Comments

  • The End of Woke
    in reference to the Kids in the Hall skit.praxis

    Answering the question was apparently a struggle.praxis

    Likely, because non-Woke don't suppose to tell what others should do most of the time. But yeah, it's better for their mental health if they ignore it. That isn't hard at all.

    in reference to the Kids in the Hall skit.praxis

    I don't know where you are in the conversation but this isn't where i am. You explicitly stated "Andrew Doyle" in the comment I linked from. Earnest critique is not mockery still stands, and I'm not sure why you thought I was talking about the Skit as I linked from your comment about Doyle and mockery.

    it needed to apologize and correct the recordMijin

    No, that is not what I said. The paper noted that the "uproar" was a myth. It was. Entirely. I was there. There was never any significant issue around Winterval, unless you were not paying much attention to anything else. It seems the Daily Mail got you with this, and now you're upset over something which didn't actually happen.

    But oh it was just a momentary thing in 1998Mijin

    This is not a good faith exchange, it seems. Moving goalposts wont work too well around here.

    Deeply ironic that you can’t say “white supremacy“ anymore.praxis

    Who can't? It's all over the fucking place. What are you talking about?
  • The End of Woke
    Its essentially an urban myth that Winterval caused any uproar. What actually happened was, initially, nothing at all. In 1998 a Bishop made some stupid comments and less than 4000 people signed a Petition that went nowhere. I lived in Worcester at the time.

    The hang-over is the resulting myth you've outlined above, which is not supported by the actual history of the matter. The Daily Mail itself outed it's behaviour as click-baiting in 2011, labeling the issue as a myth. It was never interesting, beyond the original comments by the Bishop. It has remained as some kind of distorted catch-all for PC gone mad, though.

    ham-fisted attempts at diversity in some cases, but they are few and far betweenMijin

    Is this to be troll-ish? There are plenty of ham-fisted attempts at diversity. One only need look at cinema for plenty. Those are trivial, to be sure, but illustrates that hte above is a bit naive.
  • The End of Woke
    I would suggest "beyond me", for you at this stage.
  • The End of Woke
    *facepalm*.

    And the examples write themselves.
  • The Question of Causation
    Thus to say that causality occurs between physical objects does not seem to prove that causality is physical, unless by "is physical" we only mean, "occurring between two physical objects."Leontiskos

    I think this is entirely wrong. We're looking at something observable, not abstract. We need to look at what actually happens in the world. Causation happens between physical objects, in a physical world with no evidence of any non-physical attribute involved. Philosophers don't seem to even think this is a coherent claim of a possible reality. I again want to bring in Jaegwon Kim and his pretty tireless arguments around trying to ascertain a non-physical mode of causation and landing on Supervenience of something undescribed as the only way out of hte physicalist corner. I tend to think no one has gotten further. I can't understand how you're getting yourself off hte ground, yet, though I find all of the discussions interesting. What we have to 'fall back on' as it were, is not something that points to causality being non-physical. And we don't seem to have much better than a fall-back. I do not know of any example of non-physical causation (mental causation is likely physical, reducible).

    If there is no reason to claim that causality is physical, and there is no reason to consider a non-physical basis for energy transfer, then why not simply abstain from affirming either of those things?Leontiskos

    I disagree with the former, so maybe we are on different pages here. I've not affirmed either, though. There is reason for the first claim, and no reason for the second, both of which support the first. That's as far as I'll go.

    Note though that if you think energy transfer is the transfer of physical matter, then it seems that you do think energy is a physical object, even though you said, "Energy is not a physical object, and no one claims it is." This is a large part of the difficulty.Leontiskos

    Its not difficult. I had assumed this would be intuitive.
    "energy" is a description of effects gained by the interactions of bits of matter. That "energy" is not an object, or a "thing" at all. But it obtains in the transfer described (i mean, it could be that "charge" is what transfers as, in that way, if its not the particles themselves, we may have more to discuss and might be hte page you're on).

    The concept of "capacity to do work" (energy) is not physical matter, and yet you think the transfer of energy is the transfer of physical matter.Leontiskos

    The above should sort this out. The capacity to do work is exactly represented by hte physical attributes of the matter in question.

    It is a Cambridge property.Leontiskos

    Very hard disagree, which should but paid to that part of the discussion. Something's position in space and time are properties of it. An apple has to be an apple at a certain time, in a certain place. It cannot simply be 'an apple'. That doesn't exist, anywhere. If you take away the spatio-temporal description of a physical object, you lose the ability to claim it as extant (on our current knowledge). This doesn't seem at all unusual or controversial to me.

    Does the physicist see the "spacetime fabric" as physical? In what sense is it said to be physical? We can surely stretch the word "physical" far beyond what we ever generally mean by it, but I am not much interested in that approach.Leontiskos

    This is interesting. I think, yes, they do. I think intuitively, most would. I cannot understand the underlying strata of the universe not being physical. We are in a physical universe. If you're going to posit otherwise, You need to explain how to get from that, to this physical universe. No one can do that. So it doesn't make any sense to me to go down that route (at this time) despite it being interesting, to some degree or another. We don't live in a non-physical universe. Its actually hard to even point to a non-physical thing in it (Though, i understand a few good candidates about). I guess, on similar thinking to some of your replies, I'm not prepared to look at some physical force like gravity and entertain that it isn't physical, yet. We have zero avenue to explain try to explain that. The other option is weird and difficult, but i prefer that currently.

    I still don't see that (4) follows. There is no sufficient reason to believe that the (causal) interaction is itself physical.Leontiskos

    There is no reason to think it isn't is my position(and good reason to think it is). It obtains within a physical system, between two physical objects in a physical event with no indication anything else is involved. When you adjust any physical parameter, the result differs.
    At the very least, this should be accepted as the best explanation we have. Speculation abound, for sure. But there's nothing here that makes me think its even reasonable to start looking for an non-physical answer (except perhaps impatience, which isn't the worst reason, tbf).

    This form of reasoning does not seem to be valid.Leontiskos

    Because it isn't. I didn't mention material. I mentioned mode. Theres a gulf between the two "reasonings" you've put up, which are non invalid, but essentially tautological (or self-evident in some other way). The reasoning I gave speaks about mode not content. If the lines in the previous paragraph I've written above about why we have no reason to think about non-physical causation occurring go through, then the content is irrelevant. Any event which can described on that term would adhere to that reasoning. I would want to say calling something "human" is hugely different to calling something "physical". Largely, because in your examples, everything reduces to the physical explanations underlying those words.

    Causation is not ... physicalLeontiskos

    But that begs the question. I can't quite wrangle something helpful out of this explicative section..

    If we just assume that everything is physical, including causality, then we lead ourselves into absurdities. In this case it is the absurdity which makes interactions the same kind of thing as that which interacts.Leontiskos

    Evidenced by this (out of order, sorry) making no sense to me. We don't "assume". We investigate and find nothing but physical interaction surrounding all change we see in the physical world. We are given no material on which we can explore a non-physical basis (descriptively) of causation. We may not have good answers, but we certainly don't have any reason to move off the line currently. Again, it's interesting to entertain and may well at some stage become something we can adequately explore, but we have nothing on which we can do so currently but speculation.

    but it is still improper to say that the collision is itself phenolic resin.Leontiskos

    I am unsure it is. But its not saying the same thing as calling hte collision physical. They are asking different things. The collision between two balls of phenolic resin is clearly phenolic resin (they are just in contact with each other - changing nothing about the material we're wanting to name). The mode is different, as I see it and requires a different answer.

    I think its possible you are just flat-out wrong about what physicists would say about a collision. I also don't think that has much to do with our discussion. Whether a physicist says x y z doesn't quite change anything in the world. Unless you're a total Continental.

    is a strange and ambiguous phrase.Leontiskos

    Not at all. You just picked up something wrong in it. It means to deducible entirely in physical terms, from physical activity, assessed in physical terms against other physical activity. If you want to say the deduction isn't physical (because mental) I put the conversation down, as that's a very different thing for another time imo. Fraught, and something I'm only really getting into currently (that is, why it seems mental causation is a misnomer.
  • The imperfect transporter
    How many of your atoms, and why does it matter?Mijin

    You really need to re-read this exchange. This is no longer a relevant question, and its one I've directly answered in two different ways. Please review.

    just spitting your atoms across space and reassembling themMijin

    I can't understand what you're trying to describe here. This doesn't seem to say anything that could result in the experiment we're talking about. Can you please be clearer?

    i am just saying that bodily continuity (or identity...I didn't really follow the distinction) is not as straightforward
    an answer as might first appear
    Mijin

    This makes the preceding far more perplexing then.

    I think its entirely straightforward and have given you the reasons why. Its an air-tight reason. You can reject it though. It doesn't bare this sort of scrutiny because its a brute claim. Numeral identity is what is required for bodily continuity to be the source of "me" along all the constituents of "me" at any given time. This is not a logical claim, other than that "if true" its a logical dead-end for identity discussions. In any case I don't think this constitutes Identity so not sure where you're going..

    Right now I am Mijin, and Mijin is meMijin

    Hmm. Unfortunately, I think logically, No. This instantiates that you are two people. Unless you hold that are, in fact, two people (you seem to rejecting that) at all times, all the follow-ons from that position fail immediately. Mijin is all of the things you see as "yourself" at the same time as they are one-and-the-same thing. That is exactly why it's so hard to sort this stuff out. If we had two aspects to ourselves, it would be much easier to talk about because we could have criteria for each. But Identity is, by definition singular. (this is out of order, because the next reply is hte meatier)

    It doesn't solve the problem, it avoids it.Mijin

    I cannot understand what you're talking about. The analogy is that it is not relevant how many ,or which atoms are involved. For two reasons. Both of which make this an utterly ridiculous question (to me... it may be entirely reasonable on your understanding of what i've said). These are:

    1. It had nothing whatsoever to do with consciousness. You questioned me the position that to answer to bodily continuity claims which get murky, we can say 'You are not the exact atoms I am, therefore you are not me'. There isn't wiggle room. "the exact atoms". It is now incoherent to ask the questions you're asking; and
    2. It is 100% true, without any possible discussion, that people lose limbs, multiple limbs etc... and remain exactly the person they were (i.e John Smith, of 134 Arden Street, Baltimore, Maryland (or whatever.. Just making clera I do mean that person before and after the loss of limb/s)).

