Comparison to absolute? What does that mean? — hypericin

This was the exchange:

• Leontiskos: Someone who desires art will hold that what is more artistic is better than what is less artistic.
• Hypericin: A critic might say, "though the piece is obviously artistic, I don't care for it".

In order to give a valid counterargument you must give an example where someone who desires art holds that what is less artistic is better than what is more artistic. You didn't. You simply gave an example of someone who doesn't like a piece of art. You would have to give an example of an artist who is looking at two pieces of art, says that the first piece is more artistic than the second, and nevertheless holds that the second is better qua art. When we are talking about "better art" we are obviously talking about "better qua art." When you say that someone might prefer an artistically inferior meal to the Michelin meal, you are conflating 'better' qua art with 'better' in some other sense.

How? I don't see it.

Out "notable agreement" speaks only to identity, not quality. It seems you can't stop conflating the two, if you think otherwise. Is the word "qualifies" throwing you off? — hypericin

So:

(A notable point of agreement here may be this: That which barely qualifies as art at all is much more likely to be mistaken for non-art than something which readily qualifies as art, and the person who makes a mistake with regard to the former is much less mistaken than the person who makes a mistake with regard to the latter.) — Leontiskos

On your account, how is it that these two things are true? If the two categories were neatly separate then why are they interrelated in these ways? This is the same question I asked at the bottom of .

Is the word "qualifies" throwing you off? — hypericin

No, the problem is the word "barely," which implies that some things qualify as art less than others. You began using that word when you talked about, "barely belonging to the category at all."

Sorry for the delay, I was camping and wasn't on here much. — hypericin

No worries, although I have lost the thread a little bit.

Someone who desires art will hold that what is more artistic is better than what is less artistic. — Leontiskos

Not true, even though "artistic" is a poor choice of words on my part.

A critic might say, "though the piece is obviously artistic, I don't care for it". This reads normally enough to me. — hypericin

You've switched from a comparison to an absolute. What I said did not imply that an artist must care for every piece of art.

But "artistic" is a bad choice because it not only means "art-like, belonging to the category of art", there are strong positive connotations about quality. — hypericin

I don't think it's a coincidence. What is less obviously art is less art, and what is more obviously art is more art. The semantics of "artistic" simply capture this, and it's no coincidence that "artsy" is much close to slang. Your idea that what counts as art and what counts as good art are two entirely separate issues looks to be mistaken, and one way to see this is by looking at our "notable point of agreement":

(A notable point of agreement here may be this: That which barely qualifies as art at all is much more likely to be mistaken for non-art than something which readily qualifies as art, and the person who makes a mistake with regard to the former is much less mistaken than the person who makes a mistake with regard to the latter.) — Leontiskos

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"Someone who desires art will hold that what is more art-like is better than what is less art-like." Is clearly false. — hypericin

Again, your counterexample is not valid.

Better art does not belong to the category of art more than lesser art. — hypericin

It does.

Either it belongs, it doesn't, or it's marginal. — hypericin

This is not correct. You've been asserting this over and over.

Art-likeness is distinct from quality, and it, not quality, determines whether something is art or not. Do you agree? — hypericin

Art-likeness is not a word, and there's a reason for that. You could make up a word for that which denotes species but not quality, and your statement would be tautologous. That's more or less what you have done.

Great—likely, we’re now much closer to a more nuanced and developed approach to the phenomenon of wokeness. What you describe as “neglect is volitional, albeit indirectly volitional. The short-circuit is favored” corresponds to our response to the pressures of immediate situations. We are constantly required to make decisions about complex matters within very short time spans. — Number2018

Right, and it also corresponds to 's essay about the way that modern technologies promote and exacerbate this tendency.

As a result, many of our decisions become automatized, almost unconscious. This condition affects not only those identified as “woke” but all of us. Woke individuals primarely remain anchored in a relatively localized domain, where they can continuously demonstrate their vigorous sense of moral rightness and commitment to justice. In doing so, they vividly illustrate how rationality can become subsumed by the impact of ‘the short-circuit’. — Number2018

I agree.

