When a man says "I'm a woman.", are they misusing words? — Harry Hindu

When a Harry spurge psychic dilemma because five sideways, misusing symptom communicates upside. But all that's by the bye; The point is can you understand? I you can't then call it misuse or call it ad hom, or call it a fuckwit playing games. Whatever you call it will be a misuse of words.

This seems like a bizarre thing to say. — Terrapin Station

It is isn't it.

These studies conclude that anxiety and depression are markedly higher than they were in earlier eras. They examine age groups from children to middle-aged adults and span the medical and psychological literature. Many are nationally representative samples. Most employ anonymous questionnaires asking about symptoms, which means the increases cannot be due to over-diagnosis – these are people filling out surveys for research studies, not people seeking treatment. Yet they still report more issues. And it’s not just because they think it’s more acceptable to do so – the MMPI includes two measures of this type of response bias, and it still showed increases in mental health issues among high school and college students after these scales were included in the model.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-changing-culture/201510/are-mental-health-issues-the-rise

David Smail, he da man. And he's got my essay on counselling on his website, so a man of taste too.

As I have said all along is that meaning is the relationship between cause and effect. — Harry Hindu

what you meant (your intent in using those particular words) — Harry Hindu

Well, yeah, it is the intent, or the goal-in-mind, that is the cause of the words being used. — Harry Hindu

So your intended meaning causes you to use the word "look" rather than the word "banana" because ... you speak English and know that "look" has the meaning you intend, and "banana" does not. You use words this way because we (English speakers) use words this way. And it is common usage that confers meaning on the otherwise arbitrary grunts and squiggles.

And we know they are arbitrary grunts and squiggles, because those damn foreigners use completely different grunts and squiggles to say la meme chose exactement.

If a word like, "page" can be used in a way that isn't defined in some dictionary and it still mean something, then anyone can use any word they want to express any idea they want. — Harry Hindu

This is blatantly banana custard, Humpty Dumpty. Word meanings can be stretched, extended, moved over time, and still mean something. But if you stretch too many of them too far, the ties to common usage are broken and your intended meaning is lost. As you quite clearly know full well.

Skepticism. I don't believe it!

↪Fafner We are on the same (web) page, just look at the screen! Just look at your metaphor and because your phrase could be taken to mean something else, as I just did, you had to put what you meant (your intent in using those particular words) in parentheses. — Harry Hindu

"Meaning" can mean intention.

But the meaning of a word is not the intention of the word, because words do not have intentions.

"Meaning can also mean implication.
Footprints mean feet.

In this sense, footprints mean feet regardless of the intentions of the owner of the feet.

Scent-marking is an animal communication of territorial claim; perhaps it is intentional, or perhaps it is unconscious instinct, who knows. But it is meaningful and understandable to animals. It is hardly a language though, consisting of one smell-word - "me", though that word can itself be read into as to gender, dominance, and so on.

Now when you use the word "look" above, you presumably intend to convey something, in this case to direct the reader's attention. But the meaning of "look" does not at all depend on your intention.

We are on the same (web) page, just banana at the screen! Just banana at your metaphor... — Harry Christian

Harry C. here meant (intended) to say the same thing as you, but regardless of his intentions, "banana" does not mean "look". He simply failed to use the words aright.

This is the (probably deliberate) confusion you have been spreading though the thread, based on an equivocation between the intention of the speaker and the proper use of words. It is the same equivocation, incidentally that is is at the base of Humpty-Dumpty's declaration in Alice inWonderland:

"When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all." — Humpty Dumpty and Alice

I bow before science because the miracles work.

How would dolphin researchers verify that dolphins did possess language? They would do so by showing that dolphin sounds convey concepts. — Marchesk

And would they not do so by seeing what use they made of their sounds? Is conveying concepts not a use?

I always like to draw attention to the vast ambiguity of the term 'meaning' but for a change, I'll leave out the usual quote from The Meaning of Meaning, and just point out that reference, intention, understanding, significance, are all potential candidates for consideration, and it is not clear that they are all even compatible. What do you mean (intend) by 'meaning'?

