You still don't get it. — Banno

They would say that, wouldn't they :razz:. Keeping the joke going! I like a funny guy.

Well, I guess if your country annexed and occupied Finland, I bet we would be as bothersome as the Palestinians and would all the time crying about that Finland is for Finns. Especially if you wouldn't do anything to integrate the Finns into their new country they belong to.

As I've said, I see no peaceful resolution to this. — ssu

Gaza had its chance. It went to shit. West Bank and Gaza had its chance, it wasn't taken. If Finland had its chance when Russians left and then they started bombing Russia... Yeah. If Finland had a deal which gave it nearly all it wanted and they said no thanks, we rather be in perpetual war than take that, then yeah.

Annexation of territory is the whole issue. — ssu

No, living peaceably with the neighbor in that annexed territory is the issue.

But are somehow for you the Palestinians totally uncapable or unfit of doing what Jordanians and Egyptians have been able to do? — ssu

As of right now, are you kidding? That is self-evidently the case (Hamas.. Abbas steps down...).

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Wow, that somehow encapsulates how I picture it in my head. Great sketch! Pedantic. Stuffy. Self-important. Self-referential. Greatest hits!

It seems much easier to ask Israel to create the conditions that would allow the Palestinians to emancipate themselves from radical islamism. — Echarmion

I think my answer is same as above:

But c'mon ssu, this is exactly the framework the whole time I have been questioning and trying to get others to question. It is this exact way of framing the issue that is being questioned as to if it is proper to even speak in those terms. It is a narrative that exists. I get that. It is a narrative you might hold. I get that. But it might not be THE narrative, if you know what I mean. We have went over the history. Wars fought to wipe out Israel and that failed. The Oslo process and how that failed. The Israeli shift to the right as a RESULT of those attempts and failures. Then we have both agreed Hamas is no good all around. We even agree that Netanyahu and Likud is no good. But this whole "occupied/occupier" is ridiculous. Of course Israel at this point would not want a fully weaponized and armed Palestine UNLESS it was a peaceful neighbor! That would go for any prime minister, Netanyahu or otherwise! Even the most liberal peacenik would want that. Because afterall, what even IS statehood? It means nothing. You can call Palestine a state right now if you want. It's about recognizing borders, autonomy, etc. That takes peaceful overtures from both leadership and population. The population has to hold leadership accountable and vice versa. But see, these are all issues beyond the reductionist and biased "occupied/occupier". — schopenhauer1

Certainly, the Likud has all had this strategy where a two state solution would be a capitulation to the enemies of Israel. — ssu

But see the deflection to the other side you did there.. That's what I am talking about... You are doubling down on a point I already acknowledged.

You simply cannot deny that the occupied/occupier issue does matter here. It is imbalanced, because one being the occupier and the other side being the occupied with very limited resources is imbalanced! — ssu

But c'mon ssu, this is exactly the framework the whole time I have been questioning and trying to get others to question. It is this exact way of framing the issue that is being questioned as to if it is proper to even speak in those terms. It is a narrative that exists. I get that. It is a narrative you might hold. I get that. But it might not be THE narrative, if you know what I mean. We have went over the history. Wars fought to wipe out Israel and that failed. The Oslo process and how that failed. The Israeli shift to the right as a RESULT of those attempts and failures. Then we have both agreed Hamas is no good all around. We even agree that Netanyahu and Likud is no good. But this whole "occupied/occupier" is ridiculous. Of course Israel at this point would not want a fully weaponized and armed Palestine UNLESS it was a peaceful neighbor! That would go for any prime minister, Netanyahu or otherwise! Even the most liberal peacenik would want that. Because afterall, what even IS statehood? It means nothing. You can call Palestine a state right now if you want. It's about recognizing borders, autonomy, etc. That takes peaceful overtures from both leadership and population. The population has to hold leadership accountable and vice versa. But see, these are all issues beyond the reductionist and biased "occupied/occupier".

Trying to push your own Islamic revolution in muslim countries and that's why pick a fight with Israel? This is the classic case where a revolution had to go to desperate lengths to get that enemy they can then show they are so good to everybody else. In reality many young Iranians are totally OK with America, so pretty urgent to make your own "axis-of-evil" with US-Israel. — ssu

Agreed there! Iran is ripe for being a more secularized de-radicalized state. It had the will to put the Ayatollah and Islamist regime in power... It has the power to do otherwise perhaps? Look at the protest over the head coverings and the girl that was killed.

frail old men like Biden or Trump. — ssu

If you saw the abysmal debate of Newsom and DeSantis, perhaps not. Though bizarrely moderated by Sean Hannity.

That’s like holding a fair moderated debate in this forum on Israel / Palestine :razz:

As one example of how this dictum is often ill-fit, sustaining equality of rights FORCES direct harm onto tyrants—but this doesn’t justify a morality in which tyrants are given the freedom to tyrannize. — javra

Indeed, and I would agree that the tyrant then is causing harm, and it is okay to stop them from doing so. The suffering of a tyrant not being able to cause harm is not a moral consideration, but a consideration of if someone is allowed to pursue their self-interest when that self-interest IS violating a moral consideration.

The perspective is simply that of an individual subject’s reason for choosing between future acts of malice and future acts of love—this when both are deemed to hold the same bad consequence of suffering for the individual subject in question.

But I get the impression that we’re on very different wavelengths here. Pity in a way, since I believe that the topic of love and suffering is rich with nuances and, indeed, with exceptions—thereby justifying the prescription of love over malice. But so be it then. — javra

Future acts of malice are immoral. Future acts of love are not. Both can lead to suffering, however. But those aren't conflated. Life necessitates suffering indeed. But I wouldn't want to force the conditions of life's suffering on another, if possible. So once alive, if it's easier to negate love than pursue it, and that causes less suffering, then do it. If pursuing love causes less suffering than negating it, than pursue that. If both cause the same amount of suffering, it's a wash.

Edit: And one of the conditions of life is that sometimes, to pursue a goal, we must suffer greatly. Presumably erotic love is so desirous a goal because it meets many people's desires (to be cared for/to care for others, physical intimacy/sex, and having a person you are with to share good and bad times with and feel close to). That seems to pack a high value. However, obtaining and sustaining this can cause also high amounts of suffering. It is probably worth it to pursue if one wants to gain the benefits of fulfilling those needs.

This goes back to the idea of whether suffering is all that bad. And contra a Nietzschean perspective on suffering, I think it is bad. That is to say, if those needs were met to begin with (pace Schopenhauer), then the suffering need not take place to begin with. The Nietzschean counter that, "The value is in the suffering/pursuit", I simply say that this is in fact the "slave mentality (notice I am actually inversing Nietzschean's terms, that rascal!). That is to say, if one already had what one needs, want wouldn't even NEED to justify the suffering in the first place. One would feel whole in some sense, complete. But that is not the human condition.

Isn't that the official line: a two state solution always in the future perhaps, but not now? — ssu

You talked about not talking about states as individuals but the inverse is also true, you can’t talk about statehood, without individuals. That is to say the venom of individuals has to be largely absent to actually have a state. A state isn’t much unless it recognizes its borders and recognizes its neighbors’ borders (or right to even exist). As Golda Meir said:

When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us. — Golda Meir

You can point to Netanyahu being a dick and this or that, but this sentiment goes a long way back before Netanyahu’s policies.

That is to say, it isn’t enough for leaders to be ok with peace, it largely has to be driven by the people. They keep saying Abbas is ineffective, why is that? And certainly Netanyahu has sidelined him but that’s not the only reason…

So you would need enough willpower from leadership to teach that the other side is your equal. Your friendly neighbor. Your ally. You need to see them as not occupiers, colonizers, etc. the narrative for individuals has to change. You then have to have the willpower to maintain a peacekeeping force that prosecutes its own bad actors who act against their neighbor. You then need to have elections that don’t vote in extremists again. That’s all driven by the people and their general will, not just the people recognized as the leaders.

And don’t get me wrong, this peace would have to include settlements being dismantled and Israel would have to enforce its own policies if that happens. Certainly someone who is not Netanyahu would need to be in charge if or when that happens. But as @Merkwurdichliebe points out here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/857402

It’s so imbalanced in this forum these aspects of Palestinian responsibility have to be discussed and not seen only on one dimension of “occupied/occupier”. If you went to a forum that had completely the other side, you may feel the same…

Yet perhaps in the end it's a generalization with what we don't make more sense of the World, it simply isn't so useful. "It's all the same" sounds like a cynical remark, something like "Oh well..." — ssu

It's definitely cynical, but I don't think that means it's wrong. He simply thinks this is how humans Will function(s). And also he is being instructive that Napoleon is really no different than any one else, he just manifests it more starkly.

And how much was it about France being the first nation that turned the whole society into war machine and had universal conscription where other nations had basically professional armies? When you have all those men, the capability to control them in huge formations (thanks to the optical telegraph) and a society molded to support them, why not use the forces you have? But yes, there was the idealism also. It wasn't just a French revolution for French people, the revolution was about universal values. ‘Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!’ is a slogan you don't mean just for France. — ssu

Indeed, he was liberating everyone to be under his rule :). But there is something different of a Napoleon from a Hitler. There is something genuinely better about the values of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" of course. So I see it as often a matter of means and ends. You can have good ends and bad means. You can have good means but bad ends. You can have bad means and bad ends.

Some people are of the idea that the ends justifies the means. Some believe that both means and ends have to align as proper, otherwise all the good in one is negated in the bad of the other. On the other end, some people think that all political conflict is really borne out of violence to some end, and then Schopenhauer would have a point about the inevitibility of humanity.

