The problem I see with those who promote cryptocurrencies is that they don't appreciate the subtlety of the issue. Their argument is usually grounded as such: <Money is an arbitrary means of exchange; therefore no medium of exchange is better than any other; therefore blockchain is as good as anything else>. As soon as that premise is established they merely attempt to show why blockchain is better than a government-backed currency, for example, and that's the end of it. Not intrinsically better (in terms of worth) but extrinsically better.

World history is the corrective. What medium of exchange is better than blockchain? Precious metals. In order to function, money needs to have worth. Fiat currency involves a jury rigging where what has no worth is accorded worth, is given pseudo-worth. Here is the more accurate argument from the promoter of cryptocurrency:

1. All fiat currencies are arbitrary means of exchange
2. Therefore, no fiat currency is in se better than any other
3. Therefore, blockchain is, prima facie, as good as any other fiat currency

That's a sound argument, but the response is that we don't need to use fiat currency. We could have a monetary standard of precious metals (or else a standard akin to precious metals), and this would be better than both government notes and blockchain. We already have the electronic technology to allow us to avoid carrying physical money, and this could be applied to any relatively transferrable monetary standard.

More simply, here is the argument of the proponent of cryptocurrency:

1. We must either use government-backed currency or cryptocurrency
2. Cryptocurrency is better than government-backed currency
3. Therefore we should use cryptocurrency

And the problem is that (1) is a false dichotomy which overlooks the superior approach which has been used all throughout human history, and which was only truly abandoned within the last century.

By learning that aesthetic appreciation is not a means to an end, we have a better understanding of the phenomenon, but we have nevertheless not honed in on it in a truly singular way. — Leontiskos

I'm tempted to say a "double" way -- at least if negation is allowed. — Moliere

By "singular way" I only meant that although art is an end in itself, nevertheless knowing this does not enable us to distinguish art from other things that are also ends in themselves (e.g. pleasure, friendship, etc.).

Are you saying that we want to be able to say what art isn't?

I ought not to have mentioned sex as an analogue now, I think. Two contentious topics can't clarify one another when they're both contentious. — Moliere

I tend to agree with this. :grin:

We need a situation obviously. I’ll just throw out there what AmadeusD and I started on, which was basically, say, adding people to a board. — Antony Nickles

the ability to contribute to the board's goals
— Antony Nickles

On our exchange, this is what's going on. The rest is window dressing. — AmadeusD

I think AmadeusD is right. A board hires someone who will best contribute to their goals. The rest of your post is based on assumptions about the different kinds of goals different kinds of boards would have. But like my other questions, I don't know why we are pretending we are on a board. I think you have to provide some rationale for why we should think up a pretend "situation" and then think through that pretend scenario.

For example, I might say, "Antony, let's pretend that we're surfing. Let's brainstorm about our criteria for choosing a wave. There's a big wave forming, but it looks like there's a shark nearby..." You might say to me, "This is a thread about wokeness. Why do you want me to pretend I am surfing? Shouldn't we be talking about wokeness in a thread on wokeness? Unless I am missing something and you can give me a good reason why I should pretend I'm surfing...?"

Is your point with the board that if the company serves some group—say a minority—then that minority should be represented on the board, and that this therefore has something to do with DEI?

I have tried to explain this, make an argument for it; — Antony Nickles

Maybe I just missed it. Can you point me to the post where you provide reasons for why we ought to take a step back?

But we never get to opening day and to cash out any of the criteria or see what products sell and which don’t and see a customer smiling as they say “thanks”.

We never conclude something together.

It’s all back-office paperwork. — Fire Ologist

Yes, and this is largely why the "step back" is not necessarily unobjectionable. We have members who literally argue that there is no correct judgment to be had, and when they counsel taking a step back this is what they are aiming at.

I will write the first post. This is meant to be an example for the Staging Area, but maybe we actually do want a new thread. Maybe we don't.

Step 1. Identify the thread and tag those who are participating in the tangential topic.

Thread: The End of Woke
Participants: @Antony Nickles, @AmadeusD, @Fire Ologist, and perhaps @Count Timothy von Icarus and @Joshs


Step 2. Propose or query the idea of a new thread as a means to framing the issue correctly and fairly. Proposing thread titles will be especially helpful. Optionally, one may wish to open a discussion about whether a new thread is necessary.

Hey guys, judging from posts like , , and , it looks like we might have a tangential topic arising within the thread, "The End of Woke." Would it be worthwhile to split the tangent off into a separate thread? If so, how should we frame the new topic? [Insert Leontiskos' starting point for framing the issue here]

...I will actually give a truncated starting point for framing this tangential topic. If I had more time I would write something a bit longer...

The tangent seems to be related to intractable disagreements and how to navigate them. It pertains to the move wherein one implores their interlocutors to shift to a meta-level in order to clarify more fundamental issues or disagreements.

If we did want a new thread for this tangential topic, here are some possible titles. Please add more:

1. Situating goals and interests within practical reason
2. What is the relation between understanding and judgment?
3. How do we argue across differing paradigms?
4. How do we situate interests within political debates?
5. How do we navigate intractable disagreements?
6. Is it possible to navigate intractable disagreements? Do they exist?

[Note that the starting point that @Leontiskos is offering may be highly biased towards his own way of construing the tangent, which is precisely why the Staging Area could be useful.]

Here are a bunch of related quotes that I want to gather together for this post:

That’s why I hoped you would start the interests/criteria method you propose (and which sounds good to me). — Fire Ologist

Also, I am not trying to undermine any assertions or judgments in particular (I am not arguing). I am merely suggesting that it might be helpful to look at what is at stake, how that is to be judged compared to now, etc. Not to judge the criteria (first) but as a means to see what the possibly unexamined interests are. — Antony Nickles

For any discussion of this kind, we need to establish what goals are on the table — AmadeusD

3. The interests are our skin in the game of achieving the goal, not in carrying out the criteria. Criteria do not care how you feel, they care about what you want to achieve. — AmadeusD

Yep, agreed. That's why I resorted to saying we're talking in Circles in my reply to Antony. It seems like no start point is acceptable. — AmadeusD

-

Even before reading these posts I was tempted to make a new thread on this meta-topic, because it is quite prevalent on TPF. Much of this will build on what @AmadeusD has been getting at. Often on TPF people of a certain stripe try to talk about criteria, or frameworks, or something else as if they are presenting a wholly neutral starting point. I was up against the same sort of thing in this thread with @Srap Tasmaner in particular:

J and Srap Tasmaner in particular tried to say, "Let's take a step back into a neutral frame, so that we can examine this more carefully. Now everyone lives in their own framework..." Their "step back" was always a form of question-begging, given that it presupposed the non-overarching, framework-view. That's what happens when someone falsely claims to be taking a neutral stance on some matter on which they are not neutral* (and, in this case, on a matter in which neutrality is not possible). In general and especially in this case, the better thing to do is simply to give arguments for one's position instead of trying to claim the high ground of "objectivity" or "neutrality." — Leontiskos

I don't mean to pick on Antony, as he has been very humble and intellectually honest (and he is not doing the same thing described in that quote). Still, I am going to use him as an example since something very close to his approach is what I am going to try to argue against, or at least qualify in certain ways. In this thread @Antony Nickles has been saying something like, "Before we argue, let's talk about our interests":

Also, I am not trying to undermine any assertions or judgments in particular (I am not arguing). I am merely suggesting that it might be helpful to look at what is at stake, how that is to be judged compared to now, etc. Not to judge the criteria (first) but as a means to see what the possibly unexamined interests are. — Antony Nickles

The problem with this idea is that human action is always goal-directed. We are always acting for an end. It is psychologically impossible to step out of this goal-directedness. This is explicitly true when it comes to practical reason, and therefore it is confused to say, "Let's look at our criteria/interests objectively without making any value judgments; without making any arguments." This cannot be done. There is no such thing as a reason-less volitional act, or an uninterested analysis. The reason someone wants to "take a step back" is because they have already made a judgment and they already have a practical syllogism (even if implicit or subconscious). To advise taking a step back without providing an interest or a reason is inherently problematic, and this is why @Antony Nickles ran into trouble by saying things like, "Our goal is not X."

I would argue that what is always needed is argument. We have to give an argument/reason why we should take a step back, or why we should have a different goal, or why we should examine our implicit assumptions. There is no shortcut around argument. There is no way to rationally motivate (persuade) someone to take a step back without providing an argument/reason.

