Tories have it by the looks of things.

On the bright side maybe it will take things to get much worse before they get better. At the moment the choices are pretty terrible, but that said they’ve never been great and the only sensible leader I’ve seem in my life time was Paddy Ashdown - he was too honest though (people hate the truth).

Any other possible guests in the horizon?

I wish I could agree. I do at least have a better understanding about his views of science. I was expecting more depth in the answer and hoping for a follow up. He basically said there are limits to heuristics - nothing special about that point.

The thrust of my point was that ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’ are false dichotomies and that framing these terms as ‘dichotic’ is convenient for experimentation, but not really a clear demarcation. That said I didn’t do the best job of framing Husserl’s view as I had limited time and was gambling on him knowing something of Husserl given his prominence in this area (limitations of science and his influence that runs through Heidegger to Sellars).

Fro my narrow understanding he seems to be more inclined to frame items as ‘scientism’ and avoiding ‘philosophism’ (probably because he is more bound to a ‘philosophical’ perspective). I asked the question I asked hopeful he’d read Husserl in depth - it doesn’t appear he has and I cannot blame him for not doing so as no one has time to read anything about every single philosopher. Husserl was very much about how objective perspectives relate to consciousness and what subjectivity does in terms of psychology.

I’m not at all inclined to look much more into what he says unless I suddenly feel the need to explore the modern sense of ‘stoicism’. I was looking forward to hearing more about that, but I guess - as has been said - he simply doesn’t have time to contribute more.

I doubt I’d participate in discussions on stoicism much but if you’ve gained interest in this person’s work I hope you can create some threads about it for discussion :)

Hopefully we’ll get another figure to contribute something in the near future?

It may be more a case of lack of ability to make the best of the empathy we have. Maybe if we had less empathy we’d be better able to manage ourselves.

More isn’t always ‘better’.

Immanuel Kant - Critic of Pure Reason.

It’s heavy weight stuff, but if you really want to establish the kind of lexicon used in this sort of discussion that is a place to start. Unfortunately it is not something you can ‘read up on’ overnight. Tackling it seriously would take a year, merely reading the words won’t do much as you have to think while reading.

Note: You could easily supplant some of your terms with philosophical perspectives like ‘physicalism’, ‘empiricism’, and ‘idealism’. Good luck :)

Completely. Perhaps many assume they are offering ‘critique’ when they’re doing little more than expressing an uninformed opinion.

Critical thinking is certainly dangerous without large doses of humility.

Was chatting about this sort of thing recently. The reason why ‘scientists’ are generally more capable of critical thought is likely because they are happy when their ideas/theories are proven wrong - that is exciting for them. When it comes to more dogmatic areas of interest (where ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ don’t fit so readily) the opposite is sought out: that is people look to be shown right in order to develop a sense fo ‘understanding’. At the extreme end the dogmatically religious types seek proof to rest on and do their upmost to deride any contradiction.

Reason and critical thought must go hand in hand right? If so, we’re starting at a disadvantage as we’re terrible at basic logic in abstracted forms. I don’t think this can be ‘taught’ and probably the best means of pedagogy would involve greater emphasis in the Arts rather than expecting people to make conceptual leaps from concrete examples to abstract rules.

Like all human trait, there are environmental factor that help to nurture them. Also, some traits will necessarily hinder other traits. Quite often what many see as detrimental to X actually boosts X in the long run.

I think it’s a little strange to point the finger at prominent public figures in the billionaires world - Bill Gates especially as he’s been going around the world getting other billionaires to donate billions to help his foundation (non-profit) to solve global problems.

When it comes to Zuckerberg there is also an issue. People expect him to police the globe? He cannot do this. Should he allow only rich people access to people’s data or allow anyone to access this data more readily? Note: if he didn’t then it is not exactly difficult to hack and find this information out through freelancers.

There is no ‘law’ online. China spotted this very early on and so made blanket bans to control misinformation. The US is exporting is culture via the internet and it likes to do so.