You can see a microcosm of politics by simply walking! You are walking on a sidewalk alone, a couple is is walking side-by-side coming at you the other direction. In fact, if they don't move, you will walk into them. You wait for one of them to be polite and follow your preconceived rules- that is to say, one should get behind the other to be considerate. They don't. You end up moving as you don't want to hit the person and make it more awkward. You glare at them from behind.. There is state relations in a stroll in the park! Two entities want the same space. You can start an argument, bump into the person, lecture them about what the rules of walking etiquette are, or you just cave in and let it go. It wasn't that important afterall. But the feeling of resentment might still be there! And that was just from walking in an everyday situation!

If suffering is to be deemed bad, and if all endeavors inevitably lead to suffering regardless of their quality, effort, and means—as Schopenhauer and you maintain—then on what grounds are love-antagonistic endeavors, such as that of becoming a mass murderer, to be proscribed in favor of love-cherishing endeavors, for both endeavors will share the exact same attribute of resulting in suffering, making the first category of endeavors just as preferable as the second.

(To spell things out a little clearer, what I’ve been repeatedly asking you is a morality question of how any ethical ought can be obtained given the premises you uphold. And yes, most will in simplistic terms maintain that love (be it pure agape or else agape-endowed storge, philia, or eros) in general is a good, whereas malice in general is a bad. But, again, why should this generalization be upheld when both necessarily result in the same bad outcome? It’s a simple enough question regarding reasoning.) — javra

I think you just present a false dichotomy or odd straw man. Why would love causing suffering and mass-murder causing suffering be equivalent because one can lead to suffering, and one definitely leads to suffering? You are trying to get me pinned down to a morality tale from something that isn't necessarily moral. If you play a game and it leads to suffering, it isn't "immoral" that you played that game. If you FORCED someone to play a game knowing that it will probably lead to suffering, that is a different story, and we can start talking morality. Obviously the case of the mass-murderer is FORCING a harm onto someone else. But we need not go down this side-street.

Rather, my position overall is that once born, we are in a position to have to "deal with" as that is part-and-parcel of life. You can choose to deal with things in a number of ways, but you can't get away from certain inherent features that are part of being a self-reflective social creature.

Is there a single source for the "love urge" be it for one's child, one's friend, one's brother, for 'the world', for whatever it is that we love?

How is erotic love -- or raw eros, for that matter -- related to the other types of love?

Is there 'a basic love' that differentiates in various ways, given the circumstances, or do the various kinds of love arise separately? (seems unlikely to me). — BC

I think there could be a case that they are all related through the idea of "care".
Agape is caring about humanity or the divine.
Philia is caring about someone one interacts with over time.
Storge is caring about "chance" or circumstantial kin (as you rightly framed that term).
Eros is caring about someone.

But then, not to beat a dead horse here, but Eros and Philia then become the same thing UNLESS you add the other component. Thus:

Eros is caring for someone you are attracted to physically/personality-wise, are sexual with, and forms into a relationship for which the care takes place over a long-term duration.

As for erotic love -- my theory is that eros begins as a raw form and is gradually tamed, civilized. Who does the taming, the civilizing? Parents? Not mine -- they didn't talk about sex. School? God, no. The church. God forbid. Who, then?

Eros gets civilized, tamed, during sexual interactions--in the trenches, as it were. Other people set the limits on what they find acceptable or out of bounds, and since we want their approval / cooperation... whatever, we conform to their standards. — BC

I think what you are saying actually ties into one of the modern day foibles of eros love. That is to say, because 1-4 is not explicitly stated, and because love is supposed to be seen as a sort of serendipitous event, it leads to misunderstandings, with unmet expectations, and misaligned communication. That is to say, 1-4 is the structure, but since love is supposed to be some ideal that is undefined, it tends to fail to start, flourish, sustain, and so on. Ironically, discussing the "structure" is taking the "romance" out of it. As if with all of this, there needs to be an element of whimsy and chance otherwise it is sterile and 1 leads nowhere (no 2 had, no 3 had, and definitely not 4).

In contrast, take a person who has lived a very protected life or has lived in an institution from childhood into adulthood, say, owing to disability or MI. They are liable to display inappropriate sexual behavior because they haven't been out and about enough. By "inappropriate" I mean they don't "read the room" very well. — BC

Yes, but you speak of very specific interactions. I am speaking of the structure, what the interactions represent. Thus the initial interactions are probably because of some attraction. More interaction creates even more attraction or perhaps the opposite, a sort of repulsion. That might lead to sex and relationships, etc. Sure, sex can be had right off the bat, and then perhaps the other things follow, but that usually is not how it goes, and generally leads to friends-with-benefits or flings. It doesn't have to go in order, but the order is generally the way it goes. Even if the order is not there, 1-4 steps have to be present in some sense, otherwise you can be talking about anything physical or sexual and that counts as "eros", which obviously I am making a case that it is not.

You are beginning with a mistake. If there was something that makes an object that object, it would be just another component. It's the problem that Aristotle tried to solve with his idea of "essence" (literally, in the Greek "the what it is to be"), the scholastics with "quiddity" and Locke with his idea of substance ("something, I know not what"). Not even chasing wild geese, but unicorns. — Ludwig V

Yes, it is very much hearkening back to that. Here is the gist of it...
It is placed in the camp of "Speculative Realism" which according to Wiki is:

Object-oriented ontology is often viewed as a subset of speculative realism, a contemporary school of thought that criticizes the post-Kantian reduction of philosophical enquiry to a correlation between thought and being (correlationism), such that the reality of anything outside of this correlation is unknowable. — Wiki

His inspiration was:

For Harman, Heideggerian Zuhandenheit, or readiness-to-hand, refers to the withdrawal of objects from human perception into a reality that cannot be manifested by practical or theoretical action.[9] Furthering this idea, Harman contends that when objects withdraw in this way, they distance themselves from other objects, as well as humans.

And basically the theory is:

Harman further contends that objects withdraw not just from human interaction, but also from other objects. He maintains:

If the human perception of a house or a tree is forever haunted by some hidden surplus in the things that never become present, the same is true of the sheer causal interaction between rocks or raindrops. Even inanimate things only unlock each other's realities to a minimal extent, reducing one another to caricatures...even if rocks are not sentient creatures, they never encounter one another in their deepest being, but only as present-at-hand; it is only Heidegger's confusion of two distinct senses of the as-structure that prevents this strange result from being accepted.[1]

From this, Harman concludes that the primary site of ontological investigation is objects and relations, instead of the post-Kantian emphasis on the human-world correlate. Moreover, this holds true for all entities, be they human, nonhuman, natural, or artificial, leading to the downplaying of Dasein as an ontological priority. In its place, Harman proposes a concept of objects that are irreducible to both material particles and human perception, and "exceed every relation into which they might enter".[24]

Coupling Heidegger's tool analysis with the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl, Harman introduces two types of objects: real objects and sensual objects. Real objects are objects that withdraw from all experience, whereas sensual objects are those that exist only in experience.[25] Additionally, Harman suggests two kinds of qualities: sensual qualities, or those found in experience, and real qualities, which are accessed through intellectual probing.[25] Pairing sensual and real objects and qualities yields the following framework:

Real Object/Real Qualities: This pairing grounds the capacity of real objects to differ from one another, without collapsing into indefinite substrata.[26]
Real Object/Sensual Qualities: As in the tool-analysis, a withdrawn object is translated into sensual apprehension via a "surface" accessed by thought and/or action.[26]
Sensual Object/Real Qualities: The structure of conscious phenomena are forged from eidetic, or experientially interpretive, qualities intuited intellectually.[26]
Sensual Object/Sensual Qualities: Sensual objects are present, but enmeshed within a "mist of accidental features and profiles".[27]
To explain how withdrawn objects make contact with and relate to one another, Harman submits the theory of vicarious causation, whereby two hypothetical entities meet in the interior of a third entity, existing side-by-side until something occurs to prompt interaction.[28] Harman compares this idea to the classical notion of formal causation, in which forms do not directly touch, but influence one another in a common space "from which all are partly absent".

Being that this is "speculative" realism, I am sure you will find this all quite distasteful :D. Unlike logical positivism and the analytics who only interact via sense-datum (or broadly human experience) to world, and/or propositions of language/logic-to-world, this is trying to understand "world", even if using human conventions to portray it. Not sure how well the project can hold up for "Speculative Realism". But just wanted to share a new idea for you if you were unfamiliar.

I grasp the idea that sensation is an activity or an event or partly both; there is a standard verb for it. But "property" is not so clear; I don't know what the adjective would be for it. — Ludwig V

Sensing? Yes, what is this "sensing"? It is an event, sure, but many people want to posit that a "property" to mental events. So, the property of liquid, solid, gas, or the property of magnetism, or mass or pressure, is supposed to be likened to a property of some mental event. Mentality is thus deemed an EMERGENET property of X, Y, Z events taking place. Whenever XYZ is there, the mental property must be present. It was not there previously or after its arrangement, but that particular arrangement will cause the emergence of that property. And indeed, if this sounds like a Homunculus Fallacy, it is!

Yes. I have the impression that the idea was proposed as a project, and that various ideas have been proposed. As one would expect, there are several candidates, none particularly appealing. The sunlight and the rain interact and a rainbow is the result. Would it be fair to say the rainbow emerges? I suppose so, but I don't find it particularly enlightening, compared to the pedestrian scientific explanation. — Ludwig V

It's not only not enlightening, it's not the same in kind, in my estimation, to that of a mental event. That is to say, the emergence of all other things are understood by way of our observations. That is to say, properties cohere in a sufficient observer. But how does the observer itself emerge onto ITSELF?

