Waiting, at this point, means accepting doom as necessary or unavoidable. — Olivier5

Kind of you to tell me what I mean, but actually no, it doesn't.

But suppose for a moment that doom is unavoidable. What do you propose? Will you wait then, or will you do something? This is rather important, because a large part of the problem of humanity is just this need for a win, a positive result, for progress. And of course we are all doomed to die sometime or other. So I don't propose, and I don't wait. I plant trees and bake bread; I do not travel, I live low and small, and I offer what insights I have. I try to help my neighbours practically and psychologically. Or else I do other stuff, you know. What I do matters even if it makes no difference.

So what do you propose then? — Olivier5

I propose first of all to point out that it is a problem of humanity, and a problem that science and reason cannot deal with.

And then I will wait until all the proposals run into the sand. If I had a proposal for solving the problem of humanity, it would be from the imaginary position of non-humanity. This is why scientific psychologies fail; the humans that reform humanity are all too human; the peasants are just as greedy as the nobility given the chance.

So that is the first and last step, not to separate oneself from the problem so far as to make a proposal.

we do not have the will power. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think that explains the problem at all. We have the will power to create armies and bombs to seek out new fossil fuels to exploit, and all kinds of stuff and yet we are terrified more by the prospect that someone will get something for nothing than by the destruction of the world. Here is Trump willing the death of a few more while he still can in the dying days of his presidency. No lack of will...

Who said I don't do that in my own life? — Olivier5

No one. I said it was ineffective. If I said it was as ineffective as a glass hammer would you insist that you use a metal hammer?

It brings itself quite well unfortunately. I'm not saying my sentiments are reflective of society as a whole or even the majority of persons, simply that 99.9% of persons in a hypothetical quarantine can be healthy or otherwise non-infectious, but if you don't plan- and carefully- for that single person who may be, you could easily end up with a nationwide outbreak on your hands. — Outlander

I disagree, but that is because I bring another idea of human nature to the original table, to the one that it is silly to pretend you are not bringing. This is not the place to argue out who is right, though, and I simply used your words as an example. Rawls speaks to educated white males of like mind, and comes up with a society rather like US society. He thinks this is the fairest in the land because he is looking in the magic mirror of his peers.

These chaps would bring a fresh perspective to things in the original position: -

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/strange-island-pacific-tribesmen-come-study-britain-5329192.html

The series, 'Meet the Natives' is very instructive and entertaining.

We can develop an anti-consumerist, anti-materialist philosophy, and try to teach it to our kids. — Olivier5

Sure we can, so why don't we? You come up with external solutions to an internal problem, which is why it doesn't happen. When the problem is the world, science will tells the practice that will work best. But when the problem is the human, the problem is the scientist, then science cannot help, but on the contrary, does exactly what you have done - project sensible solutions onto the world as if humans can implement it. This solution is as old and as ineffective as "don't do what I do, do what I say." Human problems can only be answered with your life.

A row of ducks is a physical thing comprised of other physical things, — Kenosha Kid

Cool. I think we agree thus far. Stuff and structure. Rows are always rows of somethings, and thus physical, but they are nothing other than the somethings in a particular arrangement.

duck duck
duck

A non-row of ducks.

So a physical architect's brain and hand produces plans for a house, and the plans are physical, but there is no house. A natural way of talking would be to say that the builders will realise the architect's plans when they build the house that is imagined. And thus we arrive at, as it were, map and territory. real and imagined, physical and mental. Now if you want to deny the sense of all these virtual existences, then it seems to me that you are trying to police a strained and convoluted language to no good purpose. 'Everything is physical' becomes as vacuous as the mystic's 'all is one'.

The tower of Babel is upon us. — magritte

That's not a problem. I can get a plumber to do the pipes, and an electrician to to the wiring and so on. this is called cooperation and coordination. Humans are good at that. Super technical super complicated stuff gets done that way, that no one can understand - like my laptop. Thank you germanium miners.

Science sets out what we might do, and what will happen if we do it.

The choice of what to do remains ... — Banno

Indeed. So science cannot do politics, cannot do social studies, cannot do psychology. Science cannot care. And woe betide humanity if we neglect to care because science cannot measure and control it.

The OP blames science for "threatening our very existence with technological devices today", when the culprit is scientific illiteracy combined with naked greed. — Banno

Does it? As I read it it simply says that science does not prevent us from destroying ourselves.

the culprit is scientific illiteracy combined with naked greed. — Banno

Lack of education? But why, in this wonderful scientific age, are we all so badly educated and greedy? We can produce clean water, but we cannot produce clean minds - is there a science and technology of humanity to match the water and sewage system?

Technological problems are trivial these days, but psycho-social problems are intractable. and psycho-social problems prevent us from dealing with technological problems.

One has to conclude, surely, that 'science' does not have all the answers. How do we stop being greedy?

I didn't read past this first sentence. — Kenosha Kid

I did.

I have explained my reasoning as to why non-physical things are either contradictory or meaningless — Kenosha Kid

If you are right, what does it mean to talk of 'physical things', as distinct from just 'things'? It seems to me that for 'physical' to have meaning, it must distinguish itself from something -'mental' or 'theoretical', or 'abstract'. I like to get my ducks in a row. Ordinary physical ducks, three of them, as is traditional. So here they are in a row:

duck duck duck.