Arguments don't have to be caustic or burdensome. What is @Antony Nickles' reason/interest for taking a step back? Presumably he wants to take a step back because he thinks it is a good idea to do so, and therefore his argument must communicate to others why it is a good idea to do so. His argument might be <There is a communication breakdown; if we take a step back and re-evaluate our interests we might overcome the communication breakdown; therefore let's take a step back and re-evaluate our interests>. Or if we are going to set an issue before a board or group of people we might want to establish criteria beforehand according to this argument: <If we explicate our criteria for a decision beforehand, then we will be fortified against post hoc rationalization once the arguments begin; it is good to be fortified against post hoc rationalization; therefore we should explicate our criteria beforehand>.

In the present case when "beforehand" is already behind us, I think @Antony Nickles is more or less trying to say what Nathan Jacobs says about the "four levels of discourse" at 1:24:36. It is definitely important to unearth deeper premises in this way, but the premises that are being unearthed are still premises of an argument. Explication of premises is a part of argument, not something that is separate from argument (and in this case the relevant premises are the interests or the criteria which are being applied). Granted, the arguments that occur at these higher levels of discourse have a slightly different and more "meta" flavor than the arguments that occur at lower levels. Also granted, understanding must precede judgment, and therefore we must take pains to understand before we judge. All of this is true, but it doesn't mean that we ever fully step outside of the mode of argument or persuasion, at least when we are on a philosophy forum.

What I always find so ironic on this topic is the line from scripture, "by the mouth of babes and infants..." Too often we think of those who argue for things as naive, and much of philosophy has become purely hypothetical and descriptive, where no one is willing to argue for anything as being true. Ironically, I think the "novices" who are giving arguments for positions are more meta-logically sound than many of the learned. But the difficulty is particularly acute when it comes to moral issues, i.e. deliberation about which course of action to take. Issues like wokeness are moral issues: they are about practical reasoning. In this area of moral or practical deliberation you can't be satisfied with hypothetical judgments. Or as ' put it, "we can pass judgment at any point, and we must at some point."

There is no gainsaying the Bishop on this point, and that’s half the point. — praxis

If there is no gainsaying the Bishop on that point, then you are already committed to the same sort of hierarchy he is.

Rather, the fixed hierarchy is key to power stratification that wokeness aims to reduce. — praxis

My point is that the idea that hierarchical thinking is an evil bogeyman is a strawman. Anyone who admits that some values are higher than others is involved in hierarchical thinking. It's just not about power stratification. The power hermeneutic is something that the woke imposes on everyone and everything.

One of the things I am asking you is this: What would you have decreed if you were instructing the Israelites? — Leontiskos

The difficulty in this question is that:

1. It shifts the discussion from what a perfect being would do to what a nuanced, particular human would do; and

2. We don’t have to have knowledge of what the best choice is to know some of the bad choices. I can say that a pizza-lover does not throwaway a perfectly good pizza without speaking to what a pizza-lover’s best choice is in terms of what to do with it. — Bob Ross

I agree with (2), but I am not asking you what the best choice is. I am asking what you would do, and the implication is that you must be able to provide a better option than the one you are criticizing, not that you must be able to provide the best option. If you cannot provide a better option than the thing you criticize, then your criticism will be otiose or at least severely mitigated. Granted, not-acting is always an option, and so you can object to some action with the mere alternative of not acting at all, but in the case of the Amalekites not-acting may not be a plausible alternative.

If I had to answer, I would say that I would have told the Israelites to focus on themselves and ignore the immoralities of the Amalekites: they don’t have a duty to sacrifice their own people in just wars against abominable nations. I think it is a, e.g., just war to conquer North Korean but I wouldn’t advocate for the US to start WWIII over it. — Bob Ross

In the first place I would point out that the Amalekites lived near the Israelites and were a threat, so in that sense it is a bit different than the U.S. and North Korea. In the second place, in the Biblical mind truly abominable acts are not self-contained. They literally corrupt the earth and the world and empower the demonic presences that are being worshipped through the acts. For this reason the libertarian approach requires a different understanding of reality, where abominations do not pollute or affect the wider world.

If I had to decree the just war, then I would say to:

1. Eliminate the enemy combatants while limiting innocent and non-combatant civilians;

2. Assimilate any of the people that they can without assuming significant risk to their own sovereignty and stability;

3. Segregate those who cannot be assimilated into their own areas and give them the freedom to leave (and go somewhere else) if they want;

4. Give as much aid as feasible to those segregated.

I would hold a significant weight to the in-group over the out-group; so I wouldn’t probably decree any commandments to sacrifice one’s own people to free another people.

Likewise, those who are not assimilated would not be citizens of Israel; so they would, in necessary, be left to themselves if Israel cannot afford to help them; and this could be all the way up to starvation, disease, and death. — Bob Ross

Okay, that approach makes sense. Thanks for providing that. :up:

Yeah, but wouldn’t you agree it would be immoral what they did since it is directly intentional? I’m not saying they would have had this level of a sophistication in their ethics back then; but we know it to be immoral. — Bob Ross

I would say that it is immoral given certain conditions. For example, if the Amalekites and their children were not demonic then the act was immoral; if it was not a delegation of God's legitimate prerogatives then the act was immoral; etc.

The other question here is that if we know it to be immoral but they did not, then was it immoral? We might then say that it was objectively immoral but not subjectively wrong, similar to the case where someone breaks a law that they were not aware of. But even on something like the pedagogical approach God could not say, "Perform this act. It is not objectively immoral" (because this would make God a liar). makes a good point about Samuel as the author, and about the priority of the Pentateuch; but if we supposed that the literal command truly came from God, would it be permissible for God to pedagogically recommend that Israel carry out an act that is objectively but not subjectively immoral? It's an interesting question.

This interpretation seems to superficially reinterpret the text though; given that it explicitly details directly intentionally killing children. Wouldn’t this interpretation jeopardize the entire Bible? If someone can reinterpret what is obviously meant one way as another, then why can’t I about anything therein? — Bob Ross

On one reading it would superficially reinterpret the text. On the reading that provided it would not. The sort of question here asks whether we are permitted to interpret these sorts of post-Pentateuch texts as including the perspective of a fallible author, such as Samuel. I don't think there is anything de facto impossible about doing this, even on the presuppositions of historical theology. Many of the various known contradictions in the Bible (including those I mentioned in to Carlos) have to do with the perspective of the speaker. Only if we make the highest canonical source fallible do we forfeit Biblical inerrancy or strong Biblical authority, which in the Old Testament context would be to make the Pentateuch fallible in this way.

This is the most plausible out of them all, and is the one Aquinas and Craig takes. Again, though, the bullet here is that one has to hold that murder is either not the direct intentional killing of an innocent person or that murder is not always unjust. That is a necessary consequence of this view. — Bob Ross

Sort of. The thing I think you're missing here is the idea that God is not said to murder even though he is the judge of life and death. For example, if there is an angel of death or a "grim reaper" who works at the behest of God, is the angel of death a murderer? Or is he just doing his job? Or one could put it differently and ask whether the fact that God allows death within the world makes him a murderer. Theological traditions do not hold that God or the angel of death are properly involved in murder in these ways. On this point, I see the crux not so much in the definition of murder but in the question of whether God can delegate his power over life and death.

This [idea of demons] is an interesting one I am admittedly not very familiar with: I’ll have to think about that one. — Bob Ross

I think it is definitely part of the Biblical context, but it is not altogether clear to me how this affects the Amalekite children's "right to life." I would want to begin with the question of whether one who is demonic via demonic rites ceases to be human, and then whether their children also cease to be human (in the sense that they lose their presumptive right to life).

This has to be immoral: it would conflate culpability and innocence with the individual and group. — Bob Ross

Well, even on a modern understanding there is commission, there is "aiding and abetting," there is failing to oppose someone in your midst who is involved in commission, etc. So the idea that groups rather than mere individuals are responsible for abominable, public acts is supportable. I think the counterargument lies in the idea that a child or especially an infant does not count as part of the group.

Yeah, that’s true. I am not sure how to interpret the texts. Maybe it is all spiritual lessons; but then what isn’t and what is the lesson? — Bob Ross

Over the years I have come to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of the Bible, because it does mirror real life. How one is to resolve the difficult tensions and contradictions that arise in life is not obvious, and in the Bible we see people grappling with this same difficulty. There are some deeply interesting writings of J. G. Hamann that have begun to be translated into the English. Hamann was a highly intelligent Christian contemporary of Immanuel Kant, and he was famous for cutting to pieces Kant's cut-and-dried understanding of reality by recourse to philological and Biblical allusions. Schemas such as Kant's tend to oversimplify complex realities, and although Hamann and the Bible are far from simple, they nevertheless reflect the complexity and chaos of real life.

