The good of the country may involve actions that, from an individual perspective, may range from merely wrong all the way to abomination. — BC

Then in that case, the ethical thing to do (or at least, aim to do) is to be merely wrong. It is possible for a citizen to be wrong, since they have the basic right to think. It does not follow from there, however, that they (the citizens) have a right to perform an act of abomination.

It's worse than wrong. — BC

It is, that is why neither citizens nor folk can afford to commit such crimes. Because that is what they are: a crime is a crime because it is an Ethical abomination to begin with.

Generals and politicians, even some citizens, may decide that mutually assured destruction is OK as long as the other side doesn't win. Most citizens, some politicians, and even some generals will consider reject the idea. — BC

Exactly. So it's about power and influence, essentially. Fame, prestige, and all that. It is, quite literally, a Power Game. That, however, does not necessarily mean that "powergamers" the best players or agents to rely on such intellectual fronts.

In the case of the October attack by Hamas on Israel, it's difficult to take a pacifist position. — BC

Because it is a very complicated conflict to begin with, it is not exactly easy to look at this conflict from a militaristic standpoint.

The attack was bad and the reprisals (the apparently goal of which is to destroy Gaza) leave nothing to approve. What we have is Iran (Hamas) and the State of Israel pursuing their interests, and damn anybody who gets in the way. — BC

Well, all I can say on the topic of the War in the Middle East, I can only share with you a music video that I like and that I agree with, more or less:

↪J
I studied De Anima in detail as an undergrad. I've forgotten most of it. To dismissive? — Banno

It's an admittedly strange book, in that it outlines a theory of the mind and the soul that is very remote from how we understand such topics from a modern perspective.

Personally, I never cared much for De Anima, but what makes it seem so odd to me, from a merely bibliographical standpoint, is that Aristotle's concept of the "active intellect" only appears once in the entire works of Aristotle, and it appears in one specific passage in De Anima. That's what most odd about that book, specifically.

Nevertheless, the topic of the "active intellect" was widely discussing in Medieval European Philosophy. It's just one of those strange things about Aristotle, I don't think anyone can really explain it.

materialism is a tendency at a certain point of the development of cultures — Wayfarer

Hmmm... Do I agree with this? This is the part where it becomes a complicated discussion. Just for the record, no, I do not believe that materialism is a tendency at a certain point to the development of cultures. Maybe it was in the past, in some instances. But it is not today, and has not been, for a very long time. And, honestly speaking, I don't think that materialism will ever be in a position to "get that back", so to speak. But that is of no important consequence, for "materialism" is not my only premise. Whatever deficiencies materialism might have as a premise, it compensates for its weakness by drawing strength from the other premises of the system, premises such as realism, atheism, and scientism. Lately, I've been considering the public addition of literalism to that list, but the system already had it as a "secret" axiom.

In any case, I don't see why I would switch the term "materialism" for the term "idealism". What do you "get out of" idealism that you don't get out of materialism? What "objective benefits" does idealism bring to the table, that materialism can't bring? I'm listening.

At that point of your own phenomenology journey, one becomes a materialism. — Arcane Sandwich

OK, I can't leave this just like this. Let me invent an excuse for it (yep, 100% honesty mode right not).

First of all, the syntax. It's not necessarily wrong. Because what I clumsily said in my original quote might qualify as a garden path sentence.

So, what I said, now means "At that point of your own phenomenology (your personal Phenomenological) journey, one becomes (through a process of increasing abstraction), a "materialism" in the sense that one has forgotten about oneself as a subject in the ontological sense of the term.

How about that?

, there is an 'absolutisation of the objective' — Wayfarer

I agree that this is a problem, comparable to reification. One should not absolutize what is not absolute to begin with, just as one should not "thingify" what is not a thing, just as one should not reify what is not a res. And one should certainly not objectify what is not an object. That, is one possible argument, and further line of inquiry.

Yet, for the very same reason, you seem to be suggesting that one should not materialize what is not material. And I would agree with you: that should not be done. It would be a category mistake to do even do such a thing.

But then you seem to be suggesting that one should not idealize what is not idea. And I expressed, even said plainly, that I agree with you: one should not do such a thing. It would be a category mistake to even do such a thing.

