A cop qua functioning node in a systemically racist system can't be good by definition. Only cops actively resisting the system could be. — Baden

Why are the other cops required to 'actively resist' the disproportionate effect of their institution's role on minorities in order to avoid charges of complicity? It seems an odd 'guilty by association' response.

If a policeman carries out his duty doing the best he can to serve everyone equally, he will nonetheless disproportionately disadvantage minorities. That's the nature of systemic racism. To fight it, one needs to change the system. But the same is true of almost all economic systems. Even buying and selling property. Are all homeowners therefore complicit for taking part in the systemically racist property market. Low cost clothing, car manufacture, commodities trading, banking, healthcare, social care... All are systemically racist, they all have a proven disproportionately negative effect on minority groups. So is everyone who participates in such institutions complicit?

I've no problem at all with the answer being yes. I think it very likely to be true. But if it is, then what is the advantage of one undoubtedly complicit group of people speaking so disparagingly about another undoubtedly complicit group of people. Why not simply look to fix their own affairs?

Systemic oppression of minorities is ultimately about greed, a bigger cut for a smaller group of privileged people. So it's not that hard to see who's benefiting most from it (and therefore most complicit in its perpetuation). It's not the head of the police force who's sitting on his own private island sipping margaritas whilst all this happening...

Yeah, this one always puzzled me too. I don't see anything at all difficult about the predictor knowing what you'll choose by the time you must make your final choice. It doesn't matter how many times prior to that final choice you flip between "...but he'll have predicted I'd think that, so I'll think the opposite...". The point is you can only perform those zig-zags a finite number of times and so a predictor could feasibly predict how many times you'd do it in the time you have available and so arrive at the correct answer.



I think it says a lot more about how viscerally offensive people seem to find the idea that anyone could possibly know how they're going act.

Get over it people, you're not that special.

Try “doing science” without at least tacitly admitting that your claims are tentative and open to further question, which is what I mean by “critical”. Try “doing science” without at least tacitly admitting that there is some actual objective reality we’re investigating together, which is what I mean by “realist”. Try “doing science” without appeals to observation or regard for concordance with observation, which is obviously what “empirical” means. — Pfhorrest

6 month old babies employ these methods to establish predictable, useful models of their world. Is your claim that they're 'doing philosophy'? If so, I think most of it's been done by 6 or 7.

You were taught his 'philosophical ideas about space and time,' by which is meant, you've done what philosophers do, talk about his work in superficial terms out of context after the fact. Philosophers' education does not equip them to understand any of these scientists. — Snakes Alive

Exactly. I think there's a generalised failure among amateur (and some professional) philosophers to understand just how specific scientific theories are. They do not generalise to broad truths. Insofar as they are truths at all, they are truths about specific experimental set ups which inform predictive models of similar environmental setups. Broad truths neither inform them (in any practical sense), nor emerge from them (in any objective sense).

the entire international community of psychology, and by extension academic community that tolerate them, are equally guilty in Chinese genocidal re-education crimes. — boethius

I'm sorry if you've had some bad experiences with psychologists, but accusing us of complicity in genocide is not ok.

I quoted my own thread where I discuss this in some detail and with further references — unenlightened

I've been through the whole nine pages (you can't just repost the links?). I can't find a single reference to any evidence of what you're asserting here.

psychology as an industry is largely in the business of undermining any class consciousness, and supporting, in the first place the individualising and fragmenting of society, whereby poverty and unemployment is an internal psychological failure of ambition, and from there a reintegration along race and national lines and the projection of the internalised resentment onto the 'other'. — unenlightened

All your previous thread says (again without much evidential support) is that psychologists are responsible for the effectiveness of advertising. Again, a very small number of people from a small branch of psychology. You're own source you later cute has it as less than 3%.

A small branch of engineering has been responsible for some of the most deadly machines known to man. A small branch of physics created the atomic bomb. A small branch of philosophy supports selfish greed. A small branch of economics supports free-market competition as a solution to poverty...and so on. Give me a single academic study which has not been used in some way to maintain or enhance the power of the wealthy and privelidged, hell even literature's implicated by your standards.

David Smail's argument is about clinical psychology, you indicted the whole of psychology. So far we've had a spurious argument about the activities of less than 3% and an argument for how the clinical side of things could be improved (much of which is being acted on, and the evidence for which actually came from within psychology).

I think you can find your own evidence, but here's something to get you started. — unenlightened

Your claim...

