Anything up to here you'd disagree with? — Srap Tasmaner

No, nothing.

Make sense? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, totally. It's why I think the issue you raise here is so important, and I don't even think it necessary to shy away from commentary of the approach of different posters. If anything, it's necessary. For a project like this to work, there has to be some mutual trust, since, as you say, you can't know if what I say is going to valuable until after you've invested the time to extract it, read it, and understand it - no small investment. I might be interacting simply to get a rise, to declare my group membership, to alleviate boredom... all three. None of which are of any use to you (unless you want to be in my group, of course, in which case me showing you which beliefs are required as membership tokens is useful).

To achieve all this needs a web of trust, like with peer-review. To build that web requires some interrogation of intent. I just don't see a way around that.

So yeah, adherence to the rules of rational discourse are a really good guide, partly because they themselves are a cost outlay, they show good intent. Most people have more important concerns, even when interacting online, than the edification of their peers, so for me to actually adhere to the rules to that end, rather than simply use the structure to declare/cement/advance my social status, is a cost to me (as it is a risk for you to trust that that's what I'm doing).

For different people, that cost is going to be greater than for others, depending on their circumstances, what the need from this place (or any other discussion) - hence, again, some psychologising is inevitable. .

What's problematic is that there's a tension between the Gricean requirement to interpret charitably, and the need to build and encourage this web of trust, especially on a anonymous platform of short post format such as this one. If every interpretation maximises charity, then there's little incentive to risk the cost of an honest transaction (for someone seeking one of those many other goals), intent needs to be interrogated.

As is probably patently obvious, to the annoyance of many a peer, I favour a fairly robust interrogation, after which we can be fairly sure the exchange is one of mutual benefit. Others, prefer the risks, but then I'm lucky in that I've little to lose from such an approach

Or are you just making the point that its possible for someone to disagree with any analogy, regardless of its merits and that it's also possible to make bad analogies? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not quite. It's merits are contingent on the interlocutor already agreeing with the point it's supposed to be demonstrating to them. What's the point in demonstrating to someone a point they already agree with?

For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic. I could not, of course, but it's not a big ask.

For an argument from analogy to have persuasive force, like the one you presented, I'd need to already agree that the situations are, indeed, analogous. If I agree that, there's little left to persuade me of. The same cannot be said for rational argument in general. It's not the case that merely by accepting rules of rational thought I've basically agreed with your argument.

you're not just seeing that "people thought about x differently in the past," but you're seeing both a mathematical argument for why frequentism doesn't work in all cases paired with examples of where prior thinkers went wrong and how that has influenced current dogma. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, examples from history can be illustrative, add colour to an argument. They are not the argument itself, that's the point being made here. The post which gave rise to this OP was nothing but history.

You can say the same thing about a syllogism. That someone could reply to "all men are mortal, Socrates is a man..." with "you can't know that all men are mortal!" doesn't amount to much, no?

Why is an argument from the history of an idea particularly bad? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, as above. The commitments you require of an interlocutor for an argument from syllogism to work are little more than the law of identity. Those required for an argument from history to work are so close to agreeing with the proposed position anyway as to render it little more than window-dressing.

I intentionally didn't use the word "oppression" in my post because it has all sorts of meanings hanging on to it. — T Clark

You're right, I read that in by mistake on account of the line of argument I was on at the time.

In that light...

She told me that was the first time in her life she felt welcome - not suspected, mistrusted. Is she oppressed? She has social, financial, and personal resources most people don't and she has still spent a lifetime with that weight on her shoulders. — T Clark

I think you've answered your own question. If "She has social, financial, and personal resources most people don't" then either she isn't oppressed, or the oppression has somehow failed. People who are oppressed don't have more than those who aren't.

I've posted this before, and it's not intended as a rebuke so much as a declaration of where I stand. This is what an oppressed person looks like.



This is what Helen Mirren looks like...



I have absolutely no respect for anyone who can't tell the difference, and until the former is sorted, any space wasted on whatever minor inconvenience the latter might have to endure is a travesty. Hopefully a position you can find some sympathy for?