This stipulated wrongness however, whatever it might be agreed to be, then directly applies to the affirmation that love (even if strictly understood as eros) is just another avenue toward suffering. It’s then a difference that makes no difference whatsoever. But underlying this is the far broader issue just mentioned.

All this being relevant to the issue I initially raised, which I summed up in my last post as that of: — javra

Well you did catch on to my point, yes. It is the Schopenhauer schema. That is the human being has no choice but the suffering of their wants and desires which may or may not obtain and may cause pain, harm, suffering along the way. It's unavoidable. You can try to minimize it, handwave it, or ignore it, but it's there nonetheless. Are you really going to tell (gaslight) me that love does not lead to much strife in the human socio-psychological sphere?

And eros love in particular is something people strongly desire, but fail at. I simply laid out a model for why it is easy to fail, as there are several steps and each one has to align, and each one can cause the downfall of the whole project.

As I stated just above:

Indeed, but my point was that we should not conflate eros with any one part of those 4 parts, otherwise it isn't love. Sexual adventure is just that, sex... Physical acts of a sexual nature. Just because it is with someone else, doesn't make it eros.

A strong emotional bond with someone can also be a kind of love. But if it is not sexual or physical in nature, it's hard to call that eros. A deep kind of Platonic love (philia perhaps?) would characterize this better.

A strong physical attraction without any emotional bond or sex is simply a sort of crush.

A relationship without attraction or sex, would deflate back to a friend.

That's all I'm saying. We can convolute it all we want but my conclusion was that if that is the case, then as you point out, this 1-4 necessity of eros to obtain causes quite a bit of strife for parties involved who seek eros. And as I stated, males are socially supposed to be quite stupid when it comes to how it works, and emotionally indifferent to wanting it. Females are socially supposed to be more open about finding love, and having 1-4 obtain. Perhaps they are often the gatekeeper for how 1-4 traditionally plays out. In the gay community, this may look a bit different, especially if males are generally indifferent to 1-4, and women are hypersensitive to it. Obviously this is generalizing and caricaturizing, but there may be truths to cliches and not because they are innate necessarily, but because it is how men and women are socialized. — schopenhauer1

It's akin to "work" and "labor". That is to say there are things in life we rather not do, but we can't just handwave it. It is inevitable to suffer in a way such that one has to do tasks that one would otherwise skip. But the pain, harm, tedium, and suffering involved in non-wanted forms of work have to be dealt with. Just like with love, one can try to find all sorts of self-help therapies to deal with unwanted aspects of things, but the burden is there to "deal with" nonetheless. Life in a way, for a self-reflecting animal as ourselves, is oriented with "dealing with", and psycho-social ways we choose to cope with the burdens involved in "dealing with".

So I'm not saying that thus love should be abandoned. I am just elaborating on the why it is hard to obtain and maintain. I am systemizing why eros breaks down in so many ways. It's a process and a state of affairs that has to be aligned and present.

Run of the mill sex with a casual partner usually didn't pose a threat to a settled relationship. What did pose a threat was great sex with a casual partner--it tended to pull one's interest away from the person one was most committed to, giving rise to jealousy and resentment.

How does any committed relationships last under these circumstances? They last IF both partners are committed to each other, without being exclusive. Also, as couples age, the attraction of casual partners diminishes. Casual sex takes time, and having a home, a partner, pets, a job, an exercise routine, civic / religious activities, etc. just doesn't leave time and energy for sexual adventures on the side. — BC

Indeed, but my point was that we should not conflate eros with any one part of those 4 parts, otherwise it isn't love. Sexual adventure is just that, sex... Physical acts of a sexual nature. Just because it is with someone else, doesn't make it eros.

A strong emotional bond with someone can also be a kind of love. But if it is not sexual or physical in nature, it's hard to call that eros. A deep kind of Platonic love (philia perhaps?) would characterize this better.

A strong physical attraction without any emotional bond or sex is simply a sort of crush.

A relationship without attraction or sex, would deflate back to a friend.

That's all I'm saying. We can convolute it all we want but my conclusion was that if that is the case, then as you point out, this 1-4 necessity of eros to obtain causes quite a bit of strife for parties involved who seek eros. And as I stated, males are socially supposed to be quite stupid when it comes to how it works, and emotionally indifferent to wanting it. Females are socially supposed to be more open about finding love, and having 1-4 obtain. Perhaps they are often the gatekeeper for how 1-4 traditionally plays out. In the gay community, this may look a bit different, especially if males are generally indifferent to 1-4, and women are hypersensitive to it. Obviously this is generalizing and caricaturizing, but there may be truths to cliches and not because they are innate necessarily, but because it is how men and women are socialized.

I agree that's what's in the background. (There was a great revival of Hume amongst analytic philosophers, at least in the UK, at the time.) But Hume posits "relations between ideas" and rejects "reason" (or some sense or other of it). So Ayer is riffing off Hume, rather than reproducing him. — Ludwig V

I kind of like the idea of a 18th century Hume being more (the age of Enlightenment) cynical than the 20th century Ayer in regards to human "reason". Hume's biting critiques really are unmatched, and it seems like everyone after has tried, but failed or has simply copied his critiques with new vocabulary...

If photons can count as sense data, then I say yes. But the idea is that we aware of them, so then I say know. So I just say I don't know what they are (supposed to be.) — Ludwig V

Well, my point was photons hitting the pupil is not sense data. That is simply the physical events we correlate with the sense data. That's the whole problem we are trying to solve... that all of these arguments go back to.. We can try to quibble about what a specific author said in a text in a chapter, in a passage, but let's get to what the subtext is, it's this (the hard problem.. )

Well, the idea that the mind is the brain is clearly physiologically inaccurate and since action is embedded in perception, I go for the whole person. But I don't see panpsychism as a problem - just a mistake, generated by the philosophical fondness for exaggerated generlization. — Ludwig V

You'd REALLY have to elaborate on that because right there is a huge generalization and handwave itself. But assuming by "whole person" we mean the theory "embedded cognition", I don't see how it really solves the problem any differently to recognize that indeed it's about the whole body's embeddedness in its environment.

It depends on what you mean by "object". If "to be is to be the value of a variable" is true, then clearly that's false. — Ludwig V

It's basically that objects interact with the world through vicarious properties but retain a sort of hidden property that makes the object itself and not just a composite of properties. Actually, it is sort of like the idea of "whole body" but spread out to objects, not just humans/animals. Specifically the theory is about not undermining objects (to just its vicarious properties), or overmining objects (to every relation it can ever possibly be a part of). There is something that makes an object that object, without dissolving it, but also recognizes that object has properties that allow it to interact with other objects, etc.

I'm coming round to the idea that accepting Locke's argument is a mistake. After all, in ordinary language (for what it is worth), there is no doubt that it is the stop-light that is red and that there is nothing red in my head. Moreover, Berkley's argument that the distinction between primary and secondary qualities won't stand up seems a good one. — Ludwig V

And here again is the crux of the argument. What does it mean that the stop-light IS red, rather than the stop-light has properties which if an observer were there would instantiate as the quale "red"? That is to say, what is red in and of itself? If you start talking wavelengths and rods/cones we are back to a dualism so that doesn't help your case much for "directly" perceiving the object. And then you can say why is it photons, rods, cones, and EM spectrum frequencies ARE the quale of red?

This goes to a deeper question I have I was going to start a thread on. What would it mean for something to have the "property" of a sensation? So the sensation of red/sound/touch/taste/smell, what if that is a "property" then what does that mean?

The generic answer would be that as long as X, Y, Z events are in place, property 1 obtains. This gets into the problem of emergentism. So 1 is emergent from the background of X, Y, Z. But whence "emergence"? It seems like a sort of pseudo-answer, like a Homunculus Fallacy by another name. It is the "magic" that can be conjured as an end to all inquiries.

“I saw the Emperor – this world-soul – riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.”

Goethe said of Napoleon that he was as intelligent as a man can be without wisdom, and as great as a man can be without virtue.

He was remarkable, in any case. I doubt I'll go to see this movie. If I see it, it will be from a comfy chair in my living room whenever it appears before me. I wish Kubrick had completed the movie of Napoleon he wanted to make. — Ciceronianus

I agree on Kubrick. Would like to have seen that.

Schopenhauer famously disliked and repudiated Hegel wherever he could. Here, there is a substantive difference. Hegel thought the human-geist was moving towards some Ideal. Schopenhauer scoffed and put people like Napoleon in his place as another vain conqueror. No ideal is to be reached. Rather, to Schopenhauer it isn't society that will save us, because our psychology would prevent us from anything more than the aimless willful creatures we are. Bored when we get what we want, and going headlong into various death drives (to put a Freudian angle on it).

In our societies and in human history war and the military aren't just simple acts or actors of violence. I think there's this very naive idea that war is somehow of multiplication or escalation from one individual hurting some other individual to group or a whole people inflicting violence on other people in similar way. I think it's different when you come to the societal level. Or wouldn't then all general then monsters? Usually higher ranking military officers are very rational, calm and aren't violent brawlers. Our societies have made them a fundamental part of the society and their role has been molded by centuries or millennia. — ssu

Indeed, and isn't that the debate you are having here in multiple thread?.. To what extent is one justified for military action. How many casualties are too much in the name of defense, etc.? But the argument at hand here is in the next paragraph so I will respond there...

