excuse not to engage with actual substance that's presented. — Tzeentch

I don't even know what your thesis is.

:yawn:

Beating around the bush again. — Tzeentch

Not really. He came to power by organizing military action. Since then, it's worked well to shore up his power and control. This is the first time things have gone substantially astray for him. This is all things you could investigate for yourself.

The "madman Putin" hypothesis. — Tzeentch

I didn't say he's mad.

There isn't much to Russian politics other than Putin. Look at the way he started the war: by dragging officials before the cameras to say what he required them to say. There is no Russian "establishment" in the American sense of that word. Russia's government is retrograde, like an organized crime ring.

Then what impact would Putin's death have on the geopolitical factors that underlie the conflict in Ukraine? — Tzeentch

He is what underlies the conflict.

You're getting a little hung up on this "great power" thing. — Tzeentch

The reason being that a great power conflict is very different from the average geopolitical conflict.

How about we rephrase it to "geopolitical conflict"? — Tzeentch

Definitely.

Russia is not a great power, so there is no "great power conflict" here. If it was, then Obama wouldn't have had the option to ignore Russia in 2014.

A "great power", as the term is used in political science, has global influence.

Russia is not a great power.

you believe a bilateral agreement between Ukraine and Russia is a realistic solution to this conflict? — Tzeentch

I don't know. The death of Putin might be the only path to peace

It's a compromise because the United States and the European Union obviously want to add Ukraine to their political spheres - something which is unacceptable to Russia. — Tzeentch

The US and the EU are simply willing to admit Ukraine as a member and ally. They have not proposed to force Ukraine to do anything, so I don't see how any "compromise" has been made.

Since, according to your own words, the US and the EU are unwilling to accept any compromise here, how can you argue Putin is the reason why there are no negotiations? — Tzeentch

I was talking about negotiations to end the conflict. That is between Russia and Ukraine. Neither the US not the EU is actively fighting Russia.

In your view, have the United States and the European Union have been willing to accept this compromise? — Tzeentch

I'm not sure why you call it a compromise, but the answer is no.

Not just the US, if that makes you feel better, Europe too. Send as many weapons as possible, care virtually nothing about diplomatic negotiations (minus France, and initially, Germany) and let the war continue as long as possible — Manuel

No doubt support for Ukraine is prolonging the war, but the primary cause of its duration is Putin. The reason there have been no negotiations is again, Putin.

It is despicable, but it is also a fact. — Manuel

That the US is responsible for Ukrainian deaths? I disagree. I believe the cause is Putin.

The point, so far as the US is concerned, is to weaken Russia as much as possible, paying for it with Ukrainian lives, not just dollars. — Manuel

I think that more so than most wars in recent history, this war is about personalities more than about states.

It's Zelensky backed by Biden against Putin. Subtract Biden, and it's just Zelensky versus Putin with a disorganized world watching from the sidelines.

Biden doesn't want a weak Russia. He wants regime change. That's blatantly obvious. And blaming the US for the deaths of Ukrainians is despicable in my opinion.

If Republicans take the presidency in 2024, they will likely withdraw support from Ukraine.

US support for Ukraine could easily drop to nothing in 2024. I'm guessing Europe would follow, for the most part.

Europe definitely needs to have its own foreign policy and defense.

You can visualize with your eyes closed. The images don't come from your eyes, they come from your imagination. — Marchesk

Not everyone can do that. The inability is called aphantasia.

Am I alone in being thus programmed or is everyone in the same boat? — Agent Smith

Everybody in the matrix is a program except for the real people.

But my understanding is that despite this, for Isaac and other neuroscientists it's neural nets all the way down. The homunculi are only there to simplify the calculation, and are ultimately dispersed. — Banno

The idea of main distribution board has been around for a while.

I've been reading about the evolutionary period when that would have first started: the development of the head. The head provides a main control dashboard for an organism, probably first enhancing the performance of predators.

I really don’t see the relevance. — Xtrix

I was just asking what sort of parties you'd like to see.

What happens is that the eyes and associated neurones build a model, and this is not what we see, but the very act of our seeing. — Banno

I think it's that the brain uses models that enhance the competence of the organism by creating expectations, which is just a theory.