All that said, I do agree that the US needs a large injection of socialism, but I don’t see that happening for a president or two. At some point we’re going to have to transition from economies based on a core of capitalism to something ‘new’, and the transitionary period will seemingly have to involve socialist structures - I think both have too many flaws in today’s world but a better balance between the two will be the better course for birthing a paradigm shift in terms of how economies are run.

Words do not exist independently of each other. I know what ‘primal’ means but don’t see how there can be ‘primal words’?

I can explain what ‘shape’ means to someone easily enough in numerous ways - by example, by reference, with the use of synonyms or antonyms, etc.,. Words, primarily, act to communicate concepts. Of course, once we’re equipped with a lexicon we can explore possibilities internally.

Example: triangle: the space between 3 lines intersecting at 3 points

Space, line, point and triangle are all primal. You can know what all of them are without any sensory evidence (you know them when you're born) — khaled

A ‘line’ is necessarily defined by both ‘point’ and ‘space’. I can also say ‘edge’ or the form made when the shortest distance between two positions is traversed (note: ‘point’ is very like ‘position’ but no the same thing). I can also define ‘line’ as the boundary between two different areas - real or existent. In any case I must necessarily refer to experience to understand ‘line’ and may use any day to day object as a means of describing ‘line’ by referring to the straight edge of a book or rock (not that a ‘line’ has to be straight; I just assumed you meant straight line).

While there are other words such as "Horse" which you cannot hope to conceptualize before seeing one. — khaled

Yet we’re born able to recognise a face. If the face happens to be a horse face we can recognise it as a horse face. We cannot ‘conceptualise’ ANYTHING a priori. That is not the same as saying we don’t have the capacity for experience only that we’re open to given experiences and filter our experience based on repetition and use.

By ‘evidence’ I assume you mean ‘experience’? If not you’ll have to explain further. If so you’re wrong because we can never ‘feel’ without experiencing ‘feeling’. Or more simply put, without sensory input sensibility is mute.

I think one of the main problems is associating ‘power’ with such a negative attitude. ‘Power’ needn’t be conceived as ‘domination’. I would say changing people’s attitudes about what ‘power’ means and highlighting the positive use of ‘power’ rather than attacking the negative uses of ‘power’ would be more helpful.

If your car is broken and I tell you what is wrong with it and fix it is that ‘domination’? Clearly I possessed the ‘power’ to fix your car yet you seem to be making out that someone being more skilled or able necessarily means ‘domineering’ or ‘subjugating’? This is the conundrum of the ‘individual’ and ‘ego’. We wish to be independent, yet in reality we rely on each other more than not - although there is a greater inclination towards one more than the other from person to person.

Nice thread btw :)

This is a tough topic and likely to induce some egotistical responses and appeals to a more ‘victimhood’ mentality. I do believe that whatever humanity is going to do it is doing it right now - we’re unwitting witnesses to a revolution that won’t be understood for several decades.

Note: I truly believe you mean this. Just pointing out how such a weighty word can be easy misconstrued to indicate a sense of victimhood by those who carry a weight of resentment around on their shoulders rather than applauding those who use ‘power’ for the betterment of society. Surely it is a question of how ‘power’ is used rather than dispensing with ‘power’ altogether?

This isn’t strictly a case for philosophers. Humans tend to disagree about several things or more.

I was making a straw man of stoicism in comparison to the straw man in the OP.

There are plenty of ‘childish’ exchanges. The ones that last for pages are the ones where the likes of me, you and others, unwilling to waste their time, step aside. It is then clear to see who the culprits are and they’ll eventually be ignored, smarten up, and/or weed out other such people so we can readily ignore them too.

It’s just a matter of keeping in faith in the sensible folk here and believing the power of one reasonably stable individual outweighs several other more dubious attitudes.

We’ve clashed and bickered a little if I recall? Even so, we manage to drop it and move on hoping to engage again in more amicable circumstances. We’re all susceptible to our egos every now and then, and some have a larger time of it from time to time.

Leave the door open a crack and maybe the most ridiculous character may actually rouse something interesting in you ... or maybe not. The internet is general a pit of filth and by most standards this place ain’t all that bad and it’s certainly preferable to banning too many people too quickly.