I mean, one of the theological issues undergirding your probing questions is the issue of Biblical inerrancy and how that is supposed to be understood. In one sense the Bible is not inerrant given that there are clear contradictions. What's curious is that the authors and the community were aware of these contradictions and they didn't find them problematic, and from this one would generally deduce that the texts neither aim at nor presuppose inerrancy in that literalistic or top-level sense. This is why what Carlos said about Samuel's authorship and fallibility is not a new idea in theological communities.

Related to these points, it is good to be humble when scrutinizing a text that has a sacred or divine pedigree, because it is very easy to impose personal idioms. Or perhaps put it this way: the more certain we are that something comes from God, the less sure we are about our negative judgments regarding it. I am not faulting your basic method, but rather noting that anyone who approaches a text as sacred will be very receptive to interpretive subtleties. This is because to believe that a being who is infinitely beyond you is communicating with you is to be open to semantic and and metaphysical possibilities that would usually be excluded. One's expectations of depth and overflowing meanings (i.e. being polysemic or plurivocal) increase in proportion to the perceived profundity of their interlocutor.

I am working on an alternative that I will share with you when it is ready to hear your thoughts. — Bob Ross

Okay, sounds good. :up:

The idea that wokeness is heretical is intriguing — praxis

To say that something is heretical is to say that it is a kind of warping of a religious form, and that the warping has become internal to the religion in question. So analogously, if you take poor care of your feet and end up with a fungal infection, that fungal infection is a kind of heresy. It's a problem, it's merged to your own body, it's in some measure your own fault, it is something you have to take care of and take responsibility for, etc.

In the video linked on the previous page, Bishop Barron refers to an 'objective hierarchy of value'—a structure he sees as embedded in the very fabric of reality. — praxis

There is an important point that Barron makes at 53:26, and it is closely related to what I said about putting second things first. There Barron contrasts the absolute values of justice and love as hierarchically superior, with the secundum quid values of diversity, equity, and inclusion as hierarchically inferior. I think it's fairly difficult to gainsay the Bishop on this point and claim that diversity, equity, or inclusion are absolute values. This inversion where one places secondary things into the first place is key to wokism.

Edit: More explicitly:

The idea that wokeness is heretical is intriguing, especially since, on the surface, both wokeness and religion share a common concern — praxis

If X ideology shares nothing in common with Y religion, then it is impossible for X to be a Y heresy. In such a case Y could view X as an error but not as a heresy.

Yep, put too much english on that. — Antony Nickles

Okay. :up:

I’m thinking maybe there isn’t one? I started trying to discuss philosophical assumptions that lead us to misunderstand/pre-judge—miss the actual import—of a moral claim. Maybe this is just a matter of you thinking I’m defending/arguing for something I’m not, and me thinking you don’t get what I am saying. Assumptions? — Antony Nickles

Well, I don't understand why you would find it necessary to discuss philosophical assumptions that lead us to form premature judgments if you don't think any premature judgments are occurring. It seems to me that if someone judges that we should discuss the philosophical assumptions that lead us to form premature judgments, then they have already judged that there are premature judgments occurring. If there are no premature judgments occurring then there is no need to discuss such assumptions. If there are premature judgments occurring then there is need to discuss such assumptions. If there is a good chance that there are premature judgments occurring then there is a good chance that we need to discuss such assumptions.

It would be yes, that was worded poorly. Of course we have to get to a judgment about moral claims; we have to move forward, decide what to do, and on what basis. — Antony Nickles

Okay, I agree. :up:

I will admit that, supposing there is a problem with wokism, the specific remedy is not obvious. Similarly, the remedy and the critique must be proportionate. For example, if a problem is intractable then a heavy-handed critique will be unfitting and hazardous.

It is presumptive to assume that has not taken place, and, again, not my intention. I was only suggesting that, generally, people (and philosophers in particular) do not consider “the ways” in which they judge. Thank you for the serious consideration. — Antony Nickles

Okay, thanks for that.

My deeper point here is not that one cannot claim that sufficient understanding has not taken place, but rather that if one tells their interlocutor that sufficient understanding has not taken place (or implies it) then they must provide their interlocutor with some means for seeing why sufficient understanding has not taken place. In one way or another there must be an attempt to persuade their interlocutor that sufficient understanding has not taken place.

On the contrary, the whole is what gives unity and function to the parts. — Wayfarer

Right.

zygotes — Wayfarer

A zygote is a good example. Its development will literally generate (more) parts which contribute to the pre-existing whole. What occurs is development of a whole, not assembly of parts.

-

Top-down implies a force acting from the outside inward — Metaphysician Undercover

Why think that? You won't find that claim anywhere in O'Callaghan's article.

If we propose a distinction of separate parts within an individual being, then the teleology must be pervasive to, i.e. internal to all parts. How could this telos get internal to the most basic, fundamental parts, genes, DNA, etc., through a top-down process? And if we take mind and intention as our example, then we see that each individual human being must willfully take part in human cooperation. And clearly this willful, intentional participation is bottom-up causation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by "top-down." Can you give an example of what you believe top-down explanation would be?

The passage is difficult, so read it carefully. Pay particular attention to the conclusion "And he presupposes nothing about them at all, since without him, they are strictly speaking, nothing at all." What the creator gives to the being is "its nature", but this nature which is given, is the nature of a being without a nature. — Metaphysician Undercover

Rather, when God gives a being a nature then that being has a nature. Sort of like when I give you a shoe you have a shoe. The second part of your quote has to do with the idea that there is no pre-existent thing which receives a nature, and that the substance receives both its nature and its existence simultaneously (both logically and temporally). It doesn't mean that the substance has no nature.

Run Adorno through Perplexity. — Joshs

I'm familiar enough with Adorno to know that he leans towards realism. But you've merely found an exception that proves the rule.

The points I’m trying to make concerning Crrical theory are twofold. First, that regardless of how unconventional their realism was, they should not be in danger of being accused of an ‘anything goes’ relativism. — Joshs

And Barron does not accuse them of that. What says there is important. To talk about the philosophical antecedents of wokism is not to talk about wokism per se. You keep blurring the difference.

Instead , [Critical theorists] beleive that material and social formations are grounded in truth, and truth is grounded in metaphysical certainties. — Joshs

That's just not true. Asserting contrary to common knowledge, SEP, and Perplexity.ai is doing you no good on this score.

-

So we can say that for a given person within a given time and culture, there will be specific criteria for the goodness or badness of a garden. What are such criteria of goodness based on, and can we generalize these criteria across persons and historical eras? I do believe in a certain notion of cultural progress, both empirical and ethical, so my answer is yes. But since the criteria I thinking are fundamental have to do with the concept of sense-making, it will be less clear in the case of aesthetic phenomena like gardens and works of art how this applies than in the case of the sciences or political systems. — Joshs

Okay. In that case you should try to show why wokeness is needed in the garden.

I believe that all of us are continually evolving within our systems of thought, but at a pace that is determined by the limits of that system. My goal in debating with others is to understand their system of thought from their perspective as well as i can, and to test the validity of my efforts by attempting to plug into the leading edge of their own thinking. If my thinking doesn’t find them where they are at, I will just get the equivalent of a glassy eyes stare of incomprehension or outright hostility. If I am successful in plugging into their cutting edge, they will respond enthusiastically, seeing me as a partner in thought rather than as a threat. — Joshs

I think you're leaving out the part where you pull weeds and disagree with others, and it would be much easier if you forthrightly admitted that you do that too.

-

Is the head of a family not an activist in putting into practice their understanding of moral standards in their child raising decisions? Are their parenting decisions not means to an end, that being the raising of good people? — Joshs

No, because they do not treat the children as a means to an end. That their parenting is a means to an end does not mean that their children are a means to an end. You are making rational errors here.

Aren’t all ‘activists’ simply actively putting into practice what they believe to be in the best interest of society as they understand it? — Joshs

Sure, and we've covered this before. Just because someone is trying to do something good doesn't mean they are doing something good, and in this case it doesn't mean that they are not treating everyone as a means to an end. Hitler thought it was in the best interest of society for Jews to die in concentration camps. That doesn't make what he did unobjectionable.

How are the critical comments about wokism in this thread not a form of activism? — Joshs

How are they? Try to argue your position that critically commenting on wokism is a form of activism.

