Yes, but you used two properties of reason to draw this conclusion. The fact that it must be used to interpret neurological data, and the fact that you can't stand outside of it. I'm asking you how you arrived at those two properties.

Let's try it this way. I say "I do not need to use reason to interpret neurological data, and I can stand outside of reason. I have some other capacity, which I call X, and I use that to draw conclusions about reason from the neurological data". How do you dispute that claim? Because undisputed it completely undermines your argument.

As far as I can tell, the only way you could dispute it is to show that what I call capacity X is, in fact, reason. But to do that you'd need to claim to know some properties of 'reason' (to demonstrate that they are the same). Yet you've just argued that we cannot know any properties of reason, because we'd have to use reason to discern them and that's circular.


Or, another way. Four properties of reason...

1. It is the capacity we use to interpret and find meaning in neurological data.
2. It is the only such capacity (there's no 'capacity X' which does a similar job).
3. It is unique to humans (or uniquely advanced in humans) - a previous claim I've read from you.
4. It is constituted entirely of, and can be reduced to, brain activity.

You seem to be saying there's some non-circular method of deriving the first three, but for some reason we cannot derive the fourth in the same way. I'm asking what that difference is.

The burden of disproving my argument falls on the neurological reductionism — Wayfarer

I'm not attempting to disprove your argument. I'm asking how you're not committing the same fallacy. I'm presuming (hypothetically) that your argument is sound, that we cannot draw conclusions about reason from neurological data using reason. If it is true, then we cannot draw conclusions about reason from any data source using reason - the source of evidence or data is immaterial to your argument.

Yet you draw several conclusions about reason, even within this very argument, let alone in your other widely written opinions. So how do you escape the fallacy? How are you able to draw conclusions about reason?

Yes, I get your argument against using reason to explain reason. I really do. What I'm asking you is how you are not committing exactly the same fallacy when you declare certain properties of the faculty 'reason' (such as the fact that it must be used to interpret neurological data, or the fact that you can't stand outside of it - these are both properties of the faculty 'reason; which you claim to be the case). What I'm asking you is - what faculty did you use to discover that 'reason' has these properties? If the answer is "I used Reason" . Then you have committed exactly the same fallacy, you've used reason to explain something about reason.

I’m saying that in order to even begin to explore the neuroscience, you already need to use reason, you need to reason by inference from cause to effect and so on. So in doing that, you’re deploying the very faculty that you are claiming neuroscience can provide an account of. That’s where the circular reasoning or question-begging comes in. — Wayfarer

Yes, I get that. You're doing exactly the same thing. You're saying that it's a problem that we use reason (applied to the evidence from neuroscience) to draw conclusions about the nature of reason. Yet you've waxed lyrical about the nature of reason. And what faculty have you used to draw those conclusions?... Reason.

The very conclusion that reason cannot analyse itself is a property of the faculty 'reason'. How did you discover this property if one cannot use reason to analyse itself.

Whenever we deploy a reasoned argument, we’re using a faculty that is internal to the nature of reason. And that is not something given in any data, it is deployed to interpret data and to say what it means. — Wayfarer

The question is, how do you know that this is the case? How did you find this fact about our faculties and how they work?

You say "it [the faculty internal to reason] is deployed to interpret data and to say what it means". But you must have used it [the faculty internal to reason] to discover this fact, to interpret the data of your experiences and say that it means what you claim. You have used the faculty internal to reason to make a statement about the faculty internal to reason.

When you're looking at neurological data and interpreting the meaning, then you're using the very faculty you're trying to explain. And that faculty operates on the symbolic and logical level, the level of logical necessity. — Wayfarer

What a classic! You tell us that you can't use a brain to understand a brain because the faculty cannot analyse itself, and then you proceed to make two assertions about how that faculty works. So what faculty did you use to come up with those two assertions then? What are you using to tell us all about how reason and logic work. It can't be reason and logic because apparently a faculty cannot analyse itself.

:100:

Not a football game, but worthy of cheerful support nonetheless! — creativesoul

Yeees! 1-1. Come on you reds!

I don't mean to pick you out, but this has getting my goat for some time. This is supposed to be a discussion forum, it's not a fucking football match. What exactly is this cheer-leading supposed to achieve?

Because it is goddam hard and the choices are quite arbitrary! A Dutch company tries to your eco-friendly phones called Fairphones. It says it can reach 40% of the materials used would be ethically sourced or recycled (of dozens of materials used). Again, arbitrary choices about what is complicit and what isn't. — ssu

How is 40% ethical sources arbitrary? It's obviously 40% better than non-ethically sourced. Are you suggesting there's some measurable disadvantages to be weighed against using child slave labour? Do they not make it in your colour?

if a fifth of the population of Congo gets income from mining and the vast amount of this is from artisanal and small scale mining (ASM), why would you then be against one of the most poorest people in the World? — ssu

Why would you think that continuing to support exploitative labour practices is the only way to help the poorest people in the world?

The reality is complex, but your answers are simple and arbitrary. — ssu

If all you've got is conservative slogans to flag-waive over there's not much point in continuing. You were previously extolling the virtues of making my voice heard via an election. Tell how choosing a political representative is a way of bringing about positive change but choosing a phone is complex and arbitrary?

