Well women spend a lot of time trying to arouse the interest of men, who generally prefer to get drunk and watch football, or play with their train-sets, because women are so much more highly sexed than men. In my youth I always dressed like a tramp so as not to have to beat them off with a stick, but nowadays I just have to remember not to smile.

So a woman is ridiculing a man by belittling herself? Something doesn't add up. — TheMadFool

It doesn't add up that being attractive is belittling oneself.

I'd like to ask you a simple question: what is it that's being revealed by wearing revealing clothes and what is the purpose of revealing that which is being revealed? — TheMadFool

All else being equal, it is being revealed that the woman in question wants to look attractive to one or more men. Rather like when a man wears a suit, he wants to look respectable, masculine, important and possibly, attractive to women.

So now explain why any of this amounts to objectification.

Rabble armies are like cluster bombs; they tend to result in a certain amount of collateral damage. Regrettable but sometimes necessary.

in my humble opinion, has consequences viz. being seen only as a means to satisfaction of carnal urges. — TheMadFool

Nothing humble about that opinion. Do you apply it to yourself? Do you objectify yourself whenever you try and attract a sexual partner? Or are you just an ordinary male chauvinist?

What are they dressing up as that they've spent time and effort rejecting?
— unenlightened

As sex-objects. — TheMadFool

Are you saying that a woman who wants sex wants to be objectified? That a woman who wants to excite a man wants to be treated as a sex object?

Connect the dots and you get the image of women dressing up to be something they've spent a whole lot of time and effort rejecting as part of their identity. — TheMadFool

What are they dressing up as that they've spent time and effort rejecting? ( He asks, pretending for no good reason that women always dress the same way.)

women perceive themselves — TheMadFool

You speak for women do you?

Aren't the low-neckline, exposing cleavage, and the miniskirt, exposing the thighs, just that - striptease? — TheMadFool

Do you think it is a matter of fact, and not a matter of perception in relation to a culture? How extraordinary it seems to me that you should suggest it! When i was a lad, it was considered an outrageous obscenity that the Beatles grew their hair so long it covered their ears. Like girls!

I find this thread a sad disappointment by its mere existence, never mind the content. Why is it always the woman whose dress is questionable? Always subject to the moral scrutiny of every spotty teen or middle aged paunch that cares to venture to lay down the criteria of appropriate femininity. That is objectification of women; this is objectification of women!

There is an etiquette to being an artists' model. One undresses behind a screen, because as has been alluded to, it is the tease of the strip not the nakedness that is exciting. The screen humanises what would otherwise be a process of objectification as it does also at the doctor's. This might be hard to appreciate if one has not done it.

Not all nakedness is sexual, and not all sexuality is objectification. Slavery is objectification, but the play of domination and submission is not - because it is a game.

A system in which more black people are disporportionally murdered by the state is so regardless if every single government officer was an avowed anti-racist. What matters is results, not intention. — StreetlightX

I think, reading this thread, it is apparent that people honestly take up positions that they honestly believe are not racist but which have prejudicial results. And I think @creativesoul has identified the space of contention.

Identity politics is the appropriate term, although it is used as a term of abuse. Look at the medalI posted above. A white angel subdues the black beast. Of course we want to be on the side of the angels; we identify as angels. The great and the good are wearing it with pride and being awarded it for services to the nation. These people do not think they are racist. The people on this thread do not think they are racist, they think they are philosophical angels subduing the beast of error and confusion.

One's beliefs conform to one's identity. I identify as British, I identify Britain as a good country. It follows that problems must be caused by what is non British, and anything that is not like me is non-British. Anyone who criticises what is good is non- British, a traitor, and a devil. I am British, therefore I am good, therefore I am not racist. Therefore, if black people get badly treated, they must deserve it.

Things about one's identity: it doesn't have to be true, it hurts psychologically when it is attacked or undermined, it is the belief that must be defended at all costs. I am rational, therefore this makes sense, and my identity is true. Devils rarely self-identify as devils, but more usually as misunderstood angels.

