That is Eugenics. It seems like a decent idea on the surface, but once you scratch away the shiny leaf all you’ll find is cold hard lead.

I don’t regard ‘intelligence’ or ‘money’ as indicative of ‘good parenting’. Besides I’m talking about preventing severe abuse NOT preventing reproduction. The child of abusive parents who go to prison will go to a new home. Besides, reproduction cannot be managed.

Nope. Eugenics is about selecting for breeding whilst my position is simply about preventing severe abuse of children by vicious people.

Well, that's exactly the basis upon which I am arguing for licensing procreation. I just don't see why you stop at child abuse. Surely children do not just have a right to be free from 'severe' child abuse, but all manner of other abuses, including being brought up very badly? — Bartricks

Maybe you assume I meant sexual abuse only? Being brought up ‘badly’ means what, and exactly what is it social services do that doesn’t cover this already?

I stop at child abuse because non-child abuse is ... not abusive. You just want to decide who you deem worthy of living. Denying someone the joy of children because you happen to think IQ matters or some other daft criteria is utterly facile.

Support is generally the way to go. Like I said, it is possible for people to change so even those who’ve abused children should be allowed a second chance - exceptions would be for severe abusers (in the real world such people would have their children taken away, so the system is working as best it can).

I think moral values inform action and actions are problematic if there is a failure to justify them. — Andrew4Handel

I see the public justification of actions as inherently problematic (see my first post on first page).

The manner in which you’ve presented this looks pretty much like eugenics. I’m not for eugenics at all.

The only version of this I could get onboard with would be to sterilize people who partake in severe child abuse. The system is already set up for removing children from hostile parents so those parents should effectively have to apply for a license to show they’ve changed their ways or they should be banned outright (depending on extent of ‘abuse’/‘maltreatment’ (I’m thinking forming drug addicts who’ve managed to turn their lives around being unfairly held to account for their youthful mistakes).

With this in mind, many people are wondering just what happens next.

What are your ideas about this, rather pleasant future full of leisure and comfort? — Wallows

That it will be neither ‘pleasant’ nor ‘comfortable’. I don’t see that ti could happen without a transition in attitudes towards ‘economics’ - precisely what I was trying to outline in regards to Marx.

It is probably of use to distinguish between two terms here

(1) Labour: A means of productivity for basic material needs - be this ‘money’ or resources for living (food, medicine, etc.,.)

(2) Work: A means of productivity for personal needs - personal expression and ‘work’ order to nurture a sense of ‘purpose’ (beneficial to self and/or others).

Automaton can, and certainly has, taken labour away from people. The problem is that in society today a great many people have come to confuse ‘labour’ with ‘work’ to the point that once labour is removed they’re unsure what work means minus ‘wage’. The sense of ‘worth’ has been removed from more personal action and covered over with ‘labour’ within which a false sense of ‘value’/‘worth’ has been reinforced.

I believe that if all productive activities (in terms of ‘labour’) were taken away from everyone tomorrow you’d see suicide rates begin to rocket after a small drop. Eventually those unnerved by this limitless freedom would either rediscover purpose through violence or cooperation. In all honesty I think this has been pretty much what has been happening in the post industrial age (just at a creeping rate).

In this regard I think the middling sections of society would suffer the most. Those in abject poverty would appreciate relief from simple burdens and be happy to take on and create new burdens, whilst those of extreme wealth will already have been living their lives as if ‘labour’ had disappeared (their challenge, if they had one, would be adjusting to others attitudes toward them altering). The middling bunch would be the suicidal bunch. Those long robbed of any serious challenges who just go with the crowd and jump through hoops. ‘Followers’ without something to follow - ‘worth’ being stripped away - would have a hard time of it.

All that said I am painting this hypothetical scenario with a broad brush. No matter your circumstances if you were to have a sense of artistry that is developed, a studious mind and/or a thirst for exploration, then you’d be fine whether poor, middling or rich. The real question would whether or not AI’s would make good psychologists and provide better therapy than a human.

You’ll have to do more than outline what you mean. More details perhaps?

No probs. I am throwing fragments of several different ideas at you at once. I do find it incredibly hard to condense what I’m referring to and where these thoughts have risen from in anything shorter than a lecture ... anyway, I do see many fruitful opportunities for exploration within ‘feminist’ ideologies.