We're talking about choices here - the ethical product vs the non-ethical one, law-breaking protest vs political campaigning, politician A vs politician B... How does the complexity of the world have any bearing on which to choose, all it does is make the choice complicated and difficult to see the consequences of. This isn't somehow magically less true for one option than another.

So do we just stop trying to make progress, because the world is complex. Just leave things exactly as they are just in case we break something? There's been violent protests since civilisation began, so how can you rail against them? The world is complex, you know. By 1833 we'd had 200 years of slavery and our economic system was built on it, should we have not abolished it because 'the world is complex'?

And how exactly is supporting law-breaking protest and ethical consumer choices 'simple', but opposing law-breaking protest and ethical consumer choices is not? What exactly is the complexity you're taking into account here? All you've provided is a bunch of speculation as to the possible consequences of either which is no less arbitrary than the predictions of the consequences of taking those actions.

I know a lot of groups from history like that. They are called dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. Keeping people in fear was/is a control tool for them. They differ from ordinary mobsters in that they surely have great plans for the improvement of the World, at least in their own thinking. The World is going to be a better place, if only you eradicate the capitalists / the jews / the communists whoever from society. That's how they think. Bold dramatic moves have to be taken! And they don't believe in democracy. — ssu

Right. And I'm sure for those groups such terrorist tactics probably work, at least for a time. BLM want fairer treatment for minorities, not the extermination of the Jewish race. The allies used the same tactics as the Nazis on the battlefield (shoot the enemy), does that make them basically the same? Intent matters.

people generally ask then: "OK, if I'm not going to use this bad company (because they use cobalt from Congo), what will I do then?" — ssu

Use one which doesn't use child labour. Why are you finding this concept so hard?

Are you less complicit than the young student working on the counter at the fast food restaurant trying to get some income? — ssu

Yes.

So you might be against attacking families that have bought a Happy-meal, but Ok with the young employee losing his or her job and perhaps happy about the entrepreneur losing his business. And all because it gets into the local news! — ssu

Yes. The young employee's income and the entrepreneur's profit both came from the use of child slave labour. Under what ethical system are you holding their situation to be in any sense more important?

Would you publicly use a smart phone if someone can takes a photo of you, tracks down where you live and puts your house on fire? — ssu

No, I don't suppose I would. I can't think of a group of people who would want individuals to be terrified of having their lives and all their family's possessions put at risk, but at the same time be terribly concerned about the welfare of Congolese children. But yes, if there were such a bizarre group then threatening arson probably would work. Why, do you know of such a group?

Who decides that? You? — ssu

It's just a sociological fact. Individuals are rarely ascribed responsibilty for actions which involves a collective, especially where there's a power imbalance.

Because if a small cabal protest the use of something as complicity to bad behavior, then the question rises that what then is "good behavior"? — ssu

I don't understand the question. Are you having trouble seeing why not buying your phone from a company who are willing to exploit child labour might be considered "good behavior"?

And if you protest the situation of child labor in Congo, is then the answer to put an embargo on it and make things worse the 12,5 million people or one fifth of the population that is employed by Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining, because the country is such a mess that only a few mining companies dare to operate there? — ssu

Have you stopped beating your wife?

Why the employees and the entrepreneur have to lose their jobs for a media photo op is disgusting and their "complicity" in the problems global markets is rather dubious. — ssu

They're making a profit directly out of the fact that the products they sell have been made using slave labour. How is that 'dubious'?

Do they at McDonalds think it's OK? — ssu

Of course they think it's OK. They didn't accidentally use child labour.

Do you think that they are irrelevant of an media article like that appearing? — ssu

Yes, seeing as the number of slaves is increasing, I'd say the media article might have had an effect, but a very slow and inefficient one.

So there's no other way than to burn down franchising to get the message? — ssu

According to most of the studies I've read on the matter (I've cited a few above), there's no other way than to break social norms (which usually means breaking some law).

the article is 20 years old, but it doesn't matter, nothing has changed in twenty years in China, right? — ssu

I don't think the factors governing the global economy have changed in 20 yrs, no.

Because let's remember that you had that smartphone which uses cobalt dug up by that poor Congolese kid, then perhaps your house should be burned down. — ssu

Yes, if I'm significantly associated with the act of complicity then arson is certainly one of the illegal acts likely to get media attention on an issue. But individuals are almost never significantly associated with the act of complicity. There are much more effective target which cause much less harm. Why would anyone deliberately choose a more harmful, less effective form of protest?

If you don't use anti-child labor eco-friendly 'happy cobalt', your house might be burnt down. Wouldn't that just change peoples behavior!??? Remember I'm using the 'happy cobalt' mined by those happy miners adhering to environmental regulations at the Murrin Murrin mine. So, have I really made things better with my anti-child labor choices? — ssu

I don't understand the connection to the argument here.

at least with burning down that McDonalds in Wyoming you have likely put one franchising entrepreneur in severe economic difficulty and few low paid workers (who might be poc) out of a job because you burned their workplace down at a time when the economy is very bad and a pandemic is going around. Guess all that makes the World a better place then. — ssu

Well yes, that's the point. You'd need some evidence to counter it, simply repeating an argument back sarcastically doesn't constitue a counter-argument.