Psychology graduates go into advertising, into human resources (there's an objectifying phrase for you) into health, social work, education, and they bring and promote the values and views they have been taught. — unenlightened

I can't speak for @Echarmion, but I'm fairly confident the main sticking point is "they bring and promote the values and views they have been taught" not the fields of work they go into.

@Echarmion has already highlighted the majority of the problems with this completely unsupported tirade so I won't repeat the list of assertions requiring evidence which have already been highlighted. I'll just add one that was missed.

social behaviour is heavily influenced by the prevalent psychological worldview. — unenlightened

Is it? Presumably you'd have some evidence of this too? Though without doing social psychology I'm not sure how you'd gather it.

All you've done is presentated a story of societal decline which has psychology as the antagonist but, with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, how am I supposed to take it seriously? Should I be grateful for every story anyone wishes to tell of our decline? Was it the promiscuity of the sixties, the decline of family values, globalism, the cold war, population density, immigration, the European Union, the bankers, the Lizardmen from the centre of the earth ... Everyone and their dog has some theory or other. Am I supposed to take every one to heart and treat it as gospel? All I've done so far in this entire conversation is ask you and boethius for clarification.

Also for the discussion about psychiatriy, relevant quote: "One of the things neoliberalism does is take social and economic problems and turn them into emotional and individual problems". — fdrake

I think that's true to an extent, but if you want to avoid claiming social and economic problems are mentally harmless, then the current social and economic system causes mental harm. Are we supposed to refuse to treat it in the best way we can as some kind of protest against the conditions which cause it. Are we on the verge of some seismic change if only the psychiatrists would get on board? It seems unlikely.


Im not suggesting for a moment that modern psychiatry has got it right, I'd be happy to see the whole discipline discarded and started again from scratch. But until we change the social and economic causes of mental harm, there will exist some need to try and alleviate that harm.

Ending the war is the best way to stop soldiers from dying, but you don't then go to war without a medic.

All that notwithstanding, unenlightened has made it quite clear that we're not actually talking about psychiatriy at all, but the whole field of psychology.

I'm guessing you meant to say psychotherapy or psychiatry right? — Isaac

No. I meant what I said, and it is a generalisation about mainstream psychology. — unenlightened

Something about the entire field of study is somehow responsible for class oppression and racial segregation. I'm still unclear what the obvious connection is.

Psychology is in a special class because it's foundational reference, normal behaviour, is by definition state controlled. — boethius

I'm still not seeing the connection between non-clinical psychology and state-controlled 'normal behaviour'. Could you give me some examples of a non-clinical psychology research area which relies on 'normal behaviour' as a foundational reference?

firstly most experiments involve deception — unenlightened

So does a magic trick, is that abuse too?

secondly they always depersonalisation the subject by objectification. — unenlightened

Do they? How?

, your contemptuous language has irritated me sufficiently now. — unenlightened

What contemptuous language? When you have break from accusing my entire profession of class oppression, promoting racial segregation and abusing children, perhaps you could take a moment to quote some of my contemptuous language for my self-improvement.

: the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry... — boethius

OK. So the idea is that all scientific research (in academic institutions) is actually just aimed at propping up the state in some way? So how far back does this go? What's the full extent of human knowledge we must abandon as nothing more than state propaganda?

More importantly, who found all this out? Did one researcher go rougue? Are they dining with the fishes now. I've written some pretty anti-government stuff in the past, do I need to get a Cupbearer?

Roughly at the point where, we hope, they get the permission of the parents, but probably, alas, not of the children themselves to experiment on them. It is the state that allows parents that authority, or denies it to them and the state also demands of psychologists that they gain such permissions. Though it is not well enforced. — unenlightened

I'm not sure what point you're making here, unless, in addition to accusing my profession of perpetuating racial segregation you'd like to add child abuse. I expect we had something to do with the coronavirus outbreak too.

Since parents currently have the authority to dictate virtually every minute of their child's lives from 0 to 16, I'm not seeing how the child psychologist playing with them in the lab has become the bogeyman here.

Do you object if the parent takes them shopping without their permission?

Exactly the same can be said of all science.

The state is capable of manipulating any data at all to legitimise its interventions.

Should we abandoned the whole project?

If we do, what should we use instead to decide maternity and paternity leave? Should we just guess what the impact of any given policy is likely to be? Should we put it out to public vote (and let those with the loudest campaign voices decide)?. I'm not seeing the alternative to just finding out to the best of our (biased, conceptually shackled, culturally influenced) ability.