It's a bit off topic posting my local shit here, but we Brits really want to show our solidarity with all you American racists at this difficult time.

Liverpool was at the centre of the slave trade, and the University has not been slow in showing its hypocrisy in on one side claiming to support BLM, and on the other attempting to shut down any critical debate. John Moores, to save your google finger made his stash running football pools, a barely legal gambling set up. Followed by a mail order business selling third rate products to the poor on credit.

https://leejasper.blogspot.com/2020/06/john-moores-university-lack-of-action.html?spref=tw&fbclid=IwAR0go05BCJL_FxzI-FhCusXEGLJfmlaRlzliONqcdHcoVAwOhSbFNziqsGg

We Brits thought of it first.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Medal%2C_order_%28AM_2018.63.1-2%29.jpg

Look carefully at the image of this still current Honour awarded to UK diplomats and political bigwigs. Yup. White angel with foot on head and neck of lucky lucky black person. And that's diplomacy justice and all good things we all can be proud of. Americans are so unoriginal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_St_Michael_and_St_George

Perhaps your body owns you.

Not really: you can mutilate and destroy your hammer if you like, but you cannot legally, or ethically, mutilate and destroy your dog. — Janus

Well you can't legally or ethically spray your hydrogen cyanide round the shopping mall either. But you might get away with walking the dog there. As I said at the outset, ownership is always subject to limitations and responsibilities.

I don't agree that everything privately owned is stolen from the community, and I think if pressed David and those like him won't either, making a distinction between "personal" and "private" property, where "personal" is rightfully owned by an individual and "private" is something that rightfully belongs to the community but from which most of said community are wrongly excluded. That's just a terminological thing though. Some things owned by individuals ("private property") are rightfully so, others aren't. If the community takes the latter, that's not theft but justice, and an individual taking it back again is just theft again. — Pfhorrest

It's hypothetical. But everything I keep for my own exclusive use, I am depriving others of the use of. This is not to say that I need to compensate everyone in the world for the pair of socks that they cannot use. But perhaps it does mean that I shouldn't be wasting food when people are starving. Perhaps it even means I should stop eating so much meat when arable land is in short supply. Maybe I shouldn't be entitled to my forty room mansion and hundreds of acres while down the road people are sleeping in doorways. Or maybe I should pay some land tax at least, and maybe My kids should pay some inheritance tax. After all, I already pay purchase tax on my socks. And maybe that tax is owed to those people who have no property.

We could discuss things like this, if we were not religiously committed to the sacredness of property ownership.

The assignment of ownership, besides the one necessary ownership of one’s own body, is entirely a contingent social fact. — Pfhorrest

This is a bit picky, but since this is philosophy, I'll just come out and say it. You don't necessarily own your body at least until you are dead. Because you cannot dispose of it, you cannot sell it or at least, arguably you didn't ought to be able to. I think Shakespeare had something to say about this.

It's like politics; necessarily everyone does it, but most of you are entirely wrong.

Sounds like the invisible hand, whereby greedy selfish people do what we want them to do in order to enrich themselves.

Do you guys agree with this and what can we do to change or improve the system? — Josh Lee

Yes, and lots. Here are some my pals and some of their ideas...

Maria Montessori.
John Holt.
Ivan Illich.
Paulo Friere.
Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Robert Pirsig.
A. S. Neill.

Where's the whip? — Bitter Crank

I think they've got it in the objectification of women thread.

A particularly stupid and offensive comment. As it happens, I own my own house and am doing quite nicely from this radically unjust system. It's something that can be said to anyone who wants to change reform or improve anything, and it is a completely fatuous rhetorical nonsense. Hey, if you don't like what I say, break your computer.

As if the way things are cannot and should not ever be otherwise than they are. — unenlightened

I am not all that interested in cataloguing the details of property law through history and across geography. I think we know that slavery is not a recognised form of property any more. So rules can change and sometimes they should change. There have been property rules since the time of the pharaohs at least, and it seems obvious that even if one disregards the property rights of indigenous people, and treats a land as vacant ab origin, a colonial government can only grant land to settlers as long as there is vacant land to grant.