And if in Ethiopia a Chine factory uses child labor in miserable working conditions, that is the reason to burn down a McDonalds in Wyoming? That will really help the Ethiopian children or what? — ssu

No, but McDonald's using child labour in miserable working conditions is a reason to burn down McDonald's in Wyoming.

And if it wasn't that, they'd be getting their finance from a bank which makes money out of other companies linked to slave labour. Global finance makes most companies complicit unless they take care to avoid it.

if we have a smartphone that has lithium battery using cobalt mined from the Republic of Congo? That's the willful blindness? — ssu

That's certainly one of the issues, yes. If we think that we live in a 'peaceful' society where everyone has a phone which has been made with child slave labour, then yes, they are wilfully blind to the violence their society is built on. But it's much wider than that, the history of violence to minority ethnic groups and lower classes is what's allowed this prosperity, it's not a coincidence. The stress policing in America is just another example of a violent situation used to maintain the 'peace' of the more wealthy.

Surely something has to be done, but how do we get the change we want? — ssu

Well, as I mentioned to CS above, messages carried within the current social norms tend to get subsumed relative to messages carried in ways outside of social norms. So we protest. If McDonalds thinks it's OK to use child slaves to make their stuff, then a stiff letter isn't going to cut it. Burning them down might.

Here in the UK, it's the rightwing media which drives racism, to boost their readership and make a bit of profit. Not to mention, as a driver for Brexit. — Punshhh

Unlikely. Newspapers seem to respond to bias, not drive it. People are always looking for some external bogeyman to blame.

Those complicit regarding matters of institutional racism and it's residual effects/affects will remain so as long as doing so poses no threat to their own lives and/or livelihoods.

Is that a good summary?

I mean, do I understand you correctly? — creativesoul

Well, it's not far off. What I actually believe is that people become very easily drawn into patterns of behaviour (whether that's a job, childcare, or socialising) where they adopt the social norms of that group, so it's not so much about something tangible like lives and livelihoods, but something slightly more intangible, the social role in their group. But this is not a crucial distinction here. The point is that it has been demonstrated over and again (see studies by Martin&Hewstone, Burgoon and Nemeth for examples) that the persuasiveness of messages from dissenting groups is carried by the extent to which they deviate from the accepted social norms. Basically, a message carried via some socially normal means get subsumed into the existing culture too easily, it takes one resistant to social norms to snap people out of standard thinking patterns so that they can engage with new ideas.

The accumulation of material wealth is a strong social norm in most groups, so it has a strong correlation with those most interested in maintaining the structures which promote it, but I think it's the social norms, not the money that does the driving.

If we glorify violence, if we think it's the only option and aren't careful, we really can get violence and lawlessness on a far larger scale that we ever did imagine in our now seemingly peaceful society. — ssu

22,000 children are killed at work every year in positions of slavery working to produce the crap that supports our 'peaceful society'.

I'm not advocating violence, but it's willful blindness to pretend that violence isn't already happening. Its just neatly hidden away.

So is your argument here that you cannot make a change without braking the law? That those constitutional rights that I and you have isn't enough or what? That the existing laws are so bad, so outdated and wrong, that there is ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER WAY than to resort to breaking the law? — ssu

Yes. In some cases that is absolutely my argument. The population (be they politicians, wealthy elites, or just ordinary people) who just sat back and let systemic racism lead to thousands of deaths each year...those people, they're not just lacking a pamphlet on the matter. They're not just about to dismantle the institutions which perpetuate this violence as soon as they receive a stern letter to that effect. They're not going to do anything unless there's some serious threat to their comfortable status quo.

The question is how to bring about that change. — Isaac

And that change usually happens through political movements that even can organize themselves into political parties. That's how the system ought to work. — ssu

But those political movements have to take some action to persuade the electorate. Simply existing isn't sufficient. So it seems we're back to ideas of the sanctity of property. You seem to be saying that political parties can 'protest' (called an election campaign) using their own suff, but protests groups can't protest using anyone else's stuff. So it seems to be entirely about the sanctity of property ownership. You're basically saying that the protection of private property is more important than political persuasion - because otherwise I can't see any difference between a political campaign and a protest.

You have to say what is needed to change. Or you just oppose 'systemic racism' just like a Republican opposes socialism, or better yet, cultural-marxism, which is created as this catch-all term for everything. Which naturally doesn't even imply any real suggestions what to do etc. — ssu

I don't think the details are at issue here. I could produce a list of things I think need addressing. The point here is that my list would be unlikely to be the same as everyone else's. So I still have some job of work to do to convince others of my list.

You can organize into associations, you can form political parties, you can join political parties and be active through them. You can run in elections in your community or so. — ssu

None of this has any bearing at all on influencing the electorate. Simply offering them the option has virtually no influencing power. You have to persuade them its the best option too.

