Comments

  • Krishnamurti Thread
    ↪Bartricks
    Dude, I'm a heroic super philosophy educator and all, but I know my limits. I wouldn't attempt to show you the nose in front of your face.
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    Otherwise one is just kowtowing to some bs stereotypes. — Terrapin Station

    Bs stereotypes are irresistible. If the SS says you are a Jew, you're a Jew.
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    ↪Swan
    You don't know, but I have seen the picture and I know my own analogy. It's a blue bin with writing on and wheels. And I say if the writing says it's green, then should be treated as green because the writer and owner of the bin is treating it as green. You, I suspect, want it to be treated as a blue bin because the colour of the bin is blue. And that is a pedantic bureaucratic idiotically literalist position, that fails to do the job.
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    But bins don't have feelings. — Pfhorrest

    Damn, I knew there was a flaw in the analogy. :razz: But what I am suggesting is that you don't need to find ever more criteria by which to classify yourself. You are just pandering to the bureaucrats and their box ticking mentality. I am the epitome of my own self, complete with whatever exact combination of behaviours, desires, clothes, physique, ambivalent feelings about myself or someone else I might happen to have from time to time. And other peoples' labels can fuck off. There is a special gender for for folk with this attitude - 'Ornery bugger'.
  • Krishnamurti Thread
    ↪fresco


    Julian Baggini, Susan Blackmore, Sam Harris, Thomas Metzinger, obviously haven't read Descartes, or didn't understand him, or are trying to sell some horrible mystical bullshit. PhDs and professorships mean nothing these days.

    Either that or @Bartricks is missing a trick. :scream:
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    ↪bert1
    Well what the bin says is what is written on it, but how the bin feels 'inside' is the nature of the rubbish it contains. So although it may have the external characteristics of a blue bin, it could contain the rubbish appropriate to a green bin. But if the binmen are too rigid in their identifications, they will disregard the bin's claims and contents both and refuse to empty is as if it were green. "It has blue junk, it is a blue bin." It all depends if they are more concerned with the recycling of rubbish or the maintenance of a strict colour code.
  • Brexit
    Maybe the Lib Dems and Labour will have to work together and not stand in eachother's best seats to keep the Tories/Brexit Party out.. — Tim3003

    That's not going to happen, even for a few weeks to prevent the no deal that is the Lib-Dem signature policy this week they will not support Labour. They're just tories without tax havens.
  • Feature requests
    ↪Wayfarer
    Me too. Used to be blue, now red - it's like there's been a change of government...
  • Disambiguating the concept of gender
    Someone just sent me an amusing photo of a blue wheelie bin, with the traditional sharpie legend added: "I identify as a green bin." Unfortunately I cannot share the picture.

    It is quite unambiguously a blue bin as to colour, and colour denotes function in the recycling world. Now some folks would claim that a blue bin remains a blue bin whatever is written on it, and whatever contents are put in it and even if it goes to the trouble of painting itself green, it remains a tragically vandalised blue bin.

    Others would say that a blue bin can be repurposed as a green bin either by its own declaration or by donning the garb and content of a green bin.

    Others find the whole thing confusing and unsettling.

    If anyone is offended at my trivialising of this topic, I apologise, but it seems to me that depersonalising the issues allows one to see that the whole thing is a bureaucratic dispute and remains trivial even if it results in the extremity of extermination camps. The contents of my underpants and the contents of my bins are nobody's business but those that have have to deal with them.

    Edit. If you would like to apply, please form an orderly queue.

    Edit 2. Such is the bureaucracy of identity: the harsh "reality" of which side of an imaginary line you were born on, what colour your skin is, whether your parents frequented a mosque or a synagogue, and what you have in your underpants and how well it conforms to the hair on your face, and the width of your hips determine where you can live and with whom, what job you can do and whether or not you get paid, and every facet of your life and death.
  • Krishnamurti Thread
    Give me an argument. — Bartricks

    I gave you an argument. Address the argument with something other than hot air.