Okay Boomer — Srap Tasmaner

I had to look that up! Does that make it self-fulfilling?

I've been careful not to denigrate people who disagree with me or to intimate that they are of a lesser mind just because I happen to have some words in my head that others don't. At least, I've attempted to be careful to not insult anyone. It would definitely go against my purposes in exploring masculinity. — Moliere

My post wasn't aimed at you specifically, my apologies if you took it that way. You will, as we all do, have to bear some of the burden of the positions you allow, or build upon. A thread 'exploring' eugenics would have to tread very carefully no matter the intention of the OP. Talk of masculinity in any sense, but particularly with regard to patriarchal oppression, is a fraught topic. Simply acknowledging the existence of these tropes carries with it commitments that entail offense to some you may not have any intention of offending.

I understand where you're coming from, but I think it's important to distinguish the oppressed from potential causes of oppression. The former being actual people, the latter being processes.

Racism is a form of oppression (even subconscious racism, systemic racism etc) and as such if you're of a minority race, you might be oppressed. But whether you actually are oppressed is still something to be determined, I don't think it's necessitated simply by possessing a characteristic typically used in one of the many forms of oppression.

A bit like being a wimp makes you more likely to get beaten up because that's a tool bullies use (picking on the weak), but it doesn't mean you will be beaten up, and the best way of identifying people who've actually been beaten up is still by bruises etc.

Does that make sense?

Respect seems a simple thing, but sadly notable by its absence these days. But then my generation haven't exactly made a good account of themselves in other areas, so... maybe rudeness and blue hair will cure global warming... Who knows.

I don't see what you're not getting, it's quite simple.

Some men oppress some women, but not all men, and nothing about their being men has anything necessarily to do with it, and some of the people doing the oppressing are women, and some of the oppressed are men, and some of the men doing the oppressing it turns out are really women, and some of the women who were oppressed it turns are really men depending on how they're feeling that day.

But the important thing to remember is that it's the patriarchy.

Beware of the trap a lesser mind might fall into of just thinking that humans ought not oppress other humans and the best way of identifying victims is by their actually being, you know, victims, rather than by using chromosomes or skin colour which are obviously much better metrics.

Hope that helps.

Sure. So 'good' is whatever your language community use the word for? Like 'apple'?

The only reason I'd be wrong to point to a banana and say 'apple' is because my language community don't use the word that way, yes?

Let's say you said that though, you said "what is good is what is natural". Are you defining good that way, or are you saying that good has a separate definition, but analytically it works out that everything good is natural and vice versa? — flannel jesus

It's not a position I'd support. I was trying to get at how we define 'good' by asking how we'd argue against such a claim. You responded exactly how I'd respond "it's not how the word is used". But there's a commitment that goes along with that response; that how the word is used is what defines 'good'.

I don't know of many people who use the word like that. — flannel jesus

Then how did you learn what the word meant, if not by listening to other people using it?

If you did learn it by listening to other people using it, then it follows, surely, that the way people use the word is to mean that which other people use the word to also describe.

for me it's pretty straight forward to think of what good and should mean intuitively. How do people use the word? — flannel jesus

Yep, I can sympathise with that approach. So would you be happy to support 'what is good is whatever people say is good'? Since that would be undeniably how the word is used?

By all means disagree — Isaac


Thank you. — unenlightened

Still just responding to half of what I wrote I see. Do my paragraphs bore you that much you struggle to get to the end?

Just because something is the case in nature does not make that something right. The natural is not the same as the good. — Tom Storm

Not that I disagree, but when you say "The natural is not the same as the good", what is it that makes the truth of that proposition? I mean, if I made the counter claim "whatever is natural is right", how would you show me I'm wrong about that? Would you point to intuition, language use, the canon of ethics...?

In the context of the thread history, you are giving an example of something you think would be meaningful without the historical context. In context your meaning is clear, but out of context It would be bizarre. — unenlightened

Which part of "we already have the context" did you not understand?

Which part of "the attempt to focus attention on just one single aspect of the million threads of history"?