With Napoleon, the question I would have is how much Revolutionary France needed a saviour-general like Napoleon after the horrors and the extremism of the French Revolution? In this way it's easy to understand how a revolution that deposed and killed the King then ended up with a general crowning himself Emperor. Sounds at first illogical, but it isn't.

Yet I think that perhaps Schopenhauer remains at a more theoretical or philosophical level and doesn't ponder much about the Napoleon's or other politicians of his time. — ssu

So yes, I don't think Schopenhauer much cared for current events or history. Rather, he used it as a platform to explain the idea that "It's all the same". Meaning, human nature doesn't change over history. Contra Hegel, technology gets better, but human psyche is nothing different. It's all the Will playing itself out in the playground that it makes for itself.

As for Napoleon's need to conquer the rest of Europe, as if Revolutionary France couldn't contain itself, so needed to burst from the seems, it's an interesting image. How much was it vanity? How much was it idealism?

Well, OK, thanks, but it doesn't answer why one should prefer an unloving life to a loving one (or else a loving life over an unloving one) - irrespective of the type of love addressed. I deem this to be a rather important question. But maybe its just me. — javra

No I agree with you. That doesn't negate that it causes suffering nonetheless. I never said "thus we don't need eros". Rather, it is part of being alive as a human. Even ignoring, downplaying, or eradicating love from one's life (or attempts thereof), is having to deal with love, but in the "negative" sense of negating it. One is still contending with it on sociological and personal level.

Dear me, when was I evading erotic love? — BC

:lol:

Looking back, no you sufficiently addressed it. But I was trying to pry it from your going back to friendships and the like, which I thought might have been equivocating like "eh if you have good friends, and you had sex just casually with a friends-with-benefits/fling, you don't need relationships". But that is not eros. My whole theory here is that eros has to embody all 4 of those things in a person(s) (at the least) for it to obtain, and it is not something that is trivial and can be mixed and matched, and as you state, is the prime reason humans mate exist (for good or bad!) and write poetry, songs, endless conversations of despair and delight, etc.

An interesting issue, actually: When one mentions “eros” does one strictly mean “sexual gratification”, so that one construes rape to be a form of eros? Something about this to me is utterly wrong – so that eros necessarily implies some measure of agape. But maybe others disagree? — javra

No not at al. Not how I was breaking it down. Let me quote for you my theory of eros:

1) Attraction. Some people's physical features and attributes seem attractive. There is something alluring, keeping one's gaze on them and attention. I've argued that physical attraction could be cultural and learned, but even if we were to keep it to its pseudo-scientific grounding in some "innate" feature, it doesn't matter, the consequence is the same.

2) Accompanying physical attraction is attraction from some emotional connection. This can be through personality, closeness, fondness, how they make you feel in some way.

3) Sexual function. Sexual organs can function in such a way as to gain pleasure. Sometimes one can feel sexual in what might seem as odd "fetishized" ways, but generally it's grounded in the usual sexual organs. That is to say, the phenomenon exists whereby one can have sex with someone they are not particularly "physically attracted to". Indeed, this is often called "settling". You WOULD like to get that really hot X, but you will "settle" for this person who is in proximity, able to be attained, and you get along with well enough. And, perhaps, due to proximity and closeness, you have developed a more emotional and personality-based attraction to, which increases the overall attraction of the person (see 2).

4) Relationship. Apart from, but connected to attraction and sexual function is relationships. Relationships are a commitment to one person (or perhaps more than one in polygamous type situations), whereby two (or more) people support each other in long-term emotional ways. Often this involves deciding to procreate or raising a family. Sometimes it just means being attached to that person in a closeness with them. It is about signaling the social cue that "this" person is my "partner" in life in a more close way than anyone else. They are the ones that care about your welfare, they motivate you, they have quality time with you, they often cohabitate with you to the point where you sleep in the same bed together, eat meals together, sit in the same room together, and go out for entertainment together. There is often an element of financial support as well, pooling resources, and dividing household chores, etc. This last one can be a source of contention.

The human animal and its mating behavior and life in general is complex. 4 - Relationships, are supposed to be the result of some mix 1-3 working at some level. 1-3 is supposed to lead to 4. But notice, there can be lots of room for all of these things to be separated and break down which causes even more misery for the human. That is to say:

-One can be more attracted to X person (1,2) which puts 4 in danger. One can technically get 3, but not really think 1,2. Ideally 1 and 2 should go with three, but technically those can be separated. Opposite this, one can have 1 and 3, but not really get anything from 2, which will lead to unhappiness as 4 will not be achieved. Also, 4 can be achieved, but 3 is lacking, which might lead one to end 4. When one gets older, 3 might not matter as much. When one is in 4 for a long time, they may lose touch with the world being outside of 4, and take it for granted. As mentioned earlier, the dividing of resources, time, and household chores might be a source of contention for 4. One might not find 4 as fulfilling as pursuing 1 and 2 again.

There are so many permutations for unhappiness. — schopenhauer1

And here:

So my point with 1-3 cannot be bypassed for 4 only, is the following:

1 alone is simply a sort of infatuation, but not "love" (eros love that is).
2 alone is simply a friend, and perhaps can count as a sort of philia.
3 alone is simply a "friend-with-benefits" or simply physically pleasurable in nature
4 alone is near impossible without 1-3, which is why I said that it pretty much has to arrive in that order for 4, to obtain. If not, it may be seen as inauthentic, rushed, not real, etc. 1-3 needs to be there to legitimize the status of 4.

Thus, I say that "erotic love" in order for it to be indeed "love" has to have all 4 elements to obtain that status. But it is also because of the necessity of each step to be present and aligned correctly, for which love is generally hard to enter into and hard to keep. There are so many ways 1-4 can fail.

It is also interesting to note that the process is quite cumbersome. Because 4 is not instant, nor is it preferable to be instant, it needs a lot of time, energy, etc. and this makes erotic love that much more fickle than most other types of love. — schopenhauer1

So with all that being said, eros implies that those 4 things be in place for it not to be something else. So, in a way you are right if you are trying to say eros cannot just mean 3 alone (sex without any other aspects aforementioned like attraction, personality, emotional connection, etc.).

Agape, as with eros, will far more often than not lead to suffering. Exceptions occur in both cases, yes, but it is not the norm. — javra

Indeed, there aren't many perfectly successful ascetics, Schopenhauer-style, or whatever manifestation of the saintly life one conceives.

So then what makes pure agape a more preferable love to maintain and pursue than an agape-consisting eros? For, in the first place, both can equally be almost guaranteed to result in suffering on account of being held or pursued and, in the second place, as the individual persons we all are, most of us stand a far greater chance of gaining more eudemonia from a sustained, agape-consisting eros than via an agape alone. The ideal romantic relationship in the extended moment is persists – this, for some, being well over 50 years of loving marriage (with personal relatives as examples, if nothing else) – can enrich one’s life with both warmth and wisdom gained from the other’s perspectives far more than can a universalized compassion for mankind, for example. — javra

(And, for the anti-natalists out there, the bringing forth of offspring is not essential to the occurrence of a romantic relationship: the latter can well be held just fine without the former.) — javra

:up:

The sexual drive goes back a long ways. The wellspring of life ought not be disparaged. (Screw the Apostle Paul.) — BC

BUT, being embodied as we are, it is physical erotic pleasure that is the foundation of long-term family relationships. (Non-sexual relationships, like college friendship, can last into old age too.) — BC

Indeed, this is actually why I see Paul as a kind of "Gnostic-lite". If suffering begins at birth, and prior to birth control, sex led often times to birth, then stop the cause and you stop the effect of suffering. Of course, Paul's shitty application of Gnostic-like ideas (it was floating around then.. you can't tell me Paul wasn't familiar in some ways to Gnostic ideas), and Augustine's ridiculous treatment of this whole thing based on his own self-inflicted guilt, is another matter (he was a full blown (no pun intended) sex addict according to his autobiography).

But indeed, even your odd evasion of erotic love now, is telling of how erotic love, leading to relationships is almost shameful. That is to say, sex stripped of relationships seems more appropriate to talk about than relationships. It is too domestic, too close to home, too close to the vest. That is to say, to want to have a deeply formed relationship with someone you are physically, emotionally, and sexually compatible with is also some of the least likely things to align successfully. Yet people take the ventures and fail often. Women are socialized to make this an open thing. Males are socialized to downplay it as no big deal, even though, why do they willingly conform to such arrangements? Also, the happiness levels of married couples belies an interesting idea whereby many times it is the men who are happier with such arrangements and women who get less happy in marriage. Anyways, it seems that wanting a relationship is shameful in society, the sex is actually no big deal anymore. Interesting sociology.

This is all very interesting, but of one thing I am quite certain: theorizing about love will not get one laid. It probably won't lead to love either. I'm not being sarcastic; sadly, rationality just doesn't help the heart all that much. (It's handy though when one is doing a postmortem on a dead relationship. — BC

Quite true, theorizing is no way to love. However, I think it becomes more a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything really prohibitive. It is the romantic fairy tale that it's just a "feeling" and there can be no intellectualizing. But being a philosophy forum, I think we can step back and see the patterns. Perhaps the patterns can inform better. Do you find this person physically attractive or do you want to get laid? Do you find this person's personality attractive? Do you feel like you care for this person beyond when just spend time together? Do you have physical intimacy? Do you see yourself over time sharing responsibilities and the everyday burdens of life that entails a long term relationship. So, yeah knowing the pattern can indeed inform oneself, more than you might let on with just "It's all about the feels!".