    Therefore I don't know what you're asking me to clarify. The answers are baked in to the position outlined. And again, to be clera (because this doens't seem to be landing) this is not my view of identity. I am answering the questions posed.
  • Free Speech - Absolutist VS Restrictive? (Poll included)
    I've not insulted you once. I've laid out exactly how incoherent your utterings are. They are, patently, out of step with reality. Everyone can see this but you. It is not incumbent on me to assuage your unregulated system of reason into thinking it makes any sense.

    You have continually side-stepped everything important to hold on to an obviously, demonstrably false belief in the face of overwhelming examples of both of those claims. This is no one's problem but yours. If your feathers are ruffled (they clearly are) its becuase your beliefs are absolute nonsense and you are perhaps realizing it. This is no one's issue but yours.
  • The End of Woke
    Could you perhaps refrain from not answering anything, and just throwing these sorts of things out? I'm trying to understand you, but you seem to want to do nothing at all but smear responses..

    Absolute bullshit. Earnestly critiquing something is not mockery. If you feel its mockery., maybe just notice how earnest critique makes it look. Silly.
  • The imperfect transporter
    You're alluding to bodily continuity, so I am asking follow up questions of why bodily continuity is critical.Mijin

    I am not. I am alluding to bodily identity. It is subtle, to be fair but distinct issues, imo.

    A perfect replica is still a replica. Is that a bit clearer? If you are not the exact atoms that make up my body, you couldn't be me. You could be a replica.

    Consciousness coming along with it is a bit of an "in the weeds" thing for this specific claim. It was a response to one of your own comments and why I think the spatiotemporal consideration is strong. I think it is correct that even if the replica has your psychology, they cannot be you because of this. They occupy different space (and time). Also, immediately after they become conscious, their memories no longer mirror yours (again, that's partially "in the weeds").

    Hard disagree.Mijin

    Hold up (because your explication doesn't touch on this). You disagree that someone who loses their legs (or other body parts) is still hte same person? If you don't disagree with that, then my argument goes through wholesale. Disagreements about "where the line is" aren't quite on the table yet, as i've resiled into a larger context to make the point I'm making. There is no specific point. People lose atoms and gain atoms constantly, with no change to their (intuitive) identity. If you disagree with that.. onward..

    But if we have a good model of personal identity we shouldn't need to dodge; we should be able to apply our model.Mijin

    I don't think we do. I think all non-further fact models fail entirely. I am not arguing that bodily continuity constitutes identity. I am suggesting that:

    1. Bodily continuity is thought about wrongly (i.e without the spatio-temporal aspect here noted); and
    2. That all this does is defeat certain claims (bodily continuity ones).

    Perhaps you've misunderstood me.

    arguably Mijin but not meMijin

    But if you are identical with Mijin, then no, that's not possible. I understand you to be saying that the qualifiers you're using make this possible. But that means there are two identities, which is again, intuitively hogwash. There can't be two yous. There can be two Mijins which are not identical.
  • Free Speech - Absolutist VS Restrictive? (Poll included)
    Do you believe that I am not my cardiac and nervous systems?NOS4A2

    You don't control it. And no, you are not that. It is something which happens in your body without your knowledge. Unless you believe you consist in simply your body. In which case you've an uphill battle to prevent me from laughing at how dumb that response was.

    You're now arguing with ghosts. That is uninteresting, deceitful and far below you. The next comment seems to prove that. You do not grasp reality, and these facts we're discussing. You're just making claims. No one takes it serously. We're trying to help you. It's like talking to my seven year old.
  • The End of Woke
    I should have said “as we are imagining”, but I thought I made it clear that what the board wants was to add another member, and we were considering the criteria they would use, the traditional ones and what would be the criteria to judge how lived experience would have value for the board, how they would decide whether to choose the new member based on it.Antony Nickles

    I really don't think you're grasping the responses to your point. This one is a prime example. Why are they adding a new member? And if there's no particular reason (perhaps there's simply an empty space) then we need to know what hte board intends to do. You are removing any possibility for motivation, and hten asking for motivating criteria. This is nonsensical, as best I can tell.

    what it applies toAntony Nickles

    This is the closest to something we've seen, I think. But all I could put under this head is that "lived experience" is worthless unless directed at some pre-existing intention, generally, an informational one. Without a pre-understood goal, aim or purpose for the experience to inform, there is nothing to be spoken about.

    I’m sorry if you didn’t get anything out of it, but I stilI appreciate your participationAntony Nickles

    I very much appreciate the exchange too. I'm just finding it genuinely really, really really hard to see how this impasse even exists.

    Do we agree we need reasons to do things? Those are goals
    Do we agree that those reasons can be understood? These are motivations.
    Do we then agree that any methods need be aligned with motivations, in order to achieve goals?

    If this is hte case, it is patent that you started a step above the ground, but wanted a view of the ground. Maybe we can just sort that out, and the rest will fall into place.


    I can't understand that either of those lines are responses to the issue, other than to again attempt to make a principled approach to separating male and female sports seem silly. But it's intuitively, and reasonably not silly. Could you maybe make clearer what it was you were trying to say here? The logic is the same.. That one is a contact sport doesn't make a difference to that.

    I don't know what scenario you're talking about. If you mentioned one, I would have purposefully ignored it because the content is irrelevant. I think Jesse Lee Peterson is one of the most outrageous commentators out there. But he is obviously correct about some things.
  • Bannings
    That was a bad move, but thanks for hte clarification.
  • The imperfect transporter
    But why? What is it that your specific atoms contain that hold your "essence"?Mijin

    I didn't content they did. Not sure where this is coming from.

    And how many such atoms need to be moved across for you to still be alive? Will 95% do it? 99%?Mijin

    This doesn't have much relevance to my position, or the claim, to be clear. For sake of discussion, there will be no specific amount. You can lose both legs and still be alive, and you. It's a silly question, in context. That's not the belittle it. It just has no reasonable avenue to a response.

    Whether my first-person perspective still exists or not matters a hell of a lot to me!Mijin

    Yes, indeed. And this is why my response to the branch line case is attractive to me. It removes the potential for my first-person to disappear, but someone to still be me. Which seems ridiculous and intuitively hogwash.
  • Free Speech - Absolutist VS Restrictive? (Poll included)
    If anything else in the universe that is not me can be shown to beat my heart I will concede. But if it is the case that the cardiac conduction system controls the heart rate, or branches of the nervous system, you’ll be left trying to prove how I am neither my heart or my nervous system, advocating some sort of dualism. This is why I always repeat that free will is often an issue of identityNOS4A2

    You have explicitly moved the goal post. It is not under your volition. That is the point. You have no control over it (other than by brute force, which is present among all these arguments). You simply don't. It isn't even connected to your brain, so there's no way for you to control it. What's called the "intrinsic pacemaker" is what's making sure your heart keeps beating. You have no knowledge or control of this.

    Like I said before, you both control the amount of light that enters your eyes and direct the sounds that enter your earNOS4A2

    I see you don't grasp reality. That's fine.
  • The End of Woke
    I also think it is a characteristic of woke - if the other party doesn’t appear to agree with you, they must need to reevaluate their whole approach so let’s talk about that instead of whatever thing we both disagree with.Fire Ologist

    This is, expressly, the problem I am having (and one I wanted to highlight within 'woke'). That is ironic, unfortunately as I think it is what's happening. I can't understand Antony's intention anymore, given the responses which have been directly on point and either claiming we have done his dance, or that it is not really what we want to do. It seems the circles continue, but I have two further pages to read before hitting Post Comment.

    BTW - I do appreciate the effort, and I am working on a response.Antony Nickles

    Entirely reasonable, thank you.

    There was a big controversy about a transwoman being allowed to compete a couple years ago. Last year the world surfing league tightened up the requirements though, to appease the anti-woke. All that over 1 surfer, and a longboarder at that.praxis

    I take issue with trying to frame the opposing side as unreasonable in this particular way (its not always a sin). A single male surfer taking a female accolade is enough, on the "anti-woke" side (though, that's misleading of a label). A single harmed child will have us looking at child abuse law. A single dead engineer will have us overhauling H&S. A single female being abused or harmed by a male in the bathroom should have the same response, to be consistent, or discuss why they aren't similar. That last bit nveer gets done... And i can see several powerful responses (they just happen to not land for me). So, I think these sorts of arguments need to engage why that position is so reprehensible. "Oh its only x no. of people". Yes. But what those people are doing matters (and this isn't akin to an argument I am liable to make about prevalence causing alarm. We can ignore that, and assume its 1:1000000 for hte above to still run well, imo).

    Thus the importance to imagine a context in which people are trying to decide what to do where the value of those criteria (above) for deciding what to do, in that situation, is up for grabs.Antony Nickles

    I would suggest for myself, and I think Leon is on this page, that this is just ignorant (not in a personal sense). We do understand these things, and we do not need to reinvent the wheel. The tension is between competing arguments (not even interests. I've tried to make this clear but if not: If you aren't willing to state your goals then I can't get on with your arguments. If you wont give me your arguments, I can't assess them against anything. Your 'interest' wouldn't help because getting there is what's at stake, not "having interest" in x y or z policy for a, b or c reasons) and we can't assess arguments without knowing the goal the argument is meant to support.

    You have to make a proposition: Lived experience is a valuable aspect of a person's exploitable wisdom.

    We can get on with that. But you'll notice most arguments I have made (and, from what I see, Leon) address this squarely, and this is why we cannot understand why you're asking us to slow down the horses. If there is some significant different between "interest" and "goal" for you here, please make it explicit. I see the difference broadly, but for our purposes it just seems to be a difference in clarity:

    Interest (in): Not being subject to arbitrary search and seizure
    Goal: I am not liable to arbitrary search and seizure.

