When you finished laughing, be angry, disgusted and horrified.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45190355

That said, a terrorist nuke may be our best hope. We're in a race between a limited event like that and The Big One. — Jake

You are insane.

You are now arguing that nuclear weapons are the way to get rid of nuclear weapons.

It means that if you own part of the earth you are depriving someone else of it. — Andrew4Handel

Then you should be paying rent to them, obviously. Let's call it 'tax'. In the case of real estate, it is very easy to allow the tax to accumulate as a charge on the land/house/factory if it is not paid, so that eventually the property becomes valueless on the market, and automatically reverts to the state.

Given that we're not capable of addressing this threat through reason alone, some event is going to be required to engage our emotional energy. As example, imagine how the group consensus might dramatically shift if a terrorist sets off a nuke in some major city. — Jake

I don't imagine it would change the consensus at all; if anything, it would demonstrate the need for 'us' to have nuclear weapons - because 'they' have them. Just as every act of gun violence demonstrates the need for guns in America.

Imagine that hackers added a button to this forum which would allow every reader to erase the entire forum and the backups too. This issue would immediately go straight to the top of focus for the mods, right? Obviously, that's because if they don't get rid of that button it's only a matter of time until somebody clicks it and then all the other threads vanish. Thus, it's not rational to focus on the other threads until the button is gone. — Jake

The mods already have this button, it is the power that confers authority. And without that authority, as you probably know, the site would descend into an ocean of spam and flames. Fortunately, no one dies when a thread is deleted or a poster banned. So there is no question of getting rid of the button, only of preventing it falling into the 'wrong hands'. Alas, your analogy works against you. It is because the mods have this button, that I can afford to focus on other things. The trick, of course is to find mods that are interested in good discussion and communication, rather than in the exercise of authority; who use the button as a sad necessity when some drunk vomits on the thread. The world should be run by cleaners, not leaders.

I do agree that human psychology is the root of the problem. I'm just making the point that we don't have time to fix that first, if it even can be fixed. Such a process would take centuries at least, and we just don't have that kind of time. Imperfect flawed human beings are going to have solve this one, if it is to be solved. — Jake

But the solution is trivial; take the gun out of your mouth, get rid of the weapons. One doesn't need to be perfect to understand that, and it needn't take centuries. So one has to ask why such an obviously sensible course is not being followed. Just as one has to ask why people starve when there is enough food for all, and why though we have the understanding and the technology we cannot sort out climate change or stop polluting the oceans, and so on.

Is it not the case that I am waiting for everyone else to be perfect before I start?

I thought it was about impressing the chicks.

Gender is just another faucet of the interior — Moliere

Your spell check needs a new washer.

In a case of bodily dysphoria it is open to others to say that the feeling that the limb does not belong to the patient is pathological; that it is the feeling that needs to be treated, not the limb.

If our conception of transgender is also based solely on a feeling, then it also remains open to others to say that the feeling that the genitals do not belong to the patient is pathological; that it is the feeling that needs to be treated, not the body.

The idea that gender is determined by feeling leaves itself open to this criticism. What's the answer?

And this is where Rebecca Reilly-Cooper's discourse becomes a great strength: at it's heart, the concept of gender is no longer defensible.

So the answer to my question, "how best to think about the challenge of transgender?", is to admit that gender is a social construct that we are better off without. — Banno

But that is not an answer to anything. We would be better off without the constructs of race and nationality, but we don't have the option. And not having the option, one might want to say it is pathological to want to lighten your skin, but the pathology is society's not the individual's. Surely the point is that gender is not determined by feeling or by physicality but by conformity to stereotypes.

I remember the days when a bloke growing his hair over his ears was an act of rebellion that people found threatening to their own identity. The thinking was fairly transparent; 'If a bloke has long hair, I might fancy him, and that would make me a queer.' And that was a fate worse than death at the time. And it is the same kind of threat to their own identity that galvanises folks in their horror at the idea of a penis in the women's toilets. Rebecca is a conformist, and her suggestion that gender is indefensible is a performative contradiction.

Well actually, the narrator denies that he was insane. But what can one say of quality about quality within the confines of a thread? That it is the fundamental particle of relationship, perhaps. Smart dude wrote a long book about it, and that's not enough for you. So my one liner won't satisfy either, but I don't want to explain it until you explain a bit.

How long do you expect this process to take? — Jake

It's taking a while to convince you, though you don't seem to have much of an alternative.

Would you try to teach them how to be enlightened, argue for a radical transformation of human psychology etc? — Jake

Yes. If you try by force to take away the gun, it will go off. So you have to tackle the reason the gun is there.