Assuming I understand what you mean by ‘civilization’ it would be sedentary living that instigated civilization - sedentary living would’ve also created more opportunity for specialisation alongside a need to ‘protect’ possessions within ‘owned’ territory. In hunter gatherer society warring undoubtedly took place too, but generally avoiding direct violent conflict would’ve be much easier as no serous time would’ve been invested in any particular ‘piece’ of land - little to no horticulture or construction of abodes in any permanent way.

Sedentary living is commonly viewed in anthropology as the beginning of ‘inequality’ due to ‘possession of land’. There is much more to consider of course so I guess you’re looking into alternative contributors to ‘civilization’ and ‘inequality’ by way of possessed ‘goods’/‘land’.

Here: https://libcom.org/files/Bertrand%20Russell%20-%20In%20Praise%20of%20Idleness.pdf

Never read it. Thanks for the ref., hope I can find a free pdf somewhere to skim through.

In simplistic terms it is kind of a counter position to stoicism. One says ‘take it on the chin’ and the other says ‘don’t even bother to fight, just have fun’.

I don’t see how any serious individual would claim to hold to either view without openly accepting that degrees if resistance are required. No matter what the ‘ethical’ premise is, there is always the embedded problem of how we act in ‘the now’ and what this does for us in ‘the long run’.

One thing I see in both stoicism and hedonism is a system of thought that pays more heed to the immediacy of emotional contents rather than the future repercussions - I’m not saying for an instant that they give ZERO regard to the future, just that they seem to lean more toward the immediate.

I think both are applicable in certain mental states. Sometimes a more ‘harsh’ outlook can rouse an individual to action and sometimes a more ‘rose-tinted’ view can rouse people to action. Adherence to either in a dogmatic sense is both dangerous and futile - for others if not for theirselves.

All perspectives have their own little seductions, so in this sense ‘doubt’ should be our home of contemplation where ‘lack of doubt’ is the path of exploration (full of woe, injury and the occasional reward if we’re astute enough to temper the seductions of ‘the new’ before they habituate us into stagnation).

It is true enough to say that motivation is based on possible positive and negative outcomes, in the immediate period or in future projections.

There are various neurotransmitters. When it comes to something like ‘motivation’ I’d say GABA is way more influential than anything else - inhibitory function. One thing we’ve become more and more aware of is that all neurotransmitters quite often have completely opposite effects in certain circumstances.

Something specific would be better. Any of us can easily find out about his general ideas so I don’t see exactly what purpose it would serve anyone to listen to repeats.

I’m not interested in stoicism so went for his views on the limitations of science and philosophy. I was expecting more depth than what I’ve heard in podcasts or youtube talks.

We have ours and our brother's and sister's loquaciousness whenever we like. Maybe better to be succinct, here, and give our guest the space? — tim wood

That’s probably a better option. Let him open with some ideas and then have us take a run at them rather than have him juggle with ideas that don’t really engage with his wants/needs. I think the stoicism side of things holds more sway here rather than discussing the problems of science and epistemic issues of communicating scientific concepts.

There is something to be said about Sellars and Husserl. I’ll have to look further into Sellars, but at a glance there is more in common between Sellars and Husserl than not. The problem is likely more about the breadth of terms like ‘natural’ and ‘empiricism’. I’ve haven’t found anything in Sellars’ yet that overrides what Husserl was about. As with Heidegger it looks like another case of taking one aspect of the phenomenological perspective and cutting it away as if it’s something different.

If you want to know about him there is plenty of content out there. I went for an approach that interested me and which I thought may open up some interesting responses.

Haha! Yeah, and then we’d have to introduce licenses flr having sex.

We cannot reverse this. It is already in motion (and would happen to a lesser degree without human contributions).

I can say many things that would help, but no one really listens - climate activists included. This century and the next will be tough unless leaps in scientific understanding allow us to discover a better energy source/storage.

Iron lungs, heart transplants and such demonstrate the case well enough for me.

I don’t confuse the two.

I don’t think there is a discussion to be had here so I’ll bow out unless the OP has something to say.