Hannah Arendt offered a remarkable account of Eichmann. However, it is not quite accurate to describe him as irrational—he was, in fact, following the bureaucratic logic of the Nazi regime. Most likely, his most consequential decision was joining the Nazi party. From that point on, he became a thoughtless functionary. But that pivotal decision was made at a more subtle level, shaped by unconscious affective forces rather than deliberate reasoning. — Number2018

Good, and we could agree with Hume at least on one point, namely that Eichmann's rationality was placed at the service of Nazism. Eichmann's reason became a slave to his passions, at least if we see Nazism as part of his passions. So Eichmann was involved in a lot of thought and reasoning about how to further his goal of Nazism, but in another sense he was being thoughtless and irrational.

Yes, like we all do in adolescence. — Fire Ologist

Or when we're tired. :lol:

The emotional response to systemic power differences usurps good judgement. — Fire Ologist

Yes.

I think the objection from @Antony Nickles is somewhat related to ad hoc reasoning. A critique or even assessment of wokeness can feel ad hoc (and therefore unsympathetic) if it is not situated within a broader theory of error or understanding/assessing. So perhaps it will help for me to acknowledge that the general error of the woke is not only found elsewhere, but is actually the basis for almost all bad/evil acts of judgment whatsoever. Almost every time we make a true mistake we are involved in this form of neglect.

(The exception for Aquinas is malice, namely when one sees clearly that their act is wrong and they do it anyway. With negligence that clear sight is not in place, and this is the more common case.)

Right, and I was thinking more in terms of breaking off a tangent from an existing thread, but it could also be used to survey interest in an altogether new topic. :up:

I just wanted to make this thread available for future use.

You may be right this; I had thought we were getting somewhere, but getting to what counts for woke, much less to judge if it has ended, has been harder than I considered. — Antony Nickles

Fair enough. :up:

I must apologize for this; it was a joke, in bad taste, which I thought was clear, as you seemed hell-bent on assuming I was somehow, in not attacking your argument, I was attacking you, your character, or your ability to judge at all. Poorly done on my part. — Antony Nickles

No worries. I actually thought you were trying to be polite. I suppose my point is that one can critique someone's judgment or even their character without falling into ad hominem. For example, if my judgment is consistently premature on some given topic then I may well need to consider my ability to judge that sort of topic, or the character that gives rise to such judgments. There is nothing inconsistent in this given that the affective critique of wokeness is similar, and is by definition going to go beyond the merely rational. To critique a movement on affective grounds will certainly look like ad hominem to the untrained eye.

Of course I was saying judgment was being made prematurely, but not any particular judgments, other than the assumption of the rational-irrational dichotomy, which, as I said, is how I got started... — Antony Nickles

Yes, I am going to try to revisit some of your early posts where you talk about that rational-irrational dichotomy. :up:

You're right—and that's likely why I introduced a new example myself: the case of Eichmann. — Number2018

In this context, Eichmann's case can become a paradigmatic example. My knowledge of the case is based primarily on Hannah Arendt’s account. “He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing… It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed [Eichmann] to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. … That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together.” (Arendt, ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil’, pg 36) — Number2018

I think this could be helpful. I would actually follow Aquinas to a conclusion slightly different from Arendt's. For Aquinas the evil of error is primarily a matter of neglect. For example, when you are excited to visit your beloved you might speed and "forget" the speed limit. You haven't really forgotten it since it's still there in the back of your mind, but you're neglecting it. More generally, there is a sense in which you are capable of following the speed limit and yet choose not to.

One could cash that out in terms of "thoughtlessness," but I think what is happening is more subtle. A kind of short-circuit occurs in the judgment such that one goal is prioritized to such an extent that other goals are ignored (which in this case is a restriction-goal: not-speeding). I agree that this is all deeply bound up with affectivity and the passions, but the moral point I would emphasize is that neglect is volitional, albeit indirectly volitional. The short-circuit is favored. The lover neglects to obey or even consider the rationale for not-speeding, or else he neglects to obey or even consider the cause(s) that would either allow him to consider that rationale, or which obstruct him from being able to consider that rationale.

