Comments

  • The Role of the Press
    They don't.

    This is what my objection boils down to. No one knows anything about 'hate speech'. They know what makes them uncomfortable. It's a vaccuous concept that doesn't refer to anything that could be used interpersonally, unless you already agree on what Hate Speech. Which is tautological and entirely incoherent.

    They obviously don't, given the number of law suits journalists and institutions get into. "Women are not men" is hate speech on some platforms.

    It takes a hard R on others. There is no universal that could be applied.

    I personally don't think anything should be considered 'hate speech' because that's a cudgel and not relevant to whether an utterance is worth hearing.
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    As in, we're both weakening our claims ;)Moliere

    hehe, that's fair. But I disagree with that sometimes is enough to go on, because it doesn't present me with anything to discuss. Which is the problem.

    Time-for-Money being a big one.Moliere

    Do you not, then see that this is an aspect of many work environments which still requires the surrounding details to discuss it?

    in-and-of-itself its nothing at all to be discussed. Time-for-money? Says nothing ethically.

    Here, let's try this: Engage me in the discussion you think you can wrangle out of hte geenral concept of "the world environment".

    I will do my best to engage back - but I expect this can't be done
  • Why populism leads to authoritarianism
    Will get back to you once i've finished On Liberty.
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    Because we have individual property rights that are enforced by a state, and because human beings continue to be what they are, some of the general structures that emerge are: some people must sell their time to people who own things.Moliere

    The phrasing of this betrays the point you want to make, and supports mine. These are various and you need a bit of detail to discuss them with any aptness. Nothing presented enables the conversation.

    These concepts above are not able to be discussed ethically. As you said, they need not be bad things - but sometimes they will be. And we need to know about that "sometime" to discuss its ethical implication.
  • The Thomas Riker argument for body-soul dualism
    As a hobby SF writer (in the past), I disagree. In fact, there are issues to figure out that more pressing than body-soul dualism. For example, here: Could the spouse be tried for bigamy? Multiple spouses suggests yes. Only one marriage certificate suggests no.Dawnstorm

    These relate to whether you're a legal positivist or not. Yes? Then the cert. does it's job and there is no problem.
    No? You need to figure out your own intuition about who is who - but that's not really pertinent here. The law runs according to the above.
    Ignoring that the two people are qualitatively, AND numerically different after any span of time isn't really the fault of the facts, if you see what I mean.

    Wait, only one marriage certificate? Two individuals sharing the same certificate? After all, both of them have the same history, so that one certificate is valid for them both.Dawnstorm

    As I said, they are not the same person on ANY conception except Immaterial Soul (and that's assuming the soul jumped to Mars.. you may hold the view, and think that's not happening). There is no problem.

    So what about... oh, I don't know... debt? You borrow a dollar on Monday, get duplicated on Tuesday, and now what? Do I get two dollars on Wednsday? After all, no matter who pays me, the other didn't pay me and still owes me a dollar.Dawnstorm

    Who are you referring to? There are two different people. It is not possible the person on Mars is party to the contract in question (on this account). Problem solved (in all three cases you've mentioned). Though, all of this assumes legal positivism.

    If it's a freak accident, people will figure things out, but in the Star Trek case... it's a transporter malfunction. You know what that suggests to anyone even remotely familiar with the history of invention? That's right: human duplication technology.Dawnstorm

    I'm unsure what you're driving at here, so my response might seem off-kilter. A transporter malfunction is exactly what the Branchline case is. So, I cannot see that this is an issue of any kind. Thought, you could make the argument that this presents an issue for them because they don't legally exist. But again, not relevant to the discussion as it could be solved by generating a birth certificate (see the NB below for why that might make sense).

    So here's the question: solve those legal problems and see whether your approach tells you something about your instinctive attitude towards the problem at issue. Maybe?Dawnstorm

    There was no problem to solve. Well, to be more accurate, my conception removed the problem. So, it seems unhelpful to restate a problem which this account removes. Person B is not analogous to person A beyond the exact moment of creation. In that moment, all of these issues arise. But they die away just as quickly.

    NB: probably worth realizing that in a world that this machine exists, the Law knows about it and has anticipated these problems. In any case, these are legal issues, not metaphysical ones. The two people are distinct in all meaningful ways. Their mentality is different, their personality is different (as a result of their mentality), their body is now different from being in a different environment, subject to different forces and chemical interactions, their thoughts are divergent, their emotions are divergent etc.. etc.. etc.. Sharing an extremely similar physical and mental make-up does not an identity make.

