I don't think you should say you saw a ghost because what you saw is doubtfully a ghost.

You might say though that you are influenced by the ghosts of your ancestors. Those are the ghosts I believe in.

From a scientific epistimology, ghosts surely don't exist. I have little respect for those who try to suggest they exist in that way. Those people tend to be charlatans or they are just poorly educated.

If you want to create a pragamatic epistimology, where you have no scientific proof that they don't exist, but you find your life has increased meaning or wonder with the existence of ghosts, I can understand your acceptance of that existence.

That is, I'm not committed to the idea that belief must be premised upon scientific proof, but we shouldn't equivocate with the terms "know" or "exist" if we're buying into pragmatism and not a rigid scientific epistimology but we should use those terms to mean different things in different contexts.

IME, the manifest function of 'US corporate news media' primarily has been to inform the business class & its mandarins (i.e. shareholders) while simultaneously disinforming – infotaining/polarizing – the masses (i.e. stakeholders). This mirrors the K-12 conformative education of their respective children. — 180 Proof

But if you're distinguishing the US system, you'll have to give a counter non-American news outlet that transcends these problems. That is, is Swedish and French (for example) news more accurate, or is it just more predictably consistent with the promotion of those countries' political ideologies?

Do you turn to the Guardian for information because it's more accurate or just because it's your version of FoxNews, ready to tell you what you want to hear?

As outsiders, that European population would see the Trump issue as an American one, — Vera Mont

The world is watching Trump.

By the way - Is there any reason to assume that there are only two "sides" to the American perspective on the Trump problem? — Vera Mont

Yes, there would be a reason. Pro and con. But mabe you're dividing it another way.

That's why I think this is a cultural and/or philosophical problem. Is there really a great deal of demand for unbiased reporting in the U.S.? The "cost" that individuals are willing to "pay" for that kind of reporting seems extremely low. As an Aristotelian I see this as a virtue problem. Those who are not educated in a way that helps them to love the truth do not love the truth, and in America we don't place much value on love of truth. — Leontiskos

Is it an American thing or just a diversity of thought thing? Would a European nation provide both sides of a Trump related issue or would that just not be necessary due to the homogenous view they might have on the topic?

You don't need to use the press as a means to advocate if everyone pretty much already agrees on everything.

The problem is that once upon a time there were very few national news outlets, so entry into the market was difficult. You had to get your credentials and prove your worth if you wanted a microphone in front of you. Reputation was critical, so no outlet wanted to get their facts wrong or appear biased. Ethical reporting was a requirement for survival in the market.

Now all you need is a keyboard and you can publish to the world. What sells is what people want to hear. The ethics exist, but it's not critical to follow them. And so we're left with people just as likely to listen to me or you, regardless of what malice lurks in our minds, as they are to listen to those who have agreed to a code of ethics.

That can't be helped: public services tend to concentrate on serving the public, not special interests. It's biased toward educating the public, regardless of party politics. — Vera Mont

I was listening to public radio last night and the issue being discussed was how to dissuade the Biden protest voters who have said they won't vote for Biden as long as he is supportive of Israel. They acknowledged the genocide that was occurring at the hands of the Israelis, but they were concerned that a Trump administration would be far worse, so the solution is not to refuse to vote for Biden.

Maybe you agree with these sentiments. Maybe you don't. That conversation was not about educating the public regardless of party politics. That was a pro-Biden, anti-Israel, anti-Trump conversation.

The government, whether the prevailing administration is liberal or conservative, can control the financing of these organizations, but not their day-to-day functioning. — Vera Mont

This strikes me as naive.

Trump unilaterally got hydroxychloroquine approved as a Covid medication, over-ruling CDC protocol. That's just one example, but the idea that there's some invisible wall that blocks the influence of Congress, individual representatives and Senators, and the President from administrative decisions just isn't a real possibility.

The right wing doesn't need a publicly funded platform for its propaganda: it has plenty of very large commercial platforms. If a Trump, or any of his ilk gained sufficient power, all public information outlets - along with public schools, clinics and libraries - would cease to exist. — Vera Mont

Except they didn't cease to exist when he was in power.