So I sincerely do not understand what is the actual difference between our Philosophies. The only difference that I perceive, the only difference truly "worthy" of the name, is a difference-making Aesthetic difference, and only that. Allow me to explain what I mean, with the help of a metaphor. Speaking less formally, here's the "picture" that I would suggest as a conceptual metaphor of "what I've been saying" in this specific Thread.



It is, as you already know, the symbol of the Yin and the Yang. We can "appeal to erudition" if you want, in this discussion, yet I would begin in a non-erudite way. In other words, I would "go about it" as a commoner would, because that is precisely what Wikipedia does:

In Chinese cosmology, the universe creates itself out of a primary chaos of material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang, form and matter. 'Yin' is retractive, passive and contractive in nature, while 'yang' is repelling, active and expansive in principle; this dichotomy in some form, is seen in all things in nature—patterns of change and difference. For example, biological and seasonal cycles, evolution of the landscape over days, weeks, years and eons (with the original meaning of the words being the north-facing shade and the south-facing brightness of a hill), gender (female and male), as well as the formation of the character of individuals and the grand arc of sociopolitical history in disorder and order. — Wikipedia

And a chord is dependent on the scale in which it sits. The first, third, fifth and seventh sound distinctly different, as does a minor chord.

But I'm not clear as to what you are getting at. If you understand that the major is the root, third and fifth, while the seventh chord is the root, third, fifth and seventh note of the scale, is there again something more that is needed in order to have the concept of major and seventh?

In a sense perhaps putting your fingers on the right strings to produce each? The doing? — Banno

If you want to talk about Math & Music, then we need more musical concepts here. I would suggest incorporating rhythm, harmony and melody as mathematical and musical concepts into this specific aspect of the discussion.

Yep. it's the doing that has import here. — Banno

If that's the import, then what's the export? What does it "get out of it", in economic and/or thermodynamic terms, and/or systemic terms?

The carry on is just meant to indicate my total shoulder-shrug with respect to the OP. — Mww

Yes, that is a High attitude, and justly so, rightly so. Objectively speaking, of course.

Nothing to do with secrecy; ol’ Bob and me, we go down this dialectical inconsistency road every once in awhile. — Mww

Yes, Dialectics is a pseudoscientific concept that some people have utilized for Evil. And yes, I said what I just said. For there is Evil in the world. It cannot be described, in moral terms, any other way.

At that point of your own phenomenology journey, one becomes a materialism. — Arcane Sandwich

And yes, I said what I said, even grammatically. I will not edit that part.

@Wayfarer my Internet connection is not "cooperating" with me right now, so I'm on another device right now. It might be a fallacy, though. If so, it is a very rare one, hardly ever appears in a human discussion. I call it "Appeal to the Machine".

Right, so think of the OP this way:

The Living Subject is like a dot. It is surrounded by a sea of Blind Spot. Then it Phenomenologizes on an Ontological level, and it concludes, from inference-to-best-hypothesis that Realism is "More True", in an important sense, than idealism and materialism. It is "conceptually superior", so to speak, in a purely formal way. It has nothing to do with materiality as such.

But then, The Living Subject looks at the world. The Subject forgets about itself, ontologically speaking. It becomes "metaphorically blind". And thus you are now in the state of awareness that you are already familiar with: the state of awareness of ordinary life.

At that point of your own phenomenology journey, one becomes a materialism. Matter is just the brute fact that there is a physical world outside of your consciousness. The world just imposes itself upon you like that. And if one were to ask? What is the reason, for such a fact?

Well... That's what we all want to know. That is why we all philosophize.

But never mind. Carry on. — Mww

I don't know, friend. It sounds to me like you just said something important, right there. Why do you seem to be so "secretive" about it?

But that's people for you: we are never very far from barbarism. — BC

And yet we try to be. To be very far from barbarism in that sense, because that is the Ethical thing to do. We can Romanticize barbarism itself, but that's a mere fantasy that we are indulging in when we do that. In the world of responsible citizens, no one has the right to kill another human being without a valid and sound Ethical justification for it. Wars are not Ethical by definition.

Every OP has an agenda, just like a meeting does, or else it is just a tangent. — Bob Ross

Would the following part qualify as the agenda?

