Others expect me to stop othering them, but they refuse to stop othering me. What does it matter if I stop othering others if they still other me? — baker

If Hitler says you are a Jew or a queer or an imbecile or a Jehovah's Witness, it doesn't matter what you think or who you other; off to the extermination camp you go. In the game of identity power is everything. But what is your point? There is nothing personal here. No one expects anything of you, except to die when killed.

The other is at least our moral inferior, but at the same time an existential threat. Both aspects are essential for our unity; without the other we fragment into internal conflict. The other necessitates, justifies and takes the blame for the burden of suffering entailed by the individual's subjugation to the group, and there can be no group that is not defined in terms of its other. 'Othering' thus becomes a process, the threat of which controls us. If you demonstrate insufficient revulsion and hatred for the other, you may be seen as, and so become, other yourself. This loss of identity is a fate worse than death. Such a fate worse than death gives rise to the martyr - one who dies to maintain their identity.

Wiki summarizes it into stages well:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism — Hanover

What wiki illustrates is that there is a coinciding of religion, ethnicity, and economic group. Conflict Sociology suggests that the more these boundaries align, and the sharper they are, the more likely there is to be open conflict. And as is usual in living systems, the reverse is also the case, the more there is conflict, the more aligned and sharp the boundaries will remain.

Most often, the Picts, Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Huguenots, etc, etc merge over time into a common folk sharing the land to the extent that such identities become lost entirely. If I had to speculate, I would suggest that the language and the Book were central along with a rare tradition of universal learning, (hence 'argumentative'?) aided by a tribal religion with strict rules about marriage and something of an obsession with lineage.

If I got bombs, I'd rather use bombs and not risk my own skin. If I got guns I'll use them; if all I got is piano wire, I'll throttle you with that, because you are the baddie and I am the goodie.

If civilians are all innocent and all equal, then fighters are all guilty, and all equal. The distinction between group A and group B is arbitrary and has no moral significance, unless it already has that moral significance.

. The claw, as an example, is not the Ding an sich; it is precisely not the "thing in itself." Rather, it is what mind makes of it, namely an example of something or other. — Introduction

The wiki page has sections on mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, as well as arthropods, and a nice picture of a beetle claw. They leave out the claw hammer, the clawed foot bath and other furniture, and that thing on the end of cranes with 3 great hooks for picking up logs and boulders etc, or in the case of those arcade machines usually, to not quite pick up the prize.

Bateson is not referring to a thing, but to this pattern, this family resemblance that connects. In the end, he is saying, what one can think about and talk about is always the abstraction, and never the particular, and that mind is 'made of' these patterns that we name.

To make sense of the world is to find the patterns, which is to say the regularities; this, that and the other can all be claws, but 'the claw' is none of them in particular. And this pattern of making sense of the patterns of the world is the meta-pattern, that Bateson is drawing attention to. This is philosophy, because philosophy above all is its own meta.

It all seems rather Kantian, but with 'substance' dropping out of the conversation altogether like a Wittgenstein beetle, leaving a monism of form and process. There's a point later on where he describes an electrical switch in its functional existence as either a gap in a circuit when off, or nothing at all, not even a gap when on.

I have a fairly strong argument for the conceivability of philosophical zombies, based on the premise that folks can very easily mistake a clearly non conscious language program for a conscious being.

If one finds things that exist inconceivable, one is in trouble, philosophically.

if Muslim leaders & their followers would do the same. — Nicholas

I don't remember that bit of the quote. If only folks would do what I want, I wouldn't have to bully them so much. Saith the Lord of the flies.

Civilians get killed in war. Should the Allies not have bombed German cities? — RogueAI

Who are you asking now? The war crimes tribunal? They only prosecute losers. So win at any cost seems to be the moral thing to do. Losers attempt to commit genocide; winners unfortunately, reluctantly, find that collateral damage occurs.

It's a dangerous game asking moral questions, because if you cannot win by fair means, then you ought to be content to lose. The suggestion that one cannot have it both ways is unwelcome.

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. — Romans 12: 19-21

The violent attack on Israel is far worse than the defensive reply with violence. Defense is permitted, attack is not — Nicholas

I remember the good old days when 'defence' meant trying to stand your ground and chase the enemy off your territory, and attacking the ground your enemies held was called 'attack'. Life was simpler back then.

Trump is losing his mind. — Michael

With luck, it's more that the rest of us (US) are regaining our minds. Trump is preparing himself for jail by channeling Nelson Mandela. He would go to his execution convinced he is Jesus.

