That being the case, when it comes to living in the moment, should I go max out my credit cards? — HardWorker

That is the question of someone who is living in the future. If you were living in the present, you would not be wanting, because wanting is projecting an image of the future (the expensive something that is absent at present) and imagined as provided by the credit card. "Should" is always about the future, and has no place in Zen practice.

After all, that's living in the moment. — HardWorker

Not at all, that's living in the future. It is the disease of the Western mind to try and understand Zen. But the application of reason is a withdrawal from the present - I am typing this exact word. You are reading this ... and then thought moves away from the present into the imaginary world where a credit card has bought you stuff or you have understood the essence of Zen or some other absent world. Your theorising about Zen betrays it, and so does mine.

I firmly believe things are right or wrong apart from who does them. But, I can't account for how this could be; because every case seems to be about an observer. — Cheshire

We are on the same side.
I'll start by saying that every case of an object is also 'about an observer'. This is a post what I wrote and you read. Or it is nothing at all.

But I'll ignore your questions in favour of a simple case. Communication is good, and to say that it is good is to pick out an asymmetry between truth and falsehood. If falsehood is seen to prevail, there is no communication, even of the falsehood. Thus to assert the moral equivalence of truth and falsehood is a self-undermining act and a performative contradiction. Therefore, we ought to be honest and tell the truth as far as we can, and in general.

To love.

In Paul Galico's The Man who was Magic, the trick performed was to un-beat an egg.

I may be way off base, but I seem to remember undertaking various examinations at school.

If he had said, "the untested life is not worth living" would it have been any clearer to anyone? One pontificates to ones hearts content on a philosophy forum about what is right and what is rational, and what is wise. Test it against your life! Bet the farm on your philosophy! That's how I understand the examined life. Test your pacifism in a conflict, and if it sustains you there, it is worth something, and if it falls by the wayside when life gets difficult then it is worthless. Or your courage, or your wisdom or your intelligence or whatever... The Socratic politic was tested in court, and the value of his his life was proved by his death. A life of ease is never tested, and thus never valued evaluated.

Yes, like the "ought" just came out of thin air. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Wherever it came from, it did not seem to come from 'what one feels like', but from 'what one does not feel like'. At the least, it is a divided feeling of 'I want to, but...'

in the end "GOOD" or "EVIL" is nothing but just a standpoint , or how we perceive it. — Gellert Marvollo Potter

Why the 'nothing but just' there, as if caring about anything is trivial?

I think he is as much asking for a theory of evil as a definition. Although exploring what people mean by the word is interesting in this case. Definition and theory blend I think with this concept. — bert1

You may be right, but I don't seem to be communicating a theory either.

I didn't say we should comply with other people's (and animal's) moral standards. We should fight for ours.

Just that we can't have an objective moral standard, because each persons morals are dependent on their feelings. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Do you not notice that folks tell each other and themselves what they ought to do, and they generally contrast it with 'what one feels like doing. A dog ought to do what it is told, and an obedient dog is a good dog. People are a bit more complicated...

Definitions are over-rated. But I would start by saying that good and evil are relations between persons and persons, or persons and things or persons and relations; and the nature of the relation is judgemental.

sometimes I do feel a quick death is better than life here on earth with these talking monkeys. — Trey

So I understand this to be your judgement of your own life, and possibly by extension, a judgement of life in general. Now if you are in constant terrible pain because of some untreatable medical condition, then I do not presume ... However, I hope this is not the case, and then it will be my judgement of your judgement that it is a misjudgement.

I would not say it is evil, but perhaps evil could come of it. But the Christian tradition, or a Christian tradition anyway, understands sin to be "missing the mark" (the mark being the target an archer aims at, for instance). I like the flavour of this, because it puts evil in the world of good, as in a sense always a mistake. This is not much taught these days, and it may seem an extravagant idea.

My definition of Evil is “That Which Increases Suffering (in magnitude or in numbers). — Trey

So rock-climbing and football are evil, because people get hurt. Cars are evil because there are traffic accidents. Your definition is the antinatalist definition, and results, when you think it through, in life being evil, and death good. because life increases suffering and death reduces it. This seems completely backwards to me.

from my side, I would say that what one can observe is behaviour and perhaps brain imagery with equipment, and these are not psyche. Psyche is inner; psyche is the immediacy, the presence that makes the present present.
— unenlightened

This is only what I would call awareness. Psyche, as far as Psychology is concerned is the entire set of functions carried out to derive behaviour from external stimuli (or internal ones, depending which school you follow). We take observations of external stimuli, observations of behaviour and then use models of psyche to make predictions about the relationship, test those predictions and refine the models accordingly. — Isaac

"The entire set of functions" - I want to be sure we are disagreeing here as to substance and not just the words: Are you saying functions of the mind that produce behaviour, but not strictly behaviour itself? If you are saying, as it seems, that psyche is something one theorises in others, not something one observes directly, then we are substantially in agreement.