Explanation for this whole thing: This is my "Love Letter" to Speculative Materialism, especially as developed by Quentin Meillassoux (particularly in his first book, After Finitude). Which is not to say that I agree with him on every topic, but sometimes his statements just leave you wondering... — Arcane Sandwich

Then you say:

Lol, you are the one that told me to chill out being so kind. — Bob Ross

Of course I did. I'm glad that you complied with that request.

What I am suggesting to you (although you can do as you please) is to accept the challenge of refining the OP to remove the ambiguity in your own thinking — Bob Ross

And all that I am humbly saying, is that I lack the knowledge, as a professional philosopher, to accomplish the task that you are suggesting that I perform. I need to tackle the problem of the OP step-by-step. It begins with a sketch (the OP itself), it continues as a progressive discussion throughout the Thread (the blacks, whites, and grays of the eventual painting), and finally it becomes a full-colored painting in the form of the comment that I personally choose as the comment that has solved the problem that the OP presented. Here's the trick: due to how good forum etiquette actually works, the "winning comment" in that sense cannot be mine. I cannot answer my own question, simply out of courtesy. Someone else, some other forum member, has to be the winner, and this is by definition.

So, again, can we please focus our attention on Korman's argument about composition? You're under no obligation to agree or to even contribute anything in that sense, you are obviously free to do as you please.

it reads to me like you don't really know what you are exploring but you know you are exploring something. — Bob Ross

Yes, that is exactly what is going on. This discussion that we're all having here, ever since the Thread started, is an attempt to clarify what is unphilosophical about the OP, for the purpose of turning it into a legitimate philosophical question.

Briefly re-reading it, you didn't even mention the PSR; which, as far as I can tell, is what you really want to talk about. — Bob Ross

Not quite. It's something else. What I want to talk about is factiality as such, which is related to, but not identical with, the PSR.

Re-reading the OP, I just find it confusing and lacking clarity on what is going on: what's the agenda? — Bob Ross

I mean, that's a bit of a brutal assumption to make in the first place, Bob. I don't have an agenda to begin with. Why would you assume that I have "an agenda"? What do you even mean by that? What is your intent when you ask such a question? Think of it as a Phenomenologist would, please. That would be very helpful for my investigation and thus, for the topic that the OP proposes to explore in this Thread.

Perhaps I am just missing the point. — Bob Ross

I don't think that you are. If you were, I would have told you. Or, if I was a very rude person, I would have "kicked you out of the Thread", or some nonsense like that. I mean, you are somewhat of a rude person, but that tells me nothing about your actual thoughts and opinions.

In other words, Bob, the bet that I "got for ya" here is a proposal, to look at how Korman himself proposes to resit the Argument From Vagueness against Restricted Composition. That is the only "philosophical lead" that I have found that could solve the problem of the OP.

Deal or no deal?

I don’t. Isn’t ultimate reality the same as absolute reality? — Bob Ross

Yes, it is. But, like North Americans like to say, "that's an opinion, not a fact". And all I'm saying is: "no, mate, that's not an opinion. That is indeed a fact. An absolute fact."

I think if you wrote the OP in a manner that was sufficiently clear, well-organized, and had legitimate argumentation for the conclusion; then it would be a good philosophy OP. — Bob Ross

Bob. Honest question. How could I even do that, if the topic of the OP is literally unexplored, at least in a purely bibliographical sense?

Wouldn’t you rather come up with a good argument for why your position is true? — Bob Ross

Sure, but I don't even have a position to begin with, that's the problem that I've been alluding to. There isn't much work that's already been done in this specific, uncharted area of the philosophical map.

I get what you are going for here; but that’s not what the terms traditionally mean. Unsoundness is when the logic is invalid. What you are talking about is internal and external coherence. — Bob Ross

Call it whatever you like, I simply share the viewpoint of my colleagues in the Analytic Metaphysics of Ordinary Objects on that topic.

Your OP is unphilosophical, as I said before, in the sense that, although it addresses a philosophy subject, it does not provide sufficient clarity and argumentation for it to be considered formally philosophical (by my lights). — Bob Ross

And that is fair. That you make such a judgement. It is fair.