What are the ends the criticisms are a means to? — Joshs

A better life and society for everyone, wokists included. To disagree with someone is not to treat them as a means to an end. To disagree with someone implies that they have intrinsic worth.

We can only experience causation physically — I like sushi

Petitio principii.

So if we are talking about the philosophy of mind we need to keep in mind that physical and mental acts are probably not best clumped together under a singular use of the term 'causal'. — I like sushi

Petitio principii.

I guess I could simply ask what kind of difference (if any) people see between physical and mental causes. If there is a difference then surely when we talk about mental acts causing physical act, or vice versa, then terminological use of 'causal' would necessarily have to shift? — I like sushi

A single word can describe two unidentical things. For example, "apple" can describe the fruit I bought last week and the fruit I bought today. It can also describe a green apple and a red apple. The same is true with "cause." That one cause is not identical to another cause does not mean that they cannot both be causes.

Again:

I don't really understand what you are asking. I'd say both are obviously true, and that 99.9% of all people accept both. To give two examples, the first occurs whenever someone forms a mental plan about the physical world and then executes it.

...

Again, 99.9% of people are going to say that the builder's mental plan of the house causes (in part) the finished house. So I think you have an enormous burden of proof to show that mental causation does not exist and that "causation is a physical term." — Leontiskos

1. The builder's plan is mental
2. The builder's plan is a cause of the house
3. The house is physical
4. Therefore, the mental can cause the physical

I want to say that causality is not physical because causality is a principle and principles are not physical. — Leontiskos

That makes sense to me - and makes sense of many intuitions. I think properly, though, the word would simply be a description of a physical process (once fully understood). — AmadeusD

Okay good, but perhaps I should clarify that by "principle" I do not merely mean a mental construct. For example, the law of the conservation of energy would be a kind of principle operative within nature.

Regarding processes, I would say that processes are causal even though not every cause is a process. Still I don't see why I would call a process "physical," nor what the difference is between a "physical process" and a "non-physical process."

In general I see no reason to claim that causality is physical. Of course if someone is a physicalist then everything is physical, including causality, and so they must be committed to the idea that causality is physical. But if one is not a physicalist then I don't see any grounds for claiming that causality is physical. For example, in these billiard cases we are talking about the transfer of energy, and I see no good reason to claim that energy or its transfer is a physical phenomenon.

You're right, it doesn't. But they cannot be left out of the discussion — AmadeusD

That's true: distance cannot be left out of the discussion. But explanation and reasoning requires differentiated genera, and the difference between geometric objects and geometric measurements is one example of two differentiated genera that provide us with the power to reason. The way that causality abstracts from objects—physical or otherwise—and is situated in between objects (in their relationality) is another example of the way that two differentiated genera provide us with the power to reason. If energy were a physical object just like the two billiard balls, then we would have a flat sequence: billiard ball1 collides with energy which collides with billiard ball2. Homogenous genera such as this are incapable of producing understanding or intelligibility. The whole reason energy functions as a principle is because it is different from the billiard balls, and more precisely because it is not itself an intermediating efficient cause (the sort of which physicality is bound up with).

One reason we know this is because distance is infinitely divisible whereas physical objects are not infinitely divisible. — Leontiskos

That seems superficial: distance exists as a relation. The space which the distance describes is physical and reduces quite well into the standard theory. The distance is a ratio of sorts between the the position of the points and the next-considered points. The space which creates that ratio is fully real, in a physical sense. There is no distance without a physical medium. I do not htink it right to consider "distance" as some kind of property in and of itself. "the space between" is probably better. — AmadeusD

Even on that conception, "space" is metaphorical not physical, and also does not belong to the genus to which point/line/curve belong. I am thinking of distance as a measurement, and I explicitly identified it as mathematical. A mathematical distance-measurement is infinitely divisible, and yet physical matter is not infinitely divisible, and therefore a mathematical distance-measurement is not physical. Indeed, if distance were physical then we would have the same problem of one flattened genus.

It is, though. It describes the transfer of particles. — AmadeusD

But according to what source do you claim that the transfer of energy is the transfer of particles? I don't think this is the standard or predominant view.

You may have something with gravity, but (unknown to you, clearly) i've always been skeptical about gravity — AmadeusD

Yes, and gravity is an easier example. Gravity causes planetary movements, and yet it is hard to see how gravity is itself supposed to be physical.

I am saying that the proposition that causation is necessarily physical ought to be a conclusion rather than an assumption — Leontiskos

With this, I definitely agree. I am not entirely convinced against substance dualism, so I need to accept this line. — AmadeusD

Even apart from mental causation, what would be an argument in favor of the thesis that causality is physical? I think it is something like this:

1. Billiard ball1 causes billiard ball2 to move
2. Billiard ball1 and billiard ball2 are both physical
3. Therefore, the causation that occurs between the two billiard balls is itself physical

Also, I would say that the very fact that we can talk about causation without committing ourselves to physicalism (or to a physicalist account of causation) just goes to show that the concept is not inherently physical. — Leontiskos

We can also talk about things in totally incoherent terms elsewhere (if that's hte case, I mean). That we can talk about causation without being committed to physical looks to me more like a lack of knowledge. — AmadeusD

Are you claiming that when someone who is not committed to a physicalist account of causation talks about causation, they are "talking about things in totally incoherent terms"? Because that seems highly implausible. Physicalism has been around for thousands of years, and people have been talking about causation in non-physicalist terms for thousands of years. Indeed, I would say that the majority of talk about causation is in non-physicalist terms.

It at least seems fairly clear that energy is of a different genus than the two billiard balls. — Leontiskos

I am unsure this is reasonable. Sufficiently dense energy is physical matter, no? They are the same stuff on that account. ice/water/steam. — AmadeusD

Those are interesting theories, though certainly not proven. But I wonder if an equivocation on "energy" is occurring here. When we talk about transfer of energy between the two billiard balls, we are generally talking about the energy of the first being imparted to the second, without any material change in the two balls. So if we say that ball1 is energy-bundle1, and ball2 is energy-bundle2, and the imparted motion is energy-bundle3, then we are back to the flat ontological genus where energy is transferred in a purely univocal sense, with no differentiated explanatory genera.

You can do that if you want, but the folks who do it (such as C. S. Peirce) do not generally call the ubiquitous energy "physical" or "material," and thus are not considered physicalists or materialists. That form of ontological flattening is usually called monism, not physicalism. Furthermore, such thinkers concretize "energy" and shift the explanatory or causal burden to other terms, which is why I think this is an equivocation on what we were originally calling "energy" (in the context of the principle of the transfer or conservation of energy).

The energy is not physical; it is potential. — Leontiskos

Again, I don't think this is true. With all of that information (and some more whcih I assume you would allow) a correctly-trained physicist could give you the exact amount of force/distance/heat/noise etc... that car could make. — AmadeusD

Exactly: "that a car could make." It is potential. "Energy, in physics, the capacity for doing work" (Britannica).

I apologize: I thought retribution semantically referred to restoration. Retribution actually refers to punishment. I was referring to restoration this whole time with the term retribution. — Bob Ross

So you said:

Like I've always said, justice is about respecting the dignities of things which is relative to the totality of creation (and how everything fits into it). Justice, then, is fundamentally about restoring the order of things and not punishment; however, what you are missing is that retribution and punishment are not the same thing: retribution is a requirement of restoration, but punishment is not. — Bob Ross

"Retribution" has to do with repayment or recompense, and in its original sense the repayment could be positive or negative. If positive, it would be a reward; if negative, it would be a punishment. In both cases it is understood as a form of restoration - a kind of restoring of the balance of justice.

In the negative sense which is now the dominant sense, the punishment restores whatever was detracted from the victim of the transgression. The term to substitute for "whatever" is somewhat debatable and also case-dependent. "Honor" would be a common rendering. For example, to apologize to someone you have wronged is to humble oneself while honoring or uplifting the other person, which restores the proper balance between the two of you. In slighting them you demeaned them and placed them below you, and in order to compensate and restore the proper balance what is needed is an act of placing them above you. Depending on the offense, greater recompense is needed.

