The seditious rhetoric published by some feminists or gender theorists seems based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of description or portrayal.

Granted that the way in which a person or group is publicly portrayed in media can be unfair or misleading. But unfair or misleading portrayals neither diminish nor objectify anything literally.

Only social constructionists, or the like, would believe such nonsense; because for them there is no truth beyond our public interaction with words or pictures. As if injustice against women would be caused by how they're portrayed in public.

But to show a breast, for instance, is a way to identify a portrayed person as a woman, like wide shoulders can identify men. Neither is thereby diminished into an object.

A guaranteed income sufficient for shelter, food, and basic health care would be great. A modern civilized society should be able to afford it, like it can afford infrastructure for transportation which enables all to travel, meet, and generate businesses, culture, intellectual life, sports, crafts, inventions, sciences etc.

Is the ascetic justified in their actions? Can they really say that what they are doing is "better" than what everyone else is doing? — darthbarracuda

I think you should question the insulted, not the ascetic.

The ascetic has typically made a deliberate choice to live an ascetic life, and people live ascetic lives for many different reasons. For example, health issues, poverty, or beliefs about ecology or sustainability (e.g. urban minimalists, or back-to-nature romantics), or as part of some religious or spiritual ritual, to satisfy a curiosity on what it's like to live an ascetic life and so on.

But to feel insulted seems less deliberate and more irrational, for the mere fact that you exist, or your demise even, can be insulting to an envious, strong-willed, childish or mad person.

Moreover, we ought to assume that the ascetic are justified in their actions, or else we would violate the principle of charity, for no-one is deliberately irrational.

Is beauty in the object or in the eye of the observer? . . . — Benjamin Dovano

Like many other properties beauty is identified and re-identified in many different places. It has no location like an object, nor does it exist in the eye or brain of the observer. Beauty wouldn't exist without the experience, nor would it be experienced without objects or events possessing the property which causes the experience. This opens for the possibility that objects or events can possess beauty as a property without necessarily being experienced as beautiful. It could take a while, or some knowledge, before one discovers it.

you're in the realm of subjectivity, not objectivity. — Terrapin Station

Subjectivity is a domain in the realm of objectivity.

. . . 'qualia' comprise an aspect of experience - it is the experience of seeing red. . . — Wayfarer

What it's like to see red is the experience. It is hardly an aspect of itself but things that reflect or emit light.

no amount of well-conceived and consistent argument would detract from that. I now know God exists. It's a certainty in my eyes. And there can be no alternate understanding for me any more. — colin

That's not certainty. That's a single-minded assertion no matter what.

In other words, you don't care about whether God exists or not, for if you did, then you would at least bother to investigate and argue for that your experience is, indeed, an experience of God, and not something else (e.g. a synaptic screw-up).

Why do we see it so scary and terrifying though? — Benjamin Dovano

Because it kills us ;) Far more scary and terrifying is the idea of birth.

To discuss its possibility under the assumption that it would be impossible is circular nonsense. Moreover, utopia is a place, not a state of mind. The possibility that one may argue or feel dissatisfied, in any place, has little to do with the possibility to find or construct a desirable place.

A desirable place does not have to be desirable for everyone at the same time. It might take some experience, effort, some knowledge etc. to get to understand that it is desirable. A place which is desirable for most people who know and understand something about human nature and societies might qualify as utopia. A place in which no-one argues and everyone is perpetually satisfied is indeed no place, it does not exist. But utopia is a place, and possible as such to find or construct.

Only under the false assumption that it would be impossible to find or construct a highly desirable place. I think utopia is both possible, and purposeful to seek.

Perhaps secularization contains some seeds for its own destruction, or at least its minimization. — Bitter Crank

In a secular society more people get to use their own will to power, which, I suppose, could make the secular society less stable as there might be more candidates for power than in a theocracy in which more people obey the will of some other power.

No, my ears are sensitive!

Dylan is great when he is silent :)

Anagrammatic, or simply a mistake because the two words look alike :)

I was also thinking about another word, 'sanctuary': it's longer than 'sacred' or 'scared', but its meaning seems closely related. For example, when sacred places or churches are used as sanctuaries by the scared, or when symbols, rituals, or simply thoughts about something sacred, say Mother Mary, are used as consolation.

The scared seek inviolability and consolation by the sacred.

Heh, yeah, scared and dyslexic :p

Someone who views inequality as wrong might understand why it matters to him when too much inequality makes a society more violent and insecure compared to societies in which people are more equal. Hence the moral or political view that inequality is wrong, which in turn motivates him and like minded to not only have the view but act and support public movements for the reduction of inequality.

c) Money
d) Fame

It seems that there are at least two different senses in which the word 'scared' is used, and that there are at least two different answers to the question "What is sacred?".