    Suppose I were to say that all that can be known, and all that can be talked about is experience. That seems like a nice tidy materialist anti-mystical approach. I won't even talk about noumena, or things in themselves, and especially, for the purposes of this thread, I will forbid all talk of 'an experiencer' as something other than an experience of experiencer. — unenlightened

    Imagine that I read a book about Caesar. I have not, and will never meet Caesar in person. All I can do is read about him. Does that licence me to conclude that Caesar is a book? — Bartricks

    If your experience is of yourself reading a book, you are entitled to conclude that there are experiences of self and experiences of books. And from such an experience you are no more entitled to conclude that Caesar exists than reading a Harry Potter book entitles you to think that he exists. History as not experienced, is inferred from a multitude of dubitable experiences, and likewise the self is inferred from a multitude of experiences - unless of course, it is directly experienced. In either case, it is formed from experience, or inferred from experience.

    This is indeed the dreadful Cartesian error. "I think therefore I am" is the reification of a grammatical term into an immaterial, mystical mind. The subject of one sentence is the object of another sentence. But do not conclude from this that there are 'the subject' and 'the object'. Quite the opposite.
  • Brexit
    Uniting the Conservative party means winning the election.What divides the Tories is always losing; they hate losers, and in the end everyone is a loser, so they hate everyone. They are divided over what makes a winning strategy, and brexit is an aspect of the division. They will even support the NHS in theory, if they think it is a winning strategy.
  • Greta Thunberg Speaks the Horrific Truth of Humanity’s Fate
    Here's the good news...it appears squids will do quite well from climate change ! If nothing else will... — Grre

    The real debate is whether the squid are orchestrating climate change on their own, or are being aided by extra-terrestrial allies. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/07/conspiracy-theory-paranoia-aliens-illuminati-beyonce-vaccines-cliven-bundy-jfk
  • Krishnamurti Thread
    Thoughts and observations welcome. — Wallows

    Well that went well, didn't it?

    Suppose I were to say that all that can be known, and all that can be talked about is experience. That seems like a nice tidy materialist anti-mystical approach. I won't even talk about noumena, or things in themselves, and especially, for the purposes of this thread, I will forbid all talk of 'an experiencer' as something other than an experience of experiencer. The experiencer is just another experience.

    So the mysticism, contradiction, and associated nonsense is all with those who suppose that the experience is something other than an experience. They are the ones talking about something beyond experience as 'the observer' that is not an observation.
  • Krishnamurti Thread
    Bartricks 2. Krishnamurti 0 — Bartricks

    Well done Bartricks! You can defeat a dead man. That's my kind of robust philosopher - one who can tell a horse from a house and is proud of it.
  • Krishnamurti Thread
    I sometimes use his words to explain myself. I prefer not to use my words to explain him.
  • Love is a transient feeling
    Why not allow that people use the word in different ways; that some refer to a momentary feeling and others to a long term commitment and maybe yet others to something beyond experience.

    My song is love unknown,
    My Savior's love to me;
    Love to the loveless shown,
    That they might lovely be.
    O who am I,
    That for my sake
    My Lord should take
    Frail flesh, and die?     — John Ireland
  • What happens when you're tired of (your own) negativity?
    There is a limit though — Wallows

    It's an analogy, but the limit is death.

    How can I change without being different?
    — unenlightened

    I don't really know. I suppose it's the kind of difference that makes no real difference. Or rather to put it more bluntly, it's the kind of difference that is actually quite detrimental.     — Wallows

    In words, it is a paradox. but in fact, it happens all the time. I turn right, and walk East, or I turn around and walk south. And that is all the death that is required - the death of going North, or being down on oneself, or whatever the identity is.

    There is no 'how'. Identity is a habit of thought, and a 'how' is another habit of thought; what can break a habit of thought is not another habit of thought (that will just become another part of the habit, the way smokers are always 'thinking giving up') or any thought at all, but presence of mind, that sees that it is unnecessary.

    I'm tired of my own negativity, so I want to change it but I'm too tired, so my negativity about myself robs me of the power to stop being negative; I don't have the energy to overcome all the energy I'm putting into being negative, because all my energy is going into my negativity.