I’d love to hear more about what you see as important regarding ‘feminist ethics’ in greater detail if you’d care share.

Thanks

I don’t understand. I thought ‘feminist ethics’ was an investigation into psychology and society not an economic model. I’m not focusing at all on who has what job or who earns what - not interested because I find that to be extraneous to developing psychological maturity. One point was that today women are freed up by extended juvenile periods and able to develop more than men in similar circumstances - I think men need risk more.

I don’t agree that women are better leaders than men or men necessarily make better leaders than women. It also depends on what you mean by ‘leader’ too - my own view on what ‘leader’ means is likely more fluid than what you meant.

It’s interesting that you see what I’ve put across in terms of financial profit and hiring. I was talking about this in terms of basic human development.

Something along the lines of what I’ve brought up previously. The ‘emotional’ desires and how these are used to sell us what we don’t need dressed in a mirage of what we truly desire - our need for companionship, love, learning and meaning.

He seems to bring up points I make myself. I’m not massively familiar with him myself, but I assumed you would be as he seems to express questions I think you’d find extremely appealing.

It bothers me because I see the ‘ideal’ as being more or less a situation where both men and women are ‘advancing’ alongside each other rather than some kind of handing the baton on state of affairs and then skulking in the shadows.

Essentially what is ‘feminine’ cannot survive without what is ‘masculine’. Men cannot live without women and women cannot live without men - if they could then humanity is no longer ‘humanity’. I see the psychological ‘division’ between men and women to be manifest in society yet the real psychological ‘division’ is merely a convenient way to express a vibrant cauldron of humanity. I think that analogy works well enough expressing what I am looking at here?

@Wallows Are you very familiar with de Botton’s ideas? If so what do you think of his thoughts on economics and human ‘needs’ and ‘meaning’?

I mean there are fewer and fewer ‘passage of rites’ in modern western societies - other than religious remnants. These generally used to coincide with immature people being given a sense of responsibility alongside physiological changes.

For girls their bodies tell them when they’re ‘women’, and for men this is less obvious. Even so. I’d say for both sexes such transitions have become more and more severed from the public eye. Today there is graduation and such events, but there doesn’t seem to be an institutional force behind them that emphasizes these changes.

The ‘rituals’ today (leaving home or finishing school) are either actively avoided or given no psychological significance in communities at large. Graduation is ‘celebrated’ but there doesn’t appear to be any thought about this ceremony as ‘preparation’ for struggles to come. It is almost treated as an ‘achievement’ above all else with no regard for sacrifice.

It is as if society has instilled the idea that fighting with foam swords is some kind of passage into psychological maturity. I think women are certainly playing with breaking open their potential right now - it’s a great thing. There are dangers and their should be. What bothers me is men have fallen back and resisted danger due to this to some extent. The juvenile period has been extended a huge amount which certainly plays into women's hands more than men’s because men lack urgency and did to be driven by a sense of urgency, whilst women are naturally inclined to a sense of urgency so extended juvenile periods leads to women being in a situation where they can mature more thoroughly.

By the social extension of juvenile periods - a recent occurrence in terms of human history - older rites have fallen away and nothing new has been developed to replace this yet. My thinking is that due to huge shifts in human society hidden ‘transitions’ (buried by necessity of survival) have been given light to flourish in. We’re still trying to figure out what aesthetic appeals to this ‘passage of rites’ as it’s immature itself.

I don’t know much at all about ‘feminist ethics’. At a glance there is certainly something to be said for ritual regarding the ‘feminine’ and the ‘masculine’ that may be being mistaken - over rather given too much import - for ‘female’ and ‘male’.

The modern ‘peacocking’ world - instagram and twitter - is a reflection of this search for psychological meaning in the absence of societal rites of passage. Cultural admixtures have probably been problematic/beneficial too in some ways.

I think at its essence this is a ‘meaning’/‘value’ problem. The lines appear muddled and lack of direction has freed upon women to impose themselves more in society, yet this is being done blindly. Men on the other hand are do the same inwardly, equally as blinded.