You didn't even mention perception of object permanence in the under fives. I was asking how the political influence (let's take your example of the legitimacy of the state) should be taken account of when researching, for example, the perception of object permanence in the under fives. Such a researcher might be gathering CR gaze tracking data in response to object manipulation. They want to report the statistical analysis of their findings. At what point do they introduce the question to the legitimacy of the state?

"Environmental factors" ignores the fact that the patient is able to participate in collective action to change the political conditions, and such activity will be, if justified, by definition frustrated, resisted, imprisoned, killed by the state, for which the psychologists are an agent and can do nothing of significance to help (that's not what they're paid to do). — boethius

I'm not seeing what that's got to do with perception of object permanence in the under fives? Perhaps you could join the dots for me?

You won't leave it will you? — unenlightened

The thread is 34 pages long. You raised the issue of psychology being somewhat to blame for the related issues brought up. I gave two responses asking you to defend such an accusation and that's somehow become such an intolerable distraction it must be hived off? Is the idea we just accept your divine wisdom and move on to the next sermon?

OK... So what evidence do you have that ""Environmental factors" is an abstraction to lead the gullible psychologist to believe that "all the bases have been covered", but they have not."?

So far you've yet to cite a single paper to support your damnation of the entire field. To properly support this position you'd need to show that at least a large proportion of non-clinical psychology papers fail to take politics into account as a factor where it can be demonstrated to be one. Since most psychology papers are about rather dry attempts to correlate reported mental activities with external stimuli, I'm struggling to see how politics would be involved. Of course, I end all my papers with "up the revolution!" in bold, but that's just a liberty of old age.

Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

Come and see the violence inherent in the system!

Help! Help! I'm being repressed! — boethius

Am I going to have to call an orderly?

I said "they are part of the problem", just like the vast majority of police who are not trying to be abusive are part of the problem if they tolerate and cover for police that are. — boethius

This is getting ridiculous. What evidence do you have that non-clinical psychologist don't speak out about ignoring environmental factors in diagnosing mental illness? And who said anything about 'covering' for them? Where the hell did that come from? Are there a large number of non-clinical psychologists who you think are somehow 'covering' for the conclusions of those responsible for categorising mental health? This is starting to sound like some tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy nut. We're all in on it are we?

If you're having trouble with these delusional thoughts I can recommend some effective medication to take care of that.

Academic psychologists, at the end of the day, provide these definitions and (more importantly) the entire intellectual framework that removes all political analysis from discussion to begin with, as well as run the experiments to prove any particular "cure" for any particular "mental disease". — boethius

Yeah, some do. The vast majority don't. They investigate how memory is affected by perception, how noisy environments affect learning in autistic children, how social heirachy affects bias formations, how neonates respond to object permanence... I could go on. The vast majority of psychologists are not even tangentially involved in the definition or treatment of mental illness. To accuse us of being somehow complicit in the propping up class and racial segregation because we share a department is ridiculous.

However, please feel free to continue the existing conversation on this topic Psychiatrys Incurable Hubris. — boethius

Yeah, I don't think I'd have much to add there as I think most of psychiatry is a crock of shit.

None of this, however has helped explain your or unenlightened's comments about psychology of which psychiatry is just one branch. It's akin to blaming the whole academic field of Human Biology for the malpractice of the pharmaceutical industry.

The functional roll of psychology within capitalism, as an academic field and medical practice, is to continuously blame the individual, and coach the internalization of that blame, for social problems that they are exposed to. — boethius

OK, so since any long investigation of this issue would definitely be off topic, perhaps you could just point me in the direction of the research you're basing this assertion on, then I can make up my own mind.

I don't think here is the place to defend it, — unenlightened


And therefore I am not going to answer your questions. Your disagreement is registered. — unenlightened

So it was on-topic to assert it, but off-topic to defend it. What a neat trick.

I am referring back to David Smail who I mentioned earlier, as a critic of conventional psychiatry in particular. — unenlightened

Psychology is neither psychiatry nor psychotherapy, they are themselves only branches within clinical psychology which itself is a branch of psychology in general. The only 'industry' around psychology in general is the academic one and its pretty unfair to accuse the entire enterprise of institutionally undermining class conflict and implicitly supporting racial division.

