It does exactly what it says on the skin.

I do not know, and I hope none of us finds out.

But suppose you had suffered such pain a year ago, and survived against your will, would you regret your survival from the position of not being now in pain?

Not posted in a recent thread:

"Post scarcity leads to empty threads, and therefore a threadbare society."

I have a real question. If you found the perfect woman, what exactly would happen next. — Hanover

Ooh, I know, I know! You'd discover your own imperfections. Fortunately, there are not many perfect women.

Any time we do something habitual we move without having the goal to make that movement. When I'm walking I'm moving my legs without having the goal to move the legs. My goal might be to get somewhere, or just to wander, but each time I take a step when I'm walking, I do not form the goal of taking that step. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is interesting; we haven't talked much about habit. Making tea has become a habit for me, to the extent that it bypasses both the motive of thirst and the goal of drinking tea; it's as automatic as walking. And it illustrates again the inadequacy of the 'every action is the result of desire' thesis. Habits are learned, and once learned become 'autonomous' - that's not quite the right word - unintentional?

One doesn't generally intend to fall over, but when walking one does not intentionally not fall over either. Most of the time it just happens without thought, but if the ground is very rough, one has to become aware of each step and take care. I don't know what we should say - that the motive of not falling is always there, but not conscious, or that it is only there when it is needed. Perhaps it doesn't matter much.

a wise person does not respond to climate change by ignoring or denying science and praising the virtues of unregulated business, nor by vilifying business and being condescending towards common people while praising science as the breathtakingly amazing arbiter of safety, longevity, justice, etc. A wise person responds to climate change by recognizing that it is the creation of both business and science and looking for ways to act outside of business and science. A complete rupture and departure from the worldviews that have created and sustained modern business and science might be a no-brainer once people start looking outside of them. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

If we were all wise, or even most of us, there would be no problem. The solution to climate change is well known, and not difficult to implement. But wise people have been turning away from consumer society and promoting sustainable living at least since the sixties. Indeed vilifying and condescending does nothing, but nor does being wise unless wisdom acts to become vegan, stop using fossil fuels, reduce transport by consuming local products, insulate homes, fit solar panels and learn to live without waste.

But all that is straightforward. It is the wisdom that is in short supply. And that is what I am interested in trying to manufacture.

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. — BillytheBard

But when you try to be more merciful than you actually are, you strain, and then it is not mercy, but righteousness, which someone is going to have to pay for. Therefore give what you can give with good will and no more.

You put it very clearly. Logos against Eros; it's all very Freudian. You speak for logos, and I speak for Eros. This gives you the advantage, as I have to fight with your weapons in the virtual world, but if we met in the empirical world I would destroy you with a caress.

When in common usage, "motivate" has a much more general meaning, more closely associated with "impetus". In this way you seek to restrict the use of "motive", so that an idea or goal provides motivation, but it cannot be motivation which is responsible for the creation of ideas, they are spontaneous or random occurrences. In actuality though, "motive" refers to the factors which induce one to act. And thinking, which creates ideas and goals, is an act. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's right. And if we are just arguing about the meaning of words, there is no real problem or disagreement.

You might call this living in a fantasy world, but that's what a theorist does and it's effective for escaping discontent. Sure the theory needs to be tested empirically to be proven, but this is not necessarily important to the theorist. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that is what a theorist does, and that is what I call the world of ideas or fantasy to distinguish it from the empirical world, which is what you have done there also.

So the question I need to ask, I suppose, is what are these 'factors that induce one to act', that are not ideas projected as goals and that you think of as motives and I do not? And since you include plants, you seem to be saying that plants have motives in this sense, which I find rather a misleading locution. But never mind, as long as we are clear that it is not ideas, or indeed any thought based factor, but something in the physical nature of a plant that it grows towards the light, or makes seeds or responds to the environment in all sorts of ways that we can make sense of in terms of evolutionary function, but the plant itself cannot consider at all.