In the past I’ve seen so-called ‘strong’ female role models come through, but they are merely mimicking ‘masculine’ tropes more than ‘feminine’ tropes. More recently, in the arts, I’ve seen powerful ‘feminine’ expression from women - recently noted something of this to a friend if mine in terms of women expressing in a more dominant manner what Jung referred to as ‘Kore’; which can either be a desire to cling to innocence or to move beyond it. I think we’re just about seeing the beginning of women ‘moving beyond’ in a manner that is ‘feminine’ rather than a mock shoulder-padded ‘masculine’ pantomime of feminine psychological maturity.

Maybe my current questions and thoughts are more telling if the transition I’n going through? I just say it as I see it as best I can, and keep trying.

A thought to consider is today people are growing up attached to their past - photos, videos and multi media allow us to have a more accurate window into the past (personally and on global scale). I do think this will affect people’s attitudes to both past and future (especially younger generations whose lives are recorded for them to play back and observe).

Sometimes it’s better to keep commonsense to yourself ;)

You’re correct. Some people prefer to see denial when facts are laid at their feet. The first post is badly worded - there is no doubt that the Earth’s climate goes through changes.

In that sense ‘halting climate change’ is completely beyond humanities current capabilities. In term of reducing the impact of humanities effect on the climate, obviously we have the capacity to lessen our impact in some ways.

I imagine the OP is looking to explore ways of either changing current attitudes, educating and/or exploring hypotheticals that could tackle future problems. Under these criteria I’d say the thread has largely failed to economics and education.

The quicker we get to 11 billion the better our chances of cutting to the quick of human societies and tackling ‘destabilizing’ factors.

The future is hazy and growing more hazy by the day. Humanity is just learning to walk.

I do think it is interesting to see how women are expressing themselves in society in various areas.

I think the most noted point for me is in the arts and how this seems to reflect the exploration of ‘coming of age’ - the same thing interests me in regards to men too (whose ‘passage of rites’ into maturity is also being re-realised in some ways).

Given past reproductive trends it seems to me greater freedoms across the board (for men and women) have revealed men’s loss of ‘coming of age’ alongside extended juvenile periods - for both sexes - and new, or more intricate, stages in overall maturity (psychological maturity). Women’s changes are quite explicit in biological terms and the ‘arrival’ of aging makes itself felt more readily than for men. That said one loss or gain (or, as I’m suggesting, extension) may show us what has remained hidden.

Anyway, just riffing. Interested to hear your thoughts on these loose ideas.

Thanks

When someone shuffles a deck of cards and deals you the first twenty cards, the probability of getting those specific cards is extremely unlikely. Yet we have no problem accepting that you will get an extremely unlikely hand. — Wheatley

I think we’d call that statistically ‘impossible’ rather than ‘extremely unlikely’. The definition is where it’s not worth a mention.

Where that line is is pretty much a subjective judgement clouded by hopes and fears.

The quote was in a given context. I simply meant that the ‘meaning’ is present in any utterance - nonsensical items are recognised as ‘nonsensical’. This is comparable to Kantian Noumenon only being possible in a ‘negative’ sense.

It’s basically a trick of language. Everything is necessarily ‘meaningful’ to us if it is within our scope of attention. That is to say anything outside our scope of attention is ‘not meaningful’ in one particular way - potential. What can never have meaning to us is not something we can ‘attend to’.

As a further example just try and bring up a topic that has no meaning. Even something nonsensical or gibberish has ‘meaning’ surrounding it.

Note: I understand you probably meant ‘meaning’ in a more confined way. I’m not encouraging rhetoric here just presenting the limitation of worded thought in terms of what is ‘real’ or ‘existent’. We must necessarily limit our thought and scope to possessing ‘meaning’ - no talk is ‘free floating’, but we can still offer up analogies and metaphors like ‘free floating’ to explore ‘gist’ ideas.

I’ve no idea what you’re thinking. The ‘block chain’ idea sounds vaguely interesting though, just wish you’d started there.

This thread probably had legs on it if you explore that idea and flesh out exactly what you propose.

Now you sound in favour of anarchist ideology? Were you purposefully setting up a poor argumentative position to allow yourself to flip the argument on its head or are you just exploring this concept as you type? (Not having a pop because I think it is good to allow your ideas feel their way around without fear of making a few wrong turns along the way).