I mean, did you actually read my post at all? By all means disagree, but try to disagree at least with something I've actually said.

Exactly.

Your first post after mine...

I don't see any big mystery. — T Clark


Well, philosophers do say that 'wisdom begins in wonder'. — Wayfarer

Insulting @T Clark by suggesting his seeing no mystery is the result of a lack of wisdom, rather than the carefully considered conclusion I'm sure it actually is.

Responding to the person doesn't render insulting their intelligence any less antagonistic.

I really don't enjoy antagonistic exchanges. — Wayfarer

Then I can only say that you need to work on your theory of mind.

Do you seriously think telling an entire swathe of serious-minded people that their carefully thought out ideas are just the result of a 'fear of religion', or that they just 'haven't understood the issues', isn't very antagonistic?

If you don't like antagonistic exchanges, the solution is to stop antagonising people by insulting their intelligence. We all read, we all think*. You don't have the monopoly on either.


* I should perhaps make it clear here that I'm talking about peers, not all of humanity, just in case this is interpreted as an argument in favour of excessive relativism.

the above quoted exchange would be hard to understand without the context of the thread. — unenlightened

Would it?

If I posted, out of the blue, the exchange...

A: it's hard to dance with you because you're never focussed on the moment but always on improving your technical precision
b: Fair point, I'll take that on board

... would anyone have any trouble understanding what's going on?

The point is not that we need no context, it's that we already have the context. We've all lived, we've all read books, we all have our version of history...

The problem with historicism is not the addition of context, it's the removal of it - the attempt to focus attention on just one single aspect of the million threads of history and say this here, this one thread is the one which explains how we got here, or tells you what you need to know about X. It constrains and oversimplifies the complex contextual understanding we all already have by attempting to tie everything to (or at best, spotlight) this single thread.

The point, which started this thread, was the attempt, not to add context to an understanding of Peircean pragmatism, but to remove it, by shifting focus to this one thread from history (the move to analytical approaches post-Russell), rather than leave it as the complex tapestry of threads it already was in our present understanding.

You don't make any point by trivialising the argument. The issues at stake are considerably more subtle, and more significant — Wayfarer

(... then proceeds to reduce the whole of the move to naturalism to a single 'erroneous' assumption)

Come on! If you want respect for the subtlety and complexity of your approach, then perhaps show a little for those who see things differently to you and stop trivialising their reasoning by dismissing it all as 'fear of religion', or 'lack of awareness'. It's insulting. People who've chosen to follow a more naturalistic (or even materialistic) path are as mixed a bunch as those who've chosen a more religious one. They're not some homogeneous mass of people who've all made the same basic mistake, or lack the same basic insight. If I made the same lumpen analysis of all religious people, you'd be on it like a shot, so perhaps a little mutual respect might help.

I agree with all of that, but would like an approach that doesn't require switching hats. Maybe that's a mistake, and being self-consciously multidisciplinary is the best way to get what I want. — Srap Tasmaner

I see the thread has moved on, and you've received quite a bit of heat for even broaching the subject, so I understand if you just want to leave it, but I'm interested in what you mean by switching hats. I don't see the distinctions so sharply as that. If language, discourse (and communication in general - non-linguistic included) are just tools, then what one is doing with them is just the process of living (which is the process of self-maintenance, entropy fighting, surprise-reduction - pick your metaphor). If you see a blacksmith using a hammer, it's unsurprising to find he's peening a rivet, not driving a nail.

In other words, we take our best guesses as to the goals of the people we're interacting with into account when we model their behaviour all the time, language is no different. I don't see it as a different hat to treat some linguistic expressions as social group badges, whilst others are almost one-to-one mappings to some worldly object, it's all part of the same enterprise - we reduce our surprise by trying to get others to agree with us about strategy, or by more closely aligning ourselves with them so we're not all pulling in different directions and 'surprising' each other with unpredictable responses..

Trying to figure out the way things really are, what is the case (as Van Inwagen delightfully put it - "even if your claim is that nothing is really the case, then it is the case that nothing is really the case"), as a social enterprise is just that process of alignment. That could be science trying to align our varied observations, or philosophy trying to align all the other stuff we think about what is the case.