As far as real estate goes, some such process must originate property rights. Lines drawn on maps fences built on boundaries, must be allowed and declared to initiate ownership. Land was wilderness, and became property.

The legitimacy of such processes is nothing other than the belief that is placed in them. That is why there can be such disputes as between Israeli and Palestinian declarations. Faith in Mammon is a sin.

I want to emphasise the ephemeral quality of ownership, it is a relationship of declaration and identification, a composition of faith and social acceptance. In case of dispute, war and weapons are the resolution. There is no justice in property, and no fact of the matter beyond the reality of the farmer's shotgun, or the lock on my front door. It is a social fiction.

So if you want to justify property as an institution, you need to show how it is fair, how the Palestinian is compensated for the loss of land, how the landless poor are compensated for the deprivation of all the Earth that they inherit none of.

This is how we do things, but it is based on no principle that I can see ,of justice or fairness that gives reason to assent to it.

I presume, that to objectify is to disregard or discount the subjectivity of another. Consider, therefore how men might be objectified by each other. When I do not acknowledge the humanity of the store assistant, when the official is interested in my paperwork, not me, when the army does almost anything...

The more I consider, the more it appears that objectification is for most people the way they treat each other most of the time. And the way we treat ourselves. It has become normal.

Right decision, but a shame.

Earlier you were decrying the whole institution for it's role in advertising, for fear it might learn to detect homosexuality, for it's complicity in torture methods. Now you're saying it's not a science. — Isaac

We didn't supply them with anything, because what we 'discovered' was just hogwash which doesn't even work. — Isaac

That is a non-sequitur of truly epic foolishness. A sign of desperation. I'm going to end this conversation here because either I am completely wasting my time, or I am endangering your stability.

What I don't do is simply assume there are fundamental problems because there used to be. — Isaac

That's very odd, actually. We have only been through a little of the history, and surely you know it as well as I do, but the whole history is littered with frankly weird supposedly scientific theories that have far more (small p) politics than science to them that have been popularised, then exposed and replaced with new much more scientific theories that in turn are exposed as false and are replaced by this time really really scientific theories that ...

And without there having been any significant change in governance or methodology or philosophy, you conclude that this time, it's all perfectly legitimate. I call that wishful thinking when I'm trying to be polite, and psychotic delusion when I'm being scientific.

Let me ask you this in turn. What is the alternative you propose? If we cannot trust psychologists to carry out their duties what do you propose we do? — Isaac

I propose that we carry on; but that we do so with more attention to the nature of the discipline, which is only possibly scientific at the margin where it merges with human biology, and that for the rest we adopt a much more humble and far less dogmatic let alone coercive stance in relation to education and psychiatry in particular. I propose that we acknowledge the inevitably cultural nature of psychology and the reflexive way that theories of psychology change the human behaviour they describe.

If so, should we do the same to every other institution with a history of reflecting cultural norms? Dismantle the art establishment, stop writing books, disband the judiciary and the bar, raise all universities to the ground, stop all investigation in physics, engineering and medicine? — Isaac

Obviously not. There is nothing necessarily wrong with reflecting public norms; there is a great deal wrong with representing this reflection as science. This does not apply to any of those establishments and disciplines you mention, with the possible exception of medicine, which is at least aware of the problem and sometimes tries to investigate whether its nostrums and surgeries and care programs actually work.

Hold me back! — Baden

No, I'm civilised. Beat the shit out of him.

I don't mind really, but you've done it twice in this thread alone.

I also don't see how the culture of Germany is synonymous with the culture of Scotland and Ireland.
— Hanover

Nor do I. — unenlightened

It's a really bad habit.

My words didn't mean to criticize you for criticizing me. It's just the way I summarized it. — Hanover

You didn't mean to put words into my mouth and then disagree with them, but that is what you did. "The way you summarised it", was prejudicial to me.