Would you like to answer that question? — schopenhauer1

Certainly. What one should do in these circumstances is die. It's very clear; Jesus did it and he told his followers to do it. And everyone can understand it. The blood sacrifice has to be made. All the horror comes from wanting someone else to do it.

Should the Allies have bombed Nazi Germany in 1945? — schopenhauer1

Still looking for the moral high ground? The moral high ground, preferably with a deep surrounding ditch of historical persecution and subjugation, is always the most easily defensible, especially when guarded by "innocent civilians".

Everyone agree? — FreeEmotion

Everyone agrees, of course.

Except the enemy.

Their own, or the blood of civilians? — FreeEmotion

As if there is more than one kind of person. "The blood of our civilians is sacred, but the blood of your civilians doesn't count at all."

Blood.

The righteousness of of any people is directly proportional to the amount of blood they are prepared to sacrifice. That is the agreement that makes war possible, and the spilling of blood maintains identity and unity.

How else can we identify both ourselves and the common good, except by contrast with the others and their common evil?

We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, We shall never surrender. — Churchill

The fight is always existential; the blood shed demonstrates the worth of the bloodline, without which 'we' dissolve into mere 'folk' and 'sheeple'.

Yet all the 'People of the Book' will agree on the barbarity of the human sacrifice of "primitive people", even as they contend to pile up the most of 'their own' copses to prove their virtue.

Do you think you are different?

It's the same old cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, goodies and baddies, traumatised and traumatising, innocent civilians and guilty terrorists. a roundabout of death and destruction.

Finkelstein is someone I could listen to. Comparing the Palestinians to his Jewish holocaust survivor mother; and then to the slave revolts; even Jesus would weep.

You keep saying interesting incomprehensible things: Explain yourself!

As a meta-theory [anti-realism] forces the ethicist to evaluate ethics on something other than the usual. — Moliere

What is the usual, and what is the other? I can guess on behalf of the realist that their usual basis for judging an ethical theory is whether or not it is true, absolutely or approximately.


Suppose I define a desire as "identification with a personal judgement of an imagined future", I think this suggests that a perverse desire is one that is either incompatible with the desires of others, or that is incompatible with reality(they amount to the same thing, because others are always part of reality). The former case demands a meta judgement of 'our' desires that is the province of ethics, and that means that perversity can be personal or social.

If I want of you, that which is incompatible with your desires, then a social judgement can be made as to which of our desires is perverse. But the case of global warming is the paradigm of collective social desires incompatible with reality:— to have an energy rich and wasteful economy, and a stable and productive environment. The personal equivalent would be things like wanting to be a concert pianist, but not wanting to practice for several hours every day, or wanting to give up an addiction but not wanting to go through any withdrawal process.

The perversity of pornography is the perversity of advertising, that it deliberately sets out to stimulate desires that it cannot fulfil. The sexual desires of the innocent adolescent (as was), are incoherent urges towards an unclear and unimaginable intimacy. Porn provides cartoon images of a fabricated unreal intimacy that is never mutual, because it is only an image; but the unreal image attaches to the primitive urge and thus develops a perverse desire that can never be fulfilled in reality, but becomes an unsatisfying addiction. Fast food and beauty products work in a similar way. This is the building up of desire, as unreachable because unrealistic images. Compare this with the job of the architect, planner, or engineer which is to make images of realisable ideas, that might be desired.

Not to value and employ men of superior ability is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves; not to prize articles which are difficult to procure is the way to keep them from becoming thieves; not to show them what is likely to excite their desires is the way to keep their minds from disorder.

Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones.

He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from action, good order is universal. — Lao Tzu

(Legge translation)

I see the potentiality as being in both, and the actuality as being in the interaction. — Janus

Yes, that's about right.

Chat GPT, thou art a woman.

Suppose there were an Experience Machine that would give you any experience you desired.

Something that might help to clarify matters is to analyse somewhat the nature of desire.

one desires to combat the vehemence of a drive at all, however, does not stand within our own power; nor does the choice of any particular method; nor does the success or failure of this method

What is the source of this force or drive? If I can dismiss the teleology of the desirable thing exerting a causal force backwards in time, then the source can only be an image that one forms in the mind. I imagine the happy release of having a drink, and the imaginary beer induces my action to accomplish it in fact.