Another way of putting this is from Quine. Since the evidence over-determines the theory (and vice versa) we have two tasks in choosing which model to follow - one is a rational task (if a theory is actually overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary, then we ought discard it), the other cannot really have any rational reasoning applied to it (which, of the many remaining theories, do we prefer?). I tend to exhaust task one first, then maybe feel a little uncomfortable about task two since I'd prefer a straight answer derived from a clear logical process, but there isn't one. Others tackle task two first, then (if we're lucky) might engage in something more pro-social in attacking task one checking if it's overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary.

The problem is that at each stage there's this sense of wanting to align the view with that of others because we're uncomfortable with the surprise that too many unpredictable theories generates. Aligning task one has a relatively clear method (or at least boundaries of method). Aligning task two doesn't and includes everything from the light threat of social ostracisation to inquisition-style religious pogroms. Progress as a social group obviously requires us to avoid moves toward the latter.

What I object to in many of the approaches to discourse here is what I see as unhelpful moves usually in this second task (choosing theories).

One such is the move you started this thread with - the implication that your choice is the result of some weakness, easily-lead gullibility to the latest fashion, whereas my choice is the result of a deep understanding of some golden-era intellectual canon.

The other (which has nothing to do with this thread, but since I'm on the subject...) is pretending task two is task one. Pretending there's some logical, rational way to choose between two competing theories even when neither is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary. It's this latter I've had most trouble with recently.

even informal arguments have a form and a content. Many faulty patterns of informal argument have acquired names we toss around (ad hominem, argument from authority, strawman, blah blah blah). — Srap Tasmaner

This is also where I am at. Discourse is a game of sorts (not implying a lack of seriousness though), and like any game it has rules. The rules here are, like Ramsey's habits, not arbitrary, they seem to work [political] albeit to an increasingly lesser extent these days [/political]. You cried 'foul' on a move and that's a fair part of the game (I know you were much more charitable even than that, but I'll happily take that position myself). One of the great things about this game is that even the rules can be discussed, and that's what this thread's for. Far from the ref's decision being final, @Wayfarer gets to make his case.

But we can't even have discourse if there aren't any rules. It's a social enterprise. Without rules we have a noticeboard and a series of private blogs, not a discussion forum; and I'll happily stick my neck out and say one of those rules has to be that the response needs to modify the proposal in some way (lend it more support, make it more suspect, expose flaws, shore it up, link it up...) It has to do something to it, otherwise all we have is a soapbox.

Of course, the psychologist in me wants to say that very few people ever actually play this game, but rather use its general form to play a much more earnest game of power and group dynamics. That's why the rules are so often broken. It's not that they're unclear, or disputed. It's that they sometimes don't serve the actual purpose. Despite its great potential, much of language hasn't moved beyond birdsong.

But this isn't a psychology forum...

Thus the canonical examples of statements in these problematics; "the cat is on the mat", "the cup is red"; force the adoption of a perspective where factual disputes of the nature of things must accord to the analysis of representative statements whose truth conditions mirror (or fail to mirror) the environmental activities they are articulated in conjunction with. — fdrake

That's fair. I haven't helped matters by picking the most analytical proposition out there.

Let's say instead that the proposition in question were something more like, say, enactivism in psychology. I'm still not sure that switch renders the case any differently. It still seems that saying "enactivism is part of a recent trend and people used to be more reductionist" carries no weight as a rational argument against it. Whether analytical or not, merely pointing out that a position is currently in favour or has recently lost favour doesn't seem to have any bearing on the argument itself, but does seem worryingly like a veiled insult (as I said, it's as if the argument is 'you only believe that because it's fashionable', or 'you're behind the times')

But maybe I'm still missing something. Does your counter still work against my example of something less sharply analytic?