I’m not really interested in either much. I’m just open to seeing if some can ignite interest in me.

Stoicism only really seems to fit best for those at extreme ends. For the ‘average’ human I don’t think it’s of much use except from time to time. Like everything it’s a useful scheme in some circumstances and depending on individual characteristics.

Panpsychism is very much like a religious belief - ie. Not based on anything remotely substantial.

Cumulative ‘bits’ of ‘something’ making consciousness is an idea ... not much more. I’m sure there are plenty of nice avenues to explore, but to take it seriously as a means of explaining consciousness is a stretch.

Impractical and unrealistic. How do you begin to impose this mentality? By brute force? Where will you get the muscle for this?

There is no suggested solution from the OP just a hypothetical that has no practical consideration attached.

I feel it’s a problem of ‘Prometheus’. We have foresight and so we accumulate in order to stave off possible problems. We have foresight, yet we appear not to pay attention the ‘scope’ - meaning foresight is a great boon but we’ve not yet really figured out how to broaden our predictive capacities only extend them.

Saving for a ‘rainy day’ is obviously valuable and prevents starvation, war and poverty. The positives has outweighed the negatives. What appears to have happened is we’ve grown more and more accustomed to building ‘potential’ and then wasting it as we’ve become too habituated in society to place our potential ahead of ourselves so much that it is nearly always out of reach and rarely ‘cashed in’. For some the accumulation of ‘potential’ has become a religious exercise and a given a false sense of ‘worth’ in their lives.

I don’t honestly see a way to reverse the current attitudes held so I’m for pushing them to the point where they’ll have to alter - how or when I’ve no idea, but it would be ridiculous to assume the whole world is just going to move together in unison anytime soon.

Any suggestion of a possible solution then? I don’t see one here. I would imagine using ‘consumerism’ to solve the problem would make the most practical sense. It’s then just a question of untangling the mess and figuring out a way to redirect consumer trends towards better management of resources.

Like everything the answer is generally ‘It depends!’

Regarding the general ‘ethic’/‘moralistic’ stance mine is quite firm in terms of the OP. I’m willing to act as I see fit and suffer the consequences of being wrong - that said I’m likely too cowardly to actually act as I see fit, but I’m working on it like everyone else.

I certainly don’t buy into the whole ‘no making a choice’ as a ‘moral’ stance to emulate. That is cowardice in my mind and just because someone refuses to make choices I’m not going to look at them as a role model for life.

Imagine if the proposal was put to the vote and the majority voted for eugenics and then you had the choice to overturn the decision and suffer the consequences. Would you? A great number of people here may refuse much like they’d refuse to pull the lever in the Trolley Problem ... I call that cowardice, and understand that in such a situation I am most likely going to take the ‘coward’s’ choice.

For me when it comes to ‘better’ or ‘worse’ it is simply down to me acting as I speak as much as I can and constantly assessing how my choices pan out and why they pan out the way they do. I’m always at least partially in the dark, but I strive to be attentive rather than shirk any sense of responsibility and frame it as ‘moral’.

You can see strange attitudes in this thread. There is the ease of painting the situation black and white in order to shut down any reasonable discussion and frame such a line of attack as justified and progressive. I think it’s nonsense.

We may not know exactly what we mean by human ‘flourishing’ but we sure as hell understand what equal opportunity means even if it is a practical impossibility given we’re all different to some degree or another. I refuse to dismiss the concept of ‘betterment’ or ‘flourishing’ just because it is an inconvenient problem to face and we’re likely going to make hideous mistakes along the way and call them ‘better’. Remaining static is pointless.

When I say ‘flourishing’ and ‘betterment’ I don’t for a second consider this to be anything like an easy or painless journey. Frankly put, I don’t see a life absent of mistakes and suffering as a life I’d want to live - this is the immediate ‘good’ at the cost of future ‘good’. We have to be bold sometimes, take risks and ‘suffer’ the hands we’re dealt. Passivity is not something I see as beneficial to this end - but doing nothing can work as a considered choice rather than as a refusal to step up (maybe call it an ‘effort of passivity’ rather than blank refusal).