A plant's genes encode a repertoire of automatic responses to environmental stresses, that have the effect of making it adaptive to the environment in ways that aid survival. If you want to call these responses motivated, well I sort of understand. And humans have similarly 'built in' responses, that in my language, I tend to use terms such as 'instinct' and 'reflex' for. Propensities to act that one can be aware of and think about, but which originate in the body without thought. Thus hunger is a physical condition that provokes suckling, or crying; curiosity provokes exploration and learning. Drought provokes spinach to run to seed. I call these responses spontaneous because they are unthought.

So per my earlier example, but in your language, thirst motivates drinking, but thought motivates the modification of behaviour from drinking some water to making tea, based on remembered previous experience. And one might say that biology, or evolution is motivated to provoke thought as a means to increase the diversity of responses through just such modification by learning. But in humans, thought reaches such a level that it can become wholly antagonistic to the motives of life that give rise to it, and this is the sad condition in which we find ourselves; that the thought that modifies the instinct to run to seed, to delay it rather than accelerate it perhaps, becomes anti-natalism, and wholly opposed to life.

While I am always happy to have a cup of tea, I generally suppose that it is myself that is happy, and that the tea has little feeling for me. I perceive that I value tea, but the value itself is not a perceiving but an orienting towards tea.

The way my ears can hear so much better than my fingers can play.

do not study philosophy. do something more interesting / worthwhile. — The Great Whatever

Well the second bit is good. Some science, some maths some psychology, some geography some politics, some religion, some sport; by all means put some meat on the bones as well as picking them over.

Anyone read the Wasp Factory? Gender politics meets Lord of the Flies. With hilarious results, not.

I am sure that this makes me a lone wolf, but I want out of the tunnel. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

It doesn't. Plato wanted out of the cave; Freud decided that civilisation is identical with madness; Jesus declared that it is necessary to die and be reborn in the spirit... There is a long tradition.

Here's a suggestion, rest of the world: instead of trying to master manipulating, controlling and dominating, try to master mutually respectfully co-existing for a change. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Well with all due respect to one who cannot read a few paragraphs of another without becoming angry, it is easier said than done. In fact, it is worse than that, it is a continuation of the mistake that got us here in the first place.

To put it very briefly, thought, intellect, science, philosophy, is a superb tool for mastering the environment. We accumulate knowledge and understanding and learn to manipulate the world. The mistake is to turn this mastery on thought itself - I think that is what you are suggesting, that we must master our own being so as to end conflict? But this simply recreates the conflict internally; the master is angry at his own anger and another's anger, and so anger is sustained in him even as he fights it.

The first step is for thought to understand completely that it cannot solve this problem, because itis the problem. And if that is clearly and completely understood, then there is an end. Thought stops. And it is the silence that follows that is the solution. But one must be very clear that this silence cannot be reached by any kind of effort or mastery; it cannot be practiced or achieved. All one can do by way of approach is to seek to understand the limits of thought and will.

Suppose the child is popping things into its mouth completely randomly, without any determination of "error", and therefore with no motive. Isn't this just the same things as saying that the idea, the goal to put the thing in its mouth, just pops into the child's head from nowhere? So now we're back to the same position I stated earlier. The act of imagination produces this idea from nothing, it just pops into the child's head, what you call "spontaneous action". And this is what creativity is. The difference between what you're saying and what I said, appears to be that you do not want to call this spontaneous action an act of imagination. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, that is the difference. But I think it is a real and crucial difference. I say that we do things, without motive, without idea and without a goal. I could call it 'play'. It has the effect of trial and error, but is not motivated by that idea, which the child is not yet capable of forming. What this formulation does, which I think makes it more true, is it establishes the primacy of being over thought. One is in the world, one experiences, one moves; and ideas, judgements, plans, understandings, come from that, and not - emphatically not - the other way round.

And this is the escape from the prison of discontented will - that it is merely an idea one has formed about oneself, and it is a mistaken idea. Why go on living? Why have children? No reason, no motive, no plan! Motives are thought excrescences on life that divert it from its course, which is just fine a lot of the time, but thought is the servant of life, not the master.

Is it not clear that before motive can get off the ground, life must have already been busy forming itself into the being that can be motivated?