Let me tell you my favourite psychological theory; it's Personal Construct Theory. It is what one might call a psychological theory of the individual as a psychologist. As such, it comes as close as can be to taking into account the effect of psychological theory on the psyche. It at least acknowledges that the way one thinks about other people and of course oneself - ones psychological theory - is a major, crucial influence on one's behaviour.

"We take observations of external stimuli, observations of behaviour and then use models of psyche to make predictions about the relationship, test those predictions and refine the models accordingly"

That's what I do with psychologists! I poke them and watch them squirm. :wink:

PERIOD!!!!!! — charles ferraro

Exclamation.

Are anger and defensiveness not aspects of the psyche? You seem to be saying here that you can do psychology but psychologists can't. I think I understood you better before the explanation! — Isaac

Yes, you probably did. :cry:

Well you are the psychologist; perhaps you should say what is the psyche. But from my side, I would say that what one can observe is behaviour and perhaps brain imagery with equipment, and these are not psyche. Psyche is inner; psyche is the immediacy, the presence that makes the present present.

Aspects of what? Aspect of a relation? — Shawn

Yes of course aspects of the relation that is observation.

I'm not entirely sure why; but, Buddhism seems like a way of life originating from a selfless observation of the self from Buddha. Why isn't Buddhism more popular in psychology? — Shawn

I'm not sure if you are just using words slightly differently here. I am trying to be clear and consistent in the way I use them, so I would say that meditation should be a practicing of presence, what I am calling insight rather than observation. If one observes oneself in the normal way of observing, one has to separate oneself from the self one observes.

There is some interest in buddhist practices in current psychology, but I do not think there is much understanding. They want to measure enlightenment. :death:

the rather nebulous use of 'insight' — Isaac

I have to use the language we have, but I'll try and concretise it a bit for you. Science begins and ends with observation, and in the middle is knowledge, theory, hypothesis records etc. Observation demands the separation of observer and observed. I could call it "out-sight".

Insight can be contrasted as demanding the unity of observer and observed. Thus, if I notice that someone is identified with 'psychology' and gets angry and defensive when it is questioned or criticised, that is an observation; whereas if I notice my own defensiveness and identification, that is insight. But I must be careful here, because it is easy to misunderstand. I can make such observations of myself in memory; looking back in the thread I might see something like that, but it would not then be an insight. Insight is in the present because the observer is the observed, an awareness of awareness that does not separate. My defensiveness notices itself.

So psychology is a pseudo-science, soft science, non-science?
Which is it? — Yohan

Most people are embodied minds. This might be confusing some. There is a totally legitimate science of the body as object, which I like to call physiology, brain science, and so on.

The mind is not a physical object. Thus psyche is not amenable to scientific study; rather it requires insight. It is the absence of insight that makes this appear controversial obscure and difficult to make sense of. The education system teaches the ignoring and denying of insight as "unscientific" - which of course it is.

Is this subjectivism or relativism at its core? — Shawn

I'm not one for 'isms - call it what you like. But my philosophy always prioritises the relation as fundamental; the observer and the observed are both united and only exist in the observation. The observation is reality; the observer and the observed are 'aspects'.

Science is about the observed aspect with the observer's influence 'stripped out, and psychology is about the observer with the world stripped out. Neither has a complete grasp of reality, but psychology falls apart rather quicker when it pretends to be science. Science is the selfless observation of the world, and one cannot have a selfless observation of the self.

are you saying the practise of philosophy is an escape? — The Opposite

Yes. it is the attempt, at least, to escape confusion, contradiction and folly. Thus I do not recommend philosophy to anyone who is not already mired in these things. I call it a snake pit because the problems of philosophy are long and involved, entangled, and usually poisonous.

Philosophy is a snake pit we are all trying to escape; and here is someone asking how to fall into it!