And I disagree with you that it doesn't matter and I don't deserve a retraction or apology. I realise I am disagreeing with something you haven't said, it's just the way I'm summarising it.

Your description of the Southern honor culture as primitive or as in antiquated due to societal changes is commentary I don't agree with. — Hanover

Nor do I. Try and disagree with what I say rather than your guilty conscience. I did not call it primitive, and I did not call it antiquated. Your prejudice not mine.

I also don't see how the culture of Germany is synonymous with the culture of Scotland and Ireland. — Hanover

Nor do I. They are completely opposed in many many ways. And that is why the result of the honour ethic is completely different. I am saying that the Scout movement was based on the Jungle-book stories, and in particular on the stories about the wolf-pack.

The Hitler Youth appropriated many of the activities of the Boy Scout movement (which was banned in 1935), including camping and hiking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth

The story I am telling is that honour ethics work on the small scale So wilderness of any kind. I could have pointed to the Beduin just as well as the Scots. It suits tribal living and isolated groups. It becomes unstable and dangerous in crowded urban environments because tribes (wolf-packs) keep coming into conflict. Urban man needs a Christian ethic, or a socialist ethic.

For your purposes, I suggest that The US has developed an honour ethic well suited to 'the Wild West, and if you believe Pirsig, heavily influenced by Native American ethics. Unfortunately it has now become a city based, civilian, civilised nation And the tribalism of the wilderness becomes the racism of urban man. I imagine that the modern version of the honour ethic is the Survivalist. When all the other tribes have killed each other, his will inherit the earth

Here is the current BPS recommendations if you'd like to check for yourself. — Isaac

Of course, the scandal has been exposed, and the official line has changed, and that is why you cannot deny that there was anything wrong with the previous orthodoxy. And of course the next scandal has not yet been revealed, and so even if I were to tell you about it, you would simply demand the scientific evidence as per. Frankly, at this stage, your continued complacency is becoming frightening. What would it take to convince you that there are fundamental problems?

A delusion is where a person has an unshakeable belief in something untrue.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/psychosis/symptoms/

But theirs was/is a society in its infancy compared to the UK. — Professor Death

Yes, sort of, but actually not quite. There's not much age difference between the cultures, but an environmental one. Scotland is wild more than agricultural, communities are small - clannish more than civic. My contention is that Honour is the morality of the jungle, as evidence by the use of jungle book stories in scouting. And particularly the wolf-pack. Loyalty to the pack means loyalty to the leader unless you directly challenge for leadership. To the civilised, it is an alien culture because it is not the morality of the civilian but of the military. The Scouts and the Hitler Youth are training grounds for a militarised society.

So one sees the virtue of an honour ethic in an uncivil time and place - the jungle, the frontier, but not - very much not - in the city, where it leads to gang wars and blood feuds. It is apparent therefore that it is attractive to the fascist mindset, that seeks to simplify and absolutise loyalties and morals, and finds the emergency of war the ideal means.

Yes muscular Christian sound about right. But Note the similarity of the Scouts and the Hitler Youth; dib dib dib sieg heil. Healthy body, and military mind.

It's what thieves share amongst them, and families kill their errant members over - the Mafia is very hot on honour.

Folks here are are arguing about a statue of Baden Powell, founder of the scout movement and nazi sympathiser.

I'm not sure what it taught, but [...] great pride. — Hanover

Great pride, aka honour, aka hubris.

"The traditional culture of the Southern United States has been called a "culture of honor", that is, a culture where people avoid intentionally offending others, and maintain a reputation for not accepting improper conduct by others. — Hanover

As the Scots have it "Speak softly, and carry a big stick." It's how one manages things when there is no law.

I'm trying to counter that the state is not the most significant factor (it's mechanisms are very weak, broad brush, and indirect). — Isaac

Yes, but you have been over-enthusiastic. We have rather established that fact and science are not the most significant factors either, but rather fashion and local prejudice.