You are describing erotic love as the end result of a progression, beginning with attraction and ending with "authentic" (whatever that means) erotic love. Probably all love follows a progression. The kinds of love mentioned here--eros, philia, storge, and agape--require investment, commitment, desire, and more by the subject. One doesn't just wake up one day and find one is full of agape. — BC

Indeed, I should not discount that other love follows a progression too, and is temporal. The stakes are different though. Agape is all consuming for the religious-inclined.. Monks, nuns, or just the "devout". Perhaps the atheistic ascetic and Buddhist devote can fall into this too. But for many of the masses, this is not what they care about (even if they should?). Rather, they want the progression of erotic love (1-4). 4 especially leads to a kind of stability. You can deny that it is more important than the other loves, but it seems pretty important to people. At the beginning of life, family stability, and throughout life friendships are important, but a relationship as represented by 1-4, seems to be very desirable, as something more encompassing to ones everyday life. There is a reason you "go back" to your wife/husband/partner, and not just to a "friend". There is an aspect of "home", and shared space, etc. It's different in its all-encompassing nature. Of course, none of this mattered centuries ago. Love had not much to do with marriage, procreation, and a domestic partner. That is relatively new. There were a lot of arranged marriages, marriages of convenience, of necessity, etc.

Ordinary love, the kind most of us find and hope to keep, is difficult because humans are not constant. We change for better and for worse. We may fail in our love at a critical time when our partner most needs us. Love, of course, is never the only thing we feel. — BC

Indeed, but I do see the 4 components outlined a good tool to see where the failure takes place.

To be fair to him, he doesn't deny the external world and doesn't deny that we know things about it. — Ludwig V

Right, this would be the wishy-washy (from accusers I mean) "indirect realism". He mine well be a Kantian! Might be the (exaggerated) pearl clutching on this accusation.

There is a complication here, that Ayer says that physical objects are "constructed" from sense-data. I think he means "logically constructed", so this isn't a straightforward metaphysical claim, but exactly what it means is not clear.

My version of this is that life is not really about avoiding error, but coping with it when it crops up. — Ludwig V

Well, I think he means it in the Humean way of "impressions" and "ideas". Ideas are built up from impressions. And here we get the seeds for the difference between straight up epistemological empiricism (tabula rasa), and Kantian cognitivism (there are innate mental faculties which shape the impressions). That debate is rather archaic now, but it does show up in various modern forms in terms of just how it is our minds construct the world from experience.

I have an issue with this. First of all, if the "real world" is never known, you have changed the standard meaning of "know" for a distortion created by the idea that "certainty" means immunity from error (see above) and if "representing" means nothing unless what is represented is also known. Comparing representation with original is how you know it is a representation - think picture vs original. How do you know what the picture is a picture of if there is no way of, at least sometimes, comparing them? — Ludwig V

I think this is possibly where language breaks down and word-games begins. The external object exists and creates the same events because it holds some primary property. This is the "real". No one usually doubts this. However, the word-games come in as to "what" counts as representation. Is a photon hitting the pupil and electro-chemical nerve firings being equivalent to or causing a mental perception and conception a "representation"? Some say yes some say no. Some might say, the sensory parts of the brain are "direct" and the higher ones are "indirect". But how is that the case? Is it the "whole body" is involved and thus, one cannot separate it? If that's the case, how does one avoid panpsychism? There are things like object-oriented ontologies where all objects have some sort of qualitative aspect, for example. Then there is process philosophy etc. But no respectable empiricist/positivist is going to go down that route.

That is exactly what is at stake in the broader context. I'm sure you know that the modern idea of "qualia" is a (not unsuccessful) attempt to preserve the ghost. — Ludwig V

Is it an "attempt" or is it simply a more just what "seems to be the case". It "seems" that there are sensory qualities. Many people consider this secondary properties as the qualities themselves are only apparent to an observer, not "there" in some non-observational sense, other than the physical substrata from which the qualities become realized. And now we are back to the Philosophy of Mind.

What is ideal is 4, no matter the process. I also think you can have most of the elements of 4 without 1-3 in the form of deep friendships. These can be passionate, but not sexual, e.g. the fictionalized version of Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassidy in "On the Road."

But whereas "eros" might be used to refer to attraction and sex in general, the English "love" seems quite disconnected from this. To be sure, there is a relation, but plenty of people will say they are not "in love" with people they've slept with or are attracted too, while most will say they "love" their family members.

The commonality between 4 and stroge/agape jumps to mind here. The "ideal/universal" seems like it can/should be realizable in many forms. That's what makes it the "universal," the truly self-determining, it isn't bogged down in the particulars. 1-4 might be the way it goes for most happy couples, but it seems plausible to talk about a celibate priest living a "love filled life" without stretching the term.

If people end up suffering because they don't go through 1-4 as expected, this seems like it could be a case of the type of "lack of understanding" Plato is talking about. It's mistaking accidents for substance; what people want is the substance, they suffer for chasing accidents. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I think this is where we must parse distinctions-

Storge is love of kin more-or-less: parent/child, pet/pet-owner, etc. Sometimes a "relationship" might fall into this, but I see it as the end result of eros love. If erotic love does not turn into a relationship, it becomes unstable, which perhaps we can discuss more.

Agape love, is like love of humanity, love of a person in an abstract way such as to see the commonality of them in you and whatnot. This is the love you mentioned tied with religious points of view of "love for fellow man"

Philia is brotherly love, basically a friendship.

Finally, there is erotic love, which is one based on some sort of attraction and/or sex. It is "erotic love" for which most people default to when discussing "love" in the general sense. It is this love in particular I am focusing on. Often 4 (which can be considered a type of storge love), is only the end result of 1-3. And that is my point, it cannot be bypassed.

If we add up attraction, emotional connection, and sex over time we will likely end up with a relationship--usually in that order. Folk wisdom has it that sex with people who were first established friends isn't going to work out. That's been my experience.

A sexual, emotional relationship that lasts will be conditioned by other factors: money, employment, poverty, major illnesses, and so on. If the partners are loyal, the relationship will endure through thick and thin, depending on the capacities of the partners. Failure can happen to good people.

In a long-lasting relationship, the factors that ignited the relationship will change. Lots of relationships endure decades with major changes in the circumstances of both partners. I believe the chances of having a long relationship improve with age. Two teenagers lack enough experience to have a chance at negotiating a long relationship. By somewhere in their 30s, people are (or should be) better able to make a long relationship work. For child-rearing, though, one doesn't want to wait too long. — BC

So my point with 1-3 cannot be bypassed for 4 only, is the following:

1 alone is simply a sort of infatuation, but not "love" (eros love that is).
2 alone is simply a friend, and perhaps can count as a sort of philia.
3 alone is simply a "friend-with-benefits" or simply physically pleasurable in nature
4 alone is near impossible without 1-3, which is why I said that it pretty much has to arrive in that order for 4, to obtain. If not, it may be seen as inauthentic, rushed, not real, etc. 1-3 needs to be there to legitimize the status of 4.

Thus, I say that "erotic love" in order for it to be indeed "love" has to have all 4 elements to obtain that status. But it is also because of the necessity of each step to be present and aligned correctly, for which love is generally hard to enter into and hard to keep. There are so many ways 1-4 can fail.

It is also interesting to note that the process is quite cumbersome. Because 4 is not instant, nor is it preferable to be instant, it needs a lot of time, energy, etc. and this makes erotic love that much more fickle than most other types of love.

Loneliness, alienation, disconnectedness, isolation, meaninglessness, etc. are deficiency conditions. Love, friendship, belonging, connectedness, validation inclusion, etc. are conditions of sufficiency. Lonely people feel emptiness; loved/loving people feel fullness, to put it in very simple terms. Of course, the experience of emptiness and fullness are not binary -- 0 and 1. There are ever so many ways to experience deficiency and sufficiency. — BC

It's interesting because being a self-reflective, recursively thinking being, these feelings are much more amplified in humans than it seems any other being. A dog likes being pet and walked and playing a game. But that's it. It doesn't need much socialization beyond. An ape grooms, and forages together, and forms hunting parties and various hierarchical relationships and plottings. This is more complex, but still, the lack of recursive, self-reflection (self-talk, self-examination) makes the amplitude of possible suffering perhaps less. Humans need what you mentioned and more it seems.

But I was specifically wondering what you though of my analysis of how love manifests in modern day in this post:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/856869

The reason I am interested in it, is I think most people's definitions of love follow the steps 1-4 in some linear fashion, and it is this linear fashion not being achieved in either the right order, or the perception that one of these steps is missing, that causes the breakdowns in finding, obtaining, continuing, pursuing love. In other words, do you have any more thoughts about how these breakdowns occur, and if that systemization (realizing it is only a model) might be more-or-less an accurate encapsulation of the ideal and where the ideal breaks down?

Because "love" is everything from the feelings of attraction, emotional connection, the sexual impulse, to the culmination of these into a relationship (a final "state of affairs" if you will regarding the first three state of affairs). It isn't JUST the feeling of attraction or relationship or sex or isolated. It has to have them in combination. That is another aspect I am asking to consider.

Good stuff there, but I think something you may not have picked up was how 1-4 in my initial post laid out love. The way you are telling it, is indeed this "romanticized" version. It is the "romance of romance" that you talk of, but not "love" proper, I'd say. Love proper- that is love grounded follows more in line with 1-4. That is to say, what is this "feeling" but 1 and 2 in the divisions I laid out? What is the "passion" consummated but aspect 3? What is the long-term goal of 1-3, but of course 4. My point was I was trying to refine what it is specifically in a grounded way, how it is lived phenomenologically in our modern day for how love causes misery and breaks down. I wasn't just leaving it at "love causes misery", I was explaining the mechanisms for where at each point this misery takes place and what that might look like. Everything from finding "love", "loneliness", "attraction", "sex", and "long-term peace with another person one feels connected with" are all their own thing, which then gets lumped with "love", I was pulling those things apart and then seeing where they combine, and how they combine.