Show me a human whose brain has been removed that is conscious. I can refer to cases where humans are conscious whilst lacking numerous organs (except the brain). Evidence matters.

If you don’t find reality ‘reasonable’ ... well, so be it. Join the club. I imagine you’re quite capable of making choices based on what you deem ‘better’ or ‘worse’. If you deny this then you’ve got a lot of explaining to do because I don’t see how anyone can make choices without making judgements based on ‘better’ or ‘worse’ outcomes. We must necessarily balance out our predictions - shoddy as they may be. If you deem ‘hardship’ better then you deem hardship ‘better’. I’m not going to disagree with that completely.

I think there is a common misconception about the ‘extent’ of consciousness. Meaning, people have a tendency to think of consciousness neatly packaged away in some specific area of the brain - this is never the case for anything as there are ‘networks’ of items intertwined in many ways on many ‘layers’ (both literally and metaphorically).

The most useful person to turn to in this situation - as far as I’ve found - is Damasio. The whole body gives us consciousness even if we’re not attentive to it. In terms of behaviorism we ‘feel’ scared; meaning our conscious experience of an ‘emotion’ is ‘feeling’ (muscular tension, sweating, and increased heart rate). The interconnectedness of the brain organ (which is itself essentially a group of separated ‘areas’ we’ve partially created due to physical divisions and archaic maps that were based on a handful of research papers - hippocampus, Wernicke’s area, etc.,.) with various parts on the body and via numerous lines of communication (biochemical and/or via nerve cells) quickly makes the idea of nailing down a specific area of ‘consciousness’ as a little silly. If you think about having your arm chopped off you may still experience pain in the arm that isn’t there, butI can guarantee you won’t experience pain in the arm that isn’t growing out of your back because it never existed - then again ... I imagine some state of psychosis may induce such an experience, but you get the idea ;)

There is a very limited scope of terms in this area. Over the centuries we’ve used ‘spirit’, ‘self’, ‘ego’, ‘soul’, ‘mind’, ‘ken’, ‘consciousness’, ‘agent’, ‘memory’, ‘subject’, ‘monad’ and several dozen more in hundreds of languages. It’s a minefield for misconception, misunderstandings and misrepresentation.

Personally I just like to say I ‘experience’ and leave it at that. What is ‘experience’? Well, hopefully I don’t need to explain to you the gist of what ‘experience’ is as you’ll be ‘having it’ now. After that the only question I really have is why you’re asking anything more and to what end? Are you pushing a personal agenda or simply flying in the face of an existential type line of questioning?

The question behind the questioning is usually more telling. Questions without their dead parents are kind of in free fall more often than not - I’d say especially so in this case as the terms lack universal application in day-to-day speech. We can at least all agree, well enough, that ‘experience’ isn’t a term we’re going to deny where terms like ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ create an instant shudder down many people’s spines.

Hope for everything and expect nothing :)

I’m hoping for a follow up, if not then I’ll just have to make do with the Stoicism stuff.

I’m told my writing style is often obscure/convoluted so if you’re short on time please just jump ahead to Second Half.

Science is limited just like any other human enterprise is limited. It's good for certain things, not so good for other things. The scientistic mistake consists in treating every problem as a nail to be handled with the only tool available: science's hammer. — MPigliucci

Agreed. Heuristics are heuristics. An artist views the world as ‘art’ and a psychologist as a world of ‘psyche’. Psychological fixedness is the tendency to use what works well in one application and it assume it can be applied elsewhere with equal success. A hammer is good for hitting nails and smashing skulls, it has extended applications beyond the intention of its maker when placed on a construction site or on a battlefield.

To run a little further with this - although, I am suspicious of analogies - such ‘tools’ are generally about increasing ‘efficiency’ and/or ‘accuracy’.

That is why the so-called social sciences are irreducible - in my opinion - to the natural sciences: they are a combination of natural science (insofar as one can carry out third-person research through experiments and observations) and humanities (insofar as one depends on individual, subjective testimony or input). Some scientists seem to have a problem with that, I don't, it's just the way it is.