    If there's something meaningful that remains between teh two, fire it at me :)
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    But it seems our disagreement is whether one can speak in general about "working conditions" at all, which I clearly think we canMoliere

    What are the 'general conditions' of 'the work environment'? If you can lay some out, I'd be happy to step back on this. I just can't think of any 'general conditions' as opposed to 'general expectations' which can't really be apt for anything here.
  • The Role of the Press
    The legal language can be made clear enough to penalize deliberate harm perpetrated by public media.Vera Mont

    Oh, sure. But it isn't currently.

    I don't think the concept is coherent enough. I think you'd have to specific the things you've specified (which i agree with) and prohibit specific acts. Not a catch-all. Way too slippery and subjective. It also lets lawyers be lawyers. Which we should reduce the opportunity for :P
  • The Role of the Press
    and hate speech, of course.Vera Mont

    I think this is where it gets messy.

    "hate speech" is not a very good descriptor of anything, despite its legal use.. which is equally as muddy and controversial. This has an extremely ethics-driven overtone, no matter what your position is - so I think, just excluded anything YOU think comes under that title is tantamount to the same arbitrary restrictions posited in the OP. It is a subjective measure, and so there is no 'accuracy' issue.

    If you are merely making the positivist point that journalists shouldn't break the law - fair enough. I took this to be a more wide-scoped convo starter.
  • The Nature of Art
    many of Nietzsche's aphorisms are within my muscle memory...Vaskane

    Well, that explains you.
  • Suggestion: TPF Conference via AVL
    Amadeus Diamond is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

    Join Zoom Meeting
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  • Postmodernism and Mathematics
    I may not be catching you right; but if I am, each to their own I suppose :)
  • The Nature of Art
    I hated Ravels Pictures at an Exhibition and just never went back, any recs?
    @Noble Dust


    Also super interesting you don’t relate to rock. Bob Dylan going electric feels the same as Beethovens choral or Paganini breaking strings. Absolutely singular and awe inspiring.
  • Hobbies
    ooof that distorted bass (is it sub synth?) goes hard on Our Bones. Really enjoy the cut rhythm too! Thank you dude :)

    If you’re of the type, I recommend Crumbling Jazz off of my Soundcloud. 16 minutes. Was spamming Pink Floyd at the time. Some of my best guitar work by far. It’s better high
  • How to do nothing with Words.

    I would agree, but wouldn't this intimate that there are two separate acts taking place, that don't necessarily require each other for pertinence? For example, If i am yelling across a crowd at someone to elicit some action (come to me, go get X, leave this place etc.. ) but they cannot hear me, only one side of the exchange actually obtains, yet my speech act seems to cover off all its requirements to be an act of Speech.

    In the converse, I often times "hear" my wife say something specific, that she hasn't said. My brain has filled in based on some previously noted house-bound noises, that my wife was talking, and in fact calculated what she's likely to be saying. OFten, it transpires she was about it - but in fact hasn't - made a speech act - yet my side of the exchange obtains regardless.

    I've not gotten in to this discussion much, so hopefully this isn't entirely pedestrian or uncouth.
  • Postmodernism and Mathematics
    In that sense it is clear that CRT has little to nothing to do with Derrida or Deleuze, but everything to do with the Frankfurt school.Lionino

    Some of the critical, if you'll excuse the pun, figures in the CRT development (Kimberlé Crenshaw, bell hooks, and Cornel West) cite Derrida as influential on their thinking. And i think its reasonable to use that metric, rather than mentions in textbooks, as a metric for the relevance of ideas.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Americans should get the chance to vote for this asshole,Mikie

    The US is a very stupid country, you see.Mikie

    LOL. I have to agree, in the Political arena anyway. It's all a bit of a joke from outside.
  • What the science of morality studies and its relationship to moral philosophy
    The science of morality can explain why our moral sense and cultural moral norms exist.Mark S

    I can't understand how this would be the case. Unless you take "the science of morality" to just be sociology focused on social norms? I would also posit that given the extreme expanses of time that would need to be "number crunched" in regard to their moral outputs, lets say, across history, that this science could never be used.
  • Indirect Realism and Direct Realism
    Yeah, Agreed.
    I wonder if this will lessen as I move through my degree.. Hmm.
  • The Nature of Art
    Don't want to import my interpretation to you words - Are you insinuating Radiohead are not artists? :smirk:
  • Suggestion: TPF Conference via AVL
    Turns out i am the typical overproductive 30-something.

    I WILL organise this. I'll do it by setting a meeting today NZ time, and you guys can argue over the timing.
  • Indirect Realism and Direct Realism


    Hahahah; not intimating, but not entirely sure he's not.