The affectivity of this case is a kind of obstruction to the judgment, and one which in fact pleases the lover. Without that obstruction he would need to slow down and he would thus delay his union with his beloved. So there is a complex intertwining and mixing of the rationality and the affectivity, and yet the lover who speeds has prioritized his affectivity whereas the lover who does not speed has prioritized his rationality (or has prioritized the broader context of goals by not allowing one to dominate the others). This prioritization often happens over years or decades, fusing with habit and ways of living, and this is why it is so hard to remove ingrained habits or addictions.

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I answer that, A sin is an inordinate act. Accordingly, so far as it is an act, it can have a direct cause, even as any other act; but, so far as it is inordinate, it has a cause, in the same way as a negation or privation can have a cause. Now two causes may be assigned to a negation: in the first place, absence of the cause of affirmation; i.e. the negation of the cause itself, is the cause of the negation in itself; since the result of the removing the cause is the removal of the effect: thus the absence of the sun is the cause of darkness. In the second place, the cause of an affirmation, of which a negation is a sequel, is the accidental cause of the resulting negation: thus fire by causing heat in virtue of its principal tendency, consequently causes a privation of cold. The first of these suffices to cause a simple negation. But, since the inordinateness of sin and of every evil is not a simple negation, but the privation of that which something ought naturally to have, such an inordinateness must needs have an accidental efficient cause. For that which naturally is and ought to be in a thing, is never lacking except on account of some impeding cause. And accordingly we are wont to say that evil, which consists in a certain privation, has a deficient cause, or an accidental efficient cause. Now every accidental cause is reducible to the direct cause. Since then sin, on the part of its inordinateness, has an accidental efficient cause, and on the part of the act, a direct efficient cause, it follows that the inordinateness of sin is a result of the cause of the act. Accordingly then, the will lacking the direction of the rule of reason and of the Divine law, and intent on some mutable good, causes the act of sin directly, and the inordinateness of the act, indirectly, and beside the intention: for the lack of order in the act results from the lack of direction in the will. — Aquinas, ST I-II.75.1 - Whether sin has a cause?

...That gets a bit complicated, but the point is that sin has to do with inordinateness, and that therefore the goal ("good") causes the inordinateness of the act indirectly, beside the intention. What is at stake is a lack of order, not simple thoughtlessness. The lover has failed to order his activity according to the speed limit law; that he has done so is beside his intention; and nevertheless he is still morally culpable for this neglect.

Let’s assume that I am uncertain about what woke is (it seems not far from the truth); think about the criteria you would explain to me so I would be able to tell it from something else I would know that is close to it and/or opposite to it (as we were doing with work experience vs lived experience). — Antony Nickles

I thought lived experience was a woke thing, but I am more than willing to admit I don’t know what I am talking about, or I picked the wrong context. — Antony Nickles

I thought I was speaking Klingon. Yes. How do we tell? What matters to (in judging) it being “woke”? — Antony Nickles

I would say woke has to do with systemic discrimination or systemic inequality, as seen in things like DEI. The woke person thinks there are societal problems that most people are blind or asleep to, and this usually cashes out as what is "systemic," such as "systemic racism."

The whole issue revolves around the question, "How much of a good thing is too much?" Everyone agrees that it is good to oppose certain forms of discrimination or inequality, to a certain extent. The critique of the woke is that they go too far, failing to make proper distinctions and failing to take into account an organic system of competing values. They become affectively set on one value or goal to the detriment of all others.

@Antony Nickles

You want to take a step back to a meta-level, such as <Nathan Jacobs> describes. The problem is that I disagree with the step back you want to take. You think that if we take the time to look at an example we will understand wokeness differently, or else that we will have a more sufficient understanding unto judgment.

I could offer a different step back which responds to your own reasons for wanting to take a step back. The problem is that I think we are <derailing the thread>. Note too that as someone who thinks wokeness is being approached inappropriately in this thread, you wish for the inappropriate approach to cease or to be replaced by a better approach. By constantly attempting to change the subject and introduce new topics or examples, you have effectively ceased the discussion of wokeness that the thread is about. Whether intentional or not, you have effectively derailed the thread from the topic of the OP. Perhaps the tangent would arrive back at the topic of the thread, and perhaps it wouldn’t. Either way, the discussion of the topic of the OP has ceased for very many pages now.