    The former is a desire which isn't particularly apt for policy. The latter is a goal which absolutely is (as the constitution will evidence). If you mean interest in a more legalese sort of why, I do not know what (extending hte metaphor) estate you could be claiming an interest in, to get this discussion off the ground, without creating a scenario of expressly competing interests in the way that "life" and "death" are express competitive notions. They cannot co-exist. The way I see this playing out is that if we had this discussion first we'd all be looking at similar things:

    For all to be treated with respect;
    For legitimate power to be wielded in the face of arbitrary disparity/force

    and all the rest that underpins most concepts of "policy". Once we have all this on the table, we can discuss what methods might get us there. The interests, themselves, don't tell us muc because we must break them down to this priors. If you're not looking for equality of opportunity, you can support many bigoted policies. If you're not looking for equality of outcome, you must drop some policies of force, as examples.

    How is talking about a board going to help us get to where we want to go?Leontiskos

    The veil of ignorance, i suspect, is at play. And its not the worst premise for a discussion of this kind. I just think Antony is importing (maybe unconsciously) plenty of goals which he/they (others, not a gender joke) implicitly carry, without these base discussions. I'm doing my utmost to ignore those voices and discuss with zero on hte table, to begin with. What do you want seems the right question.

    As a courtesy I will say in summary (though I will not argue it here, as I have spelled it out in length above), 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 worksAntony Nickles

    Do you not notice that this fizzles out into a total nothing by the end? "how the world works" is not a reference we can make any sense of in this context. What about it, are you referring to? Besides that, I think you're wrong.

    or draw in a certain demographic.Antony Nickles

    I think this is hte best argument for bringing in lived experience. The problem is that if that person is a dick, or a moron, or dishonest or any number of things, the board wont take their ideas on board very readily. If they are clearly bad economic ideas, or are typically irrelevant to the goal of the Board (quite common for DEI-type hires as best I can tell) then that person is ignored, and their complaints ring true to their politically-aligned based in that "See, they only hired me as a token for looks - they don't even take me seriously" where, you'll notice, there isn't even room for discussions of hte merits or relevance of the person's experiences.

    This is why goals are far, far, far more important than criteria.

    gets in the way of a broader practice of assessment.Antony Nickles

    I think this is the same mistake my would-be board member above is making: There is no reason to think that your descriptions here are in any way helpful to the goal you're after (coming to terms, it seems). But again, a perfect example of why not stating your goals clearly has muddied these waters. Your goal is "a process", not an end-point, so there's nothing we can adequately hold to the light for assessment. Your position seems to ruin the potential for a valid assessment.

    I think this fairly clearly sorts a couple of things out, but makes the above comments (immediately above) all the more apt: you are shying from an assessment by continually trying to bring our attention to that which we have already gone over. Perhaps this is not to your satisfaction, and so FireOlogist's comment I've quoted above comes in. If we don't agree, we must not understand. That seems wrong.

    This one is confusing. You seem to be saying that you posited a method, which I then carried out, while arguing against it. That's not the case. I ran with your example because you gave it. It should be clear I think its unhelpful and a bad example that leapfrogs the fundamental, base-level function of decision making: Goal orientation. If you're tlaking about how we decide on goals, that's really not what this thread or discussion are about. But it would explain the disconnect.

    hat would be valuable to get clear about before judging how the board would go forward and what that looks like here.Antony Nickles

    Without a clear, articulated goal, this isn't helpful and there is no meat. it is window-dressing for a show we're not part of.

    I would concede to suggestions from the group for agreement on a different example as long as it is a situation (not an “issue” abstracted from any sense of a possible context) about how to decide what to do in a particular case, i.e, with competing, say old vs new, criteria.Antony Nickles

    Then, unfortunately, I do not think you are here in good faith. That is specifically not what's at stake in the discussion, and exactly what we've been saying is problematic in your responses/approach. It comes across like you are not getting the joke, and trying to explain the pun in terms other than whimsy. The issue is what needs discussion. The 'situation' is entirely ungrounded and unable to be approached without a stated issue/goal for which someone's experience might be relevant. This cannot be talked about without specificity (as you seem to acknowledge, but in a different place).

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

    What board, for what purpose? Otherwise, no, clearly not.

    But I think your idea that we will be able to decide what to do without a goal is simply incoherentLeontiskos
    I agree. I think the discussion is evidence in itself.

    They should just enjoy it, like all of us who acquiesce to be advertised to.

    They did the same thing (the advert) with Beyonce for Levi. The woke (such as you are referring) should just stop making shit up to get upset about and call people Nazis. It just shows us how bored and uninteresting you are. Its utterly fucking bizarre that anyone is making hte kind of comments they are about htis advert. Its selling sex. Not fucking Eugenics. You've got to be so bored - so incredibly bored - to find stretches that Mr Fantastic would be impressed by - to call people bigots.

    I"VE RUN OUT OF TIME BUT I INTEND TO ADD TO THIS POST. IF YOU CAN, HOLD OFF ON RESPONDING UNTIL IMARK IT COMPLETE

    EDITED IN FURTHER RESPONSES:

    Though they might just not be granted certain authority, maybe of a final kind, but saying they “should not” or are unimportant, is perhaps to say they do not or should not have value (in deciding), which flies in the face of considering how they might or do in this case (or what case), if we imagine the board is considering adding lived experience as a criteria for appointment.Antony Nickles

    This is a really good example of you importing some assumptions on the part of your own scenario: We don't know what the board wants. There is absolutely no basis to say the bolded without first giving a reason why, Nothing is valuable tout court. What is it valuable for? I can only surmise you want lived experience to be informative. About what??? This is the basic problem with your entire approach. You want to have a discussion about nothing, and still make it substantial. It looks as if you're not willing to do the ground work here, or truly believe it isn't ground work. But that is logically unsound. If you do not state an end, criteria for what will get us there are impossible. That's the impasse.

    To date American Eagle is being tight lipped about it.praxis

    They've responded.

    “’Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans‘ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story. We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”

    Good on them. Ridiculous reaction to the advert.

    It was to try to offer a different way than just a philosophical framework which tends to overlook things based on the terms we bring to something.Antony Nickles

    Yep, but what you missed from my quote was "now" that I/we have addressed that squarely several times. I can't see why you would run the same stuff when it's been dealt with.

    And I will leave y’all to that, because I hadn’t even figured out: “valuable” how?Antony Nickles

    This is because you wont do what I'm charging with being unwilling to do. We have brought that point up to you several times in these pages. You seem to now be figuring out that this is an extremely important aspect which you had initially wanted us to forego.

    Y’all think I’m trying to sandbag you, or set a trapAntony Nickles

    No. I think you're trying to have the discussion with having your own arms tied behind your own back, and not knowing it. There's no charge on you here, morally. It's about what you're not grasping in the discussion (from my perspective, naturally). I would also suggest I am not a 'y'all' :)

    I see; sorry I wasted your time with all this.Antony Nickles

    This is an unfortunate deflation. If this was your position throughout, then you clearly are not reading very well. I (and we, on my account) have explicitly gone over what we're talking about and why. I've even pointed out that goals must, at some level, be arbitrary because they are prior to criteria on achieving them. You have proceeded as though boht that hasn't been said, and isn't the case. This is why I/we cannot understand what you are getting at anymore. It seems to be purely ignoring hte relevant responses you've been given.

    It seems like a stretch to compare longboard surfing, something that doesn’t even qualify for the Olympics, to child abuse, industrial safety, and sexual assault.praxis

    It would be a stretch to say I was doing that. The comparison is the logic, not the content. You don;'t seem to be disagreeing that a single instance of trouble in the kitchen should have us investigating and preventing that trouble. And there's far more than one instance in all three areas people care about here (bathrooms, prisons and sport).

    I don’t mind discussing the philosophy.Antony Nickles

    But your responses are making it clear you are avoiding this. Whether this is conscious or not, I don't know (or care, tbh). You're focussed on something utterly incoherent, and we've pointed that out to you explicitly. You do not respond to that, and continue on your journey to talk about criteria void any goal. Which is incoherent. Unfortunately, the posts Joshs' and yourself have been making have reinforced a sense that Continental and "deconstructionist" philosophy is almost entirely useless, other than for people who already agree to speak in some private language. That is certainly a shame, but not one i'm uncomfortable with. It's a "you don't get it" type of situation.



    Obviously this wasn't to me, but it was ancillary to something which was so I'll chime in: 4. doesn't require rescuing. They shouldn't ever have been in that position. Had you said an MMA match, there's probably no gulf between 4 and a couple of the others. Its a male beating on a female. These are clearly irrelevant considerations though. The logic of why we have rules around adults access to children is the same logic as why we restrict male access to females. There is no force of reason which sets aside that presumption, currently. Yet here we are, arguing about it. If you care about safe spaces, this is quite ironic (not that you do, but it's a woke thing so worth mentioning).
  • Free Speech - Absolutist VS Restrictive? (Poll included)
    You have almost no control, whatsovever, over your heartbeat. It is separate to even your brain's control center. You do not control the vast, vast, vast majority of what happens in your body. You couldn't possibly...
  • The End of Woke
    I also think it is a characteristic of woke - if the other party doesn’t appear to agree with you, they must need to reevaluate their whole approach so let’s talk about that instead of whatever thing we both disagree with.Fire Ologist

    This is, expressly, the problem I am having (and one I wanted to highlight within 'woke'). That is ironic, unfortunately as I think it is what's happening. I can't understand Antony's intention anymore, given the responses which have been directly on point and either claiming we have done his dance, or that it is not really what we want to do. It seems the circles continue, but I have two further pages to read before hitting Post Comment.

    BTW - I do appreciate the effort, and I am working on a response.Antony Nickles

    Entirely reasonable, thank you.

    There was a big controversy about a transwoman being allowed to compete a couple years ago. Last year the world surfing league tightened up the requirements though, to appease the anti-woke. All that over 1 surfer, and a longboarder at that.praxis

    I take issue with trying to frame the opposing side as unreasonable in this particular way (its not always a sin). A single male surfer taking a female accolade is enough, on the "anti-woke" side (though, that's misleading of a label). A single harmed child will have us looking at child abuse law. A single dead engineer will have us overhauling H&S. A single female being abused or harmed by a male in the bathroom should have the same response, to be consistent, or discuss why they aren't similar. That last bit nveer gets done... And i can see several powerful responses (they just happen to not land for me). So, I think these sorts of arguments need to engage why that position is so reprehensible. "Oh its only x no. of people". Yes. But what those people are doing matters (and this isn't akin to an argument I am liable to make about prevalence causing alarm. We can ignore that, and assume its 1:1000000 for hte above to still run well, imo).