You can't just "argue on the merits of Bayesianism or propensity," if your interloceturs are firmly entrenched dogmatists who keep saying "but look, frequency IS probability just like a triangle is a three sided shape. It's what the word means, it's an analytical truth." Something has to be done to address the foundations of the dogma. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You can't argue anything if your opponents are 'firmly entrenched dogmatists'. I suspect they would disagree and therein lies the problem. As such, I'd say something needs to be brought to bear to demonstrate that (to their resigned satisfaction), and I still don't see how any potted history of the idea is going to do that. That the word used to mean something else doesn't have any bearing on any current claim to its meaning being an analytic truth. It's a good argument against analytic truths in general (one I'd be happy to go along with), but you've not made the case in favour of historical analysis being an appropriate tool to demonstrate the weakness of such a definitional approach.

You'll note that people often refer back to earlier treatment of homosexuals when addressing contemporary issues with transgender individuals because it makes for a good argument from analogy as well (another reason to bring up history.) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, it makes an argument from analogy. I fail to see how it makes a good one; other than by it coming to a conclusion you already happen to prefer. As a step in a rational argument it doesn't seem to contain any data. "They used to do that with homosexuals" is an empty argument without your interlocutor already agreeing that homosexuals and trans people share the same status... and if they agreed on that, there'd be no argument in the first place. You couldn't argue against the incarceration of child molesters by saying "they used to do that to heretics". It was wrong to do it to heretics, it's right to do it to child molesters. The argument is in the case, not the history.

a trip through history can show how the seemingly necessary (e.g. probability defined as frequency) is actually contingent. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can it? Or does it just seem to you to show that in cases you already believe? You may well gain some vainglorious satisfaction from the obvious righteousness of such an insight, but I suspect your 'dogmatist' interlocutors would simply say that previous uses were simply wrong, after all, people sometimes are. The argument that they weren't is the important bit, not the mere past occurrence.

people did math fine all the time back then despite the problems you listed, so clearly it isn't the problem you say it is. DAX and other popular data analysis languages use n/0 = ∞ for legit reasons. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, the quality of this argument depends entirely on the fact that these other languages work, not that they tried. They may have worked in history, work contemporaneously, or work hypothetically. It's the working that matters not the place held on the timeline of ideas.

It is not...

the history of making division by zero undefined — Count Timothy von Icarus

...that matters here. It's the success. That might be historical, contemporaneous, or hypothetical (with a good argument); the demonstration required for rational argument is of it actually working, not of it having been once thought to work.



It seems you're only looking at history through the lens of one who already agrees with the points you want to make. From that perspective, of course history looks like it supports your position, it's confirmation bias, not compelling argument.

It's quite painfully simple.

Someone says "the cat is on the mat"

You respond that positions like "the cat is on the mat" are part of a modern trend of seeing cats as being located on mats, but in the past people used to think of cats as being more likely on armchairs.

The question being asked is how such a response has any relation to the question of where the cat is.

My view is that, regardless, there is something real and important in in religious consciousness — Wayfarer

Great. So an argument for 'real' and 'important' would be really interesting. The fact that other people have previously agreed, but now don't, is not such an argument. Not even close.

While I've enjoyed the responses to the wider interest I expressed in starting this thread, it has been frustrating watching the narrow point of the OP be so thoroughly missed. That's on me, I expect, but I'm glad a few of you understood. — Srap Tasmaner

I've probably told this story a hundred times now, but sod it, I'm doing it again... We used to have a saying marking papers (derived I think from a comedy sketch, but not sure the origin) of labelling most as "writing everything they know about Napoleon". It refers to the common trend to see the name Napoleon in the question and think 'I know lots about Napoleon - here I go", instead of reading the actual question and answering that. It appears no less common in real life than in undergraduate essays.

Fair enough. — fdrake

Not really. It's something that's let slide far too often in my view. Were it an up front insult, it would be moderated, but this is not less insulting. The only argument in...