What I find problematic, however, is some people in the humanities who claim that subjectivity is not just a limitation of science (it is), but also the way forward to some sort of alternative that goes "beyond" science. I think Husserlian phenomenology falls close to this position. The problem is that the whole approach seems to me to be predicated on not taking seriously one's own objections: if subjectivity and first-person experience cannot be treated by science then the answer isn't to create another "science" (or uber-science) that can handle it, but rather to accept that we as human beings are bounded to use a combination of third and first person approaches in order to arrive at understanding. — MPigliucci

As a counter, I could say that people once viewed Newton’s ability to accurately predict the trajectory of a ball as ‘magic’. To them, given their limited scope - mostly absent of scientific thought - was what he was doing was irreducible to their eyes. I would say it was. Multiple paradigm shifts in human thought throughout the ages have a tendency to make us think the ‘obvious’ as arrived at with ease. I guess this is more or less about where we decide to draw a line of ‘healthy skepticism’. And of course, my little example can be used against the same position by pointing out that Newtonian physics isn’t ‘wrong’ merely not as accurate as what was later discovered - it wasn’t supplanted.

From what I understand of Husserl he was concerned with exploring perspectives to reinforce the natural sciences, to bring psychology over to attend more readily to ‘subjectivity’ rather than have it taken over entirely by measurements and reductionism. His concern was ‘consciousness’ and we’ve seen that neuroscience has had many people claiming consciousness is merely a ‘material’ item. I actually stumbled across Husserl via Varela.

Second Half

Which brings me to what I think is the point of modern philosophy: here I agree with Wilfrid Sellars, who suggested that philosophy is the discipline that can make sense simultaneously of what he called the scientific and the manifest images of the world. The first is the "image" of how tings are that we get from science; the second the "image" we get from commonsense, personal experience, and so forth. The domain of science is confined to the first; the domain of much of the humanities to the second. Philosophy is uniquely positioned to straddle the two - which is necessary to arrive at as complete an understanding of the world as we can manage.

For instance: values and prescriptive judgments (you "ought" to do this) are nowhere to be found in the vocabulary of the natural sciences. They are not part of physics, chemistry, biology, and so forth. And yet they are necessary for human living. We won't "reduce" them to science by scanning people's brains and pointing to the neural correlates of value judgments, as interesting as such research actually is. We need, instead, what Sellars called a "stereoscopic" view of things: balancing scientific and manifest images, shifting from one to the other as needed, but never giving complete priority of one over the other. — MPigliucci

What come to the front of my mind a lot are the terms ‘dichotomy’ and ‘magnitude’. The two ‘images’ given above seem to be ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ - if not, no matter. This I have found to be one of the greatest misconceptions in colloquial speech. It’s a false dichotomy in the sense that people frame them in an absolute sense - like you said, we cannot hold to one without the other. The issue here, for scientific method, is the adherence to ‘objectivity’ - the illusion of absolute - in order to bring reductionism to the fore as the primary means of magnifying understanding about a particular item under rather specific, and ‘unnatural’, circumstances (this is not to deny the obvious uses gained by this methodology nor to say scientists are unaware of this). Really the ‘objective’ is the ‘intersubjective’ if we are to understand a world of different items about which we cross-reference and orientate ourself. In this same adherence to ‘subjectivity’ - another illusion of absolute - is necessarily the means of changes in efficiency brought about by ‘intersubjectivity’. Hopefully this isn’t anything extraordinary to your mind and you are generous with any possible misinterpretation.

So, in terms of philosophy and science what does ‘philosophy’ have to offer in terms of ‘personal experience’? It is clear enough that the cognitive neurosciences - reductionism being part and parcel of its tool kit - pays attention to this (although researchers like Koch certainly approach the issue more rigidly).

Marked in the quote above (italics), is the main point of my interest. How do we balance? I believe the two distinctions outlined are essentially incompatible in our current paradigm of thought because we’ve not developed the concepts that are universally communicable enough. In science/math/logic the rigidity of universal terms can be interchanged quite readily - the abstractions we make are not so easy though as we have refined these problem solving techniques from ‘physically’/‘socially’ grounded situations. Its common psychological knowledge that we’re just not very good in day to day life at making logical computations unless they’re presented in a meaningful narrative.