It seems obvious to me (from this site alone) that the vast majority of people are completely unaware of the vast majority of theories in contemporary psychology. — Isaac

I will certainly grant you that. And i will also grant that this ignorance gives much psychology the semblance of truth. But once you have granted the principle, which seems obvious enough, that people (and societies) are altered by the prevailing psychology of the time, which you seem not to dispute in principle, then it is but a semblance. What is clear enough, surely, is that electrons are not affected significantly by the theories we have about them, but people most certainly are. this means that if there is something like an understanding of the human psyche to be had, it is not of the same order as physics.

Which would be a theory of psychology, so we'll just presume it'll become obsolete soon as fashion changes, yes? — Isaac

Yes indeed. you demonstrate it very well! As soon as you know what the theory is, you make a new presumption and of course presume that "we" will also make it. But it hasn't become fashionable yet really has it? As long as you disagree with it, it has a chance. :razz:

Even if your theory had a shred of evidence from nearer than a hundred years ago, — Isaac

Oh it does. The list of defunct mental illnesses and defunct psychological theories is a very long one. But I do not require evidence to do conceptual analysis, and you have just demonstrated that you understand how the concepts work together.

I'm not sure. A lot of posters are posting questions about why there are so many flavors of psychology.

@unenlightened, do you know why this is, if I may be so bold? — Shawn

Listen carefully, I will say this only once (on each psychology thread).

Science operates on the assumption that atoms do not understand atomic theory - in general that the objects of scientific study are not altered by the theory on has of them. At the quantum level, this becomes difficult because the act of observation itself affects the observed and this leads to the uncertainty principle. However, in psychology, the objects of observation are themselves observers, scientists, and psychological theorisers. Their theories of psychology radically affect their own psychology.

So, for example, Freud's theories of sexual repression stemmed from observations of 'hysterical' wealthy women. It led to a change of mind of Western society, and eventually a sexual liberation, to the extent that sexual dream imagery is widely used in films and sexual repression has declined to the extent that hysteria is not even a thing. It happens whenever a psychological theory becomes popular, that the psychology of the populace adapts to it. And this is something no theory can account for in advance.

Therefore, the methods of science cannot be reliably used in psychology, and when they are, theories run in fashions, each one becoming obsolete as it has its influence on the population.

Can we philosophers perhaps disentangle some concepts?

There are facts about a person; either they have Jewish ancestry/ heritage, or they do not. But this does not amount to an identity. Identity is not a matter of fact, but of judgement. As such it is always debatable always an intersection between individual and society. Louis may claim to be the King of France, but we all think he's a loony. Similarly, there is little point in claiming to be Jewish if the relevant authorities refuse to recognise the claim, and let you into whatever club or privilege is associated. Or conversely, there is little point in claiming not to be Jewish if the SS are telling you to 'get on the cattle truck, vermin!'

There is the fact of what one is, one's social identity and one's personal identity and always there is a negotiation between them or there is intransigence and a power conflict. And always there is the judgement of social and personal identities, such that one might be shamed by others for what one is proud to be, or vice versa, one might be ashamed of what one is while it is lauded by others.

With this in mind, it can be seen that some answers here are simply judgements with a veneer of misplaced facticity; some answers are claims of social convenience along the lines of it is better to draw lines and keep things simple for bureaucratic reasons - either you are employed or unemployed, and gardening doesn't count unless you get paid.

This rigidity of boundaries is reassuring for many, particularly in personal, bodily matters to the extent that any questioning of categories is felt as threatening to both personal identity and 'the fabric of society'. Thus to be a gay man is to be attracted to men, and that is a feminine attribute; therefore it is an offence and a threat against nature, god, society, and me personally.

But is happiness always best thing in life? — Corvus

I prefer happiness to unhappiness, but for plastering a wall, I would go for a plasterer's trowel. That seems to me to be how the the word works. It's akin to asking what's better than good. I have already suggested the evolutionary benefit of intelligence which depends to a great extent on the environment, but as to pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, well I do it (at a leisurely pace) because it makes me happy, or at least happier than pursuit of ignorance and folly.

Smart & stupid, it seems, are complementary rather than mutually exclusive capabilities: — 180 Proof

Well, you can go to your college, you can go to your school
But if you ain't got Jesus, you's an educated fool
And that's all, I'll tell you that's all
'Cause you better have Jesus
I tell you that's all. — Ry Cooder

In case anyone is interested in an attempt at an answer ...

An important evolutionary benefit of a large brain is that it can run simulations of future events. These simulations use the same brain structures that respond to actual events, but with the physical actions suppressed. Thus I imagine going down the hill to the shop and getting caught in the rain with no coat. I imagine feeling cold and wet on the way home and avoid the actuality by taking a coat.