In one sense the word is used for things made sacred, such as cultural, religious, or political symbols. For example, famous art works, saints, flags. In another sense the word is used for things we discover as deserving our veneration regardless of whether it satisfies a function in some cultural, religious, or political context. For example, something beautiful, graceful, strong, skilfully made, good, or someone being alive after some terrible ordeal. For some people life, a starry sky, or a friend may deserve veneration, and they are then sacred, because of what they are, as ends in themselves, not means for something else. In this sense discovery is sacred like beauty is sacred.

One and the same object may be sacred and deserve our veneration in one sense but not in the other. For example, a work of art might be sacred in some cultural tradition simply because it was made famous, yet without being sacred in the other sense, say, because it's neither good, beautiful nor skilfully made (the art world is full of people who believe that all would be a social construction). However, one may find a colour or a spiritual experience as sacred and deserving veneration regardless of whether anyone else finds it as such.

You can assign life any ""meaning"", but its true meanings are found, typically by living it. We assign words to the meanings we find, such as 'satisfaction', 'goodness', 'procreation', 'power', 'understanding' and so on.

That's a great movie. I suppose one could relate it to a contemporary situation in which soliders are immersed in hacking, living in more or less sealed environments, where delusions thrive and inspire crazy action.

Although philosophy is love of wisdom it doesn't follow that philosophers would be wise.

I like Austin, and I know postmodernists use satire, irony, or absurd humour about others.

Postmodernists are just too "advanced" to be made fun of.

Some of those writers have arguably fueled a kind of anti-intellectualism in the humanities, where the study of canons or the truths of reasoned arguments have been replaced by seditious "discourse" about power, or cliquish bullying because of an assumed absence of decisive conclusions.

In academic architecture, for instance, Deleuze & Guattari's work attracted interest. But I don't understand what for beside the fact that their approach is reminiscent of artistic work, and seemingly open for arbitrary interpretations. It's easier to make into what you want it to be than, say, the work of APs or the great philosophers of old.

It ain't that simple, your report of pain is not the pain. And although pain is sufficient for awareness of pain, awareness of pain is not necessarily pain.

Sure, in some sense the pain is the object of its awareness. But the word 'awareness' is ambiguous here, for, as I tried to explain, there are two different senses in which you can be aware of pain: 1) as a belief about the state you're in, and 2) as the state you're in.

Beliefs are not perceptions, and therefore it is possible to believe sincerely, that you feel pain, and behave as if you were in pain, regardless of what you perceive, or even evoke and sustain pains by the belief or entrenched behaviour from past experiences of pains etc

My head does not somehow appear in a headache. It does, however, appear in experiences characterized by intentionality, such as seeing or touching.

I suppose when I experience pain there is still the awareness of pain as an object of experience; ... — Wayfarer

I don't think one's awareness could appear as an object in any experience.

Being aware of having pain is not identical to having pain although in both cases there is awareness of pain. The former is a belif about the state you're in (and as such possibly true or false) while the latter is the state you're in: the fact.

How could, for example, 'having a headache' be transitive? Some experiences are not about anything.

it just doesn't happen to be in one of the 5 categories the Nobel traditionally makes awards in. — Bitter Crank

Right, but neither was the prize in economics, which is sponsored by a bank, not Alfred Nobel's will.

Well, a literature prize seems more appropriate for Dylan than a prize for musicianship. His fans must be tone deaf.

Putnam’s understanding of meaning assumes dualism: there are internal experiences, and external things that they mean. I reject dualism and so, I suppose, I reject Putnam’s understanding of meaning. — Dominic Osborn

Dualism? Putnam's argument for semantic externalism has little to do with dualism. Its conclusion is that the meanings of words (or thoughts) are causally constrained by speakers' encounters and interaction with the things that they speak or think of, and a division of their meanings by speech. An alleged solipsist has no sufficient reason to think of anything, for nothing comes from nothing.

it projects outwards a response to an internal condition — unenlightened

What constitutes the response if not the internal condition? Perhaps I misunderstand, but I'd say anger is the internal condition expressed. It can be a response to other internal conditions or external events, or instantiate/emerge without being about anything in particular.

Or one has to remain silent, maybe. — Πετροκότσυφας

Right, a solipsist doesn't publish.

I cannot know that there is something other than my experience. — Dominic Osborn

On purely semantic grounds, you can know that there is something other than your experience.

Meanings just ain't in the head — Putnam

Sloppy use of language won't make the world subjective or objective; being referred to does not amount to being.

We can know this, for example, by investigating what's wrong with the question.

Objective and subjective are categories used for how knowledge is acquired. Our knowledge can be subjective or objective, but to ask whether the things of which we acquire knowledge are subjective or objective is a category error, it makes no sense to ask whether the world is subjective or objective. It is neither.

But the question was not whether being social has become too important but whether social acceptance has. There is environmental pressure on individuals to be "socially acceptable", but this can mean many different things, from learning the language to adapting to oppressive habits (e.g. racist, nationalist, ideological) dictated by power in a conformist society.