Like I said before, it is philosophy in the sense that the subject matter which you wish to discuss is a part of philosophy. — Bob Ross

No Bob, please don't do that. You just said that my OP is unphilosophical, and I said that I'm fine with that. Now, out of pure intellectual curiosity, I want to know: what is it? The OP. What genre of writing does it belong to, in your honest opinion? Because that would help me in a a purely methodological sense. It doesn't matter if you give me the "wrong answer", for example "I think it's the literary genre of garbage pseudo-philosophy" or something like that. I promise I won't take any offense at your honest answer to the question that I'm asking.

↪Arcane Sandwich

I'm not sure I see where you're going with this. — Apustimelogist

I'm not going anywhere with it, I'm just trying to see if we can reach a common understanding, by slightly enforcing the rules of language. If not, then I will stop.

the diplomacy of nations with gun boats will be more 'effective'. — BC

Even if that's true, it does not follow from there that the diplomacy of nations with "gun boats", as you call them, would be more dignified. And yeah, I mean that as an opinion, not necessarily as a fact.

The US or China can be much more persuasive. — BC

I don't think that persuasiveness has anything to do with their success. Their international policies seem barbaric, speaking frankly. Barbarians may be good at war, but they tend to leave a bit of a mess once they're done extracting whatever they were here to extract in the first place. Then they leave, and that mess that they made is now someone else's problem. And that "someone else" is usually some common folk. Some of them might move to another country. Others will move to somewhere else within the country. Others will stay where they are, right next to whatever problem the International "Powers that Be" have created in that area. And some others, out of pure resentment, ideology, or perhaps simple need, or even any combination of those three, become completely radicalized.

So who should take the blame, in such an "abstract" scenario?

Makes sense to me.
I should read Eco. Does the film do it justice? Thanks — ENOAH

Sure. Sean Connery wouldn't have acted in it otherwise (or at least I would hope not).

I'm really not that passionate about Eco myself. In fact, I am not passionate about any aspect of his theory. It just seems to me that there are more sophisticated semiologists in the world. And on the literary side of things, The Name of the Rose just sounds unappealingly "Europe-ish" to me. It's not "close enough to my heart", you could say. As far as Literature goes, I prefer the work of Macedonio Fernández and the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.

It is likely that people became more questioning of war after the first and second world wars. — Jack Cummins

And then it became even more complicated during the Cold War, in which there were several "subset wars", if you will, such as the Vietnam War, for example. And it is even more complicated in more recent times, especially in recent times, for example in places like Ukraine.

So, I have to ask: was there a point in Modern history in which there weren't any active wars going on, anywhere on the planet? If one finds such moments, then one has discovered something edifying, since those moments are objectively peaceful, in the literal sense of Peace understood as the concept that is diametrically opposed to the concept of War in that same literal sense.

a red rose is not what it might have been to a prehistoric human animal. Try as we might, we cannot see it with our senses, unmediated by our shared Mind. — ENOAH

This theme is something similar to what Umberto Eco intended to portray in his novel The Name of the Rose. A very interesting book, but very difficult to follow at times. I remember when I learned Medieval Philosophy at the University, one of my Professors was obsessed with that novel, as in, she would talk about it almost every class, whenever she had to state her personal opinion on some Medieval philosophical thesis or whatnot. She was quite good, actually. She knew "Medieval stuff", you could say.

Do I think that she had an extra-ordinary memory, in some sense of the term? Hmmm... that is actually an excellent question, I think, because our "folk" idea of what memory actually is, has become somewhat "tarnished", if you will, by the "commonality" of our ordinary lives, if that makes any sense to anyone.

But are "parts" really any different from the "part" that contains those "parts"? Does this question really need an answer? Is there even any definitive sense into how "parts" are divided or aggregate into more "parts" that we uphold all the time or even any of the time? I am not sure I think so. We notice distinctions and similarities in our sensory landscape which are multiplicitious, overlapping, redundant. — Apustimelogist

Hi, allow me to say something about that: there is a sense in which we should not mix up two very different meaning of the very word "part", for it has a mereological sense, as well as a metaphysical sense. In the former case, you are debating mereology: the domain of philosophy that studies the part-whole relation. In the latter case, you are debating metaphysics of ordinary objects: the domain of metaphysics in the Analytic Tradition that is concerned with the being and the existence of ordinary objects and extra-ordinary objects.

your existence must also might be an illusion. — A Realist

This is the "wrong part", in my opinion. Just look at the sentence: it's not even grammatical to begin with. Look at that part in the middle, it literally says "must also might be". That's not even English, in any sense of the term.