So one is driven by imagination, or by imaginary things. One can immediately see the shortcomings of the experience machine, which are the limitations of the imagination. Alas my imagination could never come up with a Bach fugue, or a Picasso, or a fine oak tree, or any of the wonders of my life, so a world limited to my desires would be a feeble shadow of the real world that consistently exceeds anything I could desire. So no experience machine for me, thanks.

It isn't real 'til it's happening in the US.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2314607120

I noticed this, that seemed related to the topic.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2310223120

unenlightened :up: Yes, as I said, changes, even absent anyone to observe them, are news "at least potentially". — Janus

You did, but I think you are not quite right in a small but important way. The potentiality is in the observer, not the changes.

DNA "is" (functions as) a recipe, an algorithm, a memory, in relation to an organism - environment matrix.

Example: a human zygote has DNAprogramming that begins something like "repeat n, [divide, stick together]. if endometrium, then implant." If this goes wrong, there might result an ectopic pregnancy, or a clump of cells going down the pan. But if all goes well, on implantation a communication begins between mother and embryo that eventually results in another little unenlightened, or Bateson, or someone.

So to make a human, all you need is around 700mb of DNA ...

... and a fully functioning female human and supportive environment and about 9 months construction time.

Notice the recursion in the recipe, as if Delia were to say, "to make a cake, start with a cake, and then..."

And someone is going to ask, "Which came first, the human or the human genome?" as if there was a beginning to the circle of life.

Likewise, all the algorithm for the decimal iteration of pi needs is a computer and energy and time to produce a decimal string vastly larger than the algorithm.

So much for computers and little biological machines. Now what are the ingredients and recipe for thinking all this stuff? A bunch of humans, a supportive environment, communication...

I would say that when the rain streams down the cliffs and the wind howls against them, there are changes and that changes are "news", at least potentially. — Janus

They are changes that make a difference to a seagull that nests in the cliff.
They are differences that make a difference to a seagull that nests in the cliff.

The seagull has a mental map of its home, and the change in the cliff is news to the seagull that makes a difference to its map. It might also make a difference to the map of a local fisherman.

But at least on Bateson's map of mapping, if it doesn't make a difference to a life-form it is a difference that makes no difference.

If a rock falls from a cliff and no one is around to notice, it doesn't make a difference that makes a difference, but if a tree falls in the forest, the whole forest knows about it in all sorts of ways, especially the tree itself if it is still alive.

So changes are potential news, only to life that can be affected in some way. News is not events, but the communication of events.

The US has an independent assessment that it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad group rocket that misfired and hit the hospital in Gaza, two senior officials have told our US partner network NBC News.
It would match what Israel has said caused the blast.
Palestinian health officials and Hamas have blamed an Israeli airstrike for the explosion, which they said killed almost 500 people.
White House national security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson also told NBC News that US analysis of "overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information" suggests Israel is not responsible for the blast.

https://news.sky.com/story/israel-gaza-war-latest-hamas-palestine-sky-news-live-blog-12978800

I'm not sure what the assessment is independent of exactly, or who will credit it. Still, 'death goes on', as they say.

Just looking at the BBC report from the scene, I'm not seeing a big crater, and I'm not seeing lots of demolished buildings and damaged buildings. Rather it looks like a lot of people camped in the hospital courtyard, and a rather modest explosion in a crowded place. So it does rather look to me as if it was more likely a palestinian missile gone horribly wrong.

One of the things I like about Bateson is the way he bypasses "consciousness" to a great extent, and bypasses ontology, in favour of process, relationship, sensation, and thinking. I feel if we could get some clarity about these aspects of our own being, the 'problem' of consciousness might be more tractable, or at least less important. Instead of asking what it is that thinks, ask what thinking does, and how it makes a difference in the world; and this involves recognising that thinking is what one is doing in asking or answering such questions.

Back to the beginning.

... there is a single knowing which characterizes evolution as well as aggregates of humans, even though committees and nations may seem stupid to two-legged geniuses like you and me.

I was transcending that line which is sometimes supposed to enclose the human being. In other words, as I was writing, mind became, for me, a reflection of large parts and many parts of the natural world outside the thinker.

On the whole, it was not the most crudest, the simplest, the most animalistic and primitive aspects of the human species that were reflected in the natural phenomena. It was, rather, the more complex, the aesthetic, the intricate, and the elegant aspects of people that reflected nature. It was not my greed, my purposiveness, my so-called "animal," so-called "instincts," and so forth that I was recognizing on the other side of that mirror, over there in "nature." Rather, I was seeing there the roots of human symmetry, beauty and ugliness, aesthetics, the human being’s very aliveness and little bit of wisdom. His wisdom, his bodily grace, and even his habit of making beautiful objects are just as "animal" as his cruelty. After all, the very word "animal" means "endowed with mind or spirit (animus)."