What recent papers in social psychology do you think have undermined class conflict?

Which prominent researchers in child psychology do you think are most responsible for re-integrating society along racial lines?

psychology as an industry is largely in the business of undermining any class consciousness, and supporting, in the first place the individualising and fragmenting of society, whereby poverty and unemployment is an internal psychological failure of ambition, and from there a reintegration along race and national lines and the projection of the internalised resentment onto the 'other'. — unenlightened

WTF? I'm guessing you meant to say psychotherapy or psychiatry right? (You'd be wrong even if you did, but would have at least a leg to stand on).

I've read some unlikely institutions being blamed for this deplorable state of affairs, but psychology....?

I know that the behaviour of children less than one year old does not have what it takes to be able to draw the conclusion that that child demonstrates - to us - that he/she/they understand probability. I'm taking a very strong stance here. I would take the exact same stance regarding monkey behaviour. — creativesoul

Well then what's the point in me discussing the contents of any experiments with you? They're clearly unnecessary. Whatever magical power you've used to just know things without needing to employ any scientific methodology or empirical investigation of any sort, simply apply that to the issue of indigenous tribes and you'll have your answer, carved in stone for you (or however such divine knowledge arrives).

Alternatively, you could consider the possibility that where thousands of hours have been dedicated to carefully constructing experiments, carrying them out and analysing data on a subject you claim to be interested in, you might, at least, show the slightest respect for that work by not dismissing their results out of hand without even looking on the basis that you've 'had a bit of a think about it'.

From the paper;

There is no consensus about the proper interpretation of the probability calculus (2, 3). Regardless of interpretations, however, the basic laws of probability rest on the same extensional considerations, notably, the principle that the probability of an event equals the sum of the probabilities of the various ways in which it can occur.

They were presented with a set of four chips of two different colors, and had to bet on the color of a randomly drawn chip (Fig. 2A). The odds were 3:1 in favor of the prevalent color. In each task, we considered as correct the bet on the more likely color. The Mayan groups did not differ reliably from each other (bilingual correct: 19 of 20; monolingual correct: 14 of 20), χ2(1 n = 40) = 2.8, P = 0.10. Accordingly, in the following analyses, we collapsed their answers into one group. All groups of participants performed better than chance: Mayan adults (correct: 33 of 40), χ2(1 n = 40) = 16.9, P = 0.0004; Mayan school children (correct: 16 of 20), χ2(1 n = 20) = 7.2, P = 0.007; Italian controls (correct: 18 of 20), χ2(1 n = 20) = 12.8, P = 0.0003. These responses seem to reflect a trend due to experience or maturation: Mayan children performed worse than Mayan adults who, in turn, performed worse than Italian controls. A Jonckheere’s test, however, did not reveal a reliable trend in the data, P = 0.39.

In principle, participants might solve the previous tasks by applying some superficial heuristic, rather than a proper chance evaluation. For example, they might bet on the more favorable outcome by considering the absolute number rather than the proportion of possibilities in its favor. To test whether preliterate participants succeed because they apply this “numerosity” heuristic (13), and extend our results, we used a second task [similar to 11] that would show more directly the use of probabilistic reasoning. In each trial, participants had to bet on which of two sets was more likely to yield a winning chip. The simplest trials did not ask for any estimation of proportions, given that one or both sets contained just winning chips (Fig. 3 A and B). Two other trials did ask for this estimation because both sets contained some winning chips (Fig. 3C). In one case, the favorable set contained a larger proportion as well as a greater number of winning chips. In the other case, it contained a larger proportion but not a greater number of winning chips. If preliterate Maya are able to compare the ratio of winning to nonwinning chips across sets, they should succeed in this crucial trial. Indeed, in each trial, all groups performed above chance level (as shown by binomial tests). Task A: all participants performed correctly, P = 0.0009. Task B-left panel: Mayan adults (correct: 33 of 40), P = 0.0002, Mayan school children (correct: 18 of 20), P = 0.0002, Italian adults (correct: 20 of 20), P = 0.0009. Task B-right panel: Mayan adults (correct: 32 of 40), and Mayan school children (correct: 16 of 20), P = 0.006, Italian adults (correct: 18 of 20), P = 0.0002. Task C-left panel: Mayan adults (correct: 37 of 40), P = 0.0009, Mayan school children (correct: 18 of 20), P = 0.0002, Italian adults (correct: 19 of 20), P = 0.0002. Task C-right panel: Mayan adults (correct: 35 of 40), P = 0.0004, Mayan school children (correct: 17 of 20), P = 0.002, Italian adults (correct: 18 of 20), P = 0.0002).