    I disagree, but I'm not going to get back into *the discussion. Because I ducked out :P

    *leaving the discussion.
    Clarifying things for other people is fine, as far as I'm concerned :) that said, I am impulsive and the above line took some effort to leave there without elaboration lol. The topics raised, I think about a lot.
  • The Nature of Art
    Ever been working on something passionately and experienced a time warp via tons of productivity? That is the artist's method.Vaskane

    This often happens. But equally, in the style of Radiohead, intense scrutiny and slow, slogging technical adjustment results in similar feelings of achievement toward the end product.
    Unsure what the implication for you might be, but I'm just saying that the method you outline seems to be one of, at least two, and possibly many.
  • Indirect Realism and Direct Realism
    Fwiw, I have seen this argument many, many times among psychedelic people.
    I think the implication is that if you can take a thought and ferry it through the air to cause a thought in the other person, this constitutes telepathy. Obviously, the example doesn't even fit that loose definition of telepathy. There is a mediate causal chain. And even on that definition, it's merely using a word incorrectly.
    No idea why this argument pops up, but i've seen it plenty of times with the lame reasoning above.
  • Indirect Realism and Direct Realism
    I’m not sure how something can in fact be orange but appears blue, so I cannot suppose it.NOS4A2

    To explain what I think is being said, I've noted previously that "blue" is defined by 'its' wavelength. Not it's experience. However, people can experience the wavelength defined as Blue as something that we define as a different colour (blue to gold in that stupid dress case). The experience varies, despite the wavelength "in the world" not changing (apparently).

    If the the wavelength defined as "blue" can cause more than one experience of it, we must be not noticing something interesting going on here... Or alternately, if the experience of 'gold' can be accessed through several real-world objects (wavelengths of light), something interesting is going on
  • Consciousness is a Precondition of Being
    "Consciousness emerges as in the mode of presentational immediacy whereby an occasion in feeling the universe feels and recognizes its own feelings." - Alfred North Whitehead


    In Whitehead's framework, consciousness emerges as a result of the interplay of various 'prehensions', and is not just a passive observer but an active participant in the creation of experience. This perspective breaks away from dualistic approaches that separate mind and matter, and instead emphasizes the interconnectedness and dynamic nature of the universe.

    This seems to imply that 'feelings' or awareness of experience do not make a being conscious (or sentient, for that matter). It seems to imply, as does most of Process and Reality, that consciousness is not just secondary, but essentially unimportant in the development of an 'actual occasion' representing some individual animal body region of the world while being posited as fundamental in the process itself(qua "cosmic epoch" rather than qua an actual occasion(in an animal body - a person, for instance)), ...I can't quite get across this position, but Its interesting and might be cud to chew on for others.
  • Migrating to England
    No, totally a fair comment. I should be aware of what those i'm speaking to interpret me to be saying. I should have said Northern Ireland.
  • Migrating to England
    "Ireland", typically, includes both the Republic and Northern Ireland in everyday conversation, outside of those two geographical areas, in my experience. "Ireland" alone refers to the physical Island which is merely geopolitically divided.

    I refer to places like Ballycastle and Armagh and Antrim here. That said, I would prefer to move somewhere like Wicklow or Cork.
  • The Thomas Riker argument for body-soul dualism
    No issue for them either. All the relevant memories were conserved heh. But i see your point
  • The Thomas Riker argument for body-soul dualism
    If you create an identical body with an identical
    brain in exactly the same condition as the original, you would have 2 identical conscious people, both with identical memories and emotions about those memories.
    Going forward , their experience would diverge creating different memories and experiences.
    Fess

    This has been my solution to the Branch-line case. There is no numerical identity, and qualitatively, after any, even infintesimal, span of time after the 'event' of branching, the two 'people' have different mental quality. So, there is no issue. There are two people, on any account other than an Immaterial Soul-type of account.
  • Migrating to England
    I would never move back to the UK, unless it was Ireland. I cannot support this endeavour :sweat:
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    I think it's apt for ethical discussion probably because of my own personal history, of course. It seems to me that there are some environments which are better or worse than others, which means there's an evaluative element, which means -- well, if not ethics, at least aesthetics. Value theory.Moliere

    Yes, good. I think the important part here is the underlined. To my mind, this requires a workplace to begin discussing the ethics. "the work place" is not "a workplace" and therefore has no detail to be discussed, ethically.
    It would be like saying "the court room" rather than a particular courtroom with particular policy/protocol/requirement etc... The Court Room, as it stands, doesn't refer to anything whcih could be discussed. Is how I see this.
    Is that at all clearer? I do think this applies to any value-driven discussion.
  • Hobbies
    None of this indicates I have any talent :lol: Just tenacity.