Against this background, those theories of man that start from the most animalistic and maladapted psychology turn out to be improbable first premises from which to approach the psalmist’s question: "Lord, What is man?" — Introduction

The above are Bateson's words, Bateson's thoughts, and you and I can entertain them, attempt to understand them, and conceivably adopt them to some extent.

So necessarily, a cell, any living cell, has to know how to live, and how to reproduce. Necessarily, a committee has to know how to make a decision. Necessarily, a philosopher has to know how to think about thinking. And in each case there is an abstract pattern that informs and directs a circular relation of influences that constitutes a complex system.
"A cell knows how to divide" does not seem to mean that I know how to divide; my cells know things that I do not. Likewise, committees often seem to know less than their members know.

I know how to direct my fingers to the keys to make sentences, but I cannot explain that knowhow to you, any more than the planning department can handle a spade, but only how to commission a workforce. Have a play in your own mind with what knowing is going on in and around you; have a look at some of the examples in this book. Do you think a post through first and then dictate/copy it through your fingers, or does each phrase somehow suggest the next one, in concert with some overall vague scheme?

Read a little beyond what I have quoted, and you will find a suggestion that we moderns have formed a distorted conception of ourselves as angel/devils or soulless machine masters of the universe. It is in how we understand the 'human condition' that I think a paradigm shift is being proposed. A psychological shift that reunites human with nature, and mind with body. Quick as you like please, because the soulless machine masters are killing us all.

Thinking of Whitehead, I understand him to view consciousness as emergent, it is experience he sees as elemental. His concept of experience is broad, so he would say that, for example, "the cliffs experience the erosive effects of the wind and rain", which is analogous to the way our sentient bodies are precognitively affected by photons, sound waves, scent molecules and so on. — Janus

This seems rather problematic to me. I suggest that the cliffs experience erosion the way I experience being operated on under general anaesthetic; which is hopefully not at all. Consciousness returns afterwards and I experience the after-effects of the wound and the healing thereof. In this regard there is a very clear distinction between stuff that happens to me and stuff I experience, and to equivocate between them is to confuse oneself. My toenails grow, but I am not conscious of their growth as they grow, though I may notice that they have grown when I cannot get my shoes on.

I am interested here in looking at what Bateson is saying. And one of the things he is saying is that consciousness - he doesn't actually use the word much - so let us say that what is sensed is not ever the thing in the world, but always news of a difference. So the eye vibrates very slightly, and the vibration produces a strong change at the edges of objects in the field of vision. This edge detection is how we see and separate one thing from another. Always he is talking about relationships and layers of relationships between relationships. And patterns of coding. Edges are not things in the world as such, but the vibration produces a flashing at the edges that informs the organism about the environment in ways that matter to it, like telling friend from foe. In this way mind is simply 'more life', and it is all process and all networks of active relations.

Cliffs don't have eyes or noses or nervous systems, so there is no 'news' generated by anything that happens to them, and thus no experience.

I came across this in my reading that might just satisfy you that the title was at least not intended to be understood tautologically.

We face, then, two great stochastic systems that are partly in in­teraction and partly isolated from each other. One system is within the individual and is called learning,· the other is immanent in heredity and in populations and is called evolution. One is a matter of the single life­ time; the other is a matter of multiple generations of many individuals.
The task of this chapter is to show how these two stochastic sys­tems, working at different levels of logical typing, fit together into a single ongoing biosphere that could not endure if either somatic or gene­tic change were fundamentally different from what it is. The unity of the combined system is necessary. — P.149

Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something

It's that "only" that makes all the trouble. It suggests that there is a perspective of absolute nothingness that we have overlooked all this time. It doesn't come right out and say so, but it would be uncontroversial if it were phrased, "Absolute nothingness is impossible from any perspective." We could all nod and move on.

I figure Bateson is a paradigm change that has not happened yet.

Noticing the repetition of iterations is not the same as saying what they are. — Paine

That is very much the feeling i have too; both for the academic world at large, and in my own understanding.