In any event, I'm not trying to discuss whether Trump poses a threat to democracy. I'm asking what role the press should have in controlling it. I think it's clear that both sides of the political spectrum have their media advocates, from FoxNews to MSNBC. The question is whether that is what the media ought to do.

Public funding should be in place to support the unbiased news organization in cases of threats like that. — L'éléphant

The problem with that is that our best example of publicly funded news (PBS and NPR) is left leaning. Putting the government in charge of reporting the news is a nod toward allowing propoganda. I think the fears here are lessened by the fact that Biden is President, but what would a publicly funded media look like that was ultimately answerable to a Trump administration?

The news organization does not have to listen to that article if the news organization is truly independent. — L'éléphant

If the news organization believes in professionalism, they know what to do. Their judgment should prevail. — L'éléphant

What will prevail is that the supply will meet the demand, meaning that if there is no demand for unbiased or balanced reporting, it won't be in the market, at least not terribly long.

But then also consider the role of Fox Media in the American Political landscape. — Wayfarer

That is actually what I had in mind when I read the NYT story. Fox is transparently lopsided, which makes it an entertainment source, but not a news source. As long as the headline says "Opinion," I think it's fair game to say as you want.

My concern is when those who claim objectivity give up on the idea and instead join the fray, or worse yet, pretend to be fair and balanced but instead have an agenda. It's at that point the Fox News channels of the world get vindicated, proving what they've said all along, which is that the news isn't the news, but it's part of the political process.

Biden has serious age issues. It's not worth denying at this point. To the extent admitting that helps Trump, I'd argue that denying it helps him more, especially when the denying is by people who everyone knows knows better. It's better to admit a flaw than deny it and lose all credibility.

I think all news sources should be held to a minimum standard of accuracy in the reporting of events, statistics, demographic information and quotations. — Vera Mont

I do think there should be journalistic ethics, but this seems to go beyond that. The debate in the article referenced what was reported versus what should be covered up. The report was that a high percentage of the population thought Biden too old to be President, so NYT subscribers were angry that the true report were published because it offered support for the Republican position. They were mad the truth was published because the truth didn't help their cause.

Isn't faith certainty? — Tom Storm

I don't think this is right. People have their faith challenged all the time, and there are times when one has higher or lesser degrees of faith. Perhaps the ideal is that one would walk with absolute certainty in whatever their foundational beliefs are, but I don't think describes most people who think things through. What I'm saying need not be limited to a religious context either, but I'd assume that whatever secular beliefs you hold foundational are occassionally self-questioned. I would also suppose that the committed atheist might have times in the foxhole where they question their previously held beliefs.

I also think this discussion misses an important sort of faith related to deciding to believe not based upon empirical evidence, but upon the consequences the belief tends towards your conduct and success. This pragmatic basis for faith might not be what some mean by faith because it offers a justification for the belief, and some take faith to be just blind acceptance that nothing could shatter.

What I hear from the many accounts here is that a good number have stories of loss of faith, where they began in childhood with a rigid form of faith that amounted to subservience to parents and other adult religious authority, to finally be freed from it in adulthood, finding comfort in sites like this where reverence to such beliefs is not expected.

What might have held those folks closer to their faith was some evidence of its purpose, meaning, or at least utility. It is a type of faith to believe whole heartedly that faith will lead one in the right direction, but it's important too to realize you have to have faith in the correct thing. That means faith is a meta concept, not just a list of rules and regulations. It is the idea that belief in something bigger than one's self is what faith is, with the goal in looking for that, but in being able to abandon the particulars if they don't meet that objective.

Even if my view on faith is peculiar to just me, I still think it responsive to the OP, which was a question generally of what sorts of faith there are. I just reject the idea that faith is best described as what children in Sunday school believe as they just repeat back what they're told.

For formal affairs, I suggest bowtie pasta.

For breakfast: a layer of granola with chocolate chunks followed by a layer of vanilla flavored Greek yogurt, topped with sliced strawberries and blackberries.