You can write opinions etc. to the media. You can write to the Parliamentary Ombudsman here and engage with authorities directly. You can speak to members of Parliament or elected officials in the community. — ssu

Yet more uselessness in the face of an electorate who currently do not care about the issues you care about.

The media do not publish the opinion of anyone who writes to them. They publish the opinion that suits their editorial objectives. If yours doesn't you might as well write to santa-claus. If it does then you needn't bother as all commentry will be in that vein already.

Why would your MP pay the slightest attention to you? If I wrote to my (Conservative) MP about increasing taxes, for example, all he's going to think is "most of my electorate want lower taxes".

you can hold political demonstrations. — ssu

So this is all we have left. The rest of this is just deflection. The only means of effecting public opinion available to the working class is demonstration.

The question then is simple, is the protection of private property more important than the additional attention destroying it might bring? Depending on the issue, the answer is clearly no. A couple of high street stores are not more important than ensuring that the issue of police violence is given attention.

The majority of Americans DO support change. — ssu

That's irrelevant to the argument. Firstly the fact that most Americans support change doesn't have any bearing on the argument about which courses of action are legitimate in the case that they don't. Secondly, it's reasonable to assume that the kinds of change some protest group might want are not the kinds of change most Americans support. Just supporting 'change' sensu lato is not enough.

So basically what you are saying is that nothing changes in elections. — ssu

No. I'm saying nothing changes in elections without a change first occurring in the electorate. The question is how to bring about that change.

How have you established that the electorate is not against systemic racism? You have only said that elections don't work, people aren't interested, politicians won't do anything. It might be good to explain this. — ssu

Because there is still systemic racism.

And what would be your options in a fully functioning democracy? You are not above others, you know. If you want to change peoples thinking and influence the community, yes, you have a hell lot of work to do! — ssu

Indeed. I'm asking you what that work consists in if not protest.

I don't believe that. — Marchesk

What's so unbelievable about that? Academics spent years talking about religion, but it's all just a bunch of bedtime stories, why is it so surprising that people could talk earnestly about stuff which doesn't exist.

So Wittgenstein was wrong? — Marchesk

Well, no. What I meant was that one cannot simply declare a word to mean something. Looking to the use of a word to understand its meaning is exactly what this thread is about. What are people using term 'universals' to do that could ever be questioned?

Which is something odd between the world and our conceptualizing. — Marchesk

How?

if a state does not tend to change its behaviour based on expressions of the public will, then that's a defeater for it being a representative democracy. — fdrake

Yeah, I get where you're coming from. I think I'm most interested in one step back, what if the public's will is not even where it should be on the issue, but if the state isn't even going to find out, then I agree, that's perhaps problem number one.

It seems to me that when a state's populace isn't in uprising, the default state tends towards serving the interests of wealthy private interests; which is problematic for calling that state a representative democracy. It's more of a "We'll fuck you as hard and as long as we can get away with-ocracy" — fdrake

Ha! Indeed. It's a bit of a mouthful for the politics textbooks, but it has accuracy to it's credit.

I'm probably excessively cynical (I think it might have been mentioned before), but I'm just not sure I'd limit the insidious role of big business to hoarding political influence in terms only of the substance of government. They have both the means and the incentive to influence the populace to no lesser a degree. But if they succeed at that then it won't matter a jot if the system is representative or not. All it will represent is the will they put there in the first place.

What task is over and when? — ssu

The task of changing public opinion. For, me, this whole section of this thread has been about the legitimacy of methods for changing public opinion on some matter (in this specific case, riots and statue defacing as means of changing public opinion about efforts to deal with systemic racism). By the time of an election, the political campaign (to garner support for the new candidate, or the old candidate's new ideas) has either worked or not. If the new candidate or the new ideas don't get the support they need, the other guy will get into power and the politician's ability to change the course of events will be massively reduced.

Hence if the democratic system works, at least some party will respond to it. Or then the people can form their own political movement. — ssu

Yes. If they demand it. The question here is what if they currently don't.

Let's say I'm a person who thinks we should do more about systemic racism than we currently do (I actually am, but I want to keep this hypothetical, not personal). I think people should take more action against it than they currently take. So what are my legitimate options to bring that about? Elections won't do that - they are just going to return the current state of affairs, the one I already would like to change. Political campaigns won't do that because they are focused on appealing to the very electorate I've just established are not taking as strong a stance against systemic racism as I would like them to.

(we should add in here the issues with politicians being in the pocket of big businesses and so not yielding any options even for an issue with majority support, but we don't even need it to make the argument).

I could debate, stand on my soapbox perhaps, but media attention is not distributed on the basis of strength of argument, and I don't own my own newspaper. I could write a book but can neither afford to publish nor publicise it. I could write to my MP, but he quite rightly doesn't care (he's been elected on the mandate of the very people not taking the issue seriously enough.

So what are my options? Deface a statue, occupy the street, shut down a supermarket. Now the media pay attention. Now I get a voice. Now I get a chance to persuade people that they should take this issue more seriously. Did I have any other realistic choice?

That's not what you said earlier, if I've read your posts well. — ssu

I said "Elections are utterly trivial in political terms" as in the political task is over by the time of the election, the dye is already cast the election is just to see what colour the cloth turns out.