For anyone else reading, here is an explanation of what I’m talking about (Steven Pinker): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJNeFtIDsE0

In science the ‘ought to’ is certainly part of any experiment. Scientists have expectations and set up their field of play to measure specific phenomenon. I’m not trying to be too pedantic here, only to guard against missing unseen areas. The experimental scientist operates in the sphere of applicable measurements. The philosopher, so it seems to me, operates more or less in the realms of what science cannot reach via accurate empirical measurement - be it through modeling based on current understanding or via applying pure mathematical discoveries to natural phenomenon with skeptical curiosity.

I think over the past several decades philosophy has shifted more and more towards reductionism in terms of human interactions almost as if to try and answer questions rather than analysis them or ask them. I mean this as I see philosophy today to be more about reductionism in terms of semiotics - which then necessarily get taken up by empirical data and modeling in terms of neurological research.

I was listening to a lecture by Robert Paul Wolf. He suggested that there are generally two ways of looking at what philosophy is for, the first being a way to communicate a complex idea simply, and the second being to communicate a simple idea in a complex way. I would learn more to the later as I’ve found oversimplification to be to shut off certain assumptions that often need greater attention. Of course I could present equally solid reasons for the opposite thought, and it is the ‘balance’ (I like to say ‘betweenness’ a lot) that remains the key, as far as I can reason, to shifting communication (through ‘language’ - in its broadest definition) so as to allow human thought the opportunity to create useful paradigm shifts.

Anyway, as an attempt to sum up for now, I would say ‘objectivity’ is a bigger problem for the ‘sciences’ as it doesn’t exist (it’s merely the ‘intersubjective’ framed in an ideality of ‘objective’) - a subtle difference of language that creates a certain personal regard for the world, and ‘on the hand’ (another dichotic idiom that probably does more to obscure investigation than supplement it) I would say ‘subjectivity’ is a bigger problem for the ‘humanities’ as it doesn’t exist either (again, its merely the ‘intersubjective’ directed toward experience framed as an ideality of ‘subjective’). None of this is to say that there is no use in framing perspectives as ‘pure subjectivity’ or as ‘pure objectivity’ it is more about recognising that they are ideations of cognition not opponents/opposites. So when I’ve talked at what I believe Husserl was looking at with his ‘science of consciousness’ or ‘pure subjectivity’ I don’t for a second see it as some ‘other’ uber-science, but as a pulling back from viewing the world as dichotomies and magnitudes, rather than as experience. The curious thing here is how the essential nature of intersubjectivity - of delineating ‘objects’/‘items’ of experience - is orientated among boundaries that automatically set up a world of dichotomies. Within language, as I hinted at in the first post, there can be quite different views on what antonyms are ‘gradable’, ‘complimentary’ or ‘relational’. Some seem to straddle more than one and the inclination is then to mostly dismiss such due to ‘context’. Which brings us full-circle back to the objective regard of science, having set contexts of application.

I’ll leave it there. I’m trying to dig out of you thoughts on language application, mental content and heuristics. Its a difficult subject matter to approach as ‘words’ are limited as much as any other ‘tool’.

Thanks if you got this far! Hope it wasn’t a complete waste of your time if you did :)

Look forward to hearing your thoughts about stoicism. It’s not a subject I’m massively interested in, but hope you open up my curiosity.

We generally have a reasonable idea of what ‘better’ means. Given that our conceptual landscape shifts what is ‘better’ is never known in any pure sense. It’s simply a matter of balancing the immediate benefits with future benefits ... given that we’re not able to know our future and that we’re burden with the emotional contents of the present, our estimates may be incomplete but we can usually make progressively ‘better’ choices as we fumble along.

What is ‘better’ is generally understood from a human perspective not from pure logic.

We have a pretty good idea about this already. In Kerala emphasis was put on educating young women. The effect was they didn’t marry so early, had less children and the area improved economically.

The situation is similar in Africa. Basically, if women have more control, education, then they make better choices concerning how they build a family - if they choose to; which most people do. If we just looking at individual countries the following comes into play ...