For dinner, pork ribs slow cooked in the oven with a dry mesquite rub and then slathered with BBQ sauce and then broiled a short time, served with lime beans.

It was a 9-0 decision, so it's not like this divided on ideological grounds.

The striking down of Roe v. Wade had to do with the Court's rejection of the Constitutional right of a woman to have an abortion up to a certain point in her pregnancy. It was not based upon there being a federal statute that guaranteed the right to an abortion that the Court decided violated the individual states' rights to regulate it.

That is, the Supreme Court's striking down Roe v. Wade wasn't based upon a violation of Constitutional federalist principles. It was based upon their reversing their view that the Constitution itself protected a woman's right to an abortion. It wasn't a state's rights decision.

I didn't read the recent Trump elections case, but I fully expected the decision to be supportive of keeping him on the ballot. From a practical perspective, I think the Court did the left a favor. The quickest way to get a hesitant Trump voter to commit to Trump is to make him think the other side has their thumb on the scale. That's actually why Trump's numbers keep rising with every new lawsuit brought against him.

It also doesn't hurt him that the Democrats are running someone who is brain dead and they think if they deny it everyone will think he's sharp as a tack.

What are others views on such topic from experience!? Can this actually be fixed or improved within organizations in a way that is justifiable? How can it be done so that it is fair and corresponds with everyone? — Born2Insights

I have worked for corporate America, and I would refer to a business as ethical if it adheres to the ethical standards within the system. That is, does it offer protections against rascim, sexism and violence in the workplace? Are the benefits promised (like vacation time, daily work schedule) honored? Do you receive credit where due and are you now blamed for things you did not do? Are you treated with respect and given honest feedback? That it what an ethical environment is to me.

If you're asking whether capitalism is inherently unfair and whether only through a Marxist reorganization can we acheive an ethical work environment, then I don't understand the word "anymore" attached to the OP. That is, if you think capitalism is inherently ethically flawed, then it always has been. I do think capitlistic systems grow more ethical over time, making life in a 21st century factory a more ethical work environment than one built when the industrial revolution was first underway.

Chicken looks dry and the carrots unpeeled. I'm a huge opponent of boneless skinless chicken breasts because it loses what little moisture it had. It can only be saved by deep frying in the shape of dinosaurs for dino-bites and then doused with ketchup. Consider a side of fries and Kool Aid, and if you behave, a scoop of ice cream with gummy bears.

Here's my living room, offering a glimpse into the Hanoverian House of Curiosities. The artwork is a discounted Hopper reproduction.

Consider the wifi modem the perfect anachronistic touch.

This is different to me, although realism, it's more modern and hipper, with an older gay vibe.

Saatchi is asking $90,750 for the pool photo. — BC

I shall buy two then. One for my bayside parlor. The other for my conservatory.

Yes, something very Edward Hopper American Realism about the photograph.

No one here is talking about Fani Willis.

Trump is like 0-100 in the courts, but he's about to win a doozy. What was supposed to be a pre-election knock out is going the other way.

This is the greatest come back of all time. Ignore that it's not your team getting beaten and just appreciate the mastery.

I go to a reform synagogue. The cantor sings the songs with contemporary tunes. Last Friday night was Billy Joel/Elton John night, where every song was sung in one of their tunes. They also have a small band, with a guy on the bass, a piano, and drum. The bass guy thinks it's really funny, and he laughs the whole time.

They then read off the names of the people who they are going to pray for and the rabbi recites an ever growing list, many of whom I think recovered or died long ago. He has this little saying he says before the prayer and he ends it with the statement "some of whom may never recover." What kind of thing is that to say? I mean a little more self confidence would go a long way I think.

The rabbi is pretty shy one on one, so I try to get him to talk to me. He told me he needed to figure out a better way to talk about the biblical miracles because no one (including him) actually thinks they happened. The other day when he lamented the overturning of Roe v. Wade, my wife was like is this a religious service or some guy talking about current events? I think he was just talking about what he was thinking about.