In the modern day, it does seem like by "love" people are looking for an ideal. What is this ideal? It is 1-4 working in stepwise fashion.

@BC any comments to add to these?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/856869
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/857263

And since suffering is implicitly deemed bad, the only logical conclusion that I so far find to this affirmation of supposed fact is that love in all its variations is a bad thing to maintain or pursue. — javra

No no. Earlier I stated the difference between Schopenhauer's idea of compassion and romantic love, and what that means:

Indeed, it is the will-to-life perpetuating itself. That is romantic love at least. Perhaps something like agape is more akin to his idea of "compassion" which has quite the opposite nature of Eros- that of "quieting" the will in that one is seeing the nature of reality in its true nature, as a monistic being, divided by appearance. This is in contrast to Eros, which is will following its normal pursuit, "falling" for the appearance, and not just falling for it, but possibly perpetuating the species, and thus the whole illusion, again and again. — schopenhauer1

So I was not just leaving it at "love" without distinction between kinds. Specifically I was separating out a sort of compassionate type love and erotic/romantic love.

The ethical ramifications of this logical deduction from your given premise being what exactly? That Hitler and Stalin are good guys on account of their unlovingness but the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa are bad? So it's said, both camps suffer/ed in life (the present Dalai Lama still kicking it), but in utterly different ways and for utterly different reasons. — javra

So yeah Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa type love can be deemed more in the agape/compassion category that I mentioned, though of course that would have to be applied in real-time contexts and determined etc. But the love they are striving for (and often spoken of in religious contexts in general) can certainly be deemed that.

In short, given the premise you've affirmed, what then makes an unloving life preferable to a loving one? — javra

So I was specific about romantic love, so in that context perhaps. I tried to define more systematically the "fuzzy" notion of romantic love. I was trying to say that it actually has several parts, and if they do not work in the right order, or are missing components, this can cause internal tensions that manifest in various negative emotions. Also, at every level of the four components that I theorized are involved in romantic love, there can be breakdowns that lead to stress and negative emotions.

Now going back to your idea of is "an unloving life preferable", that is tricky. My point about the multi-facets is that it becomes as much a sociological problem as it is a personal preference. Other animals have mating strategies that are more defined, innate, or whatnot. Some are learned. Bowery birds need to collect enough blue objects and do a dance in a certain way that the mate finds appealing to have maybe 5 seconds of coitus. Some birds also have various sharing responsibilities over the eggs and some mate for life even. Presumably this is all a combination of mainly innate features with some room for learned variance in there and contingency.

However, humans, being the complex beings we are on a social level, do not have a set pattern for which we can harken back to. It is hard to say how early Homo sapiens "loved" and mated. One can extrapolate from some of the earliest living hunting-gathering groups like the San Bushmen. They seem to be able to pick their mates rather than it being assigned from parents. Often though, dowries are involved, and exchange of resources between families, and marriage becomes much more than "feelings". But then there was always cheating, and some societies allowed polygamy which prevents that from being as much an issue for men, perhaps.

But the numbers 1-4 are more of the "modern" take on it, perhaps since the 1700s, when modern attitudes of dating became conventionalized. So to that extent, romantic love is supposed to lead to a package deal whereby one is attracted to (physically, personality-wise), is emotionally invested in, is sexually active with, and forms a relationship with a particular person. That person can be the source of immense highs and lows if all of these things are to be enwrapped in that person. So, is it worth pursuing with this modern sociological construct? Divorce rates, if they represent broader notions of "love" and "relationships" are about 50% in most places or more. Romantic dramas and comedies extract a kernel of truth from the sorrows and highs one gets from such ventures.

One of the problems is 1-4 is not defined very clearly so expectations are misaligned, and people have different ideas of various things. Perhaps someone just wants 3 and not 4. All sorts of things go wrong.

What is true is that humans are a social creature. Books, entertainment, gardening, going to X place for a hobby can be done alone, but everything that put you in place (by way of being born in the first place), and the use of the various entertainments, was from other people doing something. You can't get out of being a social creature, even when alone. So what is one to do? One keeps living and suffering because the alternative is not living.

I would propose this idea is even more acute in more established academic sciences (unlike "astrology"). For example, I would think human language should have an overriding theory for its origins and function, but that is far from clear. Often there is no consensus within a field (anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, etc.) let alone between fields. Terrence Deacon wrote a book called The Symbolic Species which focuses much on semiotics and the sign relation, etc. However, none of this kind of speak is in Tomasello's notion of language as deriving from "joint attention". So how do those two theories fit together? Should they? Can they? Why are they so disparate-seeming? How does one create a synthesis of the two, or is this not the correct approach?

This then leads to the point of science. Is science leading to consensus or is it just interesting experiment after interesting experiment? Some things are amenable to no more questions (there is a particle for mass, these biological molecules work with these other ones, etc.), and there are some that are more abstract. The more abstract questions then become widely various in their interpretations and methodology. There are so many "findings" from "studies" that if you go to any science website, none seems particularly like a "breakthrough" because there are so many theories touching on the same thing saying different things and possibly not even connecting with the other studies (though some probably are). Science, the pursuit of, has become so various that it creates a lot of noise.

@Count Timothy von Icarus, no response? I thought this was a fun one :D.

My main idea is that "love" (similar to Schopenhauer's view) is just another avenue for suffering. Just like life itself, the ideal is not the reality. "Romanticism" can mean many things, but in the realm of romantic love, it is an idealization or rather Pollyannaish lens for which to see love. But as I was explaining, "love" is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and when people say "love" they are defining those facets in a particular way (specifically 1 and 2 leading to 3 and 4). But there are so many ways love breaks down and causes pain and misery.

You, I and Austin can all agree on that conclusion - depending on what you mean by realism. The trouble is, it hasn't. (See qualia). — Ludwig V

Well, I don't necessarily believe that, but I am just positing a hypothetical view for why this whole debate might be important in the debates surrounding epistemology.

Besides the broader implication (no real world fits in here, oh no!), the idea itself as we discussed just seems odd one if it is the point for which verification is to be obtained. That is to say, verification happens at broader observational levels, not immediate impressions upon the body. Verification is a judgement. The computer makes a judgement. Even if the judgement is based on experience, that doesn't mean necessarily, "sense impressions" but various judgements and inferences derived from those sense impressions. Thus, one can jettison the "sense impressions" if there is a sufficient tool for the "judgements and inferences" part. So that is why I am not computing Ayer very well here. Perhaps I am not being charitable in the right way with his view.

Yes, in a way. You are using "observation" in a common sense way, and I'm on board with that. But Ayer's argument is that all observations other than sense-data are inferences from sense-data. — Ludwig V

The theory of sense data is a view in the philosophy of perception, popularly held in the early 20th century by philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, C. D. Broad, H. H. Price, A. J. Ayer, and G. E. Moore. Sense data are taken to be mind-dependent objects whose existence and properties are known directly to us in perception. These objects are unanalyzed experiences inside the mind, which appear to subsequent more advanced mental operations exactly as they are.

Sense data are often placed in a time and/or causality series, such that they occur after the potential unreliability of our perceptual systems yet before the possibility of error during higher-level conceptual analysis and are thus incorrigible. They are thus distinct from the 'real' objects in the world outside the mind, about whose existence and properties we often can be mistaken.

Talk of sense-data has since been largely replaced by talk of the closely related qualia. The formulation the given is also closely related. None of these terms has a single coherent and widely agreed-upon definition, so their exact relationships are unclear. One of the greatest troubling aspects of 20th century theories of sense data are their unclear rubric nature. — Wiki

Bertrand Russell heard the sound of his knuckles rapping his writing table, felt the table's hardness and saw its apparent colour (which he knew 'really' to be the brown of wood) change significantly under shifting lighting conditions.

H. H. Price found that although he was able to doubt the presence of a tomato before him, he was unable to doubt the existence of his red, round and 'somewhat bulgy' sense-datum and his consciousness of this sense-datum.

When we twist a coin it 'appears' to us as elliptical. This elliptical 'appearance' cannot be identical with the coin (for the coin is perfectly round), and is therefore a sense datum, which somehow represents the round coin to us.

Consider a reflection which appears to us in a mirror. There is nothing corresponding to the reflection in the world external to the mind (for our reflection appears to us as the image of a human being apparently located inside a wall, or a wardrobe). The appearance is therefore a mental object, a sense datum. — Wiki

So from here sense-data are the immediate "impressions" upon the senses. I actually don't see how that's much different than Hume's "impressions" as that is a very good name for this notion. I understand how Hume's Ideas (combinations of impressions into abstractions and such), but impressions seems pretty equivalent to sense-datum, unless there is some weird technicality I am not understanding.

From all this it is clear that it is the phenomenal experiences that the mind is having. The part that is in contention here with Austin is that Austin wants to add "From all this it is clear that it is the phenomenal experiences that the mind is having with the world."

Ayer can be accused of an extreme solipsism and this kind of epistemology might rub people the wrong way if they want to maintain the external world and the veracity of the human mind. Ayer is ever closing the human off to only phenomenal and not "the world". The two shall never meet, so to say. This is ripe then for being taken to more speculative extremes and uncertainty in general whereby Kantianism and Idealism, more generally might save the day. The middle ground is a kind of "indirect realism" which some might still find distasteful as "Kantianism in drag". That is to say, the "real world" is never known, just represented, and now this creates the division of mind/body that many philosophers want to get away from as it again, brings in the "specter" of the ghostly mind, which is to be eradicated and replaced. Thus this whole argument needs to go away to preserve realism.