Don't fuck with wisdom.
Don't worship wisdom.
Treat her as a faithful friend.

We use the same word, where the Greeks used different words, but we understand the difference as well as they, so it seems like a disingenuous question, like asking why a husband does not worship his wife. Well he does, hopefully - with his body, as the marriage service puts it - and there is the connection, that explains the use of the same word.

OK, I admit that it is possible, that all goals are produced from prior experience like this. But how do we account for innovation and creativity then? With creativity It must be the case that the act of imagination creates something new and that new thing created must be something in the mind. Suppose we assume that the imagination always uses old parts when creating something new, then there is necessarily some things within the mind which were not created by the imagination. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you spend some time with very small persons, you'll notice that everything goes in their mouth; chocolate, lego bricks, electric cable, carpet fluff, thumbs, clothes pegs, guitars, everything. Presumably, there is no 'desire for carpet fluff' required or even 'imagining carpet fluff', this is just exploration of whatever is around.

I learned about carpet fluff a long time ago, and I don't even like smoking it. Indeed there is no possible motive for eating carpet fluff, and in the same way, there is no possible motive for drinking concoction X, which might be delicious, revolting or poisonous. 'Suck it and see' is not really a motive so much as an attitude to the unknown, that infants necessarily adopt by instinct, and adults learn by bitter experience to renounce in favour of 'sticking with what works'.

So I would say that imagination can suggest trying some sugar (I know I like sugar) in the tea (I know I like tea), but cannot go beyond experience and rearrangements of experience. "How about baked beans in tea - I know I like baked beans?" but not, "How about concoction X in tea - What the fuck is concoction X ?"

But if you are young at heart, and there happens to be concoction X, you might try it, and you might like it, and then you have had a new experience, and a motive to use concoction X in all your old recipes.

So creativity can be exploring new arrangements of the same old paints and brushes, or exploring new materials, but the aspect that is intended is always the known aspect, and to be creative there must also be an aspect of 'suck it and see', which I previously called 'spontaneous action'.

Isn't that description inaccurate then? The act of imagination is said to be what produces things in one's head, but it is presumed that there are already things within one's head for the act of imagination to work with. This is a vicious circle. The imagination can only create something if something already exists, but that something could have only been created by the imagination. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think so. Imagine that terrible time before there was trade with China. The unenlightened of those days would never imagine liking tea in those days because 'tea' was a disgusting concoction of chamomile or blackcurrant leaves that was forced on you whenever you complained of quinsy or the King's evil. That poor unenlightened would have suffered, but never known what it was that was lacking in hie life, to even desire it. So there is no vicious circle that I can see. Like Tigger, one bounces through life bumping into hay-corns and thistles and not liking them much until one bumps into Roo's strengthening medicine, which is A A Milne's metaphor for tea. One learns from experience what one can desire, and the bouncing and bumping is the spontaneous movement of life.

What this view counters, or undoes, is the tyranny of desire. It stops being this slave driver, forcing you out of bed every morning, and take its rightful place as a mere thought that can refine one's bouncing so as to avoid some of the thistles.

Ooh, yummy dopamine peaks, just what I always wanted. :D

If I desire tea because it is pleasant to desire tea, then what's the tea for, and why would I ruin the pleasure of desire by fulfilling it?

It may well be that real tea cannot live up to the standard of imaginary tea - which can very easily be 'just like the best tea you ever tasted, only even better'. But I don't think this requires a radical reworking

I think if you examine this dogma, it doesn't stand up. In the first instance, it is an experience that is painful or pleasurable in some degree, or petty much neutral perhaps.

So I desire a cup of tea. This implies that I take pleasure in tea and pain in thirst. But at the moment, there is no tea, and therefore no pleasure. The pleasure that has not yet happened cannot be the cause of its own production. It can only then be the pain of thirst. But the pain of thirst can be assuaged by tap water; no need to wait for the kettle to boil.

What motivates me to make tea is the imagined pleasure that will ensue. And the image of pleasure comes from memory of times I have taken pleasure in drinking tea in the past, and is projected - thrown forward in time, and that is what we call 'desire', the imagined repetition of past pleasure, or the imagined relief from present pain.