Everybody is interested in everything, except the gun. That's fundamentally irrational, and demonstrates the weakness of philosophy. — Jake

How does it help, to focus on the gun? Why not focus on the mouth and the hand?

So living in a mad house with lots of mad people with guns, everyone is full of fear. Most people try and pretend it is not the case - that they are not afraid, and there are not mad people with guns - so the don't want to talk about it. Most people think they will be safer if they and their friends and their governments have as big guns as possible, in case the other mad people attack them.

So, as I said above, to little effect, the madness is the fear, and it cannot be addressed externally. Ending the madness is a psychological issue, not a political or a philosophical one. Have you read The Ending of Time?

Now please observe how posters will continue to ignore that specific challenge, or look for some clever way around it. Observe how philosophy is not helping us to be clear minded enough to simply admit that we are all quite literally nuts, almost psychopathic in our lack of concern. — Jake

Dude, take the gun out of your mouth, get off your excessively high horse and engage. Yes we are mad, now, moving on, what are we to do? Oh wait, no point asking you, you're as mad as the rest of us.

I have more visited Russia than anyone. I am a tremendous visitor, and when I visit somewhere, it stays visited.

And here's some more evidence>

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/blog/8395/

Or,
Other people have been to Russia more (times) than I have.

Or,
More people have been to Russia than I have (had hot dinners).

Or,
If it doesn't quite make sense, it isn't quite a lie.

Oh, I agree with you, but then your distinction loses its bite.

Let me lay it out a bit. We know that people can feel that their own limb is alien to them. We know that the feeling is real and intense because they sometimes try and destroy the offending limb. We and they can understand that feeling in relation to the same public criteria. And we know that people can have a similar distaste for their own sexual characteristics, in relation to similarly public criteria.

So what's the problem? Such people say, perhaps, "I feel like a woman trapped in a man's body", and you say "you can't possibly know." But this is simply an uncharitable refusal to understand their condition.

But you seem to be claiming that introspection can only be done by reference to publicly assessable criteria?

There's a difference, of course, between "What it is like to be a man" and "What it feels like to be a man". — Banno

Tell me more. What is the difference?

What is the point of philosophy if it can't even guide us to focus on the "gun in our mouth" which could destroy everything in just a few minutes? — Jake

Let's do some philosophy, and find out.

Why do we have nuclear weapons, or any weapons? We call it defence, and it is aimed at security. We feel insecure and we want to be secure. You want to be secure too, and that is why you are bothered about nuclear weapons. Everyone wants to be secure.

So it turns out that the attempt to be secure fails. Not only does it fail, it makes the insecurity greater. The same thing applies to the environment, as has been mentioned above. The attempt to control the environment leads to the loss of control of the environment. And the same need for security is at work.

So it seems to be that one cannot find security by seeking it in the world. And this is exactly the same as happiness; one will never be happy looking for happiness. Let's stop looking for these things in the world, and find them in ourselves.

Well, a higher order volition stems, most often, from a feeling (most often love, or most appropriately). — Posty McPostface

So a higher order volition is one that you approve of - a desirable desire. I've no problem with that, but it's not quite what wiki is talking about. Suppose I am at best a mediocre husband and father, but I wish I was better, and try to be better. That's a higher desire or volition, no? (Incidentally, are you happy to say that volition is a desire one tries to realise, as distinct from a desire one entertains but does not act on for whatever reason?)

But suppose I am a mediocre burglar, but I wish I was better, and try to be better. You don't want to call that a 'higher desire', though it has the same form, of an ambition to transform myself?

In order to carry out a rational evaluation of some way of living, a person must first know what evaluative criteria to employ and how to employ them. — Harry Frankfurt

What's a rational evaluation, Harry?

Higher-order volitions (or higher-order desire), as opposed to action-determining volitions, are volitions about volitions. — Wikipedia

People who are very hungry will eat whatever they can find: grass, bugs, boot leather. But one would not generally say that they desire these things. Their desire is more likely for steak and chips, macaroni cheese, and ice-cream, or whatever their cultural equivalents are.

In which case it seems to me that hunger is not a desire, though it may give rise to desire. Rather, central to desire is an image, a fantasy indeed, because it is the absence of the thing that makes it a desire rather than a fact. When the waiter has delivered the steak, one does not then say, 'I want steak', one says 'thank you' and starts eating. Desire is for what one does not have. It is an attractive image to be realised, or not. When I say image, I mean any form of representation that may be also verbal, tactile, olfactory, etc, not strictly visual.

Mental life is in the business of representations, and seemingly inevitably, I represent myself to myself, and thereby am able to form desires for an imagined self. "I wish I was young, handsome, intelligent, rich, talented and loved by everyone." This seems to be what wiki means by 'higher-order volitions'.