So it is not wrong to see retribution as intertwined with restoration. A rather precise analysis of this comes in Aquinas' writings on contrapassum, where what is honed in on is specifically the restoration of the imbalance between two wills. For example, if a man steals an ox he must of course return it, and this is also part of retribution. But retribution in a more precise sense has to do with the recompense for the imbalance that has been created between two wills or two persons, and thus the thief who stole one ox must repay five oxen rather than only one (Exodus 22:1). In our current legal parlance this is called restitution with punitive damages, or with exemplary damages. This restoration or re-balancing is much the flip side of the Golden Rule, especially in the neutral sense—which includes both the positive reward and the negative punishment—insofar as one receives back their own treatment, whether good or ill. This is both why someone who injures you becomes indebted to you, and also why you "owe" someone who performs a gratuitous act for you, even though these two cases also have some significant differences (i.e. repaying a debt vs. returning a favor).

With that said, I don't have time to get caught up in this thread at the moment. I have too many pokers in the fire as it is. The thread seems to be going well enough. It looks like you, @Wayfarer, and especially @Count Timothy von Icarus have written a number of good posts.

Instead we see more instances of black and white — Janus

I don't think there is any thinking nearly as black and white as wokism. That's the lion's share of the problem with wokism. This is why there is so much irony in these objections which essentially say, "You have to treat the woke with dignity, respect, and tolerance (even though they are the most undignified, disrespectful, and intolerant people around)." What I said here highlights a mild echo of the irony that applies to this objection (i.e. activism as opposed to wokism):

The question arises: Should we attempt to understand and sympathize with activists? And, supposing we want to play their game, should we attempt to understand and sympathize before we choose to either support or oppose them? I think some will say, "Yes, because we should always try to be compassionate and understanding, and therefore we should try to be compassionate and understanding towards the activist."

This gets complicated, but with NOS4A2 I would say that the act of activism precludes this response to one extent or another. The activist is treating everyone, friend and foe, as a means to an end. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that we should prefer compassion and understanding, the advice that we should treat everyone with an equal amount of compassion and understanding turns out to be false. It is false because it is fitting to treat those who are attempting to use us as a means to their end with less understanding and compassion—and more suspicion!—than those who are treating us respectfully, as autonomous persons. It is no coincidence that everyone tends to treat activists with less compassion and understanding than those who engage them as equals, utilizing forms of persuasion rather than forms of coercion.

So I see ↪NOS4A2's response as appropriate. We can of course treat the activist as if they are not an activist, or ignore the activism that they are currently engaged in, but it is eminently reasonable to treat the activist as an activist... — Leontiskos

-

It is time for some meat on the bone, right? — Fire Ologist

Yes, please!

This actually brings to mind the epithet "social justice warrior." There is a bit of truth here, in that conflict and crusade are part of the ideological framing. Warrior societies tend to generate wars, and I'd argue that "activist" societies will tend to likewise generate social conflicts. If these are the arenas where status is won and identities are built, than one must "take to the field." — Count Timothy von Icarus

An interesting observation. :up:

New Age and secularized Eastern religions offered one escape path here, but the Christian ethic of social justice and the ideal of freedom and perfection as the communication of goodness to others (agape descending, not just eros leading up) is pretty hardwired into Western culture, such that secularized Buddhist mindfulness can be found lacking in a certain degree of outwards focus.

So, there is a closure of other outlets, which funnels people towards social justice activism as their "worthy aim." At the same time, people are shut out of lives spent pursuing these higher ends because academic and non-profit jobs becomes extremely coveted and scarce, and the rise of the low paid adjunct and unpaid intern make the "life of meaning" increasingly class-based, in that one needs wealthy parents to (comfortably) support such a career. This pushes people aligned to activism as a "way of life" or "source of purpose" into all sorts of other areas of the workforce, from boring local government jobs, to medical research, to K-12 education, and particularly Big Tech. And then these become a site for conflict, because they are actually often set up precisely to avoid such issues, while social media reduces the cost to begin and organize activism (while also creating echo chambers).

That's at least how I heard a Silicon Valley CEO describe his and his peers' journey to Trump. A lot of these were younger CEOs, big Obama supporters, and tended to initially be quite open to the post-2008 "Great Awokening." But as it picked up steam (and because they tend to hire from its epicenter in elite universities) they began to face an actively hostile workforce who saw their employers as "the enemy" who needed to be wholly reformed from the inside. Or at least, this is how the experience felt to him, and he described a lot of hostile meetings, internal protests, etc. that ultimately soured him on the left. — Count Timothy von Icarus

These are astute observations. They remind me of "The meaning crisis" of Vervaeke and others. All of this makes good sense.

And this is perhaps where mainstream responses to Woke are most deficient. Because of the anthropology that dominates modern thought, there isn't much acknowledgement of the rational appetites. Yet I'd argue that people's desire to "be good" or "do what is truly right," is, when properly mobilized, the strongest motivator of behavior, trumping safety, pleasure, or even thymos. When this desire becomes aimless or frustrated, trouble will arise (which reminded me of another article on the parallels between Woke and Evangelical Christianity). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. I am still planning to follow up on your leads about thymos, as that does seem promising. I think that desire to "be good" or "do what is truly right" is behind a lot of Jordan Peterson's success, but I don't follow the various cultural currents as well as you do.

I admit that I am worried about our current state. I certainly don't see the way forward. I'd say the next decade or two will be interesting to say the least. So many of the duties that we have deferred as a culture are now beginning to catch up with us, and we seem ill-prepared to meet them. The whole national debt debacle with Musk and Trump is a picturesque symbol of deferred duties and a populace that is bewildered (or else numb or incredulous) at the prospect that the Debt Collector will come 'a knocking. So the erratic nature of the woke movement is certainly intelligible.

Interestingly, in my opinion wokism is also a Christian heresy, especially in its more moralistic and compassion-driven aspects. For that reason I think Christians need to get serious about confronting a heresy that is so intertwined with 19th and 20th century Western Christianity. The whole notion of bankrupting oneself out of ungrounded compassion is perhaps the paramount sign of this heresy, and I have seen it instantiate within Christian churches, hospitals, individuals, not to mention the society at large. But a large and simple part of this seems to be the loss of intermediate institutions, localness, and the sense of autonomy and confidence that comes from being integrated into a natural community or even a family. People read the national and international news as the local newspapers go out of business; they are hyperfocused on events that they have little to no control over, such as the presidential election; they go on Facebook or Twitter to protest international atrocities and are completely uninvolved in their own local communities; and out of all this comes a sense of impotence and hopelessness. At least on these fronts there really are remedies ready to hand.

Edit: I just started reading that article from Harper's and I see that it is very much related to what I've said here! Five years ago a feminist friend sent me a somewhat similar piece: "The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness."

- I am going to need to come back to this post of yours, but let me say just a few clarificatory points:

everyone who judges something understands it (to one extent or another). — Leontiskos

I’m tripped up on “to one extent or another”. Isn’t it the easiest thing to judge something without understanding it (even at all)? I, mean, isn’t there a scale of understanding? presumption, prejudgment, prejudice, jumping to a conclusion, on and on, etc.? — Antony Nickles

I don't think anyone judges something without understanding it at all. When we speak that way we are apparently involved in hyperbole. It is easy to judge something prematurely, but it is impossible to judge something without understanding anything about it. If we understood nothing about X then there could be no judgment about X. So yes, there is a scale of understanding and that has to do with the "extent" to which it is understood, but there is no such thing as judging something that is understood to zero extent.

More simply, people who make judgments obviously think their judgments are rooted in understanding, and therefore it does not further the rational discussion to simply call into question their understanding without providing any argument for why.*

All I was trying to point out is that we should not dismiss a claim before understanding, not the argument, but what is at stake, what the interests are, what are the actual/proposed criteria, the shared and new judgments, etc. I’m just trying to draw attention to how and maybe why everyone misses that step. — Antony Nickles

I understand that, and my post was responding to it. When I said this:

I think your basic position is, "You must understand the woke before you judge them." — Leontiskos

...by "understand the woke" I meant, "understand their argument/interests/criteria/stakes/etc." That is what my post was about. You seem to simply be presuming that we do not understand the woke. Many of your posts seem to reduce to the assertion that, "You guys don't understand the woke. You need to understand them before you make judgments." It may be worthwhile to revisit with this in mind.

I need to split a hair. I am not making a claim about “wokeness” as if to argue against your judgment of it, that it is “mistaken”, say, claiming that you don’t yet have justification (grounds), evidence. I am asking us to stop the judgment, turn, and draw out the terms and criteria., etc. To look at our history, to attempt to see something perhaps overlooked in or by our current culture, etc. — Antony Nickles

I mean, if you really don't think you are implicitly claiming that my understanding of wokeness is insufficient (and that this is why I need to improve my understanding of interests/criteria/stakes/etc.), then what's the problem? If my understanding of wokeness is not insufficient, then what is wrong with judging wokeness on the basis of that understanding? If my understanding of wokeness is not insufficient, then why do I need to improve my understanding?