Now granting that the ducks are physical, is the row physical? Do I have 4 physical things - 3 ducks and a row? Or 3 physical things - the ducks in a non-physical row?

The difficulty with the original position is that one comes to it from somewhere. One brings an idea of human nature. for example:

People need regulation, period. — Outlander

everyone will try to join and flatly nod yes to whatever citizenship pledge is required to get the free stuff. — Outlander

And also an idea of social and economic conditions. In this case the alternatives presented do this already.

1. Laissez Faire: Markets will operate without government intervention, except
to protect private property (including intellectual property through patenting
and copyrighting legislation) and to place modest limits on the emergence of
oligopolistic and monopolistic markets. — Jasmine

Patents and copyright are only really affordable by developed industrial societies. To a medieval monk copying was a heroic contribution to civilisation. This is not even a possible scenario for most of history, so it is clear that the society we are being unbiased about is ... ahem... our own. Coincidence?

When you think about it, there are all sorts of entropic forces rotting wealth. What forces it to go the other way? Isn't it that in a free society, there's nothing to stop people who just put their whole souls into acquisition? — frank

When I look at it however, I see that in the country i live in, wealth survives in dynasties ofttimes for many hundreds of years. Typically, social mobility stems from revolutions, political or technological. In a stable economy, money is the best way to make money.

The technical term is "meta".

On the face of it, I would not be surprised if to become wealthy from a poor start requires one to be hard-working, intelligent, ambitious, ruthless, greedy, and lucky.

On the face of it, I would not be surprised if to inherit wealth is much easier, and requires merely the luck of birth and the common sense not to antagonise the previous generation.

I'm trying to point out that perception cannot occur without there being a collision of two mediums. Its not an ideal, its simply a fact. — Philosophim

It's a fact under physicalism. Unsurprisingly, physicalists do not have a problem with physicalism any more than Christians have a problem with Jesus.

What tho' the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile?
In vain with lavish kindness
The gifts of God are strown;
The heathen in his blindness
Bows down to wood and stone. — R. Heber

My understanding has been that misanthropy is a distaste for human society, more than a deep understanding of it. As such it would be invidious to dignify it with the term 'philosophy.

Furthermore, as the quote above indicates, it is, in its Christian tradition, although technically universal and the result of the Fall and expulsion from Eden, actually mainly applicable to others - especially women, and foreigners, and non-Christians.

But lacking the myth of Adam and Eve, the natural philosopher as misanthrope seems bound inevitably to succumb to a global pessimism and be unable to maintain even that 'every prospect pleases', or indeed any. And one is dragged down therefore to the hell of antinatalism, and the loss of meaning.

'Think I'll go and eat worms.'

There are millions of healthy people wearing masks, not because they are sick and risk infecting someone, but because they are ignorant of whether they are sick or not. — NOS4A2

Wow, we agree about something! Now if this was bubonic plague, and everyone who was sick came out in huge pustules, or leprosy, where bits fall off, then we would all know who to socially distance from and so on. That would be much better. But alas it is not so simple with covid, and nobody knows the virtuous from the unclean, except by arcane ritual of swab and test, performed in the holy inner sanctum of science labs. Ah, the good old days of freedom...

:smile: :wink: :razz: :grin: :lol: :blush: :rofl: :joke: :cool: :kiss: :love: :halo: :yum: :sweat:

Donkeys work hard.

I never yet met a wealthy donkey.

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-12-01/high-court-rules-children-under-16-can-only-consent-to-puberty-blockers-if-they-understand-treatment

By a reasonable age, I mean children in secondary education. — Brandon G

It's a cultural thing. There is no right answer - no fact of the matter that applies to all people at a certain birthday. Having said that, it seems to me that the competence to refuse treatment would come before the competence to demand it. It relates to other expectations laid upon the young person. For instance I suppose that the age at which one is considered competent to bear arms and die for one's country should not be earlier than the age at which one is competent to vote for one's government, get rat-arse drunk, and have the last say about any possible medical treatment.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that psychologically, some people never grow up. But one cannot legislate for that, except at the extreme.

All perception starts with contact between two physical objects. — Philosophim

But you cannot start there in this thread, because in this thread we are problematising "physical objects". That kind of circularity is the vicious kind.

"Perception starts with physical objects; something is physical if it can be perceived." Nothing has been said, and nothing has been elucidated. Rather, reality has been made dependent on observation, which actually smacks of idealism.

Consider the gas laws for an example of physical understanding. They were derived in the first instance from experimental observations and measurements.

The observations were then theorised in the kinetic theory of gases. Certain assumptions about an 'ideal gas' allow the gas laws to be derived mathematically, but with limitations ...

Such a model describes a perfect gas and is a reasonable approximation to a real gas, particularly in the limit of extreme dilution and high temperature. Such a simplified description, however, is not sufficiently precise to account for the behaviour of gases at high densities.

