Now, importantly: Whether or not X and Y are the same experience makes absolutely no difference. What matters is the structure. — khaled

I find this an entirely agreeable explanation, except that I take it one step further, and say that things that make absolutely no difference should be treated as non-existent. So I never speak of X or Y at all, but only of red apples and blood and green grass and colourblindness and such. Subjectivity disappears from the conversation, because there are no words for X or Y and can be none. There are apples and grass and colours, and blindness, and we agree abut that.

Oh look! It's the private language argument again.

The “point of contact” is the similar structure of our experiences. — khaled

And is that your subjective feeling, or do you have access to the structure of other people's experiences? Folks are so keen to explain to my mere subjectivity just why n the one hand my feelings are abnormal and wrong, and on the other that they know what they are because they have the access I somehow lack.

I maintain that we all inhabit the same world, but I am called naive.

You seem to be making the same conflation as Banno between "subjective" and "private". My whole point here is that these are not the same. — Luke

your thoughts would be subjective insofar as they occur individually to you and to Banno. I suppose they would remain private to each of you until or unless they were expressed in some way (not necessarily linguistically). — Luke

I consider subjectivity to be somewhat synonymous with personhood and its traits, such as conscious awareness, rational thought, sensory perception, and the ability to feel pain. — Luke

And is this your subjective feeling about things, or is it the way things are? This is the problem: if awareness, senses, feelings, and thoughts are all subjective, there doesn't seem much left to be objective except some hypothetical noumenon, which no one has access to. And thus the subjective becomes necessarily private, because one only has one's own subjective perceptions of the expressions of another's subjective feelings. There is no point of contact.

That was intended as a lighthearted remark because those are abnormal views to hold. — Luke

Alas, you miss the point again. How can you say what is normal or abnormal without comparing subjectivities? You cannot have normal and abnormal private worlds - they have to be public so we can compare. Whether your heart is light or heavy as compared to mine is something you need to be positing as unknowable.

But excuse me for taking what you say seriously; I'll try and remember not to in future.

I'd imagine that a mental health professional might disagree with you both — Luke

Always a good argument> if you disagree with me you must be mad! I could argue that madness is an intersubjective phenomenon, as in, we have to institute (or in this case imagine), a mental health professional who is magically endowed with "the objective truth" about my subjectivity.

It is after all the first principle of psychology that the psyche can be known objectively. Far be it from me to forbid anyone from dismissing the whole of psychology, but then your reference to my health professional loses what little rhetorical force it might have had.

Saying that triangles are the basic structure of spacetime is a fine idea — Gregory

It's a bit like saying that sausages are the fundamental structure of nutrition. Why sausages and not pizza, you fail to ask? Why the 5 platonic solids and not the 17 wallpaper patterns?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36424768

I cannot experience anybody else's pain and nobody else can experience my pain. — Luke

The expression “I feel your pain” can only be figurative. In empathy one can only feel one’s own pain, even if it is expressed or felt for others. — Luke

Imagine we agree about this. You me and Banno. How is that not intersubjective?

Imagine I don't think I have my own pain, and Banno thinks he has your pain. Are these our private subjectivities, about which no disagreement is possible?

We each have a private world — khaled

Anyone who cares to admit this for their own part, thereby participates in the intersubjective construction of private worlds.

In rather the same way that someone who admits to being single or married participates in the social construction of marital relations.

To admit is to let in. One admits a construct to one's private world in such a way that one's private world is itself a social construct that admits itself to itself.

Subjectivity is a social construct; subjectivity is intersubjective.

if you prefer Biden to Trump then a vote for a third party is a vote for Biden wasted. Either Trump or Biden was going to win, and their win would have a very real and major effect on people's lives. If you believe (rightly) that Trump is incompetent, criminal, harmful, and otherwise unfit for office, then you should vote for Biden. — Michael

Have to disagree with this. If you think the 2 party system results in poor government, then voting for a third option is the the way to go. It may take many elections to build support, but your counsel of despair for any alternative other than narcissist old fart or senile old fart is not true, and perpetuates the status quo. Encourage folks to vote for real change by voting for real change!

When the state compels people to promote a certain stance under the threat of sanction we have entered the realm of censorship. — NOS4A2

Freedom imposed by law with legal penalties for not obeying its strictures is tyranny in double-think. — unenlightened

I'm always worried when agreement comes from unexpected quarters.