I see the Wittgenstein project here as part of his attempt to undo the Cartesian error of identification as 'thinking thing' rather than 'doing thing'. Thus language is not about a transfer of some essence of conceptual meaning from my inner world to your inner world, but something that operates in the physical world. Beetles in boxes... The concepts in your mind are uncommunicable (even to yourself) unless you do something public with them - use them.

Absolutely wrong. One is dominant when one has what another absolutely wants, — Agustino

You are clearly in great need of absolution. Try a Catholic website.

Also, you confuse actually being dominant, with feeling confident. The two are ABSOLUTELY not the same. — Agustino

I ABSOLUTELY do not.

Someone could be insecure and yet dominant. Dominance has to do with outward appearance, whereas insecurity has to do with inward feeling. — Agustino

You are confusing being dominant with being domineering. Dominance has nothing to do with appearance, but is simply the fact of a relationship in a particular situation. One is dominant in a situation where one has superior knowledge, experience, interest, strength, or whatever. Whereas one is domineering when one wishes to be dominant but isn't, and that is a matter of appearances, and is all about appearing confident when one is actually insecure.

I think you're wrong: — Agustino

I think you're wrong to think I'm wrong.

If I am dominant, I don't have to ask if others are submissive, it's not relevant; I am dominant. If one is looking for submissive people to dominate, one is not dominant but submissive to others, and wanting their submissiveness to make one dominant.

Trump is a serial groper because he is not dominant, and has to keep convincing himself that he can dominate women, and boasting about it in 'the locker room' - a sure sign of insecurity.

Really, guys, who cares what women generally are or aren't? What about mackerel? Are they generally dominant or submissive? Are you a man or a fish?

Sometimes the questions one asks are more revealing than the answers one gets, and in this case, what is revealed is a man that is worried he might be a bit of a fish...

So, you would say that buying cheap goods, in the end, harms the poorest by supporting and perpetuating their exploitation? — Question

It's not a simple yes/no answer, it depends on - everything. Other things being equal, a trade is supposed to benefit both parties, and other things being equal, choosing best value keeps the market competitive and efficient.

But other things are not equal. Economic leverage tilts the supposedly level playing field to the extent that when you buy coffee from a peasant farmer in Colombia, neither of you benefits and both of you are harmed, because the coffee trader takes all the benefit. This is why people have found it worthwhile to start a charitable organisation to promote Fair Trade. So it is not buying or not buying that harms or benefits anyone, but the distorted economic power relations between multinational companies, and small traders and consumers.

Frozen is dried? Not in my supermarket.

I wish I knew what "enlightened" self-interest was. — Bitter Crank

It's like dried water; really useful, except for the slight drawback that it can't possibly exist.

People are being absurdly ethnocentric if they think that an arbitrary feature of their culture--something that may not exist in the future due to environmental, biological and cultural changes--is a universal right guaranteed to every individual. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Good job people don't think that, eh?

Maybe if we're talking about monopolies; but, the market isn't controlled by one corporation or one business, as we all know. — Question

Monopolies have nothing to do with it, though they produce other problems. Take food:

During the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 19th Century, people moved towards towns and cities for work and became reliant on food retailers as a result. Industrial managers became increasingly infuriated by high levels of absenteeism, a major cause of which was the consumption of adulterated foods. In the 1850’s, Thomas Wakley, a surgeon and MP, and physician Arthur Hill Hassall conducted extensive work on samples of food and drink purchased from the marketplace. They catalogued each of the vendors, locations, dates and products purchased. Each food and drink item was analysed and the results were published. It was concluded that food adulteration was a lot more common than was believed and that many of the adulterated foods were actually poisonous. This information, coupled with industrial pressure on the Government, lead to the development of The Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act 1860, which was later revised in 1872, and the Sale of Food and Drugs Act 1875. The revised Adulteration of Food and Drugs Act 1872 made provisions for the appointment of public analysts. Two years later the Society of Public Analysts was founded.