I suspect you're a Conservative and I'll interpret any ambiguity in your comments according to that prejudice. I might be wrong, but it would be to the extent that you're actually centrist, or possibly liberal socialist. You seem to have decided (without any prior reason) to have interpreted ambiguity in my comment from the presumption that I'm probably a totalitarian dictator. Seems a bit uncharitable.

Anyway...

So if candidates promise police reform that is utterly trivial? — ssu

Firstly, candidates offering something is not an election, it's a political manifesto. An election is the collection of votes for a range of candidates. Two different things. Candidates could feasibly not offer anything and there still be an election.

Secondly, I think it is relatively trivial, yes. If there's no support for such a policy among the populace, then the candidate's offering it will get nowhere. Them merely offering it is unlikely to change the views of the populace. The populace demanding it, however, is far from trivial. If it doesn't directly get it done, then it will likely persuade one (or all) candidates to offer it as a policy. So if the two - candidate manifesto vs public demand - candidate manifesto is a fairly trivial way of bringing about change.

Wrong.

On an earlier comment before my last one:... And even before that: — ssu

Those were the 'most recent posts' to which I was referring.

it's YOU who is forgetting that democracy isn't just elections and campaigns and basic political activity of the populace is an adamant requirement for there to be true democracy. — ssu

I haven't even mentioned democracy. Elections are not democracy. Elections are a single event within a democracy. All the stuff you're talking about as being a necessary part of democracy is exactly the same stuff I'm talking about as being that which we should be comparing in terms of it effectiveness. The actual election is irrelevant to the question at hand, it's plays a trivial part in the question at hand. That is not equivalent to a claim that elections are trivial in any context, or that the whole democratic system is entirely pointless, which are the straw men you're attempting to make out of what I'm saying.

My main contention is that you are setting up a false dichotomy which casts a purely rhetorical aspersion over protest movements. You set them up as being opposed to 'elections' when in actual fact they are means of shifting public opinion. Which is not even the same kind of thing as an election.

To make a fair comparison we must compare them to other means of shifting public opinion, like political campaigns, pamphleteering, debates etc.

This is a really nice post (and thanks for bringing the thread back on topic).

I understand the critique of positivism or empiricism, or verificationism. Condensed: The empiricist's methods cannot be empirically verified, and so they have to ground what they're doing in something nonempirical. You can't verify verificationism, no. — csalisbury

Have you read any Michael Friedman? He wrote a book a while back called Reconsidering Logical Positivism. It's a long time since I read it, but it's interesting. The upshot of his argument, if I recall correctly, is basically if some metaphysical statements are valid, but others not (which is after all, the premise of debate in metaphysics) then it is perfectly possible that the total number of valid metaphysical statements is one, as it has to be some finite number, one is as valid a possibility as any. That one valid statement might well be the metaphysical founding statement of verificationists. I think there's a lot of issues with that personally, but I thought it was quite a neat angle on the old 'gotcha' of the anti-positivists.

Anyway, that's just an aside...

I point out, that, despite your rejection of verification, you compulsively reference verified sources qua verified. Though you reject pure experience as authoritative, and refer to the non-empirical essence of a priori methodology, you always approach that methodology via empirically-derived understandings of which texts are authoritative. — csalisbury

I think this is really interesting with regard to the topic. . Earlier I brought up the possibility that advancing empirical techniques created a fear in those not making the advances that power would be drawn away from them, and that this might explain the co-evolution of metaphysics with empirical investigation. In deferring to 'the text' we see the metaphysician borrowing from the empiricists handbook - appeal to the external.

what's more interesting is what we're doing when we do this, and why. — csalisbury

Agreed, I think that's what @Snakes Alive really wanted this thread to be about. It's testament to the very matter under discussion, It think, that what we've had instead is a half-dozen sentences of hand-waiving and then paragraphs of engagement in the exact practices the thread is supposed to be examining from the outside of.

I've noticed I tend to talk compulsively about the things I most need, that I'm most scared of evaporating if I don't talk about them, which means I never really had them to begin with, and could only convince myself of their reality by arguing for them against an enemy. — csalisbury

This is an interesting take.. I think we come to rely on predictable patterns in life to take the edge of the scary unpredictable chaos of it. Metaphysics perhaps, offers a verbal trick whereby we can cement these patterns even when we're not living them, just by talking. Is that something like what you're saying?

So you're saying it's self-evident that universals refer to nothing, and yet people have debated whether they refer to something. — Marchesk

Yes, basically.

If one can understand the terms of the debate and participate in the debate, then yes, it's meaningful. — Marchesk

Agreed. So how do we establish that one has understood the terms of the debate? The point is, this becomes self-fulfilling. One cannot question whether the terms of a debate are meaningful because if they weren't they wouldn't be terms in a debate. Simply using terms cannot in of itself be held as demonstration that they are meaningful, otherwise the Jabberwocky is meaningful.

Is the argument over universals a topic in sociology? — Marchesk

The argument over universals is meaningless. You brought up the fact that what we might really be arguing about is...

the questions around why and how we do it. — Marchesk

Those are topics in sociology and linguistics, yes.