For the rest, yes, all good questions, which add to the puzzle of why Ayer limited his verification only to sense data. Austin's observation, that this is far too limited, is supported by your comment. — Banno

Cool.

I don't think working scientists ever give a moment's thought to sense-data. But for what it's worth a defence of the idea would go something like this. The spectrometer is a material object like any other, so the usual "translation" could be made. It would be even more complicated that the normal examples of tables or trees, but there's no reason in principle why it could not be made. Reading the information is not specially complicated. The rest is up to interpretation via the various theories. Compare an astronomer observing starts through a telescope. There's no knock-down argument here.

Berekeley considers a watchmaker as a potential counter-example and has no difficulty arguing that, complex as it is, all our knowledge as well as the watchmaker's is easily translatable into collections of ideas. The real argument is in the actions of the watchmaker in building the watch - or so it seems to me. Action in the world establishes that I am embodied - a three-dimensional object among other three-dimensional objects. — Ludwig V

What do you mean by "translation" here? The spectrometer is spitting out data that signifies levels of known compounds. It would be trivially true, that the person "reading out" the data and "translating it" is using their "sense-data" to indeed confirm the machine's output. If Ayer is trying to say something here, it is that the determination of synthetic truth is sense-data verification. But the determination here was a machine.

If anything, it leads to a much broader discussion to what an observation is composed of. I get logical positivists wanting to keep statements about meaning to be in some way grounded in observation (especially conforming with the other academic disciplines and keeping up with the "Joneses" at the turn of the century if you will..) but why sense-data in particular? Rather, observation can be had by any number of methods, many of them inferential. It's a weird hill to die on, unless you really contort the cause-effect relationship back to "sense-data" to prove your point that it all goes back to that.

To be charitable, you can say that sense-data must be involved in the human way of interpreting the world, but that is pretty charitable. If anything, the whole discussion leads to a sort of Platonic notion of information as agnostic to sense-data and just "existing" in some sense, whatever the interpreter is.

Because Ayer is seeking to find the foundations of knowledge. Sense-data provide the incorrigible and self-evident starting-points of the the chains of evidence that underpin our knowledge. Perhaps, most of the time, we don't actually articulate the chains all the way back to the beginning. But we can, if we need to. — Ludwig V

Yeah, this is the part that seems dubitable to me. As I said, information seems to be agnostic to sense-data. What if a computer was reading and analyzing the results of another computer, and deemed it correct. What "sense-data" was needed for this observation?

But the main criticism Austin levels against Ayer here is to reject the idea that there are a particular class of sentences which are apt to verification. For Ayer these are sentences about sense data. — Banno

Does the project of "logical positivism" or "empiricism" in general rest solely on Ayer's idea of sense data? Can you explain why Ayer insists that sentences about sense data are the only ones apt for verification? For example, when we determine the chemical makeup of a substance, scientists use an electron spectrometer. There are several tricky things here.. The spectrometer takes all sorts of data that is translated back as chemical compounds. There are detectors in there, providing data that is spit back in real human language. No one need rely on their sense data here for the "verification" of the compounds being detected here. Why is "verification" so narrowly defined as sense data? What kind of data would it be that the spectrometer is outputting? It is data based on known measurements of photoemissions hitting a field, etc. It is mathematical, it is information, it is...

I'm not super familiar with Schopenhauer, but wasn't his take that this is sort of an irrational takeover by the "will to life?" His whole: "If children were brought into the world by reason alone, would the humanity continue to exist?" To which I take it the answer we're supposed to have is "no." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Indeed, it is the will-to-life perpetuating itself. That is romantic love at least. Perhaps something like agape is more akin to his idea of "compassion" which has quite the opposite nature of Eros- that of "quieting" the will in that one is seeing the nature of reality in its true nature, as a monistic being, divided by appearance. This is in contrast to Eros, which is will following its normal pursuit, "falling" for the appearance, and not just falling for it, but possibly perpetuating the species, and thus the whole illusion, again and again.

But romantic love can be broken into many facets of its phenomenology. Let's look at some:

1) Attraction. Some people's physical features and attributes seem attractive. There is something alluring, keeping one's gaze on them and attention. I've argued that physical attraction could be cultural and learned, but even if we were to keep it to its pseudo-scientific grounding in some "innate" feature, it doesn't matter, the consequence is the same.

2) Accompanying physical attraction is attraction from some emotional connection. This can be through personality, closeness, fondness, how they make you feel in some way.

3) Sexual function. Sexual organs can function in such a way as to gain pleasure. Sometimes one can feel sexual in what might seem as odd "fetishized" ways, but generally it's grounded in the usual sexual organs. That is to say, the phenomenon exists whereby one can have sex with someone they are not particularly "physically attracted to". Indeed, this is often called "settling". You WOULD like to get that really hot X, but you will "settle" for this person who is in proximity, able to be attained, and you get along with well enough. And, perhaps, due to proximity and closeness, you have developed a more emotional and personality-based attraction to, which increases the overall attraction of the person (see 2).

4) Relationship. Apart from, but connected to attraction and sexual function is relationships. Relationships are a commitment to one person (or perhaps more than one in polygamous type situations), whereby two (or more) people support each other in long-term emotional ways. Often this involves deciding to procreate or raising a family. Sometimes it just means being attached to that person in a closeness with them. It is about signaling the social cue that "this" person is my "partner" in life in a more close way than anyone else. They are the ones that care about your welfare, they motivate you, they have quality time with you, they often cohabitate with you to the point where you sleep in the same bed together, eat meals together, sit in the same room together, and go out for entertainment together. There is often an element of financial support as well, pooling resources, and dividing household chores, etc. This last one can be a source of contention.

The human animal and its mating behavior and life in general is complex. 4 - Relationships, are supposed to be the result of some mix 1-3 working at some level. 1-3 is supposed to lead to 4. But notice, there can be lots of room for all of these things to be separated and break down which causes even more misery for the human. That is to say:

-One can be more attracted to X person (1,2) which puts 4 in danger. One can technically get 3, but not really think 1,2. Ideally 1 and 2 should go with three, but technically those can be separated. Opposite this, one can have 1 and 3, but not really get anything from 2, which will lead to unhappiness as 4 will not be achieved. Also, 4 can be achieved, but 3 is lacking, which might lead one to end 4. When one gets older, 3 might not matter as much. When one is in 4 for a long time, they may lose touch with the world being outside of 4, and take it for granted. As mentioned earlier, the dividing of resources, time, and household chores might be a source of contention for 4. One might not find 4 as fulfilling as pursuing 1 and 2 again.

There are so many permutations for unhappiness.

My point was merely that it has not been a major focus on a level with other topics and has generally not occupied a place of significance in systematic philosophy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Schopenhauer thought it of the highest significance as it was an often used vehicle for which Will to propagate.

Hm. Though I'm appreciative of the reply, this take on Reform Judaism conflicts with both my limited experiences and with what Wikipedia states:

Reform Judaism, also known as Liberal Judaism or Progressive Judaism, is a major Jewish denomination that emphasizes the evolving nature of Judaism, the superiority of its ethical aspects to its ceremonial ones, and belief in a continuous search for truth and knowledge, which is closely intertwined with human reason and not limited to the theophany at Mount Sinai. A highly liberal strand of Judaism, it is characterized by lessened stress on ritual and personal observance, regarding halakha (Jewish law) as non-binding and the individual Jew as autonomous, and great openness to external influences and progressive values.
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Judaism — javra

Yeah this didn't explain much as to how it "conflicts" with your limited experiences. But to that extent, even most reform Jews see Judaism as an ethno-religion. If anything I was understating this sense of identity. See here if you need a reference I guess:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20ethnoreligious%20communities%20define,as%20religious%20%E2%80%93%20of%20its%20own.

In this sense, they are a group that had a history of being from a homeland and have always oriented themselves towards practices, traditions, stories, and physical artifacts that go back to that land. In fact, because of Christianity, it might be one of the most well-preserved historical identities in the Western tradition (certainly before anyone had a sense of being "German", "Finnish", "Dutch" "Syrian", "Iraqi" and "English" even). So in that sense, they are rooted in more than just "religious beliefs" like perhaps someone who purely professed Islamic or Buddhist or Christian belief. This doesn't mean conversion wasn't a thing. It just means converting to Judaism was more about adopting a cultro-history (a sort of "civilization"). One might liken it to intermarrying into a Native American tribe and taking on various religious and cultural traditions. They become as if they were simply an adopted Native American tribal member, and treated no differently. They have taken the steps to be a part of that tribe's cultural identity and traditions, which are intertwined with religious traditions, ceremonies, and beliefs. In that sense, you can have a strong backbone component of tradition and identity whilst even having various biological infusions from various groups who intermarry into the group.

c) One can find common ground with "the enemy". As one very simplified example: the enemy is pissed because they don't have water to drink; you then give them water in exchange for something you want (hostages for example); then there is a commonly understood situation wherein "the enemy" gets to drink water when needing it and you don't have hostages taken from your group. When either side breaches this commonly promised situation, then you can again stop their water supplies and they can again take hostages violently. Or something along these lines.

In addition, according to The Art of War, there's also this: the best way to win a war/conflict is the get what you want from "your enemy" before any war/conflict commences, this so that no war/conflict occurs. But it's a little too late for that.