"I wish I had the determination to achieve at least some of the possibilities in that direction." Is this a higher-order-higher-order volition? I will simply note for now that there is the usual psyche triple - me, my representation of myself and my idealised self.

Right. I'll go and talk to wiki in your new thread.

Tomorrow. Now it's time for some wine.

a higher-order want/desire/passion to do what is good or moral or ethical? — Posty McPostface

I'm not sure what it means to be 'higher order'. First, my example of wanting intoxication and not wanting the hangover; that's short term v longer term, probably not a higher order. But suppose I want to do good. Let's say I want to help my fellow philosophers to a clearer understanding, that I believe I have. So I do my best to explain and responded so on. Let's pretend that this is not as it happens, a need to be seen as clever or anything, I just want to be helpful. Well that's jolly nice and I don't have any conflict about it - why is that 'higher order' than wanting an ice-cream and having an ice-cream?

I think the idea of higher order comes from a conflict; I'd like to think, and I'd like you to think, that I am that kindly person who wants to help, but actually I just want to look good. So then behind this high minded kindliness, I'm in a conflict between wanting to look like a kindly fellow, and being an arrogant idler who is fed up with post's endless confusions... Now I know which is the higher order - it's the one I want to appear to have.

So, if we add in the passions to the discussion, then isn't this talk about 'volitions' and not reason and passions operating in seemingly isolation as per this discussion? — Posty McPostface

We are passionate; we give a damn, we want to do, to have, to be all kinds of stuff, and we use our noddles to get it - ie reason. And there are lots of words we can use, and there is not some separate reasoner who is without passion, which is why I called it the philosopher's imaginary friend. Of course, in general, people want to avoid burning their hands, and so we say it is 'reasonable' and that there is a 'good reason' not to touch the stove. This is loose talk. One might even say that our passion not to get burned acts as a fact upon which pure reason operates. And you can call that volition if you wish, the normal interaction of reason and passion. Remember, that this all relates to the general project of Hume's to disentangle morality from actuality - ought from is. Remember too, that it is passion and thus morality that is in pole position.

So, you have said it yourself, that reason can inform the passions through none other than reason alone, that some goal is undesirable rather than another. — Posty McPostface

No I haven't, I have explicitly denied it.

Reason can say "If you don't want a hangover more than you do want to get drunk, then do not drink lots of wine. But passion is what makes things desirable and undesirable. So reason never tells you what to do, unless you add in your passions. You have to want to avoid a burned hand before reason can tell you not to touch the hot stove.

This is pure Antisemitism = Fascism. — Number2018

No it isn't. It is anti-Zionism if you like, but not even that; it is a claim with evidence that the Israeli government is doing it's best to undermine Jeremy Corbyn because of his long time support for Palestinians. And an objection to that interference.

Are you serious about this statement? — Number2018

Yes. It is multiply confirmed by a staff member of the Israeli embassy in the documentary I linked. In the second part he attends and is active at the Labour party conference.

There is a natural localisation of identity - people like us live in places like here. There is a natural loyalty in such identity, to the colours of the local football team, to the bounds of the parish. But trade has always crossed borders, and trade deals always involve concessions to the bloody foreigners. So we escape from the mythical rules of the straightness of bananas, only to have to submit to the chlorination of chickens.

Sovereignty and trade are incompatible, and trade will win in the end. So exit from Europe will not merely allow, but necessitate entrance to trade deals that it is not at all clear will be more favourable or free. But we have been presented with - and we have tended to see, the free movement of the bloody foreigners to here, whereas we do not notice all the folks from here that freely go there. Just as we notice all the irksome rules that they make, and do not notice the liberalising benefits. Folks living in the decaying industrial North of England, see the decay, and see the foreigners, and think the latter is the cause of the former, rather than the effect. The real causes are beyond their event horizon.

But all this is being exaggerated and exploited to the extent that reasonable debate on the merits of one policy v the other is no longer possible.

For an inkling of how this is done in a different context, take a look at how the Zionist movement is controlling the agenda in the UK (and elsewhere). That link (to a 4 part documentary) is clearly partisan, but not so partisan that it should not be heard and discussed alongside that which it opposes. But it gets no voice in the mainstream, and this means that 'we' are no longer free to make up our own minds, but are subject to a particular distortion of our natural identifications. Democracy cannot function without approximately balanced media, because our event horizons are always too close for us to discern our own best interests at an international level, we are at the mercy of the media.

it's incredibly difficult to stave off that influence by sheer will-power, unless it's boosted or still at high level. I think we are constrained by passions but not necessarily slaves to them which implies no autonomy no ability to fight their influence. — aporiap

This is a misunderstanding of what Hume means by passion. Will is passion, not a part of reason. Whatever has power, whatever motivates, is a form of emotion, a passion. Thus my passion for wine might be in conflict with a passion to avoid a hangover and I might call the latter 'will-power' because it counters the immediate prospect of pleasure with a later prospect of suffering.