There is of course the desire for novelty, but this is again either the projected image of past novelties, or the imagined escape from the pain of repetition. Now it may seem that there is no escape from this world of images that direct every move, but it is not so. There is in the real, as distinct from the imaginary world, spontaneous movement.

when students from other countries would come, they would be ahead in everything: Math, the sciences, etc. They would also do better in school even though they didn't speak the language as well as I did.

Is there a way to fix the American education system to better elevate the education levels? Or do we blame the fact that 27% of America is made up of 1st or 2nd generational immigrants and thus leading to the system having to adjust for them? — Anonymys

There's something just a tad odd in complaining that Johnny Foreigner is better educated than you and in the next breath blaming him for dragging you down.

Earlier you wrote "of the society" and not "by"...

Not sure I understand that. — creativesoul

Odd, isn't it, how one can have the simplest idea in one's head, yet find that other people have difficulty with it? Earlier, I used the example of an ant colony, which is literally made of ants in relationships behaving thus and so, identifying friend and foe, serving the queen, foraging nest building. and all these relationships, habits, hierarchies, constitute social constructs and are quite literally made of ants. I contrast this with an anthill, which is a complex structure made by ants and for ants but is not made of ants but of dirt.

The simplest example of a social construct would be a mating pair - a construct of two elements and one function. And then it develops in complexity with mating rituals, nest-building, and offspring, and so on. The nest is made of twigs, the mating pair is made of birds behaving towards each other.

Our nest is our computer network and the forum software, engineered stuff, but the forum itself is a social construct; it is us in structured relationships.

I wonder if a goal is necessarily an image, or "imagined". I suppose it depends on what is meant by "imagined", but it seems to me that often a goal is just some sort of vague notion, not an image at all. I want to be satisfied, and happy, what kind of image is that? It appears to be easier to put words to a goal than it is to put an image to a goal. Why? These words don't produce any particular images, just vague notions. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I don't suppose it has to be a visual image; a composer might have a very nebulous sense of his goal as a piece of music on this sort of scale, that conveys that sort of feeling. Something that can hardly be put into words or images. That is the nature of creativity, that one does not know the goal because it is something new that has never been, and that is true of architects too. In the end, all i mean by imagined is that it is something in one's head that is not in the world.

On the small scale, my goal is the cup of tea that I do not have, that does not exist because it hasn't been made, and the logic is that if it had been made I wouldn't possibly have it as a goal, I'd already have it, just as my goal was to write some kind of reply to you, but now it is written, it is a goal no longer.

In more traditional language, perhaps, my desire is always for something that is not, something lacking. What can we call something that is not? An image, a fiction, a notion? The source of such is the past, one's experience - it can only be the past since it is not present, and it is projected onto the future as a goal.

In the end, I think one can only intend something to the extent that it is known, so a creative act is necessarily the interplay of the intentional and the accidental, and that is what I alluded to above when I mentioned doodles. One can act without motive.

Since the date is 2013, I imagine the plan has been realised. But a plan is an imagined building, and a building is a realised plan. I don't think this is controversial.

you experience intent — Galuchat

Yes. An intent is an imagined act, the act itself is behaviour. A plan is also an imagined act; as an architect plans an imaginary building, and the brickeys and plasterers behave it into existence. We hope they can read the architects intent.

Why do we do what we do? — Gotterdammerung

Sometimes I doodle. For no reason.

A goal is an image projected into an imagined future, and identified with. Goals are imaginary until they are realised. If I am motivated to make a cup of tea, it is because there is no cup of tea ready, but I imagine a cup of tea would be pleasant. It would be odd to say that I experience the goal, if the goal is to experience a cup of tea, but reasonable to say I experience imagining experiencing a cup of tea. Then I make the tea, and my goal is realised.

What an exciting life I lead. ;)

Just as a footnote, here's a little story about how totally trivial, totally ignorable stuff that, for God's sake get a life, really counts for fuck-all except political correctness gone mad and disappearing up its own special snowflake arse, is really quite important when it's your precious vulnerable child's sense of belonging at stake. Micro-aggression.