In the Early 20th Century foodborne illness became more broadly recognised and as a result, statutes connected to food safety and food quality were introduced. These included The Milk and Dairies Act 1914, which covered the production and sale of clean and safe milk for human consumption. Compositional requirements had also been introduced for some foods.

From here.

Yes, that is rather in my mind at the moment.

What's not to love about having the government in check by the markets? — Question

That's a very easy question, Question. An ungoverned market will deal mainly in pigs in pokes. To prevent people being poisoned by the food they buy, burned by the shoddy housing they rent, electrocuted by unsafe products, run down by faulty cars and so on we like to have trading standards. When the market controls the government, these standards are called 'red tape' and gotten rid of or relaxed or ignored to free up enterprise. People die.

To say that a cultural innovation is a right is absurd. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Why? Rights are themselves cultural innovations. Take property rights for example. They predate the declaration, but the abolition of slavery extended them universally to all humans. But the notion of property simply is the notion of a right to own stuff, and it is a cultural innovation. You have the right to own stuff, and I have the duty to refrain from taking it from you, and it is not absurd, but the basis of our culture.

But to declare that there are universal rights is not to enact them universally, it is to undertake the obligation to do so as far as one is able. So even the most 'primitive tribe undertakes to educate their children as to what berries are good to eat, and how to make a bow and arrow, or whatever technology is available. The right to education is part of the right to fully participate in society - why is that absurd?

Neoliberalism is a self-serving racket that exempts billionaires and large corporations from the constraints of democracy, from paying their taxes, from not polluting, from having to pay fair wages, from not exploiting their workers. — George Monbiot

You might well disagree with this or at least find it exaggerated to the point of vacuity. Nevertheless, that it makes sense to say it illustrates that a government can become a mafia. And if and when it does, obviously a man of principle and virtue will oppose the government. It is a sign of my left wing bias of course, that this appears in my newsfeed rather than fulminations against Communism. Exactly how one opposes depends on how much of a self-serving racket it is and one's resources, and one's character. Hopefully, many people will oppose such tendencies on an ongoing basis such that the government is obliged to serve the citizens as a whole rather than any clique. That is what approximates to 'good government' in my book, and it depends entirely on the vigilance of citizens in defending their own and each other's rights to fair treatment and a pleasant environment. To take the position that one doesn't mind ill-treatment of people as long as it is not oneself being ill-treated is woefully short-sighted.

The government can just as easily one day seize all my money and put me in jail. — Agustino

Of course, and governments do that sort of thing. There is no law of nature - again - that prevents governments from being mafias. What you going to do about it? You might need some help. I already said that there is no institution or system that is inherently fair moral and desirable.

In the end, we live in an anarchy, property rights do not exist any more than any other rights except to the extent that people come together to agree and institute them. The state is just a bunch of people being busybodies, and business and charity, organised crime are the same. So you just have to decide which busybodies you want to align yourself with, or if you'd rather be one against the world.

Why should the government decide what to do with my money? — Agustino

My mate Jesus had something to say about that. Not that either of us is a huge fan of government for it's own sake, and here in the UK there is a particular distaste for the government at the moment. But let's just say that the government is the only arbiter and guarantor that your money is your money, and not the mafia's or the marauding mob's. Apart from your private army of course, which is a business expense probably worse than taxes.

"How did you get started robbing banks?"
"Oh this philosopher gave me the idea, he said I should ignore the government and be self-reliant."

Can you explain why you consider it unfair? Granted that desperation is primarily something spiritual, and not material — Agustino

I don't grant it at all. If you happen to be a Jew fleeing Nazi Germany, or some other flavour of refugee, you are physically desperate and helpless and depend on the kindness of strangers in a strange land. This is the extreme, there are degrees of helplessness and desperation, but if you are a liberated slave in Southern USA, you become an entrepreneur as a self-employed share cropper - and are exploited . The conditions that allow and encourage exploitation and unfair dealing are many and varied; it is not the case that there is some economic system that is immune or that there is some market place that is inherently fair. Justice is something we can impose on the world to the extent that we value it, not something natural.