I'm personally strongly in favor of option "c". — javra

So I think to that extent, most reasonable people want to live without violence. But I think your cause and effect is off. Who is causing what for whom? Israel doesn't like Hamas, Hamas is/was in control of Gaza. Israel doesn't like Hamas because Hamas wants to see Israel vanquished. It has not only stated as such, but shown it. So Israel put an embargo on Hamas, because they don't like that Hamas wants to vanquish them. Did they show their violence before they became head of political arm in Gaza? Yes, they blew up hundreds of people in waves of attacks in the 90s and 2000s and their stated goal was to not accept the two-state solution and Oslo, and to wipe the Jews out of the region (from the river to the sea...). So, yeah, it's a reasonable move to blockade them.

Then Hamas funneled billions of dollars to their leadership but mainly to military operations like missiles and building tunnels and weapons rather than making Gaza into some thriving resort city. Okay... And then Hamas didn't let other elections take place since... Okay...

Now, you can completely blame Israel for this (that seems to be the trend in this forum). But that doesn't seem to add up. So the response from Hamas, to its own poor leadership in Gaza was to rape, behead, and mutilate Israeli civilians. And then Israel responds... So who is the enemy of whom here? It seems Hamas is he enemy of any person who simply wants to live a life where one thrives in a modern economy and have peace with its neighbors.. So, again, what does Israel do with such a hostile group?

My hope is that Hamas just leaves and says, "Okay, we have caused enough chaos in the world. Goodbye everyone...". And then Gazans realize that if life is preferable to death, that this violence cannot continue and that moderates and non-violence should prevail. Israel should facilitate this transformation in any way possible. I don't know what that looks like. How did the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki think of Americans? Certainly that was far more people who died, but Japan had healed, even with scars, as horrible as that was.

The extra layer here is that "Palestine" (what presumably might be) is a direct neighbor and historically (over 100 years now) hated enemy of Israel, so it would be more like Japan and China after Japan's "rape of Nanking" and both will now think the other is Japan here...

Searle introduced the term in his paper "Collective intentions and actions". The argument there is that collective intentions are not reducible to individual intentions and beliefs, and yet happen in an individual's mind. There is no supernatural linking of minds here, just the intent to work as a group. — Banno

Yes, this is the theory I am (more-or-less) supporting, but not because it sounds good (which it does sound very reasonable), but because it has been tested and currently being refined in various experiments.

So where does Tomasello differ to Searle, what sort of evidence is there, as opposed to hypothesising, and how does that fit in with this thread? — Banno

So he doesn't differ tremendously from Searle. He in fact, is confirming Searle's hypothesis. But my point is that these debates on language (is it commensurable, do "conceptual schemes" even exist as a phenomenon in human psychology), should be empirically derived and tested, not just remain at the level of theory built on various traditions that philosophers have made up and thus become their own thing.

Searle is only as good as experiments reveal him to be correct. Same with any philosopher regarding language. It seems to me it should be a problem situated in the empirical sciences. It is one of evolutionary and neurobiology, as well as cognitive and developmental psychology. One can throw in comparative animal studies and anthropology as well, as it touches upon all of it.

However, as a "meta-theory of language- its origins and function", those more empirical fields are most relevant in developing it.

If I am to take the idea of "conceptual schemes" seriously (why should I, for what evidence other than it's in a certain philosophy tradition used by Quine), then perhaps Wang is supported here in his idea of "common-sense" and Davidson is supported in his own way with his theory of "principle of charity", in that evolutionarily our brains, by age three are neurobiologically predisposed to care about what others think and how you can get them to see what you are thinking. The common-sense in a way, is built in. Otherwise, all communication is incommensurate. We would be going back to ape-world where there is a "gulf" of common-ground of intention. It would go back to simply the "I-world" of non-joint intentionality. I take the "joint intentionality" as a common-sense of sorts. A built in ability to carry on "joint ventures of intention" from early development.

But now I think I am just restating what I said in my earlier post, so I suppose it is now on you to see where I am not fitting in to Wang et al and the OP's idea of "conceptual schemes", as I laid out my ideas for both 1 and 2 in the previous post. One was about specifically how Tomasello confirms a sort of common-sense (I am connecting it via joint/collective intention being a foundation and roughly conforms to that notion that there needs to be some common ground of experience), and then I am making a broader critique of making theories that are not empirically based in the first place. I can go on and on, but I'd have to see where your issue or lack of understanding of what I am saying lies. In other words, I'd have to work with you in some sort of joint intention of understanding that may or may not be fruitful :).

So I have two points.
1) The content of Tomasello's point which might inform Wang's approach (perhaps?)
2) A critique of the a priori Quine approach in general (mainly the idea of conceptual schemes as a thing outside of any observations/experiments),

Starting with the content, taken from the OP for example:

“Our common-sense experience is the product of the dialectical interaction between our basic experiential concepts and experiential input from nature, whatever it may be.” — J

'

Cabrera reviewing Tomasello has this summary of Tomasello's theory of "shared intentionality":

This might actually accord with Tomasello's notion of how language develops:
Unlike Vygotsky, whose work focused
on the process of cultural transmission and its efects on human psychology, this
neo-Vygotskian theory takes a step back to look at the adaptations that facilitate the
kind of social and mental coordination that facilitate human cultural adaptations.
In this way, Tomasello builds not only on the work of classical developmental psychologists but also upon theoretical concepts from philosophy (joint agency, shared
and collective intentionality) and evolutionary developmental biology (ontogenetic
adaptations, ontogenetic pathways, developmental plasticity).
According to Tomasello, the last common ancestor of humans, bonobos, and
chimpanzees was cognitively characterized by individual intentionality (e.g., ‘I want
to forage for termites’), as opposed to shared intentionality. They were able to entertain abstract representations and simple inferences. In terms of their social capacities, they had prosocial tendencies for helping and sharing with others. Early humans
were characterized by cognitive capacities for joint intentionality (e.g., ‘We want to
hunt a stag’)—a basic form of shared intentionality that enables humans to understand their partner’s perspective in a joint activity and make recursive inferences
about their mental states. From a sociomoral point of view, they developed a form of
second-personal morality based on joint commitment towards shared activities and
a sense of fairness that ensures one’s partner’s trust and sustained cooperation over
time. Later in evolution, modern humans preserved these ancestral traits but were
also selected to extend these capacities to a collective level by entertaining representations that go beyond an individual’s perspective because of the need to apply them
to a large pool of peers. These representations are then conceived as being somewhat objective, which in turn increased the epistemic demands on humans by creating standards of what is reasonable and justifable. From a sociomoral perspective,
this led to a form of group-minded morality characterized by explicit social norms. — Ivan Gonzalez‑Cabrera1

IFF this is leading to an empirically informed and accurate theory of human language, then indeed, there has to be something about human evolution that allows for a sort of "common-sense" way we interpret the world that is "theory-laden", only in the sense that we have a "theory of mind" capacity shared in some sense with other great apes, but a novel/unique sense that by the age of 3 we have the ability to have "joint ventures of intention" with other humans. This equates to a sort of "principle of charity" (pace Davidson), that has to be there for language and cultural diffusion to work in general.

To the second point about the greater project of some philosophy of "conceptual schemes" that is not derived from observation/experimentation, look at this other quote critiquing Tomasello's theory. Now, first let me say, Tomasello himself was very influenced by philosophers such as John Searle with their idea of "social facts". But he did not stop at just going off on a mind-journey. He actually experimented and observed. Now, here is a critique:

It is correct that studies suggest an early onset of in-group favoritism, and in some
cases even negativity toward out-group members. For example, young children preferentially benefit, imitate, help, and seek positively biased information about members
of their in-group (Aboud 2003; Buttelmann et al. 2013; Over 2018; Over et al. 2018).
But experimentally constructed “minimal groups” with their clearly delineated memberships do not pose the same challenge as real life groups, with their fluid and not
always visible boundaries. Children may not always be aware of those groups as
groups and their own membership in them. It is our hunch that they often presuppose
knowledge and practices to be shared by others without recognizing them as belonging
to a group. Let’s give an example. Say you grow up in a household in which one family
member infrequently and irregularly interjects words from a language other than, but
similar to, the one spoken by all others at all times. When entering school, you use these
pieces of vocabulary with your classmates only to find them scratching their heads and
asking you what you mean. It is through their lack of understanding that you find out
that the phrases originate in a group of language speakers you do not even know
existed. This example serves to show that groups and their memberships aren’t always
visible to young children, and the degree to which they identify with them varies. This
observation agrees with social-developmental studies showing that a child’s group
attitudes are more experience-dependent than age-dependent, with contingent factors
such as particular group membership and the group’s emphasis of in-group/out-group
distinctions impacting the child’s group-mindedness (Nesdale 2004; Nesdale et al.
2005).
Another potential problem we see with Tomasello’s characterization of collective
intentionality pertains to the aspect of (intergroup) competition. — Henrike Moll1 & Ryan Nichols2 & Jacob L. Mackey

Ok, so the point here is to not just completely give you a 180 of Tomasello. These colleagues admire and generally agree with Tomasello's theory, but are pointing to some scientific studies that may challenge some of the details of his (generally agreed upon) view of joint intentionality. That is to say, it is building upon his theory, through empirical means. It isn't just fighting non-empirical thought with non-empirical thought. Rather, the empiricism informs the substance and conclusions of the debate.

Presumably, these conflicts will be resolved with further studies which will then circle around a narrower consensus that is based on the evidence. Arguably, a "meta-theory" then of the complex phenomenon of language can be constructed from these types of empirical studies and consensus-building.