Hello, Good Day to Everyone.

I will join this discussion at this point, if you don't mind. Let's attempt to leave aside the formalities as much as possible, otherwise this specific topic tends to degenerate into an abstract discussion about the rules of War. In other words, let's keep things sharp and on point, shall we?

The OP asks: "war: How May the Idea, its Causes, and Underlying Philosophies be Understood?"

I'll say a word about the philosophical part. Technically speaking (yes, I'm playing the "war lawyer" part here, please tolerate me for a moment in that sense), the Underlying Philosophies of war, are to be best understood (this is my thesis, anyway) in a literal sense. What does that mean? That there are (at the very least) two good "candidate words" for that literal sense, and those are the following ones:

Warriorism, from Warrior-ism, from Warrior, from War. That is the literal etymology of that word.

Martialism, from Martial Law, from Martial, from the Greek God of War: Mars.

Which one of those is the "correct one", so to speak? Evidently, it is "Warriorism", for that is a far more "ancient" way of thinking. If we compare the very word "Warriorism" to the very word "Martialism", we can just sort of detect that the former, and not the latter, has "more dignity", so to speak. And how do we "detect" it, exactly? Well, I'm afraid to disappoint you, as there is no scientific explanation of it yet, and there is hardly any scientific evidence for some of the hypothesis that cognitive neuroscientists are attempting to systematize at the moment. However, there is some "hope", since that detection that I was speaking about is sort of like an Aesthetic phenomenon, if you will. The very word "Warriorism" just sounds preferable to the very word "Martialism", at least to my mind, it does. Of course, that does not by itself prove that anyone else is having a similar experience to mine, or that they could even have it to begin with (though I think it's at least possible that they might have a similar experience under similar conditions).

What are your thoughts on all those things that I just said? Do you agree? Do you disagree? To what degree do you agree or disagree, or just simply don't even agree or disagree to begin with?

our so called individual memories — ENOAH

Forgive me, I became "lost at this point", so to speak. I sincerely believe (and I might be wrong) that memories are individual. You say "so called". And I ask: what can a memory be, if not individual? Are you perhaps suggesting that there are "collective" memories, so to speak?

Or perhaps an underlying, "unifying" memory?

Please help me understand this point, for it is very rare for me to encounter someone of your admirable intellect in my ordinary life, and I say that as one would when in recognition of a fact.

If it's physical, it ought to be describable, without residue, in terms of the principles of physics and chemistry. — Wayfarer

Not quite, at least not if one is not a reductionist, and that is precisely the case of Mario Bunge, for example. He's not the only one to think that, many realists (even anti-materialist realists) postulate (or deduce) that emergence is indeed real, it is "out there", in the external world, not merely "in our minds".

This is not to say that the mind "emerges" from the brain, for that would be to speak nonsense. The mind is what the living brain of an organism does. It is more like an act than a series of processes, but that is what it is: a series of neuro-cognitive processes, which have a "one to one" mapping (1:1) to biochemical processes that the brain undergoes.

But I'm of the school of thought that as soon as living organisms form, no matter how rudimentary, there is already something about them that cannot be so described. It is not an element, a literal elan vital, some mysterious thing or substance, which is reification again. — Wayfarer

Sure, but then I would humbly argue that the same can be said for the case on an inanimate object, such as a stone. As soon as a stone forms, no matter how "rudiementary" (whatever that means, in absence of values), there is always something about the stone and other inorganic objects that cannot be so described.

And what is that? OOO calls them "real qualities". They are inaccessible by definition. Think of it like the Kantian distinction between "phenomenon" and "noumenon", but in the sense of "appearance" and "reality". Inanimate things relate to each other in the same ontological sense that a living subject relates to an inorganic object. The flame that burns the ball of cotton does not access what the cotton is as a thing-in-itself, it only accesses an appearance, in the way that cotton "presents itself", "makes itself manifest" to the flame.