A representative democracy is much more than just elections. I think this is basically clear to everyone. — ssu

It never ceases to astonish me the nature of the discourse. If it's basically clear to everyone, then why have you not interpreted my posts under that presumption. Is there something about my presentation that's given you cause to think I might be so utterly stupid that I'm unaware of something which is basically clear to everyone?

The comment I initially responded to was...

As if elections don't matter. — ssu

...to which I replied...

Elections are utterly trivial in political terms because they are just a snapshot of what the electorate think at that time. — Isaac

...and was told I'd missed the point. Rather that...

Elections are a safety valve by which we can change ruinous administrations — ssu

At no point up until your most recent posts did you even mention election campaigns. Which are not the same thing as elections. I've been clear throughout that it the the mechanism I'm talking about, not the general activities carried out during it. Elections are a mechanism for recording public opinion about which representatives they prefer in government. It cannot bring about change, it can only record that a change has taken place.

With regards to the use of violent protest, riots, looting, defacing statues. We cannot compare their merits with elections because the two are not the same type of thing - that's the point I was making. If we compare their merits we must do so with other mechanisms for creating change in public preferences. Broadly speaking - political campaigning, media presentation, debate, speech by cultural leaders, advertising, and the lived experience of political decisions (not a complete list).

It seems from your recent posts that what you really mean to compare protests to is political campaigns (which can take place in association with election, or not), so we can start again from there.

Firstly though.

Yet I personally don't believe that anytime the majority is "simply wrong". That view is extremely arrogant and shows the utter hubris of the person saying it. If people are conservative, old-fashioned or even superstitious and reject something that will only later become accepted, I wouldn't judge them to be "wrong" and thus voting "wrongly" — ssu

So how would you characterise my position here. You certainly seem to have some quite strong contrary opinions and are using emotive rhetoric in an attempt at persuasion. You give me whatever term you'd use to characterise my view here and the fact that you'd clearly rather I thought differently, and we'll use your term, if you're not comfortable with "wrong".

I don't want to get into a massive debate about relativism, but those that seem wrong to me are "wrong" up until any time I change my mind about them. That all "wrong" means as far as I'm concerned, so it's not hubris, it's just relativism. The point is that there are, without doubt, things which one would prefer were different and in order to change them one must persuade others. If you're rejecting that very premise then we've nothing further to say.

So the question is, how is it best to present one's feelings about what should change in order to best persuade people to make that change? The point @fdrake originally made was that leaving it to election campaigning and debate has not effected the change that many people would like to see with regards to the status of minorities. Given that minorities are treated deplorably by the US (and many other countries), it is an incontrovertible fact that these methods of effecting change have not worked. Protest, on the other hand seems to have had an absolutely demonstrable success.

No one is suggesting we replace election campaigning with protest as a means of effecting change. No one is suggesting we no longer measure the effect of such change using elections. So exclaiming the merits of these methods is useless, they are not mutually exclusive, we can do both.

Campaigns usually ought to be more thought not only showing that something is wrong, but a specific answer what to do about it. — ssu

But one could simply say that protests ought to be some thing or other. I can see the advantage of proffering a solution along with your complaint. I can't see any mechanism which ensures political party campaigns do this and prevents protests from doing so.

Right on! If there's NOBODY ELSE than conservatives, what fhe f* is your problem? — ssu

I didn't say I had a problem with it. I'm demonstrating how the mere existence of elections do not bring about change. Something else is required to change the population. Elections don't do that on their own.

just give somebody dictatorial powers and he will solve it. It never happens like that, it never has. — ssu

This is not the point I'm making because we're not talking about the force actually effecting the change directly. We're talking about the force demonstrating the degree of anger. Notwithstanding that, it absolutely is the case that force has been necessary to bring about positive change. Its been required almost every time.



What you're missing is that sometimes the majority are wrong. In such circumstances, elections (even when completely fair) will just reflect this wrongness. What do we then do about that?

I'm unsure whether representative democracy as a social model is itself to blame. I think that our current forms of it in the political north are prone to co-option by wealthy private interests. It also looks to me that states are on a much more level playing field with corporations in terms of political power, and we often forget this. Corps are beholden to their shareholders, corps are at least as influential between states as states, and more influential within states than their populace. — fdrake

That's a fair assessment, but did something go wrong which representative democracy failed to prevent, or was it some other institution's failure?

There should be vents for public opinion that are more easily leveraged into policy than the current blockade between public opinion and policy execution most of us live in.

Our political classes only consult public opinion to the extent it allows them to manage it. And let's be under no illusions here; the corpus of political influence that drives our states' policy advocacy does not come from anything to do with the majority of its people, — fdrake

I agree with this assessment, but I'm interested in the question of whether anything would be different (and in what way) if public opinion played a more substantial part. Brexit could not have been more direct a consultation of public opinion - no compromise manifestos, nor gerrymandering, no first past the post - just a simple measure of public opinion. It didn't go well. So I can't help feeling that we'd just jump from Orwell to Kafka if we did involve the public more in national politics?