So it is absolutely possible that men will be labeled sexists as a form of bullying, even when they're not. — Agustino

All things are possible, and most of them happen. Men suffer rape and domestic violence too. And it is certainly not an improvement on women suffering them. Black people can be racist and poor people can be rapaciously greedy. Even retired philosophy forum admins can make an intemperate post (Sorry about that, mods). We are all sinners.

Nevertheless, there is a question of power and capacity. In a white dominated society (dominated by sheer numbers and by status) the prejudices of black folks do not prevail, the prejudices of white folks do. And in this forum, the combined prejudices of every single woman, even augmented by such powerful voices as my own, are not going to seriously harm or inhibit anyone.

Minorities need special consideration, whether they are right wing special snowflakes, or females or the religious. White male leftwing atheists predominate here, and especially in a philosophy forum, they, we, should welcome and nurture otherness of culture and background to challenge our preconceptions. Which is not to say we should put up with any old crap and abuse.

That there is a lot of process, of function, both body and brain, or mental, of which one is not and/or cannot be aware, is pretty uncontroversial. But 'the unconscious' is not that.

The realm of the unconscious is established in the individual when he refuses to admit into his conscious life a purpose or desire which he has, and in doing so establishes in
himself a psychic force opposed to his own idea. This rejection by the individual of a
purpose or idea, which nevertheless remains his, is repression. "The essence of
repression lies simply in the function of rejecting or keeping something out of
consciousness." Stated in more general terms, the essence of repression lies in the
refusal of the human being to recognize the realities of his human nature. The fact that
the repressed purposes nevertheless remain his is shown by dreams and neurotic
symptoms, which represent an irruption of the unconscious into consciousness, producing not
indeed a pure image of the unconscious, but a compromise between the two
conflicting systems, and thus exhibiting the reality of the conflict. — Norman O Brown

Life against Death.

This is what someone might reasonably claim does not exist, only get the response, 'well of course you would say that, because you are repressing it.'

I hate it when people hammer things into my head. It is so spongy, all you have to do is put something near it and it gets absorbed anyway.

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that the notion of social construct is far too vague to be useful. At least, it seems that way to me. If it is underwritten by thought/belief that we cannot get 'beneath' language, it seems that it would be all the more so inclined to arrive at a set of all sets. That is, if we cannot distinguish between our talk and what we talk about in some way or other which allows us to know the differences between our reports and what we're reporting upon, then everything ever spoken and/or written is a social construct.

I think an older critique talked about maps and territories... — creativesoul

I like vague. The vagueness of a screwdriver is such that everyone uses one to open tins of paint, and some of us us it to stir the paint too. Yet it also has the precision that one can fit the hinges of a door with it (once you've cleaned the paint off the end).

You know those city centre maps with a little label on "You are here"? How do they know? It is because the map is fixed in the territory, so if you are reading the map you are where the map is. These days, everyone has a marauder's map that constantly updates itself with its own location, and tells you where you are on the move. It's magic.

But less of this 'we', and 'our talk' here, because in the original sense, you are part of my territory rather than my map. Indeed you are too ephemeral to even appear on my map, and I bump into you unexpectedly here and there. At best there is a vague region marked in hope and ignorance 'Here be creative souls'. Rather, as nations are marked on 'political' maps that become in a few years out of date, and therefore historical, like a map of the Roman Empire. In the long run, the territory is changing, the continents drift, and nothing is fixed. You are here - for now.

Our talk changes the world. Our maps change the world, and they are part of the world and so cannot be absolutely distinguished. Think of town planning policy and its associated maps. They describe and also ordain. Yet a builder has the advantage over a philosopher, that he knows well to build according to the map, but on the territory; there is no confusion in his mind.

Sorry, I seem to be in poetic mode this morning; am I making any sense?