There's this one song where at some point everyone says "woo!" and throws their kid in the air, each kid trying to grab more air than the next.

I get a kick out of the whole thing. It's a far way from the long beards and black hats of my youth. It's what religion should be. Part community, part entertainment, part spirituality, and part absurdity.

I belong to a Lutheran church. — BC

Which seat do you sit in?

I'd choose immediately behind the pole.

Not sure if you saw the movie The Lobster. It was disturbing and I didn't really like it.

It was a dystopian dark comedy where people who could not find mates within a certain period of time were removed from the human population and transformed into the animal of their choice, with the main character choosing to be a lobster because they lived so long.

Every complex member of the fauna is fundamentally a worm, consisting of mouth, stomach, gut, and anus. — unenlightened

Women defecate too? But they're so pretty.

I'm Jewish because my mother was.

Atheist problems.

There was the famous Sokol affair, where a postmodern journal published an article arguing that quantum gravity was a social construct.

Unbeknownst to the publishers it was satire, exposing the lack of scientific rigor of the postmodernist.

Not sure they've fully recovered from that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

I do think the pragmatists have laid to rest any concerns anyone should actually have over whether the dog really is there in a noumenal sense or whether it is just a pure expression of phenomena. I'm content to push on with the conversation regardless because I concede the point that the bulk of what I think about is ultimately irrelevant.

So here's the best I've got:

You've got a dog running about in the noumena but he does so outside of space and time because space and time are human constructs. So this dog is no where at no time, which might lead some to think he doesn't exist because existence requires that you be somewhere at some time.

But such is my human error. The fact that I think the noumenal dog doesn't exist is because I'm a person and people can't comprehend without space and time, and so I can't say existence is dependent upon space and time. I can just say comprehension is dependent upon space and time.

What this means is that there is a dog in the spaceless timeless but I have no earthly (literally) idea what that dog is. I might say that the noumenal dog "out there" caused the phenomenal dog "in here" once doggy dog gets a heaping helping of space and time in my head, but that would assume the noumenal dog is a causative agent of phenomenal dogs.

If we can say that the noumenal dog is the causative agent of the phenomenal dog, that would be phenomenal (as in wonderful), but can we say that? If that be true, then maybe the dog is just an impluse, like what zippedy zaps throgh the computer to put a blip or blap on my screen. This is to suggest that the reduction of phenomena to predecessor noumenal impulses means the dog might just be my brain waves that precede my internal perception. If such be that, then how isn't that idealism, pray tell?

To your initial point, I need know none of this to feed my dog, pet my dog, and remind my dog that he is such a good boy, but I do need to know what a dog is when he's in the woods and he falls and no one sees him.

I just named my dog Phenomenomenomenomana. The word is best said sung. He used to be called Fred.

I think it's fairly common that parents buy their kids Valentine's Day's candy and cards and women might exchange gifts or go out to dinner with one another. I think they call it galentines. Kids buy their moms candy and gifts as well.

I don't think Valentine's Day is all that serious a holiday or that it gets celebrated in a specific way by everyone.

I think the upshot is that I was wrong to respond to Hanover by saying that according to Kant, the human understanding, like human perception, is not the only one possible: human understanding is the only knowledge-generating mechanism possible (although it might not be only human; rational extra-terrestrials could have the same understanding), but it could apply to different kinds of perception.

The picture we're left with is something like this: whatever kind of subjective perspective rational creatures might have on things, their understanding allows them to achieve the same knowledge of those things, which are thereby the very same things, even though they are "for us". — Jamal

This is the way out of subjectivity, but I don't know that it works. If you claim there are all sorts of ways to perceive that are ideosyncratic to the organism, but all these variations are rectified by the human mind's ability to assimilate and assess the information received, then you are eliminating the subjectivity with this divine power we have. That is, we all understand that the dog we see is a mere shadow of a dog, but since we can transcend that simple experience (and, as you say, think about our thinking about the phenomenal state of the dog) and realize its limitations and thereby understand the dog in a real way, we are no longer in a state of subjective knowledge.

