I blame Nietzsche.

more balanced discussions — Benkei

On one side, there is a lesson to learn that the world needs a coordinated response, if containment is to be effective, and any quarantine measures or zoning needs to be globally instituted, and enforced.

But against any such measures we have the danger of suppressing debate in order to achieve that coordination, particularly when global companies with friends in high places have financial interests that might override their, ahem, natural humanitarian concerns.

A post-moral world is a post-truth world, and in a post truth world there is no trust or honour, so in the end no lesson can be learned at all. Next time, it will probably be much worse, and the response more fragmented and self-serving than ever. "Let's forget about it" follows from the inability to take what is said by politicians or medics as honest and truthful.

I'll walk you out in the morning dew, my honey; I guess it doesn't matter, anyway. — Bonnie Dobson via The Grateful Dead

By your argument a citizen in this society would be free by fact of not having to make a choice what model car to buy. — invicta

That's right. As it is, the poor chap must choose between various compromises between fast, safe, comfortable, reliable and affordable. One buys a car and then one is stuck with it. One minute of freedom and years of tyranny? And why does one want a car? - it promises the freedom of the road, apparently, but it does not deliver.

Why do you value this choice? It is a fake, because whatever you choose, the car has already been made, not to your specification but to someone else's. The one you want does not exist, and you could not afford it if it did.

Do you feel deprived that there is only one voltage of mains electricity available? Of course not; it is a boon, because all your devices will work anywhere. You don't have to think about it until you travel abroad. And that is freedom.

Nobody needs a choice of 100 different brands of factory made biscuits. It's oppressive and a burden. Have one of my home made biscuits, and next week, I'll make some different ones. The freedom of the consumer's choice is a fake freedom that produces the opposite, addiction.

I don't see any talk about making non-mask wearing compulsory. — Isaac

Not since the ban the burkha thing.

The general venal awfulness and total incompetence of the UK government has been rather a theme in my general posting here for some time. The idiotic waste of the expertise and resources of the NHS track and trace system already in place for sexually transmitted diseases, and the emptying of hospitals of elderly patients back into the care homes that were supposed to be ring-fenced were just the beginning. But the problem is bigger than that. There needed to be a global response, and there was none. Containment isolation and eradication could have worked in the early stages, but there's no point in half the world containing and eradicating. So we had the unedifying scramble for vaccines, and let it rip amongst the poor.

We vote for self-serving politicians because they represent us, unfortunately. The bald monkeys are throwing their shit at each other as usual.

Non-choices are completely different to choices. Imagine choice being two forks in a road and non-choice just a straight road.

The question of free will then only applies when we come to that fork in the road.

Objections to the bit in bold ? — invicta

Yes, objection. Choice is always conflict, and conflict is the end of freedom.

It is always will that is supposed to be free, but my experience is the opposite. Freedom for me is pottering about in the garden doing the next job that comes along, not choosing, not deciding or thinking, but responding to the situation -- weeds to the compost, weed roots into a bag to rot in the dark, stones to a bucket, litter to another bag. Tidying, tidying... Freedom is the road, not the junction; planting the seeds, not browsing the catalogue.

The junction imposes a decision, so one has to make a determination, and then one is free again.

It is clear to me that I made a choice (on creating this topic) — invicta

You made the same choice that everyone makes, to conjoin the same misbegotten pair freedom and will. Except it was not a choice. Although you could have separated them, you never considered it, because the dilemma was already formed, and the impossibility of either free will or determinism already fixed. Although your two posts at least open the possibility of a surgical separating of, not freewill and determinism, but freedom and wilfulness.

We address matters of unworkable complexity by limiting the number of factors involved and simplifying those factors further by establishing a sole purpose and importance. The criteria for what is unworkable complexity is low. To express one's self, in thinking or communication, there needs to be a concise message. Of all the points of possible relevance that could be brought up and used to reach some type of conclusion, it is not feasible to use more than a handful. — Judaka

I don't much like the this kind of use of 'we'. Let me give an example: I go to a restaurant and order a steak. I have learned from experience in restaurants that I like my steaks medium-rare. And I have learned also the sizes and rough differences between fillet, rump, and T-bone, So I order a medium-rare fillet. This simple classification system of meat cuts, no two of which are identical, has been established over time by the catering industry help ignorami like me get what we want with a little trial and error.

The chef receives the order, and sets to work with his far more sophisticated understanding, adjusting the timings and the pan heat to achieve a result that matches my expectations using his particular experience with his particular stove and pan.