There are basically two nonexistent poles (ideological axioms around which we orientate ourselves). There is ‘Centralised’ and ‘Decentralised’ positions in regards to ‘institutions’. I use parenthesis to guard against taking any position as some illusionary ‘absolute’ form. People managed prior to writ Laws, so we know from ‘anarchical’ societal groups we developed and refined rules creating centralised powers/laws in institutions (civilization). We mist keep checking the balance yet the obvious conundrum is knowing which way to push and when. It is no huge surprise that today people are becoming more and more aware of each other due to technological advances in global communications, this has presented ‘institutions’ and ‘public opinion’ to clash on a scale never seen before in human history - the stronger ‘conservative’ tilt is now fighting the side of what used to be the ‘liberal’ position and the ‘liberal’ position is now fighting for what used to be the ‘conservative’ position. The landscape has become so confused you have people on the left demanding more centralised power/law whilst on the right they’re demanding decentralised power. The bizarre thing is they are also under the impression that what they are saying is in line with what is happening.

In short the world isn’t black and white. People don’t really want ‘freedom’ - because people are lazy cowards who would rather someone else deal with shit jobs. No one wants ‘peace’ when ‘peace’ means destroying any sense of useful conflict which enables discovery and exploration. We’re in a hedonist phase which, hopefully, will be consumed by an age of aesthetic sensibility and allow us to navigate the flat featureless political landscape we have at the moment. All there is today is a choice of blandness, a broken compass and a huge divide between cultural generations across the globe. It’s not likely to level out until the end of the century and in the meantime anything could happen.

Anarchy is the natural state of humanity. Look out your window. No one knows what they are doing or why beyond their immediate impressions which are often willfully short-sighted and actively avoiding any claim of agency unless it comes under the guise of ‘groups’ they perceive to have ‘power’ - I don’t think anyone really bothers to ask what ‘power’ means they just attach it to friend and foe to suit their homegrown myopia.

All that said, I think things are peachy :)

‘Do what thou wilt’ is good enough because generally speaking only a few have the nerve to act on this principle so encouraging a few more along the way is beneficial EVEN if this happens to foster some ‘moral’ glitches along the way. How we regard time will dictate the future of politics. Somehow we’ve gotten into the habit of trying to learn form the past unlearning the past - it’s just a game of narratives now and you can be sure the ‘best’ narrative always wins out in the end.

I think your use of terms is a little muddled. There is no such thing as ‘non-mental phenomenon’.

I leave it to someone else because I don’t think I should offer anything else until I understand what you wish to talk about better.

Give that you’ve edited the first two posts I’d say I‘ve done you favour. I’ll leave you to it.

For starters gravity isn’t a force. The rest is an area of mysticism.

I believe buddhism isn’t really concerned with material/physical items?

The reverse argument works just as well. Again, what is your point? Is it that you believe everyone thinks everything is black and white or that you just happen to prefer your own position as the ‘middle ground’?

All I can see here is a rather superficial analysis of two political poles with a strange need to cling to one and dismiss the other.

Don’t you see that you’re setting out the ‘anarchist’ stall as ‘completely lawless’ and the ‘statist’ stall as ‘libertarian’ rather than ‘authoritarian’? There are ‘anarchic’ political models that are more than happy to accept state laws, the issue being with the decentralisation of power not the complete obliteration of law/rules.

Basically you’re setting up a strawman argument here against imaginary opponents - that said maybe there is someone on this forum who likes the idea of a ‘lawless’ society where murder, rape and theft are not considered ‘immoral’ due to there being no ‘law’. See the problem?

So you prefer to have others tell you what is and isn’t ‘moral’. The reverse problem is, well, a problem too. What is your point?

You’re against an imaginary world or exploring the limits of anarchism? I don’t really understand what your post is about but it seems to hold to a rigid definition that you’re syruggling to make explicit.

Maybe a comparative analysis between other -isms and anarchism would help outline the benefits and deficits regarding what your view is?

There are many different layers and flavours of what ‘anarchy’ means. You seem to be presenting a combination of nihilism and anarchism?