No, the proposal is to protect freedom of speech in universities. It's not unreasonable to ask questions about what that means, and how it will be achieved, but the specific measures have not yet been published, so at this stage - we can only really look at the problem. — counterpunch

So the problem is "rampant post modernist, neo marxist, politically correct censorship spewing forth from the humanities departments," apparently, and not at all the pressures of commercial interests or governments domestic and foreign, or wealthy individuals using donations to influence. It's people like me, a retired hotel porter, who are distorting the minds of the young. That must be why you're a fuckwit.

I know you're absolutely desperate to distract attention away from the rampant post modernist, neo marxist, politically correct censorship spewing forth from the humanities departments of universities; — counterpunch

I know you're a fuckwit.

Free speech doesn't bypass academic merit. It bypasses politically correct censorship. — counterpunch

So the proposal is, that because academics are politically biased, politicians should interfere in the freedom of academia to shape it in a more politically unbiased way. Really? Academics are politically biased and politicians not?

We already have climate change deniers paraded year after year in the name of free speech all over the media, speaking of political correctness gone mad; and now we are to have it imposed on universities too, because it quite suits Putin to thaw out Siberia and open up his Northern coastline. And it's political, so academics all shut up and listen!

Freedom imposed by law with legal penalties for not obeying its strictures is tyranny in double-think.

I would think that an education establishment should not be a place of freedom of speech at all. It should be a place where truth is privileged. Flat Earthers, propagandists, bullshitters, conspiracy theorists, and purveyors of fake news should be given no platform. Am I allowed to say that?

Of course there can be debate as to what is true in some cases, but generally, Universities are places to establish the truth and are certainly more likely to have a handle on things than political appointees. Or if not, then abolish them and save some money.

Yes. I would not make any argument against someone who felt that life is a burden or meaningless, however you want to put it. My argument is against the notion that this attitude is somehow more rational, more justified, or more moral than the love of life despite all its pains and horrors.

Even in its own terms, life is a losing game. One tries to survive; always, one fails eventually. Kind of like the high jump - the bar gets raised until eventually no one can jump it. We're all for the high jump sometime or other, and even the anti-natalist will get his heart's desire eventually. Happy days. :love:

Dealing with naive nihilism is like playing Wack-a-mole. I predict the op will drop this thread and start another one making the same assumptions. They have already told you the likely effect of your contributions:-

It's just hard to take seriously anyone arguing for objective morality when it's pretty easily to prove that false, considering we made up morality (among other things). — Darkneos

The necessary moral conditions for communicative debate are not in place. Language is made up, therefore it's all bullshit! :vomit:

Useful and useless are judgements from a point of view. From one's own point of view, to be useless to a ruthless exploiter is a positive. The malignancy is the frustrated complaint of the ruthless exploiter. There are plenty of them, always complaining about how hard they have to work to satisfy their own greed.

By the early 21st century, millions had grown accustomed to chaos. There was a growing feeling that nothing had any meaning. The world had lost hope. But in 2021, A filmmaker from BBC offered a way of understanding reality. HIs claim was that, by sifting video fragments from the past 100 years, we could trace the patterns of power through the century . This new narrative would give us a full understanding. But this was just a fantasy [shot of people dancing, set to a different song than what they were dancing to originally] — csalisbury

Wonderful! :starstruck:

I just watched part1, and I'm reminded of ideas about control and stability being inversely related. The more control humans have the more unstable humanity becomes, and this is just the way the world is.

I might suggest, from my distant experience, that one cannot describe to the uninitiated, the effects of a hallucinogen such as LSD. Talk does not communicate an experience one has not had the like of. And yet, one can recognise the influence of that experience on the album, 'Sgt Pepper's', for instance. There are conversations one cannot have without having the experience they are about.

Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) once wrote that the imagination is our "intuitive conscience". — Gregory

Empathy is an act of imagination. I do not actually feel your pain, but I can imagine vividly and thus do not rub salt in your wounds.

There is nothing esoteric about esotericism, it is nothing more peculiar than the fact that if you haven't done the training and practice, you cannot really compete with elite athletes who have.

Not sure where you are responding — schopenhauer1

It was a joke. thought better of a post and deleted it.

MALIGNANTLY USELESS.

I'm trying to decide whether this is an oxymoron or a contradiction. It seems to depend on one's point of view.