Now the chef knows something about pans; he favours a pan with enough weight to maintain a good temperature when the cold meat is put in, and a composition that will conduct the heat from the stove evenly all over. So he has tried several pans before finding his favourite.

The pan is manufactured by a firm that has specialised in good cookware for many years and has metallurgists, foundry workers, research scientists, ergonomics experts and chefs, all working together to continually refine and improve the design and manufacture of their pans so they are as functional, consistent and reliable as possible.

They buy their steel from another company that ...

The beef for the restaurant comes from a butchers' that ...

The farm raises their cattle ...

The cooker ...

Government regulation and enforcement of standards, weights and measures, public health, gas safety in appliances, etc, etc.

Etc.

I rely on a whole army of people because my little brain could not even slaughter the cow or start a fire, or a hack random piece of flesh off a carcass to hold over the fire on a green stick till it had charred a bit. And that is how I deal with unworkable complexity - I get someone else to do it, who can do it better.

So 'we' (that is, me and my army) can address matters of unworkable complexity by cooperating to break down the complexity into narrow workable specialisms.

But is that like saying that since knives are used to kill, and killers are destroying their own world, knives are inherently self undermining? — frank

No it isn't. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. It doesn't matter where you look in the environment, runaway success doesn't last because it is unbalanced. And progress is unbalanced; it is always more, and never less. You think because I argue against progress, that I am arguing against knowledge, and science, and reason. But these are the associations that you make and Pinker makes, and they are not necessary connections. One can have power and restraint, but at the moment we don't.

If you want an analogy, it is like I am saying that there is no problem with our having an understanding of Nuclear fission, if we do not use it to destroy the environment and kill each other en masse. But as we are using it in those ways, there is a problem, and progress in having even more power will not solve that problem because our addiction to power is the problem.

I agree with this assessment. What's at issue is whether progress is exclusively a threat which must be abandoned, or if it's the solution to the problems we face. — frank

No. If you agree with the assessment that progress is self-undermining, you have already abandoned the concept of progress.

I think your argument was that airplanes are the product of a diseased breed, so it's foolish to think of them as progress. — frank

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear. A species, such as Elm disease, that destroys its environment will not last long. Aeroplanes are part of the fossil fuel dependent culture that cannot long continue and will die out. Looking for Progress and her sister, Endless Growth, is a wretched mistake that leads to the cliff edge. These are not the gods we should be worshiping. Choose instead diversity, resilience, interdependence and mutuality.

I am likening humanity to a species that we call a disease, that has not established a stable relationship with its environment but undermines it. I am arguing that this undermining is what we call progress in our own case.

You overlooked the possibility that our demise might allow some other species to flourish, and therefore the airplane very well may be a stepping stone to something amazing. I think that's because you think the end of us is the end of everything. — frank

I think you have lost track of the argument.The demise of the dinosaurs made room for the age of mammals. This is not a progression but a succession.

You talk of humans as if they're the epitome of life. — frank

Do I?

So instead of developing the smelting of iron, only to lose it in the face of environmental disaster, disease, or war, we kept that skill and then went onto invent airplanes and so forth — frank

Yes. things start from almost nothing and either die out or get better. But you mention aeroplanes as if they are unequivocally progressive and not one of the things that may be heading us towards extinction. As I see it humans are making progress like Dutch Elm disease, thriving and growing and spreading until it wipes out all the Elms, and then itself.

But then, it's also undeniable that there has been progress, that there is a direction to history. — T Clark

if the starting point is the extended family/tribe, the smallest viable group, there are only extinction, stasis, or enlargement as options. If the starting point is knowledge learned in a single lifetime, there are only the same options. What some see as progress, can be equally explained as a drunkard's walk. Set a bunch of drunks on a cliff edge on a dark night, and in the morning, nearly all the survivors will have moved away from the cliff.

By the next morning, alcohol being equally available, a few more will have wandered back to the cliff and fallen, and a few will have moved further away from the cliff.

The question for the compassionate thought experimenter is whether there might not be another cliff the other side of the island that they are moving towards. It's very early days for the survival of the enlightenment.

The undeniability of progress is easily overstated, especially by those who believe they have made the most, - 'that surely cannot have been accidental?'

conservatives, of the more old-fashioned kind at least, get off the hook. — Jamal

One gets off the hook by not trying to get off the hook. This is old-fashioned:-- "We are all sinners..." Progress therefore is not made, because progress in life science entails equal progress in death science, progress in healing entails progress in sickening and torture. Individual life-expectancy has increased, but species survival expectancy has radically reduced.