Whenever those small concessions can be scapegoats, so much the easier; "clap for the NHS" - fund them better, etc. — fdrake

Completely off topic, but had to just scream at how cross this made me (the thing happening, not you mentioning it). Yeah, don't fucking clap them, pay them!

I don't believe a representative democracy will represent any populace adequately when the interests of wealthy international actors are given much more weight by a state than their populace's own interest, or of the interests of humanity as a collective. — fdrake

Which do you think came first, representatives who favoured the wealthy or a populace who prefer such representatives? I mean, we could vote them out in an instant if we don't like them. I get the problems with gerrymandering, wealthy campaign funding etc. But none of that is insurmountable if we really wanted change, or is it?

To that extent, elections do not implement public opinion, for which a more interactive mode of democracy, well within our technical capability, would be neccesary. — Kenosha Kid

Do you think elections ought to implement public opinion? I'm not sure they should. Is there no extent to which we'd prefer to be lead by people who take decisions for us, rather than ask us at every turn?

Better that reflection than no reflection. If power only changes by violence, in that society everything surely isn't well. — ssu

Still missing the point. Elections do not cause power to change. Let's say you have a 100% committed Conservative population. You could have an election every day, nothing at all would change because the population is still 100% Conservative and so will vote in the same people. For anything to change one of two things has to happen - either the political class have to change such that they no longer even offer Conservative candidates, or the population has to change such that it's no longer 100% Conservative.

The question here is about what is going to make one or other of those changes. If you reject protest as a method then the alternative cannot be 'elections' because elections are a mechanism for recording, not a mechanism for influencing.

democracy needs an active populace: not only voters that don't tolerate corruption or dismal performance or those in power breaking the law, but genuinely voice their concerns and their agenda — ssu

If we don't have such a populace, how do we go about getting one?

What on Earth do you think election Campaigns are about? — ssu

How do election campaigns differ from protests? If the Conservative's paint a bus with claims about brexit that's a campaign, if protesters paint a statue with graffiti, that's just vandalism. What exactly is the difference in political terms? Why must political parties have the monopoly on protest?

without there having been any significant change in governance or methodology or philosophy, you conclude that this time, it's all perfectly legitimate. — unenlightened

There has been significant change in all those areas. The governance is made up 100% of different people to the ones who presided over the issues you raised from the past, the methodology is massively revised with much more stringent ethical standards and the underlying philosophy has completely changed from one of maintaining the status quo to one of understanding problems within a social context. It's ludicrous for someone outside of the profession, with no experience or evidence to just come in and say "nothing's changed" and expect us all to just take your word for it.

I propose that — unenlightened

we do so with more attention to the nature of the discipline, which is only possibly scientific at the margin where it merges with human biology, and that for the rest we adopt a much more humble and far less dogmatic let alone coercive stance in relation to education and psychiatry in particular — unenlightened

Good principle. What evidence do you have of current practice taking a dogmatic coercive stance in relation to education and psychiatry? Because without evidence of current practice how can we attempt to change? I need to know exactly what practices (or some examples of them) you think are coercive and dogmatic, and some examples of how we could do better. Otherwise it's just hot air.

I propose that we acknowledge the inevitably cultural nature of psychology and the reflexive way that theories of psychology change the human behaviour they describe. — unenlightened

Again, a very good principle. What current practices do not already acknowledge this? What things would you like to see stopped and what practices would you like to replace them with?

there is a great deal wrong with representing this reflection as science. — unenlightened

So, hang on. Earlier you were decrying the whole institution for it's role in advertising, for fear it might learn to detect homosexuality, for it's complicity in torture methods. Now you're saying it's not a science. Well, at least that lets us off the hook for those things. If it's not a science, then the contributions from psychology in those areas were just pseudo-scientific guesswork. The only people responsible for those things were the advertisers, the (hypothetical actions of the Chinese state and the torturers. We didn't supply them with anything, because what we 'discovered' was just hogwash which doesn't even work.

If it was self-evident, there wouldn't be long-standing philosophical debates over universals. — Marchesk

That simply presumes that arguments cannot be constructed around things which are self-evident. That's the question here so it's begging it do assume at the outset that the mere existence of debate automatically legitimises the terms of that debate.

Not if it's motivated by a philosophical puzzle. — Marchesk

But it's not a philosophical puzzle. That's what I'm saying, it's a sociological one. the question "are universals real?" is meaningless. The question "Why doe we use them?" is not, but it's sociological. It doesn't somehow get co opted into the realm of philosophy simply because there's a related question there. Philosophers also ask question about the fundamental constituents of the universe, does research into the Higgs Boson now become philosophy?

The argument I'm having with ssu (on my end at least) is regarding the historical failure of representative politics - the changing whims of the state - to make US POCs equal, except when their hands are forced or leveraged by popular movement. — fdrake

That makes sense, so you're not really comparing methods of moving public opinion so much as saying that simply having a representative democracy hasn't historically been enough?

Why do you think that is? Is it entirely down to political gamesmanship (gerrymandering, vote rigging, electoral colleges...) or do you accept a certain extent to which reflecting public opinion isn't enough, that sometimes public opinion as it stands would not deliver satisfactory results either, there's a need to shift it?