But if we don’t want to create a new thread—and I don’t necessarily have the time to field it—then I can outline the “step back” that I would offer in response to your own jockeying for a “step back.” The key error I see in your approach is your premise which says, “People often make premature judgments, but no one is doing that here.” If people often make premature judgments, then we are not immune; and if you think we need to reconsider the whole issue from a different vantage point, then you probably think we are making premature judgments. Although politeness and tact have their place, we simply cannot traverse this terrain without forthrightly acknowledging that a premature judgment is at stake, and may be being made. If you were to simply bite the bullet and raise this issue of premature judgment, all of the problems with coercion and double standards I have been pointing out would evaporate. This is because we both agree that premature judgments are inappropriate, and therefore in that case we have the same end rather than a coercive or imposed end (similar to my point to Banno <here>).

Besides that, the deeper deeper problem is one of error: what it is, how to address it, how to accuse others of error and then bring them around to a proper understanding, etc. When error is correctable it involves an inconsistency, and the error is removed when the inconsistency is resolved in the right direction. So if you think premature judgments are being made with respect to wokeness, and your interlocutor agrees that premature judgments are impermissible, then if you are able to show your interlocutor that he is making a premature judgment with respect to wokeness he will be have corrected his error. Or if my interlocutor agrees that coercion is impermissible in the sphere of philosophy, and I am able to show him that he is involved in coercion, then he will amend his approach. Yet—not unlike wokeness—there is an affective impediment within our culture to the idea that error concretely exists either in ourselves or in our interlocutors.* This is related to a pluralism which does not want to deem anyone to be wrong.

(Note that this is very similar to what I have run up against in @J's approach to philosophy).

* The great thing about your disposition is that you never double down on the double standard of coercion. You are the first one on TPF who did not do this, and it took me by surprise. When I point out to others their double standard of coercion, they conveniently ignore the point for hundreds of pages, in fact never owning up to it at all.

I assumed that considering using lived experience as a criteria for appointment to a board would be something that would at issue here. As I said, feel free to chose a different example that involves indecision on how to move forward. Having a situation only matters in that we would have existing criteria for doing something, but that there is either something happening that we haven’t considered or new criteria being suggested, etc. that make us uncertain as to how to continue, but, from where we are (lost). I am suggesting that, instead of assuming we understand the criteria and the interests they reflect, we actually investigate a situation with this uncertainty to use the criteria as a way in… — Antony Nickles

Okay, so it looks like you are doing something like this:

1. In the case of wokeness we are uncertain of how to proceed
2. In the case of the board hire they are uncertain of how to proceed
3. Therefore, there is a similarity or analogy between the two cases, where one will help shed light on another

That is helpful, because it gives a kind of rationale for the board example. Yet the difficulty is that I do not understand why you hold to (1). What is uncertain about the topic of this thread, wokeness? Curiously enough, this thread has some of the strongest consensus I have ever seen on TPF. There is very little uncertainty of how to proceed. People from all different philosophical and political backgrounds are agreeing that there are problems with wokeness, and they are in large agreement on what those problems are. So your notion that there is uncertainty about how to proceed does not seem to be in evidence. Could you explain where it is coming from?

wanting to first decide what we are going to do, or imposing criteria for how to decide that, is to skip over examining, in a sense, how the world works. — Antony Nickles

I don't think that's right at all. If we don't know what we want to do, then we don't know what we are doing. But it seems that most all of us in the thread know what we are doing, including the OP. We know the basic genre of activity we are engaged in. To question the idea that we have even this faintest idea of what we are doing seems like a very implausible form of skepticism.

In your board example the board already knows what it is going to do. It is going to hire someone. It just doesn't know who. At least one goal is always in place before we deliberate.

I am simply asking for a good faith effort to try — Antony Nickles

As I have said, if you give us a reason to look for examples of cases where one is uncertain how to proceed, then we will be more likely to engage in efforts to look for examples of cases where one is uncertain how to proceed.

(Is guilting someone coercion?) — Antony Nickles

No, because guilt is self-imposed. Such is an appeal to a principle the person themselves recognizes, not an imposition of a principle.