Saw you, and thought of this:

Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historically fair.
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Why can't a woman be like that?
Why does every one do what the others do?
Can't a woman learn to use her head?
Why do they do everything their mothers do?
Why don't they grow up, well, like their father instead?

Why can't a woman take after a man?
Men are so pleasant, so easy to please.
Whenever you're with them, you're always at ease. — PROFESSOR HIGGINS:

"Othering" it is called; a psychological trick to justify irresponsibility and maintain complacency in the face of injustice and suffering. As if Ukrainians have been "ignoring the achievements of the Enlightenment".How primitive of them!

"what is causing galaxies to deviate from the predictions of our models?" Such causes get posited as new elements of a model a in many subfields uncovering the nature of these causes becomes a major, or the major topic of research, e.g. dark matter and dark energy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They do, because they speak the same language we do. I'm not saying causation is denied, but what is the focus? You said it yourself - things that "deviate from the predictions of our model". Anomalies.

But in the mathematical models, there is no variable or constant 'cause' or 'effect'. Nor do the models cause the universe to obey them. The world is orderly and disorderly and mathematics describes the order and the disorder. When there is an anomaly there is work to be done revising the model, or refining the instruments. Causation drops out of the conversation because it has no function. It is not a particle, or a field, or a force, or a dimension or a measurement... It's not anything, but an old fashioned way of thinking that we still use. To look for the cause of an anomaly not understood is to look for some new thing; it is not to look for causation. Causation is a fancy word for 'the way things go' and that is why there is the temporal aspect.

No, not really. What is the cause, and what is the effect? I suppose you could say that the cause is a photon and and an atom. and the effect is no photon and an energised atom. But then the temporal aspect is there, but the thing is contrived. An interaction just seems a more natural way of thinking...

I'm getting the impression post-Newtonian physics is moving away from temporal cause and effect towards atemporal cause and effect. — ucarr

I don't know what atemporal cause and effect would be. I'm suggesting that temporal cause and effect are the 19th century paradigm of billiard ball physics which is in turn and adaptation and restriction of the notion of cause (or four kinds of cause) in Aristotle. both are not much talked about in modern physics; it's a conceptual relic of a deteriminist science.

I got excited by a small piece of pork on Saturday. — Jamal

That's got to be worth a paragraph in @Hanover's Encyclopaedia of Fetishes.

Cause and effect are kind of old physics terms. We used to talk about acceleration due to gravity, as though the word was an explanation of the observation. But Newton's laws describe the evolution of motion of objects through time and space with no reference to cause and effect.

One can say that footprints are caused by feet, or that they are caused by gravity, or both. Or one could talk about the relative hardness and resilience of feet and wet sand... But physicists talk more about interaction and the limits of interaction being the light cone. An interaction changes two things at once - an atom absorbs a photon and its energy is increased. one does not wish to say that the photon caused the increase in energy more so than the atom caused the absorption of the photon - it is a single event - a single interaction, and the observation thereof is another interaction.

Philosophers are prone to try and understand modern physics in the terms of mediaeval or even classical cosmology, and it doesn't really work. We might mention the architect's drawings as an indirect cause of the building, whereas Aristotle would suggest that the building was the final cause of the architect's plans. Physics dismisses final causes that work backwards in time, but then has to admit something like an imaginary building as the (prior) cause of the plans and thus the real building.

And then there is the matter of origins: we extrapolate the expanding observable universe backwards in time and come to a singularity, that we call the Big Bang - the beginning of space, time, and energy. And because of the physicists demand that cause must precede effect in time, there can be no cause of the beginning. The story has to stop at the limits of the equations. To speak of a cause of time and space in this sense is to reject the physicists meaning such as it is, and resort to Prime Mover type talk.

If we try to define the supernatural as that which occurs outside nature, and we then define nature as everything we can sense, then we're left with a hopeless contradiction if we say that we have sensed the supernatural. — Hanover

Just so. A physicalist has no use for the term 'natural' because everything is natural. We all know that 'Natural Yoghurt' is just yoghurt, and there is no unnatural yoghurt or supernatural yoghurt that it is better than or not as good as."Natural", in modern cosmology, is a purely emotive term expressing approval. It is a hangover from a religious age when scientists didn't know everything about everything.

unenlightened: the natural world can be defined without reference to any Gods. — Art48

Yes. It can be defined as the world.