If our perceptions are ideosyncratic to our human composition and do not necessarily provide consistent representations of the noumena, as in a bat might see things differently from us, but we clear up the evil genius' deceptions with the clarity of our reasoning, then we're neither deceived about reality nor are our subjective limitations ultimately limiting.

This seems fraught with the problem that sometimes my reasoning does in fact prove invalid and that it does in fact vary from other people's. This is the same reason I don't accept that human perception is an exact representation of the noumena. If we just want to posit accuracy in final understanding of an object, why the whole rigamarole distinguishing between reasoning and perception and why not just say WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get, and our perceptions are somehow magically and divinely true facsimiles of reality?

By “universal” he means it holds for all rational creatures, and it's based on a priori structures of knowledge that are independent of experience (though they only produce knowledge when applied to experience). — Jamal

What do you take to be the a priori structures of knowledge?

This paper (https://philarchive.org/archive/MARIKT-2#:~:text=With%20epistemic%20conditions%20of%20understanding,such%2C%20bring%20about%20experiential%20knowledge.) in reference to a paper by Strawson, states it is two things: (1) the receptive faculty and (2) the active faculty. The first references space and time (which is how we receive information) and the second references how we understand the information through concepts.

So, (1) we must receive all knowledge under the constraints of space and time in order for it to be at all intelligible to us, and (2) we must then do something in our minds to create concepts from the information we receive.

#1 are the basic intututions and #2 is the transcendental unity of apperception that holds our thoughts together as thoughts.

Assuming I got all that right, my next question is whether your comment that "By 'universal' he means it holds for all rational creatures," is itself a priori true or a posteriori true, meaning must #1 and #2 logically exist for a creature to be rational or does it just happen to be the case that rational creatures on planet earth have #1 and #2 and that makes them rational, but one could be rational with other a priori structures?

I ask this because if Kant can say that these faculties we have are the only faculties that can yield rational results, then he could possibly escape idealism because he'd be saying we have that which we must have in order to have true knowledge.

I don't like that solution. It feels like Descartes' injection of God into the mix by just declaring that there's no way we'd see things in a wrong way and that the way we see things must be right.

Objectivity is not transcendent, but immanent... It might be fair to interpret Kant as establishing objectivity only by downgrading it to a feature of the subjective. — Jamal

Saying "objectivity is immanent" is tantamount to saying it is subjective isn't it? Doesn't immanent mean to be something that comes from within the perceiver?

Real objects, objects we can know, are objects in space that are given to us in perception; these phenomena are beings of sense, whereas noumena are beings merely of understanding. — Jamal

I don't follow this. What would be an example of a noumenal being of the understanding? It would not be something we could sense for sure, but what is something just in my understanding? This almost sound like Plato's forms.

I posted a long response to you on the old forum, attacking your notion of distortion and attempting to show that it was incoherent. Looking back, it might have been badly written--you never did reply--but I'd still want to make the same point. — Jamal

I'd like to think you've been checking back daily for a response for the past decade like a spurned lover only to feel the relief now of a reply.

Only a signal can be distorted. That is, only one's perception is subject to distortion. The object perceived cannot itself be distorted by its perception.* The noumenon is the concept of a purported thing beyond possible experience, and as such cannot be distorted.

That is to say, there is nothing there to be filtered or distorted. Simply to be an object of knowledge is for a thing to be known via the senses and understanding. If there is no possible disembodied, unperspectival way of apprehending a thing, then the idea of distortion has no meaning. — Jamal

Going back to the article I cited above, where it describes the information (and I don't know a better term for this because I think I'm describing the noumena) brought in through the senses that is then registered as being in space and time and then it is formed into a concept of my understanding and then I have what we call "phenomena."

Is it not correct to describe the phenomenal state as a modification of whatever that primordial mass was that that preceded the formation of the phenomena? I use modification and distortion interchangably here, unless you think that's not a fair move for some reason.