I avoid the actual at the price of suffering the imaginary. The smarter one is, the sharper, and more painful, and more active one's imagination.

Everyone was getting old fast, and they were leaving this Earth for good. — Corvus

Poor old Corvus not only has to get old and die eventually, as we all do, he has to imagine getting old and dying over and over again even while he is actually young and in his prime. So even the good times are bad.

I hate debates. It is the folly of the age to reduce every important or pleasant activity to a mere competition. Even fishing! I await with despair the first series of The Great British Fuck Off *. Meanwhile, my moustache is bigger than yours. :roll:

Edit.* Or the BDSM version Strictly Come.

It means nothing. It has no meaning. It does not compute.

"... and the mome raths outgrabe."

They're treating the normal as abnormal and vice versa. — TheMadFool

I think it's more that they're treating normal as healthy and abnormal as sick. :sad: I, at any rate, am not at all saying 'it's all in the mind'; rather, I am saying that judgement is a relation between mind and world (body, perhaps), of the species giving-a-fuck. Thus alien hand syndrome, for example consists of the judgement of foreignness and revulsion towards one's hand (other limbs are available), the sufferer complains about the alien hand. The doctor in this case makes the opposite judgement that the hand is not a foreign body, and therefore calls it a 'syndrome'. In neither case is the hand 'in the mind', only the differing judgements.

In the good old days of medicine, "diseases" were discomforts that gave his to "complaints". The pathogenic model deceives the unwary philosopher into imagining that illness is something other than the judgement of the mind. But what is wrong - that is to say, "ill" - about a tape worm or a corona virus is not that it is an alien invasion of the body by evolved physics, but that it makes one uncomfortable, and folks complain.

What is common to a broken leg and depression is pain and disability. What is peculiar about most other mental illness though is that it is other people's arses that the 'sufferer' is a pain in. This means that they are social complaints, and that is why the treatment is often social communication of some sort.

an infinite duration — Down The Rabbit Hole

What are the chances of the existence of duration - finite or infinite?

I suggest that one needs to be rather cautious about existence. One says that unicorns do not exist, and means that at no time and in no place has there ever been a unicorn. But when one speaks of the existence or non-existence of the universe, or of something beyond the universe, one is speaking of existence with another meaning - the existence of existence, or the existence of the dimensions of existence. I suspect that these things cannot be given a meaning as questions, let alone be meaningfully answered.

It is undisputed that there are (1) minds and (2) bodies. I count two things, which means it is undisputed that dualism is the case. — Hanover

It is undisputed that there are (1) ducks and (2) rows. I might count three ducks and they might be three ducks in a row, but only a philosopher would count four things. Count ducks if you will, and count rows too. but do not add ducks to rows and call them all 'things'.

You need to, very civilly, call your attorney and, probably, your own engineer. — T Clark

A civil engineer of course.

If we only act civilly to those to whom we're inclined already to so act, then it's no longer an obligation — Isaac

I agree, and that's why I didn't say anything about inclinations.My inclination is to be civil to you even though you are making a straw man argument, because I am just a sweet little wimp at heart, but it is my duty to resist your bullshit.

I also don't remember that the suffragettes burned down any buildings[/gratuitously provocative]. — T Clark

They certainly smashed a few windows.

it isn't helpful to be overly confrontational or abusive, — Tom Storm

Obviously, if it was helpful, it wouldn't be overly confrontational. But again, notice that the issue is the confrontational abuse of the other side. When you don't have the vote, you don't have justice, you don't have freedom, and those that have it are complaining that YOU are uncivil, that is manipulative bullshit in action. The incivility, confrontation and abuse starts with the oppressive society, not with those who resist it.

For better or worse, that's not how it works, — T Clark

It doesn't work at all. But look perhaps at the women's suffrage movement as another example. Polite society would have it that it was unladylike for a woman to even want a vote, let alone demand one. Show some respect to the men who deny you the vote? It didn't work like that. It never works like that. It's always the squeaky wheel that gets some grease.

Clearly you don't see the foolishness of white society demanding respect from the movement demanding basic equal treatment for black folks. If only they were like us, everything would be alright.

Whether they like it or not, they need the support of those people to get what they want — T Clark

No, they need their compliance. Until black lives do actually matter as much as white lives, there is no civility because civility is a mutual relation.

they need to show some respect. — T Clark

You cannot show respect to someone who shows you no respect; it is meaningless. Not civility, but mere servility.

And I was disagreeing with you in no uncertain terms.