Straight from wiki:

Anarchism is an anti-authoritarian political and social philosophy that rejects hierarchies deemed unjust and advocates their replacement with self-managed, self-governed societies based on voluntary, cooperative institutions.

As anarchism does not offer a fixed body of doctrine from a single particular worldview, many anarchist types and traditions exist and varieties of anarchy diverge widely.

Of course, implementing such ideas in society is another thing. It is certainly a worthy perspective to consider. I would suggest you present a better outline of what you mean rather than some strange hypothetical about someone destroying a car and running away - in many anarchic societies the perpetrator would be caught and then made to pay (which would inevitably lead to ‘kangaroo courts’ and is certainly a flaw if we view this political idea superficially - there are positives though).

The basic philosophical notion of anarchy doesn’t mean anyone can do anything without repercussions. At an extreme level it would end in witch hunts and vigilante activity (obviously that isn’t a great outcome). Either way it is a counter position to centralised power where complete strangers dictate what you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ do and punish/reward accordingly to those views.

I’m more for a ‘happy’ medium with more inclination to being ‘anarchical’ when it comes to questioning authority rather than blindly accepting rules and regulations because it’s ‘easier’ to just go along with pointless, impractical, and possibly dangerous rules/laws. The problem embedded here to is whether you are in a position to question authority without worrying about possible kickback simply from voicing concerns.

I agree with fresco concerning the ‘word salad’. Often it is easy to take this as an insult, but please don’t. Just condense it down a little, leave it alone to fester, and then come back afresh and rewrite.

The best thing about letting such ideas loose is being able to see what you think more clearly and where your thoughts don’t aline with your words properly.

Thanks. It’s much appreciated.

In terms of politics I was just referring to its historical use for this or that cause in this or that country. The main thrust of my perspective is about the raising of aesthetic sensibilities through marketing aimed at groups and eventually filtering into marketing based on individuals.

I was more interested in the ‘how’ of these items in terms of how they function.

Basically more of an essay rather than bullet-point responses.

Feels like you’re teasing me :) would like to see more of your working/evidence if possible. Thanks

I tried to deal with that here with the proposition that this condition is changing due to what I guess we can call ‘status value’ being subsumed by ‘aesthetic value’.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7076/marxs-commodity-fetishism/p1

I was mostly thinking out loud at the start of the thread, but I think the last 2-3 posts of that thread expressed my thoughts more concisely.

Anyway, thanks for the exchange :) it’s been extremely useful in helping me see what I mean and where I’m looking. Lots of things bouncing around my stupid little skull so I better vomit on some paper more before returning.

Does it? If I own a car and just let it crumble into a pile of dust, do I not still own it? I suppose once it's completely disintegrated, it's no longer a car so I've lost ownership of it, but that;'s not unique to ownership. — Isaac

You answered yourself. You’ll have to tell me why it matters about this or that being unique. Either way you don’t seem to have gotten the point that ‘ownership’ - close relation to - objects and/or people means you generally tend to them as they’re of use/value.

A farmer may claim ownership over a pile of manure and you’d be happy they did too if you had it piled up next to your bed. Think of refuse in general. Do you ‘own’ it? Is it your responsibility or do you ‘disown’ it? How would this go down in a community with no laws or government? Would you be ‘disowned’/‘exiled’?

No matter what state it's in on it's return, people would still say "here's your arm", not "here's an arm". — Isaac

So what? That has nothing to do with the thrust of my point. Which was that different items of ownership are different in many regards. Even so, if I grew attached to your arm and moved to a country where ‘ownership of arms’ wasn’t an illegal item then would the arm be mine or yours if it’s legal where I live to own an arm. I imagine you’d prefer I used you rather than just your arm so you wouldn’t have to literally part with it for any period of time.

Figuratively and literally speaking their are items in our lives (physical or otherwise) that we’re more or less attached to. Point being the sense of ‘ownership’ is wrapped up in this not merely the dictates of governments and their ability to enforce a set of rules you never signed up for and to some degree will disagree with.