Apokrisis has adopted those aspects of C S Peirce which are relevant to biology (namely, semiotics) in support of an overall naturalist philosophy. To which I pointed out that Peirce is often categorised as an idealist or even as a metaphysical philosopher - according to the SEP entry, one in the 'grand tradition' of Aristotle, Spinoza, et al. This historical point is that at the time Peirce was active, metaphysical idealism was predominant in philosophy generally, both in the US and Britain, but that with the emergence of the 'ordinary language' philosophy, Russell and Moore's rejection of idealism, etc - all of which is or should be common knowledge - that the idealist or metaphysical aspects of Peirce have become deprecated in favour of a broadly scientific (dare I say scientistic) attitude to philosophy. — Wayfarer

... is that @apokrisis has adopted this notion, not as a result of reasoned consideration, but as a result of merely blindly following the fashion started by Russell and Moore.

It's poor form.

There's plenty of reasons to go into the history of ideas. Off the top of my head:

It's a good way to rebut appeals to contemporary authority or appeals to popular opinion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

How is it not just another appeal to authority in that case? If a person claims idea X has merit because it is held by such-and-such a contemporary thinker, then pointing out that it arose from (or used to be opposed by) some other thinker of merit, tells us nothing about its qualities unless we are to take {believed by important thinker} as a property which speaks to the merits of an idea.

If I'm arguing for x, and my interlocutor's response is that x cannot be true because of y, where y is some widespread, dogmatically enforced belief that I think is false, then it makes perfect sense to explain how y came to be dogmatically enforced. For one, it takes the wind out of appeals to authority and appeals to popular opinion if you can show that the success of an idea was largely contingent on some historical phenomena that had nothing to do with valid reasons for embracing that idea. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True, but nothing about historicism does this (unless we've all forgotten our lessons separating correlation from causation). All your historicism here would show is that idea y's dogmatic enforcement coincided with an historical phenomena. It leaves completely untouched the question of whether that phenomena became popular because of the vagaries of fashion or because more and more people saw how compelling the idea was.

The notion I take @Srap Tasmaner's OP to be gently poking a stick at is exactly that missing step. Simply saying that idea y arose alongside, for example, an enlightenment rejection of the supernatural, says absolutely nothing about whether such coincidence was reasoned, accidental, or peer-pressured. That case is left entirely unmade.

The book Bernoulli's Fallacy is an excellent example of this sort of argument. It demonstrates some core issues with frequentism, but it also spends a lot of time showing how frequentism became dominant, and in many cases dogmatically enforced, for reasons that have nothing to do with the arguments for or against it re: statistical analysis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. If frequentism is flawed, then those flaws are the reasons to dismiss the notion, not the history of its adoption. It's perfectly possible that a right idea is adopted for the wrong reasons, so the reasons for an idea's popularity are not in themselves, arguments against it.

The only exception is perhaps identification of bias in experts whose work one cannot otherwise assess directly. If I think a scientific idea is 'fashionable' I might have reason to be sceptical of weak experiments purporting to prove it, but that reason is there as a poor substitute for actually replicating the work (maybe it's in a field I have no access to labs or data for). In philosophy, no such limitations exist, we can all 'replicate' the workings of any of the previous thinkers.

EDIT - apologies@Srap Tasmaner, I see you've said almost exactly this already whilst I was typing. I didn't mean to tread on your toes (here on your own thread and all)

I don't see a problem with a bit of effete musing along with one's morning coffee. Not dissimilar to doing a crossword or chess puzzle before setting off to solve the world's problems. Or in my case, move that soil to the back garden. — Banno

Maybe. But recall my stock in trade. The nature of people's 'effete musing', the processes therein, the methods they use, the objectives, their response to the conflicts arising... None of this happens in isolation, it's all at the very least connected to (if not entirely constituted of) our general habits of thought, and those are the same habits we'll apply to the world's problems as to the soil heap.

It's not that I think effete musing without political content is impossible (and as such wouldn't ever want to imply any given person was politically motivated), it's just that I find it rarely done. From earlier...

Seems to me that if one were to follow antirealist ideas into ethics, one would be setting aside any such ethical truths, just as for ontology. Putin, not Christ, is the consequent. — Banno

...you're not telling me that's not political...