In three tasks, there were k chips of the same color and one chip of a different color. Thus, when k > 3, participants could notice that each chip having the predominant color neighbored k − 1 same-colored chips and only 1 differently-colored chip. Accordingly, they could bet on the “same color” outcome. In three other tasks, there were k pairs of same-colored chips. Thus, participants could notice that each chip had just another chip of the same color and several [actually, 2(k − 1)] chips of different colors. Accordingly, they could bet on the “different color” outcome. As shown in Fig. 4, the rate of Maya’s bets on the same color relation follows the same tendency as the probability of such an outcome.‡ For each participant, we computed an index Q of the quality of their prediction pattern, by normalizing the expected value of the number of correct bets (ref. 15; see also SI Study 3. Probability and Combinatorics). Q ranges from −1 (worse quality) to +1 (best quality). All groups performed above chance level: Monolingual Maya, mean Q = 0.37, SD = 0.53, t(19) = 3.07, P = 0.003, d = 0.69; Bilingual Maya, mean Q = 0.85, SD = 0.25, t(19) = 14.89, P < 0.0001, d = 3.33; Mayan school children, mean Q = 0.58, SD = 0.42, t(19) = 6.20, P < 0.0001, d = 1.39; Italian controls, mean Q = 0.81, SD = 0.38, t(19) = 9.56, P < 0.0001, d = 2.14. A reliable trend (Maya children < Maya adults < Italians, P = 0.03) indicated that performance increased with age and experience, suggesting that some probabilistic intuitions develop into adulthood (24). Unlike in Studies 1 and 2, adult bilingual Maya outperformed monolingual ones, t(38) = 3.67, P = 0.0007, d = 1.16. It is difficult to attribute this result to cultural factors, given that our bilingual and monolingual participants were equally preliterate, and lived in similar socio-economic conditions. Because Study 3 tasks involve mental manipulation of multiple possibilities, this result seems to support evidence for bilingual advantages in reasoning tasks of this sort (16). Despite differences in absolute performance levels, however, the above-chance performance of all groups points to a shared ability to treat possibilities in a combinatorial way.

I haven't cited these sections because I think you might be interested in the results (you've demonstrated you've little interest in anything but supporting your own prior beliefs). I've quoted them to stand as an example of how to investigate some matter you're interested in

• An understanding of the remaining open issues in the field.
• Careful study design, including controls for multiple confounding factors (culture, age, language acquisition).
• Sequential attempts to remove ambiguity in interpretation.
• Appropriate use of statistical techniques to minimise bias.
• Willingness to accept results which cloud the overall picture and offer potential interpretations.

The study took four researchers three years of work to set up, negotiate with contributing authorities and run, plus two statisticians to assist with the results interpretation.

But by all means, if you want to 'have a bit of a think about it' and tell me how they're all wrong be my guest.

So, are you claiming that someone can hold belief to one degree or another, to some specifically quantifiable percentage despite the fact that that individual does not understand probability or percentages, and thus cannot think about his own belief in such terms? — creativesoul

Yep. Demonstrable understanding of probabilities without being able to use the terms correctly or mathematically in indigenous tribes, in children less than 1 year old, and monkeys. I recently read (though I can't find the paper) that it's been demonstrated even in Pigeons.

If one cannot talk about how uncertain one is, then it makes no sense to report upon their belief as if there is some quantifiable degree of certainty for that individual regarding how confidently they hold some belief or other. — creativesoul

No, in Bayesian terms it isn't wrong. The probability just is the confidence with which he assumes I'm behind the curtain, there's nothing more to probability than that. It's expressed in the frequency at which he looks there, the odds he'd accept if he were to place a bet on me being there...

To know what the probability of some event is, one must know all the possible outcomes as well as all of the influencing factors. — creativesoul

- my bold.

So you don't know the probability of anything then, since you can never know all the possible outcomes? That seems like a waste of the term.

