It's definitely the truth. A person's totally paralyzed by a neuromuscular blockade and they're conscious. Not sure why it's cause for hostility.

Or your conception of consciousness demonstrably impotent. — apokrisis

Could be. I wasn't trying to give birth to a virile concept. Just tellin' the truth. Action and habit are irrelevant.

Habit and action are irrelevant.

I give sedation with paralytic drugs. It's just a fact. A person can be conscious though unable to produce the action necessary to breathe.

I'm grateful to un for starting this thread, — mcdoodle

Me too.

How does your version of post-structuralism deal with quarky worlds and inherent structures in natural science? — mcdoodle

I don't think I could talk about that without going off on some weird, pointless tangent. How do you think about it?

Just sayin' There may be no action that testifies to consciousness.

Medicine is no folk craft. A person can be paralyzed and conscious.

Gaps need bridging. The lonely humanless world never needed such. But in honor of your hard work and expertise starting this thread: yes: somebody ought to call an architect.

Social engineering is a leftist thingy. It's a very precarious activity. It tends to go forth building bridges in places nobody ever goes.

We just need another big monolith to turn us into star-children.

Maybe they do most of the time. We just pull them apart like taking a clock apart.

Totally agree. Post-structuralism is all right-brain: creative, convoluted, without boundaries (and so in Lacanian fashion closer to the only thing you really know: what it's like to be alive). Structuralism is parallel and perpendicular. It's all severe consequences and nuclear explosions. Scientific religion and religious science. Straight-jackets for everybody.

I'm not sure if the OP was meaning to question post-structuralism, or if I just turned it into that (for myself). But that very question reveals the coolness of post-structuralism. I realize it's a mistake to get too caught up in trying to determine the target of the OP. The inherent "slippage" in language vs reference and the on-going deferment of reference means it's perfectly ok to allow the OP to grow organically in my own thoughts. I become a spectator to the interplay between language and me.

So if it's true that you haven't seen a thing until you've seen its beauty: I've seen post-structuralism. It's not about society, really. It's most certainly not challenging naturalism. It's capturing awareness and bringing it back to something very personal. Look at naturalism endlessly unfolding. Wow.

Group A talks among themselves: "Yes, yes...it's just so."

Group B talks among themselves: "Yes, yes...it's just so."

The two groups never communicate with one another, but their so's are basically equivalent. We know this because we're in a transcendent position.

If the so's are the same, structure is implied either innately among the people or in the world they inhabit. It's not indirect realism that hovers, it's structuralism.

Quine denies that it can ever be determined that their so's are the same. So the appeal to ordinary language fails. There is reason to doubt.

Oh good.

There's still something odd about that zone in the middle. Any thoughts? — Srap Tasmaner

It's reflecting an odd scenario. I'm dropping grains of sand and asking "Is it a heap now?" Performance art.

I think it would be more common for me to say "Sweep up that heap of sand, please." However much sand is there magically becomes a heap. Or am I totally missing your point?

I'm surprised an Australian hasn't butted in. I understand that in Australia 'a river' is a slightly different thing from a Eurocentric 'river' (see this article) since Aussie rivers may be ephemeral things.

Otherwise, I have a feeling that slithy toves are gimbling in the wabes of this thread at the moment. I wonder how the borogroves are? — mcdoodle

Ephemeral Southern Rivers. Woe... Have you read anything about how music and language are linked?

We cannot do without either true facts or socially constructed theories. — absoluteaspiration

Yep. When I point out the way the river is a social construct, what I mean to say is that a physicist wouldn't be able to account for the distinctions (or lack thereof) that I make. So I must be assuming that the physicist is finding some real distinctions. If I try to say (as Quine did) that even the physicist's statements have no determinable reference, my philosophy is revealed to be a kind of nihilism.

The two (social construct/discovered truth) go hand in hand, although in this we haven't endorsed realism, but just noticed how we are bound to think. Do you agree with that?

That's true, but in some ways it's the Big Kahuna.

If you aren't lactose intolerant, I think you should go get a cone of your favorite ice cream. That's the best way to avoid these big questions. :)

I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition. Do you believe that meaning is use? Or do you have a theory of meaning?

OK.

But I don't think it makes sense to say all rivers are social constructions. — Moliere

The beginning of the story makes sense. The ending gets nihilistic. A river is a 'fiction on the occasion of sense' (Hume). Having noticed that (and it's a pretty common recognition among philosophical types), the next question is: what is the nature and origin of language?

A meaning as use advocate might say that a river is a social construct in the sense that it's part of social interaction where the universe is carved up according to human needs and purposes.