    As soon as I see the whole dreary fruitless circle, I am out of it. If I am not out of it, I haven't seen the whole. I am the thought that goes round and round. Or as the man said:
    The observer is the observed. — J.Krishnamurti
  • Everything Exists, Even if it Doesn't
    Every single human being has a unique mind full of experiences, ideas, and opinions of their own. — Bay3z

    That of course is your own experience. Don't expect anyone else to see things the same way.
  • The tragedy of the commons
    ↪jorndoe
    I like this:
    "Why, for instance, do we not focus in Hardin's metaphor on the individual ownership of the cattle rather than on the pasture as a common?"
    Looks like @Banno's (3.) to me.

    I used to live in a mountain village in South France. Every year, every able-bodied person came together to clear and reopen a complex irrigation system that brought water from the river to all the gardens along the valley. Several miles of ditching. When it was all working, there was a rota so that the gardens upstream did not use all the water. And then there was the forest, also owned by the village - that was managed differently, with felling rights sold to produce an income. Tragic.
  • What happens when you're tired of (your own) negativity?
    I am a person who always goes North. It's who I am. Although I am tired of going North, so tired I cannot bear to live with myself, I cannot stop, because stopping just wouldn't be me, it's not in my nature.

    How can I change without being different?
  • Survival of the fittest and the life of the unfit
    What should it do now? — Purple Pond

    Pontificate on a philosophy forum.

    And read 'fit' the way a kitchen installer would. 'If it's not properly fitted, it will fall apart.'
  • Loaning Money to older brother
    This is a bit of a minority report it seems, but loans are a matter of business. Is this a good investment? Is the return potential proportionate to the risk? the answer is obviously 'no', because otherwise the bank would lend.

    If your brother is in trouble and needs money, give him whatever you can. He obviously cannot afford your loans.
  • The tragedy of the commons
    That community owned land in England was not in especially bad shape, and that plenty of societies around the world have had communally owned land at some point during their history, without this apparently leading to some calamity. — Echarmion

    I think in England we even now have community owned roads and squares, that are fairly well looked after, likewise public beaches.
  • Brexit
    They couldn't conceivably become a government, could they? — Wayfarer

    So many things have happened that were inconceivable not long ago. But the currently conceivable danger is to the conservatives that they will split their general election vote, and let the labour party in.

    Thus if parliament can frustrate the Borexit plan, that will probably eventually end the whole brexit thing and destroy the conservative party for the foreseeable.
  • The tragedy of the commons
    You're sounding too much like unenlightened. I'm out. — frank

    Not at all. I'm a tyrant.

    The regulatory state enters in when this tradition falls apart, either because we're too recently transplanted to know without knowing what practices work, or because a new economic model/ behavior has torn to pieces organic communities. — csalisbury

    So, (1.) the Environmental Committee issues a dictat from time to time that declares the fish allowance this year, and (2.) the Hanoverian Hussars are deputed to kill the first-born of apostates.

    In the happy Banno world of social responsibility, government is a simple matter of coordination, (1.) experts work out what is best and we all do it; (2.) the brutality of coercion, is only required because there are cheats.

    Things could be better than they are though, and mainly by not letting the cheats make the rules and enforce them.
  • What Makes Something Quintessential?
    I must say that they really are incomparable. I wonder if it is at all meaningful to speak of standards in art — thewonder

    You need Pirsig's Metaphysics of quality. Sure it is meaningful to say this album is superb, that album is flawed; I reject 'incomparable' but will accept perhaps 'immeasureable'.
  • The French Age of Consent Laws
    As babies grow up, they need less care and control until they reach 25 when the brain seems to finally settle down. The mere existence of a scale of care doesn't automatically justify any intervention we decide to make, it must be proportionate to the care required so as not to treat autonomy without due importance. — Isaac

    I agree. So perhaps we can now start to have that debate about where and how to draw the inevitably arbitrary line so that it approximates to proportionality. You seem to think 15 is too high, I think 12 is too low. The way I see it, we set the age of consent above the literal ability to speak "yes" or "no", in large part to protect children from being pressurised or otherwise manipulated by adults, and obviously some adolescents are much more vulnerable than others at any given age, and some social conditions make one more vulnerable all else being equal.
  • The French Age of Consent Laws
    There are some appalling things done to children, as there are to adults. We respond by making the appalling thing illegal. We do not respond by removing the autonomy of an entire swathe of the population over their own bodies, just as a precaution. — Isaac

    Well actually we do both. The biology is that humans are born helpless and remain vulnerable and inarticulate for some time. They have a very limited autonomy such that they cannot survive without help. This also goes for almost all adults in almost all circumstances incidentally, but to a lesser extreme. The induction into our complex society, that we call education also takes some time and is also a survival requirement.