Would you agree that the politics involved includes the interpersonal ? Not just forums like this, but friendships, marriages. Language is a crowbar, a smokescreen, a mirror, all kinds of things. — plaque flag

Yes. I meant politics in the broadest sense. The application of power. I'm simply making the point that the choice of theory as to how accessible 'the truth' is, immediately affects one's power in terms of access to it. I might benefit greatly from a theory which holds truths to be mostly psychological. A scientist gains power by holding truths to be accessible only through the instruments she has access to. A well-read philosopher likewise will profit by an epistemology which places emphasis on the history of ideas.

At the end of the day, 'true' is just a word, and like any other it can be used to cooperate with or coerce those listening, but rarely is it just a label.

I think the beauty of Lawson’s promise (which I still don’t understand) is that if there’s no realist theory of language then discussions about effete topics like idealism and panpsychism bite the dust for good. That would be an interesting development. — Tom Storm

I haven't read the thread, I've not been on the forum for a while, just noticed a few 'mentions' yesterday. Glancing through now I see your OP develops the titular question in quite a specific direction. Yes, I mean as far as I'm concerned (very specific angle on this from a psychological perspective), idealist talk is inevitability unmoored insofar as one cannot carry out any investigation into the nature of some non-material entity where the specification of such an entity consists of nothing more than the meaning of the word. 'Consciousness' (in the philosophical sense) is one such example popular hereabouts. It refers to nothing but that which is agreed by a wink and a nod among those who wish to use the term a certain way. Such an ephemeral ontological object cannot really be the subject of any serious investigation since it's properties must, by definition, already be known - those being the only grounds on which the entity is delineated at all.

Language here rather forms the tools by which these entities are constructed rather than the tools by which they are labelled. But I see @apokrisis has already made that point, so I shan't repeat.

@Banno

Just to be clear, since I've been invoked, the distinction I'm articulating there is not the ultimate resting place for 'truth' (universe vs culture vs mind) but the declared nature of the barriers to its possession.

Whatever is between us and the truth is a power which can then be wielded politically.

What I meant by 'using those terms to bully' is that, in that particular instance, there is a certain class (let's call them liberal academics for want of a better term) who have a vested interest in promoting a location for 'truth' which is just within their grasp (from their hallowed halls) but just outside of the grasp of the great unwashed.

Literally the last thread on which I wrote was just such an example. The 'truth' regarding which political party it was best to vote for being conveniently just within the grasp of the moderately educated, but just outside of the reach of the working class, who must be educated out of their benighted ignorance.

Whatever the issue de jour, you'll find the same people who just so happen to hold an ever so convenient epistemology that places the truth just hard enough to access as to require their specific education, but not so hard as to render such an education worthless.

The hard-realists have it just right for sciencey types - truth is accessed by sufficiently complex empirical investigation.

The idealists have it just right for the humanities graduates. Truth is ever changing (the current version accessed, of course, via an up to date education - see 'are trans women women?')

The pragmatists are universally reviled for putting it out of everyone's reach like the exasperated parent finally putting the water pistol on the top shelf so that neither warring sibling can have it.

How does this relate to the OP? Not much maybe. My answer to the question of how language maps onto the world is that it doesn't. It's not what language is for and it never was. Language is a social tool to get stuff done, either cooperatively, or, increasingly these days, coercively, hence my somewhat rhetorical claim that truth is used mainly as a cudgel with which to beat one's opposition.

What's worse is that the direction of modern discourse is to make the truth even more pedestrian. In just a few years it's gone from the golden light at the end of the long tunnel of scientific enquiry to being easily accessed from the pages of the New York Times, or the lips of the government spokesman. Now we have 'disinformation experts' who's only truth-o-meter is to check what the government website says...

Anyway, I'm sure there's little stomach for political discussion in what's otherwise a nice bit of effete curiosity...

Really interesting article, thanks.

I think it's interesting how the influencing mechanisms can be handled by bots, like its not really about being convinced so much as a simple numbers game, like 'how many of my type think X' if the numbers seem big enough, then thinking X becomes the policy.

There was an article about the Russian bots and influencers (which I'll dig out) which looked at who was influenced. By and large, people already in that camp.