Aristotle said in the first place - that they posses an organising principle. (I mean, look at the etymological link between 'organ', 'organic', and 'organisation'.) That manifests in the way that all of the components of organisms are self-organising in such a way as to form a single unified being. As Aristotle put it, organisms possess an intrinsic organisational purpose (as distinct from artifacts, who's purposes are extrinsic.) — Wayfarer

I see what you're saying there, but I think Aristotle got it wrong there. And I say that as a rogue Aristotelian.

That manifests in the way that all of the components of organisms are self-organising in such a way as to form a single unified being. — Wayfarer

So? That's not exclusive to living beings. A tornado, for example, is the sort of object that Carmichael calls "event-based object", distinct from what he calls "lump-like object". Organisms are event-based objects. It does not follow from there that they have something different, in that regard, from inanimate objects, since tornadoes are similar to organisms in that sense.

Stem cells, as is well known, are undifferentiated - which is what makes them so useful for medical purposes - but depending on where in the body they begin to develop, they acquire the specialised characteristics that make them liver cells or eye cells or what have you. That resists reduction to physical principles, although that is still a controversial matter. — Wayfarer

Of course it resists reduction. It's emergent, in a literal sense, it is real emergence. Again, why is this a big deal to you? I'm not a reductionist in that sense, and neither is Bunge. I'm all for emergence, it's one of the premises of my personal philosophy (though I would prefer to deduce it as a theorem instead of merely postulating it as axiom, but that's Off Topic).

Again, where is the disagreement between us, exactly, @Wayfarer? Because, honestly, I can't see it. The only difference between our philosophies, as far as I can see, is some sort of Aesthetic difference, and only that.

Thank you for your clarification on the point. I disagree with the point totally. — Corvus

You're welcome. And yes, you're free to disagree with the point totally, as you say. That is what Metaphysics is all about (well, that's what Philosophy is all about, really).

whether something is alive or not, if something is imaginable, thinkable and conceivable, then it is possible to discuss about them. — Corvus

I agree. We can talk about anything. The problem is, that there's a point where out words just stop making sense, even to ourselves. Remember one of the games that we all played at some point: pick a word, any word, and say it out loud, and repeat that for a few minutes. For example, let's pick the word "tree". Now, say "tree" over and over again, for several minutes. At some point, you will notice a psychological effect occurring "somewhere in your mind", in which everything is normal, except for the word "tree", which just stopped making sense because you repeated it so much. Well, that sort of psychological phenomena can be scientifically investigated. And I, as a metaphysican, can talk about all that: but only up to a certain point, because if I continue to talk as a metaphysician on that point, my words start seeming like what happened with the word "tree" in the previous example. In other words, you can't do metaphysics in isolation: you need many other Academic disciplines to complement it, if you want to get any substantial metaphysical work done.

But there are vast majority of people in the world who are imaginative, creative and metaphysical and believe in the abstract existence, — Corvus

Some professional philosophers agree with that as well: that there is such a thing as abstract existence. I'm not sure what to think of that myself, honestly. It seems false to me, just from an intuitive standpoint. But, sadly, our intuitions sometimes are mistaken.

If you still deny that, then no artistic, creative, idealistic activities would be possible. — Corvus

That's an interesting argument. I'll have to consider it. Thank you very much for sharing it.

There would be no movies, novels, poems, abstract paintings and sculptures available in the world. There would be no religions. Is it the case? I certainly don't think so. — Corvus

Hmmm... I'm not sure, really. I dont know "what to make of it", as some people say. Can you explain to me why you certainly don't think so? Thanks in advance.

Dead bodies also have DNA. So having DNA is not the right criteria for being alive. — Corvus

Hmmm... You know, that's actually a really good philosophical point that you just made there. By Gods, mate, I've never even thought of it that way. I'm not even sure what I should even say to that. I would have to think it. Hmmm...

Ok, fair point. — Corvus

You think? I'm not so sure myself. Calling someone "ignorant" is just rude. Maybe I should retire that word from my personal vocabulary, but I'm not sure. What do you think about that? Is the word "ignorant" somehow insulting? I think it is, but I could be wrong.