'The ideal gas' is a made up entity to which reality approximates some of the time. This is called "physics". It is of course out of date, and better approximations and more complicated equations have replaced these ideas.

Nevertheless, such is still the nature of physics. Dark matter is a made up entity to explain why galaxies do not fly apart, which they otherwise would if everything else we think we know was right, and yet they don't seem to.

Theoretical models are not reality, they are useful simplifications.

What, then, is physicalism?

A theory is not an argument.

You're missing the point. — TheMadFool

Dude first you deny my analogy on spurious grounds, and then you try and play it back at me in garbled form. No thanks.

That's odd. Chess is an invention; naturally, everything about it is arbitrary - for instance, the rules are the way they are because the inventor said so.

Physicalism is not like chess. — TheMadFool

That, sir, is the thesis of atheism, that reality is not the way it is because the inventor said so. But it is not clear to me why it would make a difference even if it is true. Chess is real, whether it was invented or evolved, and the rules are the rules, whatever you may think.

Exactly. The rules of chess are the right rules for chess because those are the rules. There can be other rules, but they are the rules for other games.

If you want to do science, construct experiments; if you want to do mathematics construct proofs.

Circularity is a good thing for a theory, as long as it isn't vicious. A theory is a way of looking at things; at least, this is a way of looking at theories and ways of looking at things.

The problems begin when one wishes to claim that there is only one way of looking at things - this is a way of looking at things that is quite obviously faulty.

You can't make a universe without breaking symmetry.

You can't have friends; you can only be a friend.

*something even wiser about eggs falling on stones and vice versa.*


*Mumble, mumble, 'cosmic egg'.*

No, from Albion.

*Something wise about omelettes and eggs.*

the UK joined a project it did not believe in. It joined the European project not to support it genuinely and positively, but to avoid being left out. Their heart was not in it. Hence they never invested much cultural and political capital in it. — Olivier5

Yes. I think that was the price of thinking 'we won the war.' Britain was never humiliated the way the rest of Europe was, by invasion, defeat, or collaboration. The Swiss have the same problem. Still struggling to think we ever did anything wrong.

Doubtless you think Marx was right. — Tim3003

Doubtless you think Hitler was right.

"Engineered"? Murdoch simply sells papers by giving readers what they want, which is not challenging their ill-formed views and promoting fear of the unknown, but reinforcing them to promote outrage against the 'known' foreigners - simplistic stereotypes though they are. — Tim3003

Engineered! The rich minority maintain their power by sowing dissension and setting the poor against the destitute, the slum-dwellers against the homeless, the Northerner against the Southerner, black against white, worker against sick or disabled, indigenous against incomer and so on and on and on.

Readers want what they are convinced to want and that is the basis of advertising, propaganda, and manipulation. And you know all this perfectly well and are spreading the same divisive propaganda yourself. Blame the people with the power and influence for the state of the world; blame the people who inform the ill-informed with simple stereotypes - blame yourself. Drink the water, leader of horses.

...how fucking impossible it is for anyone to achieve even that bare minimum of security: the right to sit and starve somewhere without paying someone for the privilege. — Pfhorrest

Thanks for sharing your story, dude, and with such devastating clarity and eloquence. Alas for Mr & Mrs Average in this situation. Here in the UK, our adoption of American values has reached the point where Covid is that minor set back that has more and more folks literally going hungry and homeless. A priest on TV last night in tears as he described how as he delivered food parcels, children would literally tear it open on the doorstep to get something to eat. Yea, freedom!

Not you or I of course, but ...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/communication-success/201601/7-signs-covert-introvert-narcissist

Explains a lot. The people of the Land of the free, don't know what freedom is.

It's impossible for anyone to do something that doesn't benefit faer in any way at all — TheMadFool

Actually, I don't see at all why this is so. It is quite a popular idea, and I think it comes from an analogy with causation.

"A person's action is caused by their motive.", says U. But the causal agent is a thought, not a benefit. The benefit of an action if any, is a result that comes after the action, and so the benefit cannot cause the action that produces it, but a thought is the cause. So there is no particular reason that I can see, why a thought of another cannot be as good a motive as a thought of self. I might have a complicated thought about how mowing my neighbour's lawn will benefit me in some way, or I might have a more simple thought that it would benefit him, or even just benefit the lawn. Why is that impossible?

Here's how I heard it. The good stuff is reserved for medical staff and rich fucks. The rest of us use crappy makeshift masks that provide almost no protection to the wearer in a virus laden atmosphere. What they do that is beneficial is literally slow the virus being breathed or coughed out by an infected person. This means that droplets (bigger than an individual virus) sink floorwards a bit faster, and reduce the viral load in the atmosphere, thus reducing to risk to uninfected persons. Typically, it requires more than a single virus to become infected, because not every virus will get to the right place and manage to penetrate an appropriate cell. some get swallowed and digested, some are breathed in and then breathed straight out again, etc.

So wearing a mask is a constraint on freedom like having to have a driving licence. Nobody cares If you want to kill yourself in your own car on your property, but we don't really want you to kill us on the public roads. Like having a licence, masks don't guarantee safety, but they help along with other stuff.