Furthermore, expressing it as "back to the stone age" is hyperbolic scaremongering. No, we don't have to give up modern medicine and dentistry, modern communications, modern housing, clean water and sewage treatment, a varied diet, and so on. We might have to give up petrol engined cars, eat less meat, stop flying as routine, work a bit harder at recycling, use public transport and stay at home more, stop buying fashion clothes like they're going out of fashion. We need to give up some of the crap we have been persuaded to want that we would lose nothing by doing without.

But we might lose them if we let runaway global warming destroy our societies.

It's actually HG Wells dumbshit. — frank

You should have quoted H G Wells and agreed with him, instead of quoting me and agreeing with yourself. Even quite smart people have to respond to your post, not your thoughts.

I agree. Most of the human race should revert to a Stone Age level. — frank

I agree. You are silly.

In the tropics, there was a traditional form of agriculture called 'slash and burn'. You create a clearing in the jungle by chopping everything down and having a bonfire. The ash makes the ground fertile for a few years to grow crops, and then when it is depleted, you move on and make a new clearing. On a small scale (relative to the jungle) there is no problem and the jungle will heal its wound in a hundred or two years. The problem, environmentally, is always one of scale. The global economy is still slash and burn, and move on, but there is nowhere left to go.

The name of nowhere is "Brownfield land".

Climate change, though has already baked in sea level rise; the current rate is about 3cm per decade, and the seas continue to warm and the land ice continues to melt even if we stop burning fossil fuels today. The best agricultural land is low-lying flood plains. This will not be affecting us drastically for probably a hundred years; people will starve and drown in Bangladesh as they always do, but in larger numbers, St Louis will become more dangerous. The frog will slowly boil, but not notice.

Weather becomes more violent and unpredictable - we adapt. Trees do not. A hundred years is a very short time in forest migration, but a very long time in deforestation.

The question being asked by most people is entirely human centred; will we survive, will we lose our freedom, will we suffer? Meanwhile, the frog is boiling. I mention, not really for discussion, but for consideration, a strand of environmentalism that actively welcomes the climate apocalypse as the cure for the disease that is humanity en-mass. Top predators need to be few in number for a balanced environment. But the question for philosophy is not, is it happening or is it going to be bad, but how do we need to reimagine ourselves and our societies to include our dependencies on environment? The top of the tree must feed the roots.

The irony that the main concern is to find 'alternative' sources of energy to solve a problem of excess energy is amusing and pathetic. The conversation is more than 50 years old already, and it might be worth folk's while to catch up a little with what has already been discussed.

and that corner is just the place where we opened up the donut in two direction -- but we could have chosen to cut in the middle of the screen, so the speak -- it just would be very confusing for the player to play then :D — Moliere

I don't think it works like that. Consider that you can make a doughnut from the plane in two ways; make a horizontal cylinder and bend it round, or make a vertical cylinder and bend it round.

So I make a horizontal cylinder, but standing at the back of flat Pac-world, and the 'corners are now left and right middle facing me. Now I bend the cylinder around, and the corners are on the inside of the hole facing away from me. Or I can do the same thing with the vertical cylinder. So is the hole N-S or E-W? Or to put it another way, one pair of edges forms the inner ring around the hole, and the other pair goes through the hole. But which is which?

If we can truthfully predicate of some subject, then we are justified in inferring that there is such a subject. — Moliere

Hmm. Unicorns have a single horn. Harry Potter has a scar. ??? This seems a dangerous way round to put things, even if there is some way it makes sense. The danger is that one might think one can talk things into existence, and that is the essence of magic. I'd be much happier if you turned it around - 'if there is such a subject, then we are justified in inferring we can truthfully predicate.' Make the truth depend on the world rather than the world depend on truth.

One thing that's queer about relations is that I wonder what can be predicated of them?

At least, this is where I'd be stuck in how I started...

Also, I want to know -- what is the relationship involved? — Moliere

A hole is the surroundingness of a doughnut; a row is the alignment of ducks; a marriage is the joining of two matched parts. If you treat the doughnut as single material object, then the hole is the way the nut relates to itself. Or the way Pacman's world joins up. Or the way the ground of Kimberly relates to itself.
I don't know where predicates and variables sit though they seem like linguistic affairs...

Incidentally, the topology of Pacman's world is rather odd, the corners all join together as if they were all bent round as in a sphere, but the way they join up is backwards, as if one were on the inside of the sphere. Hence the hole/no hole that doesn't know whether it runs one way or the other.

I am a fake experience feeding on itself.