    Your outrage is spurious - children need protection and are not autonomous.
  • The French Age of Consent Laws
    ↪Isaac
    It would suggest that there are problems with sexual behaviour, and that we should make some rules and try and enforce them. There is a tradition derived from biology that the young need extra protection in various ways, including legal protection, and protection from adults and their own folly. The law has to set an arbitrary limit to this extra protection. An intelligent and compassionate legal system will negotiate this arbitrary limit with nuanced interpretation.

    Your question is a bit of a feeble rhetorical gimmick, when there are extremely serious issues to be considered, as my link was intended to highlight.
  • The French Age of Consent Laws
    The text also opined that if 13-year-old girls in France had the right to receive the pill, then they also should be able to consent.
    A bit of a non sequitur from the op's link.

    Before pontificating about the invariable capacities of adolescents, have a little look at the kind of shit that goes down.     — wiki
  • What Makes Something Quintessential?
    So, by what you are suggesting, Olivier's Hamlet is "quintessential" because it's on the Criterion Channel? — thewonder


    I'm saying roughly that the quintessential Hamlet is the standard by which we judge any Hamlet. It doesn't even have to be the best. "The performance I saw last night was a Hamlet and a half!" The standard is agreed, or declared or established more or less, by habit or convention or dictat of the influential.

    You say the temporal element is relevant - I bow to your aesthetic authority, and allow that you, in this case, have established the quintessence of quintessence.
  • Irrational beliefs
    ... it is rational to do what is in your best interests. — Judaka

    Is it? Give us the rationale, pray ...
  • Irrational beliefs
    Is it rational to believe you won't fall into a fiery pit?

    [...]

    I was trying to evoke a superstitious belief. There is such a thing as using birds as omens.     — Rufoid

    Yes, and I was trying to make life difficult for you. One tends to attach the labels rational and irrational rather freely, and of course a 'superstitious' belief is by definition...
    belief that is not based on human reason or scientific knowledge, but is connected with old ideas about magic, etc.
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/superstition
    So when you seek to evoke as superstitious belief and then describe it as...
    and that I believe this due to my own unpublished scientific research. — Rufoid
    ... you are creating a contradiction and setting up a fruitless debate about the meanings of words.
  • Irrational beliefs
    Well I believe on the basis of walking out my front door many times that there is no danger of falling into a fiery pit if I walk out of my front door.

    But I guess it rather depends on what decisions, and what research. If you are a hunter, it might be reasonable to base your lunch recipe on what bird you come across.
  • Brexit
    *rant* It is surely time to remove this odious little man and elect the right honourable member for Old-fartery North to head a government of national unity to delay Brexit and call an election. We cannot continue to have a lying unrepentant criminal psychopath as prime minister. */rant*
  • Brexit
    and we know what that lead to. — S

    And some of us have already started sharpening our axes.
  • Political Lesbianism as a Viable Option for Feminism
    This all turns on the misconception that sex is something that men want and women tolerate. The truth of course is the opposite. Women spend billions and billions and hours and years trying to arouse the sexual interest of men, with clothes, makeup, surgery, and so on, because the male appetite is so very weak and limited in comparison to that of the female. Men would rather be down the pub.
  • Why the Euthyphro fails
    I didn't mention God. — Bartricks

    The number of things you didn't mention would make a long list. Fortunately, I am not confined to rearranging your words. Unfortunately, your topic though interesting is deprived of most of its virtue by your unpleasant manners.
  • Why the Euthyphro fails
    God favours the big battalions.
    What God favours is necessarily good.
    The big battalions are good.

    Might is right.
  • Brexit
    Greta’s performance was by definition of petulant. Critics speak of Trump metaphorically as a child, yet grovel and self-flagellate in front of a literal one. — NOS4A2

    Clearly we need a Greta thread so that people can sneer at a sixteen year old for being sixteen.
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