Almost every negotiation starts without trust. Your negotiation partner can lie about all sorts of things like pricing, lead times, capabilities, quality etc., and magically we still manage. — Benkei

You can distrust your negotiation partner because you have a trusted social world. Start with global social distrust and you will see that you are deprived of language entirely. This too is a lie, or might (as) well be.

It's from Hume. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotions-17th18th/LD8Hume.html

To put it very crudely, if one does not have a passion for truth, reason has no function. My modern translation of 'passion' is 'giving a fuck'.

Start with a bit more modernity than Aristotle's 5 senses.

https://www.press.jhu.edu/news/blog/how-many-senses-do-we-have

Reminds me of Pirsig's discussion of the motorbike part that does not appear in the parts catalogue because it's part of another part.

One discovers with age that proprioception in the manifestation of the ability to maintain balance, decays to the extent that one needs to integrate it with vision. Shut your eyes and you fall over. Is vision part of balance? Sometimes, definitely.

the assumption that we can trust each other is a heuristic itself — Benkei

I'm suggesting that it is a moral imperative. I'm suggesting that rationality cannot exist without trust. I'm suggesting that we are social beings before there can be any question of our being rational or irrational beings. I'm suggesting that reason is and ought to be only the slave of passion.

Pro-vaxxers have a heurestic too, where the most used one is "scientific consensus". Even that is posited as a rational decision making process but it really isn't. But since most people tend to agree with the fact it's a pretty good heurestic they don't get challenged on it. — Benkei

Trust isn't rational at all. It's a rather obvious point really. — Benkei

Trust is the currency of all social interaction. Trust, in the guise of 'confidence', is the foundation of the economy, and trust is the prerequisite for communication and meaningful language.

Let me put it this way: I do not have a laboratory, or even a microscope, so I have never seen a virus. Any research I do consists of reading other people's accounts of what they have done and what happened. That there is a new disease at all is based on reports; that people have died of it is based on reports, the disease model is based on reports.

So I think you go too far, and not far enough. If trust isn't ever rational, then nothing is ever rational but what one sees with one's own eyes. Perhaps I can adapt Wittgenstein a little and suggest that distrust and trust are on a par, and equally need some, but not absolute, justification. There is, alas, good reason to distrust governments and medical companies, in the record of lies and bullshit that they have promulgated over the years. It is clear that the truth is not as high on their priorities list as their self-interest.

It should be. It comes down to this: if society does not value the truth it disintegrates. A century of moral nihilism has brought us here, to where the truth is simply unavailable, and talk has almost no value. Thus the thread does little but allow some emotional venting. If trust is irrational, then no one should rationally believe anything another says or posts, and we cannot talk at all.

I know all about intelligence but I am wise enough to keep it to myself.

Does Mario believe in the Great Nintendo? The Great Nintendo is unsure, and unbothered.

It appears chaotic to the observer. — Nickolasgaspar

So don't look! Really, this is a bit silly, isn't it? You reject what can be observed in favour of what we would observe if... according to the theory you are trying to demonstrate the truth of. Not very scientific or logical, I fear. But I have no problem anyway with noticing that the laws of physics do not impose any particular universal order, and are mainly statistical in nature - as witness the gas laws for instance. On the contrary, it is the laws of nature themselves that produce the conditions of stability of the wave at sea AND the chaotic dissipation of the wave energy at the shoreline.

The paradigm of chaos theory is the water wave. waves at sea propagate in a predictable and consistent manner, at a constant speed, and the movement of water molecules as the wave passes is consistent and roughly circular. But when the wave reaches the beach, it breaks and the movement becomes chaotic.

One can see thus, how on one hand the chaotic movement of gas molecules gives rise to the order of constant pressure, and on the other, how the ordered movement of the wave produces the chaotic event of the breaker.

It is a kind of foreshadowing of meeting the person I know in a premonitionary way. — Jack Cummins

Right, so one might understand it as a backward causation if such a thing were possible; the meeting in the future sets up an expectation in the mind in the past. Which would make sense if there were a spiritual aspect to consciousness that is beyond time. And since we already have no satisfactory physical theory of consciousness anyway, we need not rule it out a priori.

That's about as far as I can go with it, except to suggest that such premonitions might well be proportional to the 'importance' in terms of communication, of the future meeting. This would explain why premonitions about horse races are fairly rare.

Often, what happens is that I am out and think I see someone and get close up and realise it is not them. A short while later, I really meet the person who I had mistaken a stranger for. — Jack Cummins

Ok. What does that mean? What makes it a meaningful coincidence rather than just a coincidence.

I am not convinced that anything to do with Will Smith is meaningful. And this is the difficulty; one is liable to be struck by coincidences even when they are not meaningful. So much stuff happens in the course of a normal day that accidental meaningless coincidences are to be expected. We see patterns because bla bla harmless false positives...

So start again with much more strict criteria for meaning and you will be closer to what Jung intended, which was something more like a deep structure to human experience at the psycho-spiritual level.

