So you also agree that the state is something we construct to counter our own nature.

Does that mean we have a conflicted nature?

In the US there is much more violence in the southeast, and in ghettos--both places where a, b, and c apply. — Bitter Crank

Folklore says it's heavy drinking during hot summers that results in a high incidence of violence in places like Louisiana. But the most violent state is Alaska, so... so much for that theory.

I imagine Alaska's rate of violent crime might be related to what you described: in places where there's less of an infrastructure to handle justice, people do it themselves.

Let's hear it also for the ancient Greek dramatists. How shall we ever end cycles of revenge fuelled by beliefs in angry vengeful gods? — mcdoodle

Cycles of revenge aren't fueled by religion. They're driven by the bloody mindedness that follows the funeral of the murdered, right? Does the state help with this? Does it make it worse? Does it have any effect at all?

People do seem to be more prone to resorting to violence to settle grudges where no governments exist. States provide the means of achieving justice without bashing in the brains of your enemies. States also provide police of some sort to stop angry people from bashing in a lot of brains. — Bitter Crank

Chris Stringer says there is evidence in our collective genes of prehistoric warfare. I'm glad I don't live in world where violent death is always nearby, but aren't there quite a few people in the world today who do live that way?

But then, one could say that the creation of the state in the first place occurs because man is inherently political. This doesn't contradict Augustine. One of the objects of politics, seems like, is to control id-driven "sinful" individual behavior. Keep a lid on things, so that we can all go about our civic business more conveniently. — Bitter Crank

Is the state's real job to squash us or to help us realize our ambitions? Both?

It's clear to me that we have governments to maintain stability and control over the land: a government is an entity that has monopolized violence. It's a necessary evil, because anarchism is quite unrealistic. — darthbarracuda

A necessary evil. This is along the lines of Augustine's view (and perhaps Chomsky's). What I like about the Augustinian view is not it's conclusion, but the attitude toward the state that it outlines: a willingness to sacrifice the state for sake of doing the right thing. That attitude provides some freedom to the imagination.

I saw that a while back. I remember it being weird and poignant.

Their identity has disappeared for them--and if it has disappeared for them, hasn't their identity disappeared for us to? Who is a person who no longer knows who they are? — Bitter Crank

They're kind of child-like because we have to feed them. Violently insane people seem more like wild animals... but again, like adults do with children, we keep talking to them... as if maybe they'll spontaneously start understanding and become a person again... when actually we're just waiting for the sedation to start working.

I think talk of identity is so embedded in language that things start becoming circular when we try to discuss it (or just dead-end in ontology which is apt to be no more than posturing).

It's better to aim at it with fiction or poetry. Or some other strange artform like the movie Synecdoche, New York. Anybody see that?

A Columbine-style mass killing is a side-effect of the existence of firearms. As one of our lawyer buddies explained, it takes less aggression to kill with a gun than with a machete.

The fact that we're shocked and appalled by it is excellent news. It means we aren't in the Soviet Union during the 1950's. Historians tell us that during that period everybody in Russia must have known somebody who had disappeared to a death/labor camp. We enjoy a fabulous naivete.

Yeah maybe not a 'meme' in the technical sense (if there is one). — Wayfarer

Hmm. So a more vague sense (if there is one).

A meme (as Dawkins envisioned it) is a sort of cultural unit that survives by virtue of being selected. At first glance, it looks like the mass-killing meme kills its host and so should disappear quickly like Ebola does.

I think this signals to us that it's not mass killing that is meme-like. It's our endless fascination with such stuff. A question in keeping with Dawkins' adaptationist leanings would be: how is this fascination with death serving us? What's it doing for us?

I don't quite understand what you're saying. In what way do you live in the future?

I take it that identity is not something basic to our psychological makeup, even as individuals. There are more basic operations of the human mind than our identity, such as perception, memory, desires, or inclinations. — Moliere

There's food for wonder there.... the notion that perception, memory, and desire are more fundamental than identity. Do you mean that a creature could have these things without being aware of being a unique individual? That would mean that what you mean by identity is awareness of it?

A biological system may support a capacity.... I wouldn't equate a capacity with a system... would you?

Is knowledge a complex biological system? Or just a byproduct of one?

Are you thinking that knowledge necessarily has some use? If so, why do you assume that?

Ivan the Terrible became convinced that the only way to save his country was to reanimate Russian fears of Mongol warlords. Ivan was crazy, but maybe there's something to that strategy. When people are terrified, they give their leaders more power.

Terrified people are easier to control... something like that.

Pacifism. Yep. I'm familiar with the concept.

I say that each person is responsible for each other's actions. I hit you, I am responsible for you hitting me back, or you hitting another. I refuse your need, I am responsible for your despair. — unenlightened

Vinay Lal says watch out for the hidden imperialism there. If you are responsible for my terrorist actions, then you have the qualities of an adult (responsible and able to choose), while I am like a toddler (lashing out reflexively, too immature to be held accountable.) Lal says adult/child is one way dominion is expressed and justified.

I think you need to read Great Expectations again. It's all about how a single act of abuse is like a pebble in a pond sending out waves of grief and rage through space and time. And I agree with John Fowles that it expresses the central thesis of Christianity.. that though this web of despair may be all you've ever known, it doesn't hold you. You're free.

Nobody bombed Saudi Arabia. I say each person is responsible for his or her own actions. Reject that and the dominos fall back to the Original Sin and nobody is to blame for anything.