    Thus the importance to imagine a context in which people are trying to decide what to do where the value of those criteria (above) for deciding what to do, in that situation, is up for grabs.Antony Nickles

    I would suggest for myself, and I think Leon is on this page, that this is just ignorant (not in a personal sense). We do understand these things, and we do not need to reinvent the wheel. The tension is between competing arguments (not even interests. I've tried to make this clear but if not: If you aren't willing to state your goals then I can't get on with your arguments. If you wont give me your arguments, I can't assess them against anything. Your 'interest' wouldn't help because getting there is what's at stake, not "having interest" in x y or z policy for a, b or c reasons) and we can't assess arguments without knowing the goal the argument is meant to support.

    You have to make a proposition: Lived experience is a valuable aspect of a person's exploitable wisdom.

    We can get on with that. But you'll notice most arguments I have made (and, from what I see, Leon) address this squarely, and this is why we cannot understand why you're asking us to slow down the horses. If there is some significant different between "interest" and "goal" for you here, please make it explicit. I see the difference broadly, but for our purposes it just seems to be a difference in clarity:

    Interest (in): Not being subject to arbitrary search and seizure
    Goal: I am not liable to arbitrary search and seizure.

    The former is a desire which isn't particularly apt for policy. The latter is a goal which absolutely is (as the constitution will evidence). If you mean interest in a more legalese sort of why, I do not know what (extending hte metaphor) estate you could be claiming an interest in, to get this discussion off the ground, without creating a scenario of expressly competing interests in the way that "life" and "death" are express competitive notions. They cannot co-exist. The way I see this playing out is that if we had this discussion first we'd all be looking at similar things:

    For all to be treated with respect;
    For legitimate power to be wielded in the face of arbitrary disparity/force

    and all the rest that underpins most concepts of "policy". Once we have all this on the table, we can discuss what methods might get us there. The interests, themselves, don't tell us muc because we must break them down to this priors. If you're not looking for equality of opportunity, you can support many bigoted policies. If you're not looking for equality of outcome, you must drop some policies of force, as examples.

    How is talking about a board going to help us get to where we want to go?Leontiskos

    The veil of ignorance, i suspect, is at play. And its not the worst premise for a discussion of this kind. I just think Antony is importing (maybe unconsciously) plenty of goals which he/they (others, not a gender joke) implicitly carry, without these base discussions. I'm doing my utmost to ignore those voices and discuss with zero on hte table, to begin with. What do you want seems the right question.

    As a courtesy I will say in summary (though I will not argue it here, as I have spelled it out in length above), 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 worksAntony Nickles

    Do you not notice that this fizzles out into a total nothing by the end? "how the world works" is not a reference we can make any sense of in this context. What about it, are you referring to? Besides that, I think you're wrong.

    or draw in a certain demographic.Antony Nickles

    I think this is hte best argument for bringing in lived experience. The problem is that if that person is a dick, or a moron, or dishonest or any number of things, the board wont take their ideas on board very readily. If they are clearly bad economic ideas, or are typically irrelevant to the goal of the Board (quite common for DEI-type hires as best I can tell) then that person is ignored, and their complaints ring true to their politically-aligned based in that "See, they only hired me as a token for looks - they don't even take me seriously" where, you'll notice, there isn't even room for discussions of hte merits or relevance of the person's experiences.

    This is why goals are far, far, far more important than criteria.

    gets in the way of a broader practice of assessment.Antony Nickles

    I think this is the same mistake my would-be board member above is making: There is no reason to think that your descriptions here are in any way helpful to the goal you're after (coming to terms, it seems). But again, a perfect example of why not stating your goals clearly has muddied these waters. Your goal is "a process", not an end-point, so there's nothing we can adequately hold to the light for assessment. Your position seems to ruin the potential for a valid assessment.

    I think this fairly clearly sorts a couple of things out, but makes the above comments (immediately above) all the more apt: you are shying from an assessment by continually trying to bring our attention to that which we have already gone over. Perhaps this is not to your satisfaction, and so FireOlogist's comment I've quoted above comes in. If we don't agree, we must not understand. That seems wrong.

    This one is confusing. You seem to be saying that you posited a method, which I then carried out, while arguing against it. That's not the case. I ran with your example because you gave it. It should be clear I think its unhelpful and a bad example that leapfrogs the fundamental, base-level function of decision making: Goal orientation. If you're tlaking about how we decide on goals, that's really not what this thread or discussion are about. But it would explain the disconnect.

    hat would be valuable to get clear about before judging how the board would go forward and what that looks like here.Antony Nickles

    Without a clear, articulated goal, this isn't helpful and there is no meat. it is window-dressing for a show we're not part of.

    I would concede to suggestions from the group for agreement on a different example as long as it is a situation (not an “issue” abstracted from any sense of a possible context) about how to decide what to do in a particular case, i.e, with competing, say old vs new, criteria.Antony Nickles

    Then, unfortunately, I do not think you are here in good faith. That is specifically not what's at stake in the discussion, and exactly what we've been saying is problematic in your responses/approach. It comes across like you are not getting the joke, and trying to explain the pun in terms other than whimsy. The issue is what needs discussion. The 'situation' is entirely ungrounded and unable to be approached without a stated issue/goal for which someone's experience might be relevant. This cannot be talked about without specificity (as you seem to acknowledge, but in a different place).

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

    What board, for what purpose? Otherwise, no, clearly not.

    But I think your idea that we will be able to decide what to do without a goal is simply incoherentLeontiskos
    I agree. I think the discussion is evidence in itself.

    They should just enjoy it, like all of us who acquiesce to be advertised to.

    They did the same thing (the advert) with Beyonce for Levi. The woke (such as you are referring) should just stop making shit up to get upset about and call people Nazis. It just shows us how bored and uninteresting you are. Its utterly fucking bizarre that anyone is making hte kind of comments they are about htis advert. Its selling sex. Not fucking Eugenics. You've got to be so bored - so incredibly bored - to find stretches that Mr Fantastic would be impressed by - to call people bigots.

    I"VE RUN OUT OF TIME BUT I INTEND TO ADD TO THIS POST. IF YOU CAN, HOLD OFF ON RESPONDING UNTIL IMARK IT COMPLETE>
  • Mooks & Midriffs
    Yeah, decent and absolutely worth discussing. I think there's a mistake being made though, where there's going to be a rejection of totally sound ideals because hte advertising machine is so ruthlessly careless.

    Eg:
    Or the way living at home with one’s parents is viewed as being a loserMikie

    Fully agree that this framing is bollocks (though, i contest that this isn't quite what's presented most of the time - i digress, and am trying to avoid that which we already know we disagree on) but I don't think its a rejectable principle. Living at home with your parents does infer you may not be capable of surviving outside the family home. That's not to infer that anyone living at home would, but plenty of those living at home are incapable. Probably hte majority - failure to launch type of scenarios.

    But I also know plenty who live at home for totally noble reasons (unrelated to caring for parents, lets say). So to say its one or the other seems rash, but there's some real utility in keeping some pressure on (particularly male) teens to grow up some. Not that this doesn't apply to females, but males appears to be more capable of relying on the women in their lives when younger, than women who rely on the men in their lives later on. And its that failure to launch that seems at issue.

    No, but there are alternatives: pooling resources with friends or family is a common one. But that isn’t very profitable, so it’s made to seem “un-cool.”Mikie

    I agree, but i also think homesteading comes under the same banner. It's considered 'right wing' to be self-sufficient in a way that isn't directly social. I don't deny there's associations there, but it seems a pretty clear case of indoctrination to see a woman canning and assume she's racist or whatever yknow. Similarly, not everyone who volunteers for social justice-driven charities thinks sex doesn't exist, and private property should be abolished etc... So, its quite easy to notice this problem, but not really understand how it's affecting you, personally. I certainly don't quite get it (because that's the point) and i doubt anyone else does, either, so its a weird discussion in that sense. That which is made to seem uncool to you probably isn't that way to another demo.
  • The imperfect transporter
    I'm a material token, not a type? So not a soul botherer?bongo fury

    I have wrestled with Parfit, and his teletransporter for a couple of years now.

    I think this is the correct answer to the branch-line case. Any "one" who is me, yet occupied different atoms and extracts difference resources from the environment to maintain homeostatis, and occupies a different "moment' in space, cannot be me.

    Whether this is true of the original case, I am yet to decide, but in principle, the transporter cannot transport me without "taking" me. And I agree, this gets around the Soul (further fact) problem.

    There is the “Ship of Theseus”Fire Ologist

    I think this is a really stupid 'paradox' personally. A ship is "that ship" because of what people call it. There isn't, that I can see, a physical boundary to the identity of a utility/object. The identity of a 'person' is what's interesting, and we run into all sorts of problems because almost everyone has the intuition that "they" are non-physical (or, a further fact, in Partfitian terms) and ride around in a physical substrate. This said, I think many sorities problems are also stupid:
    A heap of sand obtains once at least once grain of sand is suspended above the surface in question by other grains of sand. I cannot understand why this isn't a totally adequate answer that shows that people are silly and like to argue.

    Again, the metaphysical challenge to identity arises only if you are committed to the idea of sharp-edged essences of things.SophistiCat

    I'm unsure. Identity, by definition, has those edges baked in. If we want to jettison personal identity then i agree.

    At any rate, Parfit treats this problem at length when talking about surgeries replacing molecule by molecule, a person's brain. The conclusion is that the x literally doesn't matter. What matters is the outcome, and whether 0 or 1 obtains. ***That is, for Parfit, as long as there's a 1 (for him, relation R) on the other side of whatever process, then identity is irrelevant. "you" will continue. This is unsatisfying, but appears to be hte logical conclusion***.

    There's an argument that the you that is experiencing the middle of this sentence now is a different you than the one experiencing the end of the sentence now.flannel jesus

    But lets be real - its a really tortured and unhelpful argument I think. We can't explain much of anything without continuous consciousness. Unless we want to go Parfit's way and just say "this isn't important, look over here instead" (as do Austin and Searle) I can't see a way to argue that there isn't continuity in consciousness.