Speaking of tone, the antipodean intonation that turns every sentence into a question perhaps expresses in its origins the roots of the largely uneducated convicts in a strange land? Uncertain of almost anything? D'ya know what I mean?

The latter question, which philosophers agonise over for centuries, is an expression more or less equivalent to "um," but occurs at the end of the speech more than the middle.

When a doctor asks where the pain is they pay attention to the gesture that indicates the location; a flat hands indicates a surface pain, a finger a stabbing pain, a fist a deep ache, and so on. That these indicators are expressions rather than referrals is strongly suggested by the fact that most patients are unaware of their having any significance. Body language, except when learned by actors, is almost all expression, I would think.

The 7-38-55 rule indicates that only 7% of all communication is done through verbal communication, whereas the nonverbal component of our daily communication, such as the tonality of our voice and body language, make up 38% and 55% respectively. — Google

Philosophy is toneless and bodiless, and that is why it goes astray so often.

*Gives long hard scanning silent stare to audience.*

The motto of liberalism is nihil ultra ego - nothing beyond the self; challenge it at your peril. — Wayfarer

The religion that worships its chains! There is a persistent illusion that distorts my view of the world, that my pain and pleasure is more significant than yours, and my life more important than yours. The combination of this myopia and short arms means that I tend to myself and let you tend to to yourself most of the time. But when there is nothing beyond self, we cannot even communicate, let alone cooperate. Have some more tea.

Sure, but 122 people a year does sort of pale in comparison to the scope of the aforementioned atrocities, not that that isn't a serious social plight. — thewonder

How many years, one has to ask? I seem to remember the old 303 bolt action rifle was replaced by I forget which semi automatic because someone calculated that if the Chinese people were lined up to be shot, the job would never be finished. This is surely the crucial other half of the statistics - the replacement rate.

Is this the sort of argument you want to have? Actually, I'm bored already, don't bother to reply.

There is indeed something remarkably like it.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/aug/08/rise-of-the-racist-robots-how-ai-is-learning-all-our-worst-impulses

Apparently, a woman is murdered by a man every 3 days in the UK. I blame the government.

Apparently Churchill was responsible for the famine in India

But i wonder if the conspiracy to undermine the science about smoking and lung cancer, and the similar one about asbestos and emphysema, are up there with the megadeath score?

But what are these arguments you speak of? Is there a Megadeath competition or something? If you are wondering which are the goodies and which are the baddies, I can give you a hint - the angels are the goodies, and the humans are the baddies.

Moral nihilism has a bad reputation, but isn't that what we are espousing? — Down The Rabbit Hole

It's certainly not whatI'm espousing. I say that life is good and therefore death is good and pain is good, because these things are part of life. I do not have an argument, and if you disagree, there is nothing more to be said on my part.

Well actually there is a great deal more to be said, but for the moment I will limit my pontification to this aphorism: suffering is the attempt to escape pain or capture pleasure.

Is it that there is no correct answer? Or we just can't prove it to each other? — Down The Rabbit Hole

The former.
I prefer vanilla, you prefer strawberry.
I prefer the pricking of my finger, you prefer the destruction of the world.
De gustibus non Disputandum est.

'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. Reason's only purpose is to help us to satisfy our desires. Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. — Hume

In other words, it's not worth arguing about.

So it's your dreams that create all this trouble in the world? There had to be some reason for it I suppose.

Any chance you can learn to dream nice dreams? Please?

Have you read Ursula LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven?

The physics of the mind? — khaled

The physics of the mind would be very abstract and rather empty seeming. I can make one vague suggestion: the physics would be 3 dimensional. There is a necessary (or perhaps unnecessary*) division of self-awareness between the self that is aware, and the self it is aware of. And to notice this requires a further division, producing the three dimensions. But further division is unnecessary, and simply repeats the previous ones. Thus every decent theory has 3 elements id, ego, superego, or child, adult, parent, or social, personal spiritual, Father Son and Holy Ghost, or whatever.

*Of course "the sage is ruthless; he treats the people as dummies." But that is to say that when one has no division, one has no psychology.

Well they say that it’s because of people not fully committing to the model! — khaled

You have to laugh! It's not that the theory is wrong, it's that people aren't trying hard enough! Worthy of a politician. :rofl:

I heard the folk in the East have a nice model which supposedly eliminates all suffering and places you in a state of permanent bliss. — khaled

You heard wrong, unfortunately; there is heap plenty suffering in the East. But anyway, you don't get to choose your theory any more than you get to choose your form of insanity. You get educated/socialised according to the current psychological theory, and that produces the kind of person and the kind of insanity that you, or I then theorise and use to bring up the next generation. My generation was brought up on 'discipline' meaning physical punishment and threats. So the current theory is called 'trauma theory'. This seems to lead to a lot of complaining snowflakes who will probably neglect their children. Expect "abandonment theory", or some such, therefore.

Of course I am probably entirely wrong about all this, because it is after all, a psychological theory. :death:

We have had various theories of matter, and the current theories seem to work better than the old theory of the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water), for example. One of the things about matter that helps us here is that matter is constant in the sense that it does not adapt to the theory we have of it.