    How am I doing so far? :razz:Benkei

    Hahah, this is genuinely the type of stuff I used to write. But, battle rap is very homophobic so it takes a certain type of skin to get on with it.

    When I roll up, you fold up like confessing to a priest
    Like a warlord in Africa, i'm coming for your teeth
    Told you schmucks I'm the Lord here in these streets
    Put here by God, you can't see me, like a ding-en sich.

    Please kill me.

    :gasp: and I thought my 9 not including EPs and bands was a lot for a hobbyist. Comfortable sharing any links? PM is fine. No worries if not.Noble Dust

    To be clear, I spent about a decade doing drugs and recording music. It wasn't a great time, but the resulting media is meaningful to me haha. Here's something from my Soundcloud. As you can see, this hasn't been updated in years... and every thing on it is demo - though, technically that's true for everything I've ever done bar one studio recording for a friends audio engineering course lol. I don't have access to the laptop with my library on it currently, but It's safe.

    Any of your own?

    Are you real, Amadeus, or are you an AI bot? :gasp:jgill

    Trying to be real! Hahah. Music above, Jiu Jitsu here but I've just realised it's private :( Here you can see I was nominated for a National comedy award (fifth row down, on the right).

    I'm at work and can't find links for most of hte other stuff, but you get the picture. It's all horrid, but i'm doing it all! LOL

    I also complete forgot to mention that I also spent abotu a decade advocating for Psychedelics in medicine in New Zealand and abroad. It was semi-successful and we got a couple of studies done, but I became disillusioned and moved away from it about 18 months ago.

    And i used to lecture at Universities about Ancient History ala Graham Hancock. In fact, he is a good friend of mine. Yes. I am now showing off.
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    Hmm... Not in this discussion, no, as it violates the premise being asked about (though, i do intuit that this is by way of the OP being very imprecise in its aim). "the work environment" imports nothing to be discussed, ethically. You have to import some detail to get anywhere. You're basically not disagree with me, but still arguing that my position is off.

    Can you just directly address why you think the abstract concept of 'work environment' without any indication of detail is apt for ethical discussion (and this, specifically in opposition to "a work environment, X")?

    We're all replying to replies. I am agreeing with Moliere. I think his argument is approximately a million times better than yours.Leontiskos

    You're allowed - but my comments don't change simply because you're justifying ignoring the arguments to agree with a badly-formulated response. *shrug*.
  • Hobbies
    No longer able to call Philosophy a hobby - which is good and bad. Outside Phil though:

    - Brazillian Jiu jitsu;
    - Drums, voice, guitar, bass, keys.. few others, including Irish Whistle!;
    - Songwriting in light of the above - 23 albums and counting;
    - Free Running/Parkour (mostly handstands and other power moves);
    - Writing comedy for television and other stand-ups;
    - Writing battle raps that will never see the light of day (though, there is footage of me doing several battles out there on the internet... )
    - Collecting/enjoying Whisky/ey and fine Wine;
    - Currently Learning Spanish and Arabic;
    - Trying to solve the origins of the Voynich manuscript;
    - Visiting puppy litters; and
    - Writing science fiction (two pieces, thus far.. but one is a Trilogy for which i've only begun the first volume).
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    Is there some reason, other than avoidance, that you're replying to a reply, instead of hte points made in the comment being replied to?

    I ask because both of your comments are made utterly redundant by my response before yours. Seems like you might be trying to avoid? I've directly addressed why your positions make no sense (though, in response to Moliere). I cannot help but have this thought...
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    The relationship between employer and employee has no relationship beyond the fact that they have a relationship, and yet that relationship doesn't involve any interaction or disposition -- ever?Moliere

    I can dispossess you of an erroneous take with this:

    on it's face,AmadeusD
    which means.. You are leapfrogging over the discussion into one which I am not having. Though, I have very, VERY clearly stated that once there are details(i.e an example of), that discussion is apt and important. Unless you involve some specifics, there is nothing to discuss. "the workplace" doesn't even exist unless you are talking about a workplace. In that case, go for gold and I likely have as many, and similar critiques to yourself. But the concept itself means nothing but that there is a relationship. Not what it is, or that it requires any interaction.