I think it makes more sense to address the OP:

While many of us understand that our body parts are ours, it may not be that simple as to why we can claim ownership of things that are not part of yourself. How did we get all the way from, "these are my hands", to "this is my house."? What is the connections between the two? — Wheatley

In anthropology there has been a long interest in how ‘ownership’ arose. This is often referred to as the rise/origin of inequality where groups of humans accumulate goods of symbolic value above practical use. Jade blades or other such ritual items that possess no physical utility - status symbols maybe? In hunter gatherer societies clashes certainly happened, but so did mutually beneficial exchanges (women, partaking in social events/rituals and/or mutual protection from nature/hostile tribes). In this sense the idea of ‘ownership’ was present most strongly through tribal/family ties where material goods were certainly of import not by no means necessarily of more import than the producer (skilled hunter, gatherer, storyteller or tool-maker).

The domestication of humans following Sedentary Living meant human control became more specifically orientated to ‘pieces of land’ rather than in a hunter gather society where ‘the land’ was a whole made of parts rather than of parts made of a whole - a perspective shift brought about by creation of a static space. Where previously humans scope of control lay within themselves and between each other as the most prominent component of their existence ‘in the world’ - rather than an extraneous to it - now there was a field of play in which the environment could be brought under direct human control. In this sense humans began to play at ‘god’ within the limited bounds of what we now call ‘houses’. Here they had a cosmos with which they held almost complete sway over. The ‘house’ became ‘owned’ because it was an item crafted with the purpose of setting boundaries and creating and dictating rules of play.

For a bibliography try Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Renfrew, Rousseau and/or Geertz for a more anthropological look at this kind of thing.

If you wish to go deeper there are multiple avenues to take in this respect that include language, religious practice, shamanism and knowledge exchanges through mnemonic means. Further still there is the neurological data to consider in how we sense our surroundings, how we learn, and the less substantial area of psychology that highlight our social proclivity. Politically there is also how the division of labour from a mobile life altered with sedentary living and how specialisation likely intensified with this alongside necessity and needs for basic survival. There is also family units, communities and items like sanitation that arise along with brining more than just dogs into our circle of living - horses and cattle.

As for the general question of how ‘ubiquitous’ humans are, didn’t mean much more than something like every language possesses the same concepts, and by ‘material resources, cultures that have a similar environment generally share a common set of problems - flora and fauna as well as general climate.

I most certainly don’t think ‘Ownership? Ah, it’s just a legal term. Where’s my dictionary ... yep, or as good as. Next question?’ ;D

Can you at least see my issue here? The conflict of terms?

If a ‘use value’ becomes a ‘Value’ (commodity) then the ‘use value’ is covered up. So is he saying that both ‘Value’ is useless because ‘use value’ is out of sight, and/or that a kind of ‘unpotentialised use value’ is useless, because it is again out of sight.

For instances of these confusions:

So is also the establishment of social measures for the quantities of these useful objects.
The diversity of these measures of commodities originates in part from the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, and in part from convention.

The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value.

But this usefulness does not dangle in midair. Conditioned by the physical properties of the body of the commodity, it has no existence apart from the latter.

The body itself of the commodity, such as iron, wheat, diamond, etc., is therefore a use-value or a good.

This characteristic of a commodity does not depend on whether appropriating its useful properties costs more or less labor.

Pay particular attention to the bold. I am saying there no thing that is wholly absent of ‘usefulness’ - there is no ‘useless’ item. As this is a key concept I have instant doubts about where this is going already as there is a lack of precision - repeated later with over simplification regarding skilled labour.

Also:

The commodity is at first an exterior object, a thing, which by its properties satisfies human wants of one sort or another.

The nature of such wants, whether they arise, for instance, from the stomach or from
imagination, makes no difference.

Nor does it matter here how the object satisfies these human wants, whether directly as object of consumption, or indirectly as means of production.

Can anyone suggest anything that doesn’t have the potential to satisfy ’human wants or needs’? It’s a chimera.

The last bold part does seem to suggest ‘self-entertainment’- but I’m being generous. The thrust of my point here is that producing something without the intent of it being open to the public as a utility doesn’t take away the ‘use-value’ as Marx defines. Yet as we’ve seen he is happy to later talk about something as ‘useless’ - which we both seem to assume means an object absent of ‘use value’ and further still he states that the ‘labour is not labour’.