Whether he advocated a positive thesis on the immorality of birth, that's certainly up for debate. — darthbarracuda

S was a determinist. Determinists don't advocate anything. They recognize that shit happens.

My most recently favorite follow the leader story: Elizabeth Holmes. Endlessly entertaining to me for some reason. Recently banned by CMS from operating a lab for two years, under investigation by the Feds for fraud. The story includes the suicide of a Brit scientist named Ian Gibbons. There are hints of a svengali-type figure named Sunny Balwani. But the broad story is that Elizabeth was charismatic. Watch her TED-talk.

The latest:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/holmes-to-remain-at-theranos-despite-federal-ban-and-gross-negligence/

Or is it rather the case that a good and decent man cannot compete with an amoral power seeker? — unenlightened

Depends on the climate. I think human life oscillates... ups and downs. Growth and recession. It's during extended periods of growth and development that the "good and decent man" you're thinking of prospers by virtue of fostering an environment conducive to cultural blossom. People are attracted to that kind of environment when they are enjoying a youthful, spring-like climb toward expression of their society's identity.

Alas, those who are young at heart will become confused when the calendar marches on and glory is in the rear-view mirror. But that's ok because by this time, Nature has already produced a bumper crop of baby Kierkegaards to preside over the disintegration.

I was on the way to pointing out that we don't know the nature of either consciousness or the universe. The conversation was not able to adapt, mutate, or genetically drift into something worthwhile. Such is life.

You can't simply take that because you have conscious states that are emergent out of a complex system, that the presence of something complex and emergent also means the emergence of consciousness. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Indeed. (In American, it's "no shit") :)

Soames is the man. His history of AP is excellent.

I earlier advised you to read Scott Soames' book Understanding Truth. I make that same recommendation again. :)

Cool. Thanks!

I'm definitely complex.

All sorts of things are emergent, constrained, and complex. Are they all conscious?

Why am I conscious?

What more am I?

I'm a bunch of atoms. I'm conscious. I assume the same is true of you.

Right. Frege did point out that there's a problem with picturing how a statement might correspond with the world. The real defeat of Correspondence Theory is his proof that truth can't be defined.

Correspondence is not unanalyzable. We can break it down into smaller concepts. It means that one thing is similar to another. As one thing changes, the other will change... and so forth.

So the more basic concepts are:
one
thing
another
similar
change

Truth isn't like that. It doesn't break down into smaller concepts. That's what Frege proves if we assume that truth is a property of statements.

How does an account differ from a definition?

If there is a correspondence theory of meaning, what is it?

IF all is [at minimum] 'atoms & void', THEN g/G too is [at minimum] 'atoms & void' maximally, or perfectively, configured, AND THEREFORE g/G is oblivious, or indifferent, to every non-maximally, or imperfectly, configuration of 'atoms & void' (e.g. mortals, stars). — 180 Proof

Atoms are obviously capable of consciousness, so how does the conclusion follow?

Frege's argument is meant to refute the possibility of a correspondence theory of truth not to refute the possibility of a correspondence account of meaning ( or perhaps even a correspondence account of truth). — John

No. Frege's argument that truth is unanalyzable rules out Correspondence as a definition. It rules out any definition. Period. The fact that there is no account of how a truth-bearer "corresponds" to a truth-maker is for all practical purposes a side issue.

And if there is a correspondence theory of meaning, could you lay it out?

This thread didn't end up being about the Correspondence Theory of Truth or about realism.

The OP had something else in mind.

I agree.

Let us please attempt to be precise in phrasing these questions with the proper attention being paid to the meaning which must be revealed on closer inspection and diligence to the words we apply.

Mars Man is gone, but never forgotten.

Didn't you say that utterances correspond to experience?

Five people look at an apple. The biologist sees a phase in the reproduction of apple trees. The baker sees that it's a Fuji and not a Granny Smith. The Preacher sees the Fall of Man. The toddler sees something red and shiny.

How would the baker's comments correspond with his experience?

I'd say his comments may or may not convey his experience, which as you point out, are bound by the poles of sensation and concept.

Beyond all of this and simultaneously intimate to each observer is the apple noumenon, which is a facet of the world diamond. The observers know they share the same world. They take it that the apple is a feature of that shared world.

Anyway... if you're a Kantian, then your doorway to AP is Carnap.

True, we do usually distinguish between those things, but in the context we are considering, the apple is part of the experience of eating it, and is thus still distinguishable from the experience as a whole, as well as from other parts of the experience. There is also picking the apple up, seeing it, tasting it, biting it and so on and all those are also distinguishable from one another; but none of them seem to necessitate that there be any experience-independent existence of anything. — John

Five people look at an apple. Each has a different experience. It's the same apple.

Either the apple is experience-independent or solipsism.

Well, do you think that all those ways of thinking about experience, particularly in the context of the case in question of wanting to eat an apple (which is wanting an experience), entail metaphysical realism? — John

We usually distinguish the apple from the experience of the apple for obvious reasons.

Speech can be useful for conveying experience. It's notorious for failing to do so, however... thus a picture is worth a thousand words.

Perhaps you could drop the use of "correspondence" which is already loaded with implications you reject and say that speech conveys or expresses experience.

Try this: do you agree that variously thinking of experience as 'mental states' (or 'activities') rather than, say, as 'the contents of mental states' or as 'bodily states' (or 'activities'), or the constituents of bodily states (or activities) is already to have accepted, and be employing, certain presuppositions? — John

Probably. ?