Well, good question. I would argue that our goal is not “judgment”. In a moral situation like this, it comes down to whether we see that our (once drawn out) interests are more alike than apart, that we are able to move forward together, extend or adapt our criteria, reconsider our codified judgments, etc. — Antony Nickles

But isn't it coercive to tell me what my goal is? The reason many of us have judged wokeism wanting is precisely because we have judged that our interests are not more alike than apart; that we are not able to move forward together, etc. If we thought that our interests were more alike than apart and that we were able to move forward together, then we wouldn't have judged wokeism wanting in the ways that we have.

It's as if you see someone critiquing wokeism and you tell the person, "Our goal is not critique; it is such-and-such." But obviously the (proximate) goal of the person critiquing wokeism is critique. It seems very strange to walk up to a person providing a critique and tell them that their goal is not critique.


* Edit: A good example of an attempt to demonstrate an inadequate understanding can be seen by looking at post. That sort of thing is precisely what is needed in order to go beyond a mere assertion of an insufficient understanding. For a post like that to succeed would be for it to show that the understanding in question is inadequate.

There is no such thing as the cause of a thing, simpliciter, with no context of who is asking and for what purpose. — SophistiCat

I just gave you a whole post arguing otherwise, and in response you've merely begged the question. Do you have any arguments for your position, or just assertions?

For example, you asserted:

But to ask what accounts for the duck's existence doesn't seem sensible, because there is no way to answer such a question. — SophistiCat

I responded with the argument:

To take a simplistic example, someone might say, "We can't ask what causes ice. We can ask whether ice requires H2O and we can ask whether ice requires low temperatures, but those are two different questions." The answer is that they are two interrelated questions, and that to give the cause of ice we will need to answer both questions (and others as well). One cause/reason for ice is H2O and another cause/reason for ice is low temperatures, and yet they are both causes and they will both be needed to explain, "What accounts for the ice's existence." Surely someone who understands these two things about ice understands what accounts for ice's existence more than someone who does not understand these two things (ceteris paribus). — Leontiskos

And then in response you just re-asserted your initial assertion, avoiding all argument. So at this point I can see that in your opinion we can never ask, "What accounts for the ice's existence?," and I can see that you have not yet provided any arguments for your opinion.

I’m suggesting setting aside judging whether a person is racist (on any terms) in lieu of unearthing the interests and terms of our language and culture and our relationship to them and our responsibility for them. — Antony Nickles

I think your basic position is, "You must understand the woke before you judge them." I would point out that understanding precedes judgment, and therefore everyone who judges something understands it (to one extent or another).

So the question is this: Why do you assume that those who judge the woke do not understand them? All of us who judge the woke believe that we do understand them. That's why we judge them. It actually appears as if you hold that anyone who judges wokeness unworthy has by definition not understood wokeness, which is a form of begging the question.

So I must pose the question: How will we know when our understanding is sufficient for judgment? How will you know when my understanding is sufficient for judgment? What makes you think that someone is mistaken who believes that their understanding is sufficient for judgment? Your own judgment is, "You think your understanding of wokeness is sufficient for judgment, but you are mistaken," and apparently you think that your own understanding is sufficient for that judgment. If I wanted to reverse roles and take up your own methodology I would simply say, "You must understand the anti-woke before you judge them," thus implying that your judgment is premature.

More simply, it is not a rationally substantive move to say, "What if you didn't consider enough evidence before drawing your conclusion?"

• "Maybe you didn't consider enough evidence before drawing your conclusion."
• "Yeah, but maybe I did."

The question is not whether we can [sympathize] but whether we should — Leontiskos

And that is a legitimate question. — Antony Nickles

Isn't it the central question, even in your own posts? Look at what you said in this same post:

And I am admonishing that clarifying the underlying interests is a process that is being skipped and is possible. — Antony Nickles

To say that someone is skipping something is to imply that they should do it. And when you the way that we can make their interests intelligible, aren't you really implying that we should make their interests intelligible? It seems like you keep insinuating the "should" question, and that is why I tried to tackle it head-on in .

If I can take it down a notch, what I am trying to address is the judgment I’ve seen that these moral claims are irrational, emotional, personal, etc. to point out that it is possible to get at the so far unexamined interests and different criteria — Antony Nickles

It seems to me that you are venturing the argument that the moral claims are only irrational according to a certain set of criteria, and that once we understand the criteria that the other person is employing then we will no longer view their claim as irrational. Is that correct?

When I say that wokeness is irrational what I mean is that wokeness is reliant upon clear falsehoods. I don't mean that wokeness is incompatible with my own personal set of criteria. Indeed, "irrational" does not mean, "incompatible with some arbitrary set of criteria," which is why such a word is being used.

Of course it is possible that we are talking past each other. It is possible that when I talk about someone who is "woke" I am thinking of someone who is irrational, and when you think of someone who is "woke" you are thinking of someone who is rational but misunderstood.

I am pointing out we start arguing what to do before we understand what is at stake. — Antony Nickles

What if someone holds that we shouldn't adhere to systems which are reliant upon clear falsehoods, even if there is a great deal at stake? What if someone holds that the end doesn't justify the means? I don't see that the critique of wokeness depends on what is at stake, and therefore it is not clear why one would need to do a deep dive into the "stakes" before dismissing wokeness.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that wokism’s roots contribute nothing innovative or valuable to the canons of philosophical thought. — Joshs

I'm certainly not committed to the idea that all philosophy is good... — Count Timothy von Icarus

-

What I am talking about is humanizing (as in respecting)the claim as if it is made by a serious person. — Antony Nickles

Isn't it confusing precisely because it involves lying to ourselves? Because it involves treating someone who we believe to be unserious as if they were serious? — Leontiskos

-

It seems that a fundamental disagreement here is over the question of whether humans are capable of bad ideas. The woke, as well as @Antony Nickles and @Joshs, seem to lean into the idea that humans are not capable of bad ideas.

Consider an analogy. Human beings and human culture are, in part, ideational. In part, they are collections of ideas. In both cases the ideas are domesticated into a sort of garden. Now gardens have lots of weeds, and require weeding. The camp that leans into the no-bad-ideas direction is effectively claiming that weeds do not exist, or that gardens should not be weeded, or that weeds can be pruned but should never be uprooted. I think that's crazy wrong. There are bad ideas aplenty, and they should be uprooted. Indeed, I would argue that the very idea that there are no bad ideas is itself a bad idea. This is true even though weeding requires energy and constant diligence, and even though it is possible to learn from bad ideas (because evil is a privation of goodness).

So backing up, do bad ideas exist?

That is the problem with wokeism to me - its inability and unwillingness to debate and address reasonable challenge. — Fire Ologist

Right. :up:

The most acute woke vs. anti-woke discussion I have witnessed was the dialogue between Sam Harris and Ezra Klein mentioned <here>.

At 1:45:11 Harris says that every single male finalist of the Olympic 100m dash since 1980 has been of West-African descent. In effect he asks, "Are we racists or 'racialists' if we notice such a fact? Or do we have to avoid noticing such facts for the sake of political correctness?" — Leontiskos

Now the intellectually honest person who notices that every male finalist since 1980 has been of West-African descent will erect a thesis explaining why, and then consider evidence for or against that thesis. Not so for the woke. The woke immediately turns to post hoc rationalization, insisting that the outcome is due to racism. The only question the woke will ask is, "What forms of racism contributed to this racist event?" Anyone who questions the assumption that it is a racist event will be met with gaslighting and coercive behavior.

(or we ignore it—are asleep to those deeper concerns) — Antony Nickles

Continuing the point of my assessment of the sleeping metaphor, isn't it simply an equivocation to say that ignoring X and being asleep to X are the same thing? It is these untruths that are creating the problems. If ignoring X and being asleep to X were the same thing then my argument would fall to pieces, but they are not the same thing. The wokists can't decide whether the problem is lethargy or ignoring, and although it would help their case if we claimed that lethargy and ignoring are the same thing, they aren't the same thing.