    I pause there to note that I see a difference between "continuity of consciousness" and "continuous consciousness". There's a continuity in a Playstation Memory Card re-booting and providing continuing as to wherever the saved game was left off.

    why would the universe decree that, say, X=12,371 means being transported with brain damage, and X=12,372 means you just die at the source?Mijin
    ***

    It wouldn't. That would 'merely' be the case, if so. This relates back to the starred passage above.
  • The End of Woke
    adding people to a board.Antony Nickles

    I don't understand what you're describing or trying to set up here. This doesn't jibe with anything we've said, that I can tell. The follow ons seems non-sequitur for that reason.

    the ability to contribute to the board's goalsAntony Nickles

    On our exchange, this is what's going on. The rest is window dressing. You could add something like "In a way that is not obvious unethical" going to things like corruption, deceit etc.. which are non-co-operative. But the rest seem illegitimate (or, baked into this one like history of leadership. That's a consideration of one's abilities in the present with recourse to statistical evidence supporting that claim of ability).

    “Experience”Antony Nickles

    Is the question what's the difference between "experience" in the sense of a job interview, and "lived experience" in the sense of emotionalizing political issues? That seems... perhaps... not a reasonable question to ask. Experience is literally experience of success in a given field in the former. Usually, to extremely specific criteria which are necessary to assess one's potential. The latter has none of these features. The latter (in practice) categorically ignores any metric. It is not a criteria, other than a brute claim criteria. There is no nuance, there is no metric and there is no way to value one over the other (or, as I see it, reason to "value" it for policy purposes at all). We can take aggregate self-reportage somewhat more seriously as a indicator of what problems exist. I can't see it being useful otherwise.

    having been part of the population the board is trying to helpAntony Nickles

    This is used in two scenarios I'm aware of:
    1. In certain law contexts so that hte committee at hand has a "lay person's perspective" but they are essentially ancillary to any decision making processes;
    2. Where there is adirect, measurable relationship between this person's membersihp of some class (demographic?) and their ability to report an aggregate opinion of that class to the committee (or board, whatever). This seems problematic in plenty of ways, but at least has a basis to move from.

    Otherwise, I cannot see how this could be helpful. The other criteria you posit are directly related.
    aluing having people that are connected with the lives they are trying to changeAntony Nickles

    This insinuates the board themselves would not have stakes of the same kind. That seems wrong. They are from the same demographic they are serving. Adding "lay people" for the purpose of lived experience seems to simply shift the rhetoric around a bit and have us feeling as if there's some "authenticity" in the decision making process, or "representation". I personally reject that rep. along lines of sex, ethnicity, nationality etc.. are actually helpful or give us much, socially but that aside, clearly the board themselves are representative. This, though, goes to some confusion about the scenario. Why would this be the way to discuss it? Surely it would make more sense to find an issue and discuss why lived experience might be helpful there. You're certainly more likely to find an example that could be agreed on. In broad-strokes, this seems, again, to be an exercise in saying quite a lot, but not going anywhere with it.

    I had also mentioned earlier that if you are on vacation looking for something to eat, you ask a localAntony Nickles

    I treated that example. I don't think there is any value, other than to get directions. You could consult Google.

    If things need clarifying, counterexamples, go ahead; if it’s broke, fix it—I suggest first trying to get at a good overall sight of all the grounds (get it).Antony Nickles

    I think I've done so, and responded in ways that, to me, seem totally reasonable. The scenario doesn't really move us toward anything helpful, and I'm unsure it addresses the issues we're talking about for lack of being specific enough to actually engage them. I make a suggestion earlier as to how we might proceed a little clearer.

    This might be overly coarse, but I take the other option to be claiming/attributing/assuming a certain goal first and then perhaps treating “interests” as justifications for the goal, or motivations for the goal. Whatever that may be, I take it as the classic philosophical discussion to first determine what is right or what ought to be doneAntony Nickles

    I think this is quite clearly wrong. The goal is essentially arbitrary, as all must be more-or-less. That's the point. If can't get a moral discussion of goals going there's no point moving to methods. If your position (one's position) is that white people need to be removed, by legislature, from some positions of power - okay, cool. We need to talk about how you're going to get there. One issue is convincing people. So we're off to a good start.

    If we start with criteria about goals, we're looking for an objective moral. That seems a bogus endeavour, particularly around Woke issues.

    Again, I take this difference as a matter of analytical philosophy, and not as some kind of proxy for woke/not wokeAntony Nickles

    There does seem to be a semi-direct link between the Analytical/Continental divide and woke/non-woke arguments, though. I'm unsure that's an unfair connection to make.

    I would also posit that the portion between these two quotes is again, using a lot of words to say not much. Rationality is not up for grabs. Rationality is a particular process. If we want to jettison rationality that's fine and we can discuss from there. I think what you're trying to do is to say "Well, what is rationality?" which is again, bogus. Rationality is a known process. Its place at hte top of hte hierarchy of deliberation may be questionable. But I doubt it, given these exchanges.

    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).Leontiskos

    100%. Absolute gentleman.
  • The End of Woke
    I see both of these as an example of doing precisely what Antony is asking for here:Fire Ologist

    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.
  • The End of Woke
    What do you mean by "move forward with reasonable people in the discussion?"frank

    What i mean is that people who can provide reasons, and not either deflect (which, I think personally, Anthony is) or move on to epithets, threats, impugnings and irrelevancies should be included - those who do those things probably shouldn't (and this based on a goal-oriented metric, not some 'moral' framing).

    Your final point is an example of the sort of unreasonable behaviours I'm talking about. Zegler's goal was obviously of a feminist/equity bent. She failed, entirely, and turned people off her, the film and the general thrust of her point. Its irrational in a way that (speaking to Anthony's point) is objectively damaging to the goal.

    I worded this wrong obviously, as I conceded to Leontiskos; of course we can pass judgment at any point, and we must at some pointAntony Nickles

    Ok, fair enough. Much better starting point.

    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

    My initial charge on you still stands. This just kicks the can a bit. Fwiw, I understood this to be your intention to begin with, and felt the same sort of denial was coming through. As someone who was in that space for a decade, I find it (superficially and i do mean 100% superficially) insulting to be told perhaps I'm not looking at the underlying urges. I lived them. This doesn't butter your bread, but may explain why I've been a bit... tetchy.. on this particular point.

    Although my (one) argument would be our society (not of course anyone here) jumps to judgment most of the time, and I only started because I thought I saw the argument framed as rational—emotional (a version of “objective”—“subjective”) which is one thing that gets in the way, philosophically, of getting at the criteria for the case at hand, thus the interests in it.Antony Nickles

    While I agree with the opener here (premise?) i disagree that the final point makes sense. This issue is frame and carried out as a tension between emotional and reason. That's largely hte difference between right and left. There's a reason "bleeding heart liberal" is a term, i suppose.

    This would be traditional philosophy’s framing of a moral discussion as an argument over what “ought” to be done, or the justification for that, or principals, etc. I am suggesting a different discussion where we are talking about how to move forward in a situation where no one has more authority to what is right. I am suggesting that we may not see beforehand what the criteria are that we use in that scenario, and what new or different criteria would look like, as a method, a way in, to see what our interests are (as they are captured in our criteria for each thing).Antony Nickles

    A few things here, that, unfortunately, make it seem like you're not really hearing what's being said:

    1. I disagree. That is not the framing of traditional philosophy given "traditional" philosophy has resulted in three distinct and essentially non-overlapping moral frameworks that virtually all philosophers adhere to. But I also thikn this is a red herring;

    2. What you are suggesting is actually ignoring what i've said. What I've said is we need to establish goals. That way, what "ought" to be done is a clear, concise and able-to-be-discussed subject. The criteria are already laid out when our goals are sufficiently articulated. Goal is x. Discussion: How do we achieve goal x? That is the criteria. If being overly emotional is counter productive to the goal, then you have your answer. There is no tension.

    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.

    This continues to exemplify the exact tension stated above, between emotional and reason. Reason is getting us to move forward. Emotional is getting us to talk in circles. I very much appreciate your time too. Its a pity we werent' able to come to terms.
  • The Question of Causation
    I should clarify that by "principle" I do not merely mean a mental construct.Leontiskos

    I understand. But if the principle reduces to "certain physical descriptions as between objects and processes are invariable" then it does hte same thing as I'm getting at. And, as I see, it can be reduced this way. Onward..

    In general I see no reason to claim that causality is physical.Leontiskos

    I can't see that it could obtain if not. This is a really weird statement, for me. It's almost like saying "I can't see a reason, in general, to assume that heat causes hotness". I mean, causation happens in the physical world. We don't have other examples (ignoring some "hard problem" considerations that would beg the question on either side).

    "physical process" and a "non-physical process."Leontiskos

    I'm unsure a non-physical entity can be a 'process' which happen in space and time, best I can ascertain.

    But if one is not a physicalist then I don't see any grounds for claiming that causality is physical.Leontiskos

    This, also, real weird. It doesn't matter if you're a physicalist: If your thinking, from any angle, gets you no escape from the claim, then there's your bullet to either bite or set aside. You're right that hte physicalist, over others, wouldn't have any discomfort with this. Can't see that as particularlt relevant here.

    and is situated in between objectsLeontiskos

    I'm unsure it is, and I don't think physicalists at least would argue this. It is part and parcel of the relation between the objects, not between them. It only obtains upon the two objects (until we talk about physical trains like "hot from x causes particles in the air to heat and ferry that energy across to other particles which come into contact with y and pass on the high-energy particles etc.. etc.. et.etc.. but this would be to either ignore the problem, or solves it on a physicalist account lol). It doesn't obtain "between" the objects, in physical space. It only obtains "between" the objects in thought (like the "relationship" between two corporate entities. In reality, it is the "relationship of them - how the two relate).