Well I don't know what kind of a business you used to run, or why you don't think it was hard (or at least harder than being an employee). — Agustino

I do think it is harder in the general circumstances in which I find myself. And I have no objection to it being remunerated accordingly. However, whenever someone makes a business, they need to conform the business to rules of health and safety, insurance, tax, employment regulation and so on, and these need to be there and enforced to prevent the unscrupulous from obtaining an advantage from their lack of scruples.

An employer should pay what the employee is willing to work for. Why should it be otherwise? I think even minimum wage levels are a problem. It makes starting a business more difficult. — Agustino

It should be otherwise because it is unfair. It encourages an economy of desperation. As long as there are desperate people, starvation wages will be the norm. And of course low wages lead to low consumption which is bad for business. What the entrepreneur wants of course is to pay his own staff a pittance and for everyone else to pay well, so that there will be consumers for his product.

there's this totally idiotic notion around that the job of the entrepreneur is to create jobs. — Agustino

I don't think I have forwarded that notion; it is generally something that employers use to trumpet their social value, like they're doing their workforce a favour.

I who work as an entrepreneur (well self-employed really) get 0 benefits atm. Tough life being an entrepreneur eh? But I'm not complaining, unlike some people. — Agustino

Yes you are complaining; your whole response to me is about how hard done by you and your fellow heroic business folk are. As a former business person myself, my heart bleeds, of course.

Yes, there is a glut who barely make a living out of it while working 10x harder than your average employee. — Agustino

Well if she works ten times as hard as the average employee, she deserves ten times the reward, minus whatever percentage we need to take off to cover all the stuff we want done that doesn't make money directly, like mending the road, defence, justice, child protection, etc. In a better run economy, such arbitrary cut offs are avoided, also healthcare is one of those things taken out of taxation. But the clever business person get's around these things by setting up another, 'arms length' company to employ another 49 people with no health insurance, and another, and another...

And then they earn, not a bare living, not an average wage, not 10 times the average wage, not 100 times the average wage, but an obscene and unjustifiable amount. I'm all for rewarding businesses that grow by providing a service and contributing to the economy in a legal and ethical way, but Bernie is right to suggest that healthcare is one of the costs of labour, just as paying them enough to feed and shelter themselves is. And if you can't afford that, you can't afford to employ people.

And by the way, you're not addressing the fact that most miners would not even WANT to be entrepreneurs, much less succeed as ones. — Agustino

I'm all for market forces to operate here. If there is a terrible shortage of willing business people, then their value is increased. But there is a glut, and their value does not decline because they rig the market.

...the entrepreneur has no family and tugs away at it for many many years, only after years of hard toil to be rewarded with riches, that other snitches try to take away from him afterwards. If anyone doesn't have it fair, then it's certainly the entrepreneur. — Agustino

What fairytale is this plagiarised from?

And that would be Fascism. — Galuchat

That is Fascism, I think you would have to say; I'm not talking about something that could possibly happen somewhere, but what is happening all the time and everywhere. But I have no interest in arguing about the labels you think we should apply.

Even those who succeed, they fail more times than they are successful. — Agustino

You confirm my point. If you can fail, and fail and fail and then succeed, then failure is not a serious risk. Clearly the penalty for failure is carried by others, who lose their livelihood, their health their pensions, their lives.

Which is fair game unenlightened. The entrepreneur assumed the risk, bought the mine (or rights to exploit its resources), hired the miners (who have a guaranteed pay at the end of the day), negotiated the deals, established a distribution network for the products, hoped the products would sell in sufficient volume, etc. — Agustino

Again, this is the image that is projected. But starving entrepreneurs who have lost everything,throwing themselves out of their high rise offices, are rather exceptional, whereas starving miners, dead miners underground, miners dying of respiratory disease in poverty, are commonplace; these are the people taking the real risks. Even farmers take far more risk than entrepreneurs.

'The market' conjures an image of some version of the miner selling ore to the blacksmith, who sells tools to the farmer, who sells food them both, and money or barter regulates supply and demand such that everyone provides value to others and receives equivalent value from others.