What I am talking about is humanizing (as in respecting)the claim as if it is made by a serious person. So that is confusing — Antony Nickles

Isn't it confusing precisely because it involves lying to ourselves? Because it involves treating someone who we believe to be unserious as if they were serious? Ergo:

We can of course treat the activist as if they are not an activist, or ignore the activism that they are currently engaged in, but it is eminently reasonable to treat the activist as an activist... — Leontiskos

-

So that is confusing, but really what we are talking about are the integrated terms and judgments of our culture, as the criteria we have for our practices codify our society’s interests. This is why judging someone as a racist is to philosophically misunderstand that we share a language and culture; are complicit in its interests and judgments (comprised of it and so compromised by it), and, yes, in that way, responsible for it, but this is structural, not personal, perhaps the point of seeing it as “institutionalized”. — Antony Nickles

I think that if you try to develop these ideas you will find that they break down rather quickly. Specifically, you think that to judge someone to be a racist is to misunderstand, failing to recognize that one is complicit in the systemic structures that caused their racism. That looks to be deeply mistaken, and again, if one attempted to develop or defend it I believe it would break down. Like anything else, if one does not attempt to develop, defend, or assess it then it can of course be maintained.

There is physical evidence for physical causation but not for mental causation. — I like sushi

Why do you say such things? Do you have an argument?

Or rather, the reason 99.9% of people believe that there is mental causation is because there is evidence for it. That there is not physical evidence for mental causation may be true, and is probably a tautology. If one accepts only "physical evidence" then they are effectively a physicalist.

What are your views on Mental to Physical and Mental to Mental causation? — I like sushi

I don't really understand what you are asking. I'd say both are obviously true, and that 99.9% of all people accept both. To give two examples, the first occurs whenever someone forms a mental plan about the physical world and then executes it. The second occurs whenever some persuades someone else. Or if you want a stronger sense of 'cause', then the second occurs whenever a propagandist succeeds.

The idea that there is such a thing as Mental to Mental Causation is an overliberal use of the term 'Causation'. — I like sushi

What do you mean by "mental to mental causation"?

The term Causation is a physical term that describes types of temporal organisation. — I like sushi

Again, 99.9% of people are going to say that the builder's mental plan of the house causes (in part) the finished house. So I think you have an enormous burden of proof to show that mental causation does not exist and that "causation is a physical term."

This would suggest that the cause of the change in momentum of the two balls could be given to numerous different forces, held in various different points in the system. Depending on which perspective the observer is coming from. — Punshhh

Sure, I don't have any objection to that sort of claim. :up:

Maybe we can say that like we sense water and then sense ice, causality is something we sense over time, it’s a name for the “and then” when we mix water with cold air over time. So like the other physical things causality isn’t just a mental relationship, but the motion of objects. Causality is a type of motion like icey or liquid are types of water depending on the temperature. — Fire Ologist

I think that's basically right. My point is not that Hume is correct in dismissing causality, but the Humean-like arguments apparently do suffice to show that causality is not physical.

But this was the very question that awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber. His famous “answer to Hume” was, paraphrased, that we do not infer causality from observed sequences; rather, we could not even recognize those sequences as such unless the category of causation were already present in the intellect. The freezing of water is experienced as a physical transformation precisely because we perceive the world through the perspective of causality Causality isn’t a physical object to be found so much as a necessary condition for the coherence of experience.

Hume argues that since we never observe causality directly—only sequences of events—then causality must be a mental habit or convention, not something real, as it can’t be observed. But Kant says the fact that we can experience sequences as ordered events already presupposes the possibility of causal relationships. What makes experience possible is not just sensory data - as the empiricists argue - but the conceptual framework through which we cognise it. — Wayfarer

Okay, but how does any of that help your thesis which holds that causality is physical? Kant's answer to Hume does not involve the idea that causality is physical.

The repudiatory nature of wokeness is inconsistent with the metaphor of waking from slumber. — Leontiskos

Again, without having any actual knowledge of what “woke” is, couldn’t our current culture—our interests in the judgments we share, what matters, even what is rational—be asleep, as in unaware, of the world as it is... — Antony Nickles

Sure, but do you generally repudiate people who are sleeping or who are unaware? Negligence and sleep can go together, but they generally do not. So if someone is committed to repudiating others, then they should probably call them "negligent" rather than "asleep" or "unaware." In that case there would be less linguistic "violence" involved. It also explains why Buddhists don't go around repudiating everyone who is not awakened.

I knew this was going to get sticky. I am not arguing for activism as a means of persuasion, nor am I even arguing that activists deserve a discussion; only that, despite all that, we can make their interests intelligible... — Antony Nickles

Yes, of course, and I don't think anyone has claimed otherwise. The question is not whether we can but whether we should:

The question arises: Should we attempt to understand and sympathize with activists? — Leontiskos

I would go further and say that natural selection is itself a teleological explanation. It is a teleological explanation that covers all species instead of just one (i.e. it is a generic final cause). — Leontiskos

An interesting relates to this issue.

Why, thanks! Will read carefully. — Wayfarer

I finally got around to reading this. It was well-written and I enjoyed it. might like it insofar as it sheds light on the bottom-up nature of his "model-building," and might like it insofar as it is closely related to "reverse mereological essentialism."

Good essay and very carefully composed. Overall, I find it congenial, although I’m not as disposed to consider the theological elements. — Wayfarer

:up:

What I have argued here does not prove that evolutionary history is teleological and has a purpose, much less a divinely intended purpose. But what it does prove is that the random variation of traits that result in survival advantages does not rule out evolution having a teleological end or purpose. Evolutionary science is and should be neutral with respect to the question of whether the process of evolution has a teleology. If an evolutionary biologist claims that evolution has no purpose because of the role of random variation within it, that is not a scientific statement of evolutionary biology.

Yes, and I would go a bit further and say that Darwinian evolution is teleological, in much the same way that craps is teleological. It's surprising that O'Callaghan did not make this connection in his essay.

---

Here's a passage from your link distinguishing internal teleology from external — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that's an interesting excerpt. :up:

I believe that when we consider the way that internal teleology is 'given' to beings, it is necessary to conclude that this is a bottom-up process of creation rather than top-down. Top-down suffices to describe external teleology, but internal teleology, by which teleology is internal to each member, or part, of the whole, is necessarily bottom-up. — Metaphysician Undercover

Although O'Callaghan does not state it explicitly, I believe he holds that internal teleology is top-down. It is the internal natura of a living substance in which all of its parts participate.

According to the passage, what is given, is no specific nature whatsoever, but simply the will, or teleology to produce one's own nature. — Metaphysician Undercover

Where do you find that in the passage?

-

And that is nothing if not top-down! — Wayfarer

Yes, I tend to agree. Here is a quote that captures the thrust of the bottom-up vs. top-down distinction:

I said at the beginning that the two modes of explanation I was going to discuss were not themselves scientific theories but opposed metaphysical positions as to what the fundamental reality is to be investigated in a science like biology—the whole and its parts or the parts and their whole. — Teleology: What Is It Good For?, by John O'Callaghan

Top-down sees the whole as primary the parts as secondary, whereas bottom-up sees the parts as primary and the whole as secondary.

---

The people who deny this teleological purpose are in a way blind to it. They see things only in the external. This results in a failure to understand what an organism is. In a sense they look at individual organisms, or species and see them as one of those body parts that Frankenstein was working with. But this denies the essence of life which courses through those organisms. They should remind themselves that all life of this planet is one family, literally brothers and sisters of one common parent* and that they are a result of one continuous lineage of life. One life begetting another all the way through our evolution. — Punshhh

Yes, good point. :up:

But the relation being described—namely, the causal link between temperature and phase change—is a physical phenomenon. It reflects real, observable, and measurable interactions in the physical world. Water molecules slow down at lower temperatures; — Wayfarer

But why do you think that a relation between physical things is physical? Why do you think the speed of water molecules is a physical thing? Again, do you think that the world where a molecule changes speed has one more physical thing than the world where the molecule does not change speed? If a molecule's speed is physical then it seems that you must hold this.

Beyond that, Hume's response would be, "You have seen the constant conjunction between slow-moving water molecules and the formation of ice, but where is the cause? How do you know that it is the slow-moving molecules which cause ice?" The cause is itself neither observable nor measurable in the way you suppose.

And consider the world in which water never freezes. Surely that world has one less physical thing than our world, given that it lacks ice. But does it lack a second physical thing, namely the causal relation described by the consequence? — Leontiskos

-

The description of the relation is of course not physical—it’s verbal or symbolic, a product of language or mathematical formalism. No argument there — Wayfarer

I think I was pretty clear that I was talking about the "relation that obtains in reality between water and temperature." I did use the word "describe," but within the clause, "describes and accounts for the transformation." So I am not attempting to talk about mere words.