Elections are a safety valve by which we can change ruinous administrations to others and a way to show that those in power do enjoy support of the majority. If the elections are just an theatrical show, naturally democracy doesn't work. But it can work. Quite surprising to have to say such basics. Just saying. — ssu

You're missing my point. The election (the actual act) is trivial because it does nothing but reflect public opinion (in a perfect democracy) about who should represent us.

It cannot change ruinous administrations - the public no longer wanting those administrations is what changes them, elections are a bloodless and convenient way of doing that, revolutions being the alternative; but it's the mass of people wanting change which brings about the change, not the election itself.

As a means of creating that change, elections are close to useless. That's why I'm saying that comparing them to protests is like comparing apples to oranges. They're not even the same kind of thing. Protests seek to change public opinion, elections seek to record public opinion. Two different things. If all we did was record public opinion, nothing would ever change.

So we have two possibilities for positive change. (1) Human cultures are all lovely all the time and all we need are better elections so that our nasty politicians better reflect their angelic populace, or (2) Cultures can become unpleasant, in which case they need changing, simply accurately recording their preferences for representatives is not going to get anywhere. In fact it's perfectly possible that a populace might be more unpleasant in aggregate than the sub-class from which it's leaders are
drawn, in which case accurately representing them would be a bad thing.

In the case of (2) (which I think we all agree is the more likely) some action changes public opinion.

Importantly, this happens anyway no matter what we do. There's no neutral position where public opinion isn't influenced by something. Public opinion is influenced by a statue being up just as much as it is influenced by it being down. Leaving it up isn't some kind of default whereby the public are left to make up their own minds. a statue influences them one way, destroying it influences them another.

They may. They are of course free to think whatever they like. The point is merely thinking something is the case is not sufficient to make something the case. On cannot write a treatise about just how much one thinks such-and-such is the case and expect the degree to which one believes it to be the case to have any persuasive power.

If they can't demonstrate what that confusion consists in, then how are to tell if their argument that such confusion exists is sound?

I think you're missing the point of representative democracy. — ssu

Which is?

You realize that by this account all of the other supposedly meaningless philosophical questions discussed in this thread also become meaningful empirical questions in light of the confusion or clarity they produce in people? E.g. the difference between a world where "universals exist" and a world where "universals don't exist" is that in one world (whichever of them represents the correct answer to that question), people are not needlessly confused by intractable philosophical problems, while in the other world, people are thus confused. — Pfhorrest

No, I don't think that's true. People can very well be more or less confused by competing models of empirical representation because such confusion is observed in the failure or success in the application of those models. Universals is not such a thing because one could not even in principle describe what a person 'confused' by a model including them would look like.

I'll certainly grant that a large number of supposedly philosophical problems are, in fact, of the nature of the speciation problem. Its one of the reasons I'm interested in philosophy, but most big metaphysical questions are not like that because we cannot even articulate the confusion.

there isn't a disagreement about the observed phenomena (the facts of speciation), but a disagreement about the observers (the humans doing the thinking about speciation). — Pfhorrest

The behaviour of the observers is itself an observed fact. That's what I'm saying. The only observer whose response is not itself just another observed fact is you yourself, and it would be monstrously hubrisitc to assume your personal confusion/clarity somehow was representative of the whole of humanity.

Elections and representative politics has a terrible track record on addressing systemic racism. — fdrake

I've possibly just misunderstood what you're saying (or just read too much into it) but I can't understand how you could even argue the latter. Elections address nothing at all, they're a data gathering mechanism. In order to address anything at all we must persuade people to vote differently in an election and simultaneously persuade politicians that people are likely to do so so that they offer our preferred policies as a choice. (A third option is to persuade people to deal with some issue differently within the parameters of what is already legal/institutionalised, but that's an aside).

Either way, the actual mechanism by which politicians are given the authority to carry out their policies is not the same as the mechanism they use to determine which policies might attract such mandate. Effecting change on some issue requires action on the latter. So I think when discussing methods for addressing racism its just a false dichotomy from the outset to frame it as elections vs protests, they're not the same kind of thing.

The debate would be about the relative merits of, say, discussion vs protest, or pamphleteering vs protest, something like that, no?

Neither side could demonstrate the difference between a world where "species exist" and "species don't exist" through Snakes' "novel test", for example. — Pfhorrest

Of course they could. You provided that yourself

it is a concept that gives rise to unnecessary confusion and unanswerable questions, so that concept and the framework that surrounds it are best abandoned and replaced with alternative ways of thinking about things that serve the same purpose without leading into those same problems. — Pfhorrest

That describes some way the world is. One in which people are confused and ask questions to which they cannot seem to find answers. The world in which the Darwinians are right is one in which adopting their way of thinking causes people to no longer be in this state. The world in which they were wrong is one in which adopting their way of thinking has no effect at all on this state of affairs. One could easily distinguish between novels written about each of these scenarios.

It's not only about the empirical facts of speciation in this case, it's about the empirical facts about how confusing/efficient different ways of thinking about them are for the humans doing the thinking. My point is that one can no more work out the latter from one's armchair than one can the former.