I sing the praises of Hume the Romantic. Let us be clear, that passion is giving a damn, and is contrasted by reason that gives not a damn.

Reason declares that the lit stove is hot relative to the hand.
And that the hand put-upon the stove will be burned.

Passion declares that in that case, I would rather not.

Nothing matters, nothing has value, nothing is worth doing or avoiding by reason alone. But life is passion that urges the spider to spin, birds to fly south, children to climb trees, and philosophers to question. Thus passion gives value to reason that it does not have of itself.

So therapy of the sort mentioned is in the business of pointing out to passion, that perhaps there are more effective ways to get what it cares about that it currently uses. I drink to dull the pain, but drinking causes me pain, and I drink to dull the pain. Reason can suggest that this is an ineffective strategy.

Since philosophers live, they are passionate. And reason is their imaginary dispassionate friend, servant and therapist; the devoted strategist to serve their passionate goals, with no goal of its own.

People can vote for censorship, and they can vote for tyranny. They can vote for oppression and injustice. Hurrahs for freedom and democracy can lead to the gas chamber. Hurrah, therefore, for the protection of this and other truths!

I've never set foot in America either, but it sets foot on me quite a lot, and I feel entitled to fulminate.

Do you suggest that those with body integrity disorder ought be permitted to amputate whatever body part they fell is not their own? IS that feeling enough?

All that I am sugesting is that there is more involved here than it might at first seem. Hence the thread is a puzzle.

SO now, if you can see the issue, can we work towards some sort of coherence? — Banno

Well I would say that body integrity disorder is a 'what it is like' that we can see in the behaviour, in the expressed preferences. So I suggest that part of 'what it is like to be a man' in a non-pathological way, is to be fundamentally ok with having a penis and facial hair, just as part of being human is to be fundamentally ok with having 2 legs.

That is, preferences are part of identity, not something added on.

The tail that's wagging the dog of those things is the vampirism of the elites that I've mentioned (being paid more and more bloated incomes to strangle the system more and more), just as the cause of the French revolution was an absentee aristocracy putting an ever-heavier tax burden on the peasants. — gurugeorge

I think we are quite close, except that I think the elite is always vampiric, and it's a matter of economic power whether they can suck the people dry or not.

Essentially we have the (university-indoctrinated, NGO/HR-Department-employed) equivalent of a decadent, periwigged, pompadoured rentier "elite" (or rather, in modern terms, rent-seeking crowd) that's leeching off the body politic, whose way of life, whose ideology, language and manner, and whose dominance of the cybernetic industries, are absolutely hated by the average working person. — gurugeorge

I'll buy this if you can explain why. Why now? Middle class self-satisfied do-goodery has been with us - forever, more or less. Otherwise, it seems like another advertising slogan they are being told they should be angry about.

On the face of it, it makes far more sense to say that loss of worker power through trade unions, loss of the benefits of colonial exploitation, loss of power and income is what is driving the search for scapegoats, - lefties, feminists, others of any kind.

Surely the cause of the French revolution was that the peasants had no cake? Or bread?

In the interest of playing the ball, rather than the man, I suggest that criticism of identity politics on the grounds that it oppresses a minority (or a majority) is a weak position to take.

desire will become completely fascistic. — Number2018

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can we not say that desire is fascistic by nature. Whether i desire to make America great again, or make unenlightened great again, or some other thing - make Jesus crucified again, whatever, it takes no account of what you want unless I want it to? In which case, desire becomes fascistic whenever it is able to overwhelm the opposition.

Thus I am a conflict sociologist to an extent. The thesis is that peace ensues when conflict is internalised. If most people have conflicted loyalties, then the conflicts are internalised, but if their loyalties are not conflicted, conflict is externalised. The paradigm case is N.Ireland during the troubles; there was an alignment of identities such that working class = Catholic = republican = live in certain areas, and middle class = protestant = loyalist = live in other areas. If it had been the case that some republicans were protestant, and some working class folk lived in middle class areas, if there had been intermarriage such that families were conflicted, then there would have been less violence externalised, because folks that were allies on one issue would be enemies on another. Thus the homogenisation of conflict leads to externalised conflict and fascism. You have to identify the other unambiguously.