And my suggestion is to look at the criteria for judging in a particular case (not justifications for x) to find out what is at stake (what is essential about it), as if we don’t yet know, and so would be trying to decide what to do blind (even about a goal). — Antony Nickles

But I think your idea that we will be able to decide what to do without a goal is simply incoherent, and I think any attempt to try to decide what to do without a goal will be wasted time. So I don't want to adopt your premise that one can decide what to do without a goal. I want you to argue for your unintuitive premise, or at least give me a counterexample where someone is trying to decide what to do without a goal.

@Antony Nickles

It is incredibly common on TPF for people to give "random" scenarios such as the board, which then turn out to involve petitio principii, even unbeknownst to them. This happened recently when Srap wanted to frame an issue in terms of moving from one town to another, but in the end his framing . He styled himself as a neutral party, but it turned out he wasn't, which is not surprising. Neutral parties are rare when it comes to these issues where we must all make decisions about the thing at stake. That's why you have to give a rationale for the relevance of your example (analogy?). No one just gives random examples for no reason. I desire transparency.

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

Can you point me to the post where you provide reasons for why we ought to take a step back? — Leontiskos

My first post was to get at why “rational/irrational” gets in the way, and to suggest a way around that, but I think I did such a poor job of it, not expecting confusion in the right places, that I think it better to just see what I am doing in, participate in the method of, the example and maybe hold off of on the larger philosophical issues; — Antony Nickles

So are you saying that you don't really know of a place where you provide reasons for why we ought to take a step back? Again, I don't know what your example is supposed to show. I don't know how it counts as a reason.

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Okay, but how they decide (what is important in deciding) is based on criteria. Contributing to their goals is one criteria (do we have a goal that each other criteria satisfy? “Our goal is to have someone with work experience” How is that saying something different?). There are no more? — Antony Nickles

If you think there is a criterion that is unrelated to the board's goal, then what would that criterion be?

Appointing someone to a board based on "lived experience" is not relevant? — Antony Nickles

I'm asking you to tell us why it is relevant. This is the same issue we ran into earlier. You want us to do something but you won't tell us why. "Let's change our goal." "Why?" "Let's talk about a board." "Why?" It seems to me that just telling people to do things for no reason is coercive, and this is incompatible with philosophy. If you were my Zen master then you could just tell me to do something and I would do it, no questions asked. Or if I accepted your arguments from your own authority, then you could just tell me to do something. In both cases I would trust that you are leading me where I ultimately want to go. But I don't see you as an intrinsic authority who can just give directions without any rationale. So if you want us to talk about a board, then you have to tell us why. Again, should we start talking about surfing? Would I need to provide a reason if I said that?

How is talking about a board going to help us get to where we want to go? How is it related to the topic of this thread, and not a derailment? "Just trust me" is not a reason.

As I said, any other examples are fine by me. (except surfing, though I know there's a joke in there somewhere) — Antony Nickles

Why not surfing? That is precisely the sort of question you need to answer. If you can propose boards for no reason at all, then why can't I propose surfing for no reason at all? If we've done away with reasons then what's the difference?

I’m not attacking a strawman or anything else. I’m merely voicing the opinion that the fundamental conflict is between hierarchical vertical thinking and egalitarian horizontal thinking. — praxis

I don't disagree that the conflict is bound up with that polarity. Let's revisit what you said here:

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. While that may be a compelling theological claim, it also implies a preference for maintaining a vertically structured society. And in any vertical structure, there is always a lower class. — praxis

So in Barron's "vertical structure" where justice is good and injustice is bad, the thief is forced to answer to the non-thieves, i.e. he is punished for stealing. That's true, and perhaps it's no coincidence that many of the woke do not believe in theft.

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

Well, if you were "merely voicing the opinion [above]," then I don't think you would be using the word "key." That word implies that the non-woke is using hierarchy as a means to their desired end of power stratification. A hierarchy of value results in normative structures and "power stratification" (such as the case where the thief and the non-thief are viewed differently), but I think it is a strawman to impute bad intentions here, as if "power stratification" is the desired end.

But here's a question for you. Take the wokist and place them in every possible world. Is there any possible world where they look around and say, "Ah, there is no power stratification in this world and therefore my wokeness will lie dormant"?

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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: