But let's not pretend we all know equally what that means. Ok? — frank

Yes. It is silly to argue about the definition of war, or whether a genocide is a war or not, or whether the slave trade or the apartheid system was or is part of a war.

But to the extent that we want to call a conflict a race war, we all know who won and who lost, whether we are talking about the holocaust, the conflict in Myanmar, the Tutsis and Hutus, or blacks and whites.

But if science cannot tell us what it is to be fully human, isn't psychology than a matter of opinion??? — Gregory

No. On the one hand science cannot tell us what it is to be fully human, and on the other hand psychology is far more than a matter of opinion.

I will declare, unscientifically but philosophically, that at least part of what it means to be fully human is to have a theory of mind, which is to say to have an idea of what it is to be human and as part of that, a psychological theory. This means that the way one understands oneself and others forms a substantial part of one's character. To be human is to be caught in this tangle of partial understanding of self and other, and thus that very human nature is modified by human theories of human nature. This is why science cannot 'complete' its psychological theories.

For you, the war is over.

Some of us become attracted to a person, not a type.

Well since we're here, and the interview is current, I'll make a comment as a non-royal married to a mixed race woman. On the one hand, who gives a fuck if mega-rich celebrities have harsh words said to them sometimes. On the other, the story is very very familiar to us and remarkably restrained and kind to the people and institutions that have clearly driven them out of the country.

The royals are racist because royalty is racist. They are brought up to look down on everyone and simultaneously claim to be living a life of service to the whole population. This is the very source of the doctrine of white superiority that justified the slave trade and the rape of the world known as the British Empire.

The most interesting aspect to me was the confession of how the Royal family has lost its real power, and is now a pawn of the media, allowed to continue on condition that they allow intrusive reporting, nd punished with negative reporting if they resist. My take is that the media need reform, and the royals need abolition. The royals do not serve and the media do not inform.

It seems there are two things to be troubled about for your average self-styled "rational" philosopher. The first is the subliminal and therefore unconscious influence, that worried television executives and gave advertising execs a hard-on, back in the day. The other is called 'confabulation', which is the tendency of self-styled "rational" philosophers to make up reasons why they did things after the event, rather than admit that they do stuff without knowing why.

I became less and less enamoured with the fact that my consciousness springs forth from and is contained within a deteriorating mass of biological complexity. — dazed

@180 Proof reminds me that the body is generally racialised and universally enslaved to the intellect - as depicted by Eldridge Cleaver. Find me the film where the jocks triumph over the nerds. No, it's always mind over matter; brother ass is tolerated but made subservient to the eternal mind.

Now put all that in brackets or scare quotes and append " says the white intellectual. And so (the other link) a film in which you (or I, or anyone) are mentioned as the viewer who cannot look at the body without demanding to know the meaning of every movement conceived as necessarily gestural, necessarily significant of something else, and never complete in itself. It reminds me of the way one cannot look at a work of art without the aid of an adequate blurb of interpretation already provided.

An interview ... Yeah, but what's it really about Adam?

So, because nothing was happening, it prompted me to examine how we got to this frozen state, where everyone is hysterical, but actually nothing was happening. — Adam Curtis

https://time.com/5941744/adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

There’s a great story which I threw out of the film, because it’s just too complicated. An economist working for eBay a couple of years ago was very suspicious about this. He persuaded the marketing department of eBay to give up advertising on Google for a third of the North American continent for three months. And the marketing company went, this will be a disaster. But nothing happened. They tried it for another three months. The sales remained exactly the same. And the economist said: what Google might really be up to is the pizza leaflet thing. If you and I are both advertising pizzas, and you go out on the streets and hand out leaflets, but I go to the lobby of a pizza pickup joint, it looks like I’ve got a 100% success rate, but they’re already coming there to buy the pizzas. I couldn’t put it in the films. But this terrible thing is that really, you’re just targeting somebody with something they’re already going to buy.

You might also look into "embodied cognition", or if you want to give yourself a proper headache, try Julia Kristeva.

And/or https://www.artandeducation.net/classroom/video/66044/trinh-t-minh-ha-reassemblage

Try bald vs. hairy — bongo fury

Obviously it depends whether it's my pate, or my wife's chin. Let's assume that I am not bald and my wife's chin is not hairy, and don't fucking argue if you know what's good for you.

I never understood what the problem was. The answer is 4. 1 is obviously not a heap; 2 is either a short row or a carefully balanced column; 3 is a row, a column, a plane or a wall; it takes 4 grains to have a layer of three and one on top, heaped up.

Slightly more formally: treating a grain as a centre of gravity with a spatial boundary, four points are required to define a three dimensional space, so four grains are required to define a three dimensional shape that constitutes a heap.

Try D.H.Lawrence.

I am not aware of any practices of sensory deprivation. It sounds very worrying. — Jack Cummins

Here's an oldish mention.

How many kinds of philosopher are there, I find myself wondering?

Some answers suggest there are but 2; good and therefore right, and wrong and therefore bad.

Others seem to suggest that to be a kind of philosopher is to be a follower of another philosopher, which suggests that Plato must have been a Platonist or he was no philosopher at all.

I would suggest that Marx should be classified with Nietzsche as an extravagantly hairy philosopher.

I am thinking of particular difficulties identified, such as ADHD and autistic disorders. — Jack Cummins

I was talking about ADHD. It is hard not to notice how ADHD diagnosis and Ritalin and function as the social control of children. Even more disturbing, there are reports of isolation amounting to sensory deprivation being used in schools on a regular basis, that inflicted on adults would be classed as torture.

Autism is very different, and usually doesn't get a drug treatment precisely because it is a real condition of the psyche, a matter of what used to be called 'character' rather than a 'mental illness'. One does not 'cure' autism any more than one cures Down's syndrome, one adapts.

It's possible (in fact I think it personally very likely) that the very reason why we're not making any improvements in the way our society functions is because of the damage living in it causes to our mental health. Addressing that damage may well be a step toward removing the conditions of its cause. — Isaac

Yes I agree. I think the trauma model is sound and that there is potential value in treatment and prevention both.

it's too easy to diagnose an illness as the result of a failure to function according to some societal norm rather than a failure to function according the person's own preferences. That is gradually changing (although third world backwaters like America are very slow to progress). — Isaac

Again we largely agree, though I think you are more optimistic. The use of Ritalin, for example, to treat an overly rigid curriculum and un-engaging teaching seems more to be spreading than retreating. Psychiatry as substitute for corporal punishment - the chemical cosh returns.

We are agree that nihilism and depression are completely different but in some cases depression somehow can drive you to nihilist ideas.
It will depend in the stimulus because I guess when you are having an active life (work, studies, friends, etc...) it is quite difficult to experience nihilism. I was the opposite. I remember wasting a lot of time of worth living in my nihilism era. When I change my mind and discovering other motivations, nihilism started being something from the "past" — javi2541997

It is certainly the basis of CBT as a treatment that depression can be treated by changing thinking, and through addressing negative thoughts, altering self defeating behaviour. In some ways it is the therapeutic application of philosophy.

That's not the conclusion of the study cited. Even a cursory read shows that. — Isaac

You are absolutely correct. My enthusiasm for social and environmental influences on mental health got the better of me. But do you not think that prevention is even better than cure? Therapy can sometimes have the social function of making social problems into personal ones, in rather the way cholera treatments of old failed to address the sanitation problems of crowded living in cities, that led to the frequent epidemics. Clean water does not cure cholera, it merely prevents it.

There is no sense in trying to analyze or categorize this one further. An inability to experience joy, with feelings of dread requires intervention. — Tom Storm

Turns out, 80% of depressions can be cured by not having a war where you live.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/people-in-war-torn-countries-are-five-times-more-likely-to-develop-anxiety-of-depression-320553

Actually, when I did undertake psychoanalytic therapy, at times it made me feel much worse about my life. I heard some therapy tutors say that sometimes things have to get worse before they get better. However, I did wonder how far this has to go. — Jack Cummins

It slightly bothered my that you put the emphasis on suffering, and reducing suffering. The phrase "comfortably numb" comes to mind. Will you choose a deep love and a painful loss, or a shallow life of little suffering?

I want to be more sensitive, not less, and that means more suffering too. Think of autonomy, of resilience, of agency, of relationship; less suffering is a too small a goal, too weak a measure of success.

If I were to ask, "Do we need clothes? What works and what doesn't?" I might get all sorts of answers. Inuit tend to opt for seal-skin, Hawaiians for grass skirts. Neither is quite appropriate for the London underground.

I am asking about how therapy helps in response to the problem of human suffering and asking to what extent it may help? Can it even aid in the experience of nihilism? — Jack Cummins

It can be a life saver, and it can be quite useless and even damaging. More power to to your non-directiveness or whatever you bring to the couch.

But every therapist should ask themselves very seriously and regularly whether they are helping people to tolerate the intolerable, rather than regain full agency in their lives. It should be the last rather than the first resort to an explanation of suffering that the cause is in the mind. Many people live in oppressive, stressful maddening situations, and they need practical help before anything else.

Likewise, the therapeutic effect of an appropriate environment and community should be part of any treatment program. My own favourite therapist is a tree, specialising in end of life and bereavement counselling.

1 why can't laws of nature and other fields be reduced to physics alone ? — Swimmingwithfishes

Here is a very simple outline argument.

P1. The laws of nature and other fields can be reduced to physics alone.
P2. Humans are part of nature.
P3. Humans can believe or disbelieve P1.
P4. Their belief affects their behaviour.
Therefore, the laws of physics are affected by human belief. :scream:

There is no need for new patterns of pronoun usage. — Bitter Crank

My lords, ladies and gentlemen {and rainbow warriors},

When I were a lad, persons of the feminine persuasion would be addressed and were obliged to style themselves as Miss or Mrs - according to their marital status. After a long campaign by rabid feminists claiming that this was unfair, a maritally neutral honorific 'Ms' was officially sanctioned. I don't see why pronouns should be exempt from change. Some people are unhappy being referenced by gender. They can be accommodated at little cost. Why not be generous?

A note about Richard and other partially colourblind philosophers.

It is not strictly the case that Richard cannot see red, he can see it just fine, but he cannot distinguish red from green. So with one of those test things with blobs of colour, he cannot read the numbers, but he doesn't find that ripe strawberries become invisible; he can pick them out easily because they are *scare quotes* "darker" or "bluer", or as he himself would say "red" . And this is why his experience and his talk are problematic.

We have to say of him, not that he has no experience of red (I am correcting myself here), but that his experience of red and his experience of green are 'the same'. So what I would like to suggest, is that this is a general principle of experience, that one does not experience light, but one experiences the distinction -it's a clunky way of expressing it - between light and darkness.Thus if one is blind, one cannot detect the dark or the light equally. One does not experience sweetness, but distinguishes sweetness from blandness - and so on.

This means that it is inappropriate to ask what the experience of red is like for you or for Richard; rather one should ask what it is unlike.

None. I just added it in to emphasise what I took you to be rejecting. — Luke

That's frankly bizarre. I say "I experience ... " And you say I want to deny experience. I don't have anything to say about that.

Notice your use of "absolutely" to qualify "no difference". — Metaphysician Undercover

Notice that in my use I am copying the exact phrase that my interlocutor used and that I quoted in my post.

I think I'm done with this discussion, chaps. It's been loads of fun.

Actually it's a very common use of the word "look", you're just obstinate, refusing to look at anything unless it's in front of your eyes. — Metaphysician Undercover

:rofl: It's very common to be misled. I do see what you mean though. But in the context of a discussion of colour and colour experiences, Richard does not see what you mean by 'red', though I do. And this is using 'see' in its visual sense. I am obstinate about that.

I get the sense you would prefer to reject subjective experience from your explanations entirely. — Luke

What other kinds of experience are there?

Looking at something with the mind does not mean to hold an image of it, it means to think about it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then looking is a misleading way to express, which is what I told you a while back. Yes I can remember stuff and manipulate concepts. And this means that I have a mind. Some people, but very few, can remember and recall complete images. They have minds too, that work slightly differently.

I experience, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.
— unenlightened

You call your experience the world? Are you a solipsist, then? — Luke

EDIT:

I experience something, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.
— unenlightened

Is that any clearer? Thus I am wearing a red fleece today, "The fleece is red", not "my experience is red".

Why does God have the Israelites march around the walls of Jericho once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh day before the walls fall? — BBQueue

It makes a better story. If Joshua just waved his hand and the walls came tumbling down at once, it would be unsatisfying, like using a developer's cheat in a computer game. The lads have to think they are contributing.

Your experience is the world, or is of the world? — Luke

I don't understand the distinction. I don't imagine I experience the whole world all at once, if that's what you mean.

Of course you can continue to deny that it's possible to look at something with one's mind — Metaphysician Undercover

And I will. Do the test linked above, and find out how well you can hold a simple image in your mind for a few seconds. I cannot do it very well at all, and have to try and remember structures of symmetry and asymmetry. Eidetic memory is very very rare.

Mustn’t my experience of red (as a non-colourblind person) and your friend’s experience of red be different, just as they would be different if your friend was blind and unable to see? — Luke

Richard cannot distinguish red from green.You can, we assume. I don't know what you want to say about Richard's experience or about yours. I suggest that as a matter of fact, Richard has no experience of red, but only the illusion that he experiences red. Or to put it another way, his experience of red is socially constructed. In the light (haha) of this, I for my part start to wonder about experience altogether.

I experience, I call it the world; I don't call it having an experience.

We all "look" at our experiences, we look at them with our minds. If we didn't we'd have no memory, as that's what memory is, looking at our experiences. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, we don't.

Memory is not looking at experiences, because one can remember in the dark. I remember the last time I was in the chip shop, the smell of hot fat and vinegar, the soft shine of the stainless steel counter and the bubbly battered fish hot under the lights. But I am looking at the words appearing on the computer screen and smelling the clean washing just out from the dryer.

There is no confusion of memory and experience, even if the memories are vivid, as they often are, though there might be, if one were not fully conscious. You can imagine me typing, my wife can see me typing, and neither of you confuses their actual seeing with their imagining or remembering by and large. "The mind's eye" is a metaphor, and you are allowing a turn of phrase to deceive you again.

In fact there is a test for eidetic memory (which in my case I have not got), in which you have to compare memory to present experience by 'as it were' superimposing them. This illustrates both how very different they are and how hard it is for most of us to put them together.

You can't explain to someone what an experience is like so I'm not sure what you're asking. As you said: The subjectivity leaves the picture. We can't talk about it. — khaled

But in this case we can talk about it. We discovered a difference. Richard discovered that he couldn't see red, but he had been seeing red all his life. So there is an experience of red of someone who cannot see red. In this case, it's is not that we cannot talk about it because it is private or subjective, but that we cannot talk about it because it never existed in the first place. 23 odd years of talking about something he could not see and not noticing that he could not see it. And no one else noticing either.

↪Luke I wonder if it is what unenlightened has in mind, — Banno

Not really. One might have such an experience in sunshine with one's eyes shut. It is the situation where it makes most sense to talk about 'an experience of red'. But it is an experience that anyone can have who can see in colour. And if you ask what it is like, I might liken it to a glorious sunset or something. I still wouldn't be talking about "my experience of red" as if it were something similar or different to "your experience of red".

Most of the time one can live with a colourblind person and not notice that they see things differently. They usually do not notice themselves, and talk about colours just like a human being. But they sometimes make mistakes, and my friend discovered one day that he was red/green colourblind when he applied to be a telephone engineer and had to do a test. We were both surprised. So here is a question for philosophers - What is the experience of red of someone who is colourblind but does not know it? Expect to construct a large edifice in explaining this mystery.

This is a mistake. If it can be recognized by you as a thing, then by that fact, it has made a difference, and cannot be excluded as non-existent. — Metaphysician Undercover

It is not a mistake. because it cannot be recognised as a thing. "I see a red apple" means I see a thing in the world that is red. There is nothing in my interior world that is red. But "an experience of red" suggests that the red is in my head in my interior world (whatever that is). But I don't see colour in my experiences, because I never look at them - my eyes point outwards not inwards. It is a linguistic construction that is mistaken for a thing The experience of seeing cannot be seen and thus cannot be coloured. Only what is seen is coloured and never the experience of seeing.

I believe your red is my red, because the underlying mechanism to produce those tints is biological and biology is very conservative, it change very very slowly and cannot be parametered at will like, say, a digital computer. — Olivier5

As you see above, I do not think I am red or have a red or a red experience, and I don't believe you do either. I see red things, and rarely I see red illusions which are errors of seeing. But my seeing experiences no more have colour than they have smell.

May I ask, what does "intrinsically private" mean in this context? Can anyone try and define it? And what is the connection with public discourse? — Olivier5

The sort of question that come's up now and then is "How do i know that my experience of red is the same as your experience of red?" The answer to this is not that we agree which things are red. And because of this, "my experience of red" becomes intrinsically private, because there is no access whatsoever to it by anyone else. It might be 'like' your experience of green, or your experience of conservatism, or your experience of cats. and nobody could ever possibly know.

This is of course utter tosh. But the reason it is tosh is that no one has "an experience of red", they merely experience things as red, or as not red. Ask a silly question, and you get an intrinsically private experience.