I don't know what the dispute was, that disillusioned or discouraged you, so of course I'm not in a position to disagree with you or judge your objections. — Michael Ossipoff

I'm not at all discouraged. But thank you for the endorsement of the regime, with which I totally agree. There is a tradition inherited from a previous site of quality moderation and generally friendly and insightful members. Long may it continue. If this thread appears critical, it is only because eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

You do show good technique, reframing a horrifying tragedy to a dance party. However the effort doesn't indicate immunity. — praxis

I did say 'more or less', but I suspect some people mistake my caring deeply about how things are for being hurt. One can be unhappy about things without being hurt.

On reflection, and with the benefit of hindsight etc, I have slightly mislead some folks with the Kevin thing. It was a bit of wordplay - nobody died. The party analogy works better. The dance floor is crowded, and if you tread on someone's toes, you can apologise and move on. Some dancers are a bit wild and inconsiderate, and you might want to remonstrate, but if a drunk is flailing about knocking people down and throwing up on them, it's time to call in the bouncers. Don't try to tackle them yourselves or it will become a brawl. The bouncers need to be alerted to trouble, but not troubled with trivial alerts. And this is the undefinable judgement that we all have to make, between a lively party, and a rowdy one.

I think it's been a bit too rowdy here of late, and some people seem to have left as a result, which is a shame. Wipe up the vomit, calm down, and carry on with care and consideration.

I hope you are not suggesting that we have an unmoderated forum?
— unenlightened

No, but I would be as hands off as possible. I requested this before, but there really needs to be an ignore feature on this forum. That's a pretty glaring oversight by its makers. Nonetheless, it is still possible to ignore users you don't like, so I still have a hard time feeling sorry for you. — Thorongil

Well we agree about being as hands off as possible. In fact all the mods agree about that, because modding is tricky, thankless and tediously time-consuming.

But I have no idea why you think I want you to feel sorry for me. I am, strange to say, completely un bothered personally by all this. Mods are in the business of being unpleasant to people by editing or silencing them, or by standing in judgement and giving stern warnings. So they take a level of crap in private and in public that would be intolerable to the delicate. Over the years in the previous forum I have manage to arrive at sense of personal security that allows me to be quite sensitive and yet more or less immune from hurt. It is a condition of being eager to learn and change, but unattached to what has already been learned.

So this is what I am doing with this thread: I am trying to minimise the moderating, in the same way that one might try to minimise the housework. But this cannot be done by letting everything get into a disgusting mess, rather one has to clean as one goes, show the drunks the door, sternly order the children to behave, and ask folks to take their muddy boots off as they come in. It's not the most exciting topic in the world, but if I can get folks to think about their own behaviour, and that of their fellow guests, then not only will it save some housework, but the party will be more fun.

But take someone like Bitter Crankus. I highly respect BC and if I was the owner of this forum, quite honestly BC would be a moderator. And yet I disagree with him on most everything. — Agustino

BC would make a good moderator. Not so much for his philosophical expertise, but for his social and communication skills. We agree about something again, how annoying!

I don't think we need to talk about Kevin. — Sapientia

It's not obligatory. I am interested.

Dude, you annoy me to fuck, but I love you like an oyster loves the grain of sand that produces a pearl. I wish you would be a little more considerate, but I do not want you banned.

But this is not an invitation to become fuck buddies, I am happily married - well, happily, I am married.

I did. I said you need to ignore Kevin, as several other people have suggested you do. — Thorongil

I don't think that is a good policy, for two reasons. 1. It can't be done; some people are more tolerant of abuse than others. Typically it is a learned male trait to 'take it like a man', so it disadvantages half the population at a stroke. 2. Kevin is contagious: call me a dick and I'll likely call you one back, and when people who like to call other people dicks find that they can call people dicks, you end up with threads full of dicks calling dicks dicks.

You have to understand that in theory, and in the old forum in practice, it was my business to deal with Kevin. I hope you are not suggesting that we have an unmoderated forum?

Sometimes evolution has nothing better to do than just fuck about.

the pleasure of unearned moral superiority. — Thorongil

Have I offended you, or are you a gratuitous shit merchant? I am doing my best. Clearly it has been and continues to be inadequate. Perhaps you can help?