@NOS4A2 said that activism is not conversation. I think that's basically correct. Activism is focused on an outcome:

Activism: the use of direct and noticeable action to achieve a result, usually a political or social one — Cambridge Dictionary

Activism: a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Activism: the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change. — Oxford Languages Dictionary

Generally activism is not an attempt to rationally persuade others to adopt a particular view. So if the wokist is an activist, then their activity is not aimed at rational persuasion. What follows is that to try to agree or disagree with an activist is a category error. The "game" that the activist is playing requires others to either support and ally with them, or else to oppose them (and because of this activism has a lot to do with "material positions"). The activist wants to achieve an outcome, and they aren't overly scrupulous about how that outcome is secured.

The question arises: Should we attempt to understand and sympathize with activists? And, supposing we want to play their game, should we attempt to understand and sympathize before we choose to either support or oppose them? I think some will say, "Yes, because we should always try to be compassionate and understanding, and therefore we should try to be compassionate and understanding towards the activist."

This gets complicated, but with @NOS4A2 I would say that the act of activism precludes this response to one extent or another. The activist is treating everyone, friend and foe, as a means to an end. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that we should prefer compassion and understanding, the advice that we should treat everyone with an equal amount of compassion and understanding turns out to be false. It is false because it is fitting to treat those who are attempting to use us as a means to their end with less understanding and compassion—and more suspicion!—than those who are treating us respectfully, as autonomous persons. It is no coincidence that everyone tends to treat activists with less compassion and understanding than those who engage them as equals, utilizing forms of persuasion rather than forms of coercion.

So I see 's response as appropriate. We can of course treat the activist as if they are not an activist, or ignore the activism that they are currently engaged in, but it is eminently reasonable to treat the activist as an activist and to recognize that they are attempting to use you as a means to their end. Incidentally, this is why one with the virtue of modesty will be averse to publicizing even true virtue, much less virtue signaling or engaging in activism. They will not be comfortable with achieving an end via improper means. Cf. Matthew 6:16-18.

How is it not? How did the fall in temperature not cause the water to freeze, or the corrosion of the main support beam not cause the bridge to fall? If causation is not physical, what is it? — Wayfarer

A more clumsy way to address this issue is to think about a cause in terms of a consequence relation. So in response to a question about the cause of ice we might provide a consequence (or "conditional" if you prefer): <If water continues to cool then it will eventually freeze>.

Now supposing the consequence really does represent a cause, is it physical? Is the if-then relation that obtains in reality between water and temperature a physical thing? The water is physical, and the cold temperature is physical, and the ice is physical, but is the relation that describes and accounts for the transformation itself physical? And consider the world in which water never freezes. Surely that world has one less physical thing than our world, given that it lacks ice. But does it lack a second physical thing, namely the causal relation described by the consequence?

Below I will give a bibliography as the translator will translate it — Astorre

Thanks, this is very helpful. :up:

I agree with your essay in large part. With that said, I think it is very natural for Christianity to navigate the area between monism and dualism, especially given the Platonic context of early Christianity. It strikes me as something Christians will need to continue to revisit and refine as time goes on.

A learned Western author who addresses the same sort of issue from an Anglican view and with an eye towards the Reformation is N. T. Wright. He has a famous quip: "Christianity is not primarily interested in life after death, but rather life after life after death." From his Western vantage point he will claim that the problem you identify was exacerbated by the Reformation emphasis on justification for the sake of a disembodied heavenly state.

Most concisely would simply be what the term implies: asleep or unaware. — praxis

Cf:

...it is also worth noting that wokeness is not inherently reactionary, at least in one particular sense. The name conveys this, "woke." "Awake." It is styled as a project to awaken the slumbering, not to chastise the aberrant. Obviously that didn't last long, but it does point to the idea that the genesis of the movement was not a reaction to something like the "anti-woke." — Leontiskos

From the moment I heard about "woke" I thought about the way that Buddhists use the same metaphor of awakening. Yet with time the gulf between a Buddhist approach and a woke approach has proved remarkably wide, and I think the Buddhists leverage the metaphor much more consistently. The repudiatory nature of wokeness is inconsistent with the metaphor of waking from slumber.

In any case, the words we have in the Book of Samuel are Samuel conveying the divine will, and that ambiguity runs through the text (i.e. whether it is God or Samuel making the commands... or both). If I had to judge, I'd say it's a mix of both. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, that's a good point. Your emphasis on weighting different parts of the canon is edifying and intuitive. I was aware that such is a traditional Hebrew approach, but I had never witnessed it first-hand.

On a similar note, I was revisiting the book, Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas. The author looks at the way that the Pharaoh of the Exodus story is variously described as having his heart hardened by God, as hardening his own heart, and as simply having his heart hardened (in a passive sense). The author is trying to demonstrate the manner in which the Hebrew understanding of God's action is in a continual process of development, and I would add that such a topic is inherently unwieldy and difficult to understand. For example, there is a constant vacillation in the Bible between the idea that everything is according to God's will (and therefore even evil things are brought about by God), and the idea that God does not do or will evil. I think that's a natural vacillation that can't be overcome easily or quickly, and the sacred texts inevitably reflect this reality.

- I think you're reading a lot of things between the lines that aren't there at all. For example:

he asserts that for Critical theory power is the central principle of society, and that it supersedes truth (such as that 2+2=4). But there is no central tenet of wokism arguing that 2+2 can equal anything we want it to (in spite of a handful of wokists who may or may not have made that claim), because critical theorists are realists, not radical relativists. — Joshs

Where does Barron claim that power supersedes truth for Critical theory? He points to the way that it can do that, and does do that for some Critical theorists. You seem to agree but want to dismiss that "handful of wokists."

Read more charitably, his point is that the broad genealogical lineage of wokism—especially its voluntaristic roots—is ordered towards the very things that we see in wokeism today.

Deconstruction shows what continues to bind together groups on either side of an oppositional divide, so one can never simply overcome what one opposes. — Joshs

Now apply that to your post, because you transgress this principle multiple times. You say, for example, that Derrida was critical of Marxism and therefore Marxism cannot be used to explain his thought. On the contrary, a critic of Marxism is by that very fact informed by Marxism - especially one who holds that one can never simply overcome what one opposes.

The first factual error I noticed is that he claims Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault belong to the Frankfurt school of critical theory (he says Derrida is the patron saint of critical theory) , which is not true. Instead, they were critical of Marxism and the Frankfurt school. — Joshs

Here's Wikipedia, which sort of sums up the way in which your post is filled with half-truths:

Critical theory continued to evolve beyond the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Jürgen Habermas, often identified with the second generation, shifted the focus toward communication and the role of language in social emancipation. Around the same time, post-structuralist and postmodern thinkers, including Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, were reshaping academic discourse with critiques of knowledge, meaning, power, institutions, and social control with deconstructive approaches that further challenged assumptions about objectivity and truth. Though neither Foucault nor Derrida belonged formally to the Frankfurt School tradition, their works profoundly influenced later formulations of critical theory. Collectively, the post-structuralist and postmodern insights expanded the scope of critical theory, weaving cultural and linguistic critiques into its Marxian roots. — Critical Theory | Wikipedia

As someone who began studying for his doctorate in Paris in 1989, Barron knows a fair bit about figures like Foucault and Derrida. He is probably not as up to date on your wheelhouse of "enactivism" given that that is a more recent movement, but I doubt his genealogy requires such a thing.

It's good of you to watch the video, and I would be interested to know if you think he identifies a philosophical root of wokeism that is inaccurate. But the things you are bringing up now read like quibbles, such as the idea that Derrida is not central to Critical theory because he did not formally belong to the Frankfurt School.

Edit:

critical theorists are realists — Joshs

This seems highly inaccurate to me, so after finding no evidence of this I queried Perplexity.ai:

Are critical theorists realists?

Critical theorists and realists are distinct groups, but there is overlap between some critical approaches and a philosophical position known as critical realism. In general, most critical theorists are not realists in the traditional philosophical sense—especially within the Frankfurt School tradition and related approaches, which often critique the very idea of objective reality and emphasize the role of social constructions and power in shaping what counts as "truth"... — Perplexity AI

So my intimation that your claim is highly inaccurate is now stronger. Note too that the folks on TPF who gravitate towards Critical theory generally do not consider themselves realists.

Probably a lot of ground-team type personalities reject current "woke" but still stand ten-toes deep on the original concept. — AmadeusD

True, and that seems to be one of the elephants in the room. I wonder if any within this thread would say that wokeness never got off the rails?