IQ is not a big deal really. Even if we were to consider IQ then the same follows as IQ, or rather ‘g’, is pretty concrete, yet in the early years it will drop of without stimulation. So, this beings us back to nurture in the early years of life. To put this into perspective wealthier families who have both parents contributing to interacting with their children as much as they can compared to parents who only have a few minutes a day to spare translates into classroom productivity - the former children end up coming arriving at school knowing how to count, read and write, whilst the later are at an incredible disadvantage having had no preschool teaching and a substantially limited lexicon.

Maybe we can discuss this if the OP cannot?

I think it is undeniable that there are benefits to this scheme on a facile level. The question is really do the positives outweigh the negatives? Can we put together a strong argument for such eugenics and then see how well it bears up to scrutiny?

Given bartricks silence to my questioning I can only assume he’s not given this as much thought as we have so we can do a better job I reckon - as I mentioned above I’ve been down this road before.

He’s dodged that question already and then called someone else a coward.

I can make an attempt though as the topic has been of interest to me before.

The criteria I imagine we’d be looking at would be to judge families based on monetary income/wealth. I think it would be a reasonable plan to set up ‘limits’ for licenses after maybe the first or second child - so family sizes would be dictated by circumstances. Of course this is a flawed plan as circumstances change and families may be making good money one year and then unemployed the next. This does at least seem to be a reasonable position to start from.

One thing we do have to consider is how socialised children are - how exposed they are to other people in their early year (ages 1-4) - as this has a huge effect on their lexicon. What is deadly important here is the time children spend with their parents during these early stages of development. This is a problem if we’re only regarding ‘income’ as a means of measurement, yet we can certainly understand that a family with more money generally has more freedom to interact with children where a single parent working three jobs would be able to.

I think from here we can begin to tackle the problem of providing a reasonable approach toward development in early years - the most important item when thinking about human potential.

Perhaps you think it won't prevent rights violations, but then argue that. Don't just label it 'eugenics' and think your job is done. — Bartricks

I don’t believe this is the case at all.

Answer the question. — Bartricks

Maybe you could answer ours before making demands?

Do you want to discuss this topic or simply pick a fight? You’ve tried to provoke me and now you’re doing your best to provoke another. We could have a civil discussion about this interesting topic.

To repeat, what exactly would be the criteria for ‘good parents’ and what are the positives and negatives that we can appreciate from a purely hypothetical position? I’m certainly not denying positives, and I have in fact asked almost an identical question in another forum so I understand knee-jerk reactions (the two people trying to engage in this discussion are not simply dismissing the topic).

Children are not held accountable. If under some policy an adult has a child in your scenario then they would be breaking the law - prison term or fine (I assume they’d likely be poor too).

Not to mention every parent screws up to some degree. We’re not robots.

Then there is the difference between children of young parents and older parents. Studies have found that younger parents tend to be less controlling and that their offspring tend to be more socially adaptable because of this whilst the children of older parents are more mollycoddled.

What exactly would be the measure for ‘good parents’?

Logic is limited. Different applications of logical method have different limits in terms of ‘truth’.

Such terms as ‘justified true belief’ is bound up in issues of semantics. A workable ‘gist’ is still workable, but it is necessarily limited. Applied to human life all abstractions are limited in scope and application. Reason/logic/philosophy/linguistics is about means and methods of delineating between every fluid human experiences.

The idea that children who are up for adoption have this right, but those who are not do not, is ludicrous. And thus, it is equally ludicrous that we licence the former but not hte latter. — Bartricks

This is quite ludicrous. My view we be the reverse approach though - that is to make it easier for people to adopt rather than to make it harder for people to have children.

I used to think it was bizarre that people could be banned from having pets yet could still have children. After more thought it is down to our regard for animals generally being quite different than for humans. Animals are always (throughout there lives) unable to do much to change their circumstances, and because of this are treated as ‘inferior’ as well as being mentally ‘inferior’ and reliant upon human care in a domestic environment. Human reliance on others decreases with maturity quite drastically.