It would be a controversial stance on what counts as a social constrct, — Moliere

Those who are devoted to truth are never afraid of controversy.

Is a river a social construct? Note that we could flood the Nile with alcohol, it's still a river. So it's not the water. We can divert the Nile, it's still the Nile. (Hobbes)

Is it a matter of language? If so, then you would say the Nile or any other river is a social construct if you believe language is purely socially derived. Chomsky argues pretty well that this can't possibly be true. Language capability is innate. Infants at two days old can distinguish the language of their mother from a foreign language.

Abraham Lincoln received the nickname "Honest Abe" because of his decision to refrain from the rampant and outlandish lying common among politicians at the time. The secession of the southern states which initiated the American Civil War was directly related to fake news which was taken seriously by southerners.

I think the more recent use of the term "fake news" has to do with internet news outlets. That's my perception anyway.

The real is not lost, we have become unconscious of it, it is still there, just unable to speak. — Cavacava

Which creates an intriguing role for unconscious content. I'm reminded of Rumi's 'In the depths of our hearts the light of God is shining on a soundless sea with no shore'

It also brings in the mystery associated with the advent of speech in individuals and in the species as a whole. I'm thinking of Chomsky's view that the abrupt onset of fluency in toddlers indicates that it can't be learned piecemeal. Lots of details... I've yet to organize it. :)

Cool. I'm still struggling to make sense of his notion of alienation (due to the power of language to set out the real). Alienation from what? Is it just a sense of alienation?

I had a friend who dreamed of and wrote a story about a person who had no language.

I guess there are multiple ways to analyze those stories. They all present a conflict between weak/good femininity and strong/evil femininity. The innocent girl finds a hidden ally in nature.

The caretaker of an infant isn't always its mother and isn't even always female, so is it appropriate to interpret Lacan as speaking of caretakers in general when he says "mother?" And how eurocentric do you think Lacan was? How much is he analyzing a particular culture as opposed to the psyche... and is that all psychologists ever do... analyze the psyche as it appears in a certain culture?

And I agree with Mongrel that we're joined at the hip, but more like Siamese cat twins — Thanatos Sand

Sounds like we need a surgeon. :D

And really, you aren't an ally to China and China isn't your ally either. — ssu

Who would our common enemy be? Aliens? Anyway, the US and China are joined at the hip economically. Kind of like Siamese twins... if one dies, the other is in big trouble.

But Steinbeck was pretty strong in the creativity department, so bringing SX's quote into it... Steinbeck is to literary critics as the US is to the press?

It's just hard for me to imagine Steinbeck saying that... he's such a sweetheart in his books. Who knows what the real guy was like.

In some ways its hard to tell the parties apart.

Well said back at you. Except I think the DNC probably thought Sanders was unlikely to win due to being too far left. They underestimated how much Americans dislike and distrust Clinton.

China has been involved. It funds NK because it doesn't want a failed nuclear state on its border.

I think Kim is upset about that movie: The Interview. No, really.

A society in which brute facts (using Searle's terminology, see my last post)) are ignored will almost inevitably fail. Brute facts are unforgiving. — Banno

Societies don't fail. They grow and evolve. Many features of contemporary human society are around 60,000 years old.

You have mentioned in this thread that you see Trump as a sign that the US will presently lose its influence in the world. I pointed out to you that he was elected, in part, because he was seen as an alternative to Clinton, who was expected to try to maintain the US's standing as if the Cold War is still going on.

So.. what you describe as failure of the US would be considered by many Americans to be success. By and large, the US doesn't want to be an empire. There's no percentage in it.

It's not that bad actors shouldn't be expected Mongrel. It's that when enough members of the society do not understand what truth is and how it works, neither the problems nor the solutions will be realized... — creativesoul

Seems that would be a self-correcting problem. Society-X can't settle on whether shooting yourself in the head is dangerous or not. Society-X is now gone.

Amazing insight. And that's what the OP is supposed to be about. That is bullshit.

Where is busycuttingcrap? We have some crap to cut.

It's always been that way...

It's always been that way...

It's always been that way...

That's the pattern folks. — creativesoul

It's worth visiting, though. Why the expectation of truth? Why not just expect smoke-blowing and obfuscation. Ignoring the value of these strategies would be to ignore brute facts.

Reminds me of what Steinbeck said about critics, that they're like eunuchs gathered around the marriage bed to watch a whole man perform the act of creation. — Srap Tasmaner

Could you unpack this?

And yet NK has nuclear capability in part due to financial support from China. Instead of feeding their people, they build ICBMs. Surely China has some influence.

I wonder if one can influence the unconscious. Suggest things to yourself?

Do you believe in a collective unconscious?