I just don't think there's much to see here. Psychology has had some fairly shameful moments, as have most institutions, but it's coming along at least averagely at making the sorts of changes that address those problems. — Isaac

I think this is where I borrow your tactics and ask for some evidence that problems are being addressed. We have already established that as old diagnosis of mental health issues have been found to be unacceptable, new one have come along to replace them, and that at least some of them are also highly questionable. And we have also established that fairly major fields in psychology aside from psychiatry can also turn out not just to be wrong, but to be politically (ie racially in my example) biased and motivated.

We have already seen quite a lot, and no evidence that fundamental changes in methodology, governance, or anything else have addressed these issues. On the contrary, we have a psychiatrist, yourself, defending with almost fanatical fervour the reputation of his profession, and finally reduced to mere blandishment.

Doesn't it sound far more like there was simply a range of opinions in psychology which broadly reflect the range of opinions of society at the time? — Isaac

Is psychology then a matter of opinion? Nothing much more than a reflection of the society of the time? Then my work here is done.

in my limited experience of Chinese students and professors I've not found them particularly 'state tools' they're mostly pissed at the restrictions the government place on them. — Isaac

I'm so ignorant I don't know what the Chinese government's position on homosexuality. But with a totalitarian regime, you do what you're told, pissed or not, if you want to practice at all.

I really cannot see a mechanism for infusing any meaningful kind of government policy into psychological research. — Isaac

It doesn't have to be precise or absolute to be meaningful. Let us say that gradually, A-level psychology becomes more commonly offered as a course. It is quite likely to start in those places that anyway have smaller classes - not state schools. Psychology departments might come to like the qualification, but not everyone gets the opportunity. So a class bias is introduced into the intake.

That's a simple example of what we know is an endemic problem for the prestigious universities - a class biased intake. And that leads to a political bias towards conservatism, but also affects on average the kind of assumptions about 'normality' that are made and the kind of questions that are asked.

So for an example from mainstream psychology, one finds a deal of interest in intelligence tests (because we like measuring stuff) that coincidentally (???) favour white Western-educated middle and upper-class folks and is championed by Eysenck who uses it to promote what turns out to be a fake scientific racism. And it takes a long time to expose this nonsense, because from the population of psychology departments, it would appear to be true. You have to be smart to do psychology, don't you? Well no, it turns out you have to be middle class.

But what's most odd about this is that I, at least, want research to be controlled, because when psychologists are free to do whatever they like, some of them like to do things that are frankly abhorrent and inhumane. And you are trying to convince us that they are completely out of control.

But anyway, it looks to me as though mental health is defined in oppositional terms to mental illness, and mental illness seems to constitute a failure to sufficiently conform to the norms of a social situation. ADHD is a failure to conform to the norms of typically a school type situation. homosexuality is a failure to conform to the sexual norms, Drapetomania is a failure to conform to the norms of enslavement, Hysteria is a failure to conform to the norms of femininity, and so on. So as society changes, mental illness changes.

So one can still research homosexuality, but one does not call it a disease. But I wonder, and perhaps this is another argument you are having with @Boethius, what the morality is of sharing the results of such research, with other countries where it is perhaps still considered a mental illness and a crime. One might not want to share the gay recognition software that might be developed, for example.

I'm not getting the link here. How does the government's cackhanded attempt to make degrees into quantifiable commodities actually make any difference to the research (which is the point that's trying to be made here). It's not enough to point to some bungled government intervention in the grading system and just insinuate the rest. — Isaac

I did more than that. It's a bit silly to pick one point from a broad sweep of a picture and claim it is not enough; it is already supported by a load of other stuff that makes connections of power and influence between academia and the state. So one of the changes that came along with the points system was the ending of free (or very cheap) evening classes put on by universities and technical colleges funded by them, the government and the Worker's Educational Association, in favour of points based courses which were "quality controlled" and free only with a means test. If you cannot notice how this aligns with the institution of the national curriculum for schools and centralises control of the content of education courses t all levels, and thus of what anyone might be qualified and competent, never mind funded, to research, then I really don't know what anyone might say to you that would start to be "enough".

But I'm not an expert in the matter, and am only pointing out the most obvious influences.