Yeah, I misspoke. The cat believes it has four feet, not that "I have four feet" is true. — Banno

But 'that it has four feet' is not a proposition. That's what I was getting confused about. You were wanting to define belief as a "a relation between an agent and a proposition", but 'that is has four feet' is not a proposition - "I have four feet" is a proposition. So the cat doesn't have any beliefs because it doesn't understand any propositions...is what I was lead to conclude. So if the cat believes it has four feet, are you saying that it's belief is a relationship between it and the the proposition that it would hold to be true if it could understand propositions? That seems like an incredibly convoluted way of getting beliefs to relate to propositions. Why not simply say beliefs are not related to propositions, or that they are and the cat doesn't have any - these seem like much simpler solutions?

Ramsey. Worth a whole thread. — Banno

Definitely. I was mooting the idea, but not sure I'd do it justice. It might happen one day.

My gut says that neurone don't represent stuff as percentages - amy more than gasses do - but that we can describe what they are doing in terms of percentages - like we do with the temperature of a gas — Banno

I suppose it depends on what you mean by representation. Neurons, of course, represent stuff as axon potentials and dendritic connections, and that's all there is. But that's like saying computers represent stuff as 1s and 0s. It's trivially true, but doesn't get us very far when talking about their function. We talk about computers in terms of code, software, APIs, drivers, RAM, networks etc. It's somewhat contrived, but it's also more true than any other way of talking about them. Its being contrived doesn't mean there's no right and wrong about how a computer works when parsed in terms of code.

I don't see why we should avoid doing the same for brains. Just because they, fundamentally, represent everything as axon potentials and dendritic connections, doesn't mean we have to restrict ourselves to those terms in order to remain accurate, any more than than you'd tell a computer engineer that he was mistaken to talk about 'code' and 'software' when all computers really are is 1s and 0s.

In that vein, there's a significant amount of evidence that the brain does in fact work in probabilities. In fact, although I might be biased, I'd say at the moment it's the predominant theory in cognitive science. The landmark experiment was this one, but the history of concept is summarised in this paper. Basically, the brain does indeed seem to work in terms of predictions, probabilities, in the same way as computers work in terms of software. In actual fact, if I were to put money on one or other, I'd say that it will demonstrated very soon that it is actually impossible for a brain to represent a belief binomially (true or false), that neural systems are just too vulnerable to temporal iterations to represent anything with 100% certainty.

I speculate that a kind of pre-rational investment in this or that version of the 'hero' or 'target self' quietly drives or controls a rationality that is never 'pure.' — path

Absolutely. I think there's a link there to why we love stories so much - they infuse our culture completely and seem to be almost entirely universal and cross-cultural. The 'Hero', the 'Villain', the 'Quest', from aboriginal Australians to Hollywood screenwriters. I think we've brought into being, or formalised, one of the mechanisms of social cohesion. Create a hero and villain (be this, don't be that), describe the quest (act like this). It's much more powerful a guide when embedded in a narrative than any dry set of moral rules could be - 'love thy neighbour' vs. 'be like Han Solo' - I know which was more powerful a guide in my playground. Why do we need the whole narrative to make it work? - Perhaps because our ideas are really a web of belief (as Quine put it) and we need the whole package to see how it fits together. When other interests take over storytelling though, that worries me...but that's totally off topic. So many threads from this would make good topics on their own.

I don't believe I am. If you replace the words "sympathy for the words "empathy" in my paragraph it makes no sense. — Wheatley

I didn't say anything about the terms being interchangeable within your post. You've made a claim about empathy which does not apply to it, it applies to sympathy. We cannot empathise with a psychopath because we cannot feel the same things he feels. Your conclusion that we cannot feel bad for a psychopath does not follow from the fact that we can't feel what he feels because feeling bad for someone is sympathy,not empathy.

You're just confusing empathy with sympathy. Empathy is (broadly) feeling what another person is feeling, sympathy is caring about what another person is feeling. The two are not mutually dependant.

It wouldn't harm the philosophy to leave out the insults. — unenlightened

Yeah, I agree, and insult can come in the form of more than just foul language.

I tend to draw a distinction though, between philosophy and rhetoric. It's not always clear, in the more political threads, whether the imperative is to be collaborative or persuasive or just declarative and all three have their place from time-to-time. I find it bizarre (aside from just offensive) to find people using insulting language when we're talking about, say, constructivist or non-constructivist views of infinity, but I find it neither offensive nor strange to encounter strong language when we're supposed to be talking about a man who's just been murdered by his own community's police, and people want to discuss some broken windows. To everything there is a season...