    If energy were a physical object just like the two billiard ballsLeontiskos

    Hmm. I think this is both instructive, and confused. Energy is not a physical object, and no one claims it is. But this is instructive, in the sense that energy is a property. The concept describes several attributes that can variously be attributed to different physical objects and their ability to, what physicists call "do work". We don't understand this very well (in terms of the underlying establishing principles, but that's not here nor there for our discussion) but everything we have ever done to try to understand it, has reduced to the physical interaction between physical objects trading physical objects (particles etc..) between them. There doesn't seem to be any reason whatsoever to consider a non-physical basis for energy transfer yet. These are properties which we physically observe in physical objects.

    The whole reason energy functions as a principle is because it is different from the billiard ballsLeontiskos

    In light of the above, i think I need an elucidation here. It seems this has been answered adequately above: Yes, they are one-and-the-same but in concert, not considered individually. The energy of one ball is part and parcel of itself, and not something "other". The same true for ball 2. They then interact, physically, and pass physical matter between themselves causing "work" to have obtained. If the quibble is about "what about that matter passing between them causes that transfer to instantiate the result it seems to, then I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding. The matter, itself, is what causes certain excitations in the second ball (it has too much charge, which can be described physically) to stay in one place. Given it was acted on from a particular direction, it moves in te opposite due to its shape, and our medium of air, the felt, the cue tip etc.. etc.. but all can be calculated, as I understand. There doesn't seem to be a mystery.

    Even on that conception, "space" is metaphorical not physicalLeontiskos

    False, as I understand. We do not live in a vacuum. Space is made up of plenty of stuff. When I say space, I am talking about hte actual density of matter between object A and object B. Maybe this is naive? I can't see that though, seems to run in line with how we understand "space" at the highest levels of physics.

    nd therefore a mathematical distance-measurement is not physicalLeontiskos

    This is wrong as I see. The division is not physical. The division is artificial and, as you say, abstract. The measurement is entirely physical and rests on the actual physical limitations of point A in relation to point B and the physical space between them, along with our measurement methods which are also physical.

    But according to what source do you claim that the transfer of energy is the transfer of particles?Leontiskos

    IN fairness, this was rough-and-ready and I'm technically misspeaking, even on my own understanding. Different forms of transfer require different descriptions, but something like this seems to work for your example. A version below:

    "At the interface where the two objects meet, the faster-moving, higher-energy particles from the hot object collide with the slower-moving, lower-energy particles of the colder object."

    At collision, "energy" which is read essentially as head or speed in this context, passes between the two objects, more-or-less replacing the hotter, faster particles in the moving object with colder, slower particles from the stationary object (again, not quite right - but the net effect is this).

    An easier example is something like boiling (convection more broadly): less energetic particles are heated, move faster and spread about over a larger area, which causes them to move (as they cannot be as close to other particles when vibrating so fast, lest destruction occur) upwards and transfer that heat as essentially movement, to the more dense, less hot particles which they encounter. There's a purely physical explanation going on there.

    Energy is just an assignment of value to the ability for a system to "do work" or affect other systems and objects. It's not claimed to be a "thing". Its a physical attribute, described very different across different media.

    it is hard to see how gravity is itself supposed to be physical.Leontiskos

    I don't find it hard. But then, I include certain assumptions about "fabric" being involved in space-time. That there is a finite set of work that can be done within the Universe leads me to understand that all bodies will be affected by all other bodies. This will represent itself in a ubiquitous force exerted by everything, on everything else. I'm unsure its reducible in any way from that.

    Even apart from mental causation, what would be an argument in favor of the thesis that causality is physical?Leontiskos

    I've made a couple above. And previously. I'll go with your example though:

    1. Billiard ball1 causes billiard ball2 to move
    2. Billiard ball1 and billiard ball2 are both physical
    3. There is nothing else involved in the interaction
    4. Therefore, the causation that occurs between the two billiard balls is itself physical
    Leontiskos

    Closer.

    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"?Leontiskos

    Nope. I'm suggesting that running incoherent arguments about causation is possible. That's all that was on the table.

    I would say that the majority of talk about causation is in non-physicalist terms.Leontiskos

    I agree. I think most of it is doomed to be self-contradictory, empirically untenable or down-right ridiculous (God did it, for instance).

    without any material change in the two ballsLeontiskos

    I do not think this is the case. This would be "empirically wrong" on the above ideas about people talking about causation in ways that wont work.

    the capacity for doing workLeontiskos

    Physically deducible. If you want to get around this, you have to solve substance dualism.
  • The End of Woke
    I don't think there is any thinking nearly as black and white as wokism.Leontiskos

    Yes. Of course this one example - but one of plenty. (i'm also only trying to illustrate hte attitude - not decry all 'wokists' on the same basis).

    Now I see you are using “irrational” as in a person’s actions are contradictory, hypocritical, that we have grounds to dismiss their argument (not factually correct Amadeus), etc.,Antony Nickles

    I'm not entirely sure what the potshot here is, but if its that its incorrect to describe woke behaviour hte way I did, either we can agree to disagree or I can present examples for you (one above). They will number high, and be external links to the actors own words/actions. The paradox of tolerance (i.e, the patent intolerance of that which we subjectively deem intolerable ) looms large. If this isn't what you're getting at, I don't know what you are, so would appreciate and explication.

    I am saying we have work to do apart and before that judgment about their claim.Antony Nickles

    This seems to rely on your underlying supposition that we(anyone making the noises we're making) don't understand enough to pass judgement. That seems patently incorrect, and exactly what I had classed it as: a cop out. It precludes any third party analysis until you're satisfied the speaker sufficiently understands things (i imagine, the way you do). This is not really doing the work, but instead saying that the work cannot be done other than on terms you agree with. I reject that entirely, so if this is your argument we're at an end to the discussion, i'd say. I imagine you've said more in the thread, so this isn't meant to be a dismissive statement, just explanatory.

    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

    This is a perfect example. Its obviously about judgement. That is how humans operate. However, you've made a point I want to go into a bit, though in other ways:

    For any discussion of this kind, we need to establish what goals are on the table. Something like "inclusion" is insufficiently clear. Inclusion of what, for what reason and to what end? But, if we at least have each other's goal in mind, we might be able to do something akin to what you've said above, but judgements will be there the entire way through. This is unavoidable. I cannot understand how you could make the statement above and expect to lead to anything but sitting about umming and ahhing.

    each thing has its own standards for us to judgeAntony Nickles

    Yeah, and those criteria all rest on a rational analysis of the state of affairs. If your analysis is not rational (i.e reasoned and logical) you will import falsities, assumptions and irrelevancies, making your actions disagree with your object. This is a full explanation of why this is the wrong way to think of "rationality". Wittgenstein is not impressive to me in this regard at all, and in fact, comes across as someone cowardly (take the dramatic-ness out of hte use of this word). I'm unsure relying on one or two thinkers to discuss something so fundamental is a good idea either.

    This isn’t “subjective” but specific, thus the importance of understanding all the criteria and current judgments in a moral situation.Antony Nickles

    This doesn't move the needle. If you support a non-rational assessment of any state of affairs, we may be at an impasse. I don't accept that there are ways non-rational to achieve goals. I cannot understand any other motivation to act. If there is one, put it forward and let me know what criteria you think are relevant to it. That may solve hte impasse.

    it helps to pick a local to askAntony Nickles

    Usually not, no. This is a tradition that makes not a lot of sense. What would make sense, is to say "Hey, you live here, what's your favourite x". That doesn't give me anything but an opinion. This is not rational discourse and does not get me to my goal, unless it is to eat at a place this particular local person prefers. There is no good reason to accept a local's answer to the question "Where's good to eat"? They don't know anything more than you do about your apprehension and enjoyment of new food.

    but they know their way aroundAntony Nickles

    This seems to reduce the question to one of "where are the restaurants". That's rational, aimed at a goal. Fits with my descriptions perfectly. The former does not.

    they still need to be drawn out, made explicit and intelligibleAntony Nickles

    Then (given the arguments you're running, but i admit this is somewhat an assumption about what you're trying to say) the Woke need to do this. Not everyone else. If they can't adequately articulate their urges, needs and goals without resorting to violence, insults and coercion i couldn't give a shit. Neither, I think, should I. The racist can't adequately articulate theirs. I dismiss them. I take a lot of Wokists to be racist anyway, so maybe that's a moot point.

    Those things are not evident until we look at them.Antony Nickles

    On current status, we've been looking at them - dead in the fing eye - for a decade or more. I am beginning to think, again, that you simply deny that anyone has a handle on these things. This seems, as my example clip to Leon shows, to be a "You literally cannot question this" type of claim, because at no point that someone is critical, will you accept that they sufficiently understand the subject (it seems). I'm going to simply tell you, outright: I understand what I'm talking about. I was what I am talking about. I was embedded, and respected within Woke culture of a specific kind (drug policy, for clarity and i mean locally, though not entirely restricted in that way. You can find articles about me internationally). I understand these things, and my critiques are well-founded. It wont do to simply tell me "No".

    I think we need a caseAntony Nickles

    Could you be clear about what you mean by "a case"? It seems we'd only have two options:

    1. Explicit claims;
    2. Inferences

    in 1, we have no work to do. In 2, we will just have the same back-and-forth about understanding.

    I was only suggesting that, generally, people (and philosophers in particular) do not consider “the ways” in which they judge.Antony Nickles

    I suggest this is particularly, and somewhat perniciously (again, remove hte dramatics) wrong. Philosophers, over most others, do exactly this. This is probably why academic philosophy so intensely leans left (particularly public academic phil).

    For the most part, the far right is not interested in reform. They believe the establishment has failed.frank

    Seems so for the far-left also. This is to be expected, and I'm unsure why there are discussions about understanding absolutist and destructive ideology (on it's face, anyhow) from either side. Why not ignore hte idiots and move forward with reasonable people in the discussion. But that's a pipe dream, I know, and not necessarily 'right'.

    How are the critical comments about wokism in this thread not a form of activismJoshs

    They are not activating statements. THey are quibbles on a forum. Activism is taking intentional action aimed at social or political change. We're not doing that. I probably would if I had time, and I used to be an extremely "active" activist and routinely invoked "woke" tenets of inclusion, equity, racial disparity, sex discrimination to support my arguments. These were erroneous. There were rational arguments to be had. I stepped away from activism when I could no longer make any sense of what was happening around me, or what I was doing in response to it. I see exactly hte same thing in woke activists. The crash outs are monumental. I walked away quietly.