(we can know things objectively). — Jamal

To think about objects transcendentally is to think about our thinking about them, to investigate the conditions of our knowledge. — Jamal

What does "objectively" mean as you use it?

If we concede there are conditions for our knowledge and our knowledge is subject to those conditions and if those conditions are peculiar to the perceiver, how is our knowledge of anything objective?

The transcendental perspective does not mean the true perspective, such that the empirical perspective is false, illusory, defective or distorted, since in science we have no interest in noumena—mere objects of thought—anyway. — Jamal

If upon transcendental contemplation we determine X,Y, and Z are the conditions for our knowledge, doesn't X,Y and Z become the lens upon which we view the noumenal and what we then actually perceive we refer to as the phenomenal?

I get that science will only concern itself with the phenomenal, but I don't see how you reject the suggestion that the phenomenal is a distortion of the noumenal. Isn't the phenomenal just the noumenal filtered through X,Y, and Z as you described it?

Your description of the transcendental was most helpful, but with Kant I'm always stuck with the meaning, purpose, and relevance of the noumenal and the difficulty in saving him from idealism.

As a time-traveler, you should not be visible even in 1 second past time. The present moment is very short, and if you are not in it, you do not exist in the present. — BC

To the extent the rules of time travel are as you say they are, I just went back in time and changed them. I can now stalk myself like I was talking about.

Keep up this chastising and I might go back and take you out of existence.

If you could go, would you go? — BC

I'd go 1 second back so I could follow myself closely one step behind myself. When I talked, there'd be an annoying feedback echo.

It'd freak out the people around mes. That's me with an "s" because I'm plural.

The thread was supposed to be about how we thought we appeared to others, sort of a test of self awareness, but it's instead become an assessment of others thread.

In the Hillary-Trump debate, the moderater asked Hillary and Trump to say something nice about each other, which I thought was the only interesting question.

Compliments are more challenging, not because we can't think of things, but because it takes us out of our comfort zones to be nice.

I ate dinner at a Mormon's home, and his 5 kids took turns before dinner telling each other what they admired about one another. That was not an event that ever happened at the House of Hanover.

Anyway, I throw down the gauntlet. Only compliments.

A for example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets

But that is all speculation, even if you think they are good guesses, still you're guessing.

That the earth is changing is clear. That we'll not adapt isn't. We're resilient because that's how Darwin made us.

We've got to admit to our biases (myself included) in constructing our narrative that fills in the blanks of what we don't know. If we start with the notion that we're a parasitic species ravaging a gentle planet, particularly barbaric in our economic and social methods of controlling resources, a coming apocalypse comes as welcome news because it can be used as argument to preemptively and radically change our society immediately. That is, the capitalistic party was fun, but it's over. Time for rehab.

My approach is to deal with the fall out when it falls out, but not because I'm reckless, but because I think your speculation is pure speculation and most likely wrong, so your solutions will be ineffective and more destructive than the disease.

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

All of it, or just your tribe's? — baker

Everyone but you.

Billions will die. The human population will crash. We are in overshoot, and the planet cannot sustain us in our current numbers or lifestyle. — unenlightened

This is not what the science shows. There are no meaningful models that predict the human response to the climate change as it occurs, as if to suggest you can know what mitigating responses will be available. That would be like predicting in the 1800s that we would one day run out of horse food due to the ever increasing need for transportation. The fact that we can sustain billions of people on the planet would have been unfathomable a few hundred years ago.

Here's where I think we disagree (among other things): I find no virtue in protecting the planet for the planet's sake. I don't care if we lose thousands of polar bears if it means the promotion of human life, the continued promotion of the capitalistic system, and the continued centralization of power in the hands of the United States. I don't believe in equality.

I don't think you can avoid the class system. Someone is going to have to do brain surgery, oncology, anesthesia, etc. and if they only make the same as a farmer makes, not enough people will go into those fields. — RogueAI

I was being sarcastic. Pol Pot killed 10s of millions of people in his attempt make Cambodia an agrarian society. That is to say, I agree with your comment. Equality is not a virtuous objective.