Watching this sequence of cat behavior and the sequence of my reading of it (because the system we are talking about is, in the end, not Just cat but man-cat and perhaps should be considered more complexly than that, as man-watching-man's-watching-cat-watching-man), there is a hierarchy of contextual components as well as a hierarchy concealed within the enormous number of signals given by the cat about herself. — P. 117

Here is a small example of one particular shift that is about the identity of the observer. Whenever what is going on is an interaction between living beings, all the sense of both are involved in a communication that affects both, and this communication is not distinct from the 'internal' communication that constitutes each being's own awareness. Man and cat merge in mutual observation.

With this in mind, I can suggest that when we mutually understand each other, we are in that moment literally 'of one mind' in regards to that which we mutually understand, And this contrasts with the all too common case where I do not understand myself, and project that misunderstanding onto the other, recreating my own cognitive dissonance in the relationship.

Rather it's accepting oneself as what one is and modifying desires — Moliere

Is this not a direct contradiction? As the therapist proverbially says, "the lightbulb has to want to change."

But honestly, I don't understand much of what you are saying. I'd better be quiet.

Is the consumption of life to preserve life a perversion, or can you see it as a natural flow which can become perverted? — Moliere

That question suggests, (rightly I think) that perversion is in the seer more than the seen. That is, the first perversion is the cleaving of the individual such that they can stand in judgement of their own desires. And from that judgement comes the repression and then the projection onto the world of whatever is seen to be perverse. Perversion is the buck that is always passed and never stops. It is the human condition. The epicurean is naturally a connoisseur of perversion. Too much would be gross, but a little spice in your girls (or boys) ...

Thanks. I was snarky back, so apologies returned less 10% for provocation. :wink:

I have to take issue with your link quoted above on one issue. I do not believe Bateson was a determinist, and I certainly do not believe that determinism is one of the necessary presuppositions of the thesis he presents here, because if it had been he would have declared it and made an argument for it. He's a far too careful, and self-aware thinker to have missed it.

See here for example for a claim that he "... consistently opposed determinism." https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783231?typeAccessWorkflow=login# (no special access required for the quote)

Also the "Science never proves anything" section pretty much rules it out.

Really now. You actually have to think about whether America or Nazi Germany should have won? — RogueAI

Really now? You actually have to ask again the question I have just explained why I cannot answer as if you cannot understand plain English?

Say what you like about Trump, — Chisholm

Alas, there is nothing I like about Trump. But your analysis of the situation is otherwise about right. The moral vacuum gets filled with poisonous nonsense of various sorts. I think it is no coincidence though, that this global belligerence and stupidity coincides with the birth pangs of a fully automated economy with little need of human labour. The invisible hand is wielding the scythe.

Who you rather have won WW2, the Allies or Axis? It's a really easy question to answer, is it not? — RogueAI

I don't find it easy. I know roughly where we are, but I have little idea of where we would be if everything was different. Probably none of "us" would have been born, but a lot of other people would, because all the acts of procreation since would have been different. Counterfactual history is so much a work of the imagination, that it cannot be a reliable guide to action. And that basically fucks the utilitarian calculation altogether. The defeat of Europe would have seemed bad to "us", but the defeat of Russia, might have seemed preferable to what we have - nobody knows.

Has anyone noticed that analysis in terms of of goodies and baddies is a recipe for continued conflict? Everyone is always a reluctant justified sinner, who will become a saint as soon as circumstance allows, but has a duty to protect the innocent by whatever means necessary, even by the slaughter of enemy innocents.

One ought not to judge from the sidelines, as @Hanover says. But since he is also on the sidelines, he really ought not to judge the Palestinian regime either. We can judge each other though as to our posts. The UK suffered sporadic terrorist acts from the IRA for years, and the government was not full of moral scruple in dealing with them. Governments like to be seen to be doing something in a crisis, but prefer to do nothing when public opinion is divided. All their effort goes into manipulating opinion and then following it, and the rationality and morality that results is negligible.

The most dangerous thing in the world is a man with nothing left to lose, who sees his way to a justice of leaving others in the same place. It would be a brave pacifist that stood in his way. But if you want peace, you have to give the man who has nothing something of what he wants, that he stands to lose in the next fight. Or else kill him. But leaving a million people on your border with nothing is a recipe for trouble.

And vice versa?
— unenlightened

The existential threat to Gaza is Hamas provoking war with Israel. — Hanover

Oh, dear. One way moral rights is a rather old-fashioned look these days. Not that the other side is any different, you understand. But if you can't even see that mutuality of existential terror, then destruction must reign until the final triumph of good. Let the four horsemen ride!