    Most activists are drawing on commoditized , pre-packaged , dumbed down dilutions of the antecedent philosophiesJoshs

    Yes. And it may be worth noting that this is what we're talking about. The mention of the antecedent philosophical thinking is futile, because it isn't involved in their thinking (or activism).

    I think the only outstanding matter is Josh' assertion that all wokists run in circles that can be reduced to a few thinkers ike Adorno or Fanon. That is a wild challenge. I would say that the outright racism and wilfully misunderstanding things (like the current American Eagle controversy) is probably not in line, lol.
  • The End of Woke
    A totally fair position, imo.
    For me, its hte underlying assumptions in even the use of the word "trans" in these contexts that has me thinking a bit further about these things. I do my utmost to jettison my personal negative experiences, but thats somewhat impossible to do entirely. particularly as they are in concert with overall reports.

    As almost a joke, I note that the Manhattan shooter was initially reported to be "possibly white" with absolutely no reason whatso-fucking-ever other than to demonize young white men. That's woke as heck, in the terms I've discussed here.
  • The End of Woke
    Well, I'm not even quite sure what you mean by that so i responded in kind, there.

    So yeah, not sure what you mean. You could mean a few things:

    1. allow Bud drinking to move over to a different demographic (feminine men? Idk);
    2. allow Bud's marketing strategy be taken over by the same group (aesthetically, not identity); or
    3. allow Bud to go broke because its demo doesn't understand social justice properly.

    Allowing for some case-specific nuance, the answer should be roughly the same:

    Its disrespectful to the existing market demo, severs no economic purpose and obviously sews social division. It tells the demo the producer doesn't care to retain their custom, that they do not care to make money from their product particularly, and that they do not mind causing easily predictable social dis-ease.

    You could say "yeah, that doesn't matter because 3." but this, again, leapfrogs the issue: Why would you even get into the headspace of wanting to run this experiment, other than to upset people? And hte answer, in context, is virtue signalling in order to pick up market share (so, we can probably both drop this example - it was cynical regardless).

    And hind-sight is 20/20. The biggest reason is because it wont work. It'll either tank the company, or make people vastly more abrasive to the "trans agenda" such as it exists (i'm a happy to sya it does in terms of marketing, at least).
  • The End of Woke
    According to Anheuser-Busch most their market segment didn't carepraxis

    They saw a 28.2% y on y drop in sales at the highest effective point in June 2023 and 20% stock loss by the end of May that year. That's about 26 Billion. That continued until quite recently, where sales have stabilized. I'm not sure how more disingenuous a statement could be made on that specific issue.

    Fortunately for me, almost all mainstream beers are terrible (Miller, Bud, Modelo, chinese Corona (now that it's not made in Mexico) among others. But that's not the point. Neither is this:

    Modelo Especial took the lead after the incident, if I remember correctly. It's good.praxis

    This leapfrogs the point and reflects a meme about liberal responses:

    No, it didn't happen ->
    Ok, it happened, but it's a good thing ->
    Ok, it happened and is bad, but who cares?

    Not saying you're doing this. Just getting a little meta about what's being discussed.
  • The End of Woke
    Does this sound like a palatable scenario to you?Joshs

    Hard to tell. Habermaas is one of the least-clear writers I've come across. In principle though, yes, that's fine and preferable.

    It’s not irrational to reject another’s perspective, no.praxis

    The question was more to do with whether or not you genuinely held that view. I find it to be irrational, so I thought you were highlighting something you didn't hold to be hte case. All good.
  • The Question of Causation
    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). Currently, it seems to be as you say for lack of an actual descriptive grounding.

    it does not follow that distance belongs to the same genus as points, lines, and curvesLeontiskos

    You're right, it doesn't. But they cannot be left out of the discussion, lest you end up with merely overlapping geometric elements and no shape at all. The distance creates what we're observing as a 'curve' for eg.

    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.

    Likewise, we could say that kinetic energy is transferred from one ball to another, and given that kinetic energy is physical this is a physical phenomenon.Leontiskos

    It is, though. It describes the transfer of particles. The cause for your question has been ascertained in physical terms. What, exactly, causes those particles to move from one object to another, i'm unsure of but I understand it breaks down to physical forces we understand pretty well. If I am wrong, we have more to discuss, definitely.

    I would again say that "energy" is a highly theoretical entity, and is not obviously physical.Leontiskos

    I cannot see another avenue to explore, even, so I have to reject this. It begins with light, i suppose, as fundamental. IT just goes upwards from there in terms of density. I am not a physicist, though. I'm not quite sure what gaps you're seeing in the descriptions above. You may have something with gravity, but (unknown to you, clearly) i've always been skeptical about gravity (not in a Bryce Mitchell kind of way, but in terms of "nah, you guys don't know what's going on at all").

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

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

    he very fact that we can talk about causation without committing ourselves to physicalismLeontiskos

    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. It was a thousand years before we stopped thinking a giant guy dragged the sun across the sky. Or before we dropped the assumption that the Lord interferes, non-physically, in people's deliberative endeavours (changing hearts).

    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.

    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. It doesn't seem to me many of these objections are, in fact, theoretical.
  • The End of Woke
    That has nothing much to do with me. What I'm telling you is they are not synonymous (which is an empirical fact. Wokists do not play out hte tenets of legitimate critical theory. They play dress-up to justify shitty, incoherent moral points of view (on my view)). You can say that you think their actions are justified under CRT and Ill say no, they expressly are not. I'm not personally interested in that debate because it is clear to anyone who has a clue about CRT that things like BLM (2019-2021 type of BLM action, anyhow) were not part of the agenda. We don't need some theoretical approach to notice this. I assume you've read the basic texts. There is no debate here.

    If, on the other hand, you are saying that the basis for what's called wokism is something legitimate, so we should trying to tease out what that is - yes, but that has nothing to do with understanding those wokist actors. To be clear about the type of things I'm talking about - Tiffany Henyard, Patrice Collours, Stacey Clarke, Corrine Brown, Tania Fernandes Anderson (i sincerely cannot find examples of males doing this same thing. If I had seen/found egs, I'd have balanced this list). These people are corrupt and justify a lot of their behaviour with recourse to the tenets of CRT - and no, not explicitly: that's sort of my point. I don't think you can say people who do not know CRT are carrying out urges based on those underlying theoretical considerations. The chances many of these people (beside maybe Collours) are particularly aware of CRT beyond the ways in whicih is emotionally agrees with them is very low.

    Rather, your unwillingness to to employ CT expresses your anti-wokeness.praxis

    Is this to note an irrational position? This does seem to be a line towed by the Woke. It isn't reasonable, imo.

    Another rejection is in limiting what counts as “rational” “argumentation”.Antony Nickles

    Perhaps. I am happy with my use of irrational. I think I outlined it? If it not, its to do with goal-oriented behaviour. If you have the information to know your action will not achieve (or, is unlikely to achieve) your current goal, but you carry it out anyway (without some special condition) this is irrational. I can't quite understand how we can use it in other ways without, as you, i presume, are getting at, falling into total subjectivity. Luckily, I need not comment on whether your goal is rational (because this would be hte latter).

    I don’t think it is valuing one opinion over another, but valuing one person over another.Antony Nickles

    That's a lot worse, and less capable of a rational basis in my view.

    We are not at this point judging their evidence in the decision but their value at the table.Antony Nickles

    Furthering my position above. If you are judging someone's worth based on either:

    1. their claims;
    2. your perception of them

    I can't get on that train. If it's something else, please outline.

    It is not the account of their lives that is valuable, it is their having lived in the context, been affected by the current criteria/practices, etc.Antony Nickles

    Where is the value going? If we don't actually care about the account they're giving, I cannot care about who they are. Because I can't possibly know.
    The fact that people go through things isn't valuable at all, as best I can tell.

    the interests and needs of young trans wasn’t in the cultural awarenessAntony Nickles

    I think it's more accurate to say these "needs" weren't actually an issue. We treated body dysmorphia as it appears - a mental aberration. This isn't to deny that 'trans people' exist. But it is to deny that there is any legitimate basis for the claims made by trans people about themselves.
    I would temper this, because different claims get made, but the ideas that one can change sex, or is born in the wrong body (one of these has to be true for the position to cohere) seem empirically dead wrong. The idea there is no sex binary, while auxilliary, is another reason I wont temper that claim ( it is roughly, universal among discussions of the fact of trans people). These are all of them banal and incorrect.

    What if that theory appreciates, as Antony appears to, that ‘rationality’ can’t be separated from what’s being dichotomously treated as merely “feeling -based’ and emotional?Joshs

    This may be a reason why it can't be done. This is a cop-out and a dismissal of that which rationality points towards: Decisions made in accordance with reason and logic. These aren't superficial or subjective metrics. You can reject them as premises of rationality but then i suggest you're the new Sisyphus.

    If this isn't how you view rationality, that's fine, but it explains my position at least. Unfortunately, and again, with the utmost respect, the rest of this post reads to me like standard prevaricative, deconstructionist discourse which has never helped anyone understand anything (it results in a series of questions that can't be answered, and generally run into each other). If i'm not getting something, I apologize. But it just can't be responded to in a way other than "What are you even talking about?" so I guess I'll just eat that and assume I don't get it.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    Almost entirely as expected. A non-engagement.

    You have experiences. Either argue against that, or argue that you don't know about them. IF you do know about them, qualia obtain in the very knowing.
  • Fight Test, by Cat Stephens
    I'm not against IP rights.

    They don't sound sufficiently similar to get me to take up the case, even. I wouldn't have had the client back for a second discussion. Cat Stevens is a dick. Also, for full disclosure: He didn't win.
    They settled. An extremely bad settlement borne out of Stevens having more, and more expensive lawyers.