But it is still possible to talk about non-alive objects such as the fire breathing dragons and demons. — Corvus

Sure. But then I can talk about how those people talked about those objects. And how do I do that? First, I study what they said, then I study what those objects are. It's a case-by-case approach, there is no general rule or principle here. I'll share one of my favorite quotes by Dan Z. Korman on that point:

I can imagine some metaphysicians complaining that my approach is disgracefully messy and unprincipled. Even if the charge of arbitrariness can be defused, case by case, by appeal to a hodge-podge of different phenomena, the conservative treatment of ordinary and extraordinary objects evidently isn’t going to conform to any neat and tidy principles. So whatever conservatives are doing, they surely aren’t carving at the joints.
I would remind these metaphysicians of the story of Cook Ting, who offers the following account of his success as a butcher:

I go along with the natural makeup . . . and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint . . . However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety.

Some cooks are going to view Cook Ting’s approach with suspicion, as they watch him slowly working his knife through some unlikely part of the ox, carving oxen one way and turkeys a completely different way, even carving some oxen differently from other oxen. They’ll see his technique as messy and unprincipled, hardly an example of carving the beasts at their joints. But from Cook Ting’s perspective, it is these other cooks, the ones who would treat all animals alike, who are in the wrong. They aren’t carving at the joints. They’re hacking through the bones. — Daniel Z. Korman

@Wayfarer have you read that book by Daniel Z. Korman that I just quoted? It's called "Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary", and it was published by Oxford University Press in 2015.

Thank you very much once again, @ToothyMaw. I'm not that familiar with the work of Peter Singer. I know of him, but I have not read any of his works yet. What would you recommend that I start with?

Changing the subject, back to this Thread. I am quite huge fan of Earth Crisis myself. Yet (and I say this as a fan), sometimes it seems to me that their message fails to engage with the listener as an individual. And that's something very interesting in its own right. Earth Crisis speak "to the masses", if you will. Well, that's technically inaccurate, since the last lines of their song "Ecocide" are literally "by me, and by you", so, they do engage with the listener as an individual in some sense. However, there is another band that does that far better: Hatebreed. They are not Vegan nor Straight Edge, but they have something in common with Earth Crisis, because they are part of the larger "world" of Hardcore Punk / Heavy Metal. Besides, Jamey Jasta himself (lead singer of Hatebreed) as said on several occasions, even on social media, that Earth Crisis is one of the bands that inspired him to form Hatebreed. So, let's take a look at one of their songs, shall we?



I actually quite like that song and video. It sends out a positive message, even though the instrumentation and the lyrics are a bit "harsh" for the positivity that they are attempting to transmit to the listener.

What do you make of that, @ToothyMaw? Feel free to just "ramble on" about it, even if it has no logic to you.

↪Arcane Sandwich
I couldn’t make sense of your comparison.

Look at the passage above your post, specifically:

The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness. Treating consciousness as part of the world, reifying consciousness, is precisely to ignore consciousness's foundational, disclosive role. — Source


Agree or disagree with that proposition? Why? — Wayfarer

I agree with it, of course. Why? Because consciousness is of the elements of subjectivity. And the world is what is not the subject: it is objectivity itself. So, of course, I am against the reification of consciousness. To reify is to commit the fallacy of treating a non-thing as if it were a thing. It is even worse if one believes that consciousness is indeed a real thing, such as the Cartesian res cogitans. Technically speaking, Descartes was speaking nonsense on that point. Literally. Consciousness is not a res to begin with, it is not a "thing". It is, instead, a series of physical processes occurring in the brain of every living creature on this planet that is endowed with a central nervous system. So yes, "the mind is what the brain does", so to speak. None of this means that I am necessarily right. It does mean, however, that I have the right to say it publicly, and to think it privately at the same time. That, is what I call "the Absolute", in the Hegelian sense. It just so happens that I don't believe in Dialectical Synthesis. Instead, I utilize "Dialectical Analysis", if you will, to achieve a sort of reverse-engineering of language itself, and that reveals many things, including the Nature of consciousness. It is a "situated phenomenology", if you will. And that grants it more dignity than pure, non-existential phenomenology.

That is what I believe. Again, I may have beliefs that are false, it just so happens that I am unaware that they are false.