It's the definition of "natural" that is problematic. One the face of it, the laws of nature are merely descriptive of what happens. If something happens that doesn't fit with the laws as we have found them, then we change the laws. Unless it only happens once, in which case we dismiss it as fraud, coincidence, measurement error, or imaginary.

The concept of nature is part of a philosophy that is out of favour because it proposes a triple fundamental division, Man, Nature, and God. As soon as one leg of the tripod is removed, the thing collapses. Man is unnatural, God is supernatural. That is the way theses terms have some meaning.

But when the conception is that there is no God, man is part of nature and so is everything else. The term does not have a distinct meaning at all. And from there it becomes "obvious" that everything is natural and nothing is supernatural. That nothing is supernatural is true by definition in the current cosmology.

The radical] is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed: but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side. — Paulo Freire

Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

The victim of oppression is not helpless, but in need of help. But indeed help cannot come from the oppressor, rather the oppressed must liberate the oppressor.

I should lack any arguments against Yoko Ono if she tells me that a time (maybe after 200 years) will come when everyone will understand that she was the greatest poet and painter in UK of the 21st century :) — Eros1982

It happened to Van Gogh.
I don't think it'll happen to Yoko, but I don't have an argument, only a judgement.

Hence, I do think in arts there must be some kind of standard/criteria on what consists of an artwork (poem, novel, song, etc.) — Eros1982

I am saying that there are those standards, and we know what they are from looking at the best. but every now and not too often, a playwright will break the rules and set a new standard and paradigm - and the standard changes. If you judged Waiting for Godot or Under Milk Wood by the standards of conventional theatre of the day, you would not look at either of them twice. We understand classical painting, but you cannot use that understanding to look at a Rothko. But when you start to appreciate Rothko, you develop a new standard.

In other words the work has priority, and the standard is just the current theory and standard - a post hoc justification and teaching aid.

Can we agree on properties that give beauty or harmony in objects, humans, artworks and phenomena? — Eros1982

To a considerable extent we do agree; and to a considerable extent we disagree. But any consideration of what properties are shared by beautiful things is like music theory, it comes after the event. First we make the sounds we like, and then we work out theories of harmony etc.

Furthermore, some things become fashionable, and go out of fashion, but other things do not. There are generational sensibilities and concerns, and evergreen classics. All this is annoying for philosophers who like things tidy and consistent.

The Crimean War started with Russia's invasion of the Turkish Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (now Romania). Britain and France both wanted to prop up the ailing Ottoman Empire and resist Russian expansionism in the Near East. — google

Mumble mumble, forced to repeat, mumble.

When I am an alcoholic, if you will not sell me your finest ethanol, I will have to go to the hardware store and buy meths. No tax on meths!

Of course you are your brother's keeper, but if you are also a shopkeeper, you need yourself the support of the community. Easy enough to tell the miserable addict to go away, and impossible to really be responsible for his plight. How can you help me, addicted as you are to your respectability?

Advertisement doesn't work on me so... — Darkneos

Yeah, I saw that one too.

Are we essentially just brainwashed by society and nothing more than puppets in our lives or is there more than that? When I ask other people no one seems to think that just because emotions are cause and effect that it means they aren't genuine. But if you are being affected or influenced by something else then it's not genuine, you're being controlled. — Darkneos

Both. If you had no feelings, then it would be hard to brainwash you into having them. But given that you have fears and anxieties, needs and desires, you can find them being manipulated. Panic not though, the manipulator, 'society' is just some other people like you, pretending to be the illuminati.

Try unenlightened's advertisement meditation: whenever you see an advert, analyse it carefully and you will find in every case that it will first seek to provoke in you a negative feeling, and then offer you a solution to make you feel better.

Because we can feel hunger, and feel sated, we can have hunger provoked in us; so it is worth a little consideration to discover whether the hunger you feel arises because you need sustenance or because McKellog needs to sell some more carbohydrates. But it is also worth discovering whether your feeling of being manipulated is also being provoked in order to manipulate you into supporting a party that promises to "take back control".

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. — political advertising

Thanks for sharing.

As it happens, though, you are not just an insignificant speck, you are every insignificant speck, and every sentient being for all time. So make yourself comfortable, because you're going to be here a while.

It's all a question of identity; what is reincarnated. what Karmic baggage is carried from one life to another. So try the flavour of this, and add a pinch of salt to taste.