If malignantly, then it seems to follow that it ought not be useless. But moral realism is an anathema.

Or ...

If useless, then malignancy can have no use.


Or is this another rhetorical flourish, not to be taken seriously?

This is a very old problem, with a straightforward solution. Back in the good old days, you never knew if the merchant's weights and measures were accurate or not, you never knew whether your bread flour had been adulterated with chalk or your wine with antifreeze, or the concrete for your skyscraper was made with beach sand full of salt.

This was annoying and dangerous, and nothing could be done by corporations because if there was one unscrupulous trader, he could undercut all the honest traders and put them out of business. But behold, the government invented red tape.

Red tape has a bad reputation as limiting innovation and slowing business down and costing money.
It consists of rules and regulations and standards, along with officious and powerful inspectors and enforcers. Health and safety, food standards agencies, building inspectors, electrical standards, car manufacture controls, toxicity controls so that kids no longer play with lead soldiers or lead painted toys and furniture. Every aspect of life is regulated and inspected by 'the man', including care homes and the certification of doctors.

Everyone hates it until it's not there and they experience the lethal alternatives. It's expensive, complicated, petty, and intrusive. It forbids short-cuts, make-dos and cover-ups. Whether they're government controlled, corporate owned, or charity run, care homes need inspecting often and in detail, and they need to be held to a complicated detailed standard of care that is rigorously enforced This costs a lot of money, and we have to pay for it and suffer the inconveniences, or care becomes careless. and end of life care becomes life-ending care.

Edit: Nothing. It was meaningless. And still is.

Have you ever felt that there was nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, no one to know? I am not asking for self-help or anything or to "snap out of it", just curious if that feeling ever came upon you where no motivation or significance had impetus. — schopenhauer1

Yes. I call it 'peace'.

ALL is best, though we oft doubt,
What th' unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft he seems to hide his face,
But unexpectedly returns
And to his faithful Champion hath in place
Bore witness gloriously; whence Gaza mourns
And all that band them to resist
His uncontroulable intent.
His servants he with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind all passion spent. — John Milton

There are two ways to have social order, culture, or authority over the people. Authority over the people, even if it is blind justice, destroys liberty, and that makes a moral culture very important. — Athena

Spoken like a true anarchist! My own position as an anarchist is that we already live in an anarchy, but the difficulty we always face is that there is nothing to prevent anyone from setting up a government and producing authorities. There ought to be a law against it, but ...

So while we are waiting for everyone to become moral and cooperate, impersonal justice including police and law courts seems like the best of governments rather than the worst - at least when they function as intended, that is 'blindly'.

What about that part? — schopenhauer1

I already critiqued the ever-"clanking machinery of emotion", and having mechanised emotion and so deprived life of all its liveliness, he declares it vacuous. Emotion is the relationship of a life to the world, and without relationship to the world life would indeed come to a standstill. So what? So treasure your emotions, even the negative ones.

I think it isn't so much against emotions qua emotions, but emotions that illicit a positive affiliation with this or that "anchoring". The anchoring of "hard work". The anchoring of "family". The anchoring of "good citizen". The anchoring of "creative artistic type". Or alternatively, he is questioning how it is we attach ourselves to certain motivational forces that makes it seem "There's something to do, There's someone to know, There's something to be, There' to know". It seems like he is saying that the depressive doesn't see an attachment to any of these via some emotional value from it. Hence his main point is this:

"And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill." — schopenhauer1

I hope you mean elicit not illicit. :grimace: Depression is an anchor too. One cannot write a book without a strong attachment to the topic.What he does is contrive to negate positive emotions as 'false', 'arbitrary', 'inaccurate', etc, but his own feelings are exempted from this because they are already negative, and thus their negation makes them positive - honest, realistic, intelligent. Thus he is positively attached to depression. And again, he negates the character of life in a very 19th century scientific traditional way here: "the ever-clanking machinery of emotion". The thing about machinery - even quite sophisticated machinery, is that it is devoid of emotion, but with a sleight of mind and a turn of phrase, Ligotti contrives the mechanisation of emotion itself, and even complains of the noise! The age of clanking machinery has long gone!