I'm sure @StreetlightX can speak for himself, but just to point out how clear it is to an outsider, Chester was banned for

being a low quality poster — StreetlightX

...not just for using insulting or derogatory terms. His posts were consistently nothing but unsourced speculation which told us nothing more than what he would like to be the case.

What matters is not the language we use to express our arguments, but the quality of them. Are they well-sourced? Are they thought through? Do they defer to experts or previous commentators with similar ideas?

To suggest that Streetlight's posts and Chester's are in any way the same just because they both have something of a brash turn of phrase is to completely miss the point.

As I think I might have mentioned before, I'd ban another score of posters for the same reason if I were a mod. Its a private discussion forum, not parliament.

Even people being willfully obnoxious are IMV performing for at least a virtual community. — path

I read that in terms of genius outsiders performing for a projected community that they hope to create. — path

Yeah, this definitely happens, they are fairly well studied areas in social psychology. It's known as perceived entitivity. People act in such a way as to conform to the typical behaviour of the social group to which they wish to belong (not necessarily the one to which they actually do belong by practical entitivity).

It's an area of great interest to me, the extent to which our beliefs (by my definition) are formed and maintained by social group dynamics.

Do we know what we mean by 'physical'? Or 'mental' for that matter? — path

Well, in terms of using the term, I think we just want other people to feel compelled to agree with us, but I'm a psychologist, I think practically everything comes down to social acceptance!

The gist of saying something is 'physical' is making it more difficult for the other person to disagree. I'm not saying here that it's nothing more than a cheap rhetorical trick, I really do believe that there's a physical world distinct from my mental constructs, but I'm trying to look at the sentence "chairs are physical objects" in the same terms as we looked at "meet me by the tree", what is it trying to do. I think the answer to that is that it is trying to get the listener to take the chair as relatively indisputable.

Oh, and on the subject neural underpinnings, you might be interested to know that there's a response in the brain called a p600 effect (not important why), it alerts us to novelty in various processes. It's active when we process sentences of ambiguous meaning. It completely inactive when we don't. I just thought it might be of interest given your conversation with Banno (which was a good read, by the way). We really do, it seems, have whole sentences and responses which are processed almost on autopilot, only being flagged occasionally when something novel turns up.

People are sure that they know what 'tree' means — path

Hardly. I don't know how much experience you have with your native flora, but pick some medium-large sized woody plant and ask people if it's a tree or a shrub.

The point is it doesn't matter. If I say "meet me by that tree" no one's going to get confused if they think we're in a shrubbery. The purpose of the sentence is to say get the other person to be at some place I have in mind. If it does that then who cares what 'tree' means? It just has to be close enough to something we're both going to respond to in the same way.

I don't think that humans know exactly what they mean by 'mind' or 'physical' or so many other words. Instead we are just trained with reward and punishment to use such words appropriately enough. — path

If this is the case (and I'm very much inclined to agree with you), then would it not be more likely that there is no such thing as what a word means... Rather than that such a thing exists but we don't know what it is?

Well, yes, in the end it is presumably something physical...

But how, that remains an unknown. — Banno

Indeed. I hope I have been clear enough about the speculative nature of pretty much all neuroscience and cognitive psychology. That's not to say one can reasonably just discard it's findings, they need to be accounted for, but they are far from demonstrating something particular to be the case. If I come across as more assertive about the interpretation of the evidence than I mean to it's just a reaction to some of bullshit ad hoc 'reckoning' that seems to pass for serious empirical assumptions around here and that frustration may leak out into conversation with those other than the worst offenders. If so, my apologies.

Isn't it also "in" the house and the apple? The size relation between apples and houses makes no sense without apples and houses.

I'm more incline to embodied cognition...

Indeed, I'd be incline to look even further afield, to seeing cognition as embedded in the world; after all, language is best seen as being so embedded.

But I suspect you have less realist, more idealist sympathies. — Banno

No, no, quite the contrary. If you've read any of my discussions with @fdrake about active inference, you'll know that I believe our brains are in an inextricable relationship with their environment such that the very structure of our neural architecture reflects structures in reality (our body map for example is largely arranged in the same spatial relation as our actual body). I've often been accused of being an idealist, but I'm not. The confusion probably arises (as I've recently realised in another conversation) from a failure on my part to make clear the difference between object recognition pathways and object interaction pathways. These take completely different routes through the brain, right from the moment the signal leaves the retina. I believe it's perfectly possible to be idealist about object identification (tree, car, mother, father...) but be entirely realist about the degree to which we are embedded physically in the external world (we touch it, get feedback from it etc...).