The contradiction is well hidden I’ll grant that. I’m not against contradictions - I’ve read Kant - but these contradictions are presented in the same section it is not the case that he’s set up different sets of limitations and then set them out parallel to each other.

The problems continue:

Every useful thing, such as iron, paper, etc., is to be looked at under two aspects: quality and quantity.

‘Quality’ here means ‘utility’. The is the ongoing problem of human existence in many ways and an age old question. How to measure different ‘qualities’ against each other. To then dress up ‘quality’ as ‘utility’ is to say the quality of something has nothing to do with aesthetics as it is all about how an object can be utilized not about any direct consideration of ‘qualities’ just practical functions irrespective of any human sense of aesthetic taste.

I assume all he is trying to say here is that the ‘utility’ (‘use-value, not ‘quality’) of resources are Valued (as in ‘Value’) by how they function the production of a commodity. The ‘utility’ for every item conceivable is always present, yet not always fulfilled - by ‘wants or needs’ due to ignorance or knowledge.

There is NO ‘useless’ resource present in opposition to ‘use-value’. It’s a value dichotomy. There most certainly are unfulfilled ‘use-values’. The fulfilled ‘use-values’ inevitably embody an object with value regardless of whether this ‘value’ extends beyond the personal sphere into the public.

To return to the first quote and provide another translation:

But this usefulness does not dangle in midair. Conditioned by the physical properties of the body of the commodity, it has no existence apart from the latter.

The utility of a thing makes it a use value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity.

This is wrong. There is ‘existence’ within the conscious human being. We don’t merely act upon the world as an exterior influence, we actively impose ourselves upon it. The ‘utility’ of resources don’t jump out to us like sentient beings. We have an intent, a sense of time and place, and go to play in the word of things directed partly by our aesthetic disposition not entirely as reactionary beings absent of agency.

The whole premise is actually based on this thought. We brought resources into a position where we can refer to them as ‘commodities’ to be exchanged, improved and engaged with. We simply have a drive to utilise our environment and the ‘Value’ is an aspect of measuring ‘efficiency’. Even this barely touching on the ‘utility’ of human interactions outside of what many consider ‘economics’. From what I’ve read Marx has done no more than sharpen the capitalist sword rather than offer a new means of engagement in the sphere of ‘economics’ - maybe I was expecting way too much :)

Anyway, maybe I’m not discussing what you wished to discuss in this thread? Either way I think my time would be better spent keeping my thoughts mostly to myself for now as I work my way through the text. I like the line of questions he presents even if I find the presentation wanting.

Looking to develop my own. — MountainDwarf

What for?

I have my own little Venn diagram that is much more applicable than yours I believe - but it isn’t a category of subjects.

The ‘poles’ are order an disorder (roughly speaking ‘science’ and ‘art’): as science is empirical and objectively more discernible than art. The orthogonal ‘pole’ to this one would be ‘belief’ and ‘non-belief’ (to accept and to question): I roughly frame these as ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’.

Where these circles of interest intersect there are items like ‘ritual’, ‘myth’, ‘imagination’ and ‘action’.

Maybe I can find it ... [img][/img] nope, cannot download image. Don’t do ‘links’.

“Truths” are necessarily dependent upon limits. We don’t know a ‘truth’ that has no bounds.

My view of ‘knowledge’ is pretty much in line with what you’ve stated though. I see ‘knowing’ as the realisation - directly or otherwise - of what isn’t known. The only concrete truths we possess are those bound within manmade rules. Some are far more impactful than others in certain fields of play (mathematics being the most obvious example).

I think you’ll find philosophers are more interested in ‘questions’ than answers. When enough answer arise measurements begin and then you’ve got a science.

Selecting questions is the art of philosophy as well as exploring their applications and limits. Everything else is science or mysticism in terms of ‘knowledge’.

How does this happen? Again, I’m still having an issue with the depth of answers here. Could you possibly go further about how this ability to convince others functions? What essential aspects of persuasion make this possible?

Thanks

What I wanted was the meaning of ‘useless’ explained. I was pretty explicit about the issue I had. If you cannot think of anything then I’ll just have to put that term down as a mistake or needless obtuse. Either way, something is off.