Yes. I'm just bemused by the thread. When I try to imagine an alternative to treating everyone the same in the common sense way of justice as blind, I can only come up withe notion of privilege - literally "private law", as in one law for the rich and another for the poor, for example. That systems of this sort abound in history and still at present is lamentable. Caste, race, aristocracy, the forms of inequality are legion, but once a society becomes bigger than a single village, personal relations cannot be the basis of interaction, and to the extent that it does remain the basis, it becomes another form of privilege - "it's not what you know, it's who you know" - nepotism. I assume neither of you are advocating for any of this, so what is it that you want?

to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives,
— Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

What is said here implies that living as a depressive is as much living as a pawn of affect as any alternative.

There's a deep irrationality in thinking that being a depressive is somehow authentic, that being happy is inauthentic. — Banno

Depression is an affect, obviously. And what is expressed here is something like disgust, abhorrence, even hatred of affect itself that parallels the feelings of the anorexic for their body. It is sustained individually by the sense of superiority of privileged access to "the truth". But it is also promoted socially by, ahem, emotional correctness gone mad. Expressions of dislike, disgust, hatred, are not permitted except directed at official scapegoats. Tediously, Freud was about right about this effect of civilisation on the discontent of the individual. And the ideology of scientism supports this denigration of emotion - the primary insult against woman - and worship of the great god, Rationality.

we need to be treated as unique individuals — Jack Cummins

I love you for saying that! That is exactly what I wish everyone would understand. — Athena

Are you not both arguing for and treating everyone the same here?

It sounds Kantian to me. "final value" I guess means value as an end (in itself) rather than as a means. The woodman's axe has value as a means to chop wood, whereas the stone-age obsidian axe head has value in itself as a thing of beauty and historical significance.

So if the stone-age axe was ugly, and had a singular (final) value as a thing of historical significance, its value would be less, but there would still be a normative reason to preserve it or whatever.

an image of a boabab tree in a giraffe's mind and the word "boabab" in a human's mind are semantically identical. — TheMadFool

I have just explicated in detail how I think they are very different.

You wouldn't, for instance, say that "water" and "aqua" and a picture of a glass of water are different in any significant sense, right? — TheMadFool

Wrong. A picture is a record, thus a memory: a word as I explained above is multi-faceted and associates a sensation an emotion and a memory along with, crucially, an identification.

The logical question that arises is: Where did the conscious mind come from? — Ken Edwards

"In the beginning (of consciousness) was the word."

Draw me a graph. — Ken Edwards

I'm sorry, but I can't be bothered at the moment - I don't have facilities to make it easy enough. So instead ...

By your hypothesis words are behaviour/actions. One might say 'gestural'.

So giraffes can't think since they have no vocal cords? — TheMadFool

Obviously giraffes think, but not in words, and I suggest that they are aware, but not conscious. This is a distinction that requires forcing of the language a bit, so I have to explain: awareness is defined for this purpose as sensation (image, smell, sound, etc) + association with a memory, accompanied with affect or emotion. Eg. sensation sight/smell of baobab associated with memory of another tree that smelled and looked a lot like, and feeling of yummy leaves and fruit. (I attempt to describe in words the thinking of a giraffe not in words.)

This whole thought process in a human is encapsulated in a single word - ice-cream. What this means is that a word does not refer to a thing, but to a whole relationship, something like: "that is a baobab, giraffes like baobabs, and I am a giraffe."

And it is this last bit, of crucial self identification, that distinguishes the wide-aware giraffe from the sleepily conscious human.

I may be a pensioner, but I'm still keeping my end up, never fear.

It is said that you end up with the partner you truly deserve. — synthesis

Well that's me feeling extremely smug!

TBH, I think this is not far off — Possibility

Incel fantasy, alas.

The rule is big muscles and/or big wallet. Romance is nice and flattering, but a girl has to be practical.

We call it 'embodied cognition'. It connects with the notion that one can improve one's physical performance in say tennis by visualising practice. Memory jocks commonly visualise a familiar journey and mentally 'place' the information they want to recall along the route. Philosophers all too frequently forget that they are embodied to the great frustration of their wives if any. "All talk and no trousers."

However, visualisation is not verbal but still thinking. Do I need to draw you a diagram?

Guys, you need to watch more teen films. The air-head socialite girls all go for the football jocks and the intelligent girl, who always wears glasses and has a bad hairdo and no makeup, goes for the maverick loner who is ignored or bullied by everyone else. Intelligence doesn't come into it, you have to be a maverick loner, preferably with tragic problems and odd parents, if any.

:rofl: That is sooo gay!