↪Arcane Sandwich
If anything is said to be good, we can always ask on what grounds is it deemed to be good. — Janus

Ah, but you see, that is the "magical" part of Cosmological Platonism: you don't even need ground to begin with, because the Idea of Good (in that system) is identical to the Ground itself. It is "That Which Grounds", in the sense of metaphysical grounding as an Academic discipline.

we can always ask on what grounds is it deemed to be good. — Janus

And the usual retort to that, is that language itself is a game, and since there is no arbiter (i.e., no "referee", if you will), it is an incomplete game.

If someone claims there is an unconditional good, then you might ask "can that be more than a mere opinion?" — Janus

I sincerely do not know, my friend. What would be your honest opinion on such a thesis, if it is indeed a thesis to being with?

"what grounds do you have for claiming that there is an unconditional good?" — Janus

None. That is the whole point of Ground. That is its function: it grounds other things, in a metaphysical sense, and it is not grounded by anything else. Think of it like Aristotle's Primer Mover: it moves other things, and nothing moves it.

Yet Aristotle wrongly assumed that the Prime Mover was diametrically opposed to Pure Matter. He had it, "backwards", if you will.

This is something h.sapiens can do that no other creature can do. If there’s anything problematic it is the inability to see the significance of that. — Wayfarer

Then I'll just share my own Philosophy of Mathematics with you all, since I have not done that so far (oddly enough, not one of you even stopped to realize that fact). In matters of metaphysics / ontology, I have already told you the following: I am a realist, a materialist, an atheist, and a supporter of scientism. From those four premises, you cannot "get" (deduce) my Philosophy of Mathematics, because it is a "hidden" axiom of the system itself (BTW, this is "the language" {it's more of a dialect, really} that I call: "Axiomatese", as in, "Ontologese", which intended to mimic "Portuguese". Pay no great attention to those facts, as they have a sort of Mind-Flayer-ish tone to them. And I am not a Mind Flayer, of that I am certain. Cogito, ergo sum et res cogitans / extensa) <- Yeah, I just "made that up", so to speak.

And that is my humble point. Some absolute restrictions are necessary in language itself, otherwise communication is not cost-effective. In the terms of Thermodynamics, it would be "too costly for not enough benefit". It would be what is now called "a viable option among many others".

Edited for Clarity.

↪Arcane Sandwich
Agree, nicely put. — Tom Storm

Thank you very much Tom Storm, I do indeed know how "to muse", in the verb-sense of the term. As in, I am familiar with the human art of music, which is itself related to the Muses of ancient Greek mythology, as well as the word "museum", literally meaning "the place of the muses". In other words, yes, I'm somewhat familiar with poetry. Not exactly my field, but I did read Tolkien, so that must surely count for something (one would hope).

↪Arcane Sandwich
What might be an example of such an absolute good and how might we demonstrate this? — Tom Storm

Hmmm... Well, Platonic Ideas, if they exist, would be example of such absolute goods. Why is a mere thing, a mere ordinary object, good? Because in that context, relativism is somehow true (though it doesn't have much being, and consequently, it does not have much existence). However, in that very same context, there is a wider context. The real world, for Plato, is something like a subset of a larger world, and it runs parallel to "another subset" in that real world, which is the subset of the "Realm of Ideas". In that realm, "things" (i.e., Platonic Ideas) are good by themselves, that is, they are good in a non-relational way. So why are they good? It's not as if "something makes them good", since they're immaterial (i.e. they're not "made" of something, so nothing "makes" them good). So, why are they good to begin with?

Well... you just said so yourself, in your own mind: because they simply are that way. They just are good, simpliciter.

Yes, although I might say this is a contingent form of good as it would be 'truly good' for a specific purpose - my back - and such an efficacious approach may not work on other's backs or even mine, a year later. So the good is relative to a set of circumstances. — Tom Storm

Unless there is a good that is non-relative to a set of circumstances. Such a good would be, in that sense, an absolute good, as opposed to a mere relative good.

↪Arcane Sandwich
You kinda learn who when you learn your first language, as you learn to use words like "one" and thereabouts. You are part of a community. Them. — Banno

If there is a "Them", then there is an "Us". That, presents itself as different options. Hypothetically:

Option 1) Us vs Them
Option 2) Them vs Us
Option 3) There is no match. There is neither Option One nor Option 2, because this is not to be decided in this context. It does not follow from that, however, that it is not to be decided in any context.

Most people in my world know what 666 means, and so in. — frank

The world of Iron Maiden, you mean?