But obviously it is nothing at all like that. The miner, the farmer, the blacksmith does not get the value of his labour because things are not arranged as a market of that sort at all. Rather, the mine owner, the landowner, the 'entrepreneurs' literally take a cut between every exchange between others, impoverishing them all. The 'market' is institutionalised robbery.

An economist is to an entrepreneur like a boxing historian is to Muhammad Ali ;) — Agustino

Or a biologist to a tapeworm. Again, the image one is supposed to have of the entrepreneur is of the shopkeeper, or travelling trader, facilitating the exchange between others and taking in exchange the means of their own livelihood. But in fact, the market makers are market fixers.

Not having killer instinct. — Agustino

Not so much a marketplace then, as a battlefield, where rather than add value to the community, one seeks to take value from others. And a battlefield is a place that adds no value, but destroys it, and redistributes the remains on an arbitrary and unequal basis.

For such affairs, a dog is more convenient than a philosopher. A dog has more sense than to wonder if it possibly knows enough to get where it's going, and won't trouble me with the question either.

You'd have to know you weren't going to have a heart attack, and that the mad axeman wasn't creeping up behind you, and that you weren't going to move your own goalposts halfway through.

But most of us philosophers are perfectly sure we can drive to work in the morning, and cook dinner in the evening, and some of us don't even call it guessing. The future may be uncertain, but not so uncertain that I don't go shopping and fully expect the nice man at Walmart to accept my money.

Everything anyone ever does, they have sufficient knowledge to do, but not always before they do it.

Yes, it's about time we get our rights, and get properly recognised! — Agustino

You Have the Right to Remain Silent, But Anything You Don’t Say May Be Used Against You.

In my case, I don't say a lot about God, and it gets used against me a lot. A long forgotten source said that belief is thinking the bridge will support you, whereas faith is stepping out on the bridge over the void. I have faith without belief, and that, by convention, is lunacy.

Yes, we are on the same side. The suggestion that God designs every snowflake, and when he takes a break amorphous masses result is rather peculiar. But I was exploiting your comment to make a much more general critique of all arguments for or against existence of all kinds.

Think global, act local. — Patrick Geddes

Identification is always divisive, but one must deal with whatever is here.

The universe is not well arranged or tidy in any way that a room might be. It is merely clumped much like a room would be after being hit with a flood.
I don't see the argument from order at all. — noAxioms

Try the argument from disorder, then.

If there is disorder, there is a disorderer.
There is disorder.
Therefore there is a disorderer.

Or even better:

If there is a rock, there is a rocker.
There is a rock.
Therefore there is a rocker.

If there is something, there is a somethinger.
And if not there is a nothinger.

Really? :-$

Which neatly illustrates that the conclusion of an argument must be contained in the premises. Which is to say that the existence of something can only be proved by assuming the existence of that something.
The way I like to put this is that no matter how cleverly one arranges one's words into premises and conclusions, they cannot oblige things to be thus and not so.

An untidy room can be caused by chaotic causes e.g. a strong wind, earthquake, etc. — TheMadFool

Also called 'An act of God'. Thus a tidy room is a sign of the absence of God, and the presence of fairies, or some other anal retentive being.

there is no mess — TheMadFool

In which case a tidy room is unsurprising to the extent of being inevitable. Don't tell my kids.

Imagine yourself entering a room and finding it clean, well arranged and tidy. You're then asked to infer something from this information. What will be your thoughts? — TheMadFool

My first thought was - clearly no one lives here (because living is a messy business). Creation is clearly a messy business, and God is not so neurotic as to tidy away all the unused galaxies, as anyone with a telescope can see. There's crap all over the place. Cleanliness is a very long way from Godliness.

Reality can be simulated via logical computers, — Question

... is equivalent to "We all exist in the mind of God."

Because either these logical computers 'really' exist as simulations inside themselves, or they are imaginary, in which case who cares, or they exist 'beyond reality' in 'real reality'. in which case they can be simulated via logical computers, whatever the fuck they are.

Alternatively and intuitively - Reality cannot be simulated via logical computers. Then logic is subordinate to reality and is merely a tool for modelling, not simulating.