There is such a thing as just focusing on the visual field. Artists do that a lot. I would say that is the act of just seeing.

Add onto that knowledge of what you're seeing and you have an analysis, probably involving some degree of language, memory, modeling of some kind, and definitely some deduction.

The first is a variation on the homunculus. The brain constructs a model that the homunculus observes, giving rise to the mistaken notion that what we see is the model constructed by the brain. — Banno

We don't know enough about consciousness to rule out some sort of homunculus. As long as we don't end up with an infinite regress of them, there's no good reason not to consider the possibility. We might imagine it as the mind's microprocessor, which is a little computer inside the bigger one.

There were profound differences of opinion between Republicans and Democrats during the civil war. The conflict was over whether the South should be part of the USA.

Is that the kind of difference you want to see?

:yum:

There's a difference between seeing an illusion and analysing it. The analysis is not part of the seeing, happening after the seeing - we analysis what we see. — Banno

Deduction is part of determining what's really there.

@Banno @Marchesk @Janus @Wayfarer @Jackson @Tom Storm

When you analyze a visual illusion, you use a little deduction to figure out what the picture really looks like.

Deduction is part of sight,and probably all the senses to some extent. Do you agree?

Philosophizing is tough! — Agent Smith

You were programmed you to think that, Smith.

The reading bit is about raising the point that perhaps distinctions such as direct, indirect, internal, external, subjective, objective, realist and idealist are inadequate to the task set in the OP. Perhaps they misdirect us. — Banno

I agree. Those categories assume a Cartesian framework which is so embedded in our culture that we forget that it's problematic.

We probably keep returning to it and trying to use it as a foundation because we really want to know what we are and it's all we've got.

Not sure I follow you. What is an idealism - that one deduces chairs? — Banno

No. I don't know what ontology that is. It's not indirect realism.

If you insist that the real world consists of what you're most directly aware of, that is a kind of idealism.

Now apply that to the rest of the things around you. What can we make of "we immediately experience only our own existence, but can only infer that of outer things"?

As if you sat there ratiocinating that the thing under you is a chair. As if that were a deduction... — Banno

This is a kind of idealism: one inhabits a realm of mental objects.

Your argument is that we encounter statements directly because it's nonsense to say it's indirect.

I don't know what it means to say it's direct, so it may be a category error.

You and I contemplate the same statement. We both do so directly.

Are you familiar with Feuerbach? 'I think, therefore I am you'

Inflation due to extra money in the economy is a nice story — and there’s clearly some truth in it — but it’s simply not sufficient to explain what’s happening and, in my view, doesn’t account for more than perhaps a few hundred basis points of the inflation we’re seeing. — Xtrix

They are multiple causes. As we've discussed, at this point, expectation of inflation is one of the causes.

Will the economy slump into stagflation? That's an important question now.

But you are experiencing the text of this sentence directly. — Banno

We contact statements directly? How do you know that?

The state isn’t an organized society. The state is the organization of political power and exploitation within a society. — NOS4A2

Sure. Did we already do a thread on what a state is? Don't want to derail.

So long as the state grows freedom and liberty doesn’t. Our political sort in life will invariably be decided upon its whim and fancy. — NOS4A2

Interesting that you think of the state as having whims and fancies.

I was just reading an article that speculated that the reason the human brain shrank in size 3000 years ago is the advent of collective intelligence.

As labor began to specialize, the individual has a smaller piece of the survival pie to manage, so brains were able to shrink to take less energy.

In other words, individually, we're stupider than our ancestors, but we have collective power they didn't have.

Plus, since this would be a physiological change, we're presently bound to it.

We have to have large, organized societies because that's what we're adapted to.

400
Can wars be avoided? — Average

A war is a large scale expression of natural aggression. We can imagine that energy being redirected, but you're asking if we have the power to do that.

So far, we haven't demonstrated that ability, though we have tried three times. The UN is the third iteration of that effort, and it has failed.

In order to succeed, there would have to be a long enough period of peace to allow nations to disarm. I don't think we can engineer those conditions. It's not up to us.