    So, you want to talk about specifics.
    I'm saying, the concept doesn't hoild ethical water until you talk about specifics. I'm unsure that we disagree?

    under capital it's a time-for-money system.Moliere

    This could be said, and It would be hard to argue against, but there are millions of examples within capitalism where this is not the exchange. Exploitative trade is very much a thing (and imo, a good thing) which doesn't involve any direct relationship with value per se, and instead, value per individual but is definition part of, if not intrinsic to the mechanics of modern capitalism (i would posit that this is marked by multiple hierarchies, rather than a single state-peaked hierarchy).
  • Is the work environment even ethical anymore?
    It's the organization that's similar between jobs that make "working conditions" coherent.Moliere

    I reject your premise. That is not a catch-all description of all work places. That's my entire point, though. I did point out that once you've got 'a workplace' of some kind (i.e, a particular) then you can start the ethical discussion based on what actually happens in that case. There is no universal relationship between employer and employee beyond the "fact of" (which doesn't, on it's face, involve any interaction or disposition at all). If there was a specific relationship that could be threaded through every single workplace in the metaphysical world, as it were, there would be no acceptable economic system given that 'work' is literally unavoidable within society.

    As an example that defeats the premise there are many companies with a a flat structure where employees earn exactly what they bill for (some types of Law Firms have a 30/30/30 rule for every single employee based on their fee-earner's work.. which they are usually partly responsible for) entirely regardless of their position but decision making is obviously the arena of the owners of a company.

    Shareholding might actually hold water for your point, though, as the relationship is one of pure exploitation (arguable, but I can't see it another way).
  • The Nature of Art
    Whatever you take it to be.

    I know mathematicians who react the way I do to Allegri's choral pieces when they see/understand a 'beautiful' proof. I've known architects who see, literally, a specific angle and jizz themselves. I've seen astronomers see a new piece of equipment and be beside themselves. They all seem to be reacting to the 'closing in on perfect' - these are unique examples in disparate fields, but its only meant to support my opener.

    Attainment of some 'perfection' seems to be the aim of art, even if it's out of reach, or isn't explicit. The perfect expression of something(being entirely subjective, it's hard to know exactly how to frame this - but it seems clearly the intention from all cases I've ever surveyed).

    Other domains don't seem to include this particular aim. 'perfection' in other areas seems to relegate emotion to irrelevancy. Art seems to hold fast to emotional responses as if they are paramount to the success of the work/piece.

    And just for the record, if you take an institutional theory of Art seriously, I have to seriously question your framing of almost every item you interact with.
  • Indirect Realism and Direct Realism
    In fact the very claim that two people see the dress to be two different colours requires that colour words (in this context) refer to the quality of the experience and not the wavelength of the light as the wavelength is the same for all of us.Michael

    it’s important to recognise that the term “blue” now has two different meanings.Michael

    This is exactly my point noted here:

    "Blue" is definitional, in terms of wavelengths and we ascertain an aberration from that definition. Not from disparate experiences themselves.AmadeusD

    Only the wavelengths are defined. My point is this is arbitrary (or "convention") so we're speaking about hte same thing, I think. Blue is defined as a certain range of wavelengths. (I should have said..) but is understood within each specific personally private experience of blue.
    Yet, we have disparate experiences, so whence comes the definition into play?
    This is why I'm saying its a 'naive realist' position to suppose that, ipso facto, those who 'do not see a blue dress', for example, have aberrant perception. The reliance on a convention to deduce where teh aberration is doesn't sit too well with me.
  • Does Consciousness Extend Beyond Brains? - The 2023 Holberg Debate
    Perception, therefore, isn’t online hallucination; it’s sensorimotor engagement with the world.

    This seems to entirely miss the point. Perception may well be sensorimotor engagement. Experience is absolutely not, and suggestions that it is seem to fly in the face of every position except naive Realism.
    The experience of an orange (sight, touch, taste etc...) does not consist in the sensorimotor engagement. It consists in some secondary, brain-generated imagining. So, I don't think the quoted passage quite addresses the issue at hand (re: the previous poster) while outlining an important way in whcih we need to understand our data input.

    We aren’t dreaming machines but imaginative beings. We don’t hallucinate at the world; we imaginatively perceive it.

    This seems to pretend that "imaginatively perceive' is not the same as 'hallucinate'. Perhaps not a 1:1, but it is extremely close. I guess the difference is that in a True Hallucination there is no "real world" input, but in general perception there is. I'm unsure that Picasso and Caravaggio can be considered to be doing the same 'imagining'.

    New muscle stimulates CNS growth in the brain as well.Vaskane

    So do magic mushrooms ;)