    Additionally, Coyne's response to this was the weakest, most blithering apology for a non-event I've seen in popular music.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    Oh, i fully agree. I'm just putting forth what I think will prevent Banno from interacting with it sufficiently, and where I think that may be able to be overcome.
  • The End of Woke
    wokists who may or may not have made that claim), because critical theorists are realists, not radical relativists.Joshs

    I think you may be missing a trick wihch is implicit in all our comments here... These are not synonymous. At all.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    Lewis or Pierce? If Lewis, Banno rejects the premise of what he was doing. There is no sense data. The only thing i see saving this, for the purpose of discussion with Banno, is that Lewis expressly noted that the "red" is still an objective physical property, and so "redness" does obtain in that domain.
    Many anti-realists posit that it doesn't. I understand the discomfort with that. But Lewis just wanted to discus hte Given, rather than the investigated, part of 'red' (or, whatever). He assesses that you can be wrong, in that a qualia could appear as x, but the object causing it is actually y. This might help move it from "I don't get it" to "here's why that makes no sense".
  • Free Speech - Absolutist VS Restrictive? (Poll included)
    think about them, consider whether I should bother responding, and do so according to my own whim and fancy.NOS4A2

    This happens prior to your whim and fancy. You can't read them without thought. That's a direct cause of activity in your brain and consequently, your relevant decision making. Additionally, your following thoughts and decisions are at the whim of all your prior thoughts and decisions (though, this one, I understand you will reject and I wont press it. But it is physically true, in some neurological sense - and thats ignoring Libet).

    This is fun.
  • The End of Woke
    :up: Yeah. I think that's quite important though. Bad faith is the most common currency at the present time (maybe, always).

    So I think that if we read such people according to their own hermeneutic, then we also come to the conclusion that their philosophy is a power grab driven by primarily emotional factors.Leontiskos

    Seems to me to be true, empirically. That is to say, not a comment on Joshs' position. There may well be underlying reasons that support that type of behaviour without it being a power-grab.

    However, like Terence McKenna once said "There wasn't much Stalin could do about Stalinism once it got going".

    Probably a lot of ground-team type personalities reject current "woke" but still stand ten-toes deep on the original concept. Which I think its "correct" morally.
  • Measuring Qualia??
    I see that plenty of objections are being ignored. Such is life...
  • The Question of Causation
    What is at stake is a kind of relation between heat and water, and I don't see how such a relation could be construed as physical.Leontiskos

    The transfer of certain particles from heated air (or metal, i guess) into the water, ramping up the potential kinetic energy in the water until it cannot contain the energy, and must "boil" to let off heat which it cannot contain.
    That seems a physical causation train. Is that not what you're looking for? Given the Davis quote and your response, I have to say there seems a trapdoor:

    One could give a completely detailed and accurate account of the collision without any reference to energy whatsoever. — Paul Davies

    No, they couldn't. Without explaining what's happened at the moment of impact, we have no reason to think that a collision would cause movement, descriptively (we obviously do practically). Explaining what's happened at the moment of impact would be something of the form of my (likely inaccurate) description of heat causing water to boil.

    Δ-temperature caused the water to freeze.Leontiskos

    No, I don't think that's right. Δ-temperatured air (sic) causes water to freeze. The air, when in contact with the water reduces the energy in the water to the point that its constituents cannot move rapidly enough to remain fluid. These are all physical. Temperature is a way to notate the complicated relationship between mass and energy, right? Can't see the gap, myself, which you are trying to fill. But I also don't see the explanation I'm looking for either...

    I mean, if causation were physical then Hume would have just pointed to it.Leontiskos

    Not if he was insufficiently resourced to do so. It may be that Hume didn't understand the transfer of energy sufficiently to understand that there are some non-trivial and non-variable ways in which that energy transfer occurs (and temperature seems to be one.. the ratios of mass/energy retention would act as a "cause" in this sense - that could, i suppose, be called non-physical but I presume you see how that's misleading and not what you're after).

    To be clear, none of this is particularly intended to support a physicalist account of causation. As noted, I don't understand how it occurs. But it seems to me we can get much further on the physicalist account than you're allowing. I would suggest some of Kim and Chalmers chats about causation in the mind/brain complex could be instructive as they are extremely detailed and minute.

    But energy is not physical. It is a property of physical systems.Leontiskos

    Which obtains, solely, in a physical, measurable domain. The premise seems wrong in this light... It is physical. We just can't grok quite how to describe that tension adequately.
  • The End of Woke
    if one remains at the surface level of ‘things wokists do that annoy us’, the baby is nothing but these arbitrary and wrongheaded actionsJoshs

    I, again, am wholly convinced you're trying to have a different discussion, and save the term from what is clearly a current actuality under its banner. I do, fully agree with this, though:

    There are legitimate points to be made from all different perspectives and directions.Fire Ologist

    The issue is that plenty of points on the 'woke' side are clearly illegitimate and I think that's what's being discussed. Even if we (those of us who are clearly critical) were to accept the underlying basis for "woke" as it was throughout the 70s and 80s, we can still make all of the criticisms we're currently making. That there's some coherent underlying idea doesn't change anything about these critiques. We're talking about what is/is happening - not what should be/be happening.

    The responsibility to make that effort is each of our duty as moral agents, as citizens of a democracy, even the work of philosophy.Antony Nickles

    I do not thikn I agree there's any responsibility to interrogate prima facie irrational positions in hopes to find something interesting to the other person. But i understand that there's a moral/co-operative dimension to this which I agree with.

    The fact that they are “underlying” is because we have not yet made the effort to look past our own criteria and (perhaps also unexamined) interests to see theirs, treat them with the respect of being able to be different but equally able to be considered once understood.Antony Nickles

    The seems to be hte exact opposite of what, in practice, occurs. I do not (almost ever) see rejections of calls for parity, equity, inclusion etc.. on emotional grounds.
    I see the reverse constantly, in the face of rational argumentation.

    The other problem is this(anecdote):

    I have spent years trying to get rational, well-grounding and intelligible responses from the 'woke' about why they do what they do, or want what they want.

    "injustice makes me feel bad" seems to be the bedrock of 90% of these people's thinking. I spent years (a decade maybe) in that exact headspace: My feelings matter. They are reasonable. They are important. Others need to take me seriously.

    I then realised that was horsecrap. No one needs to take me seriously. No one has to respect my positions.No one needs to even hear my positions. If the urges are to be heard/seen etc.. then they are misguided. If they are to ameliorate ones emotional distress, they are misguided. If there are, in some sense, to do with a high-level discussion of justice, then they are misguided. Anecdote, definitely. But I have since then, approached the 'woke' with extreme sympathy because of my journey, as it were. I have never been met with reasonable discourse or sympathetic interlocutors. They notice I am not the same as them, and its over, in terms of respect. Its higihly ironic, hypocritical and gives the distinct impression the "underlying urges" are as irrational as the manifestations (wholly reasonable and expectable that they would be).

    reform of wokist excesses can take place within the bounds of these philosophical groundJoshs

    They can't, it appears. Theory isn't particularly of any moment here. Those frameworks are what drives the more ridiculous of the manifestations some would critique (like a lot of University administration behaviour around DEI). I think it might a "You just don't understand" to take this line, myself. We are not ignorant to this and the surrounding development of thought - we just reject that this saves anything, i'd say.

    This is to put the responsibility on them to meet our (society’s) requirements and criteriaAntony Nickles

    Yes, and that is because we actually do understand

    interests and reasonsAntony Nickles

    by speaking to these people and reviewing what they cite as influences. This can easily be done, and regularly is done by critics. It is not a reflection of reality to suggest we don't understand their motivations, desires or needs. That is special pleading of a kind.

    If we grasp at something like this with our terms for judgment, we only see what we want.Antony Nickles

    I disagree. You might. But besides this, I see no problem. That's their problem at this point of the journey. If they refuse to become either explicit, rational and intelligible, I can't do anything with that. I can only do something with what I am given. This isn't to dismiss the point you've actually made - it may well be hte crux of the tension. I just don't see this as at all incumbent on my or my "side" as it were.

    It is not a matter of being a metric (a criteria for accuracy—which is judged differently), but an expert as a valued source of evidence of what matters, perspective on our current criteria.Antony Nickles

    I can't make heads or tails of this. It is a metric for valuing those opinions. And the metric is amorphous, indefinable and obviously impossible to arbitrate in that lane (lived experience). There is no way to value an opinion over another outside of actual expertise, as you then go on to outline. A "legal opinion" is not a personal opinion.

    I believe the claim is that in certain situations (as I discussed), it matters to have input from someone who has lived through something.Antony Nickles

    Yes, i understand the claim. I largely reject it. It is almost entirely impossible to give a reasonable, helpful account of osmething one lived through because we cannot extract ourselves from the effects we are experiencing. People experience things so radically differently, there's simply no way to choose which opinions can be called "important" and to what end. I think.

    Was it unconscious disdain for their own consumer demographic by an enlightened and awoken upper leadership?Fire Ologist

    Yet, a company like Jaguar has conscious disdain for their consumer demographic and reduced their sales by 90%. Because no one likes the product. No one wants a can of Bud with a clear male dressed as a woman(i'm happy to call Dylan she, I'm just making the point). That's odd, irrelevant and off-putting, even if you're fine with transwomen. Dylan, particularly, appears to be a mentally ill narcissist. Nothing to do with cisnormativity. That type of claim (made by praxis, not you) is tantamount to saying "the reason I need to support my position is the one which is true". But given praxis wasn't in the boycott group, that seems a little off. Someone in the boycott group can easily give explicit reasons, and they mostly amount to the above (when asked by me, or what i've seen online, anyway).

    Those who want to utterly downplay and de-prioritize them (from the right) should not get away with it.Fire Ologist

    They don't. They say they are not the problems the Woke present them to us as. Is racism extant? Yep. Is it systemic?? Almost certainly not. The law doesn't allow it. Yet, any perceived disparity will be held up as an example of it. We can play that game in the reverse, and support hte idea that hte USA is highly sexist against Men, for instance.

    I'm going to give praxis' challenge a go from the post below also:

    I would say that the only "woke" way of looking at this is that there's a tension in language, and that the cis-normative men were threatened by a feminine spokesperson, and particularly a male who is so feminine, she's a woman, representing them. That discomfort must be borne of homophobia and transphobia because there aren't other rational reasons (or, alternately, they are all what's called "dog whistles").

    Just so you're aware, this is what I was told. Not what I am imagining.