In fact the evidence from infant object recognition studies seems to back up this position. Infants show surprise when objects defy laws of physics (disappear, pass through one another, fit into container smaller than the object itself...), but they show no surprise when one object spontaneously changes into another (cup becomes a pumpkin). They don't seem to be born with any sense of object recognition, but they are born with neural architecture which reflects the external reality they're born into.

To make this work it would have to be related back to the cat not being able to believe it will be fed next Tuesday while believing it has four feet. — Banno

I don't understand where you're going here. If...

every belief is a relation between an agent and a proposition, such that the agent holds the proposition to be the case. The general form of a belief is "A holds that P is true" — Banno

...then the cat has no beliefs. It doesn't believe either of those propositions because it doesn't understand propositions, it can't possibly form an opinion about whether they're true or not. All a cat has is it's biology, no language. If you want to talk about beliefs outside of biology, then the cat has none. If you want to say the cat believes it has legs because it would hold the proposition "I have legs" to be true if it could understand the proposition, then I suppose it could work...but why would you need to do that?

Four possibilities:
Janus believes Banno has a front door
Janus believes Banno does not have a front door
Janus does not believe Banno has a front door
Janus does not believe Banno does not have a front door

You are saying that before the question, you adhered to Janus does not believe Banno has a front door and Janus does not believe Banno does not have a front door...? — Banno

When I play hide-and-seek with my nephew, the first place is comes to look is behind the curtain. Does he believe the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain"? If he does he's very sorely misunderstood the nature of the game, it's entirely predicated on the fact fact that I might be behind the curtain, but I might not. So does he believe the proposition "My uncle might be behind the curtain"? Well, that wouldn't quite capture the situation either. He often looks behind the curtain first, it's his best guess, maybe 50% of the time. So does he believe the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain 50% of the time", well, he's a smart lad, but he doesn't understand either probability or percentages yet, so he can't believe a proposition he can't understand.

Ramsey's solution is that he believes the proposition "My uncle is behind the curtain" with a probability of 50%. Belief is not binomial, one does not think of propositions as either true or false, but one believes them each to a degree. I believe your house has a front door to a certain degree.

As to your (perhaps more important question) about whether that belief pre-exists prior to your asking; no, I don't see how it could. If we are not to hold that we are born with a full and exhaustive set of beliefs, we have to accept that they are generated (not to mention the absolute mountain of empirical evidence that this is case), so I don't see any good reason not to assume the belief that your house has a front door is generated the moment I give it any thought, but all that existed before then were a set of prior beliefs (about houses and doors) which I would use to generate this new belief about 'your' house and door.

[

The way I see it, that kind of thought experiment is more a tool to check how the moving parts of a philosophy work in extremis. If the result is absurd, that's good cause to check where that absurdity comes from. — Echarmion

Can you think of an example of this, where an absurd result from a thought experiment has been a red flag in this sense. I'm not entirely sure what you mean and I think an example might help.

open the door, then that act shows that I believe there is a door. Or, if I tell you my belief via language, then the act of telling you reveals what I believe. Meaning also is revealed in how we use words in social contexts. — Sam26

All of this tells me how these things are revealed. If someone asks "what does does a painting consist of?" the answer is not "a paintingis revealed when the artist pulls the covering cloth away". I'm not asking how we recognise the existence of beliefs, I'm asking what they are, for you. I'm a physicalist, so my answer would be that what they are, is some collection of neurons. Neurons are the physical manifestation.

I'm wondering if, for you, there's some realm of existence outside of the physical, were such things as beliefs exist, or if they exist physically but are just not neuron clusters but some other physical things.

I don't mind if the question just doesn't interest you, but it silly to suggest that explaining how we recognise something is the same as explaining what kind of thing it is.

it's just expressing a modern version of age-old concerns about skepticism, because are heads are the jars. — Marchesk

...

That's ok dear, that's ok. — fdrake

Still an appropriate response, no?

He'd learn he was a bat dreaming of being John Wick in the Matrix. — Marchesk

Yes, but what is it like to be a bat dreaming of being John Wick in the Matrix?

one might argue that torturing a p-zombie wouldn't be wrong since it doesn't feel pain. — Marchesk

Yes, but what if the p-zombie was just a brain in a vat? What if he was colourblind tortured p-zombie brain in a vat? Would he learn anything new when he sees red?