I see a lot of beliefs like membership badges, believing X is your proof that you belong to group Y. Since no-one is in charge, everyone is looking to everyone else to see what beliefs are part of the membership criteria at any given time. As each is looking to the other, mistakes get magnified in unpredictable ways, like a massive game of Chinese whispers.

So we end up with some really odd beliefs. Usually these are then 'pruned' by contact with reality.

I think what's happening with social media is that beliefs can spread faster, bots can propagate them (but crucially they do so without error), and reality can be distorted to seem as if beliefs which are unsustainable can be held.

PeoplePeople, please keep the off-topic mudslinging elsewhere. — jorndoe

You mean like...

For some reason, it seems that some (Western) communists and socialists have become apologists for Russia. — jorndoe

...?

If you don't like it, perhaps refrain form doing it, at least in your own threads, or maybe just try dialling down the sanctimony.

The West has managed to develop "woke warmongering" somehow. — boethius

Yes, this really is the pinnacle of media psy-ops - to make war-mongering, not only acceptable, but actually to have people advocating peaceful methods of conflict resolution seem as though they're the oppressors...

As I believe I've mentioned before - does anyone know what happened to Cambridge Analytica? A company credited with altering the course of no fewer than three national elections, as well as countless smaller influences... then suddenly they're out of the picture and apparently no-one else has taken up the reins? I find that hard to believe.

It's like someone invents a super weapon which changes the fortunes of any war, they go bankrupt and no-one else even bothers to pick up the patent.

The Cambridge Analytic methodology worked. It's not hard to copy. I'd be very surprised in no-one was doing so.

More of the same.

Yes, we get that Russia is bad, that invading places is bad. The question is what we do about it, not whether it's bad or not.

Please produce this list for us, in your own words. — Outlander

I have already done so in the discussion above, but broadly it is through the appropriation of the means of production in the hands of groups of individuals whose united objectives cause them to act as a monopoly.

If the system is set up such that the winning strategy for, say factory owners, is to support some employment strategy, then they will all do so (those that don't will lose - it's the 'winning' strategy). Considering that they will all do so, and they own the factories, a stakeholder in those factories has no means to alter course, the preferred strategy of the owners will be the one under which they have to work.

Same goes for every single other resource. the group that own that resource get to dictate how it is used and other stakeholders have to just lump it.

A communist system is, in essence, saying that it is stakeholders, not owners who should dictate how a resource is used.

the difference is one can get "caught" and social outrage justified whereas in state-controlled production one who criticizes is metaphorically "in bed with the enemy" and against the well being and future of the children ie. a traitor. — Outlander

This is, again, no less the case in a capitalist system. Powerful interests only need to monopolise the media (one the 'resources' I mentioned above), and it is they, not the stakeholders (readers in this case) who get to dictate how that resource is used. It's not hard to create social movements by manipulating media outputs, possibly even easier than government's trying to do it.

if I'm eating at a large corporate chain you better believe I'll be living the rest of my life waking up when I please not knowing if it's 7 AM or PM and loving it. — Outlander

The evidence does not support this. Big businesses have big legal teams and most attacks on them fail. They might pay out, but it is inevitably less than the profit they make. so they continue to harm people, and pay less than they make in compensation. That's not a world I want to live in.

The comment wasn't aimed directly at you, just at the conflict your post highlighted between a willingness, in this thread, to accept the gritty reality of the US, whilst Ukraine is treated like a Disney film with nothing like the same level of pragmatic realism. The hypocrisy I was alluding to was that of the moderate left in general who support an completely unwinnable war with no hint of realpolitik in Ukraine, but think that supporting Bernie Sanders in America is 'naive' because he can't win.

Exactly.

The thing is, (to over-simplify) there are many Americans who have always disliked progressive politics, and have over time shifted to the more regressive party. Once it was the Democrats, now it is the Republicans. Yes, party propaganda has an effect on the electorate, but the electorate also has an effect on the parties. — BC

That's true, but I think what's going on these days is not really progressivism. The reason why there's no movement on poverty is because there's no policies designed to address it, it's all identity politics and window dressing. As Norman Finkelstein put it...

Identity politics is an elite contrivance to divert attention from this class chasm.