Consciousness, gathers accretions in the form of memories, habits, and associations. But in itself, and apart from its contents from time to time, consciousness is featureless, and therefore everywhere the same. "It ain't no use a-talking to me. It's just the same as talking to you.", as Bob Dylan sang. Or as Jesus put it, "Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these my brethren, ye do it unto me" When I am more awake, I tell myself these things; that the persecutor is always persecuting himself in another incarnation, and there is only an illusion of separation between us. I/you can look forward to/back on 10,000,000 deaths in the concentration camps and however many lives saluting the Fuhrer and goose-stepping across Europe, etc etc. We don't have to carry the Karmic baggage, it is always right there waiting for us.

If it isn't the belief in racial groups that motivates the discrimination against their members, perhaps you can name something else that is. — NOS4A2

Because they can, and advantage can be gained from disadvantaging others.

Does (non-violent) racism (dislike, mistrust, prejudice) in the minds of “white” people EQUAL the same type of racism in “black” people?

In other words:
(Does White racism = Black racism ? ) — 0 thru 9

I think I can help out on this one. There is a vast difference between the prejudice of the empowered and that of the disempowered. The very simplest illustration of this is the racist violence perpetrated by black police officers against a black man recently.

Are you likening that to Russia hankering for Kiev without consulting them? — Paine

I'm likening the arguments about legitimacy. I am saying borders are never legitimate or illegitimate, they are merely established or disestablished and stable or unstable.

If your Chez is actually attacked, and you choose to fight the attackers, that could reasonably be called self-defense. — Paine

I think it would be called "resisting arrest" by the enemy. and I think they would call my UDI illegitimate. This is the difficulty that you do not seem to have grasped - my neighbours have an interest and a claim to be consulted over their national borders, that I have created without consulting them.

Isaac has repeatedly argued that Ukrainians are not enough of a self-identified group to say they are making a decision to act in self-defense together toward a common enemy. So anything you might refer to as "moral" on those grounds witl have to be excluded in order to be considered. — Paine

Such arguments have as much force as one wants them to have. A group's right to self determination has, necessarily, to be allowed before it can be even tested. My declaration of unilateral independence for Chez unenlightened has been studiously ignored by the UK government despite the unanimous vote of a 100% turnout in a free and fair referendum. It is an outrage, and I am asking for your donations of arms so that we can defend our small country, particularly from the invasion of foreign goats. Poor Scotland has been refused permission to even having a referendum, but I was smart enough not to ask.

Stable borders are the pre-requisite of a democracy and they therefore cannot be established democratically.

the notion that Ukraine sans Russia will be some kind of peaceful, democratic paradise as opposed to the Orwellian nightmare of Russian puppetry is completely without merit. — Isaac

Indeed. The notion that any country is some kind of peaceful, democratic paradise is without much merit. Nevertheless, one has to make a judgement about whether Ukraine sans Russia might be better or worse than Ukraine as Greater Russia over all, allowing that there will be winners and losers either way and that nobody knows the answer for definite to such hypotheticals. And then presumably one has to weigh that benefit or loss against the costs of a war to achieve whatever option is preferred - also incalculable except in arrears to an approximation.
There is also an incalculable risk of 'letting the aggressor profit from their crime' in encouraging others to chance many other folks' arms.

So it is not a great moral victory in any particular situation, to think the war option is not worth the cost. Opinions can legitimately differ, and nothing more than suggestive reasons can be given either way. Unless one is a pacifist non-utilitarian, and then there is no need to labour over it. Everyone lay down your arms, and if the other chap wants to kill you, that is his problem not yours. Given there is a war, the casualties are always the other chap's fault anyway, everyone agrees about that at least.

But here I’m trying to get an analysis specific to recent Western philosophy in particular. I never particularly warmed to Gilbert Ryle — Wayfarer

He was a prick. And it is the nature of a prick to misunderstand himself when right as supporting himself when wrong. He was right about category errors, and the notion is important for disentangling some of the muddles of philosophy. But in characterising mind as the 'ghost in the machine' he paved the way for a reductionist mechanistic thesis that still permeates much of the West.

Because nobody believes in ghosts, right? And philosophy runs on slogans more than arguments.
But we believe in 'measurements' like anything, don't we? And measurements are relations between the thing measured and the thing measuring. So the mind of man is the measure of all things, we might better say.

Perhaps a reconsideration of Ryle might even bear some fruit in the way of a rapprochement between the analytic and continental schools?