Not so, humanity alas. We always have some view of human nature or other, and that view does much to colour our interactions with each other and with the environment. The effect of a psychological theory on behaviour is not something that the psychological theory in question can possibly take account of. Thus one comes up with - for example - a theory of sexual repression of women leading to hysterical symptoms (Freud), and by the time the ideas have percolated through society, everyone is talking about sex all day long, the repression no longer exists and poor old Freud looks like a nutcase.

It is rare in the course of discussion to achieve a sudden new insight. What is difficult about the more abstract discussions though is to understand what is at stake. Sometimes nothing is at stake except the meaning of a word in a particular context, but sometimes the whole of civilisation is potentially transformed.
The latter is unlikely to be the result of a discussion here, though.

But while SEP is the dog's bollocks for serious depth, I recommend rather a quick crib-sheet that will allow you to spatter the big cheeses' names through your posts without actually have to read the buggers, and get a handle on some of the isms and other obscure terminology. Something like this: http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/

Alas I know that story too.

It refers to the People's Temple cult who all drank poisoned Kool-Aid given them by their guru. — T Clark

And there was me thinking it referred to the Cool-Aid Acid Test.

Read Brave New World.

Edward Gibbon, in his classic work on the fall of the Roman Empire, describes the Roman era's declension as a place where "bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.” — Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

You heard it there first.

I'm very interested in identity, but I'm not too fond of video philosophy, so I headed off after a few minutes to find some text on Lionel Trilling.
https://medium.com/adams-notebook/lionel-trilling-sincerity-and-authenticity-1972-e0934fa65aab

It's not so much inconsistency as lying that I mind. — Tim3003

You and me both. From the bridge to N. Ireland to the floating wall in the Channel to stop the migrants, the fantasies pour out with Trumpean brazenness. They'll be telling us next that Corbyn is a racist.

I am sure that there are limitations of our current knowledge. — Jack Cummins

If that its your project, you have started poorly. Start with the idea that we really do know some things, and then see how far you can extend these things. I think I am quite certain that the world is not flat. Some people believe otherwise, but they are in error.

So you can imagine a circumstance where what I have claimed we know, could be untrue. I might be a robot, for instance. Or you might be hallucinating this discussion, or...

If "absolute and indubitable certainty" is what you mean by 'really know' then we know nothing, including whether or not there is a 'we'. But that is an abuse of language, because actually we use the word 'know' in a different way - I could be wrong about this, but as it happens I am not, so I know...

"We"?

1. You have written a post.
2. In English.
3. That appears superficially to make sense.
4. We know how to read and write English.

I wonder if there is a difference between 'what we know' and 'what we really know'? What work is the extra word doing?

But truth does have an annoying way of eventually coming out, which will either be when the vaccinated start having all sorts of mysterious symptoms or the when unvaccinated start dying. — Hanover

It won't annoy the dead, or the self-righteous living, but it annoys me now that I cannot trust what I am told, and but expect to be told "told you so" whenever I have been misinformed, which I suspect is all the time.

Not the first, obviously, but still interesting...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jantar_Mantar,_Jaipur

if there is really a conspiracy, then there will be real traces of it. Nonexistent events don't leave them. — ssu

Sometimes the work of the invisible hand looks a bit like a conspiracy.

A vote for Boris has never conceivably been a vote for consistency. We like the cut of his jib, without having the least clue what a jib is or how it should be cut.

Belief systems tend to have high priests, and here are a couple for you.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-coronavirus-vaccines-skeptic/

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02989-9

There is no way the charge of stupid can fit here. These are high-ish flyers, qualified doctors.

On the other hand, the mass of the faithful are suffering from a generalised paranoia brought on quite justifiably by the habit of lying that prevails in commercial medicine and politics and the media and authorities in general. When you cannot believe what you are told, you are reduced to superstition and complete gullibility, such that negating the official line, and getting ejected from the establishment has become a mark of credibility. These are dangerous times. There is no one immune from this gullibility, because no one is even competent in most fields of knowledge, and even in those areas that they are expert in, they have learned their expertise from potentially dishonest sources.

In these circumstances, there is no basis to make a reasonable decision. What is needed, and what is lacking, is trust. Trust is the liquidity of the knowledge economy, and of society in general.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. — W.B.Yeats

If you consult The Golden Bough, or better yet, The White Goddess, you will hear of an ancient normality of matrilineal descent - there is no question of who the mother is, when the question of who the father is is not even considered. In such matrilineal societies, there would typically be a King, who would reign for a year and then be sacrificed. An excellent system that should be brought back asap for all politicians.

At some point the king managed to survive and eventually managed transform the system to a patrilineal one. This involved of necessity, strict control of the female sexuality in order to ensure the patrilineal purity of the offspring.

And that is the essence of patriarchy - the control of female sexuality. I have to say that this is not even controversial in anthropology, and it is rather sad that by page 4 it has not even been mentioned.